After watching the first Democratic presidential debate, I am sure of one thing: the race to succeed President Barack Obama and become the standard bearer of the Democratic Party has come down to two people. Assuming Vice President Biden does not throw his hat in the ring, the Democrats are left with the 67-year-old former first lady, senator from New York, and secretary of state Hillary Clinton, and the 74-year-old independent senator from Vermont, the socialist Bernie Sanders. The other three contestants were on the stage simply because there is no one else. Chafee was cringe-worthy bad; Martin O’Malley reminds me of a less talented John Edwards—scripted and predictable; and Jim Webb, while a war hero and perhaps the most commendable of all, is a throwback to the Democratic Party of Scoop Jackson and Joe Lieberman, a party long gone in the age of Sanders, Obama and Warren.
On the issues, I thought Sanders came away with the gold in a race between two. Though I disagree vehemently with much of what he has to say, at least he is an honest and authentic man. He stuck to his guns (literally) and defended his positions on socialism, climate change, and immigration, and viewers knew where he stood at the end of the debate. Sanders might be Eugene Debs incarnated, but people respect candor in a political environment of duplicity. Notwithstanding such sincerity, his fiery rhetoric describing right-wing Republicans and the oligarchy class is extremely divisive, and like most Democrats he seems to forget who has been president for the last seven years.
Hillary Clinton presumably won the debate and strengthened her status as the front-runner for the nomination—remember, Sanders is still a socialist—but she is no Barack Obama. Her answer on the Trans-Pacific Partnership was wholly inadequate, and moderator Anderson Cooper pointed it out when he asked the obvious question: “Hillary, will you say anything to get elected?” For those of us who have watched her throughout her political career, the answer is most certainly yes. To be fair, though, she did give an articulate defense of capitalism in response to Sanders, and I thought she handled the Edward Snowden question well. Her attack on Sanders’ gun control record will probably play well with the liberal base, but probably won’t help her when she’s campaigning in rural Ohio. I also literally laughed out loud when she identified the Iranians as an “enemy” she is most proud of making. Given her record as secretary of state, such a contention is truly comical.
Which leads me to my final thought. I did not hear any of the Democratic presidential candidates, with the possible exception of Jim Webb, acknowledge the most important fact of the current state of international affairs under the Obama Administration. We, the United States, have no overarching strategy to deal with an increasingly perilous world. From Syria to Russia, Libya to Ukraine, and Iran to China, our foreign policy is in utter disarray. While the candidates spent an immense amount of time lamenting the Iraq War, and Sanders-Clinton engaged in a dispute on tactics in Syria, I did not hear any thoughtful answers delineating a comprehensive American foreign policy vision. Though this might be hard to obtain from Hillary Clinton, a senior official responsible for the first half of the dismal Obama Doctrine, Americans deserve an answer. Whereas the GOP presidential candidates are engaged in a robust debate on the practices and limits of American power abroad, the Democratic Party has yet to get past the “Don’t-be-Bush” mantra.
When watching presidential debates that help determine the next leader of the free world, we should recall the wise words of Henry Kissinger: “Leaders must invoke an alchemy of great vision. Those leaders who do not are ultimately judged failures.” In the upcoming debates and on the campaign trail, all presidential candidates should offer an actual vision of American foreign policy to a country devoid of one for far too long.