The Next Four Years: A Political Forecast

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The Next Four Years:
A Political Forecast

By Tom Barry, Laura Carlsen, and John Gershman | November 10, 2004

(This policy briefing is the first of a series of post-election reports planned by the IRC program staff. It will be followed by regional reports, covering topics such as the current state and the future of U.S.-Latin America/Caribbean and of U.S.-Asia relations. We are also preparing a prescriptive policy report as the IRC's contribution to an incipient public discussion about the type of principles and reforms necessary to steer U.S. foreign, security, and economic policy agendas off their current dangerous course. This forthcoming policy blueprint will recommend pragmatic reforms that not only will better serve U.S. national interests and security but will also help restore respect for the United States as a responsible global leader and partner.)

Candidate George W. Bush during the 2000 campaign outlined a policy agenda that was largely in keeping with the moderate conservatism and foreign policy realism of his father’s administration. In practice, the first GW Bush administration pursued a radical policy agenda that aimed to rid both domestic and foreign policy of all liberal policy frameworks.

In economic policy, the administration rejected the notions of a social democratic management of capitalism in favor of policies that catered to the short-and medium-term interests of Corporate America. In social policy, the views of the social conservatives and the Religious Right became the Bush presidency’s favored framework for interpreting social ills. The Bush White House joined the culture war on the side of those who believe that fundamentalist Judeo-Christian values should guide U.S. domestic and foreign policy. The liberal principle upholding the separation of church and state was rejected in favor of rhetoric and policy initiatives that brought religion not only into the public sphere but also directly into government.

In foreign policy, the first GW Bush administration broke with candidate Bush’s promise to consult more closely with allies and adopt a more humble posture in international affairs. Instead, the administration took immediate aim at an array of international treaties that were regarded as constraints on U.S. military options and on U.S. corporate interests. The Bush foreign policy team has not argued that multilateralism needs reforming to ensure its effectiveness. Rather, an aggressive anti-multilateralism aimed at international treaties and international forums it does not control is an imperative of its ideological commitment to U.S. supremacy.

The assault on all vestiges of political liberalism—from multilateralism to the effective dismantling of the New Deal reforms of the 1930s and the New Politics reforms of the 1960s and early 1970s—will continue but at an accelerated pace during the second Bush administration. The four main pressure groups that have united behind the Bush administration include on the ideological side, the Religious Right and the neoconservatives; and on the material side, the elites of Corporate America and the militarists of the military-industrial complex. Although each pressure group fields its own specialized policy institutes, all four sectors are represented in the leading right-wing think tanks and foundations, such as the American Enterprise Institute and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

http://www.irc-online.org/content/commentary/2004/0411next.php

[PROGRESSIVE1]

1. DAS GOP is RAPING America!

:puke:

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2. Hell on wheels.