Question: Does the 2004 Presidential Election in the United States turn on domestic policy or foreign policy, and what of Senator Edwards’ grasp of foreign policy and suitability as President?
Answer: The election may turn on domestic agendas, but if it does and along with that the foreign policy issue isn’t settled, domestic security and deployed force security are going to deteriorate speedily. We can take an election cycle or two to get the domestic agenda correct — and it boils down to self-reliance — but we do not have an election cycle or two to get the foreign policy agenda correct. The enemy is at and inside the gate.
It is in this sense that I mean the issue at stake in the election is foreign policy. The election may turn on domestic policy but the issue of the moment is foreign policy.
I would be so happy that I would register and vote for any candidate who gave the following mission for the United States as his/her sole election plank:
*Plant trees, build public parks and secure clean water and sewage for every locality, worldwide.*
Everything necessary for foreign and domestic policy is given in the requirements to fulfill that mission. That is the mission that would make all beings revere the United States as an environment of just economic and social expansion because of its combined moral, legal and military strength. That mission is the core foreign and domestic policy for this or any nation from now until the end of time.
Senator Edwards’ statements do not show that he/his team grasps the foreign policy issue at issue. Maybe he does. If he does, he needs to say so by articulating it.
If he means to turn the election on domestic agendas and ambiguate or insuffice on foreign policy, the crucial issue, then he either has insufficient intellectual horsepower or honesty for the Presidency or genuinely is unqualified for the job because he does not grasp what is important.
In other words, if the election turns on domestic agendas without simultaneously settling the foreign policy issue in the manner which safeguards the Republic, I will be sorely discomforted — and so will we all be, and very soon.
Senator Edwards biggest negative I can see is the line that as a trial lawyer he lines his pockets while driving up the cost of living for everyone else by battling combinations whose malignancy it is primarily the responsibility of government to destroy.
The pitch could run along these lines:
Trial lawyers help legislatures write laws to prevent governments from fulfilling their responsibility to destroy the malignancy of combinations so that they, trial lawyers, have guaranteed income, which drives up everyone else’s cost of living. If governments rather than trial lawyers were primarily responsible for treating malignant combinations the general cost of living would not go up as it does or as much as it does when trial lawyers treat that malignancy through litigation. And whereas trial lawyers can only swat files — and intend to do only that to guarantee income streams — governments can burn whole nests and thus clean entire neighborhoods.
The weakness of Republican cant, actually and politically, is that it ascribes too much ability to the activity of private interest to secure public welfare. Trial lawyers are a case in point, even though they are mostly Democrats. In some cases private interest can and does secure public welfare. Most of those cases involve private giving rather than private profit taking. Private profit taking is a necessary and salutary activity in the presence of government regulation — rather than private extortion (which is the nature of trial lawyering when relied upon to treat malignant combinations) — to ensure the outcome of public welfare. This lesson is both indisputable and widely understood, even if not universally accepted! 🙂
Do we want Johnny Cochran or Mark Garagos or staff members of the ACLU for President? Their concern for the public welfare is probably undiscoverable.
How well-regarded are trial lawyers in this country? By their clients, certainly, by their opponents, certainly at least for their professional competencies. In the media PR mill and the popular “image?”
If trial lawyers would stick to their purpose, would help the genuinely mistreated — would obtain justice for the genuinely wronged — they would be revered. Some do that and they are revered. As a class, however, and certainly as an image in the media PR mill, that is not trial lawyers’ reputation because that is not the generalized experience of them.
As an aside: would that clergy had at least as dismal a reputation as trial lawyers have. They deserve it a thousand thousand times more than trial lawyers do. Their ability to delude citizens and their governments, to be bad guys and successfully cast themselves as good guys, exceeds that of trial lawyers, whom they disparage as insufficiently competent in the casting spells department. What is the annual income of so-called religious entities in this country? And what is the annual income of trial lawyers in this country? And how many fewer are clergy than trial lawyers in this country? But I digress …. 🙂
There are significant opportunities to run up the negatives of any trial lawyer standing for election. Surely Senator Edwards has faced them in North Carolina. A read on their results in his election record would give an indication of his effectiveness in countering them.
As I mentioned earlier, I would be so happy that I would register and vote for any candidate who gave the following mission for the United States as his/her sole election plank:
*Plant trees, build public parks and secure clean water and sewage for every locality, worldwide.*
Everything necessary for foreign and domestic policy is given in the requirements to fulfill that mission. That is the mission that would make all beings revere the United States as an environment of just economic and social expansion because of its combined moral, legal and military strength. That mission is the core foreign and domestic policy for this or any nation from now until the end of time.
AMDG
