Bipartisanship has its advantages. A bipartisan process is more likely to get policy based on values that Americans broadly agree on, and a bipartisan process is less likely to accept mistaken evidence because many eyes will have examined the evidence from different perspectives.

But we need to remember, especially at Across the Aisle, that bipartisanship should rarely, if ever, be a goal for its own sake. The United States in recent years has made all sorts of “bipartisan” foreign policy errors.

And we’re on our way to another one, if the House-led effort to crack down on oil market speculators makes it into law.

In recent years as a New York Times columnist, Paul Krugman has often opined based on his values, and his columns can sometimes seem partisan and shrill. But when he writes as an economist, he is almost always sharp and clear and insightful (who am I to offer broad criticism of one of the leading international economists of our time? I once tried to get him to join my committee of advisors on my Ph.D. dissertation, but since I studied graduate international economics at MIT when he was on leave, meaning that I took the class with another great contemporary international economist, Avinash Dixit, Krugman demurred.  Bottom line: I have my personal views about Krugman’s economics writings, but a dispassionate observer would be perfectly justified in taking his views much more seriously than mine.).

Krugman’s column in today’s Times about speculation in the oil market seems solidly on point, based on well-argued economics. And he offers much more detailed analysis on his blog (here is the most recent post in a series, which started here). Blaming “speculators” for the run-up in oil prices and passing bipartisan legislation to crack down on speculators in hopes of driving down the price of gas in the U.S. is misguided.

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It was just over twenty years ago, on June 23 1988, that Dr. James Hansen, who heads the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told a U.S. Senate committee that the year’s record temperatures were not the result of natural variation. As a result global warming irrevocably became part of official political discourse.

Last year Hansen said that a global tipping point will be reached by 2016 if the human population is unable to reduce greenhouse gases. He said the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scenarios for future sea level rise do not take into account ice sheet disintegration, which could cause several meters of sea level rise during the next century.

It is important to remember that even before his 1988 testimony Hansen was sounding the alarm. In 1981 he and a team of scientists at Goddard had reached the conclusion that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would lead to global warming sooner than previously predicted. While other climatologists had already predicted that a trend would be apparent by 2020, Hansen predicted, in a paper published in Science, that the change was already occurring and that there would be record high temperatures as early as 1990. He also predicted that it would be difficult to convince politicians and the public to react.

The history of Hansen is instructive for what it says about the American government’s ability to deal with a real global threat. After decades of even acknowledging there could be a problem it then switched to minimizing the dangers. When even that became impossible it switched to suppressing information about it.

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This morning, we got Ambassador Tom Pickering, Bud Mcfarlan, and Rick Barton in a room together to see what they had to say about the kinds of foreign policy our next president could enact with support from both sides of the aisle.

Part 1:

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The Partnership for a Secure America presents

A Bipartisan Foreign Policy

for January 2009

With

Ambassador Tom Pickering

Robert (Bud) McFarlane

Frederick (Rick) Barton

Monday, June 23, 2008, 9 – 10:30 am

1111 19^th St, NW, 12^th Floor, Washington, DC 20036

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Last week the Supreme Court of the United States ruled for the first time in Boumediene v. Bush on whether “noncitizens detained by our Government in territory over which another country maintains de jure sovereignty have any rights under our Constitution.”

Specifically, the court ruled in a 5 to 4 split decision that unlawful enemy combatants captured overseas and transferred to the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay (GITMO) have habeas corpus rights under the U.S. Constitution.

Translation: the 270 remaining detainees held at Guantanamo can now legally challenge their detentions in a civilian court.

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Many observers, inside and outside the U.S. Government, believe we are at a critical juncture, some say a tipping point, in global efforts to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction and the missiles materials, technology and expertise associated with them.  While much progress has taken place over the past few years, the trend lines are not very promising and we may be falling behind where we need to be.  The next administration will be tested the first day it takes office.  It will need to prepare itself for the long haul with a policy agenda, an organizational structure, skilled leadership and adequate staffing to rally our country and our friends and allies to the cause, if it hopes to reverse this trend.

Controlling the spread of WMD is a bipartisan national priority. Improving the way we organize our arms control and nonproliferation structure to prevent WMD proliferation should be a bipartisan challenge as well. Dispassionate discourse on the strengths and weaknesses of past and current organizational practices can help shape the next administration’s strategy on stemming and reversing the proliferation of WMD.

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Congress mandated a new study of the military services’ “roles and missions” in the 2008 defense budget, and in the past few weeks, military and civilian leaders in the Pentagon have started the process. They hope to finish in time that the report might be useful to the transition team after the presidential election. According to Reps. Ike Skelton and Duncan Hunter (who sponsored the bipartisan study provision), the idea is to “identify the services’ core competencies, discover the missions going unaddressed, and examine possible duplication of effort among the branches.” As CongressDaily points out,

Critics have complained that vast sums of money are wasted due to the military operating four air forces, two land armies and overlapping intelligence and space programs.

Sounds like a reasonable point. And most of the (limited) commentary that I have seen about the study worries that the rapid timetable or entrenched political interests will prevent the study from doing its job and saving money “left on the table” in the defense budget (for example, here). The presumption is that a more centralized military organization — more “jointness” in military parlance — is a good idea. The danger, in this view, is that the military services each want to preserve “parochial stovepipes;” the implied solution is that Defense Department civilians rather than the service staffs should drive the study project.

Sometimes it’s a good thing that few studies or even “blue-ribbon panels” have any effect on the real policy environment. I would be upset if this study were likely to narrow America’s strategic options and capabilities. Or maybe I should take solace in the Congressional direction to eliminate “unnecessary” duplication, perhaps implying that Congress understands that not all duplication is bad. But I’m afraid that “jointness” is so ingrained in the modern military (and among civilian DoD leaders) that the baseline assumptions are that all competition and interservice rivalry should be stamped out.

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Getting to bipartisan compromise is a tough challenge in today’s political climate.  Those that preach moderation are frequently ignored in favor of those who propose more dramatic and, therefore, “newsworthy” ideas.  Congress - the House of Representatives in particular - has become increasingly partisan thanks to gerrymandering on behalf of both parties and the 24 hour news cycles which promotes conflict and confrontation.  So, what is a politician to do?  While there is no easy answer that will eliminate the partisan rancor that permeates our discourse, I believe that Senator Obama has made some real inroads and presents a very valuable lesson to other leaders who seek to promote bipartisanship in an environment that tends to dismiss compromise. 

Granted, many of Senator Obama’s policy ideas do come from mainstream democratic thought.  However, what differs between him and many other political leaders with similar policy ideas is his ability to present these ideas in a way that is compelling to those of very different backgrounds and political beliefs.  Just as Reagan had fundamentally conservative ideas but was able to present them in a way that appealed to a much wider cross section of society, so has Senator Obama shown a unique skill in being able to appeal to a broad cross section of American society. 

So, what is the key to his success?  There are many.  However, one of my observations is that Senator Obama presents his ideas in a context that does not seek to denigrate those who disagree.  Rather, he frequently acknowledges those with whom he might have fundamental disagreements.  This is not to say that he agrees with them, but simply by acknowledging those ideas, he presents himself as a more open-minded and a more even-handed leader.  And this isn’t just a show.  I am increasingly convinced that this is truly the way he approaches problems.  One of the keys to compromise is acknowledging that even though you may hold very strongly held beliefs, that well meaning people hold equally strong beliefs on the other side.  The first step in solving a contentious problem is acknowleding the concerns of those who disagree.  Senator Obama has shown that he recognizes this important fact.  A couple of examples: (more…)

It seems to me that the presidential debate has devolved into a contest of who can dig up the most controversial quote said by someone connected to one of the candidates.  This type of contest, in my opinion, breeds the sort of personal attacks that the Partnership for a Secure America was set up to counteract. Accepting these attacks as the modus operandi of politics will only create further tolerance for them when Republicans and Democrats actually govern. 

People make their decisions on political leaders based on a wide variety of factors.  These range from their stances on issues to the candidate’s professed values to simply a gut feeling that a voter has about a candidate.  When it comes to foreign policy the candidates have made their views fairly clear and there have been worthwhile debates during the primary season about their foreign policy positions.  What is concerning to me is that it seems that our political debate has degenerated into a gotcha contest where the media (and frequently an opposing campaign) attempts to dig up the most offensive quote said by someone associated with a candidate…. even better if that quote is immortalized on Youtube. 

The examples in the past several months are plentiful, especially on the Democratic side.  Back in December Bill Shaheen stepped down from Clinton’s campaign for suggesting that Obama’s drug use would be ammunition for Republican attacks.  More recently, Samantha Power stepped down from the Obama campaign after calling Clinton a monster.  Geraldine Ferraro stepped down from the Clinton campaign after arguing that Obama is such a strong candidate because he’s black.  And, of course, we’re now dealing with Obama’s association with his pastor who has become well known for some of his hateful sermons.  While the words of people associated with our candidates have taken center stage in the news, the words and policy positions of our candidates get sidelined as we, the American public, focus on this “gotcha” game.  The fact of the matter is that every political candidate has at one time or another been associated with a person with whom he/she did not agree.  Sometimes those people say offsensive or hateful things.  Sometimes they simply make mistakes.  The real test of a candidate is not whether or not he/she associated with a person who had a divergent view, but rather whether or not the candidate agrees with those views.  In every case I’ve mentioned the candidates clearly denounced the views of their controversial associates, and that, in my opinion, should have been enough.  (more…)

There’s been a bit of discussion recently about the New York Times‘ addition of William Kristol to its stable of op-ed page columnists. I agree with Steve Walt’s analysis (at Salon.com) that Kristol hardly represents a major break from the views already available on the Times’ opinion page: Kristol is a widely read neo-conservative voice who already has an established platform in his magazine, The Weekly Standard, but his advocacy of American primacy — the view that American intervention around the world can make the world a better place and that Americans will be better off if we exercise our power to intervene — is the normal view among leaders of both political parties and among both liberal and conservative pundits.

Sure, they differ at the margins — setting priorities among the various places that the U.S. can meddle or debating the importance of cooperation with international organizations to build legitimacy for interventions — but the general theme is the same. And that consensus breeds complacency, whether it’s sloppy arguments in favor of intervention (note the problems in Brett Stephens‘ history in his critique of Ron Paul’s views on intervention — he misinterprets the U.S. interventions in both World War I and in the Tanker War between Iran and Iraq in the 1980s) or a stunted debate in the presidential campaign (it’s hard to find sensible discussion about Iran or terrorism, for example: do any of the candidates have a coherent view that they can explain about the level of the threat from each?).

The problem with Walt’s call for realist analysis in a leading newspaper of record — analysis that would, indeed, offer something different from the conventional wisdom — is that there are no real candidates for the job. Realists need to cut their teeth as regular contributors to the policy debate elsewhere before they can make it to the New York Times, and academics need to convince young writers to adopt their line; academics have neither the incentives nor the right skills to audition for the job themselves. The leading academics of the previous generation that Walt refers to in his column, people like Ken Waltz and Hans Morgenthau, had sensible things to say about American foreign policy, but they did not have regular gigs as columnists, either. If we can find the realists voices in the current public debate, we should all just do our best to promote their views, adding to the diversity of thought and argument. I try to do my small part through this blog and a few other outlets, but I would certainly appreciate help and recommendations from any source! And I applaud Steve Walt for doing his share, too, even if I think he’s getting a bit ahead of himself in his call forrealists with regular columns.