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Since I am not running for president of the United States and winning over voters in Florida is not critical to my career choices, I can say one thing without hesitation: it's time to tear down the wall between the United States and Cuba.
Although Cuba's "elected leaders" did little more than continue their dynastic politics in handing over leadership to lifelong Cuban President Fidel Castro's brother, Raúl, last week, the handover offers the United States an opportunity to affect change we can believe. It's time to end the Cuban embargo and allow free trade, travel and investment in our island neighbor.
If we learned anything from the end of the Cold War, it should have been that free trade leads to free people. Our embargo on Cuba may have served only to prop up Fidel Castro, but by opening up the borders to Cuba, we will either bring down the regime of Raúl, or force it to bring change.
A year ago, writing about the war in Iraq, I wrote that, "the day we see a Starbucks in Baghdad will be the day we know we've won the War on Terror." That is because multi-national corporations have a stabilizing effect on global politics. They force their host countries to adopt investor-friendly policies, while keeping countries where they hold investments from fighting each other.
My uncle, Jerome Schmidt, just returned to the States from Vietnam. It was his first trip back since he served there in the United States Army three decades ago. In his daily correspondences with family and friends in the states, Uncle Jerry had one recurring question: why did we fight this war?
His questioning of the Vietnam War wasn't fostered by the anti-war sentiments of the 1960s, but rather by the realization that Vietnam today is as free and capitalist as America. In fact, some might argue that there is more economic freedom in the Saigon than in San Francisco! Although the tactical was in Vietnam may have been lost, the war of ideologies was, in the end, won. And everybody is better off for it.
With Kosovo gaining its independence from Serbia, the last remnants of the Iron Curtain hang just off the coast of the Florida Keys. And you have to ask: if Vietnam's politics can change after a healthy dose of global capitalism, why can't Cuba's?
Imagine if investment and travel restrictions on Cuba were lifted. Starwood, Marriott, Hilton and Sandals would rush in to Havana to redevelop the best real estate into mega-resorts. Arnold Schwarzenegger could open a cigar shop! Starbucks could introduce the Green Tea Mojito Latte, and MacDonald's could try its hand at a Torta Asada, Cuban Style.
Faced with a flood of potential investment of the United States, Cuba would have to change its policies to make these companies feel safe in making the investment, and social policies would have to be reformed to make the American tourist feel welcome.
Within a year, I'd bet, the average Cuban would see his or her standard of living double - if not triple - and they'd ask themselves why they tolerated the policies of the ancien regime for so long.
We do not need guns, bombs, or secret assassinate plots to free the people of Cuba. America needs to take leadership in an economic change - and chance - to bombard the island nation with economic shock-and-awe. Free trade leads to free peoples, and is that is the only way we will see a Free Cuba!
If you turned on CNN or BBC News this week you might have thought the year was 1992, not 2008. A Soviet ally stepped down from power while in Africa and Eastern Europe, citizens waved American flags as symbols of the march of freedom.
For the first time in years, the United States is in the middle of a string foreign policy victories. News of the Middle East has been pushed off the front page, as other parts of the world take center stage and the news is resoundingly positive and familiar. Freedom is, once again, on the march.
Although Michelle Obama can think of nothing that the United States has done to be proud of in the last quarter century, in my mind the greatest accomplishment of our nation is to be the example - that shining city on a hill - of how to promote peace through freedom. Democratic, capitalist nations do not fight each other and as the U.S. has promoted the values of democracy and capitalism around the globe, our tolerance for war and its tragic costs has diminished in turn. We're seeing the results of these efforts this week in Africa as it welcomed President Bush and in Kosovo as it declared its independence.
Until President George W. Bush's recent six-day tour to Africa, I doubt many Americans even thought that this administration had a foreign policy when it came to the continent. Neither friend nor foe in the War on Terror, the continent seemed to slog along in foreign policy obscurity as it had for decades previous. The refugee camps of Darfur gets attention from Hollywood but even that cause doesn't resonate much with average Americans.
Which is why it was surprising to hear the President of Tanzania say that Bush, "will be remembered for many generations to come for the good things you've done for Tanzania and the good things you have done for Africa." As Americans stand at the precipice of electing our first African-American President, Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete told reporters, "the most important thing is, let him be as good [a] friend of Africa as President Bush has been"
This sentiment is echoed by Bob Geldof, - the rocker who brought us the Live 8 Concerts - saying that Bush "has done more than any other president so far." And the sentiment can be seen in the reactions on the street, which even if they looked a bit contrived, required willing participants and organizers who thought that they were at least plausible demonstrations of gratitude towards the current U.S. president.
The White House has been criticized for pushing an abstinence-first policy towards fighting AIDS but the Bush Administration has increased AIDS funding multi-fold over the Clinton Administration. The current White House's investment in fighting malaria have send disease rates falling. And people's lives are improving as a result.
At the core of Bush's Africa policy are the Millennium Challenge Accounts. Rather than distribute foreign aid willy-nilly around the globe, the Millennium Fund focuses on helping countries with strong records in governance and promoting democracy, making sure that the help that offered promotes core values like pluralism and freedom which America is hoping to spread around the globe.
It's worked in other places. In the streets of Pristina, Kosovo, this weekend, these values flourished still, as the nation declared its independence from Serbia. Amid the pictures of celebrating Kosovars, one image resonated as a global icon of freedom: the Stars and Stripes. Indeed, to celebrate, their freedom, many Kosovars took to waiving the American flag, rather than their own, evoking memories of the beginning of the fall of the Iron Curtain, just as its last vestiges rusted away.
At the core of Bush's Africa policy and Kosovo independence is the principle that, even without guns and bombs, freedom is on the march. With the retirement of Fildel Castro, we're reminded that Freedom's march is not always a fast one, but that it is one from which we should not retreat, and as its pace picks up again, we will realize that it will be morning in America - and around the globe - yet again.
UPDATE: Well they're
protesting in Belgrade now, and those who are opposing Kosovo's freedom are targeting symbols of the west--storming the U.S. Embassy and defacing our flag. You sometimes must take the bad with the good, I suppose, in this reminder that freedom's march isn't
always bloodless.
Although it is too early to write an official post-mortem on the Bush administration, it is worth taking a look back at the last eight years - from George Bush the candidate, who showed signs of promise as a uniting centrist governor to George Bush the president, who is regarded as a dividing and bumbling - to gauge the currently dwindling stock of presidential contenders.
Most Americans will agree that the presidency of George W. Bush was been rather a disappointment. For conservatives, George Bush will be derided for pursuing liberal policies like immigration reform, and in the long eye of history, a Medicare prescription drug benefit which will bankrupt the system even earlier than projected. Liberals deride the President for overseeing two recessions and sending our country to war.
Folks like myself, who kind of supported President Bush from the beginning will be disappointed with him more for his failure to achieve Social Security reform, immigration reform and making his tax cuts permanent. These failures derive from what is his greatest strength and his greatest weakness: consistency.
In presidential campaigns in 2000 and 2004, President Bush promised to lower taxes, fix Social Security, give prescription drugs to seniors, win the war in Iraq and make housing more affordable. You can't say he hasn't delivered on these promises - or at least tried. You may not like the man, but you cannot charge him with changing his positions.
Normally, that would be a virtue in politics, but what we've seen with the Bush Administration is that our leaders must be able to adapt to change in order to affect it.
So when I look to the candidates in the running for President now, I weigh them in this light: Do they possess a consistency verging on obstinacy, or are they someone who can read the tea leaves of changing times and provide effective leadership?
As a Republican, my natural instinct should be to look at our front-runner through the prism of the last eight years. Senator John McCain holds his hard-headedness and consistency up as his greatest quality - even when he doesn't walk the walk. In his come-to-Jesus speech last week at the Conservative Political Action Conference, the Republican front-runner equivocated his positions so widely that you could drive a truck through the exit clauses he added to his promises to the Conservative base. But at least they're promises he won't break!
On the flip-side, there is the candidate of change, Barack Obama. With so few accomplishments in the United States Senate, you would hope that Obama would give potential voters more than flourishing rhetoric. But when even my Democrat friend, "Blond David" says Obama lacks substance and doesn't say anything, you have to worry. The blond isn't just referring to David's hair color! I do know that Obama has become the most liberal United States Senator during his campaign for President and that alone is unsettling.
Which brings us to Hillary Rodham Clinton. Watching her pander to Democratic voters before the California primary, I had to cringe at visions of higher taxes, government healthcare programs and more. But based on President Bill Clinton's White House record, I can apply familiar logic: if you don't like her positions today, just wait awhile and they will change again.
In eight years in office, Bill Clinton gained a reputation for being a flip-flopper, a label which has become synonymous with Democratic candidates ever since. It's true he changed his positions, quite a bit either to triangulate between the extremes of the Liberal Left or Conservative Right or to adopt policies that, well, most Americans wanted.
The poll-driven governing that defined the Clinton years is not exactly leadership, but it's better than sticking to your guns when they're out of ammo, as President Bush has done. If Sen. Clinton can show even hints of such crass pandering to the will of the people, she'll deserve a second look - even from this Republican.
If, as I have suggested, Mike Huckabee is the Bill Clinton of this election cycle and Barack Obama is an Oval Office Arnold Schwarzenegger in the making, then the comeback kid of the Republican pack, Arizona Senator John McCain has a parallel which is equally clear from past Presidential contests: Senator and former Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry.
Just comparing the campaign trajectories of McCain and Kerry demonstrates a close parallel between the two candidates. During the summer and fall leading up to their respective elections, each candidate was written off for dead, polling in the single digits. But early wins in Iowa and New Hampshire, coupled with the collapse of the media-designated front-running campaign left each candidate inheriting their party's nomination by default.
Like John Kerry in 2004, Senator McCain is not very inspiring to his party's base. In fact, to many Republicans, John McCain is more know for his betrayals on tax cuts, campaign finance reform and immigration than for his strong national security record. Conversely, McCain's record of service in Vietnam will most likely play as an asset in 2008, rather than as a liability as it did for Kerry. Don't expect McCain to be "Swift Boated" even in a general election.
If McCain is lucky, as the Republican nominee, he will face Hillary Clinton in November, for she is just about the only political figure in America who is as polarizing as Kerry's 2004 opponent, George W. Bush. And, of course, we saw how much that helped the junior Senator from Massachusetts.
But wait! The parallels between McCain and Kerry don't stop with their war records! Both have a solid record...of flip-flopping on the issues.
I've already detailed how McCain's "straight talk" comes across more like double-speak, but the hits keep on coming.
In the California Republican Primary debate, the first question posed by CNN's Anderson Cooper was whether Americans were better off than they were eight years ago, when George W. Bush took office. McCain's negative assessment led Cooper to follow up by concluding, "It sounds like that we're not better off is what you're saying," to which the Senator had to stumble around to find a more positive-sounding answer about job creation and the economy.
Janet Hook, from the L.A. Times, later put McCain on the spot later in the debate about why he opposed President Bush's tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, asking, "Now, more recently you've been saying that the reason why you opposed the tax cuts at first was because they weren't offset by spending cuts. But back when you actually voted against the tax cuts in Congress, you said you opposed them because they favored the wealthy too much. So which is it?"
In his typical double-speak, McCain answered, "I disagreed when we had tax cuts without spending restraint," re-writing history once again.
But McCain also appears to have flip-flopped on his own immigration bill as well, stating that he would not vote for his own legislation today - a fact buried in some rambling pandering about the processes of the United States Senate.
I guess you could say McCain was for his own position on immigration before he was against it! Sounds a lot like a position that John Kerry would take!
United States Senators do not have a good track record of being elected President, especially those who have served in the body for awhile. Perhaps this is because of the deliberative nature of the body, which makes it hard to be an obstinate fighter for one's convictions, but it usually ends up with the same campaign attack in a general election. Flip...Flop! Flip...Flop!
