Clark is a Krugman on Defense/Foreign Policy

[tameszu]

A lot of people have doubts about Clark due to his lateness in entering the race and his inexperience and I don't blame them. Yet I am confident that however things shake out, whether Clark ends up as someone's (I am thinking Kerry's) VP pick, pledging himself as Secy of State (I am thinking for Dean), gets the Presidential nom, or just stays on the sidelines as a commentator, I think he makes a massive contribution to the Democratic Party.

And the correct parallel just hit me as to the positive contribution Clark has and will continue to make: he is America's Krugman on defense and foreign policy.

Just like Krugman, Clark is a moderate progressive who has a background in a traditionally non-liberal field. Krugman is a neoliberal, proglobalization economist. He is moderately pro-NAFTA and pro-WTO: he thinks that it is a much better idea to work through those institutions to promote global progressive values and he has no time for radicals who naively advocate getting rid of them.

Yet, unlike the Al Froms of the world, PK is a moderate progressive who recognizes the real threat: the infinitely more radical and dangerous Bush Administration. So PK uses every bit of his immense analytical skill and economic expertise to direct scathing critiques at exactly where they belong. Not only that, but Krugman also points out all of the constructive ways the Bush Admin could be doing better, using standard, mainstream economic language and reasoning that is conventionally thought to be the conservatives' domain. And this is why hardline Republicans HATE Krugman so much. He is a conventional, mainstream economist who largely uses same theoretical market frameworks they use, but every single day, he tells them them that they are dangerously and almost completely WRONG.

In the same way, Clark has all of the nuts and bolts military experience that today's conservatives get a hard-on over. He has a deep practioner's knowledge of logistics, strategy, weapon systems, and diplomacy that Republicans claim as their domain. Although he might respect pacifists' views, he is not one of them, and he must almost certainly believes that they are naive and untenable, for his profession requires ordering people to kill and to risk their lives. He has won a major war, defeated a murdurous dictator, and helped use American military power to produce peace and democracy. Neocons quote the action he led as a paradigm example of success.

Yet Clark also knows where the most proximate problem lies today and has appropriately focused HIS fire at the Bush Administration's unjust and incredibly unwise foreign policy. He dismantles it, not using a radical discourse that the conservatives could easily dismiss as un-American or effete, but in the professional military and strategic language that they would claim as their own. He has lived the neocons' wet dream, yet he utterly rejects their vision as foolish, dangerous to world peace, and counterproductive to American security interests: he calls Bush's war "the greatest strategic blunder since the Cold War." He sees through Bush's propaganda and names it for the smokescreen that it is--as he did when he voiced what many veterans were thinking by slamming Bush's "prancing" around in a flight suit. And he pairs with every step of this critique a coherent and constructive alternative that is backed up by sound facts and strategic reasoning.

The Democrats don't need to choose between moderate and "deep" progressives. Krugman personifies this, but his views hardly make him a Democratic Party outlier--he is just symbolically unique, the neoliberal economist who complements the policies advocated by more typical Democratic figures like Dean and Kerry, Clinton (both) and Gore, Pelosi and Kennedy and Feingold. They are all of a kind, in that they all attempt to ground progressive ideals in a workable praxis.

So I guess the reason I'm excited about Clark is because I think he will be the next big figure to join this project, which is about to reverse the mess of the last couple of years--in short, he's becoming our latest Krugman.

P.S.: Yikes, there's a lot of hate on this board. I know we can do better...

[deutsey]

1. Thanks!

I'm a Dean supporter, but I appreciate your post. You actually make me want to continue learning more about Clark (who seems like a decent potential candidate to me).

I agree about the hate, too. We can debate heatedly, I believe, without the intense animosity.

[tameszu]

2. Thank you too!

It's nice to know someone read it.

Funny, the uncivil threads seem to be the most popular...eh, what can you do, but hope, right?