As Reagan said once, we declared war on poverty a few years ago and poverty won…

My thoughts exactly, Nathan.

Bryan - can you give me the source for the $845 billion? My own estimate was a bit lower than that based on the percentage of GDP I’ve seen quoted, but still in the hundreds of billions.

Sean, I got that figure from Tony Perkin’s Washington Update, a daily e-mail news summary. I couldn’t find an archived copy online so I’ll e-mail it to you.

Lugar was almost singlehandedly responsible for driving the U.S. and Russia into the destruction of stockpiles of obsolete nuclear weapons. Every destroyed weapon was one that otherwise could have fallen into other hands. Our security is significantly better in this unsafe world than it otherwise would have been.

Lugar was decisive in obtaining the shift in U.S. policy from Marcos to Aquino in the Philippines, ensuring that we were on the side of a democracy, however perilous, rather than a failing dictatorship, however friendly it had once been. (I was in the Philippines the month of the revolution.)

Lugar identified even before our invasion of Iraq the fact that the Administration had no plan for success once military victory was achieved.

Lugar is a statesman; he works quietly and effectively, which is why he is awarded such high marks by third party reviewers for his effectiveness. He’s not a grandstander.

Pence does not have the intellectual capacity to look into the future for the strategic good of the nation, rather than the short term interests of his own political career. He does not build consensus; he destroys it.

Well, regarding Pence, as an example, the administration of George Bush Sr. understood well that a relationship of U.S. public embrace of Israel over the Muslim world threatened Israeli interests and threatened U.S. interests. Under George Bush Sr. (whose administration many Jewish friends of mine considered anti-semitic), the U.S. carried weight in the Middle East as an honest broker. We served Israel better in forwarding relations than if we had embraced Israel outright. Under Bush Sr., we accomplished an isolation of Saddam Hussein in the muslim world and an atmosphere of steady progress toward reconciliation between our Arab allies and our Israeli allies.

Beginning with Clinton, however, we began to lose this effectiveness driven, in part, by U.S. domestic concerns, namely, that our own religious right identified so strongly with Israel that to attempt to play the role of mediator, rather than advocate of Isreal, became tantamount to heresy. Consequently, our ability to play mediator diminished first under Clinton and then under George Bush Jr., until it disappeared completely… to neither Israel’s benefit nor to ours.

Pence is of the quality of intellect that panders to the religious right, in my opinion because it advances his standing, rather than attempt to support a foreign policy that achieves progress in bringing the two sides together. Whether it is out of self-service or inability to work through future consequences is irrelevent, I suppose. But Pence’s ability’s, in my opinion, are amateur in the promotion of any public good other than his own standing with religious conservatives. In the promotion of his own standing with religious conservatives, he is a professional.

But for the same reason that he cannot see far enough down the road to understand what must be done to achieve a consensus for peace in the Middle East, he also can’t see far enough to understand what must be done to assemble a consensus beyond the conservative right either in Indiana or Nationally. For that reason, in my opinion in contrast to Lugar, he is doomed to occupy no office requiring a broader electorate than his congressional district.

Regarding Lugar’s importance through his career, his integrity, and his independent, statesmanlike insight and influence, I have touched upon only three examples. While they are examples, they are but his standard product of concentration not on his own future, but on that of the Country. Many of his most influential contributions have been too subtle to gain headlines, but important nonetheless.

Our troubles as a nation are not because we have too many Lugars, but because we have too few. Men like Pence? Now it is from men like Pence that our troubles truly flow.

Chris, please explain a little more clearly:

How was Clinton driven by the religious right in his mid-east foreign policy? How was Bush 43 colored by the religious right when he called for a Palistinean State (very early in his administration)? And by the way, there is no way to achieve “consensus” (whatever that really means) in the middle east–at least regarding Israel.

How has Pence “move[d] swiftly to ban” freedom and liberty?

(In the above, I mean to say that I was observing as practitioner in the era of Bush 41 and a well informed observer through Clinton & Bush 43. I’m getting my information not from the history books, but as one who was witness to it throughout. )

It was in 1991 that this friend of mine who was Jewish referred to Secretary of State Baker as anti-Semitic for that Administration’s policy. Whether Baker was or was not, I felt fairly strongly at the time that Israel had been well-served by Bush administration policy, and that in the environment of Arab/Israeli/US cooperation during the First Gulf War, a tone of mutual respect, nascent trust, and civility was growing.

Under Bush 41, I think a neutral policy that tended equally to condemn Israeli and Muslim actions that escalated tension, and promote and reward gestures that reduced tension, was proving effective. As Israel and the Muslim World tested each other through the 90’s, it seemed to me that U.S. policy began to forgive Israeli actions and condemn Muslim actions, mainly because of domestic political pressures, all of which had the effect of undermining both our condemnation of escalating tension and our promotion of gestures of increasing good faith, however fitful.

Joel, your statement that there is no way to achieve consensus is an easy one, destined to produce conflict ever after. That is indeed what I see from the approach Pence has adopted. Such a view renders hope virtually impossible. But that is not inconsistent with the religious right position that the position of Israel is somehow a precursor to the Apocalypse and the Second Coming. It is this view on the part of right wing Christian Conservatives like Hagge(?) that has contributed to drawing us so closely to Israel, and Israel has leveraged it (understandably) into the closest possible relationship.

However, the religious right’s interest in the Apocalypse and the Israeli interest in peace and security diverge, so I think Israel makes a strategic mistake in allowing us to draw so close. We lose the ability to be effective on their behalf in the Mideast.

Joel, the Clinton Era was defined not by extreme leftist government, but by Clinton’s policies of triangulation… that is in positioning himself in the center, often to the frustration of the Left. If I’m not mistaken, Clinton received about 1/3 of the evangelical vote.

Clinton was and is a savvy politician with regard to evangelical politics and how to avoid making a target of Democrats, advising Democrats to run from the topic of same sex marriage for instance. The same was true of evangelical pressure on his administration with regard to Mideast Policy.

Everyone was aware that the first Bush administration got its hat handed to it in domestic politics when it attempted to tie aid to Israel to Israeli restraint… In the outcry that followed, Israel began to identify that it had an opportunity to work with American evangelicals, who had no love for Bush Sr., to exert pressure in Washington.

Pence is an example of the product. When I attended an Indiana Leadership Forum event in DC at which Pence spoke, he addressed briefly before turning it over to a representative of Israel. That representative had an aide working closely with him who spoke in glowing terms about how she had come to be speaking for Israel.. it turns out, of course, that she was not Jewish, but American evangelical.

The Israeli Representative commented somewhat disingenuously that he couldn’t imagine how it was that Hoosiers like Pence had come to embrace Israel with such fervor. The answer, in my opinion, is domestic politics and evangelical support for Israel which tolerates no dissent even in a discussion of what might be better for Israeli and American mutual interests.

For an American politician, Republican or Democrat, to attempt to adopt the stance of the first Bush administration is to invite political grief without any domestic benefit whatsoever, with that grief coming as much from evangelicals as from any. After the first Bush, we abandoned policy positions which established distance from Israel and which afforded us the ability to broker peace on Israel’s behalf.

With a philosophy of striving toward the Apocalypse, the evangelical movement has in my opinion worked against the interests of our Country and of Israel. But then, I have a different point of view: I would like to see us live and the Mideast achieve peace in a nuclear age, so that we are not merely reduced to an interesting layer of sediment in a rock formation uncovered a million years from now by some future life form marveling that a civilization had apparently previously existed on this planet.

No, Joel, the apocalyptic world view is one reason evangelical leadership is so intent on supporting a policy with regard to Israel that does little to engender peace.

In order to achieve peace, concessions, compromises, and gestures of respect must be made on both sides in the Mideast. But their world view drives the evangelical leadership to flip out at the idea of any concession or compromise coming from Israel, so any politician, Republican or Democrat, who bases a policy for progress on necessary compromises gets covered with right wing bromide.

I am saying these are the domestic pressures that undercut our diplomacy and effectiveness in the Mideast, from which we must recover. There are signs of recovery, especially with the general loss of credibility that the Neocons have suffered. The Neocons, incidentally, are not of the evangelical right, but they played upon that pressure in order to back their own policies. It is the push back that produces signs of hope.

The question for you…. and I don’t know the answer… is does Pence support or oppose providing a Palestinian state? My hypothesis is that he opposes, but I would be delighted to be surprised.

It does not conflict with my thoughts, Joel. I am speaking of pressures and trends.

Bush is not as hard-right as the evangelical base. I’m aware of that by other evidence, including his willingness to discuss civil unions and his reinstatement of his administration’s nondiscrimination policy with regard to sexual orientation after one of his nutty hard-right appointments attempted to cancel it. (I and some other Republicans in Indiana had a bit-part role in that reinstatement, but I am not at liberty to go into the details!)

Pence’s position appears to be utterly unilateral in its expectations, and his details likely impossible to achieve without some give and take from Israel of the nature which he seems explicitly to discourage. Like the President’s signing statements to legislation which he has no intention of enforcing, Pence’s statement to me reads like one who is reconciling his position with a move the administration has already made, with which he disagrees, but which he is forced to acknowledge. Had he been secretary of state, for instance, it appears clear even that preliminary step would not have been taken.

I stand by my statements.