Foreign fallacy

I watched the Obama - Romney debate last night on foreign policy.   I didn't catch onto Romney's strategy until I listened to the PBS commentators afterwards:  Romney was trying to be calm, agreeable,  less aggressive, even the hurt puppy, to appeal to women.  He wanted to come across as someone who isn't scary, isn't ready to go to war at the drop of a hat, in order to appeal to women who evidently worry more about that than men.  (And perhaps that's true).

I'm voting for Obama anyway, but I have to say I thought he came across as more personally connected to foreign policy than to some of the other issues they've discussed.  (Except health care).  I was thinking about why it appeared this way to me, and I've concluded this:  So much of the news in the last four years has been economic:  to tax or not, to bail out or not, to spend or not, the price of houses, how many people are out of work, the percentage of increase or decrease in unemployment and home sales . . . numbers, numbers, numbers.    This isn't completely the case, of course:  some news stories focus on human examples of these economic realities.  But more than ever in the last four years, I find I can't listen to the news on the radio for more than 5 or 10 minutes, because it's so much about numbers and financial institutions and strategy.

Obama seemed very personally connected to foreign policy last night, because he's been living it the last four years.  He's been living all the issues--economic, environmental, health care--but health care is (at least in the news, often when it's discussed) completely intertwined with money, too.

But, as I was pondering why the president seemed to take all the issues so personally last night, why he glowered at Romney as he realized that Romney was just going to repeat everything he said about foreign policy because he didn't want to appear scary--as I was thinking about this, I realized that foreign policy, more directly than any other issue a president tackles, involves people dying.  President Obama--anyone who's been in that office after four years--has seen people die on his watch, die as a direct result of him sending them to war, or of the results of what other countries do because of our relationships with them.  People dying is not necessarily the US's fault, and there's not necessarily anything the president can do to prevent our citizens, our soldiers, or other countries' citizens from dying, but that's very often what the stakes are in foreign policy.

I thought of all the students and faculty I've worked with, from the Middle East and all over the world, and how they would react to the unmistakable assumed superiority of the US that both candidates projected.   How we arbitrarily say that Iran must never have nuclear weapons and Pakistan, who already has 100, can't have any more.  Nobody mentioned India, an enormous presence (and nuclear-armed too, right?)  I understand that these issues aren't so simple; that the nuclear arms race was called a race for a reason, and I can accept arbitrariness in who's nuclear-armed and who isn't.  

But do WE always get to decide?  Really, the US gets to be the decider of these things?  I guess a candidate for the US presidency can't say otherwise.   And if I'm honest, having grown up in this country it's hard for me to imagine the US as not having some kind of major influence in the world.  I just wish it didn't have to be voiced in such starkly simple and arbitrary terms; that Obama didn't have to say, "If I am president, Iran will not have a nuclear weapon."  And Romney to say "Me too, and I'll even cripple them some more."

At least, to me, the debate brought out Obama's decisiveness in an area of experience that Romney just doesn't have.   In that way, it seems a bit unfair even to debate foreign policy, when one of the debaters has been in charge of it for the last four years.   It made me think of the sobering influence a US president has over the lives of people.  That foreign policy means life or death at times, and it's complex and messy and important.

Teenage passions

I'm a college counselor at an international school.   My students apply to colleges/universities in the US, Canada, and UK.   If you've attended any admissions information sessions or applied to college in the US in the last 10 - 15 years, you've probably been urged to tell colleges about your "passions."   For colleges with a selective admission process--that is, who require more than rigorous classes/high grades/strong test scores--they distinguish between students based on what makes them interesting.   Interesting in the context of their particular campus, to be sure--but increasingly, it's the student with a "passion" for an instrument or a cause or a subject (multiply that times 10 for a sport) who is "interesting," rather than the classic "well-rounded" applicant.

When I first started working as a college counselor almost 10 years ago, I may have used those words:  "Tell them about your passion."  Eventually I stopped doing that because it began to sound trite, to ring hollow.  To me, it assumes that everyone who's seventeen or eighteen is passionate about something, and that if you're not, then you're not okay.  It even sounds like that to me, 30 years older than my students.   I did have a passion when I was a senior in high school--music, specifically playing violin and flute--but  even though I applied to a couple of music schools, I don't think I ever said "I'm passionate about playing violin"  to anyone.   I said I wanted to be concertmaster in a major orchestra someday, which was much more recklessly ambitious, but I don't think I would have ever called playing violin or flute or singing in ensembles a passion.

I suppose that concept, as a catchphrase for college-admission cachet, is relatively new, developing as more students apply to college and more students apply to more of the same selective colleges.

In the last four years--since I've worked at a school that teaches the French national education system--I've noticed more keenly a blank stare or a whisper of fright across a student's face when an application, or a university rep, has asked a student to describe a passion.  I'm not sure it's a concept that is contemplated as much in other cultures as it is in US culture.   We toss around the word "passion"  freely here in the US, without embarrassment (not a love-of-another person passion, but a consuming drive for an activity or subject), as if we should feel free to go around telling people we have a passion for reading Faulkner or rowing or blogging about sports.   If it's truly a passion, shouldn't it be obvious to others?  Do we have to name it?

Well, of course we have to name it when its importance is implied, or directly asked about, on a college application.   I find that many of my students have a difficult time naming a passion, and I'm on their side where that's concerned.  Their school day is consumed with classes from 8:30 - 5:30 on many days, working toward huge end-of-2-year exams whose results can determine a lot of your life.   This is the case in many, if not most, other countries.  

I put this out there to wonder if I'm right, whether the concept of having a "passion"  for something is a particularly American one . . . or if even naming something as a passion is a very American thing to do.  I don't know.

What if I just want to be President of the United States?

We hear every day, and we have heard for the last two years, about Mitt Romney's changing positions. He wants to protect a woman's right to control her body; the same day, he says he is firmly pro-life.  President Obama modeled his health-care bill after the Massachusetts plan that Romney implemented when he was governor, yet Romney would repeal "Obamacare"  on Day One of his presidency (except for the parts that everybody likes, such as denying coverage for pre-existing conditions).

I'm sure it's no secret that I'm an Obama supporter and generally vote blue.  I am not posting this to try to slam Romney, believe it or not.

While I will add that his aggressive behavior to Jim Lehrer during the first debate, and his "47 percent" comments, have not endeared him to me, my overriding impression of Romney is that he just wants to be president.  Period.  He wants to be president of the United States, and that desire seems to be his substance.  I respect his devotion to his church and family, and I can respect his ambition.  But after two years--even four years, remembering him from the 2008 Republican primaries-- all I can say I really know about a Romney presidency is that he wants to be president.

Now, normally showing that you're "hungry" for a job is a good thing.  In fact, the first time I ever realized the similarity of running for president to a 2-year job interview was in 2000, the first time George W. Bush ran.   I got the distinct impression that he didn't want the job he was interviewing for.  To me, he didn't have that fire in his belly, that sense of urgency that usually comes through in a candidate's interviews and speeches.   I had never noticed that before in any presidential candidate.

So, I keep saying to myself, it should be a good thing that Governor Romney wants so badly to be president of the United States.  Usually wanting a job means you'll take it seriously and you know why you want it, what the job will satisfy in you and what you want to accomplish in the job.

But there's something missing.  I still have no idea why he wants to be president, why it matters to him.      Yes, on many--perhaps most-- days during the campaign he has expressed differing philosophical views about the role of government than Obama.  (In the debate last week, they suddenly sounded more alike).    Maybe he does believe in less government, and maybe a hell of a lot less federal government in people's lives, than Obama does.

I realize that, as I started this post, I said I wasn't going to harp on Romney's changing positions.   But I think that's why my impression of him is what it is.   I don't know what's at his core.  If he is elected, I have no idea what would or would not change in the first month, three months, six months, one year, of a Romney presidency.  I can't recall ever feeling this way about a candidate.


Mitt Romney, more than anything, puzzles me.  And he points out a conundrum that is larger than himself.   What does it mean that a candidate just wants to be president?  If that's the case for Romney, is that enough to make him an effective president and a serious, circumspect leader?  Is it enough just to really, really, really want the job?