John B. Judis

John B. Judis is a Senior Editor at The New Republic and a Visiting Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Judis' articles have appeared in American Prospect, New York Times Magazine, Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, Washington Monthly, American Enterprise, Mother Jones, and Dissent. He has written five books, including latest book is The Folly of Empire: What George W. Bush Could Learn From Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.

We will discuss issues related to American politics. Readers can send questions to rosnersdomain@haaretz.co.il.

Why do you think Clinton and McCain are ahead in the Presidential race?

Shmuel,

Elections often surprise, but there have been certain patterns to presidential primaries. In both parties, the frontrunner usually endures a stuff challenge a few months before the primaries - or even in the first primary or caucus - but eventually prevails, as voters return to their original preference for the best known and most reputable of the candidates.

Before the actual primaries, the polls often register dissatisfaction with the frontrunner rather than real support for the challenger - or support for the challenger's views, but not necessarily for his candidacy. So it's better not to make too much of the polls in, say, September of the year before the election.

In the 1980 race for the Democratic nomination, Ted Kennedy leaped ahead of Jimmy Carter in the summer of 1979, but Carter prevailed. In the 1980 Republican nomination battle, Reagan lost the Iowa caucus to George H.W. Bush in January, but prevailed. In the 1992 Democratic race, Paul Tsongas won the New Hampshire primary over Bill Clinton, but Clinton prevailed.

In 1996, Republican Pat Buchanan won New Hampshire, but Bob Dole, the original frontrunner, got the nomination. John McCain won New Hampshire in 2000, but original frontrunner George W. Bush won the nomination. In the 2004 Democratic primary, Howard Dean had displaced John Kerry as the frontrunner by the fall of 2003, and was widely expected to get the Democratic nomination, but Kerry prevailed.

There have been exceptions - McGovern in '72 and Carter in '76 - but this pattern has held for over two decades. So there is some reason to expect that the initial frontrunners, John McCain and Hillary Clinton, will eventually prevail, even if they fall behind their opponents in the polls and lose an initial primary or caucus.

Of the two party primaries, I am more convinced that Clinton will win. She'll have an enormous advantage in organization and name recognition, the support of her husband (who is still wildly popular among Democrats), and the built-in support of many women professionals, who make up a key constituency in Democratic primaries.

Barack Obama is now the Howard Dean of the 2008 election - supported because of his eloquence and early opposition to the Iraq war, and because the idea of electing a black man president, which appeals to many upscale Democrats. His support is very much like Dean's - concentrated among upscale Democrats, weak among the white working class. He does have support from African-Americans, but he'll probably split it with Hillary Clinton.

When the time to vote comes, I think many voters will focus on his lack of experience and problems with his electability. I expect that he will fade next winter.

John Edwards would be a more formidable challenger for Clinton. He has the outward features of a successful Democratic candidate - white, Protestant, Southerner, raised like Bill Clinton or Lyndon Johnson in humble circumstances - but he too suffers from a lack of experience (he was only a senator for one term, and has no background in foreign policy), and he does not appear to have improved his campaign skills over the last three years. He is running a Johnny-one-note campaign about poverty and the "two Americas" that is belied by his own lavish life style.

I used to think that McCain would be a shoo-in. Republicans, after all, have a habit of nominating the guy who came in second before. And I still think his stature and his skill as a campaigner will win out, but I am not sure anymore. McCain has not performed well as the "establishment" candidate. He is a maverick at heart and has lost his political voice until recently. He is also starting to look old.

New York Mayor Rudolf Giuliani is a scandal waiting to happen. And his social positions are way too liberal for the Republican electorate in the South and much of the Midwest. But the primary schedule this year is very compressed and includes a few early states, such as New York, California, and Florida, where voters will discount Giuliani's foibles and not care about his positions on abortion.

Voters in primaries also don't know a lot about the candidates they are voting for, and are mostly voting on atmospherics. That, too, could favor Giuliani. Mitt Romney is an outside possibility. His Mormonism will probably hurt him among some voters - and his late night conversion to conservatism won't sit well with others - but he is a formidable campaigner and will have the money to compete.

I have no idea what impact Fred Thompson will have. I did a profile of Thompson a decade ago, and found him genial, and somewhat too decent for Republican politics. He had a hard time getting his way among his fellow Republicans when he run a Senate committee. And he didn't particularly like electioneering. But he has Reaganesque skills as a political actor. I have a feeling, though, he'll be getting in too late to raise enough money or to assemble the kind of organization he needs.

The general election - I'll leave that to the next guest.

What influence will the Christian right have on this election cycle? Do you think that the political power of this group is declining?


The influence of the Christian right is at a nadir in American politics. I can give two reasons and a possible third. First, the Christian right has always had a limit to its success. The more powerful it has gotten, the more likely to arouse a backlash that will reduce its power. It has been at its best when it served merely as a pressure group similar to the AFL-CIO in the Democratic party. When it has tried to take over the Republican party, it has doomed the party's candidates to failures. That happened, for instance, in Kansas, Colorado, and Minnesota, three states with large evangelical communities. In Kansas, members of the Christian right tried to force creationism - the bogus science of creation - down the throat of the state's school boards. That provoked a split in the Republican Party and led to Democrats winning House seats and the governorship in this normally very Republican state. (If you want an international comparison to this phenomenon, think of the fate of the Italian Communist Party after World War II. It would always climb to the edge of power, but that would set off a reaction that that would push the party back into a more marginal role.)

Secondly, the burst of religiosity that sustained the Christian right for a decade has subsided. Over the last fifty years, the intensity of American religiosity has declined - the percentage of people saying they rarely attend church, have no religion, or are agnostics or atheists has risen - but at the same time, the country has experienced sudden rises in religiosity. One began in the '90s for reasons I don't understand, and it was centered in evangelical Protestantism. It was sustained in the early 21st century by the terror attacks of September 11, which gave credence to an apocalyptic view of history and humanity. But as the focus on terror has receded somewhat, the religious fervor of the last years has subsided, depriving the movement of followers and revenue.

Thirdly, there has been a turn among some white Protestant evangelicals toward causes that are less congenial to partisan political action. These include genocide in Darfur, AIDs, and global warming. The New York Times and other major publications have reported this trend. I am still not sure how pervasive it is. I put more significance in the disintegration of Christian right political operations as two political organizations, the Center for Reclaiming America and the Center for Christian Statesmanship, run by Fort Lauderdale's Coral Ridge Ministries.

Given this apparent decline in the religious right, one can't help but wonder about the eagerness of Republican presidential candidates to pander to James Dobson, the head of Focus in the Family in Colorado Springs, and his like. The more they bow and scrape before such avatars of intolerance the worse off they will be in the general election in November 2008. At the same time, I don't think it will do them much good in the Republican primaries, except, perhaps, in the deep South.


Dear John,

Sure, let's talk about the things that the candidates stand for - in foreign policy. But maybe we should focus our attention on the two leading candidates in each party: Clinton and Obama on the Democratic side, McCain and Giuliani on the Republican side. What are the main differences in theory, and what do you think will be the differences in practice?

Best

Rosner


Dear Shmuel,
I don't want always to be moving one step backward, before taking a step forward, but I want to say something general about political candidates and foreign policy. From 1940 until 2000, American presidential candidates debated foreign policy in general elections, but with two exceptions at most, a sophisticated voter could count on there being continuity from one administration to the next.

Ronald Reagan, for instance, ran against the SALT II arms treaty in 1980, but carefully adhered to it as president. Bill Clinton claimed he was going to change U.S. China policy in 1992, but adopted virtually the same policy as his predecessor. You might even find the same people in charge at the critical assistant secretary of state level. Dennis Ross, for instance, was in charge of Israel-Palestinian negotiations for both the George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations. That's because presidents acted under an underlying consensus and employed the same stock of foreign policy experts from the upper ranks of corporate law and finance and the Washington think tanks.

In 2000, George W. Bush ran as if he, too, was going to be part of the consensus. If anything, he was going to be a little less eager to intervene overseas than his father or Bill Clinton, but no one expected major changes, certainly not with Colin Powell as Secretary of State. After September 11, however, Bush confounded his critics and supporters alike in the foreign policy establishment by embracing a foreign policy that had been developed by dissenting neo-conservatives in Washington. Taken as a whole, it represented a break with 60 years of American foreign policy: stridently nationalist rather than internationalist, contemptuous of international law, clothed in the language of American exceptionalism but in fact embracing 19th century German Machtpolitik, endowed with what one British journalist once called America's "illusion of omnipotence," and committed to a theory of geopolitics that assumed that the world could be easily shaped by the exercise of American force.
So as we head into the 2008 election, the question is whether the next American president will continue George W. Bush's foreign policy or revert to the kind of foreign policy that America followed from 1940 to 2000.

Now I have to say one more thing. Just as in the past, much of what candidates say about foreign policy doesn't necessarily foretell what they would do if they became president. Look at our last two presidents. I don't believe, for instance, that Mitt Romney is as bellicose or as committed to the Bush administration policies as he makes out. Quietly, he has made Mitchell Reiss, who was Colin Powell's Director of Policy Planning at the State Department, his chief foreign policy advisor. Reiss is a liberal internationalist like Powell. I have no idea what Rudolph Giuliani thinks about foreign policy, but he is running a high testosterone campaign of fighting terrorism that suggests he would one-up Bush in sending American troops overseas to transform the world. I somehow doubt it - he was, in spite of appearance, a moderate New York mayor - but I would fear that he is so committed to a political style of belligerence that he would be hard put to back off if he became president.

Of all the leading candidates, the only one who has embraced the neo-conservative vision is John McCain, who since 1998 has been advised by, and followed the approach of, Washington neoconservatives (Those interested in the details might up the profile of McCain I did in The New Republic last year.) In McCain's favor, he does not have the Bush administration or the typical neo-conservatives? contempt for international law. But McCain is also, as one disillusioned Bush supporter told me, a "warrior" who sees the world as a playground in which slights have to be avenged. Witness his recent flip comments about bombing Iran or his proposal to "take out" Iraqi leader Muqtada al-Sadr. So McCain is the major question mark.

On the Democratic side, I can say with some assurance that all the major candidates would attempt to build on the older internationalist foundations of American foreign policy. Their administrations would be sequels to the George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations not to the George W. Bush administration

Dear John,

You recently argued (in TNR) that "voters should demand that the president know what he or she is doing in foreign policy before taking
office". The candidates for the 2008 election cycle - you wrote - rate poorly in this respect and this "could mean trouble."

McCain, Clinton, Richardson, Biden, Giuliani, Dodd - all these don't
have the necessary experience?

And if they don't, how could the election process become more compatible with the needs of this era - namely, a process that encourages candidates with education and experience in foreign policy rather than eliminating them.

Best

Rosner


Dear Shmuel,

I'll try to answer one part of what you asked: why experience is important, and who has it? In judging a presidential candidate, I pay
more attention to what he might do on foreign than on domestic policy - in foreign policy, American presidents can do pretty much what they want; in domestic policy, they can be constrained by Congress. And in the coming years, an American president will have much to do in foreign policy. American presidents have learned on the job (Bill Clinton certainly did), but when they come into office without any prior experience in conducting foreign policy - as a vice president or cabinet official or high military official, or as a senator with significant responsibilities in foreign policy - they often make bad mistakes.

Look at the recent presidents who made mistakes right after coming into office: John Kennedy (Bay of Pigs, Vienna Summit), Lyndon Johnson (Vietnam), Ronald Reagan (Lebanon), Bill Clinton (Somalia, Japan, the Balkans); George W. Bush (global warming, Iraq). What these had in common was a lack of experience in, and knowledge of, foreign affairs. Look at those who did not make serious mistakes immediately (whatever they did afterwards): Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, and George H.W. Bush. These presidents came into office with the most experience. Eisenhower had been in charge of the European theater in World War II and had been head of NATO; Nixon, of course, had been vice president, and had kept up closely with foreign affairs when he was out of office; George H.W. Bush had been UN head, head of the CIA, and vice president. They knew the complexity of making foreign policy; and they also knew something about the details; and they also knew it was the most important part of being president.

What about the current candidates for president? Of the Republicans, only John McCain has really thought long and hard about foreign policy, and served on a relevant committee in Congress. Rudolf Giuliani and Mitt Romney have no experience, and have shown little interest, in foreign policy. Giuliani talks a good game about stopping terrorists, but he didn't know what the difference between Shiites and Sunnis. Fred Thompson, who may enter the race, also doesn't have a clue. Of the leading Democrats, only Hillary Clinton has the requisite experience. She clearly knows what it is like to be president. As a member of the Armed Services Committee, she has also has made a point since joining the Senate of getting up to speed on foreign policy. John Edwards has no experience and has displayed no interest. He was on the Intelligence Committee during the debate over whether to authorize force against Iraq, but he failed to read the classified National Intelligence report. He takes one position on Iran when he comes to Israel and another in the United States. Barack Obama has some interest in foreign policy, but he has only held national office for two years. Some of the second tier Democrats - Bill Richardson, Chris Dodd, and Joe Biden - have experience, but of these only Richardson has the remotest chance of winning the nomination.

So as the Democrats and Republicans prepare to nominate presidential candidates, they lack a sufficient choice of candidates who are experienced in foreign policy. That's no good, and I have no ideal, Shmuel, what to do about it. The American political system is even harder to reform than the Israeli system. I didn't talk much about what the candidates stand for, but we can do that in the future if you want.

A couple of questions from our readers:

1. You write about the experience of candidates, but do voters pay attention to such virtues? And do they care more about foreign policy than they did in the past?

Voters hardly ever worry about foreign policy the way that people in Washington think tanks do. They worry about their security - and national security ? when they see the country threatened. So foreign policy was an issue during the Cold War and in the 2004 election, but not at other times. In 1992, voters thought George H.W. Bush cared too much about foreign policy and not enough about jobs and wages. And in 1996 and 2000, it was barely mentioned. It will be an issue in 2008, particular if, as I expect, the United States still has troops in Iraq. But how it plays out will depend on whether there is any end in sight. Some voters will worry about the foreign policy experience of the candidates. They will worry about their "toughness" (which could hurt a woman candidate among some male voters), or they will worry that a candidate like McCain is not really committed to getting American troops out of Iraq.


2. How many of these candidates will have the political backing if they feel the need to act militarily against Iran?

Do you mean to ask whether, if a candidate comes out in favor of going to war against Iran, he or she will get the voters' support in the election? I doubt very much that even one of the Republicans will take a position like this unless the Bush administration gets to the point where it says it wants to go to war, or actually does bomb Iran. Posturing is one thing; making declarations of war is quite another, even for McCain and Giuliani. Among the public, I doubt whether there is much support for going to war against Iran. Some Republican primary voters like it for the same reason kids like to watch violent sports. I would be surprised if the Republican candidates don't tone down their tough talk on Iran in the general election. The only people who seem ready to go to war in the next year or two against Iran are a few Washington neo-conservatives.

3. Another one on Iran: Should we believe all the recent rhetoric about the danger of nuclear Iran - or is it just pandering to primaries voters?

This is really a more substantive question, and would take me pretty far afield. Certainly, a nuclear Iran would create dangers - among other things, of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. And the U.S. should be working with Europe, Russia, China or whoever to discourage Iran from going ahead. But America's first priority with Iran should be securing their help in arranging an exit for the U.S. in Iraq. And that will probably involve revoking our stupid policy of promoting regime change in Iran (which is just a provocation and can have no practical effect except the reverse of what it promises).

4. In such a broad field of candidates, do you have any sense of who's going to win?

It's really too early to tell. The polls mainly register name recognition and celebrity. My guess would be that Hillary Clinton and John McCain are currently ahead. We can discuss this at greater length if you want.

5. Do you think an independent run (by Hagel or Blumberg) has any chance of success?

I don't think so if success means winning. But perhaps an independent candidacy might have success (as Ross Perot had in 1992) in influencing the presidential debate and in tilting the election toward one party over another - which one, though, is hard to say. I think both parties are worried about a Bloomberg-Hagel candidacy. I doubt very much, though, it will happen.