A Game-Extending Debate Whose Format Could Hurt Trump
by Peter Feaver
Some debate performances are game-changers, and some are game-enders. Most, however, are just game-extenders. Sunday’s much-anticipated mano a mano between former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders fell into the last category. Biden did not finish off Sanders —but as the front-runner, Biden did not have to. More importantly, Sanders did not inflict a mortal blow on Biden—and he really did need to do that to have any hope of changing the trajectory of the race. Now, barring some sort of coronavirus-induced surprise, tomorrow’s primaries are likely to further cement Biden’s grip on the nomination. Yet if Sanders is fixing to pull out of the race any time soon, he did not hint at that in the debate.
So the Democratic primary is likely to limp along for a few more weeks. President Donald Trump is the beneficiary of this, for every minute Biden has to position himself for the primary is a minute he does not get to position himself for the general election. The coronavirus lockdown could, in theory, provide a window of opportunity for Biden to refocus his campaign on Trump, but not if he has to spend the next few months going through the motions of finishing off the nominating contest. And woe betide him if he conveys the impression that he is just “going through the motions,” because that is one way Sanders could revive, phoenixlike, to be a threat at the convention.
In the meantime, while the debate was far more substantive than previous ones, it was not very revealing on foreign policy and national security—at least not revealing of any surprises. Sanders showed that he still can’t break free from the far left’s rigid double standard that blames the United States first while winking and nodding at what totalitarian regimes wrought in the previous century. Biden showed that he, like most Republicans and other Democrats, still cannot talk with candor and persuasion about Iraq. He needs to have a better explanation for his vote in Congress supporting the Iraq War, and former President Barack Obama’s administration’s role there, since this will be one of the most obvious lines of attack from the Trump team. For Biden, it won’t be enough merely to point out that Trump has mishandled Iraq as well—that is true, but it will only land if Biden can better explain what he has learned from several decades of playing a key role in managing Iraq affairs.
One final takeaway: Most observers seemed to agree that the no-crowd format made the debate more substantive and less of a carnival. I bet that scares the Trump campaign. Trump emphatically does not do well in such an atmosphere, and I doubt very much that his campaign would want to accept a format where Trump cannot play to a noisy hall. A shrewd move for the Democratic Party would be to insist on this format going forward. Even if they can only force Trump to accept it once, that could lay the trap for a game-changing moment in the general election.
Ironclad Commitments
by Dov Zakheim
Sen. Bernie Sanders was more passionate, but former Vice President Joe Biden held his own. Biden made two ironclad commitments: to name a woman as vice presidential candidate, and to appoint a black woman to the Supreme Court. Sanders made no commitments to speak of. As often as Sanders harped on his usual targets—the banks, the oil companies, the drug companies, the insurance industry—Biden invoked his years with Obama.
Both men showed their age; neither could refrain from dredging up his opponent’s decades-old votes and statements. Both studiously avoided addressing their failures in attracting key constituencies: for Biden, young people and Hispanics; for Sanders, suburban voters and African-Americans. Biden demonstrated his superior experience in matters of national security and foreign policy. Sanders tried to skirt those subjects, except when attacking “authoritarians.” After two hours of back and forth, it is unlikely that either man changed anyone’s mind.
Biden’s Lead is Good News for Trade
For free traders, former Vice President Joe Biden’s likely nomination is a relief. While Sen. Bernie Sanders and President Donald Trump are unapologetic protectionists, Biden’s record, while mixed, is generally positive. Given the increasing support free trade enjoys among the American public, Biden has an opening to clearly litigate the case against Trump.
First as a senator and then as vice president, Biden supported every major trade initiative—including the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993 and the creation of the World Trade Organization the following year. In 2000, Biden voted in favor of normalizing trade relations with China, paving the way for China’s entry into the World Trade Organization. As vice president during the administration of former Barack Obama, Biden supported the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
To be sure, Biden’s record isn’t perfect; he voted against the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement, and for quotas on steel imports. There were other votes that would normally have given free traders pause, but compared to the sprint toward 1930s-style protectionism under Trump, they are minor apostasies.
Trump will surely point to Biden’s support of NAFTA and trade with China as a reason voters in the Midwest can’t trust the former vice president.
On NAFTA, Biden has no reason to be defensive. In 2016, the U.S. International Trade Commission found that NAFTA produced small but significant economic gains. Not only that, Trump’s much-advertised replacement for NAFTA, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, is only a minor rewrite of its predecessor.
China is more complicated. China’s entry into the World Trade Organization was a good idea and made sense at the time. It remains a positive development: Beijing has cut tariffs since joining the World Trade Organization, and the United States has more influence over China’s trade policy and practices now that Beijing participates inside the system. All is not well with U.S.-China commercial relations, though. Much of the concern stems from actions taken by Beijing in recent years, including abuse of intellectual property, forced technology transfer as a condition of doing business in China, theft of trade secrets, massive industrial subsidies, and cyberintrusions into commercial networks.
Now is the time for a responsible hawkishness toward China’s economic practices. Even after the so-called “phase one” deal between the United States and China, tariffs now cover about 70 percent of imports from China with an average rate 6.3 times higher than when the trade war began.
By abandoning negotiations toward a Pacific trade agreement and levying tariffs on imports from China, Trump’s irresponsible policies have weakened the United States economically and hurt its ability to influence Beijing’s commercial practices. Biden will need to fully flesh out a China policy, but his instincts toward multilateral engagement are vastly superior to erecting an “economic Iron Curtain,” as former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson dubbed the Trump tariffs.
The Candidates Are Ignoring Other Countries’ Lessons
The Democratic presidential debate last night led with the coronavirus crisis and what the United States should do about it. Yet even as the United States has struggled with a timely response to the pandemic, the candidates did not much address the valuable lessons offered by other countries.
South Korea stabilized its outbreak with free, easily accessible, and unlimited testing, administering more than 250,000 tests at a pace of up to 20,000 per day. As a result, the number of new cases there peaked on March 3, and has generally trended downward ever since. Seoul has apparently turned the corner without widespread lockdowns. Hong Kong and Taiwan focused on screening and quarantining travelers from coronavirus hot spots, as well as social distancing, and have managed to keep the rate of infections per capita down to a fraction of that reported by China. Singapore used technology and big fines to enforce quarantines. China exercised the state’s immense power to enforce massive lockdowns. While the data from China is less authoritative than from South Korea, new cases appear to have peaked in mid-February, after an initially slow response. One small indicator beyond the numbers: At the moment, China is the only country in the world where Apple stores are open. So much for the states that appear to be coping.
For now—and much remains to play out—the biggest failures appear to be in Italy and Iran, the two worst-hit countries after China, as measured by the total number of infections. There, the number of new cases appears still to be accelerating. They also have much higher infection rates per capita than those reported in China. Moreover, there is reason to believe that the numbers reported in Iran substantially understate the true extent of the outbreak. What both nations’ responses seem to have in common is a failure to act quickly.
Once we are past the crisis stage of dealing with the pandemic, various nations’ strategies will be compared to infer best practices. Important lessons will be learned. Perhaps more important, though, will be the debate about how differing political systems responded. Were China and Russia more successful, or Europe and United States? Did democracy or dictatorship do better? Do transparency and civil liberties matter? Or is it optimal when unlimited state power is put to the purpose of public health? The coronavirus outbreak is likely so momentous that it will be the leitmotif of the debates sparked by China’s rise over which political systems are most effective at advancing the health and prosperity of their people, and so which should be emulated. The pandemic is, therefore, a matter of international security on several levels, and its consequences will last far longer than the outbreaks.