Shutdown and Showdown (October 6, 2023)
Welcome to Home & Away. Here at Home the big story is the ouster of Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy. More on this in a minute.
Near Shutdown
First, though, the near government shutdown, which until Tuesday was the big story. It was only averted at the 11th hour by a vote in which a good many Democrats and Republicans joined to keep the government up and running for a time.
That is a good thing, but hardly the only or main thing. The 45-day stop-gap spending bill that funds the government through November 17 does not include military assistance for Ukraine. This is not yet a foreign policy crisis, as there is substantial economic and military help already in the pipeline. And the odds favor Congress voting for additional help in the next funding bill as a majority favor continuing military and economic assistance. But it is not a sure thing.
It is also something of a warning. Support in this country for assisting Ukraine is beginning to fade. There is a bit of fatigue. Other issues are moving to the fore. Ukraine’s counter-offensive appears to have made only modest progress, although there are reports that Russia has moved several of its naval vessels out of Crimea. Still, it is far from clear that more assistance for Ukraine will translate to improved results on the battlefield. Political support for wars tends to fade when they are costly and prospects for success appear poor. This is what seems to be developing here so long as success is defined, as it is by Ukraine’s leaders and its ardent backers here and in Europe, as complete territorial recovery, economic reparations, and war crimes accountability. Stay tuned.
Beyond Ukraine, we are not out of the woods on a shutdown, as the issue will return in mid-November. A shutdown would not be the end of the world, assuming it would be for a limited duration. But make no mistake, it would be costly. Millions of federal workers would be furloughed (affecting numerous government services) or receive no paycheck until the shutdown ended, causing all sorts of economic knock-on effects. Government-funded projects would be slowed or halted.
A shutdown would also have a symbolic effect both at Home and Away. It would further disillusion Americans as to the value of their democracy, which is already widely seen as not delivering what is needed. It is infuriating: those who are doing the most to undermine American democracy are the same people who are causing support for it to erode. And what is going on in Washington raises doubts around the world as to whether the United States can be trusted to be a reliable partner given that our house is so unruly. This was the theme of a book (Foreign Policy Begins at Home) I published a decade ago. I am sorry to see that things have only deteriorated since.
It will be interesting to see if those Republicans responsible for the disarray in the nation’s capital will pay a political price. It is not clear they will in this age of populism where it is often more important to be pure and oppose than to compromise and govern. What is all too clear is that our politics are severely broken. What we are seeing in Washington is the all but inevitable result of gerrymandering, funding reforms that weakened the hold of parties, and social media, none of which will be alleviated soon.
Kevin, We Hardly Knew Ya
All of which brings us to Kevin McCarthy, the man formerly known as Speaker who will be known henceforth as the former Speaker. I will begin with a confession: I find it difficult if not impossible not to feel a hefty dose of schadenfreude over his demise. He sowed the seeds of it in so many ways. By making it so easy to bring about his ouster. By appeasing a small group of radicals who saw his serial bouts of appeasement as the weakness it was. By alienating Democrats who decided his word could not be trusted and as a result was not worth saving.
The race is already under way for his successor. I don’t know who will win; nor do I know what winning will mean. It is complicated. The debate within the Republican conference is not one between moderates and conservatives as moderates are near extinct and conservatives rare. It is between those who are relative pragmatists and those who are nihilists. There are far more of the former than the latter, but no individual could get enough votes for the speakership unless Democrats are willing not to oppose him, thereby allowing the anti-extremists to prevail. As noted above, Democrats were unwilling to do this on behalf of Kevin McCarthy. They should be prepared to do this for a Republican willing to agree to certain provisions, say on avoiding government shutdowns, providing aid for Ukraine, etc.
At the Border
At long last the Biden administration seems to have woken up (at least in part) to the political and physical reality that its policy of turning a blind eye toward the southern border was failing and becoming an enormous political liability. Some four million people have entered the country illegally over the past two-and-a-half years, stretching or at times overwhelming the capacity of cities and states taking them in. The unsustainable influx of immigrants has led to widespread opposition to any and all immigration despite the evidence that over the decades it has been a major source of American innovation and vitality.
The administration announced it would spend already appropriated funds to build an additional 20 miles of border wall in south Texas and to start deporting some of those from Venezuela who have arrived illegally. The new policy, while a step in the right direction, suffers from incoherence. The President and his secretary for homeland security have stated they are doing all this reluctantly (pursuant to congressional direction) and have no confidence it will succeed. Earlier decisions allowing migrants to work incentivized additional individuals to come. Nothing was said about shoring up the wall in other places or increasing the ability of the U.S. government to process asylum requests.
What accounts for this inherence is the politics. Democrat/progressive activists appear to favor an open border while Democratic mayors and governors, for whom the economic and quality-of-life consequences of the policy are all too real, increasingly do not. But the administration refuses to embrace much less expand on what it is now doing, in part out of a desire not to alienate those influential activists, in part because it is allergic to backing a policy so closely associated in the public mind with Donald Trump. But just because Trump supports a policy or a version of it doesn’t necessarily make it wrong—just as Republicans refusing to vote for added assistance to Ukraine are in the wrong to oppose a policy because it is so associated with President Biden. Increasingly, what we are seeing is partisan politics get in the way of smart policy.
O, Canada
Let me raise three other items. The first is the imbroglio going on between Canada and India over what Canada alleges is the involvement of the Indian government in killing a Canadian citizen who was advocating for the creation of an independent Sikh state carved out of India. It echoes in some ways the U.S. dilemma in how to respond to the Saudi government’s killing of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a legal permanent resident of the United States. Over time, considerations of realpolitik came to dominate the U.S. approach to relations with Saudi Arabia. I expect much the same will happen here when it comes to Canadian policy toward India. This does not excuse Saudi Arabia’s actions or what India is accused of doing, but it reflects the reality – or some may say tragedy – of geopolitics and competing priorities.
Saving for Rainy Days
Last Friday was a day of serious rain here in New York. On the order of eight inches fell in parts of the city and the Hudson Valley. Twitter was awash in videos of cars under water, subway stations flooded, and people walking on the streets through ankle-high water. The flooding and the disruption it caused highlighted that years after Hurricane Sandy this city and the surrounding areas, including mass transit systems and many buildings, remain largely unprepared for the predictable effects of climate change.
We know that such storms will increasingly be the norm rather than the exception. In biblical times Noah would have built arks in anticipation of floods to come. We need to be doing the same. Greater resilience is required in how we build and live as we will have no choice but to live with climate change. (For the record, this is true for climate change deniers and climate change believers alike.) This is what adaptation is all about. It is not an alternative to slowing or stopping or even reversing climate change but a complement.
Ryder Comeuppance
Last and least is the Ryder Cup. The Europeans did not clinch the Cup until Sunday afternoon, but in many ways it was all but over Friday morning after their fast start. Actually, one could argue the outcome was all but certain once the teams were chosen, as the Europeans did a better job of putting together a strong squad than we did.
One match between two two-man teams was the most one-sided ever. The Europeans won that match 9 & 7 (which means that after 11 holes it was mathematically impossible for the American side to win), literally reducing the number one golfer in the world to tears. The Americans mounted something of a comeback Saturday afternoon and on Sunday, but it was a case of too little too late. Europe prevailed 16.5 to 11.5. The chance for revenge won’t come for two years, when the Ryder Cup will be held at the fabled black course in Bethpage, Long Island. I am not confident it will be enough for the Americans to be the home team. My take is that we ought to spend less time keeping Chinese students out of our labs and more time keeping golfers from cold-weather countries in Europe out of our southern universities. They would not do nearly as well if they stayed home, where the golf season is truncated thanks to the cold and snow. Just sayin.
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Richard Haass in the news
Friday, September 29: MSNBC Morning Joe on American democracy (begins at 43:42; audio-only)
Sunday, October 1: CNN Fareed Zakaria GPS on the war in Ukraine and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict (Clip #1 & Clip #2)
Monday, October 2: The Economic Club of New York Author Series (video available next week for members only)
Wednesday, October 4: Fortune CEO Initiative 2023: Business With China
Check out The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens.