By Wes Pedersen
Here are five things to understand as we edge toward the mid-term election and a new year:
1. Advocacy. No matter what the final tallies are in the elections next month, Washington is not going to change. Business will be done as it has always been done– in the back rooms by lobbyists whose ranks will next year be bolstered by legislators defeated by the angry public.
The advocacy firms on K Street have been looking at the odds on wins and losses and putting down the names of any who might be useful additions to their staffs. It’s a bit like vultures circling overhead to pick a likely dinner, but it’s a method that has brought uncommonly good talent into the corporate advocacy fold over the years.
For many losers, defeat will be highly profitable. That’s the irony of the system. Former members of Congress can make more from their political experience out of office than they did in office. And irony again: a fair percentage of them will often be writing the bills that will come before their successors for consideration and due process. The lobbyists, not the posturing figures on C-Span, will be the real lawmakers.
Whatever the election tallies are next month, there will be plenty of work for lobbyists. There always is, regardless of presidencies, majorities, minorities and third-party scares.
2. Birth of a new agenda? If Republicans score as well as expected at the polls, the Obama agenda will go promptly into the dumpster and lobbyists will be busy writing new bills to benefit big-earner clients and the military, always a beneficiary of conservative administrations and Congresses.
The president will be taking fire not only from Republicans but from Democrats angry at him for blowing two years of promise and two years of their party’s future. It will not simply be legislative stalemate, it will be paralysis.
The White House temptation will be to attempt to push certain projects through by presidential fiat.
3. The business of business. The shaky economy has been an incentive killer for much of business. Despite government bailouts and rescue efforts, there is little real fire in the belly for gung ho-ism and innovation in the nation’s aging plants. Indeed, the latest statistics show the utilization rate of existing plants to be just 75 percent. Only a handful of new plants are being opened.
As the Wall Street Journal has it, it takes guts to be an entrepreneurial manufacturer these days, confronted, as he or she will be, by a jumble of trade policies, looming currency battles, higher domestic taxes and moves to tax foreign profits.
4. The scrutable East. China is out to win international respect. Manipulating its currency and invading the international markets is the equivalent of the Old Empire dragon breathing fire at foes and unbelievers. Beijing diplomats have on two occasions sought to gain face at home by trying to cause President Obama to lose face at formal international functions.
Beijing’s foreign trade influence is widening, with the Middle East and Africa eyed as future Chinese spheres of various degrees of influence.
Beijing is encouraging innovation in all fields. As a result, China this year has passed both the United States and Japan in the number of applications filed for patents. The Chinese not long ago were viewed internationally as master imitatators in manufacturing; they have metamorphosed into master innovators.
China has broadened its international propaganda efforts, and has strengthened its army and navy. It is determined to become a naval power and to that end has in the water a new atomic powered submarine. North Korea has sunk one South Korean ship, confident that it will have China’s backing in future adventures.
Obama is trying to play hardball with China, with no sign that Beijing is about to back off on its threats to the international economy. The president must be extremely careful to avoid any actions that could indicate a U.S. intention to cause China to lose face.
The U.S. wants eased entry into the vast market that is China. It can’t squeeze Beijing, which holds it in debtor thrall and is now virtually on a par with Washington as the world’s leading economic power and political power.
5. Afghanistan is lost. The Karzai government is selling out. It’s been holding secret sessions with the Taliban for the past year. The Taliban wants only a little – just a toe in the democratic regime of one of the Middle East’s most oily, duplicitous con men. In fact, it needs only wait until we finally haul brass out of there and go home. Then it will step in, take over, and defy us to return. That process is under way in Iraq.
Our 50,000 non-combat forces there are wearing the equivalent of a white flag, but they are still targets.
The truth, too, is that we cannot afford Afghanistan and Iraq any more. Barack Obama should have realized that when he took office two years ago. Conservatives are loathe to admit the failure of the two invasions launched by George W. Bush.
In a post-November climate, they will have to decide for or against continued funding for operations there.
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Wes Pedersen is a retired Foreign Service Officer and principal at Wes Pedersen Communications and Public Relations Washington, D.C. |