The following is an excerpt from: Peter Beinart | November 14, 2011 | thedailybeast.com
In Saturday’s GOP debate, candidates argued for bombing Iran and staying longer in Afghanistan, ignoring the threat of Asian economic power, the global financial crisis, and the financial constraints on U.S. foreign policy.
It was hard to know who were worse at Saturday night’s Republican presidential debate, the candidates or the moderators. With American and European economic might in near collapse, and the world witnessing a once-a-millennium power shift from West to East, Scott Pelley of CBS News and Major Garrett of the National Journal waited until the debate’s closing minutes to ask about the global financial crisis—and when Jon Huntsman and Rick Perry tried to answer, Pelley cut each of them off.
The exaggeration of the threat America faces from jihadist terrorism and the minimization of the threat it faces from Asian economic power is one of the most disastrous legacies of Bush foreign policy. And listening to Pelley and Garrett—and their overwhelming focus on Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran (China was mentioned briefly; India not at all)—was to re-inhabit the world according to Dick Cheney, not the world in which America actually lives.
Then there were the candidates’ answers. In their debates on domestic policy, the Republican presidential contenders described America as a bankrupt nation, too poor to afford even the meager welfare state we have. It would be nice if someone introduced those candidates to the folks who debated last Saturday night.
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