Out with the Old, In With the New

Fareed Zakaria notes that we're poised on a new age in which the old liberal vs. conservative ways of looking at the world don't work anymore. The Democrats, he seems to suggest, adapted, while the Republicans clung to their obsolesence:

Conservatives were ascendant in the 1980s and 1990s because they offered
powerful prescriptions for the problems of the 1970s--stagflation and social
unrest at home, and Soviet expansionism abroad. Arguing for less government,
traditional values and a tough response to Moscow worked. But though the world
changed, conservatives have trotted out the same ideas to every successive
crisis. Consider John McCain's response when asked how he would handle the Wall
Street meltdown. McCain vowed to end earmark spending, which has absolutely
nothing to do with restoring confidence and credit to the markets.

I felt the same way about McCain's saber-rattling over Russia's invasion of Georgia -- he was treating Russia like the Soviet Union and casting West vs. East as if the Cold War was still on.

Obama recognizes the change and you could hear explicit expressions of it in some of his rhetoric. I recall hearing him say something like this:

"The question today isn't whether Americans want big or small
government. That's the old question. Today, Americans want
better government."

Who after Katrina couldn't agree more with that?

The Republican Party has some serious soul searching to do and it needs to find itself. My Republican friends (the few still talking to me) all agree the party needs to return to "real conservatism." Then agreement stops when I ask them to define what "true conservatism" is.

Meantime, Obama stands astride history. Conservatism, as I knew (and supported) in the 80s and 90s may not be dead but it is obsolete. We'll see what Obama can achieve in this new era and if the Republicans can find their footing.

Zakaria: McCain is the Foreign Policy Unrealistic Idealist

A must read from Fareed Zakaria today:

Ironically, the Republicans now seem to be the foreign-policy idealists, labeling countries as either good or evil, refusing to deal with nasty regimes, fixating on spreading democracy throughout the world and refusing to think in more historical and complex ways. "I don't do nuance," George W. Bush told many visitors to the White House in the years after 9/11. John McCain has had his differences with Bush, but not on this broad thrust of policy. Indeed it is McCain, the Republican, who has put forward some fanciful plans, arguing that America should establish a "League of Democracies," expel Russia from the Group of Eight industrialized countries and exclude China from both groups as well.

Obama's response to McCain's proposals on Russia and China could have been drafted by Henry Kissinger or Brent Scowcroft. We need to cooperate with both countries in order to solve significant global problems, he told me last week, citing nuclear-proliferation issues with Russia and economic ones with China. The distinction between Obama and McCain on this point is important. The single largest strategic challenge facing the United States in the decades ahead is to draw in the world's new rising powers and make them stakeholders in the global economic and political order. Russia and China will be the hardest because they are large and have different political systems and ideological approaches to the world. Yet the benefits of having them inside the tent are obvious. Without some degree of great-power cooperation, global peace and stability becomes a far more fragile prospect.