Rumor is that Barack Obama is on the verge of picking a VP nominee and may do so before the Olympics fat-foots news coverage next week. Governor Tim Kaine of Virginia may be at the top of the list. Without taking anything away from Kaine, I think that Obama’s campaign may be missing the best pick, Wesley Clark. The reasons go well beyond the preference in the netroots for Clark. His pick would open up perhaps a flood of votes from military members and families all across the country, perhaps carrying multiple borderline states. So really, nominating Clark is its own "fifty-state strategy".
I’m seeing repeated reports in the lackey media about Obama narrowing his picks to a few people, including Governor Kaine and Senator Joe Biden (also a huge favorite of the netroots). Senator Chris Dodd has also been mentioned, but I don’t see him on the short list most quoted. None of these choices would be a huge mistake, it seems, but I don’t think they hold a candle to the potential of bringing on Clark as the VP nominee.
The Democratic Party has long suffered from an anti-military reputation. Of course, the party embraced this during and after the Vietnam War, especially as Nixon escalated it and turned it into a nearly regional conflict. Pacifists have flocked to the Democratic Party, allowing the Republican Party masters to repeatedly work the Democrats-are-soft-on-defense meme. Of course, having a sensible approach to military power is not soft on defense; it’s just smart on defense. But Democrats bought into the meme, like so many other Republican memes, and this makes it very hard for anyone in the military to justify voting Democratic, especially at the presidential level.
By putting a four-star general on the ticket, we make it possible for military people to vote their conscience and their heart. They can tell themselves, even if they aren’t willing to tell their friends, that they voted for the Democratic ticket because of Clark. This could bring in thousands of votes in every state, perhaps tipping the balance in places like Missouri, Virginia and even Texas where the race may be very close. It will strengthen the fifty-state strategy across the board, maybe bringing in candidates at the congressional and state levels. In short, there is a huge upside to nominating a candidate with strong military ties.
I don’t think the political ramifications should be missed. But, beyond that, there are very appealing reasons for putting Clark on the ticket that could pay dividends for many years. The big policy reason for drafting Clark, in my opinion, is that it allows Obama to address one of the most difficult problems we face: the top-heavy military nature of the federal government.
We are staggering under the load of a military system that spends so much money and takes so much of our resources that we are literally back to where we were before the "peace dividend" kicked in. We’ve got a Reaganesque military-industrial system, and this is a huge national security problem for many reasons, among them:
- Military spending sucks up money we need to run the economy; and the economy is the most important security protection in the twenty-first century.
- We are now the military arm of the Chinese-American empire. We provide the military; they supply the manufacturing. We no longer have a functional independent national defense. (This, of course, has its good points.)
- The American people have lost their ability to control the military, with the concomitant loss of democracy. People who make fantastic amounts of money from the military have deep connections into Congress. (Senator Dianne Feinstein’s husband comes to mind.)
According to Wikipedia:
The 2005 U.S. military budget is almost as much as the rest of the world's defense spending combined and is over eight times larger than the official military budget of China. (Note that this comparison is done in nominal value US dollars and thus is not adjusted for purchasing power parity.) The United States and its close allies are responsible for about two-thirds of the world's military spending (of which, in turn, the U.S. is responsible for the majority).
I would like to see the U.S. military budget (without regard to war operations, which is a separate issue) limited to the combined estimated budgets of the next five largest combined. (I call this my 5X plan, which also calls for cutting military R&D in half by mothballing projects like "nukes in space" until after we’ve wound up military operations in hot spots.) If we are fighting the next five largest countries in the world, we’re probably on the wrong side anyway, so spending more than this is pure waste. You can quibble about the exact figure, but I think that 5X represents a reasonable compromise and a good target for getting the bloat under control. It’s also a number that the average voter can identify with. They may well ask, "Five times? It’s more than five times what China spends? WTF? No wonder my taxes are so high? Who did this?" To which, the answer is "Republicans".
[Parenthetically, did you see the little girl at the McCain rally asking if he was going to raise her taxes? It was so cute. She asked if he’d raise her taxes and he said, "No." Everyone laughed. I laughed. But the truth is that he’s been raising her taxes every day since before she was born because he voted for the war, he’s voted for increasing military spending, and he’s still trying to get people to continue to spend money on the war while not increasing today’s taxes. That means that he’s been adding to the deficit, just like all the other Republicans, and that means that when that little girl is old enough to pay taxes her taxes are going to be higher than they would otherwise be, because McCain and his cronies are going to make her pay for this war and all the interest on the money they borrowed to fund it. I call it the "Republican Child Tax". It’s a tax they are imposing on the children of this country by their irresponsible deficit spending on the war. When the Democrats raise taxes they should take their cue from the Republican Orwellian machine and put the word "Republican" on the title of each bill to remind people that the Republicans are the ones who really raised their taxes, not the Democrats.]
But I parenthesize.
How does the Obama administration get the lead out of the military budget? It will require an enormous effort, and a presidential focus. It is one of the most important issues that we must face if we are going to retain any vestige of our position as one of the superplayers of the world. Absent this, we will slide under the Asian continent and possibly the European one, as the economic tectonics of the modern world push these economies around. Our strategy should be to assign the Vice President the task of addressing this situation, pulling together a team with the expressed goal of reforming the system so that the people of the United States are back in charge and can use the military, just like other parts of the government, for the interests of the country (and the world at large, which we are a part of).
Clark has exactly the experience, the clout and the outlook to do just that. He has shown a true patriotism that goes beyond militarism to look out for and work for what’s best for the country. For those unfamiliar with his thoughts, I suggest reading his books, Waging Modern War and Winning Modern Wars. In them, I believe you will see a mature take on how the U.S. fits into the world. It is a great relief to have this opposition to the raw use of military force (the model promoted by PNAC and others). It’s a model for security without stupidity.
Combined with a solid pick for Secretary of Defense (maybe someone with bipartisan stature, like Colin Powell, who has great respect across party lines despite his participation in the Bush Blunder), and an explicit, public program to reform how we fund, deploy and use the military, we could address the huge problem we’ve created. This must be a widely publicized effort because the American people are easily misled on military matters. In the age of the narrow media bottleneck we have been passing through, a few, shrill partisans have been able to equate money with security and the use of force with foreign policy. This is dumb strength, successful before because no one knew anything. This time is coming to an end. Now, everyone knows everything (thanks to Al Gore’s revenge), and strength comes from smarts. Smart beats strong every time. You can’t drill your way to energy independence, and you can’t spend your way to security. If you are not spending smart, you are wasting taxpayer dollars (a particular vice of the Republicans).
Looking beyond the election, we will need a President, a Vice President, and a Secretary of Defense who are aligned with the singular goal of creating a military that serves our national interest and not the interests of war profiteers. The military should be the sword of democracy, not a free-floating sponge, soaking up all available cash in the country. (I’m being generous, since it’s now soaking up money from outside the country.)
General Clark has a great many other desirable qualities (administrative experience, experience with military strategy, foreign policy experience), but his ability to step into the role of military reformer and help solve this critical problem should make him top of the list for VP candidates. I don’t doubt that Obama and others have other ideas, but I think they should pause, at this critical moment, and consider asking him to take the job. At a minimum, they need to find a way to address the problem, even if they pick someone else. Unless the next administration solves this problem, they may never have enough money to fix the other problems. It deserves to be a top priority for the administration.