By Ken Libbey

Barack Obama says that candidates’ families, especially their children, are out of bounds, and he has threatened to fire anyone in his campaign who violates the rule. That is certainly the proper position to take, and I hope he can make it stick. For the rest of us, however, the revelations about Governor Sarah Palin, John McCain’s choice for vice president, raise important issues about personal choices and personal rights.

First we learned that Gov. Palin, at age 44, gave birth in April to a child who she knew from prenatal testing had Down Syndrome. Then came the announcement that her 17-year-old daughter was five months pregnant and was planning to have the baby and marry the teenage father. The Palins and their evangelical supporters are treating both of these decisions as admirable.

I doubt if there is anyone in the Democratic Party or the pro-choice movement who would not respect the right of Gov. Palin and her daughter to make these choices. Moreover, there is every reason to believe that the family will raise all of the children lovingly and successfully. (Taming the boyfriend may be another matter, from what little has come out about him.) The question is whether the Palins and people who hold the same beliefs are willing to respect the right of other families and young people to make different decisions, decisions that may be more appropriate to their circumstances.

The sad fact is that most teenage births do not occur in families like the Palins. They occur in poor families where there are already too many children and too little economic opportunity. Some poor teenage mothers mature rapidly and become positive forces in their children’s lives, but the probabilities are otherwise. More than half the women on welfare rolls had their first child as a teenager. Teen mothers are less likely to complete school or marry, and more likely to live in poverty. Their children will sometimes escape poverty and achieve success in life. But on average, they are more likely to be suspended or expelled from school, serve time in prison, and become teenage parents themselves.

The U.S. has the highest teen pregnancy rate of all developed countries. The problem is aggravated by the desire of many adults to deny teenage sexuality. People like Gov. Palin have insisted that schools teach only abstinence, and have fought against the provision of confidential contraceptive services to teenagers. They succeeded for years in delaying the availability of “morning after” contraception that could have prevented millions of teenage births and abortions. One has to wonder whether the governor’s views discouraged her daughter from getting contraceptive help from her mother.

We are entitled to ask also whether Gov. Palin would respect the right of a woman to refrain from bringing a severely disabled child into the world. It is now possible to detect several of these conditions at a relatively early stage of pregnancy. Not every family wants to take on the economic and emotional burdens of caring for such a child. Not every family is capable of doing so. Many of these children will end up in foster homes or government facilities. They will become the responsibility of the rest of us. Yet we respect the woman’s right to choose.

Abortion is always a regrettable event. It would be ideal if accidental pregnancies did not occur, if rape and incest did not occur, if young people did not become parents before they were emotionally and economically prepared, if babies were not born with severe congenital diseases and defects, if alcohol- and drug-addicted women did not become pregnant. If we could prevent these things, we would have no need for abortions. Unfortunately, these tragedies occur every day, every hour. If we take away the last resort for resolving them, many parents and children will pay a heavy price, and so will the rest of society.

Gov. Palin’s choices in her personal life are part of her right to privacy. It is only when she works to imposes her choices on everyone else that they become a public issue. We already have a Supreme Court that is perilously close to abandoning personal rights that we had taken for granted. Apart from Palin’s thin resume, her fitness for the office of vice president under a septuagenarian president is undermined by the kind of nominations she would favor for the federal courts. She is one more good reason to elect Barack Obama president.

By Ken Libbey

Joe Biden was not my choice for vice-presidential nominee. But let us begin with potential positives. The motivation is clear, to blunt Republican charges that Barack Obama does not have enough experience, especially in foreign policy. Never mind that he has more national government and foreign policy experience than four of our last five presidents had. Obama let this doubt linger, and now he is taking a somewhat desperate step to allay it.

It may work. It worked for George W. Bush, who barely knew where China was, but who numbed the issue by taking Dick Cheney as his mate. It worked for Ronald Reagan, whose simplistic rhetoric was balanced somewhat by the elder George Bush. The risk in the strategy is that Obama is acknowledging the charge as he tries to counter it. Moreover, it may perpetuate the debate over foreign policy in a campaign that should be focused squarely on the economy. Obama’s gamble is that the presence of Biden on the ticket can take national security off the table and make room for economic populism.

Another positive has already been apparent. Images are important in campaigns, especially with voters who do not follow the news closely. Joe Biden looks presidential, handsome, photogenic, distinguished, and seasoned. The photos of he and Obama smiling together look like a good team. And let us be honest. Those images can help reassure voters about not only Obama’s credentials, but also his racial background. They help with the comfort factor.

Biden is not likely to lose votes for Obama, providing he avoids his proclivity for colorful off-the-cuff comments. If he stays on message, he can probably help some. How much is questionable, since history tells us that few votes are swayed by vice-presidential nominees. Still, after all the buildup, I think Obama missed an opportunity. His campaign needed a shot in the arm, a new buzz. There were choices who could have helped generate some new excitement. Freshman Senator Jim Webb of Virginia, a Vietnam veteran, is an articulate populist. So is Senator and former Congressman Sherrod Brown of Ohio. I do not know what Hillary Clinton said privately to Obama, but I have come around to thinking that his campaign could use the energy that she would have brought.

Joe Biden may have a neutral to slightly positive effect on the election, but my concerns about the choice increase after November. To begin with, there is the question of 2016. Assuming Obama serves two terms, Biden will be 73 when it is time for a new Democratic nominee. I would like to have seen someone groomed for the succession. Could it be that Obama did not want to exercise that prerogative? Lest we forget, the vice-presidency has been the most frequent springboard to the presidency. Since 1900, it has been so for Theodore Roosevelt, William H. Taft, Calvin Coolidge, Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, Gerald Ford, and George H. W. Bush.

What worries me most is the role that Biden would play in an Obama Administration. I certainly do not fear the kind of destructive effect Cheney has had on the Bush Administration. Biden is, however, a strong, aggressive personality. He considers himself an authority on foreign policy and, although he became critical of our commitment to Iraq, he remains a proponent of international activism. It would be a surprise if he did not try to shape Obama’s foreign policy and get us involved in various situations around the world.

If Obama is to be successful in his first term and win reelection, he is going to have to show tangible progress on domestic issues. He must preside over an economic recovery that brings back a robust job market. He must get federal finances back on a sound footing and restore some of the lost value of the dollar. He must get stronger energy conservation regulations in place that improve our long-term energy security regardless of fluctuations in the price of oil. He must achieve a health care reform that in some way resolves the issue of universal coverage.

The distraction of foreign policy is a threat to any administration’s domestic goals. The Korean War undermined the Truman Administration’s agenda, and Vietnam prevented Lyndon Johnson from realizing his Great Society. Under the guidance of Karl Rove, on the other hand, the Bush Administration was able to use foreign policy to consolidate its power and push through its domestic policies. However, its aggressive internationalism eventually came back to haunt the administration and undercut the Republican Party.

Barack Obama has all the right instincts get American back on track domestically and in world affairs. Having Joe Biden at his right hand in the White House will test his capacity to be his own man. Biden is a liberal on domestic issues, to be sure, but it is not reasonable to expect him forsake his long immersion in foreign affairs. And it is understandable that he would see himself as a mentor to Obama, which he has in fact been on the Foreign Relations Committee.

I would have preferred a vice-president who reinforced Obama’s attention to the economic and social issues facing this country. Perhaps his wife will do so. Perhaps he himself will recognize the need to be wary of foreign entanglements. Perhaps I will be wrong about Joe Biden. I would not mind being wrong.

By Ken Libbey

The pictures were all too familiar – Russian tanks moving against a defenseless country with little more than popular demonstrations to deter them. It evoked memories of Prague, circa 1968. At that time, the Johnson Administration was reeling from the fallout of the Tet Offensive in Vietnam. It had committed the lion’s share of U.S. military power to a senseless conflict, bringing on its own downfall and that of its party. It could only protest meekly as the Red Army crushed the democratic hopes of Czechoslovakia. The Russians are cautious people. They do not stick their necks out unless they are pretty sure no one will chop them off.

Does this sound like déjà vu all over again? A lame-duck president with ratings in the 20’s and no military assets to spare is trying to talk the Russians into behaving themselves. The Russians, meanwhile, are feeling their oats. They export a lot of oil, and thanks to our profligate thirst for it, they have currency reserves up the kazoo. Their economy is zooming along, a darling of Wall Street. Their armed forces, which had suffered a two-decade hangover from Afghanistan, are congratulating themselves the way ours did after we blasted the fleeing Iraqis in 1991. What’s more, their leggy young women are dominating tennis and their basketball league is stealing NBA players.

It is all a sad commentary on the state of American influence in the world. George Bush pledges to uphold Georgian democracy and lectures the Russians on respecting the rights of small countries. But on what ground does he stand? Iraq had a bad dictator, as do many other countries in the world, but he posed no threat to us nor, for that matter, anyone else. He lived in fear that the Iranians would support an uprising of the Shia majority against him or that the Kurds would succeed in breaking away and taking their oil with them. He despised the Osama bin Laden types and would not let them in his country. No matter, George Bush invaded Iraq, overthrew Saddam, and had him hanged. So much for respecting the rights of small countries.

Our current military weakness was certainly a factor in Russian calculations, but that in some ways only begs the question. Can we really protect and promote democracy by force of arms in today’s world, especially if another major power is involved? We do not kid ourselves about Tibet. The supposedly democratic regime we created in Iraq was really a shift of power from the Sunnis to the Shia, leaving a drama still to be played out. The many governments we backed in the third world during the Cold War were uniformly antidemocratic, no matter what we called them. Our only successes were Japan and Germany, which we pounded into submission and then generously helped to rebuild.

Yet democracy, and in a broader sense personal and economic freedom, have made great strides in recent decades. It has not happened through military force, and only occasionally has it involved violence. It has been a product of the communications revolution, the global economy, and the insidious appeal of pop culture. Consider China, for example. Twenty years ago, most Chinese knew virtually nothing about America. Today, their workers and businessmen know our consumer products better than we do. How could they not want in? Chinese fans at the Olympic basketball games knew only a few of their own players, but they knew every one of the Americans and could recite statistics.

American movies, television programs, pop music, books, clothing styles, video games, all are wildly popular throughout the world. They may not represent the flower of American intellectual culture, but they carry the appeal of American freedom in a way that our military might never can. Even where autocracies and theocracies battle to keep them out, they find cracks in the wall. They spread the revolutionary idea that individuals ought to be able to make their own choices.

For over two hundred years, America has been a beacon of democracy, a symbol of what is possible when government reflects the popular will and people can express themselves without fear of retribution. The abiding question, however, is whether a democracy can elect leadership to effectively cope with its challenges. The informed citizenry imagined by Jefferson has always been in short supply in America. We were fortunate to have Franklin Roosevelt emerge at the depth of the Great Depression, but too often mediocrities have gained power though shallow appeals to fear, prejudice, and jingoistic nationalism. The quality of public policy and governmental performance has suffered as a result.

America’s leadership in the world has diminished substantially in the 21st century, and not only because we have squandered military power in a backwater region. We have piled up debt and devalued our currency. We have allowed ourselves to become more and more dependent on imported oil by refusing to take conservation and alternative energy seriously. We have tolerated poverty and crime rates far above those of other modern countries. We have a chaotic health care system that costs far more and delivers far less than other systems. Our corporate economy has produced, along with its benefits, excessive inequality, pervasive scandal, and disregard for job security.

The world looks to us to set an example, and in recent years we have set an example of a paranoid nation that is all too willing to sacrifice its way of life to a handful of bearded men hiding in remote villages. We have elected leaders who believe in power but not in government. We have demonstrated neither the willingness nor the capacity to make hard decisions that would sustain our standard of living in the future. In short, we have not been a convincing model for democracy.

Eight years ago, the Russians were anxious to preserve good will and cooperation with the United States. Today, they obviously hold us in much lower regard. This is a dangerous development, one for which we ourselves are to blame. We need to get our house in order and regain international respect. Getting our troops out of the Islamic world would help, but we have a lot of work to do at home as well. Let us hope this election will produce leadership with the wisdom and courage to do the right things.

By Ken Libbey

Like generals, politicians try to cover their flanks. John McCain has shored up his right flank with loyalty to the Bush tax cuts, and is now working on his left one with empathetic if meaningless television spots about the job market and gas prices. Barack Obama is busily trying to secure his right flank with robust statements about national security. Specifically, he has made increasingly grave assessments of the threats from Iran and Afghanistan. One can imagine that the Europeans privately told him to cool it on both subjects. If so, let us hope he listened.

Campaign rhetoric can be easily forgotten, or it can haunt a president like an albatross. John Kennedy was tired of hearing that the Democrats had “lost” China, so in 1960 he promised a more vigorous defense against Communist “wars of national liberation” in the third world. He set a trap for himself which first prevented him from canceling the preposterous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and then sucked him into increasing the American commitment in Vietnam.

In 1964, Lyndon Johnson countered Barry Goldwater’s bombast by exaggerating an incident in the Gulf of Tonkin and getting a resolution from Congress authorizing whatever military force was necessary to protect U.S. interests in Vietnam. Privately, he vowed he would not be the first American president to lose a war. Had Johnson been able to give full attention to his domestic agenda, he might have gone down as one of the great presidents in American history. Instead, he was dragged down by the inexorable escalation of a war in which friend could not be distinguished from foe and only one side knew what it was fighting for.

Shortly after 9/11, the CIA and some Army Special Forces dislodged the Taliban government in Afghanistan and sent Osama bin Laden scrambling for the mountainous border with Pakistan. A presumably more acceptable government was installed with a bare minimum of popular support. To have any chance of stabilizing its control, it needed substantial economic aid and a sustained buildup of its armed forces. It got neither. The Bush Administration quickly relegated Afghanistan to a sideshow in favor of its cherished overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq (and who knows what other adventures).

Barack Obama and most other Democrats have rightly criticized the abandonment of Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq in 2003 as a costly detour in our response to Al Qaeda and other terrorists. Now we are confronted with a resurgence of the Taliban, while the Afghan government in Kabul remains weak and thinly supported. The Bush Administration chose to “surge” troop levels in Iraq, leaving barely any reinforcements for Afghanistan. It has practically been reduced to begging its reluctant NATO allies to take up the slack.

It is thus understandable that Obama would make Afghanistan his issue in asserting his national security credentials, promising that some of the troops withdrawn from Iraq would transition to the Afghan theater. And therein lies a great danger. Upon taking office in January, Barack Obama will face extraordinary challenges in restoring a healthy job market, reversing the spiral of debt and the devaluation of the dollar, facing up to an energy crisis, reforming health care, and reducing poverty and crime. If he takes his Afghan rhetoric seriously, it could easily become the Vietnam that undermines all his other efforts.

Whatever chances we had in 1989 and 2002 (and they were not great) to nudge Afghanistan into the modern world, those have gone by the board. The country is geographically and culturally inhospitable to outsiders. The small western-oriented elite in Kabul is incapable of controlling the rest of the country, which teeters between warlords and fanatic traditionalists. These people live in a time horizon that is both archaic and endless by western standards. The Russians discovered to their sorrow that they could not win a war of attrition in Afghanistan, and their attempt to do so helped destroy the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

In the aftermath of 9/11, there was an American national interest in Afghanistan since Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda cronies were using it as a sanctuary. Today, that organization, strong or weak, is embedded safely in the remote tribal regions of northwest Pakistan. The current Pakistani government seems bent on containing it there rather that trying to destroy it. How we will deal with this situation is a puzzle. What is clear, however, is that we no longer have any compelling reason to fight in Afghanistan.

I am sorry for the people of Afghanistan who must contend with the brutal lunatics in their midst. I am sorry for people throughout the Muslim world who would like to live peacefully under a liberal interpretation of Islam. But if the past three decades have taught us anything at all, it is that the European world cannot change the Muslim world. They must do it for themselves.

In the first half of the twentieth century, military force and political manipulation enabled western governments and corporations to control oil supplies from the Middle East and elsewhere in the third world. That regime has long since disappeared. Today, producing countries control their own oil and sell it in a sophisticated world market. If the Bush Administration thought it could turn back the clock on this score, it was delusional. The presence of western military forces in Muslim countries today is nothing but an intrusion that fuels the recruitment and support of terrorists.

There is nothing Barack Obama could do that would reduce the threat of terrorism more than to remove our military presence in the Muslim world. Of course, he cannot say this. He probably does not believe that he could even quietly do it as president. We cannot expect miracles in a democracy, even from someone as astute and well informed as Obama. Let us hope, however, that he recognizes the potential quagmire that Afghanistan could become. Let us hope that he does not elevate it to a test of American will to win a war. He does not need to do that to become president.

By Ken Libbey

The Board of Anheuser-Busch has finally capitulated to a slightly sweeter offer from Belgian brewing giant Inbev and agreed to sell the company. When the transaction is complete, all the major brewers in the U.S. – Busch, Coors, and Miller – will be foreign-owned. The Busch board, thinking in dollars, felt it had held out for a good price. Inbev, thinking in Euros, believes it snapped up a bargain.

I am not one who contends that national sovereignty requires owning one’s own breweries. What is disturbing is that this is but one of many examples of American companies falling under foreign control. If Americans knew how many of the traditional homegrown products they use are now produced by foreign-owned companies, they would be shocked. I am not talking about imports, of which there are plenty, I am talking about goods and services still produced in this country.

We have become the world’s leading debtor nation, and we are selling our country to pay our debts. The world is awash in dollars, and so it has marked them down 30 to 50 percent, depending on the corresponding currency. For the Europeans, Saudis, Japanese, Canadians, and others, dollar-based assets look incredibly cheap, and they are taking advantage. Realtors in the depressed Florida and California markets say that without foreign buyers, they would have no sales at all. Europeans have reversed the old American practice of crossing the ocean to shop.

Make no mistake, we are a great nation that is now in decline. We have lived beyond our means, squandered our resources, and borrowed profusely in order to pamper our rich. The Bush Administration and it supporting cast have strutted and blustered as they poured money into military misadventures, but they have turned a blind eye to the progressive loss of national control over our patrimony. By no stretch can they be said to have enhanced the security of the American people.

The Federal Government debt is now well over $8 trillion and climbing. Nearly $3 trillion of that is held by the Japanese, Chinese, Europeans, and other foreign creditors. Their willingness to hold these IOUs is the only thing keeping the U.S. government afloat. That willingness becomes more tenuous with every unbalanced budget submitted to and passed by the Congress. In the meantime, the number of dollars going abroad just to pay interest keeps rising.

We do not have to continue on this slope, but to reverse it we need visionary leaders who are willing to ask for sacrifice and citizens who are willing to support them. We must first turn the federal deficit into a surplus. Politicians can posture all they want, but there is really only one way to do this: raise the marginal tax rates on high incomes and cut spending on major weapons systems and military commitments abroad. This was done at a modest level in the Clinton Administration and it worked. It will have to be done at a more ambitious level now that eight years have been wasted under the Bush Administration.

Secondly, we must stem the outflow of dollars to buy oil. Foreign oil has long since ceased to be the bargain that fueled our economy, and has become instead the ruptured artery that is bleeding it to death. We are in a vicious circle where our oil deficit devalues the dollar and the weaker dollar prompts producing nations to demand a higher price. There is no simple or short-term solution to this problem. We will have to produce more oil from our own expensive sources, but we must also commit ourselves seriously to conservation and alternative energy. We cannot wait for private capital and private incentives to accomplish this. The government must take the initiative through investment and regulation.

Third, we must find ways to keep jobs in this country without violating world trade agreements. I am not an expert on these agreements, but I am certain that we have not tried every avenue available to us to protect American jobs. The Bush Administration has followed a laissez-faire policy at the behest of big corporations, admonishing the affected workers to get “retraining.” This has been a cruel joke to the skilled, well-trained, and often well-educated workers who have been displaced. I have always been a proponent of free trade, but we cannot continue on the slide we have been on. If we cannot sustain our economy under existing agreements, we will have to reevaluate them.

Fourth, we must strengthen our economy by creating jobs and increasing the purchasing power of low- and moderate-income households. The rapid recycling of money from these households will percolate up through the economy, benefiting the middle class and even the wealthy. We can create jobs with federally assisted public works projects, alternative energy projects, aid to education, and programs tailored to school dropouts, released felons, and other chronically unemployed groups. Stimulating the economy in these ways would also increase government revenues and reduce social dysfunction.

Finally, we must bring the escalation of health care costs under control, for the sake of family finances, government finances, and corporate competitiveness. This is, however, a thorny subject needing another column.

If the next president is John McCain, we can expect tepid and inconclusive gestures toward restoring our national viability. If it is Barack Obama, let us hope that he does not fall into the trap of distraction from the critical task at hand. It will take strong, insightful leadership to keep us focused on the future. Obama will enter office with an historic challenge and an historic opportunity. It is an opportunity we cannot afford to miss.