KEENE, N.H. - If you’ve been reading my coverage of the presidential race, you may have noticed that I pay particular attention to the music each candidate plays before a speech.
In Donald Trump’s case, the lineup is heavy on the Rolling Stones. He always wraps up with “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” as perceptive a political message as any rocker has ever proclaimed.
Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard likes to warm the audience up with the music of fellow Hawaiian surfer Jack Johnson.
Billionaire climate obsessive Tom Steyer, for whom there always seems to be a bad moon rising, leans toward Creedence Clearwater Revival.
Then there’s Pete Buttigieg, the former South Bend mayor who has ascended to the top of the Democratic field. When I saw him address a standing-room-only crowd at Keene State College the other day, I couldn’t help but notice that the sound system was playing a song with every bit as cynical a message about politics as that Stones song so beloved by Trump.
It was “Won’t Get Fooled Again” by the Who.
The lyrics by Pete Townshend describe a revolution in which “we’ll be fighting in the streets.”
The result?
“Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”
To put it another way: Regime-change wars rarely work out the way we want.
You kill Saddam, you get ISIS. You kill Khadafy, you get Benghazi.
And so on. There’s one candidate making that point in this primary, but it sure ain’t Mayor Pete. On this, as on just about every issue, the Rhodes scholar has been too clever by half, as the English like to say.
Just two days ago in this same building I heard Tulsi Gabbard declare that our involvement in Afghanistan is costing us $4 billion a month and we should just get the hell out.
(Check these poll numbers and ask yourself why Gabbard was kept out of the recent debate while rich-guy candidates Steyer and Andrew Yang were permitted to take part.)
Bernie Sanders also argues we should just get out of the Mideast.
But where does Buttigieg stand?
In an earlier debate, just after President Trump withdrew a small number of troops from northern Syria, Gabbard demanded to know if Buttigieg would end U.S. involvement in the regime-change war there. Here’s his reply:
“What we are doing -- or what we were doing in Syria was keeping our word. Part of what makes it possible for the United States to get people to put their lives on the line to back us up is the idea that we will back them up, too.
“When I was deployed, not just the Afghan National Army forces, but the janitors put their lives on the line just by working with U.S. forces. I would have a hard time today looking an Afghan civilian or soldier in the eye after what just happened over there.”
Buttigieg has also said he wants to end the war in Afghanistan. But when?
It’s hard to tell from his speech in Keene. Mayor Pete made a couple of remarks about foreign policy that could be interpreted in a number of ways.
One was that when it comes to foreign wars, Americans “should never be asked to go unless there’s no real alternative.”
Another was an observation that “My own life was changed by the orders to be sent to a foreign war issued by a decision made in the White House.”
Was Donald Trump in the White House when Mayor Pete was sent to Afghanistan? Nope. That was Barack Obama.
Buttigieg describes that in some detail in his 2019 auto-hagiography “Shortest Way Home: One Mayor’s Challenge and a Model for America’s Future.”
Here’s what he says about his Afghanistan tour in 2014:
“That May, President Obama finally made his drawdown announcement after weeks of rumors: The American troop strength would fall to ninety-eight hundred by the end of 2014, to be cut in half the year after that, and then out.”
It’s 2020 and we’re still bogged down in Afghanistan. But is pulling out after 19 years of war a “real alternative?”
I defy anyone to discern the answer from Buttigieg’s comments.
He is among the slickest politicians I’ve encountered, not just on foreign policy but on all issues.
But I’m a conservative. What do liberals think of the man who is emerging at the top of the Democratic presidential primary field?
As it happens, Current Affairs ran an excellent analysis of Buttigieg when his book came out last year. In it, Nathan J. Robinson wrote, “I don’t trust the type of people likely to appear on ‘40 under 40’ lists, the valedictorian-to-Harvard-to-Rhodes-Scholarship types who populate the American elite. … I don’t trust wunderkinds who become successful too early. Why? Because I am somewhat cynical about the United States meritocracy. Few people amass these kind of résumés if they are the type to openly challenge authority.”
That analysis works from a right-wing perspective as well.
Even better, in fact.
When Trump supporters rail against “the swamp,” this is exactly the sort of creature they envision.
But the TV anchors love someone who can convey what sounds like genuine emotion in a sound bite that is devoid of any substance.
And Democratic Party leaders need someone who will stop Sanders, a guy who goes after the Swamp from the left just as hard as Trump does from the right.
I would warn my liberal friends not to expect too much from Buttigieg. Every liberal I know wants to end these endless wars. But will they really end if Mayor Pete becomes President Pete?
Or does he just want to be the new boss?
That was certainly the case with Obama’s foreign policy.
Make sure you don’t get fooled again.
BELOW - KEEP THIS SONG IN MIND IF YOU EXPECT PETE TO PROMOTE PEACE:
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February 10, 2020 at 04:02AM
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Won’t get fooled again? Pete Buttigieg’s a smooth talker but good luck figuring out what he believes | Mulshi - NJ.com
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