An American Political Agenda for 2018 and 2020: Six Suggestions for the Upcoming Election Cycles: Part 4

In putting forth an agenda for the 2018 and 2020 elections (read Part 3 here), we’ve focused on domestic matters – restoring the dignity of the Presidency, ending Trump’s harsh, divisive race and ethnicity baiting, and addressing income inequality.  We’ll get back to domestic concerns but, for now, we turn to foreign policy, Trump’s failing that potentially poses the gravest danger.  His shortcomings in this arena could get the country into a war. 

Pointing out Trump’s foreign policy flaws isn’t difficult.  His Secretary of State did, after all, reportedly call him a “moron.”  Trump has estranged the United States from many of its European and Asian allies with bellicose rhetoric, threats to withdraw American support from those allies, and general uncertainty about our intentions on long settled questions.  Many countries now doubt they can count on American military and economic assistance.  Trump has sent mixed signals about his support for U.S. treaty commitments and whether he adheres to basic premises undergirding American policy since World War II.  Most of all, Trump’s flirtation with Vladimir Putin’s Russia gives European countries heartburn and needlessly raises international tensions.  That flirtation encourages these nations to doubt where we stand in the battle of ideas between authoritarian Russia and Western democratic ideals.  We hope any candidate seeking office in 2018 or 2020 will advance a foreign policy agenda that includes three basic policy imperatives and commits to addressing foreign affairs in a language recognizing the complexity of the enterprise and that eschews simplistic nationalism.  We didn’t even mention North Korea.   

Allied Commitments   
No doubt should ever exist about the American commitment to NATO, our other treaty obligations, and bilateral mutual defense pacts we have with various nations.  If the country wants to debate continuing those agreements as matters of policy or economic imperative, fine.  That’s why we have a Congress.  But as long as those obligations remain in place, the American President must support them.  Throwing out threats to eliminate or reduce U.S. support for this or that country or this or that treaty serves no one except our enemies.  Already, nations like Japan and South Korea have started thinking they should acquire nuclear weapons because they doubt the United States will protect them.  Those agreements helped stem nuclear proliferation.  Backing off from them makes such proliferation more likely and further destabilizes an already dangerous world.

Restore the State Department   
In the post war era, American foreign policy has depended on a strong military consisting of conventional and nuclear arsenals and an expertise-based diplomatic corps.  Our State Department has served the nation well, staffed as it has been by distinguished secretaries (from General George C. Marshall, through Henry Kissinger and James Baker, to Hillary Clinton and John Kerry) and their deputies, as well as career foreign policy professionals who understand the cultural, political, and economic terrain of the countries to which they’re assigned.  Trump and his Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, are in the process of tearing that down.  They’ve left countless political positions unfilled and demoralized many career people, some of whom have left.

Revitalizing American foreign policy requires restoring the State Department.  First, the White House must rebuild trust with career foreign service professionals and candidates should make an explicit promise to do so as part of a foreign policy reset.  Second, we urge anyone running for President to pledge to scour the think tanks, international law firms, universities, and the journalistic community to fill the political slots with smart, thoughtful, competent deputy secretaries and under secretaries who can resume the American diplomatic role in the world.  This may seem like “inside baseball” no one except political junkies cares about, but the Trump-Tillerson strip down of the State Department has done America serious harm by robbing the nation of an experienced, expert diplomatic corps that can talk to the rest of the world in its cultural, political, and economic languages.  The voters need to know the next President will tackle this problem. 

Repair our Relationship with Mexico   
Mexico is our third largest trading partner, behind only China and Canada.  It accounts for about 16% of our exports and over 13% of our imports.  With his ridiculous proposal to build a border wall – and suggest Mexico pay for it – Trump alienated the Mexican government and damaged the U.S. relationship with the Mexican people.  The next President and the next Congress need a different approach to Mexico.  Despite the immigration issue that so agitates Trump’s base, Mexico stands as a critical trading partner we should cultivate and with which we should maintain a respectful relationship based on mutual and shared interests, not hostility stemming from biases and ethnic distrust.

We could talk about a lot more – a saner approach to North Korea, assigning someone to work on mid-east peace with more foreign policy gravitas than the President’s 36-year old son-in-law, climate change as part of the foreign policy-national security matrix – the list extends on and on.  We’ve focused on things that go to the root causes of our foreign policy challenges – language, relationships, alliances, and governmental infrastructure.  Solve some of these problems and many of the others will take care of themselves.  Isn’t that the task we really face?               

An American Political Agenda for 2018 and 2020: Six Suggestions for the Upcoming Election Cycles: Part 3

In the first two parts of our series of six suggestions for a political message for the coming election cycles—restoring the dignity of the Presidency compromised by Trump’s bad behavior and healing the racial and cultural fractures Trump created or exacerbated.  Our third suggestion – addressing income inequality and economic dislocation caused by globalization, inequitable tax policy, and other factors – requires more detailed policy exploration and development than we could ever do in a thousand words (the usual length of our posts).  But we can lay out a skeleton, to which we and others can attach meat in the coming months.

First, we must explode a myth. Trump’s campaign didn’t address income inequality. His government, staffed as it is by millionaires from business, hasn’t attacked the structurally created problem of the top one per cent of income earners getting 40% more in one week than the bottom fifth gets in a year.  His tax plan will likely give wealthy Americans most of the breaks.  Trump made a lot of noise about bringing back manufacturing and coal mining jobs.  The media spun the fact working class people attracted to that message also suffered the effects of income inequality into a narrative that made Trump appear the income inequality candidate.  That wasn’t true in the campaign and it’s not true now.

Income inequality results from a myriad of factors, including failures of the educational system, the inability of some groups to adapt to globalization, government tax and wage policies, and what economists call “rent seeking” by individuals at the top.  Rent seeking occurs when those at the top use their wealth and influence to promote governmental policies that keep the largest share of economic assets in their hands and prevent others from getting a bigger slice, in part by keeping the overall pie smaller.  Attacking income inequality requires action on at least three broad fronts.

Education   
America needs a vibrant, effective public school system.  Trump’s Education Department promotes so-called charter schools to the detriment of public schools, a shortsighted and immoral policy.  Promoting charter schools drains student and faculty talent from public schools, leaving low-income communities most dependent on a robust public education system with fewer educational resources when they need more.  Improved economic opportunity and, therefore, less income inequality, also requires strong technical schools and community colleges that prepare people for jobs that exist now and will exist in coming years.  Finally, the federal government must address student debt for traditional college students.  Americans will still need college educations; the difference in income over time for college and non-college graduates remains undeniable.  Reasonable minds can differ about the wisdom of free college, as Bernie Sanders proposed in 2016, but we can’t differ about needing to make college affordable for low income and middle class families.   

Tax and Wage Policies   
Trump’s tax reform proposal remains murky.  The details that have emerged suggest wealthy tax payers will benefit unfairly.  Republicans spin the proposal as a cut in corporate taxes that will spur business creation and, therefore, job growth.  Early indications, however, suggest tax payers in higher brackets and business owners will get large breaks.  We don’t think that will reduce income inequality and amounts to no more than the trickledown theory discredited by our experiences in the Reagan and George W. Bush years.  A tax plan aimed at alleviating income inequality would raise taxes in upper income brackets and reduce or eliminate taxes on middle and low-income individuals.

Attacking income inequality also requires a minimum wage increase to $15 an hour in the quest for a “livable wage” that helps working people get off public assistance.  The current system subsidizes corporate interests by forcing tax payers to make up wages corporations won’t pay in the form of public assistance for which low wage earners remain eligible.

Rent-Seeking   
We’ve heard stories about how, following the 2007-08 recession, Wall Street bankers, hedge fund managers, and other corporate executives continued raking in huge bonuses, even after banks got government bailouts.  This happened for a reason. Economists call it “rent-seeking” – rigging the system for a favored few. Rent-seeking, for example, includes making large campaign contributions so lobbyists employed to influence legislators will find a receptive audience.  Why isn’t the tax system fairer?  In part because special interests have so much influence in writing tax laws.  Campaign contributions from rent seekers eager to keep tax laws in their favor grease the skids for lobbyists.  Why does the federal minimum wage remain at $7.25?  In part because rent seeking business executives successfully advance their argument that raising it will cost jobs.  Despite flimsy evidence for that proposition, legislators – especially Republicans – accept it, in part, because of campaign contributions from individuals and corporations wanting to keep their incomes and profits up.

We’ve only scratched the surface of what it will take to fix income inequality in America.  It won’t happen by promising to bring back jobs to sectors of the economy that saw their peak in the 1950s and may never reach such heights again.  Eradicating income inequality requires rolling up our sleeves and getting our hands dirty on policy questions many don’t want to face.  We have to face them.  If we don’t, those at the bottom, as in other countries, will take their complaints to the streets.  It won’t be pleasant.  We don’t really want that, do we?