From: king@cogsci.ucsd.EDU (Jonathan King)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections
Subject: Re: THE CLINTON DOCTRINE
Summary: don't know where people get their information from these days...
Date: 9 Oct 92 05:31:59 GMT
Organization: University of California, San Diego

cote@cs.ucsd.edu (Brad Cote) writes:
>egl1@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (Elizabeth G. Levy) writes:
>>Democracies do not go to war with one another.  They do not sponser
>>international terrorism.  They do not threaten to destry other nations
>>with weapons of mass destruction.  
>
>Sorry you didn't like the method, but you can't deny that MAD worked,
>keeping an uneasy peace between the USSR and the US. 

Freeze.  This is a post hoc argument.  You could certainly argue the
point if you chose.  (E.g. you could argue that even without a formal
policy of MAD that the threat of nuclear weapons use was a deterrent.)

>That's the
>primary reason why (with the exception of Carter) we have had
>Republican presidents for the last 25 years. 

Hmm.  If you use a post hoc argument to back up another post hoc
argument, does the penalty double? :-)  I think the economy was at
least as much of an issue in 1980, and things weren't that great in
1976, either.

>The US has historically
>demonstrated that after a war, it is very likely to bring in the
>opposition party. 

They do?  Let's see:  

After the War of 1812, Monroe succeeds Madison; nope.
After the Mexican War, Whig Zack Taylor did win; yup
  (note that Taylor was a War Hero nominated by the Whigs out from under Polk)
After the Civil War, the US returns Republicans in the next 4 elections; nope
After the Spanish American War, the US votes in Republicans until 1912; nope
After WWI, the Republicans *do* in fact tacke over in 1920; yup
After WWII, Truman does manage to win again; nope
The Korean Conflict is tricky, since hostilities cease in 1953, right after
    the election; you make the call.
After Vietnam, the White House does change hands, but nobody really thinks
    that was the reason; technically yup.

In my book, 4 out of 8 (at best) is not "very likely", and I don't
think you've proved much about causality.

>Let's just hope that a president with a strong
>foreign policy background is not needed for the next four years,
>because it doesn't appear that we are going to get one in Clinton.

...as opposed to George Bush, whose foreign policy errors in Iraq were
absolutely blatant, and whose policy towards the break-up of the Eastern
Bloc has hardly been brilliant, either (my opinion).

>Foreign policy is not thrilling when you win, but it is a whole other
>ballgame when you lose. 

I don't understand this sentence.

>We couldn't afford to take a chance with
>McGovern, another Carter term, Mondale, or Dukakis. 

Proof by statement?  How do you know this?  I'm a bit young to say
much about McGovern other than he denounced the failed US war in
Indochina, but Carter scored a brilliant success with the Camp David
agreement, and at least backed up most of his policies with moral
principles.  An arguable cause of the Iran debacle was his decision to
allow the former Shah to get medical treatment in this country, and
this was at the behest of "experienced" folks like Henry Kissinger.
But Carter really wasn't too dovish; I am all too aware of the fact
that it was his move to re-instate draft registration and propose very
stiff penalties for failure to comply.  I personally didn't prefer
Reagan's ruinously expensive defense policy to Mondale's positions,
and I don't see any way that Dukakis could have done a worse job at foreign
policy than George Bush.  What precisely are you trying to get at with
your blanket statement?

>I painfully note that these men were the Clinton's political mentors. 

Uh, no.  Clinton was part of the DLC, which didn't particularly care
for Mondale and really didn't care much for Dukakis (Gore was their
man in '88).  Neither Mondale nor Dukakis have been allowed anywhere
near the Clinton campaign, and their campaign chairs have been reduced
to writing these weird columns I sometimes see in the LA Times.
Clinton *did* have a political mentor or two, but these guys certainly
weren't his mentors.

>Given that, and the Democratic party's historical tendancy to solve 
>economic problems with the marching of soldier's boots, I will not 
>sleep easy these next four years. 

I guess I miss this one, too.  The War of 1812 was your basic failed
land grab.  I don't *think* Polk's expansionist policies were driven
by economic problems.  The Spanish-American war was declared in a
Republican administration, and well after the Panic of 1893.  Our
entry into World War I was really strange; take that one if you like.
If you really care to defend the Republican Isolationist position of
the 1930s, be my guest.  I fail to see an economic cause for the
Korean Conflict, and The Vietnam (Non-)War was an outgrowth of US
activities in the region begun in the Eisenhower administration; and
how in the world could you argue that this one was caused by US
economic problems of the time?

I sleep more uneasily in the knowledge that our president capriciously
invaded Panama and dealt so ineptly with Sadam Hussein that we ended up
having to send half a million troops into the desert to straighten the
whole thing out.  Your sleep cycles obviously differ.

>				Brad Cote'
>				University of California, San Diego
>				STARE Project

jking

Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections,alt.politics.clinton,alt.politics.bush