Richard Epstein is a professor at the University of Chicago Law School. I have known him for some time, but not well. My wife has a long relationship with Epstein and his family. One of the wonderful things about living in Hyde Park is the people you get to know. It's a neighborhood where the people you know from work, and the playground, and synagogue overlap, and you come to like people who you never imagined you would.
Epstein recently wrote an essay for Stanford's Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank where he holds an appointment. The essay attempts to build a connection between a recent piece in the New York Times documenting and explaining Derek Jeter's decline and what Epstein views as the Obama-assisted decline of America. As a resident of New York for 5 years during the prime of his career, I came to love Jeter. America could do a lot worse than aspire to be Derek Jeter. He plays the game with heart, he makes other players around him better, and he never sacrifices team objectives for individual statistical goals. He also dates super models and movie stars. I'd rather be Jeter than Adam Dunn. A slugger who no longer slugs and is batting .170 for the White Sox right now, consistently stranding runners and killing rallies.
But, let me get to my point. For a smart man, Epstein's view is myopic. When Epstein picks out the things that "nations that are in their prime" do, his choices are consistent with his ideological view. "They run a strong military...worry about the maintenance of a simple tax system with low rates...they praise their inventors, authors, and innovators."
But historically, "successful" nations have also invested in education, have leveled income and status inequalities, and have been careful to build international stability, rather than bully other societies into reluctant acquiescence. Think about post-war Germany and Japan. Or America, during our long climb to world dominance. And by the way, who doesn't praise inventors, authors and innovators? Even the left likes inventors, authors and innovators.
Epstein steers the analogy to Jeter to suggest Obama, like an aging athlete, is doing a lot of little adjustments that won’t slow our decline: “We are told that we must constantly have stimulus programs to "jump start" the economy so that it can return to its productive ways. But what we get are "cash for clunkers," short-term subsidies to new home buyers, extended unemployment benefits, and an endless set of home loan forgiveness and loan extension programs.”
The reason, though, that we get these less-than-enough programs is because Republicans and corporate-owned Democrats won’t let us adopt system-transforming reforms. We pump money into the system – and rescue Wall Street, by the way, which Epstein doesn’t mention – to save it, not reform it. But the system is corrupt and immoral and damaged. We hobble along like an aged athlete not because of the things Obama has done, but because our economy and system of regulation and schools haven’t kept up with the new, younger players on the field and the new dynamics of the game.
The thing that bothers me the most about his essay is his false and mistaken statements on American foreign policy under Obama:
Here is not the place to defend at length the decision of the United States to intervene militarily in Iraq and Afghanistan. My own sense is that the risk of destabilization coming from these two countries required some military action, not only for humanitarian reasons, but also to prevent them from operating as bases for spreading mayhem ever closer to Europe and the United States. But what really matters is how that intervention takes place. A strong and confident nation declares that the tasks it begins are the tasks that it will end successfully. It is willing to commit major resources to these ventures today without caveats and hesitation….But this is precisely the course that President Barack Obama has chosen to pursue in Afghanistan. His pre-appointed deadline for withdrawing troops offers our enemies the luxury of choosing their optimal strategy….Unfortunately, the Obama administration dismisses our military involvement in Afghanistan as a misadventure.
That last sentence is absurdly false. From the start, as a candidate and throughout his Presidency, Obama has believed that the war in Afghanistan was worth fighting, and in fact he escalated the conflict, sending in more troops than George Bush had in place. Even Obama's announced reductions will result in more boots on the ground than Bush had when he left office. I was living in New York in 2001 when we first invaded Afghanistan. I said then that our invasion of Afghanistan would only result in destabilizing Pakistan. I think I was right about that. I think that’s what we see now. And Obama sees that as well: one of the reasons he wants to maintain our presence in Afghanistan is to keep an eye on an increasingly more dangerous Pakistan. What Obama believes – and he is right about this – is that the Bush administration walked away from Afghanistan, pursuing a misguided, unnecessary war in Iraq. Epstein is wrong that “destabilization” in Iraq required U.S. military action. That was the fiction the Bush administration promoted, through phony intelligence and a cynical manipulation of the public’s fear and ignorance. In fact, it was Bush, not Obama, who failed to commit to U.S. action in Afghanistan (to use Epstein’s words) “without caveats and hesitation.” Donald Rumsfeld thought he could fight a war in Afghanistan without committing sufficient troops to hold major regions of the country or block Osama Bin Laden’s escape into Pakistan. Then he reduced our forces in Afghanistan to begin a war in Iraq, again without sufficient forces to hold major cities, or preserve law and order. The Bush administration’s war strategies in Afghanistan and Iraq were hesitant and full of caveats and equivocation. That's a primary reason we have been at war in Afghanistan for ten years. If Epstein is going to be angry at anyone for hesitancy and failure of resolve in Afghanistan it should be Bush and Rumsfeld. Not Barack Obama. As Obama pulls out of Afghanistan, Epstein accuses him of "running scared." In reality, he is making pragmatic choices that preserve operational latitude, are guided by circumstances on the ground, and reflect the mess he was handed by the Bush administration. Fighting a perpetual war in Afghanistan, draining our military strength in the process, and spending resources better spent at home to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, reinvigorate our schools, and put people back to work is a surer path to national decline than anything Epstein points to.
