Final roundup on the Democratic victory

In the past day several writers have produced worthwhile post-mortems on the elections that have echoed my concerns about the Democratic victory.

First, at the New Republic website (free registration required), John Judis -- who must be happy now that he can return to his "emerging Democratic majority" trope -- provides a sober review of the election that suggests that the Democrats benefited in 2006 from "Perot voters":

In the South, independents tend to be former Democrats who have begun to vote Republican but are unwilling to describe themselves as Republicans. In the North and West, however, they occupy a much more distinct political niche. They include libertarian-minded professionals and small-business owners--especially in the West--and white working-class voters in the Northeast and Midwest. They are equally uncomfortable with the feminist left and the religious right. What they dislike most is government interference in their personal lives. They see Washington as corrupt and want it reformed. They favor balanced budgets but also Social Security and Medicare. They worry about U.S. companies moving their plants to Mexico and about China exporting underpriced goods to the United States. They favor a strong military, but they want it used strictly against foreign aggression.

In the 1980s, these voters generally supported Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush; but, in 1992, many of them abandoned Bush for Ross Perot, who received 18.9 percent of the national vote. Perot did well in the West, Midwest, and Northeast, but not in the Deep South. In 1994, two-thirds of Perot voters, disgusted with what they saw as continuing corruption in Washington, backed the Gingrich revolution, accounting for much of the GOP's success outside the Deep South.

It's Perot's variety of anti-globalization -- if anti-globalization is the word for it -- that characterizes the positions of many members of the new Democratic majorities in the House and Senate. They support a kind of populism at home, populism abroad, that sees the struggle between Main Street and Wall Street as little different than the struggle of the US against foreign countries that supposedly play dirty: Japan in the 1980s, China and the other BRICs today. I doubt these voters would think of using the word "anti-globalization" to describe their positions, and compared to those who proudly wear that label, they're not. They just want the fair deal they think they deserve individually, and that the US deserves internationally.

While this position sounds innocuous enough, the policies that could result from this sense of insecurity -- whether retaliatory tariffs against countries with trade and exchange policies deemed detrimental to theUS or the rejection of bilateral trade agreements that have strategic as well as economic merit and multilateral and regional agreements that could assist development in benighted regions of the world -- could devastate the international economic order and effectively cede US leadership to...well, that's anyone's guess. (For an example of foreign fears of economic retaliation from the Democratic Congress, see this article in the English edition of South Korea's largest circulation daily, the Chosun Ilbo.)

So the question is what the Democrats will do to ease the insecurity of their new constituents. As Judis writes, "In this election, the Bush administration's failure in Iraq and the corruption of the Republican Congress allowed this heterogeneous group to find a temporary home in the Democratic Party. But it will take all the ingenuity and craft that Democrats can muster to turn this halfway house into a permanent residence for a long-term Democratic majority." Will they build their "permanent" majority by pandering to the fears of these homeless voters, or will they find a way to convince them to "buy in" to globalization, introducing reforms that alleviate their insecurity and convince them that they too can benefit from global economic openness? If they opt for the latter, the Democrats will be doing a great service to the country -- something that George Bush's Republican Party has yet to attempt.

Gerard Baker too suggests, in his column in The Times, that the results of the election hardly provide a clear policy mandate. He wrote:

Republicans lost not because the American people have suddenly seen the wisdom of the collective leadership of the European Union or the editorial pages of the world’s press but because they deserved to lose.

When you foul up as comprehensively as this Administration and Congress have done for six years you need to spend a period of time contemplating politics from the other side. The recent debate on these pages about whether Iraq was a bad idea in origin or just badly executed has been entertaining but jejeune from a political standpoint. It is literally impossible to know whether it was misconceived because what is absolutely certain is that is has been almost miraculously mismanaged from the moment Baghdad fell.

When you throw in “Heckuva Job” Katrina and a Congress that has devoted most of its time to enriching itself at the expense of every principle and value it was supposed to hold dear, you wonder why anyone even doubted that the good common sense of Americans would demand a change.

And how. It seems that all that mattered this year was that the candidate had a "D" next to his or her name on the ballot.

Baker ends with a note of doubt, however, suggesting that the (James) Baker survey on Iraq due in several weeks could, combined with the new Democratic majorities, spell the end of the line for the Bush administration's revolutionary project to transform the Greater Middle East.

Meanwhile, in the FT, former Harvard President Lawrence Summers suggests that previous "repudiation elections" in which the opposition parties made significant gains as voters rejected the sitting president's policies may provide a guide to the next two years in American politics. Summers too concludes that there is no clear way forward regarding domestic and foreign policies. He expects that both sides will be maneuvering to the center, with neither party getting everything that it wants. Bush may actually have to use the veto pen, or else make real efforts to compromise with the opposition.

The American political system will likely benefit from the change. One benefit may be that by no longer being locked out of power, the Democrats could shed the poisonous anti-Bush rhetoric that has characterized their past six years in the wilderness.

In any case, the only clear conclusion that can be drawn from this election is that the American electorate punished the Republican Party for a series of policy failures and for the shameless corruption of congressional Republicans. What the new majority will mean in terms of policy will remain largely unknown until next year.

Japan watches and waits

As the Election Day dust settles in Washington, foreign governments are watching closely to see what will change.

Japan is no exception. Arguably, for Japan and Asia as a whole (with the potential exception of congressional retaliation aimed at China), the impact will mainly be felt in its impact on how the Bush administration conducts foreign policy rather than in any substantive policy change emanating from Congress.

Sean, over at White Peril, comments on the Nihon Keizai Shimbun's comments the changes in Washington. Sean suggests that the Japanese are worried about the impact of the election results on the US-Japan alliance, and he's right to note that the Japanese trust the GOP more on the alliance, but I think "worry" might be too strong a word. The alliance remains the exclusive preserve of alliance managers at the Pentagon and, to a lesser extent, the National Security Council and State Department. Beyond that, there is a bipartisan consensus on the alliance, as indicated by this noted 2000 report on improving the alliance being the product of a bipartisan study group co-chaired by former Clinton administration Assistant Secretary of Defense Joseph Nye and soon-to-be (at that time) Bush administration Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage.

The Yomiuri Shimbun, in fact, in its editorial (in Japanese) on the election suggests that it may be an exaggeration to call President Bush a lame duck; it points to major foreign policy initiatives launched by Presidents Reagan and Clinton in the final years of their terms to suggest that Bush is not doomed to irrelevance yet. It argues, furthermore, that the presidency still retains considerable foreign policy powers, regardless of who controls Congress. The Yomiuri does express concern that the ongoing failure in Iraq may distract the administration from North Korea, allowing Pyongyang to continue developing a nuclear arsenal unhindered, but that is a danger regardless of which party controls Congress. If anything, should Iraq continue to crumble, Bush may turn to Northeast Asia in the hope that he might restore some respectability to his legacy by helping to ease the Kim Family regime out of power and create a new regional order. That may depend in part, however, on how Bush gets along with Prime Minister Abe, about which we'll learn more next week when they hold a bilateral summit on the sidelines of the APEC meeting in Hanoi.

Given that Japan hosts thousands of US military personnel, the departure of Rumsfeld -- a fanatical advocate of the global transformation of US forces overseas -- may prove more important to Japan than the transfer of power on Capitol Hill. Indeed, the Asahi Shimbun ran a long article speculating on the consequences of Rumsfeld's departure for the planned transformation of US deployments in Japan, agreed upon in May 2006. Asahi quotes Chief Cabinet Secretary Shiozaki as noting that the two governments have agreed on these matters together, so the policy remains unchanged, although Japan may have to continue to wait for progress in implementing the transformation plan. Shiozaki may be right, but given the wait that has followed the initial US-Japan agreement on Futenma in autumn 1995, a similar wait may be in the offing.

Given that Gates's appointment comes as something of a surprise, it is hard to know what his priorities will be (outside of Iraq) upon coming to office. He began his career as a Sovietologist, and does not appear to have any particular expertise or interest in Japan; with the US foreign policy apparatus lacking Japan hands in senior positions (unlike in the early years of the administration), US-Japan defense relations may be pushed down the agenda for want of a policy entrepreneur to push the issue forward. Much will depend on the Bush-Abe relationship. I doubt that it will be as strong as the Bush-Koizumi relationship, which could mean that the process of reforming the alliance will stall, as it did in the final years of the Clinton administration.

The importance of Henry Paulson

So the Democrats reclaim the House. And the Senate remains within reach, with results from two races pending.

There's not much I can say about this that isn't being said elsewhere, but what I will say is that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson may now be the most important man in the Bush administration, if not in all of Washington, because he now stands between China and congressional Democrats eager to punish China from growing. Paulson, who in recent months has emerged as the point man on US-China policy, will have to ensure that the Democratic House does not do something stupid, like imposing tariffs to goad China into raising its exchange rate.

Ironic that an administration that entered office determined not to view China as a "strategic competitor" is now in a position of defending China from China bashers in Congress. (Or maybe not so ironic, because since Nixon went to China it seems that the executive branch always finds itself defending China, while Congress bashes China, whether on human rights, trade, or national security grounds.)

Nevertheless, Paulson's significance remains. He will have his work cut out for him, but given that he has already performed well in office -- possessing more power in the administration than both of his Bush administration predecessors combined -- I expect that he will be up to the task.

Pre-election doubt

I said that I would try to limit my discussion of American politics, but I read a few pieces today upon which I couldn't resist commenting.

First, in the FT Alan Beattie writes about American attitudes towards globalization, noting that despite the common perception that Americans are much more tolerant than Europeans of the "negative" consequences of globalization for the American economy, Americans have many of the same fears and doubts as Europeans when it comes to dealing with the dislocation caused by economic openness.

Why is this important?

Well, as this analytical essay by Edward Luce and Krishna Guha, also in the FT, suggests, the Democratic party appears to have turned away from the commitment to economic liberalization that characterized the Clinton administration's international economic policy (also discussed in this New Republic essay [free registration required] by Peter Beinhart on the liberal flirtation with populist CNN broadcaster Lou Dobbs). Should the Democrats abandon a commitment to globalization, the US will see a partisan divide reminiscent of the 1890s, as the central political issue becomes the degree to which the US partakes in the global economy.

If the stakes were high in the 1890s, they are innumerably higher now, with the US now a leading engine of growth for the entire global economy. The danger is that should the perception that large numbers of middle-class Americans are being devastated by globalization take hold, the beleaguered defenders of an open economy and open global economic system may be able to do little to stop the US from undertaking a populist rampage, turning on other economic powers for their "cheating" and scaling back the US commitment to globalization, with untold consequences for the US and the global economy.

At the same time, however, even as this issue looms over the political landscape, America's political class seems to have no interest in actually discussing how to ensure that the US remains committed to furthering globalization. As Christopher Hitchens writes in an op-ed in the Times (of London) -- a piece that expresses my thoughts exactly -- the election campaign this fall has been fought over trivial questions, not the great national questions that must be answered.

The behavior of America's political class and its various hangers-on on K Street and in the media this year show them all to be incapable of leading the country properly, but sadly I don't expect them to be replaced anytime soon (and no, a Democratic pickup of one or both houses will not qualify). America needs real, fundamental change in how it thinks and talks about politics, and, in particular, how it talks about America's place in the world. The dividing wall between domestic and foreign policy in the US has broken down, and America's leaders need to start talking and acting as if they recognize that fact.