Intervention and Domestic Politics: Which Way Forward?
BLACK-Mandate is a hard thing to define, but we might start by assessing what the administration will claim as its mandate for a second term. And in the wake of the Reagan landslide, what real...
...It only happened in Nicaragua because Somoza was such a special case, so illegitimate...
...When PACCA started to do teach-ins on Central America, it was professors that organized them, not students...
...Both of them faced the problem of modifying their image to pick up support, so we saw Mondale inching to the right and Reagan inching to the left, and then that bizarre role reversal in the debate...
...Now, if the polls ask a different question--"Would you favor intervention in Central America if it did not result in another Viet'14 REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 0I REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 44nam...
...One way is to play to the cultural issue of strength...
...I just don't think the president, or anyone in the House or Senate, takes the raw figures of opinion polls as a basic check...
...It is at its most efThe question is no longer how outrageous conditions are in El Salvador, but how close that country is to "perfecting democracy...
...The Right has achieved that by having a coherent moral agenda backed by lots of money...
...The Interreligious Task Force, for example, arguably the most interesting group, has focussed more on the sanctuary movement than on strictly electoral or foreign policy issues, because sanctuary is rooted in real flesh-and-blood human beings...
...This cast of characters in the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies extends back to the 1940s, and survives from one administration to the next with remarkably little change...
...And these people have no enthusiasm for the New Right, which is something quite distinct...
...Perfect...
...JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1985 49Four More Years came to power...
...Paul Gorman or Brig...
...NAIRN-That early Carter period is important...
...The Speaker of the House of Representatives...
...Who speaks for the Democrats...
...BOROSAGE-There is a widespread feeling in the party and the media that the Jackson candidacy did more harm than good...
...We are also an older generation more integrated into a political process that seriously examines the differences between the Democrats and the Republicans...
...One is domestic: you need a clear objective and a national consensus behind it...
...Sure, he may flirt with the New Right, speak with their preachers-he needs their support...
...The third constituency, and the most hopeful to me, is the churches...
...What he meant was that the state would fight little wars on the edge of its empire, and day-to-day life would go on without much discontinuity...
...CLARK-So do the results of the congressional elections, which brought no really significant changes...
...But today its at- tacks seem much more creative and more decen- tralized...
...FEINBERG-I would say the administration clearly does not have a mandate for a hard line...
...Remember that McCarthyism was largely a way of creating a bipartisan consensus around foreign policy after 1948, when there were major splits in the parties about the post-war posture of the United States...
...BOROSAGE-The polarization in American politics that we spoke of earlier is visible in the Vietnam generation, with one side feeling it was betrayed and that it won't lose another one, and another side that fought in and against the war and doesn't want its kids to go through another one...
...However, those figures should not make us complacent...
...Our discussion is not really about the mandate of the administration...
...HEALEY-Understanding public opinion is critical...
...The question on El Salvador was whether we should have anything to do with the military...
...Nothing comparable happened among the solidarity, anti-intervention forces...
...But what I'm looking to is something different, the possibility of a populist alliance between Jackson and the white Left, the churches against the war, the disarmament movement, the white working class grouped on issues of jobs or mortgages...
...Obviously the main problem facing the Right is the same one that faces the Soviets...
...prestige...
...Third is what I call the "Old Right," which is really the Taft-Goldwater wing of the party...
...The divisions in the Democratic Party are so severe that I don't see it, or any individual aspiring to high office, taking on the president over Central America...
...Similarly, the question on Nicaragua is what kind of ties to the Soviet Union would justify our launching an airstrike...
...They hate to lose their monopoly...
...We might see that kind of reflex again, if for example there were a major fiasco around the contras which wrecked Reagan's Nicaragua policy, or another comparable attack in the Middle East...
...You could argue that the complexion of the Senate is slightly more liberal in some ways, more conservative in others...
...HUNTINGTON-We tend to focus on classic McCarthyist tactics, as if those are the only ways the Right can neutralize its enemies...
...In 1980 there was a much greater active consensus for a military buildup, for activism against the Soviets in the Third World...
...If they work, they are victories that everyone would applaud, including the Democrats...
...My guess is that which way they turn, or whether they get involved at all, will depend on whether they are offered a clear The Democrats today have no idea of where they are going on domestic or foreign policy issues...
...fective on matters of foreign policy and national security...
...He has certainly opened the door...
...NAIRN-That kind of strike, to recover from humiliation and regain lost political capital, is especially tempting to this kind of administration, whose whole theme is the reassertion of American strength...
...The public would only be aware of war periodically when prisoners were paraded through the streets...
...One is to withhold access to key policy-makers, especially in the military realm...
...any election winner can define the so-called mandate...
...What then is the agenda, and what degree of freedom does the administration have to advance it...
...And many people did not know how to react, for instance, to his visit to Cuba and Nicaragua, which not only placed the issues on the table but confronted some of the cowardice and contradictions in the mainstream positions of the Democratic Party...
...The hardest thing for American policy-makers to accept is any relationship a revolution may choose to have with Cuba or the Soviet Union...
...They have to pick the right war...
...it was outside the mainstream of recent discussion...
...Analytically, their agenda seems to go little further than feeling good and avoiding any more Irans...
...It means a willingness to talk boldly about why the Nicaraguan revolution is admirable, and why its accomplishments should be praised and defended...
...They are now middle-aged...
...That could shatter its basic image of America standing tall...
...And in the wake of the Reagan landslide, what real domestic restraints will the incoming administration face...
...But the administration is quite capable of downplaying such crises if it realizes that it can do nothing about them...
...All three are key leaders of the New Right...
...BLACK-Does that imply that the New Right is the dominant force in the administration, and within the Republican Party, at least as far as Central America policy is concerned...
...Today, much of the initial protest is from the churches--extremely legitimate mainstream institutions...
...All the other Democrats start picking him apart...
...This represents a conscience opinion that was strong across all three Democratic candidates...
...We have to be frank and blunt on both counts, and integrate both into a bold moral approach that says, "this is what we feel and we are not apologetic about it...
...The chairman of the Democratic National Committee...
...If you use the Senate as a model, you have Mathias, Weicker and a handful of others-the "Gang of Six...
...There are not so many senators from the New Right: East, Helms, Denton-ten or a dozen, depending on how you define them...
...Like Reagan, he has a unique way of speaking and communicating his values...
...The lineup in the House of Representatives remains very similar...
...It's awfully hard to argue that they have made any more headway in 1982 or 1984...
...Reagan faces that too, and Lebanon is a superb example...
...We always underestimate the strength of that latter group...
...Now look at those same issues: Cuba is off the board...
...I think the direction to move in has to be in terms of a more traditional definition of U.S...
...An important fact about whatever generational opposition might emerge is that it would be closely tied to the mainstream...
...FEINBERG-The one element that cuts somewhat in the opposite direction is the need that the Democrats clearly feel to appear tough...
...The question is, does that current of thinking have any chance of reemerging...
...NAIRN-Many people are politically alienated, uncommitted, unsure or just completely cynical about the importance of political action...
...It hasn't learned that if you want to act successfully in this arena, you've got to make choices...
...We need that moral vision and we have to be willing to confront directly some of the most fundamental issues...
...It only reflects the bargaining for delegates between the Mondale people and the Hart and Jackson people...
...In 1968 we were outside the Democratic Party convention protesting...
...I don't think Kennedy or people like him will accept it...
...As for the Weinberger speech, you can see that as the culmination of a trend of military thinking that has grown in response to the counter-reaction to Vietnam...
...As for people of Hart's generation, the old internationalist view of a globally dominant America has gone...
...To be able to move beyond containment theory and interventionism in the Third World, you must find a constituency...
...He got his defense budgets, he got his tax cuts, the chain of revolutions in the Third World has halted since 1979...
...In the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the new chairman, Richard Lugar, will be less independent of the president than Charles Percy was...
...It will be hard, though he has a lot in his favor...
...It's instructive to look at three other constituencies and consider what the 1984 election said about their potential...
...It may not be easy for us to define the administration's agenda precisely, but we can see very sharply how they have made it harder for us to discuss what our agenda might be...
...So he may have hurt not only his own chances, but the chances for a progressive alternative in the party...
...It may seem paradoxical, but I think the Reagan Administration could in fact more easily tolerate objective inroads against U.S...
...A year and a half ago, the president vetoed human rights certification, and Congress dropped the issue...
...It's been 25 years since I read "Profiles in Courage," but it's my recollection that every one ot those guys lost...
...Look at issues like gun control or abortion...
...Even in 1977 or 78, at the height of liberalism, it was not an acceptable option for the United States to stand by and watch insurgents overthrow the government of El Salvador...
...No Democrat in the Senate would ever say so...
...Factionalism has grown worse with the reforms to the nominating process...
...The agenda of the populist Right today, including the Heritage Foundation, seems essentially domestic...
...FEINBERG-I get a little nervous when I hear the emphasis on moralism in U.S...
...My point is that a middle-aged activist generation has an extraordinary position in the active circles of the party...
...They came close to calling Carter a treasonous president...
...We'll face those contradictions and go toe-totoe with the Right on the basic issues...
...That was a historically significant departure from the consensus, and weak and minimal as it was, it was just obliterated...
...It may not win an election next year, but it is intellectually coherent, probably in the national interest and potentially a vote-getter...
...CLARK--One helpful way of analyzing the Right is to see the Republican Party in terms of four factions...
...And just as the Russians are circling the wagons and growing more cautious, so even the Reagan Administration is affected by economic constraints...
...Only 13 or 14 seats changed hands out of 435, and most of those were conservative Republicans replacing conservative Democrats in places like Texas and North Carolina...
...But he does provide a pole of energy, and for the moment he is the only one around...
...ARMSTRONG-Many of us feel that unfortunately Jackson may prove too weak a reed to hang this process on...
...REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 46BLACK-Last year's events in Grenada and Lebanon are instructive, with the invasion coming right on the heels of the Marine compound bombing...
...The other is the strategic preconditions overseas...
...One reason why Kemp is a serious candidate is that he is not factionalized...
...BOROSAGE--Certainly the administration is angered by its continuing sense of economic constraints and domestic opposition...
...Clark for one...
...It *Jesse Helms is Republican Senator for North Carolina...
...They are a smaller group, they mobilized fewer people and they are much less electorally oriented...
...ruling class, or of the Right, because the way they set the political agenda deter48 REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 48 REPORT ON THE AMERICASmines the kind of answers we are allowed to give...
...Church people are hard to mobilize on electoral issues...
...In mid-1983, Public Opinion, the journal of the American Enterprise Institute, studied historical data going back to the Korean War, and discovered that Americans have always disliked intervention before the fact...
...So the Left has moved, not in becoming more conservative or reformist or losing its revolutionary edge, whatever that means, but in accommodating itself to the limits of what is politically relevant...
...FOOTE-I already detect a long-term financial commitment by the New Right to foreign policy issues...
...They almost always vote with the Democrats...
...There is no liberal reaction to that...
...But where I think there is now a Democratic consensus is on a Soviet threat, the potential for the Soviet Union to exploit social change in the Third World...
...So I see the New Right as a little stronger than the liberals, but not as moving either the country or the administration in its direction...
...The interventionist consensus in the Democratic Party was reinforced by the fear that white men no longer vote Democratic...
...Paul Weyrich is director of the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress...
...Before the Hymietown episode, he had white New Hampshire farmers on street corners in the snow chanting "I am somebody...
...Bob is right about a resurgent McCarthyism, and I think it will be used to attack moderate Republicans as well as Democrats...
...NAIRN-Even if the major actors in the Democratic Party become more quiescent or conservative, the Central America issue is likely to be shaped by the actions of mobilized, committed constituencies opposed to the administration...
...Those people who do not believe it would be a long complicated fight favor an interventionist policy by 67...
...But the issues of the populist Right, like high defense spending, peaked in 1981 and have since been in decline...
...It was audacious...
...BLACK-As far as domestic politics are concerned, what are the implications, for a conservative administration, of acknowledging the objective limitations on its power...
...The four leading political action committees of peace groups raised over $5 million, had over 200 full-time staff and 20,000 people working regularly for House and Senate candidates...
...It's a potent ideological weapon, but hard to apply on domestic issues...
...it's about not getting involved in long messy foreign wars...
...The argument will be posed to people like Ted Kennedy that the present imperial bipartisan consensus is untenable, that a new alternative vision of the United States' role is needed and that a prospective candidate should move to the Left...
...BLACK-A lot of the analysis of the Baby Boom generation has highlighted their contradictory political attitudes-conservative on domestic economic issues but liberal on social issues, favoring the "lean" new military that people like Gary Hart and James Fallows have outlined, but still within the early Carter tradition of rethinking the question of coexistence with Third World revolutions...
...So the question arises, what happens when they stop getting their way...
...I think that accounts for an increasingly ugly temper and tone in American politics...
...I don't think that alliance will win the primaries, let alone the general election, but like the New Right it could provide a magnet, or a pole in relation to which the other candidates will have to define their positions...
...The administration itself has also employed two tactics to overcome congressional resistance in its desire to shape the debate and set the agenda on Central America...
...interests and the relations between states...
...Overall, there's a shift in the entire discourse...
...Today, our bureaucracy can be engaged in several low-level wars around the world, both covert and overt, and the public is acquiescent because it is not really affected...
...Lebanon, 1983 Pentagon cautious about using force, even in a con- servative administration...
...In fact, much of the human rights policy was designed to recreate a domestic base for a more activist foreign policy...
...FEINBERG-That's exactly where the administration has been so brilliant...
...Jackson, whatever shortcomings he may have, has begun to stake out that territory...
...global power...
...Mondale was seen as weak...
...It indicated a basic instinct to divert attention from failures...
...And some of the positive issues that were placed on the agenda in the 1970s are still there...
...I think much of American politics in the next few years will turn on questions of race and class...
...resources...
...The Democrats today have no idea of where they are going on domestic or foreign policy issues...
...It was moderately better than what preceded it, and moderately better than what followed...
...They're quite willing to go out and fight, but only if they know they can win...
...The ceiling on military advisors in El Salvador, the exercises in Honduras, the CIA's role in intelligence collection and the privatization of the war against Nicaragua have all eluded the Congress...
...Is there a basis for a new policy from the Democrats...
...Now I tend to believe that the New Right is in de- cline...
...After Reagan's address to the Joint Session of Congress, Dodd made what was in my judgment a strong, fair and courageous response...
...But being that kind of political natural also means having a clear moral and ideological stance which can be sharply communicated and which people will embrace...
...If the covert war is ended, or Duarte falls apart, and they have to face hard choices in Central America...
...One is the conception of U.S...
...Among the Republicans, the right wing is bidding to take complete control of the party...
...For example, you do not get into a land war in Asia next door to the Soviet Union and China...
...STEIN-I too have a sense of a new McCarthyism arising...
...On Central America, there is no policy, just occasional statements on the issue by isolated individuals like Barnes, Dodd, Kennedy, Solarz...
...I would probably agree with your wish to create a pole in the debate which eases things up for the center...
...there is relative enthusiasm...
...The sense of limits imposed by the economy makes it harder to sustain what we used to think we could sustain without cost...
...There is a strong sense of non-intervention, which comes out of the Vietnam period...
...In the effort toward building the Rainbow Coalition, or the alternative policy, he may only be an interim figure...
...This is different from Weinberger's concept of how to use force in war...
...FEINBERG-There is one important complication, and that is the major distinction between the attitude that says "We need to control the revolution" and the attitude of "We're satisfied provided there is little Cuban or Soviet influence...
...Now progressives are never going to have that money...
...Six weeks later, Dodd said it was the worst thing he ever did in his life...
...The most remarkable contrast to polls of 20 or 30 years ago is that raising the specter of communism no longer brings great gains...
...My sense is that over the last four years the Reagan Administration has shifted from the merely ideological formulation of objectives to a very pragmatic, operational policy that is moving ahead irrespective of any bureaucratic conflicts...
...That argument is prevalent among neoliberals, for JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1985 45Four More Years Militarism resurgent: The USS Iowa visits New York example, who have positioned Hart to the right of Mondale on foreign policy questions, and I think that's a dangerous trend...
...What may substitute for money are issues emerging under the kind of pressure that a crisis creates, which sets people adrift looking for leadership and solutions, and sets the media adrift looking for "strong alternative voices...
...With the New Right...
...If there were a left pole in the REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 54debate, they might be able to stake out a moderate position of pragmatic disengagement...
...alternative...
...One is Bob's reference to the resistance that the administration is likely to face from the Left and from the Democratic Party...
...There is significant mobilization against the buildup and against interventionism...
...The national security bureaucracy that Bob described earlier seems to have adopted more and more the rhetoric and concerns of the New Right...
...foreign policy when the progressives *Joan Frawley, The Left's Latin American Lobby, Herit- age Foundation Institution Analysis, October 11, 1984...
...Reagan projected the image of strength and personified the idea of U.S...
...Now of course he was responding to the public opinion polls, which show a generally dovish attitude on Central America and other foreign policy issues...
...covert operations around the world...
...And I think Hart, and certainly Jackson, still espouse that view...
...Instead, the accepted debating point is how many of these actions we should sustain...
...But they did not respect the nationalist element, the meaning of the slogan "Patria Libre o Morir...
...These are all respectable middle-aged people whose formative experience was in the Vietnam years...
...In Central America, it seems they would see the cheap gains coming in Nicaragua-not through an invasion, but maybe through setting up a quarantine to stop Soviet ships...
...We are seeing a shift to the right among much of the white population...
...It's a mess...
...And they have to, given their premises...
...it is a concept of policing, which looks for ways to break out of the box of economic constraints in order to operate around the world in a cost-effective manner...
...The Reagan Administration still has to address the question of human rights, even in the Kissinger Report...
...At the same time, changes in the economy will deprive many whites of their middleclass status and close off the old channels of advancement to many Blacks and Hispanics, who are already suffering an objective decline in their economic status...
...interests, and another is the idea of how to protect those interests...
...Those very real constraints are countered here-as they are in the Soviet Union, for that matter-by a national security bureaucracy that is permanently engaged around the globe and believes it has a historic mandate that it is treasonous to undermine...
...As we said, the Santa Fe document was a product of the New Right...
...Reagan ran a very dovish campaign on foreign policy, especially toward the end...
...They say "We hold no brief for the Sandinistas, but we don't like the covert war...
...The Vietnam syndrome has nothing to do with the self-determination of other peoples...
...One is the so-called liberal faction, the old Rockefeller-Dewey wing of the party...
...The Lane Kirkland wing of the party was weak on the floor even at a convention dominated by their candidate...
...NAIRN-In looking at the campaign, and what the administration may see as its mandate, we shouldn't overemphasize the specific positions that the candidates adopted, especially near the end...
...And they had a major effect on elite opinion...
...Either way you're a hero...
...When Mondale laid out his views on Central America, emphasizing economic aid and diplomacy, Reagan agreed...
...There was actually more talk about global retreat under Nixon and Kissinger than under Carter...
...The Caribbean Basin is the toughest place in which to deal with revolution...
...Shooting down those Libyan planes in the Gulf of Sidra was one good example of a quick, cheap victory...
...Or it might be through the kind of wonderful Entebbe scenario they have scripted out...
...Hence, they offer a smaller base for building successful alternative policies...
...It's been there for many years in the reports of the Heritage Foundation, but it was crystallized in Jeane Kirkpatrick's speech to the Republican Convention, which was one of the most pernicious and poisonous addresses we've heard since the McCarthy era...
...There has been a basic bipartisan consensus since 1898 that certain parts of the world are ours to dominate...
...One is the disarmament community, which has operated quite differently from any previous Left movement in this country since World War II...
...In his first two years, Carter changed the frame of reference from East-West and communist subversion to North-South and indigenous discontent, and he was blown out of the water with ease by the hard-right position of American domination and anti-communism, which has been the core of U.S...
...You're trapped...
...It is still there...
...For that reason, I think the Right may shift its emphasis to foreign policy issues...
...power than it could a subjective ideological blow against the idea of U.S...
...It is on the defensive on the key Central American issue of covert aid...
...If our candidate is a wimp-which was the term of the 1984 election-we're in trouble...
...It has expertly avoided boxing itself in...
...On the other hand, though, the effort will run up against the racism in American society, and against Jackson's own unique anti-organizing habits...
...The question is no longer how outrageous conditions are in El Salvador, but how close that country is to "perfecting democracy...
...For one thing, he is a political natural...
...The other is the argument that up 'to five years ago there was an established current of alternative thinking within the Carter Administration...
...The clear message in the Heritage Foundation piece is that dissent from the ad- ministration's Central America policy is to be equated with Marxism-Leninism...
...I've also been pleasantly surprised by the absence of what we've called McCarthyism...
...it is a given that we will defend the Salvadorean regime, of which the army is a core part...
...Similarly, Weinberger's speech laying out the five preconditions for military intervention in the Third World was straight from Gary Hart's position...
...It's clear that the disarmament people made a difference in a number of races...
...The church activists are purists and visionaries, sometimes even anti-political, but I would argue that they are the only constituency likely to provide an alternative for the Democrats...
...Because Reagan and Mondale started at two opposite poles...
...The litigious nature of the Right also limits the possibilities of dis- course, with journalists facing the constant threat of massive libel suits...
...Yet when I look at elite opinion, I am still struck by the strength of the national security consensus...
...They 52 REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 52 REPORT ON THE AMERICASAmerican politics: In need of a new moral vision have an extraordinary passion about Central America...
...FEINBERG-Like Dick Clark, I was nervous about a McCarthyist revival in 1981...
...Eighty percent of the Mondale delegates were liberal...
...interests...
...One reason for the incoherence of Mondale and the Democrats is that they are obsessed with trying to navigate between those two currents and have been afraid to associate themselves with one or the other...
...Today, someone like Bob Borosage is a respected actor in a major Democratic campaign...
...We've reached the stage of what Orwell meant by "War is Peace" in 1984...
...The new approach was that revolutionary change was not necessarily inimical to U.S...
...There is no serious defense of Nicaragua...
...They are either church-based or they are consciously anti-imperialist, in solidarity with foreign revolutions...
...But without it, the Democrats cave in every time when it comes to the crunch...
...But more to the point is what that agenda is...
...It feels threatening to us right now...
...Many former anti-war activists are now pushing Central America resolutions at that level...
...BOROSAGE-Where would you place Jack Kemp...
...Although the polls showed majority support for the invasion, the administration didn't want to raise the specter of intervention in the Caribbean Basin just before the election...
...CLARK-I'm more pessimistic...
...Each of those people is stuck out there like a salesman...
...In some ways they are more radical, ironically, but they are more rooted in concrete things...
...The striking change since 1980 to me is the polarization of informed opinion...
...What is striking about the polls on Central The Vietnam syndrome is nothing to do with the self-determination of other peoples...
...For example, a number of our church allies would not work on the first Boland-Zablocki bill which asked for $80 million in aid to friendly governments as well as cutting off aid to the contras...
...The support for Carter's alternative policies could not stand up to that, and no one has been able to shift public opinion away from the anti-communist impulse of the post-war period...
...We may not have reached that stage yet, but there will be frustrations and there will be fights when things get worse and the administration faces serious resistance...
...The same with churches who are organizing to take over congressional offices if we invade Nicaragua...
...Today's Democrats will react against certain of the worst Republican excesses, but less as a matter of principle than because Cold War policies are ineffective...
...so is Lugar...
...Also, public opposition to intervention can easily be turned around if the intervention is a success, as in Grenada...
...And there is little doubt that they will prevail as far as the party mainstream is concerned...
...El Salvador is one of the most fascinating cases...
...In my judgment, Reagan is clearly an affiliate of the Old Right...
...Jesse Jackson shared a basic assumption that the United States should act around the world to stop communism...
...And what happens...
...Agreed, Somoza was a special case, but the fact is that the administration did let him fall...
...One says, "We don't want to be humiliated any more by communists and foreigners...
...They are the Yuppies, but they are also the middle-aged working class, and their reactions fundamentally affect the Democratic Party...
...Today we have Chris Dodd talking about what kind of airstrike is allowable...
...CLARK-I think there's a good reason for that...
...NAIRN-One of the remarkable things about the Jackson candidacy was that he did begin to broach issues like the North-South conflict and Third World nationalism...
...He clearly had in mind to land a couple of divisions and get out...
...HEALEY-What kinds of questions are allowable today...
...And that cuts both ways...
...there is no argument for recognition of Cuba...
...There is now a widespread argument in the party on how to recapture the white, working-class, nonunion, male vote...
...That kind of crisis could provide the opening for progressives to exert the intellectual influence that the Right has had in recent years...
...power and influence...
...That would have been inconceivable before Carter, and it became so again at the end of the Carter Administration, after Iran and Afghanistan...
...Or, to take another case, the new Heritage Foundation report recommends an expanded number of U.S...
...The platform is meaningless...
...Many Democrats now argue that Jackson is the kiss of death, that the party cannot win the South, and therefore can't win an election, with an activist black candidate...
...That was the essence of the second debate, when Mondale used the words "strong" or "tough" something like 35 times...
...It has avoided the error of every other post-war administration, which is to de- fine an insoluble problem as a crisis...
...Now any candidate who might run for president, whether it's Bradley or Bumpers or Biden, risks losing his head if he sticks it above the ground...
...The test for Jackson in the next year will be to build a broader Rainbow and attract white support...
...But that argument is more about means than interests...
...they did call Paul Warnke a treasonous arms controller...
...HEALEY-Much of our analysis reflects the way in which the Left, too, has shifted...
...It's still alive, but it's weak...
...I give Carter some credit for even daring to use different rhetoric and downplaying the necessity of fighting communism...
...I do want to challenge the idea that the Democrats are unwilling to confront Reagan on Central America, though...
...BOROSAGE-I agree with Richard Feinberg that we are wrong in seeing the first two years of the Carter Administration as some kind of Nirvana-like interlude in U.S...
...We have such short political memories in this country: just five or six years ago there was a substantial group of progressives in the Senate-Sen...
...If Zia falls in Pakistan, or Pinochet in Chile, on the face of it that is an objective crisis for the United States...
...Certainly, the Democratic Party and the general public debate have shifted to the right over the last five years-if five years is our yardstick...
...I could even see them finessing the fall of Marcos in the Philippines...
...CLARK--Even when the polls show a majority hostile to intervention, I question what real restraint that places on the president...
...Very few legislators have had access to the likes of Gen...
...JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1985 53Four e AMore Years Four More Years CLARK-At the level of something like Central America policy, I'm not sure Jesse Jackson was taking a courageous stand so much as saying what was popular in his constituency...
...Now all that is different from the business of advancing an alternative foreign policy through the Democratic Party...
...For all his recent appearance of dovishness, people continue to associate Reagan with the image of strength and pride...
...But with a longer term horizon of ten to twenty years, developments have not been bad...
...The first protests against Vietnam came from Blacks in the civil rights movement, from youth and the counterculture, all of which at that time were considered politically illegitimate...
...It was not a dramatic departure...
...That will not be easy-it has just been defeated on the Senate leadership-so we can look forward to some fierce ideological combat there...
...We support Duarte, but we have trouble with the military...
...Much as they agreed with one part of the bill, they were less willing to compromise on the rest...
...When the Carter Administration slighted many of them, they reacted viciously...
...The House majority leader denounces him...
...Jesse Jackson and the Rainbow Coalition will try...
...Maintaining that image will be important to the administration in keeping support, and it will feel that if some action has to be taken to maintain the image of strength, it will be worth paying the price to do so...
...A series of organizations will be branded as the enemy, or allies of the enemy-something we are very familiar with in Central America-if they oppose the administration's agenda on Central America...
...And the result is that liberal Democrats are always trapped...
...When the Central America Peace Campaign polled delegates to the convention, it found that 85% were opposed to any military aid to Duarte...
...It demonstrates what a Left presence could do...
...The military has taken a very cold analytical look at the preconditions for victory and has seen that there are two...
...It also means a willingness to talk objectively about its less attractive features...
...Progressives have certainly failed to provide that appeal...
...The trilateralist argument has in a sense won out, because it makes sense...
...But there was a different sense of the means to be used, and that included a greater respect for the limits of U.S...
...In 1981 I thought that would be Reagan's natural inclination, but it hasn't happened...
...CLARK-No, I don't think he can be easily categorized...
...That bureaucracy is now engaged in a very important effort, which we can see in its emphasis on preemptive strikes against terrorism, on using the military to police drugs, the buildup of special forces, the increased use of covert operations and secrecy...
...NAIRN--There seem to be two powerful and contradictory currents of public opinion which exist simultaneously, often in the mind of the same person...
...They have to pick the right war...
...And Dick is right-the question is "What party...
...So there is a hint in that natural populist style of the ability to reach beyond the racial base...
...The question is whether progressives can do for the Democrats the equivalent of what the New Right did for the Republicans: create a relatively coherent perspective with some resources behind it, some scholars, some political leaders, some motion in society, and make the whole party react to that agenda...
...The second is the ever-diminishing role of congressional oversight on U.S...
...government funds and military operations in Central America...
...The same is true in city councils and governors' offices...
...NACLA is on the top of the latest Herit- age Foundation report on Latin America.* I wonder whether the administration has not been able to keep the New Right at bay by following its tough agenda on Central America, which is an issue that concerns the New Right very much...
...More than 50% of respondents oppose Reagan's Salvador policies, even if the question is phrased as defeating a communist threat...
...The Weinberger speech reflects the military's determination not to lose another one...
...BOROSAGE-I don't mean to disagree...
...51 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1985Reot or te4 Americ Four More Years Then you have the problem that the party is absolutely leaderless...
...foreign policy for the last 40 years...
...Neither of those, in the administration's eyes, would be an act of war...
...It shows concern only when a crisis disrupts its everyday routines...
...Military action becomes a metaphor for strength, not a way of winning territory...
...Right now there is a huge terrain within American politics which is receptive to a clear moral appeal but has not been touched by Jackson or Reagan...
...It means taking Cuba out of the propaganda haze: telling Americans about the millions of people the revolution has fed and clothed also means talking about the ones it has shot or thrown in jail because they didn't toe the party line...
...They have an image of planes going in, bombing Soviet helicopters or MIGs at the airport, and then flying out over the horizon to the strains of "The Star Spangled Banner...
...One way to reconcile those contradictory impulses is with a cheap victory like Grenada...
...ARMSTRONG--Our task at the moment seems to be a descriptive one, to understand the nature of this country, the political economy of the United States, the state of the empire in 1984...
...But the world has changed, and that makes the, They're quite willing to go out and fight, but only if they know they can win...
...So what are you going to do...
...The Carter argument was directed at the latter...
...The Jackson campaign picked up very few white votes--there was no white Left to rally to it...
...There are fewer people who are beholden to them, or see them as safe, and of course the intellectual and ideological weakness of the anti-intervention movement is that it doesn't understand that yet...
...Now, the Reagan Administration believes that any revolution inevitably means an adverse geopolitical shift and an opening to the Soviets...
...JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1985 47Four More Years seems to me that in its ability to elect people, the New Right began its ascent in 1978, and hit its peak in 1980...
...It managed to go much further in playing the electoral game and mobilizing voters...
...The question is whether an independent white initiative can come from within the party...
...Public opinion is just so uncertain, so malleable...
...Richard Viguerie is the publisher of Conservative Di- gest...
...One potential constituency is the generation that went through Vietnam, whether veterans or their families or anti-war protestors or just those who remember...
...SOL-The attitude of the Carter Administration was respectful as far as the need for economic changes was concerned...
...interests and how to safeguard them, at least in Central America policy...
...Support for Reagan's positions-military aid to Salvador or support for the contras-has varied from 22% to 31...
...But even if the relative size of the various camps remains constant, the Right in a broader sense has succeeded in shifting the entire political spectrum of both parties rightwards...
...But their items are so far down on his agenda that people like Helms, Viguerie and Weyrich* are complaining that he never gets to them...
...It has asserted its ideological dominance brilliantly through the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, the whole network of conservative, neoconservative and New Right institutions and media outlets...
...In the realm of religion, political opponents are attacked as religious heretics...
...It recognizes that inflating their importance at home will only cause political problems of credibility...
...E CD 0 Dallas, 1984 America is the consistent opposition to intervention over the past four to six years...
...it's about not getting involved in long, messy foreign wars...
...Among the Democrats, Mondale and the old party establishment, the neoliberals and the party's fund-, ers have all drawn the same lesson from their defeat-take the party to the Right...
...It is the only institutional constituency where you can find the moral basis for an alternative, and in the end politics rests on a moral vision of the world...
...What is particularly alarming about the Reagan period and the future is the convergence of interests between the representatives of the national security state-largely an elite group-and a right-wing populism...
...So there is strong union opposition to Central America policy from middle-aged people who fought against the Vietnam War, and now have union positions in the UAW, the Machinists, AFSCME...
...The first Reagan election did not lead to a new McCarthyism, but for a very good reason, which was that Reagan largely had his way...
...It seems to me that the 1980 Document of Santa Fe, a New Right document, set out the agenda clearly...
...BLACK-There are two themes here that we should develop...
...Though we may have seen certain shifts at a tactical level, it remains the North Star, the guiding light of administration strategy...
...The Jackson candidacy has frightened many of the white elite of the party, including the Mondale and Hart camps and many of the post-Vietnam liberals...
...It's easy to recognize that a number of things are simply no longer askable in this country...
...This is a better approach than that of the Reaganites, or the neoconservatives or the Lane Kirkland Democrats...
...Those attitudes are very pragmatic, and in a certain sense xenophobic, and they give us very little encouragement about the possibility of developing alternative policies...
...Now, in the organs of elite opinion, in the anti-nuclear and anti-intervention movements, in the informed public generally, there is more polarization on the Central America issue...
...Although they make up a large number of the anti-intervention people, they are nonetheless quite distinct...
...both parties agree the Sandinistas are an adversary...
...The disagreements were on the means...
...That is more apt now than ever...
...I do think it was a fundamental departure in the sense that it entertained an alternative conception of U.S...
...Remember the old Will Rogers joke: "I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat...
...Central America is a growing theme in their publications, and I think they are being creative and successful in using the media to communicate their view of events in the region...
...The key seems to me that an intelligent U.S...
...On certain specific issues, notably the covert action, they have spoken up...
...He was associated with a Carter Administration that many voters saw as having abdicated that power...
...On economic and social issues, too, the two parties have moved profoundly to the right on an absolute scale...
...Doing that, in a way that forms part of a coherent moral vision, is the key to an alternative...
...There is no effective fundraising system in the party, no effective organization at a national level, and very little at a local level...
...What the early Carter period was about was arguing that that equation does not necessarily hold...
...The other, with equal fervor, says, "We don't want another Vietnam, where our boys will die for nothing...
...Roughly two-thirds of those polled have disagreed with his policies...
...It is a more realistic, and to them more intelligent, way of looking at intervention and the use of force...
...As Viron Vaky put it, we should not seek to prevent revolution but rather seek to manage change...
...Answering that helps us to better understand the project of the U.S...
...World War II is the only exception, and even that palled quickly...
...All of this suggests moderation...
...Only marginally...
...In the second debate, Reagan and Mondale switched sides...
...My heart beats a little faster when I hear the term "imperialism" because I think there is still some reality to it...
...Every candidate except the Rev...
...It's the result of the reforms in the selection process, which lets delegates emerge whose liberal views and educational backgrounds are not representative of most Democratic voters...
...Of course not...
...And unfortunately his constituency may have been discredited within the party...
...In the short run I am gloomy about the Democrats breaking with the containment consensus, but in the next period more interesting trends could emerge...
...At the core of his campaign was the idea that "America is back," which is founded on two things-a relative economic recovery and the fact that the United States is no longer being humiliated in any overseas theater...
...Jackson is often unjustifiably belittled, like Reagan, as just an actor or a showman...
...There was a lot of debate in the administration, for example, about whether he should go to Grenada to celebrate the anniversary of the invasion and the opening of the airport...
...Those who think it would lead to a Vietnam-style involvement oppose intervention by something like 80...
...Is the resistance going to come REPORT ON THE AMERICAS __ 50from a revival of that tendency or will we have to look elsewhere...
...In East-West relations, arms control is again the issue...
...We are not shying away from the contradictions like the Democrats have, and like many on the Left have in the past...
...BOROSAGE-The major factor in foreign affairs is that the public is still acquiescent to global intervention, to bloated military budgets...
...The Sandinistas' decision early on to invite in a large-scale Cuban security presence frankly made it harder to sustain the argument that Third World revolutions do not necessarily raise East-West issues...
...It broke with the bipartisan consensus that revolutions should be pre-empted or crushed...
...Either way, they find much less to attract them in the Democratic Party and have been less integrated in terms of political action...
...the question is whether a clear response is ready...
...In Central America, the administration is fairly satisfied with the results of its policies...
...How is that generation likely to affect the Central America issue...
...Dole is Old Right...
...Americans just don't like foreign affairs, and given the choice they'll say, "Don't give them money, don't give them arms, don't send our boys over there...
...We see that kind of argument from the Institute for Religion and Democracy, and even from the Vatican...
...As Willie Loman says, you're out there on a smile and a shoeshine...
...Bobby Byrd...
...That's good and important, but we shouldn't become obsessed with the distinction between the Right's agenda and the Democrats' agenda over Central America policy...
...They are police actions, quick, delimited ways of punching the communists in the nose...
...The Right has been quite successful in removing certain questions from the agenda...
...At the same time the Right continues to grow in harsher ways...
...BOROSAGE-It's important to distinguish between two things...
...FEINBERG-First, we should distinguish between Central America and the rest of the Third World...
...foreign policy...
...He didn't go...
...But I detect in Hart personally the desire to search for ways of preventing that equation from occurring...
...The "war is peace" concept is quite apt for Central America, where we are fighting a war and still talking about peace as if we had not intervened...
...For the moment, I don't see it, although Jackson may have defined a space which some politicians could try to occupy...
...I suspect the crisis will come anyway...
...All that creates serious contradictions which could explode if we face any kind of real crisis, such as a severe recession or a war...
...Either the Soviet ships turn around, or they let you stop and search them...
...foreign policy makes it less likely that the equation will hold...
...The same thing was true in Democratic Party platform meetings...
...The Black Caucus has a base in its own community for taking positions that are far out in comparison to any other Democrats, but it's hard to see how to expand that constituency to a point where it provides the basis for an alternative policy for the party as a whole...
...A majority favors both, but the organized minority carries more political weight...
...But I don't think messianic liberalism-which is what I see in Jackson-as the way to build a governing party...
...Two years ago, Chris Dodd was talking about a different agenda item...
...Kirkpatrick's claim that she represents the old Humphrey wing of the Cold War Democrats is not without foundation...
...It's also worth noting that the original McCarthyist alliance had the same characteristics as the present one-a populist base, building off traditional small-town America--coupled with an overriding concern for national security...
...He appeals to many different elements of the Republican Party, even, strangely enough, to the Rockefeller group...
...Fred Woerner of Southcom...
...Much though I support those reforms, they have not encouraged coalitionbuilding...
...They have done little work on foreign policy, and the issues they have chosen have tended to be outmoded and ridiculous-Taiwan, for example, or the Gold Standard...
...It does not show any less of a political inclination to intervene, but it is more realistic about what it takes to win...
...ARMSTRONG-Some of the gloom around Mc- Carthyism is well-founded...
...Relations with Cuba were under discussion, the United States was planning a working relationship with the new Sandinista government...
...Then in the middle there are the moderates-quite a number of them, people like Durenberger, who is the new head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Heinz...
...Somebody like Dodd shows how the system augurs against an intelligent politician with a future standing up to the Reagan Administration...
...NAIRN-I think you are correct that the New Right per se has not expanded its representation in the Senate...
...BOROSAGE-When you think about Central America, you think about what does not exist in the American political dialogue today...
...NAIRN-But if "means" includes allowing a revolution to succeed, that's an enormous difference, even if the ultimate goal is still U.S...
Vol. 19 • January 1985 • No. 1
