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Citizen Diplomacy and Global Innovation
Alex Steffen, WorldChanging
One of the most tragic consequences of the Bush Administration has been the wall it’s driven between the people of the United States and the rest of the world. Seven years of war, jingoistic xenophobia, terrorism fear-mongering, anti-intellectualism, immigrant-bashing and disdain for international law and diplomacy have left a wider gulf between the U.S. and the rest of the world larger than anytime since American doughboys went sailing to France in the First World War.
On these shores, that gulf manifests itself in an explosion of people who don’t know anything about the outside world, and don’t care, and even consider themselves more patriotic for it — “ignorant proud,” my grandmother would have called them. Indeed, I’ve read that if it weren’t for immigrants and the children of immigrants, the share of Americans speaking a language in addition to English would be at an all-time low. Only 21% of Americans even own a passport, and fewer are going overseas (further than Canada or Mexico). And, of course, as Ethan has extensively discussed, Americans get less — and more narrow — news about the wider world than the people of any other developed nation. Even well-educated Americans know far less about the world than their peers abroad.
But the closing of minds is not just an American phenomenon. Like most Americans who travel a lot and spend a lot of time around people from other countries, I can tell you that knee-jerk anti-Americanism is at a level I couldn’t have even imagined 10 years ago. Not only do a great many people — especially, in my experience, young people in Europe — regard the U.S. itself as a corrupt and collapsing empire far behind the times; many have begun to treat Americans themselves with an open contempt. Even in more polite conversations, you sometimes get the sense that people abroad think Americans have all retreated back to the caves.
(17 October 2008)
A financial new world order?
Howard LaFranchi, Christian Science Monitor
When President Bush hosts a world financial summit in the coming weeks, one of the least multilateral American presidents in decades will set in motion what could result in a full reordering of the global financial system.
The series of summits that Mr. Bush announced over the weekend at Camp David with European leaders at his side suggests a broad understanding among them: that the current crisis requires the kind of global regulatory reforms that have eluded major powers in the past.
Europeans especially are speaking of a “Bretton Woods II” that could do for financial markets what the 1944 summit at a resort in New Hampshire did for monetary policy.
… Saturday’s meeting offered a picture of transatlantic unity, but that hardly means the road ahead will be discord-free. Bush says future reforms and new international regulations must improve but not fetter the free market, while European leaders hint at much more robust state intervention with tighter regulations.
Bush recognized the need for “regulatory institutional changes” but added, “It is essential that we preserve the foundations of democratic capitalism – commitment to free markets, free enterprise, and free trade.”
In response, President Sarkozy said, “The president of the United States is right in saying that protectionism and closing one’s borders is a catastrophe…. But we cannot continue along the same lines,” he added, “because the same problems will trigger the same disasters.”
Mr. Barroso was more succinct: “We need a new global financial order.”
Those words could send shivers through a White House that is suspicious of the current chorus of world leaders – European, Russian, and others less friendly to the US – who are hailing the current economic crisis as a moment to usher in a multipolar world.
(20 October 2008)
Crisis inspires rethinking of ‘Reaganomics’
Sam Zuckerman, San Francisco Chronicle
Now the tide is turning, political experts on the right and left say. A combination of circumstances, including the resurgence of the Democratic Party and fallout from the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, is giving impetus to wholesale expansion of government economic intervention.
“We’ve gone through a period of three decades when the default assumptions were conservative assumptions,” said William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., and a policy adviser in the Clinton administration. “That framework has probably been torpedoed by events.”
If Barack Obama is elected president and Democrats strengthen their grip on Congress, the period could be transformative.
… Conservatives acknowledge they have lost the initiative. But they see the current period as a temporary detour in a nation where free-market capitalism remains the ruling principle.
“The pendulum swings between big-government liberalism and small-government conservatism,” said Dick Armey, former Republican leader in the House of Representatives. “We’re going though one of those periods now. Democrats are feeling their oats. But the pendulum will swing back in our direction profoundly.”
(19 October 2008)
It’s official: Colin Powell endorses Barack Obama (text and video)
Richard B. Schmitt, Los Angeles Times
Retired Army Gen. Colin L. Powell, an adviser to the last three Republican presidents, said today that he is crossing party lines to support the Democratic candidate for the White House.
“I think he is a transformational figure … and for that reason, I’ll be voting for Barack Obama,” Powell said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“We need a president who will not just continue … basically the policies that we have been following in recent years,” said Powell, who once briefly considered his own run for the 1996 Republican presidential nomination. “We need a president who is a generational change.”
Powell, 71, who was President Bush’s first secretary of State and served Bush’s father as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Ronald Reagan as national security advisor, said he believed that Obama had the style and substance to be successful in the role at a time when America must be better represented and involved on the world stage. He cited a need to speak to world figures “who we have not been willing to talk to before.”
“This is a time for outreach,” Powell said.
He cited the Illinois senator’s “ability to inspire” and the “inclusive nature of his campaign.” He said that Obama in recent weeks has “displayed a steadiness” and “showed intellectual vigor” in addressing issues as diverse as the economy and the selection of his running mate.
The election of Obama as president, Powell said, would “electrify the country and electrify the world.”
(19 October 2008)
There is a 7+ minute YouTube of Colin Powell explaining his reasons for switching parties and endorsing Obama. I was impressed by Powell’s thoughtfulness and inclusiveness – qualities that are sorely lacking in American political discourse. Qualities that we will need in order to deal with peak oil and climate change.
(EB is not associated with any candidate or political party; we look for hope wherever it may occur.) -BA
