Now that Bernie Sanders has won the New Hampshire primary, what are some of the things he should do in the upcoming days? I have two suggestions.
1. Pledge to Nominate President Barack Obama to U.S. Supreme Court
Sanders should say that if he is elected president in 2016 and current President Barack Obama would accept a nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court, Sanders would nominate Obama to the U.S. Supreme Court. Obama was the editor of the prestigious Harvard Law Review and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School. In addition, Obama has been a U.S. Senator and, by the end 2016, will have been two-term U.S. President. So, Obama has excellent credentials to be a good U.S. Supreme Court Justice. In addition, Obama strongly believes that the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United should be overturned.
It is very important for Citizens United to be overturned—if not overturned by the Supreme Court, then by a constitutional amendment. Overturning the decision is more likely (than not overturning it) to increase the number of choices that can be made by those members of society who currently are able to make the fewest number of choices, and those members of future generations who will be able to make the fewest number of choices. If the decision is overturned, the amount of wealth one has will not be as positively connected to the amount of political power one has. And if political power is more equal than it is now, then those with less money will likely will be able to affect the political-economic system more than they can now. And if they can affect the political-economic system more than they can now, then they will be more likely to increase the number of choices that can be made by those members of society who are able to make the fewest number of choices, for instance, their children and disabled and elderly members of their families.
Also, as a Supreme Court justice, Obama very likely would make good decisions and reason well on all constitutional cases that I can think of. He is extremely bright and good at thinking through legal problems. More importantly, he is committed to a kind of constitutional jurisprudence that promotes democracy, free speech and other parts of the U.S. Constitution that tend to help the less fortunate and most vulnerable. For instance, I’m confident that he would rule that the Affordable Care Act requires states to expand Medicaid in their states. Medicaid helps many people who are struggling the most, so that they can be good parents and helpful members of society.
In addition, it likely would be very good if Sanders is president for the next four to eight years. His being president is more likely to help the least well-off than any of the other candidates being president. For instance, of all the candidates, he seems the most likely to avoid unjustly ordering the use of military force and most likely to make every reasonable effort to resolve conflict without violence. Moreover, if, in the coming days, Sanders were to argue that the next U.S. president should nominate Obama to the Supreme Court, it might help Sanders win support among some African American, Latino and Asian voters. And if Sanders does not get more support from African American voters and other voters of color than he has been getting in recent polls, it will be very hard, if not impossible, for him to win the Democratic nomination.
Interestingly, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has already said that if she were elected president, she would consider appointing Obama to the Supreme Court.
2. Articulate a Foreign Policy Focused on Smart Democracy Promotion
In the victory speech Sanders gave Tuesday night in New Hampshire, Sanders devoted two paragraphs to foreign policy. He said the following:
My friends, we all know that we live in a dangerous and complex world. As president I will defend this nation, but I will do it responsibly. I voted against the war in Iraq, and that was the right vote. While we must be relentless in combating terrorists who would do us harm, we cannot, and should not be the policeman of the world. Nor should we bear the burden of fighting terrorism alone.
In the Middle East, the United States must remain part of an international coalition sustained by nations in the region that have the means to protect themselves. Together we must, and will, destroy ISIS, but we should do it in a way that does not put our young men and women in the military into perpetual warfare in the quagmire of the Middle East.
I think a number of these claims are flawed, and the foreign policy vision Sanders articulates is incomplete. First, for a significant percentage of people, the world is not particularly dangerous. For humans, life expectancy at birth is increasing fairly significantly. In 1950, human life expectancy at birth was 48 years; now human life expectancy is 71 years old. By 2050, reasonable estimates suggest that human life expectancy will be 76 years old.
In addition, according to work done by Harvard psychologist and cognitive scientist Steven Pinker, the world is becoming less violent overall. According to Pinker,
The world is not falling apart. The kinds of violence to which most people are vulnerable—homicide, rape, battering, child abuse—have been in steady decline in most of the world. Autocracy is giving way to democracy. Wars between states—by far the most destructive of all conflicts—are all but obsolete. The increase in the number and deadliness of civil wars since 2010 is circumscribed, puny in comparison with the decline that preceded it, and unlikely to escalate.
Here is a link to information on Pinker’s book The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence has Declined:
www.amazon.com/…
Moreover, Sanders’ saying that the world is a dangerous place may contribute to pessimism and make people more depressed and less willing to make decisions that they should make because they are unreasonably afraid of getting hurt.
In addition, Sander’s claim that “we should not be a policeman of the word” is, I suppose, true. But it’s important that the U.S. plays a very active role in the world. Specifically, we should try to promote democracy through diplomacy, smart foreign aid, popular culture and by improving the United Nations, for instance, by abolishing the veto-power in the UN Security Council. Smart democracy promotion by the UN and democratic nations can help countries with authoritarian governments transition to democratic governments. We have seen various kinds of democracy promotion and smart aid achievements in India, Taiwan, South Korea, South Africa, Peru, and even Guatemala. Those efforts at democracy promotion and other kinds of foreign assistance are smartest when they help the nation in question—both the government and civil society—to decide for and help themselves.
Another tool we can use to promote democracy is to freeze the bank accounts of the leaders of authoritarian regimes and publicize that the U.S. has done so. This can weaken the power of authoritarian regimes by limiting the number of choices that the leaders of the regimes can make and by enabling the citizens to know how much wealth their leaders have unfairly amassed. The U.S. should have used this tool against the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.
In Syria, we should consider helping Bashar al-Assad’s officers defect. In a February 3 New York Times op-ed, Mohammed Alaa Ghanem (director of government relations at the Syrian American Council) argues that helping al-Assad’s officers defect would weaken al-Assad’s grip on the country. If al-Assad's grip on the country weakens, maybe he will vacate power or allow UN-monitored free and fair elections to take place in Syria.
In short, the U.S. should not disengage with the world. We should be an active player in smartly promoting democracy non-militarily and in doing other things that increase the likelihood of helping the least well-off in other countries.