Sunday School 6/16/19

Two quick classroom visits today: CNN's State of the Union with Jake Tapper, and CBS' Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.  Those were two of the three conversations with South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who of course is running for president along with some 20-odd others on the Democratic side, including still-not-a-Democrat Bernie Sanders, which, well, you know how I feel about that.

Anyway -- let's see what Mayor Pete had to say. Several topics were addressed on both shows, so I'll incorporate both answers on those.

On the Democrats not having much of a consistent foreign policy over the past many years, he told Brennan

I think it's been difficult, even confusing, to figure out what our foreign policy is because Democrats became so absorbed in opposing whatever the Republicans were doing - now, often, rightly so. What the Republicans were doing often was terrible. But we got so sucked into that. 

...take the Iraq war, which I opposed as a student and continue to think was a terrible idea. We were so horrified by the way that democracy promotion was done at gunpoint then, that it nearly made our party into isolationists when actually we've often been the ones who believed in more international engagement. 

Turning that into what Dems need to do, he offered this to Tapper (and similarly to Brennan)

And so I think now is a moment, given that, in some ways, the politics around foreign policy have been scrambled for my entire adult life, I mean, really, ever since the end of the Cold War, that we establish a new set of foundations for how American values, American interests, and American relationships are going to interact with each other. 

On Trump's comments about accepting dirt on an opponent from a foreign government, listening to it first and maybe turning it over to the FBI, he Told Brennan, in part

We're talking about foreign interference in American politics. And by the way, this isn't hypothetical. This isn't theoretical. We were attacked by a hostile foreign power that decided they could damage America, destabilize America, by intervening in the election to help him win. And they did and he did, and now America's destabilized. 

He told Tapper that Trump's comments were "both unbelievable and all too believable" and that the answer is not hard.

If you get an offer of material help from a foreign government, you call the FBI. This shouldn't be difficult. This shouldn't be complicated. 

Both asked about pursuing prosecution of Trump after he's out of office. The main point Buttigieg made here, similarly in both interviews, is that no one is above the law, but that, as he told Brennan

I also believe that the last place you look for guidance on how to conduct a prosecution is to the Oval Office. The less our law enforcement and prosecution has to do with politics, the better. 

On a related note, Brennan asked about  a presidential pardon (Buttigieg is not a fan of the pardon being used in this circumstance), including whether Gerald Ford should have pardoned Richard Nixon.

You know, I don't know what I would have done in the 70s and that historical counterfactual, other than that I'm bothered by the possibility that public corruption went unpunished and the idea that that could happen in the future is equally problematic. 

On Iran the most interesting conversation was with Tapper. Buttigieg has a unique perspective among all the presidential candidates, and among many in Congress - he's a veteran. Here's what he told Tapper.

As somebody who felt five years ago, when I left Afghanistan, that I was one of the last troops leaving, and five years (later), notes that we're still there... And pretty soon you're going to be old enough to enlist and be sent over and not even been alive on 9/11...

I think we  have learned as a country in my lifetime just how hard it is to end a war. We'd better be working very hard to make sure we don't start one. 

Brennan asked about his position that we should rejoin the Iran nuclear deal, and pointed out that some of the arms provisions coincide with our election and the next president's inauguration. She asked what he would do.

Any negotiation is going to have to meet the needs and the realities of the moment. Unfortunately, the moment we're in is one where the United States' influence in this region has diminished because of the-- the way that we have withdrawn. So what we're going to have to do is re-engage with our partners, re-engage with anybody who has an interest in stability in the region and do whatever we can to once again meet the objective of stopping Iran from developing nuclear capabilities which is exactly what that deal was doing. Even this administration certified that that was the case.

Tapper asked about the border, mentioning this call-out in a NY Times op-ed:

 "In short, it is time for Congress to stop dithering and pass emergency funding to deal with this nightmare. Democrats are standing in the way of this. They don't agree with it."

His question? Was it possible that Democrats were putting politics above what the migrants need, and pressed Buttigieg on what needs to be done right now to deal with the emergency.

I'm not against directing more funds in order to help with the issue at the border. But I think part of the reason why there's such frustration and concern and even resistance among congressional Democrats is that it's not doing anything about the bigger problem.

 We have got a president who got elected on a promise to fix immigration, whatever that meant to him. And what we have seen is that all of the issues that were with us then are with us now, and issues at the border, including a humanitarian crisis, created by this president through cruel policies, like family separation, are only getting worse. 

Meanwhile, the one thing that would really help the issue of increased migration flows from Central America -- the words of one migrant, who said: "I'm not here to seek the American dream. I'm here because I'm fleeing the nightmare in Honduras." We're actually, under this president, seeing a threat to take funds away from stabilizing those Central American countries. We have got this completely upside down.

And measures that are designed to put out fires in the near term would be a lot more convincing if they were set up in the context of an actual immigration reform, which, by the way, if you're talking about Americans, people on both parties want to -- in both parties want to do it. If you're talking about Congress, not so much. 

And I think the real dark fact behind all of this is, if immigration were solved, if we had comprehensive reform, this administration could claim it as an achievement, but it's more useful to them as a crisis unsolved than it would be as an achievement if they actually did something.

 Interesting conversations, both of them.

See you around campus.