There Are Lots of Reasons Not to Like Hugh Hewitt

But one of the reasons I’ve always held a small place in my heart for the man is that he took the time a couple of years ago to run an eight part series with Thomas PM Barnett about Barnett’s books The Pentagon’s New Map and A Blueprint for Action. The interviews tend to be quite good, Hewitt advisedly sits back and let’s Barnett do most of the talking and each pience tended to be about thirty minutes, which is either a nice introduction to Barnett and his work or is a lovely add on to hvaing read the work in hearing Barnett apply it live on air interacting with Hewitt and callers.

Barnett has a new book out called Great Powers: America and the World After Bush and Hewitt has started up a new series of interviews to cover topics in the book. Parts one and two are currently up at Hewitt’s site with more to come in following weeks and I highly recommend you give them a listen, doing so will do a lot to explain my continued stance on some form of better articulated interventionism as Barnett has had a big influence on my foreign policy views.

Barnett is an admitted economic determinist, which is one place where he and I part ways, or at least diverge. It strikes me that assuming stability and prosperity will naturally follow in desperate regions via the spreading of  economic activity and globalization is asking your economics to do some pretty heavy lifting. As integral as the econmic plank is, I continue to see a lot of work that has to get accomplished through the cultural and political planks and that this work doesn’t necessarily follow from increased economic prosperity. I remember reading on Chris’ older blog how the class argument around Al Quaeda operative didn’t fly because many of them were middle class, educated, and relatively prosperous.  A certain level of economic prosperity certainly does change one’s perspective on the world, there’s no arguing that. But in discussing different portions of the world we have to bear in mind that we’re also dealing with deeply ingrained customs and traditions. Those elements of influence don’t just melt away in the face of economic gains, their influence may be shared more greatly with the influence of economics, but they remain influential to some degree. So I have a hard time just sort shoving them off to the side, if we could do that would Americans remain so deeply religious? 

Barnett’s seemingly cursory treatment of culture leads me to the concern that he skirts that fine neo-conservative line around nation-building in one’s own image that denies an important space for culture at our developmental table. My own formulation of foreign policy/interventionism tries hard to avoid that dangerous chasm. Which is not to say that I think Barnaett is in fact a neocon, he isn’t and vocally denies that conclusion, though recognizing how many come to such a shallow conclusion. Again, it becomes incredibly easy to pigeonhole someone based on even just one element of the political view. That Barnett is unwilling to give up on the formulationof an interventionism that is helpful makes him a prime candidate for neocon boxing and subsequent dismissal, his unabashed American exceptionalism cheerleading doesn’t help him in that regard either. But then in the same breathe, Barnett is adamant about spelling out the various ways in which Bush and Cheney lead the country badly astray and unrepentent about openly acknowledging how American foreign policy on Iraq was disasterously inaccurate and wrong headed. These are elements of admission in which most neo-conservatives simply aren’t willing to engage.

Part of the reason I like Barnett as much as I do is that like me, he isn’t really playing for anyone’s team, his eyes are on a much bigger prize that mere partisan posturing and in that regard he maintains a freedom to acknowledge where every player on the field is right and where they go wrong. The corollary to my point here about Barnett and my larger points of late bashing political labels is obviously that one can’t get very much done if one deems the luxury of rejecting membership on all teams as the highest political truth to be gaurded. At some point you have to decide what you believe in and pick the team that best represents those beliefs to join together with other relatively like minded people in a common effort of igniting change. At worst, my label bashing can be seen as essentially sitting the whole game out and remaining a passive recipient of others’ hard work and direction, or in short: apathy and lethargy the arch nemises of democracy.

I take those charges seriously and recognize that such a state could be a natural outcome of refusing to pick sides, but I don’t think it needs to be and my own belief is not really a complete abolition of political labels and teams, but rather a hope to see more free agents enter into the system. Barnett is to my mind a perfect example of how the politically free agent is able to positively impact the whole playing field in interesting ways. Rather than taking the position that you’re not on anyone’s team and condemning teams altogether, the politically free agent is free in fact to potentially be on anyone’s team at any point in time depending on the situation, what that team happens to be bringing to the table, and how those two elements hold in relation to one another. Neither does this necessarily make the politically free agent wholly situational in her/his politics; first principles will inform their view of the world (for Barnett it’s the power of economic prosperity and the potential good of globalization, broadly understood). But those first principles will not and can not inhibit the politcally free agent from exploring and appreciating perspectives from political teams that oppose his/her first principles. Ultimately, the first-mover for a politically free agent is the principle of communication and understanding, though judgement and condemnation are not removed from his/her wheelhouse, just more carefully wielded overall.  Barnett is a perfect example of such a free agent precisely because he can get invited on to a show like Hugh Hewitt’s and have a meaningful dialogue with Hewitt, who is a staunch neocon, identify areas of disagreement, but still illicit an impressive amount of respect from Hewitt. On another day; however, Barnett will be advising Democratic foreign policy experts and what the best course of action in terms of grand strategy might be, illiciting the same degree of respect that he was able to draw from the likes of Hewitt. Barnett is not devoid of beliefs and principles, and neither am I, but we actively cultivate a certain ambidexteriousness in politics so as to relate to the greatest number of people and see that flexibilty as a distinct advantage.

The interesting point that I’ve come to in this conception is that for all my expressed disdain of labels and teams and the like, they remain absolutely necessary in our political system as it currently stands. We’re not at a point yet where doing away with labels and parties would result in anything other than confusion and paralysis. One step further, wihtout those teams and labels in place, the politically free agent doesn’t have anything to do. The strength of a politically ambidexterous posture is the cross communication that that posture enables, but at this point wihtout parties or sides to cross-communicate with there isn’t anything to do and no way of generating any forward momentum. So my pushing against labels and parties as hard as I have is less about habouring the delusion that they will become dislodged and more about nudging their foundations so that perhaps a few more people consider the no-mans-land in between that offers little in the way of solidarity, but much in the way of exciting, if not unstructured, potential.

In short, it takes all types right now and the partisan posturing is a part of how we do politics, for good or for ill. We just need to get better at it and I happen to think that the politically free agents among us have a unique ability to help that process along. So I’ll go back to playing nice in the sandbox after some slighltly cantankerous posts, even if y’all do eat glue sometimes.

PS – sorry for beating the same drum for over a week, this was supposed to be a provocative partial defense of neoconservatism, but when I went to finish it up the above just came out. That neocon post will probably surface this weekend and I’ll happily take a flaying for it. Also, review of Barnett’s new book to surface on here before too long — just have to read it first.

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Tags | first principles, Hugh Hewitt, partisan politics, picking sides, politically free agent, Thomas PM Barnett