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Foreign Policy Debate II - Pre-Game

Rich Galen

Tuesday November 22, 2011

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From Great Barrington, Massachusetts

Pre-Game:

Egypt is back in the news and it's all bad. Look for all the candidates to take a swing at President Obama for his non-handling of that complex situation as well as allowing the Syrian government to continue killing its citizens without any hint of military intervention as NATO did in Libya.
This the third or fourth debate with a new candidate joining Mitt Romney as a member of the "Two-Person-Race" club. Michele Bachmann was followed by Rick Perry who was followed by Herman Cain.
Tonight Newt Gingrich comes into the debate not just as the non-Romney, but sitting atop the latest polls. All eyes will be on him to see how he reacts to being the front-runner.
Here are my theories on who needs to do what.

Newt Gingrich: (23.2% in the RealClearPolitics polling average) Newt has led in every national poll taken in the past 10 days. I was quoted somewhere this morning as having said "Newt knows a lot about foreign policy because he knows a lot about a lot of things." Newt's problem won't be trying to remember where Libya is; his problem is likely to be having to defend/deflect/disclaim something he has said or written in the past about current hotspots which may be raised by the moderators or by his opponents.

Mitt Romney: (21.0%) Romney has been polling in the low-to-mid 20s for a long time and has watched as his closest opponents have flared up and burned out like the charcoals on a backyard grill. He has pretty much been able to skate through the debates because it has never been do-or-die for him; he has benefited from an assumption that he knows his stuff - unlike some of his opponents who have been trying to prove they have at least a basic understanding of the problems with which a President must deals.

Romney has had four years to study foreign policy and, although he might not know the name of the Second UnderSecretary of Finance in Morocco, he has certainly had the time to construct some broad themes.

Herman Cain: (18.2%) Cain's star isn't falling; it has fallen. It is becoming apparent his former supporters are lining up behind Gingrich. Cain's brain freeze in Milwaukee in trying to construct a cogent sentence regarding Libya had the effect of making Rick Perry sound like Henry Kissinger in spite of his memorable memory lapse.

More than that, his continuing demonstration that he doesn't know very much about anything is made all the more stark by Newt's rise (and his knowing a lot about a lot) and has made the shift from Cain to Gingrich fairly easy for a great number of Conservatives.

Rick Perry: (7.7%) The good news for Perry is: his precipitous drop in the polls appears to have stabilized. The bad new is: It has stabilized in the mid-single digits. We don't know whether this is where he will stay or whether bringing in a new campaign management team just hasn't had time to turn things around yet.

Perry is not known as a foreign policy expert except as it attends to Mexican immigration and that subject - especially in-state tuition for illegal immigrants - has not served him well. As we get closer to the Iowa Caucuses (just 42 days from tonight's debate) Perry will be looked at more critically to see if the "three Departments I would cut" was a one-time lapse, or indicative of a broader lack of understanding.

Ron Paul: (7.5%) Paul appears to be fated to sit at the top of the second tier in the national polls. Don't be surprised if he aims his answers tonight at Iowa caucus-goers where I make him better than 50-50 to win the caucuses outright.

Paul's basic foreign policy mirrors his domestic budgeting philosophy: Start at zero and prove you need the money/people/arms/attention. In a war-weary America that America-First position has significant appeal, but ignores the fact that it proved a non-starter both in 1917 and 1941.

Michele Bachmann: (4.8%) The prevailing theory about Rep. Bachmann's foreign policy expertise is it is limited to what she has been told by her staffer on the Intelligence Committee - much of which she is prohibited from repeating in public.

Bachmann's campaign has been aimed like a laser on Tea Party Republicans for whom foreign policy is nothing more than a distraction from the important domestic issues on which they have been focused. The fact that Bachmann is now supported by fewer than five percent of them tells us she has little to gain or lose tonight.

Jon Huntsman: (2.2%) Huntsman and Rick Santorum will share the outside lecterns again tonight as they continue to trail the field. Huntsman is a former Ambassador to both Singapore (under George W. Bush) and China (under Barack Obama) so if this debate were conducted in Mandarin he would win, but it isn't so he won't.

Huntsman's problems stem from the fact that he has never gained any traction, so no one listens to him, so he can't gain any traction.

This, in the double-secret high-councils of political punditry is known as "Catch-22."

Rick Santorum: (2.0%) Santorum is looking to surprise geniuses like me by making a strong showing in Iowa so, like Ron Paul, he will be aiming his responses directly at conservative caucus-goers there. But, Santorum (like Gingrich and Perry) may be using Iowa as a lever to win South Carolina.

As a former Member of the Senate Armed Services Committee he will have a record of things he has written and said he might have to defend tonight.

Post-game analysis will follow immediately after the debate.

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