I am going to mention just a few points, broached on David Kaiser's blog as well, to try to indicate why it is ineffective to look to the Office of the Presidency for domestic relief in 2010, before, or beyond.
Not that one shouldn't try to do something, but here are some comments explaining why it has tended to fail.
The main reason, taking this office in 'isolation', which itself is not recommended,is that the Presidency has increasingly appropriated certain foreign policy tools and agendas. It more or less began under the Marshall Plan, and thus seemed innocent enough in that context.
Since WW II, these tools and agenda, or hats if you will, which he has come to alternately wear, have been progressively, diametrically opposed to domestic policy initiatives he has also been called upon to champion.
It has mattered little which party has worn either hat. Although Clinton talked a good talk about unfair trade, etc, he did little to change the overall pattern of actual foreign policy business as usual.
Even after the 'Cold War' was supposedly over, and which had been the main pretext for presidential foreign policy concessions, the practice continued unabated ostensibly for cobdenist or other ostensible reasons, but mainly now because of political patronage of both domestic and largely offshore interests, whether originally American-based MNCs, or foreign interests, governments, and others.
This history is set out, briefly, in capsule form, for those with limited time or attention, in an article Harold Eckes wrote for Foreign Affairs, called Trading American Interests.
He also wrote a longer work, for those who have the time, on the history of American trade policy from the founding.
No comments:
Post a Comment