Lincoln Mitchell

Blog

This page contains links to recent blogs by Lincoln Mitchell

Perry, Cain and Paul and the Future of American Foreign Policy

To a significant extent, the more interesting foreign policy developments in the election do not have much to do with either of the two men who are likely to be there party’s nominees. These developments may also have more bearing on 2016 than 2012. Nonetheless, at least three Republican candidates, Ron Paul, Rick Perry and Herman Cain have made statements, or taken positions on foreign policy that could prove important harbingers of the future of the foreign policy debate in the U.S.

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Democracy and Military Bases in Kyrgyzstan

The election of Almaz Atanbaev as president of Kyrgyzstan in what has been recognized by western observer groups and governments as a relatively free election has been generally viewed as a sign that democracy may have a future in Kyrygzstan. Atanbaev’s election also provides another example of how the spread of democracy and the short term goals of the U.S. are often in conflict.

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Ron Santo's Evolving Hall of Fame Candidacy

Ron Santo will appear on the Veteran’s Committee ballot for the Hall of Fame this year and has a good chance to be elected. Should Santo win election, it will be the second year in a row in which a favorite of more quantitatively oriented fans and writers will have been elected to the Hall of Fame. This will be good news for Lou Whitaker, Tim Raines and others. If I had a vote, I would also support the late Santo who was one of the best third baseman in the game when he was playing, is still among the very best ever to play that position and was a beloved announcer and community figure in Chicago during his post-playing days.

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Herman Cain and the Tea Party Legacy →

During recent weeks the Tea Party has only received media attention when it is being compared to Occupy Wall Street, but the Tea Party continues to have an influence on politics, particularly in the Republican primary for president. The big stories around sexual harassment charges against Herman Cain, as well as that candidate's bizarre statement of fealty to the Koch brothers, for example, are also part of the story of the Tea Party.

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Sometimes an Election is Just an Election

The recent election in Kyrgyzstan presents somewhat of a Rorschach test to observers of political development in Central Asia and democracy generally. The election of Almaz Atanbaev as Kyrgyzstan’s president is another chapter in the country’s political evolution and, not insignificantly, the first peaceful of transfer of power since Kyrgyzstan was part of the Soviet Union. This election was probably the best in recent Kyrgyz history and perhaps the best ever in post-Soviet Central Asia. For these reasons, it is possible to view democracy as moving forward in Kyrgyzstan, which may perhaps have an effect on the region more broadly.

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Occupy Wall Street and the Dirty Hippies Narrative →

This critique, which could be called the "dirty hippies narrative" is offensive and misleading, but it is also almost quaint, harkening back to a bygone era when it was considered notable if men wore hair past their collars or if women wore dungarees. What is perhaps most interesting about this narrative is that it demonstrates that even though the year is 2011, the Republican Party still seems to think that attacking the other side for how they dress, wear their hair and the like is both a legitimate, and more surprisingly, effective means of building political support.

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Tony LaRussa, Ron Washington and the World Series

The Cardinals victory in the World Series has sealed Tony LaRussa’s reputation as one of the most important managers in history and made his chances of being elected to the Hall of Fame even stronger. LaRussa has now won more regular season games than any manager other than Connie Mack and John McGraw, and is likely to pass McGraw next year. He is second only to Mack in total games managed. LaRussa is now tied for sixth most pennants won, and is one of only five managers to win six or more pennants for teams other than the Yankees. This Cardinal team was an extremely unlikely World Champion, but it is not clear that winning the 2011 World Series was LaRussa’s most impressive post-season accomplishment. In 2006, he won a World Series with another Cardinal team that had only won 83 regular season games.

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Obama, Occupy Wall Street and 2012 →

The Democratic Party finds itself in a different situation as the sitting Democratic president is running unopposed for the nomination and already has a sufficiently enormous lead in fundraising and organization that any primary challenger who would emerge at this point would be badly defeated. The Occupy Wall Street movement is wisely not even talking about running somebody against President Obama in the Democratic Party, but this would be about the best thing that could happen to the Obama campaign. If such a candidate were to emerge, Obama could move to the center now, run up a string of impressive primary victories and use his ample resources to marginalize the Occupy Wall Street, largely through attacking the credentials and credibility of whichever flawed candidate was supported by the Occupy Wall Street. This would put him in a strong position for November especially as once he secured his nomination Obama would then be able to use his resources to again court the activist wing of the party. Additionally, running somebody against Obama would, in of itself, erode much of the Occupy Wall Street movement's support because many liberals would see the movement as seeking to destroy President Obama and behaving counter-productively.

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U.S. Leaving Iraq with All Deliberate Speed

The U.S. is now planning to remove all its troops from Iraq by the end of 2011. This might mean that one of the most expensive, ill-conceived and destructive chapters in American foreign policy is now coming to a close. The decision to get out of Iraq could not have been an easy one. Fears of a growing Iranian influence in the region or the collapse of the young Iraqi state are legitimate. They are no longer, however, compelling reasons for the U.S. to remain in Iraq. If there was any guarantee, or even strong likelihood, that two, three or even five more years of U.S. involvement in Iraq would ensure that Iran’s influence would not grow in Iraq or that the Iraqi government would be stable and well-functioning, there would be a strong argument for staying in Iraq. The reality, that there is no way to know how much longer, or at what cost, the U.S. would need to stay in Iraq to achieve these goals, means that it is time to get out. More accurately, it means that it has been time to get out for a while.

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The Phillies, Red Sox, Yankees and the Big Market Blues

This year’s World Series will be the second in a row in which neither the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox nor Philadelphia Phillies will be playing. The 2011 payroll for each of these teams was over $160 million; and in the case of the Yankees, well in excess of that number. No other team spent even $140 million on payroll in 2011. The Texas Rangers and St. Louis Cardinals had the 11th and 13th highest payroll, with each spending between $90-$110 million assembling their pennant winning teams.

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Occupy Looks Forward, Tea Party Backward

The Tea Party is essentially a movement that is deeply conservative, not just in terms of its political ideology, but in its opposition to change. It is no coincidence that the faces at Tea Party events skew older and whiter than the American population, thus presenting a visual reinforcement for what is primarily a backwards-looking movement seeking to return to a largely imagined time of small government, economic security, and a less tolerant and diverse America. It is also not surprising that so much Tea Party vitriol is aimed at President Obama, who evokes hatred and fear among many Tea Partyers because he is such a powerful symbol of a changing America. Accordingly, the Tea Party is fundamentally a regressive movement with little ambition to move society forward.

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An End to One-Sided Class Warfare →

Republicans and other right wingers are not troubled by class warfare in the abstract, otherwise they would have said something during the last three decades when the political and financial leadership of the U.S., with the close support of the Republican, and too frequently, Democratic parties, have waged class warfare on the poor on behalf of the wealthy. Deregulation, cutting social programs and increasingly regressive tax structures have all been part of an effort to shift wealth from the poor and middle class to the wealthy. This kind of class warfare has been met with no concern at all from the right. When Republicans get upset about class warfare, what they are really angry about is that poor and working people are fighting back. That may be beginning now on Wall Street and elsewhere, leading to such concern from Cantor, Mitt Romney and other conservatives.

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The Occupy Wall Street Movement: Not a Moment Too Soon →

In this context, the Occupy Wall Street movement seems particularly notable. It is not yet entirely clear what the specific goals or demands of the Occupy Wall Street movement are, but that is neither a fair nor reasonable question to ask of a movement that appears to be, to a large degree, organic and genuine. The Occupy Wall Street movement appears to be a legitimate expression of the anger and frustration that many ordinary Americans have felt towards the leaders of the banking and finance sector, and the good treatment they have received from the federal government, despite driving the economy into the ground, causing millions to lose their homes, savings or jobs.

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Romney Still Trying to Have it Both Ways on Foreign Policy

“Trying to have it both ways, while running up massive debt” may not be the successful slogan for the Republican Party, but it would be accurate. The Republican refusal to see the obvious contradiction between preaching the need to balance the budget while advocating for policies that would increase the debt is neatly captured in Mitt Romney’s recent foreign policy speech.

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Hip Hip Jorge: Saying Goodbye to Posada and Placing Him Among the Yankee Greats

The question of whether or not Posada is one of the twenty greatest Yankees will have to be left to future, and longer, subway rides, but his place in the top 25 is reasonably secure. The same ambiguity around Posada’s place in Yankee history will probably surround his Hall of Fame candidacy, but there is no ambiguity around his role in the last four Yankee championships. If game five of the LDS was indeed Posada’s last game, he will be missed by all Yankee fans, whether hunched over their computers looking at numbers or cursing A-Rod while semi-conscious on the subway.

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Ten Years of War in Afghanistan

In the ten years since the war started, a lot has happened to the U.S. The threat of terrorism which was on everybody’s minds when the war started, while still real, is no longer something which ordinary Americans think about every day. However, the added security we confront in our daily lives has become a permanent part of life in the U.S. The U.S. is moving towards surrendering its role as the global hegemon as the world seems more strongly than ever to be moving towards multi-polarity. The U.S. has also experienced the most severe economic downturn since the great depression with widespread unemployment threatening to change life in America for years to come. Not surprisingly, the political polarization and vitriol, which was already a source of great consternation in 2001, has gotten worse in the last decade.

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The Trouble with the Moneyball Movie

The movie version of Moneyball, probably due to the necessity of building some kind of dramatic story, pays more attention to Beane and the tension between him and his scouts, rather than to the concepts which underlay Beane’s approach. The problem with this approach is that the movie suggests that Beane’s strategy won out over that of the scouts, thus allowing the A’s to succeed in 2003.

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Is Anybody Really Shocked by Rick Perry's Hunting Camp Controversy →

One of the most intriguing questions surrounding the word painted on a rock in Texas Governor Rick Perry's hunting camp is not whether or not the rock was painted over, or even whether or not the governor is a racist, but why the tone of so much of the media coverage of this story is one of such great, perhaps even genuine, surprise. Is anybody really shocked that a right wing governor who has never sought or received African American support, almost never sincerely said or done anything to suggest that racial equality is important to him and who has closely aligned himself with a movement whose members have frequently crossed over into overt racism, has a disturbingly high comfort level with racist words?

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Arab Spring Tests 'Relevance and Impact' of Democracy Assistance

This test of the relevance and the impact of democracy assistance is exacerbated by a growing concern in the U.S. and Europe about the value and cost of various aspects of foreign policy. Although, democracy assistance programs are not expensive at all, this alone is no longer enough to justify their continuation to ordinary citizens and legislators alike. Democratic outcomes in which western democracy assistance play a real and visible role at least somewhere in North Africa may be an high threshold, even an unrealistic goal for democracy assistance organizations, but that may be what it takes to rebuild confidence in this work and its value.

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The Arab Spring and the Future of Democracy Assistance

With regards to North Africa, western democracy assistance proved to be a minor player in the recent breakthroughs. Although democracy assistance organizations were active in Egypt and elsewhere in the months and years leading up to the Arab Spring, support for these organizations was outweighed by such a substantial degree by western support for the authoritarian regimes, that the west, and the U.S. in particular, has been broadly viewed in the region, probably accurately, as being responsible for keeping the old regime in place for so long rather than for helping accelerate its downfall.

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