The Success of Partisanship

Not to long ago, before the Democratic Presidential contest had become the Hilldabeast-Obamarama dogfight that it is now, I used to tune in and watch some of those old Democratic Debates, with all umpteen of the candidates, to give myself a good laugh. When I did that, no one was able to provide bigger laughs than New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, whose wildly (and in some cases, disturbingly) idealistic view of the world made him a ready source. The Governor was back on TV today, giving his endorsement to Barack Obama, and while watching him speak, I was given a nice chuckle or two and again reminded of his general, all-around stupidity.

At one point during this speech the Governor was talking about foreign policy, and he went into the standard Barack Obama talking point about how, after 8 years of W, the country needs someone who is a "uniter" and who can "repair America's image" in the rest of the world. Then, in order to prove his point, he harkened back to the Cold War, and talked about how, back then, we had this policy of Containment which, in his words, was not "Democrat or Republican, but American." In other words, in Gov. Richardson's mind, the Cold War was a time when the country never, ever, but never had partisan disagreements about foreign policy.

Right.

First of all, lets just get one simple thing straight - Containment was a Partisan policy, as it was created and first used by President Harry S Truman, a Democrat. Sure, it was later adopted by Republican Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon, but it was, originally, Truman's policy - something which shows you how stupid Richardson really is; as it would have been better, if he was going to praise Containment, to point out its roots in his own party.

Secondly, I find it incredibly ironic that Gov. Richardson, he of the 'I'll have us entirely out of Iraq in 30 days' (or whatever it was), would praise Containment. Afterall, it was fear of Communism spreading to the rest of Southeast Asia and LBJ's desire to contain it within North Vietnam that got us involved in the Vietnam War. And as we all know from the last 3+ years of Democratic talking points, Iraq is bad because it's Vietnam, and nothing in history was worse and more misguided, evil, stupid (etc., etc.) than American involvement in Vietnam. But hey, when you're Bill Richardson, why not come out and praise the policy that got us involved in a war which you feel is exactly like the 'misguided' one we're in now; it's not like the media is going to call you on it. Afterall, you're a minority and a Democrat - hell, you could probably join Eliot Spitzer in the prostitution scandal business and they would still try and avoid asking you questions that might be a bit too hard. But I digress...

The final point I'll make about the good Governor's dim-witted reference to Containment is the most important; and that is that, ultimately, for all the bi-partisan goodness that it may (or may not) have been, the policy of Containment failed. It was a failure because, in the end, the guy who won the Cold War, Ronald Reagan, won it not by sitting back and simply trying to 'contain' the Soviet Union but by calling it the "Evil Empire" and doing everything possible to defeat and destroy it. During the 1960's and 70's, something like 13 countries had become new Communist nations; but Reagan, with the Grenada invasion in 1983, began toppling Communist regimes. For decades we'd been told the Soviet Union was here to stay, Reagan told us it could be gone in our lifetimes.

Now, I could go on about how Reagan's foreign policy was different from Containment, but in doing so I (again) digress from my original point. You see, when Reagan was in office, implementing his new strategy for dealing with the U.S.S.R, the Democrats were kicking and screaming at every turn, and saying all sorts of nasty things about his intelligence along the way. Most importantly, however, they didn't believe what he was doing would work; meaning that they made Reagan's Cold War policy a partisan issue. And this brings us to the hillarity of Bill Richardson, who wants us to get excited about Containment, which didn't work, simply because it was 'non-partisan' and fully approved by the French - despite the fact that the evil, divisive partisan strategy was the one that ultimately won the War.

Makes for an ironic analogy to the present day - don't you think?