My daughter is very anxious that Mitt Romney might win the election. Before that she was worried about the European monetary crisis and what might happen if Greece defaults. This suggest that the problem is less one of our partisanship than of growing up the kid of international-affairs specialists who listen to the news during the morning commute.
Regardless, her anxiety suggested it was time for “the talk.” We’d already had the “Republicans are good people” talk. It went something like this: “your grandfather is a Republican, and he’s a wonderful human being. We just disagree on what’s best for the country. And whether your schoolfriend’s mommies can choose to get married.” So this time we explained that the parties periodically switch control over various branches of government, they do good things and bad things, and life goes on.
Anyway, this got me thinking about the “good things and bad things” part of the discussion. So here’s my challenge: Â can you identify a policy where the “other side” is likely to do better?
In other words, if you’re pro-Obama, tell us about a positive change that a Romney administration is likely to make in US policy. If you’re pro-Romney, identify something that Obama did right and that Romney would mess up. If you’re one of those third-party types, probably best to skip this one.
My answer is below the fold.
I think that a Romney administration would be better, overall, on nuclear strategy and nuclear posture. I’m fine with the Obama Administration’s embrace of  “Global Zero”  as an aspirational policy. The problem is that too many people within the Administration think that “Global Zero” ought to guide every aspect of nuclear strategy. In consequence, the people doing serious work on US nuclear posture are ignored and marginalized.
That’s not good. The growth of pre-nuclear escalation options–from highly-accurate conventional payloads to cyber attacks–requires sustained high-level attention to US nuclear-weapons policy. The number of nuclear powers is likely to increase. Our technicians and designers are aging. Yet national security officials in the Obama administration remain concerned about interfering with the “Global Zero” message. This is one area of national-security policy where I expect a Romney administration would do better.
Re Greece, you should’ve just pointed her to my article (w Oatley) at FP online and she’d sleep well at night: https://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/05/23/dont_fear_the_grexit
More generally, you should remind her that institutions are more important than individual politicians.
As for the “other”, I don’t support either candidate nor do I particularly care who wins, so I’ll give one for both:
I think the primary thing Romney would be better at that Obama is global economic relations. Obama’s not especially bad at it, he just doesn’t care about it. And while I don’t like Romney’s blustering about China, the truth is that China is not WTO-compliant in a number of ways — both in practice but especially in spirit — and the US has a strong interest in maintaining the legitimacy of the WTO. Obama knows not and cares not about that. There actually is a case, on welfare grounds and for their own good, for pushing China into de facto compliance with global norms/laws that they already have adopted de jure. Anyway there’s a ton of room for gain here — a bunch of low-hanging fruit really — and Obama hasn’t been picking it because he just doesn’t care about it. I think Romney would go after it because it would suit (some) corporate interests.
Obama, on the other hand, clearly has an image of the future of America’s economy that is based on actual theory and has clearly identifiable goals. Romney doesn’t. His attitude is “live and let live,” with a healthy dose of collusion b/t government and corporate America mixed in. I’m not sure at all that Obama has anything *right*, but any theory is better than none. I think.
Gun to my head: I vote for Obama. But it would more of an aesthetic choice than anything else. Since there’s no gun to my head I’ll resume my normal practice and abstain from voting, and trust the median voter to do what she would do anyway.
Two words: Supreme Court. Three more words: Affordable Care Act. Some more words: More drilling on no-longer-pristine protected federal lands. One cd go on.
An “aesthetic choice”? Criminy.
Yeah, the Supreme Court argument is a hard one to deny. Besides, economic and foreign policy are not the only areas influenced by the presidency, and I think it would be hard to make the case that Obama and Romney (with their respective party obligations) would not present different scenarios for the next four years of social policy in the country, whether or not it is about rolling back, halting, or moving forward on various progressive issues.
“The growth of pre-nuclear escalation options–from highly-accurate conventional payloads to cyber attacks–requires sustained high-level attention to US nuclear-weapons policy.”
It might be because I’m traveling today, but I don’t see the connection here. How does one get from cyber ‘conflict’ to nukes?
What is the appropriate response to a (hypothetical) cyber attack that cripples a city? We tend to think the answer is definitely not “a tactical nuke,” but it isn’t clear that every other nuclear power agrees.
I’m a Democrat, and I’d say trade liberalization, too. This is one area where the party’s internal politics sometimes pull it towards protectionism in ways that are counterproductive, even for the lower-income Americans that resistance is supposed to help.
Wow, I’m a lot more skeptical of GOP on trade liberalization, mostly because I think that when academics use the term they believe that workers who lose from trade will be compensated by the very social safety net that Romney wants.
Actually, I think that the GOP would be more successful at prioritizing East Asia in international relations, and have a good chance at being more successful at promoting specific development projects (e.g. a Romneyite initiative along the lines of PEPFAR).
Ten years ago, my answer would have been “cap and trade.”
My thinking about trade liberalization is premised on the assumption that the protections representatives pursue are often really narrow, whereas the gains can be broad and substantial. That said, I also realize that these gains may not always happen. But, hey, Dan asked for *something*, and as a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, that was the best I could come up with.
(I also agree with Dan re: nukes.)
I hate to be so partisan, but the one obvious thing Romney will be able to do better is achieve some modest degree of bipartisanship. NOT because he has any particular magic touch (and his Massachusetts experience doesn’t suggest he does, simplistic campaign story line notwithstanding), but because the Democrats would not be the “party of no” for Romney that the Republicans were for Obama these past four years. The Republicans were willing to take the country hostage to try to prevent legislative successes for which Obama might take credit and had the party discipline to follow through. Some on the Democratic side presumably would feel similarly, but the centrist, pragmatist core of the party wouldn’t play along and for better and for worse, the Democrats don’t have the party discipline the other side of the aisle does.
SIGH
Unfortunately you are probably right. I do wonder if this is a reason to vote for Romney as it would follow for any republican president. It is akin to giving one child more presents on Xmas day because he acts like a baby if you don’t while the other is rather mature about it.