The Romney Doctrine: National Greatness Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry

GOP presidential candidate, Mitt Romney,
with the Veterans of Foreign Wars
(Justin Sullivan, Getty)

GOP Presidential candidate Mitt Romney gave a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars last Tuesday (July 24th) and I guess I shouldn't be surprised that Romney got worked up over what is really very little to work with: cuts in defense spending and White House leaks regarding covert operations.

But first he started with the standard chest thumping: "I am an unapologetic believer in the greatness of America. . ."  Nope.  We cannot have a complicated perspective on the role of the US in the world.  It can't be that just maybe, our country has been a force for both good and ill.  Gotta simplify.  Recognizing complexity robs us of, well, the ability to say things like "I'm an unapologetic believer. . ."  We've got to stay as far away as we can from those terrible days of the Church hearings in the 1970s that exposed covert operations ending nascent democracies in Iran and Guatemala, attempts to assassinate Castro among others, all that crap that made us feel bad about ourselves and led to President Carter's quirky human rights emphasis, and his infamous malaise.  And we can't do the introspective thing because even as we lecture other countries on human rights and democracy we are again engaged in widespread covert operations and assassinations, though the latter we can now do with drones (never mind the civilians we take out along with the bad guys).

But this is under Obama's watch, and he has continued with many key aspects of President Bush's "war on terror" (for example, Bush-era detainment, torture, and targeted killing policies).  So what's Romney to do?  The Obama administration has shown a tough side in its foreign policy, and Romney can't do the usual Republican move of calling Democrats wimps in world affairs.  In 2004, VP Cheney warned Americans that a vote for Kerry would likely mean another 9/11. Romney didn't play such a dire fear card, but told the audience that impending cuts in defense would mean the US would no longer be the strongest nation on the earth.  A vote for Obama means, somehow, a quick slide into a second rate power, no matter that we currently outspend the next twelve countries combined on our military.  A vote for Obama means national insecurity.  It's an old, very old, and tired line.  But I suppose it works--if you can forget that these defense cuts had bipartisan support-- because it will get a rise out of those who think the response to a foreign policy challenge is, if you can't safely ignore it, then shoot it (e.g. not just an anti-illicit drug policy but a war on drugs; not just an immigration policy, but militarize the border).

The other just really awful problem with the Obama administration according to Romney is the leakage, apparently out of the White House.  Yes, like such leaks are unprecedented, as if no administration until now has tried to make political hay out of foreign policy achievements--but this is about pushing the fear button again, because, Romney asserted, by divulging aspects of covert operations, these leaks put our soldiers at risk now and in the future.  It's a "national security crisis," it's "contemptible," it "betrays our national interest."

It seems a little desperate to imply that Obama has been treasonous, but Romney had to do something to tarnish the covert op that gave Obama a boost in popularity, the assassination of Osama bin Laden.  So Romney kvetched about a high profile extra-judicial killing, not because our hands are bloodied, not because it's part of a much larger campaign of dubious legality and utility, inflicting more "collateral damage" than we care to realize, but because details of the operation got out.  It's not like I think Romney should high-five Obama for taking bin Laden out.  But it would be good to see him pull at his finely crafted hair, anxious about the murky moral landscape we're in now, or have been in for some time.  I'd like to see more of all of us do that.

Aftermath of drone strike in Buner, Pakistan, 2009
(from Council on Foreign Relations website)

I know.  It's a presidential campaign, and candidates must exude confidence rather than anxiety.  Thus Romney declared "This century must be an American Century."  It is our "destiny."  But this secular providentialism is also very old, and tired.  Why not invoke the spirit of his GOP ancestor, Lincoln, and warn against self-righteousness, announce his own version of ". . .with malice toward none, with charity for all. . ?"  But I don't expect it, not from Obama either.  Instead, we'll probably get an echo of the plaintive words of another more recent Republican president: "Why do they hate us?"


The National Review has provided a transcript of the entire speech here.

Who Gets to be an American?

Apparently, President Obama doesn't. Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio and other "Birthers" continue to spin conspiracy theories while more reputable figures like John Sununu say things like "I wish this President would learn how to be an American."

I thought things got strange back in the early eighties with Maranatha preachers casting out demons in the Oregon State quad and young Reaganites outnumbering liberals in the cast of Gershwin and Kaufmann's political musical "Of Thee I Sing" (a theater crowd combined with a campus setting, and you'd think there would have been more of us that thought the Reagan administration's declaration that ketchup and pickles are vegetables hilariously awful. . .).  And then there was Howard "I'm-Mad-As-Hell" Jarvis turning anti-tax hysteria into virtue, and President Reagan sunnily declaring "America is back, standing tall," to wild applause and gushing commentary, after illegally mining Nicaraguan waters and sending the troops to crush tiny Grenada.

The strangeness then doesn't compare to that of the present.  It seems the combination of economic hard times and the election of our first black president have released our inner looniness.  And while race was obviously an issue a generation ago (remember all the talk of the GOP capturing disaffected white Democrats?), it appears that Du Bois' "problem of the Twentieth Century" remains with us in the Twenty-First, though it bubbles to the surface in different ways.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio, birther extraordinaire
Matt York/AP

Now, no doubt Arpaio is in part engaged in some tit-for-tat.  He's under federal indictment for racial profiling of Latinos in his campaign against undocumented immigration.  So he once again hauls out the tired accusation that Obama is not really an American and therefore not our legitimate President.  I suppose we could see Arapio as just keeping up an old American tradition of nativism that has been around since Ben Franklin's whine back in 1751 about all those "alien" and "swarthy" Germans (I've been called many things, but I don't think "swarthy" was one of them).

But we can also consider this in the context of a broader effort to restrict the number of people entitled to be American: the anti-immigrant and so-called "self-deportation" legislation in states such as Arizona and Alabama, or new voter photo ID laws  in ten states that make it more difficult for poorer and otherwise marginalized citizens to vote, or even register to vote.  I could even mention the Obama administration's decision to justify the execution of American citizens deemed guilty of terrorism, without due process of law.

I'd say our country is in the middle of an existential morass in which we have tremendous disagreements over how we identify Americans, who gets to be an American, and what being an American really means under the law.

Former NH Governor and Romney ally, John Sununu
Denis Poroy/AP

So it's no surprise that John Sununu, instead of sticking to a critique of Obama administration policies, resorted to a complaint about the president's lack of Americanness.  As if there were one proper way to be American--a common note, but still a hypocritical one in a country that touts its pluralism.

Sununu later tried to explain what he really meant: "What I thought I said but guess I didn't say is that the president has to learn the American formula for creating business," meaning that the private sector is supposed to do it, thus adding jobs, not government.

Really?  New Deal policies that put people to work were devised by people who hadn't learned to be American?  So all those defense contractors and road construction companies in the Eisenhower era didn't do it the American way?  Absurd, and there's still the implication of Sununu's remark--if his ally Romney's policy stances are truly American, then those of us who disagree with them are what?  You guessed it, and I suppose Congress had better revive its Committee on Un-American Activities to safeguard the nation.