Steve Clemons

Reuters

This morning, Washington Post editors challenge Mitt Romney's foreign policy views in this morning's lead editorial and also give Jon Huntsman a working over. 

The editors applaud Romney's call for American leadership but call his approach to US foreign policy challenges unimaginative and devoid of key details -- particularly how he would wrangle the hundreds of billion dollars of new military spending he called for in his recent Citadel address.

But then the Washington Post challenges Jon Huntsman by slur rather than logic on his Afghanistan policy.  The Post writes:

In contrast, Mr. Huntsman is relatively bold but decidedly more misguided: His promise to "bring home" U.S. troops so as to rebuild an American "core" he views as "broken" sounds like an updated version of George McGovern's "Come Home America" campaign of 1972. Americans didn't buy it then; it would be surprising if GOP primary voters lined up for it now.

Jon Huntsman has offered a strategically coherent view on why American force deployments to Afghanistan undermine rather than enhance American interests.  He sees American power being trapped and tied down by the deployment -- and that higher tier problems, like Iran, are emboldened rather than constrained by the perception of an overstretched American military.

Huntsman also thinks it is irrational for the United States to spend upwards of $120 billion per year in a country with a $14 billion GDP.

What is the Washington Post's rational for labeling this logic "misguided"?  The Post offers no explanation at all as to why Afghanistan is strategically more significant to the US than other vital American challenges -- or why Afghanistan should stand as the "Moby Dick" of the US foreign policy portfolio. 

The Post should table counterpoints and alternatives that are themselves strategically coherent if they decide to challenge Huntsman.  All that the Post does in this attack on Jon Huntsman is to assert without explanation that withdrawal from Afghanistan will weaken the US, at least that is the implication.  It is equally possible to reasonably argue that a withdrawal or sizeable drawdown in Afghanistan will strengthen the United States -- free troops and other military resources to be available for other higher priority contingencies (i.e., Iran, Asia, etc.).

One hopes that the Post will pick up its game as its editors are the ones that are 'misguided' in setting such a low bar in the manner in which they challenge Jon Huntsman's efforts to explain the costs and benefits of various national security strategies to the American public.

I'm just returning from two days with members of the Global Council network of the World Economic Forum held annually in the UAE, this year in Abu Dhabi.  I was a guest of the WEF and participate as a member of the WEF Global Council on Geopolitical Risk.

Despite having quality, sobering discussions with a number of interesting people about the fragile state of global geoeconomic and geostrategic affairs, including former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, former NM Governor Bill Richardson, Kissinger Associates China expert Joshua Cooper Ramo, Eurasia Group president Ian Bremmer, Saudi media mover Jamal Khashoggi, IMF US alternative director Douglas Rediker, and others -- the general mood there seemed to be uncomfortably positive.

Not sure why this was.  Perhaps some folks who attend the Global Councils meeting are so deep into their various NGO terrains trying to alleviate poverty, curtail pandemics and disease, deal with water shortage problems, enhance human rights and the like that the fragility of the developed economies doesn't really rank as a big concern.  Maybe World Economic Forums and the network of business leaders and economists just naturally tilt to more positive takes on the globalization track and downplay the downsides.

I'm not sure.

That said, when I boarded the plane returning back to the US, I caught a refreshingly candid snapshot of the world's precarious situation by the Financial Times' Martin Wolf titled "Do Not Mistake First Aid for a Cure."

Two short clips of Wolf's piece which ran Wednesday, 12 October dealt with defining the severity of the looming eurozone crisis but also explored why the more optimistic version of a one for all and all for one Europe is delusion unless the strongest economies accept the burden of carrying the weaker ones -- and the weaker ones accept that they won't have the same options and power of Europe's core states.

Wolf's comment that this is a very serious -- really, really serious -- mess:

Nobody now sees the eurozone crisis as a little local difficulty.  It has become the epicenter of an aftershock of the global financial crisis that could prove even more destructive than the initial earthquake.  Potentially, it is a triple shock: a financial crisis; a crisis of sovereigns, including Italy, the world's third largest sovereign debtor; and a crisis of the European project with unknowable political consequences.  it is no wonder people are frightened.  They ought to be.

And then his comment about Europe's glue coming undone:

As I have long argued, at bottom this is far more a balance of payments crisis rooted in financial sector misbehavior and cumulative divergence in competitiveness, than a fiscal crisis.  The architects of the eurozone thought that balance of payments crises were impossible in a currency union.  They were wrong.  In the absence of automatic cross-border financing, and unfinanceable external deficit will emerge as a domestic credit crisis.  Then, even currency risk will return if the union is among largely sovereign states.

Martin Wolf does regularly attend World Economic Forum meetings around the world.  I often see him at the WEF New Champions meetings in China -- but I think folks need to consider diminishing Wolf's status as a contrarian -- as his views need to be more aggressively considered, digested, and made mainstream if the world's leaders are going to process the right benchmarks for action and have a chance at sidestepping catastrophe.

My colleague at The Atlantic Max Fisher has written a thoughtful essay questioning why Iran would consider assassinating Saudi Ambassador to the US Adel Al-Jubeir on US soil when, as he argues, it would re-energize a weakening US-Saudi alliance, animate weak Arab states in the region to more strongly oppose Iran's pretensions as a regional hegemon, and open Iran to the possibility of full frontal attack from the US, Saudi Arabia and potentially other allies.

Fisher is careful to point out that Attorney General Eric Holder's action against alleged agents of Iran may prove to be true -- but the story's weird points -- like the recklessness of wiring funds cross border into a US bank, talking about the plot on cell phones, and working through a Mexican drug cartel raise red flags about the solvency of the Justice Department's case.  It's just hard for some to believe that Iranian agents would operate so unprofessionally or trigger events that could seriously harm Iran's regional and global position rather than enhance it.

A couple of quick reactions.

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News is breaking now that senior officials of Iran's Revolutionary Guard/Quds force were attempting to orchestrate the assassination of Saudi Ambassador to the United States Adel al-Jubeir.

As I write this, Attorney General Eric Holder is speaking to the press -- and I am watching events from Abu Dhabi where I am attending the Global Council on Geopolitical Risk session of the World Economic Forum.  Thus, my information is limited to that which I am hearing from US Department of Justice officials.

What is listed in an official complaint filed by the US government is that a bombing was allegedly planned, perhaps in a Washington, DC restaurant.  The possibility that 100 to 150 people might be killed in the alleged plot was, according to FBI officials, waived off and of no concern to the Iranian interlocutor.  According to statements at the news conference, $1.5 million was wired to the alleged perpetrators to finance the costs of the attack.

A couple of key things to consider as this story evolves.

First of all, Ambassador Adel al-Jubeir is not a member of the Saudi royal family but is widely considered to be the closest national security adviser and confidant to King Abdullah.  Al-Jubeir is constantly flying between Riyadh and Washington and wherever the Saudi King is as the King constantly calls on him for counsel and advice -- and thus al-Jubeir is far more than just an Ambassador.

Secondly, one of the key themes that has frequently emerged here at the Abu Dhabi meetings of the World Economic Forum this week is that a more intense proxy struggle is taking place between Saudi Arabia and Iran throughout the Middle East as the perception of American strategic contraction grows. 

This alleged assassination plot simultaneously may indicate both the intensity of anti-Saudi passion among Iran's senior leaders and a greater aggressiveness by Iran against the US.

This is a serious situation -- and this kind of assassination is the sort that could lead to an unexpected cascade of events that could draw the US and other powers into a consequential conflagration in the Middle East.

If Iran was indeed willing to attack a Saudi Ambassador and close confidante of the Saudi King on US soil and countenance the death of 100-150 Americans, then the US has reached a point where it must take action. 

The President's National Security Council and intelligence teams led by Thomas Donilon must construct a response that is "more than reactive."  This is time for a significant strategic response to the Iran challenge in the Middle East and globally -- and if the US does not take action, then the Saudis will most likely retaliate in ways that will escalate the stakes and tensions with Iran throughout the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia.

Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denies any government involvement in this plot -- and there no doubt will be much more that surfaces in coming days.  But Iran has officially denied any complicity in this plot and has accused the US of fabricating these claims.

During the very start of George W. Bush's first presidential run in mid-1999, Robert Zoellick -- now head of the World Bank -- was tasked with organizing a myriad of advisory committees to the Bush Campaign. 

The focus of these committees ranged from trade to the domestic economy to national security questions on many tiers and across regions.  At the time, it appeared that Zoellick had tied up most of the high quality policy practitioners who tilted Republican or Independent across Washington's rich think tank ecosystem, thus stealing most of the creative op-ed writing and policy punditry talent away from other Republican contenders. 

Interestingly, after John McCain lost the primary battle with George W. Bush, McCain began investing much more heavily in building relationships with key think tanks -- including the New America Foundation -- and also launched a couple of think tanks himself, one on media reform and the other on campaign finance.

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At the 2011 Washington Ideas Forum, former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf tells Atlantic Media Chairman David Bradley that he was 500 percent sure that at least he did not know about bin Laden residing inside Pakistan.  If true, that's very bad news.

This means that Pakistan, which has been behaving like a badly wounded, now unpredictable, tiger since the US killing of Osama bin Laden, may have more highly developed, compartmentalized command and control national security operations completely siloed from each other.  This has long been thought about the ISI, but that agency may be just the beginning of a very fragmented set of operations -- cocooned from each other -- that neither the President nor the Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Kayani, have full command of.

The information that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and outgoing Joint Chiefs of Staff Commander Mike Mullen have revealed on Pakistan's direct hand in the inner-Kabul terror attacks that are taking place with greater frequency, including an attack on the US Embassy compound in Kabul but starting in part with the bombing of the British Council offices which I blogged about that morning, means that the US government is clearly now in conflict with at least part, if not all, of Pakistan's national security forces. 

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Reuters/Mike Segar

As David Frum has said, if the Republican Party is an oligarchy, Mitt Romney will head the GOP ticket.  If it is a democracy, anyone but Romney will. 

Despite the agitations and clatter of the Tea Party, my hunch is that the Republicans are an oligarchy and Romney will be the last one standing when all the others have fallen. 

The Obama White House fears Romney and would have loved to run against Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann or Chris Christie of Sarah Palin (or Herman Cain!!).  Obama has spent so much political capital irritating the left and holding the pragmatic, wanna-do-a-deal center that for the Republicans to now throw a generally sensible, northeastern, Nelson Rockefeller style Republican at him seems like a game foul.

But Romney has been campaign tested once, and at least for the time being -- he's the candidate who deserves a deep dive into what he believes, thinks and who he surrounds himself with.

Romney's speech on foreign policy was depressingly conventional.  I am acquainted with many of his now outed foreign policy advisers -- and think that some how the tug between the different perspectives on the team must have warped beyond coherence whatever strategic frame Romney hoped to deliver.

Running through his remarks -- Romney checks off the Iran box, punctuating his citation by calling Iran's leaders "suicidal fanatics."  This is a bit like John Bolton calling Kim Jong Il "scum" just before Colin Powell was working to get the North Koreans to suspend a nascent nuclear warhead production capability.  Romney, or Bolton for that matter, 'might' be right -- but the comment practically assures Romney's impotence in finding an alternative path with Iran if he were to win the White House.

But we also know that Iran is not led by suicidal fanatics.  They would have behaved very differently if 'suicidal'.   We know Iran is led by a combination of tired ideologues who are corrupt and intoxicated on their positions and power and privileges not unlike what happened after many decades of power-holding by Soviet elites.  There is not much revolution left inside Iran's top tier -- but there is a lot of jostling for power and there is a thirst for regional preeminence.  Romney's comment gives absolutely no indication that he would be any better than Bill Kristol's or John Bolton's war-mongering calls for a collision now with Iran.

Romney's second checked off box is Israel.  I believe in standing by Israel's security too -- but want Israel to stop confusing its long term and short term interests.  Israel is the super power in the region and sets the temperature in its neighborhood.  Romney talks of Israel as if it is a complete innocent and without capabilities of its own.  Tired.  And distracting from America's real issues.

Some years ago, I asked Chinese strategists what their grand strategy was -- and they said it was simple -- they just hoped the US would remain distracted in small Middle Eastern countries.  So far, Romney is giving China's geostrategic weiqi players exactly what they want.

And yes, China has not yet come up in Romney's talk as I reread it.

Afghanistan mentioned.  No clarity at all. 

Romney asks "will the country sink back into the medieval terrors of fundamentalist rule and the mullahs again open a sanctuary for terrorists?" 

Mitt -- make the case why this matters one way or another.  Are there not havens for terrorists in many countries we don't invade and occupy?  And more importantly, do US force deployments in Afghanistan appear to the great powers of the world as force multipliers and the leveraging of American force -- or instead appear to be a trap containing American power?  China, Iran, Pakistan, the entire neighborhood perceive an American military that is overstretched -- and Afghanistan as a crippling rather than enhancing effort of US power projection.

He casually drifts by Pakistan -- not posing the key question which is whether we now be in some form of informal war with the Pakistanis given the public comments of US officials that Pakistan directed Taliban attacks against America's Kabul Embassy compound.

He then tosses in China between Pakistan and Russia -- asserting that China is bent on emerging as a globally consequential economic and military force.  But it's not enough to state the obvious.  What is the strategy to deal with this rise?  Are China's intentions the same as were the Soviet's? or different?  What are America's and China's strategic equities that need sorting and managing?  Is a collision inevitable? or will Romney suggest a path that will align the strategic interests of China and the US?

Then Russia. Romney asks will the Soviets be back?  A nation that is demographically collapsing will not go on a new warpath Governor Romney.  Your advisers know that.  Spend some time with Dov Zakheim or Mitchell Reiss.  They would not have made such ridiculous leading, vapid assertions.

Then Chavez, then Castro.  The realists on Romney's team know that the US-Cuba Embargo harms American interests more than helps -- and increasingly irritates a younger generation of Cuban-Americans who want to do business and make their fortunes in trade an investment in Cuba, while watching some of the Cuban diaspora in Central and South America as well as in Spain run ahead of them.  Do some poll work, Governor Romney -- the results are not tilting toward Ileana Ros-Lehtinen but rather towards a next generation of entrepreneurs.

Then Romney goes to Mexico -- drug violence and narco-crimes.  Illegal immigration and drug smuggling Nothing at all on Mexico being America's largest trading partner or the many positive avenues of engagement between the countries.   I'm imagining Romney doing something along the lines to the Hispanic vote of what John McLaughlin might say, "Bye-bye!"

Then Mitt Romney offers the Roger & Me, America as General Motors line:

But I am here today to tell you that I am guided by one overwhelming conviction and passion: This century must be an American Century. In an American Century, America has the strongest economy and the strongest military in the world. In an American Century, America leads the free world and the free world leads the entire world.

Of course, America is important and has a big miltary and a $15 trillion GDP -- but it is slipping.  Romney doesn't get the fact that the world looks at the US as a very well-branded, globally sprawling operation with a lot of power and capacity that is rusty, underperforming, and unable to accomplish the things America itself says it wants to do in the world.

Romney apparently thinks that just asserting leadership is being a leader.  The world has moved past this point.  American leadership must be consented to and earned again -- and there is nothing in Romney's speech that indicates that he actually understands America's real state of play with other global stakeholders.

Finally, I found a line of Romney's that I fully agree with.  He says:

It is far too easy for a President to jump from crisis to crisis, dealing with one hot spot after another. But to do so is to be shaped by events rather than to shape events. To avoid this paralyzing seduction of action rather than progress, a President must have a broad vision of the world coupled with clarity of purpose.

America has tilted towards being a reactive power rather than a strategic power -- and this needs to be reversed. But I am desperately searching in Romney's comments a "clarity of purpose".  I see historical cliches, and inertia-forged thinking that reflects the past more than I see something designed to deal with the world as it is today.

Then back to Islamic fundamentalism.  Fear. Fear. Fear.  Box checked.

Global bad guys. North Korea. Venezuela. Cuba.  Check. Check. Check.  Cuba?  Oh right -- Florida -- have to make Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Debbie Wasserman Schulz happy.  

Someone please walk Mitt Romney through what the US has accomplished with that evil Communist nation we actually had a debilitating war with (Vietnam) and tell him how it is working out.  And Cuba today has decided to export doctors rather than revolution of late.  It has also developed a Meningitis B vaccine that could be rather helpful to afflicted US youth -- and Cuba has been making a series of steps that are very China-like in its domestic political economy, all while the US dithers and Mitt Romney clings to a pathetically anachronistic vestige of the Cold War.

Then 1,542 words in we get another China reference.  That is right.  Two modest mentions of China is Mitt Romney's zinger opus on American grand strategy.  China is surging -- and while America appears to be the General Motors of nations; China looks like the Google of countries, rocketing upward like an internet start up in the perception of other states.

I just accidentally deleted quite a bit of text that followed this.  Not going to re-write it.

Some of what I wrote saluted Romney's framing of the importance of international institutions -- seeing them as valuable vehicles to move America's statecraft and vision of human rights and democracy forward but not relying on them entirely.  I noted that this section was written I'd guess by Paula Dobriansky, whom I really admire -- and that this paragraph would never have slipped pass a John Bolton, Frank Gaffney, or Max Boot -- all of whom are not listed Romney advisers.  So, Romney scores some goals on this one in my book.

I won't re-create what I wrote as my frustration with most of Romney's speech is severe (there were some good points -- just too few).  There is no strategy in his remarks.  I had hoped he would realistically grapple with America's deficit in geopolitical strategy and offer something that would demonstrate a credible vision that might reinvent America's leverage and place and mystique in the world. 

Instead, Romney flounders in platitudes, checked off boxes in laundry lists of problem states, and offers contradictions on how he would approach defense spending and the economy.

China -- which matters on all tiers of policy, domestic and foreign -- gets a scant nod from Romney, and this is very disappointing.  There is no more important challenge in the world today in my view than in getting China right -- and figuring out how to stabilize and deal with China's "fragile swagger".

I'll write more on Romney's advisory group which I found surprisingly good and diverse.  There are smart, thoughtful realists and smart, thoughtful neoconservatives; there are global justice policy intellectuals who see the value of international deal-making.  All of this is good.  And the names I would have thought might appear, like John Bolton or Frank Gaffney or Elliott Abrams or Randy Scheunemann are not there -- at least not yet.  I have nothing against their inclusion, but they represent a much harder-edged and in my view potentially dangerous global military adventurism which Romney's announced crew does not represent.

I'm off to Abu Dhabi for meetings of the World Economic Forum and will add more on the Romney Foreign Policy advisers when I get there.

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This event will be webcast live.

For those into US-China issues, I will be having a discussion with the dean of Asia observers in America, Ezra Vogel of Harvard University, on is seminal new work, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China, from 12:15 pm - 1:45 pm EST today. 

I will be sharing my comments on this important, definitive work on Deng later -- but wanted to give folks an opportunity to listen in on this meeting sponsored by the New America Foundation/American Strategy Program.

My Atlantic colleague Jeffrey Goldberg has offered this observation on the issue of whether Israelis want peace with the Palestinians:

Polls show that a majority of Israelis support a two-state solution and territorial compromise. The Israelis I know, left and right, would much rather not send another generation of sons and daughters to army service.

I completely agree with Goldberg.  Most Israelis I know want peace and some version of a two-state solution. 

I helped establish the Middle East Task Force at the New America Foundation directed by former Israel government trade negotiator Daniel Levy, who was one of the whirling dervishes of the Geneva Initiative, as well as Amjad Atallah, who is now Bureau Chief of the Americas of Al Jazeera, because I not only thought that a two state deal was vital but believed in the many polls done then showing that both Israelis and Palestinians in their respective majorities favored a peace deal.

Goldberg wrote the item above as a counterpoint to something I had written suggesting I was saying that Israelis didn't want peace. He reposts from my piece on Obama and the Palestinian statehood bid:

What Obama doesn't get is that a substantial portion of Israel's population loves not having a deal and never wants one.  They are OK with a peace process to nowhere -- but that is not acceptable for the less-endowed, less-powerful Palestinian side.  Hamas is in the rejectionist corner as well, seeing its fortunes rise as earnest efforts at peace go nowhere.

Jeffrey 'rounded up' what I actually wrote.  Not a big deal -- but it does give me an opportunity to raise the issue of ineffective majorities and effective minorities in the Israel-Palestine divide.

I clearly qualify my comment above on the number of Israelis not desiring piece as "substantial portion" rather than using "majority".  In Jeffrey Goldberg's own writing about Benjamin Netanyahu, about the influential two-state rejectionist Pamela Geller, about many in the equation about Israel-Palestine issue who ultimately don't trust any Palestinian leadership structure enough to do a deal.

I am not going to argue that a majority of Israelis don't want peace.  Of course, they do, and this is something that we should applaud -- but that has been true for a very long time -- and the fact is that majority perspectives don't seem to matter when it comes to Israel-Palestine deal-making.

What matters are the minorities, particularly the violent ones -- Hamas in Palestine, and the settlers who keep pushing out the frontiers of what they consider to be Greater Israel in the Occupied territories.

Both of these minority groups are rejecting the two state peace track -- and any successful outcome will depend upon resilience, upon strong support of those who want peace against the minorities willing to do do anything to capsize a track -- even the initiation of the process -- towards a fair, final deal.

Israel and Palestine can never sell a deal internally without blaming outside powers for compelling them to do what is in their long term interests

Reuters

President Obama's speech at the United Nations yesterday paled in comparison to the soaring, expectation raising addresses he gave early in his administration, particularly in Cairo, but also at past UN General Assembly gatherings.  The President has lost his groove.

Obama opened with FDR's line that "We have got to make, not merely a peace, but a peace that will last." This was the perfect set up line for the President to describe how the United States was going to reinvent its leadership in an increasingly complex world where the old rules are not working. 

President Obama could have described in his address a new set of global deals among the world's last era powers and ones now rising -- particularly Brazil, India, Turkey, China -- and talked about the need for responsible stakeholders in the international system to deliver on a package of rights and opportunities for citizens of the world, perhaps a new Global Social Compact that America could help design but which would need to be supported, ratified if you will, by other of the world's great powers.

That would have been something.

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We have had gay generals and captains, colonels, lieutenants, staff sergeants, airmen, and admirals in the past -- many of them -- who have fought and sacrificed for the country. 

For the most part, these men and women have had to hide who they were if they wanted to serve.  Many, particularly enlisted men and women, joined the uniformed military services out of high school discovering that he or she might be gay or lesbian along the way.

It was a shameful deal between Pentagon commanders and then US Senator Sam Nunn on one side and Bill Clinton on the other that resulted in gays only being able to serve in the US military if they hid their true selves.  This was the purgatory of Don't Ask Don't Tell.  As Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen stated on many occasions, this state of affairs forced a moral crisis on those who served -- and this policy itself was immoral.

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I am embarrassed not to have previously known the work of MIT historian Pauline Maier, winner of the 2011 George Washington Book Prize for her gripping account of the state by state drama over ratifying the US Constitution.

I am a history junkie and just served two exciting years as one of a three member team on the Los Angeles Times History Book Prize Committee and would make my way through 80-90 volumes a year that were being considered, but while in the weeds, missed the emergence of Maier's excellent work, Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-1788.

Most are familiar with the key roles played by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay in taking on the propaganda responsibilities for seducing and/or pommeling those skeptical of or opposed to a new constitutional framework for the barely tethered together states under the Articles of Confederation. But there is so much more to the story.

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It's irresponsible, toxic and demeaning to others on the supercommittee with whom he agreed to work

Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

Senator Jon Kyl made news this week by telegraphing in advance the tantrums he would throw -- including resignation from his responsibilities as a member of the so-called "supercommittee" -  if the Congressional group pushes for more defense cuts. 

It's unclear whether Kyl will tolerate the $350 billion in cuts slated for the next ten years already called for by President Obama -- or whether he is talking about cuts above this amount.

From my experience, it is probably the former -- but my calls to his office yesterday asking clarification have not yet been returned -- so I leave open the option that the Senator and President Obama may be on the same page about the relatively modest cuts Obama has called for.

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Word broke today that Barack Obama's funniest speechwriter Jon Lovett -- performing above at the Washington Improv (giving an impeccable impersonation of Arianna Huffington) and who along with lead Obama wordsmith, Jon Favreau, was the genius this year behind President Obama's Trump-stirring White House Correspondent's Dinner speech -- will be leaving DC to write funny stuff for Hollywood.  Watch out 30 Rock.

I've been studying Lovett from a safe distance for a while -- and he reminds me of my pal Darren Star who never wrote speeches -- but was from Potomac, Maryland before he began defining for the Beverly Hills and Melrose crowds how they lived better than they could ever tell. 

Darren, you should meet Lovett quick -- before one of those more humor-needy producers get him.

Two big immediate consequences from Lovett's departure though -- well three actually. 

The first, which I nearly forgot, is that I will probably not succeed now in getting Lovett and Favreau to headline the opening dinner chat for the Washington Ideas Forum organized by The Atlantic and the Aspen Institute on how they sew lots of chuckles and well delivered punchlines into vast political blandness.  Will still give it a try -- and maybe a ticket back from LA?

The second is that Barack Obama is losing his only gay speechwriter.  Yes, I've said it now -- GAY.  None of the reports -- none -- no one who has written or blogged about Lovett's big news has shared anything of his gay sizzle and fabulousness.  Jon Lovett is not shy at all about this -- and frankly, I think it's been inspiring and important to have a brilliant gay speechwriter among the other half dozen or so other young future Ted Sorensen's.  This is sort of like writing a tribute to Gore Vidal without mentioning that his groundbreaking novel, The City and the Pillar, was a 'gay' novel.

OK, done with that.   

Third, the handsome-but-not-gay Tommy Vietor (sorry guys) now needs a roommate.  (Tommy is the guy pictured on the left.)

Vietor and Jon Lovett have been sharing a flat this past year, or were last I checked in, and that means Vietor will probably need a new roomie unless President Obama is giving his National Security Spokesman a raise -- and given the debt ceiling fiasco, I somehow doubt that.

Congratulations Jon Lovett -- though I just can't imagine Barack Obama being funny without you.

Bleak views of the US economy abound.  Real unemployment for August -- which according to a monthly newsletter report prepared by Leo Hindery includes discouraged workers (3.9 M), part time of necessity workers (8.8 M), and marginally attached workers (2.6 M) those on the unemployment roles -- is up to 29.3 million workers, or 18.2% - compared to the still bleak official unemployment rate of 9.1%.

EJ Dionne has today penned one of the most depressingly accurate homages to labor I've read, suggesting that we change the name of "Labor Day" to "Capital Day", arguing that we have "given up on honoring workers as the real creators of wealth and their honest toil. . .as worthy of genuine respect."

But I've always had respect for contrarian views -- and I found one in my inbox a few days ago from the insightful research operation of the ISI Group.

The preamble to the report opened: "We are not trying to look at economic releases through 'rose colored' glasses, but the distinctly negative climate in the U.S. three weeks ago has since brightened.

Something to consider on this rather gloomy Labor Day are the ISI Group's observations:

1.     Monster online employment index continues to trend up.
2.     Consumer confidence is generally rebounding
3.     Chain-store sales were solid in August
4.     Motor vehicle sales were solid in August.
5.     Mfg PMI was better than expected (even after adjusting for the quality of the indicators,   most notably inventories)
6.     Household employment jumped.
7.     Temp employment is up two months in a row.
8.     Unemployment claims are trending lower.
9.     Verizon workers returned to work which should add about 45K to September's gain.
10.   Historically, September - November job growth is above the long term average gain

So, while today is cloudy, there is some hope that America's no job growth economy may be tilting slightly up for workers in coming months. 

Let's hope the ISI Group's view holds.

(photo credit:  Fred Prouser/Reuters)

Commentary's Jonathan Tobin has an interesting piece out on the ruffled relations between Israel and Turkey.  His primary assertions are that Prime Minister Netanyahu can do no wrong and that Turkey set on a path to downgrade its relations with Israel far earlier than the Gaza flotilla dispute.

But the zinger that has many folks chattering is that Turkey was somehow responsible for Iraq's insurgency.

Tobin writes:

In 2003, Turkey's decision not to allow coalition troops to use their territory in the effort to depose Saddam Hussein in Iraq not only was a blow to the U.S.-Turkey alliance but set in motion circumstances that ultimately helped create the insurgency. Since then Turkey has consistently set itself apart from its NATO allies on a host of security issues.

In on-the-record conversations I have had with US Ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder, Daalder has stated that Turkey has been careful not to mix issues at play in its bilateral tensions with Israel with its obligations and commitments within the multilateral discussions inside NATO, so I don't believe that Tobin's assertion about Turkey vs. other NATO members is correct.

Tobin suggests that Turkey is undermining NATO by attempting to pursue closer commercial ties with Tehran, but just this week, Turkey's Foreign Ministry announced that it "agreed to host an early warning radar as part of NATO's missile defense system aimed at countering ballistic missile threats from neighboring Iran."

On the linkage between Turkey and Iraq, I am really scratching my head.  I guess I'd need to see a much longer article on how Turkey bore responsibility for "creating the insurgency" inside Iraq. 

From my perspective, those dots just don't connect, but I look forward to someone trying to give that puzzle a try.

h/t to Ali Gharib.

Most Americans know former First Lady Laura Bush as a strong supporter of education -- and she puts her time and travel into this cause.  What is less known about Bush is how committed she was to international bridge-building and encouraging Americans to connect abroad.

I want to tip my hat to former First Lady Laura Bush. 

She is an internationalist -- and young folks, in fear of burying the lead, you should know that there is a "Laura W. Bush Traveling Fellowship" administered by the Department of State (Deadline extended to September 26, 2011) that is a great opportunity for young people to work abroad in line with the goals of UNESCO.

Most Americans know Laura Bush as a strong supporter of youth education -- and she puts her time and travel into this cause.  Just today, The Education Alliance -- a support group of business and community for "public" schools in Charleston, West Virginia -- announced that Mrs. Bush would be the keynote speaker of the Alliance's annual fundraiser on November 9th.

On October 7th, Laura Bush will visit the Lubbock-Cooper Independent School District in Texas to attend a ribbon cutting at a middle school named in her honor.  This really impresses me as Charleston while a fine city (and the same goes for Lubbock) doesn't tend to rank among America's most acclaimed metropolises.  She is pushing education in a retail way, out in places that too often get overlooked.  Impressive.

What is less known about our former First Lady is how committed she was to international bridge-building and encouraging Americans to connect abroad.

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In Arizona, the Republican Party plans to raffle off a Glock handgun, the same brand used to kill six and wound 13 others -- including Gabrielle Giffords -- in January

Carlos Garcia Rawlins / Reuters

In September 2008, then US Senator Lincoln Chafee did what many other smart, sensible Republicans should do today.  He distanced himself from the pugnacious, anti-informed, increasingly deluded and violence-hugging wing of his GOP party. In a talk I moderated at the New America Foundation, now Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee called Sarah Palin "a cocky whacko."

Today, the too silent majority of Republican Party members who are decent, believe in classical conservative values of decency and fair and honest work, who shun flamboyance, and want to see the nation move ahead for everyone need to stand up and knock back the idiots in their party who are celebrating and breeding thuggery and promoting violence.

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I'm off to Seattle today to take part in the annual conference of the American Political Science Association. 

The highlight every year is a private dinner that G. John Ikenberry of Princeton organizes with some of the leading lights in international relations theory -- including Charles Kupchan of Georgetown, Michael Cox of the London School of Economics (though he is AWOL this year), Peter Trubowitz at the University of Texas/Austin, William Wohlforth of Darthmouth, and Daniel Deudney of Johns Hopkins University.  Others jump in as well.

This year, we'll no doubt be picking apart Ikenberry's latest contribution to the field, Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order, one of the must read new books for anyone who wants to knowledgeably debate the current and future state of American-crafted global institutions.  I happen to think that Ikenberry has too much confidence in the resilience of America's place in the future global order -- but he's an extremely interesting and serious thinker on these issues, well worth the time reading and debating.

That said, APSA -- as usual -- seems to be easily distracted by the trivial.  The roster of big meetings doesn't look hopeful.  On the roster for 2011 plenaries are "The Fate of the Affordable Care Act and the Right to Health Insurance Coverage"; "Democracy, Economic Security and Social Justice in a Volatile World"; and "Women's Rights Around the Globe."

Ugh.  [While these topics are important -- and of course I support women's rights, expanded health care coverage, and international economic development, APSA meetings in my experience tend to draw together some of the world's best minds and produce very little of consequence at these sessions.  There are some exceptions -- but few.]

If you are in Seattle and have any zinger ideas you want to share, drop me a line.


UPDATE:  I have amended my post above with the comment in brackets as it captures what I meant to say but somehow didn't as I rushed to catch the plane to Seattle.  Thanks for all the comments, even the snarky ones.  I stand by my basic point that APSA could be so much more than it is in sorting through these important topics if it tried a bit more.  Robert Jervis of Columbia University was an outstanding President of APSA and while there his forums tended to have more of a constructive edge and yielded what I thought were profound insights, even about some of these broad global justice topics.  That hasn't happened in my experience since.  All best, Steve Clemons

The fact that the GOP is now experiencing the kind of outrageous character assaults against Muslims that many Dems, like US House Representative Keith Ellison, have endured only means that the push back has come much later than it should have. 


Reuters/Rebecca Cook

Are you or are you not a card-carrying member of the pro-Shariah, Muslim Brotherhood network trying to force the citizens of the United States of America to submit to the hateful will of Allah?

I haven't heard anyone in the network of scholars, validators, or activists -- profiled in the just-released Center for American Progress report Fear Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America -- utter the above statement precisely.  However, the propaganda of a growing American-based network agitating against the spread of Shariah Law, an entirely fabricated fear-mongering movement, sounds a vibe close enough.

Recently, Atlas Shrugs blogger Pamela Geller -- who is a key player in the Fear Inc. report, decided to focus her anti-Muslim rants at a Muslim GOP candidate, David Ramadan, that former Reagan administration Attorney General and Ronald Reagan Chair in Public Policy at the Heritage Foundation Edwin Meese was helping to support in a local Virginia House of Delegates race.

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