Tag Archives: republican

United States

How the US government shutdown looks to the rest of the world

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The People’s Republic of China doesn’t do government shutdowns. USflag

Neither does India, the world’s largest democracy.  Neither does Russia nor Japan nor the European Union.

The crisis that the United States faces over the next month — the nearly certain federal government shutdown set to begin on Tuesday and the US government’s potential sovereign default if the US Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling — is almost completely foreign to the rest of the world.

The vocabulary of the government budget crises that have sprung from divided government during the presidential administration of Barack Obama — from ‘sequester’ to ‘fiscal cliff’ to ‘supercommittee’ — is not only new to American politics, it’s a vocabulary that exists solely to describe phenomena exclusive to American politics.  As the Republican Party seems ready to force a budgetary crisis over the landmark health care reform law that was passed by Congress in 2010 and arguably endorsed by the American electorate when they reelected Obama last November over Republican candidate Mitt Romney, the rest of world has been left scrambling to understand the crisis, mostly because the concept of a government shutdown (or a debt ceiling — more on that below) is such an alien affair.

If, for example, British prime minister David Cameron loses a vote on the United Kingdom’s budget, it’s considered the defeat of a ‘supply bill’ (i.e., one that involves government spending), and a loss of supply would precipitate his government’s resignation.  If Italian prime minister Enrico Letta loses a vote of no confidence in the Italian parliament later this week, his government would also most likely resign.  In some cases, if cooler heads prevail, their governments might form anew (such as the Portuguese government’s reformation earlier this summer following its own crisis over budget austerity).  Otherwise, the country would hold new elections, as will happen later this month in Luxembourg after the government of longtime prime minister Jean-Claude Juncker fell over a secret service scandal.

So to the extent that a government falls, in most parliamentary systems, the voters then elect a government, or a group of parties that then must form a government, and that government must pass a budget and, well, govern.  Often, in European and other parliamentary systems, the typically ceremonial head of state plays a real role in pushing parties together to stable government.  Think of the role that Italian president Giorgio Napolitano played in bringing together both Letta’s government and the prior technocratic government headed by Mario Monti.  Or perhaps the role that the Dutch monarch played in appointing an informateur and a formateur in the Dutch cabinet formation process until the Dutch parliament stripped the monarchy of that role a few years ago.

But wait! Belgium went 535 days without a government a few years ago, you say!

That’s right — but even in the middle of that standoff, when leaders of the relatively more leftist, poorer Walloon north and the relatively conservative, richer Flemish south couldn’t pull together a governing coalition, Flemish Christian Democrat Yves Leterme stayed on as prime minister to lead a caretaker government.  The Leterme government had ministers and policies and budgets, though Leterme ultimately pushed through budgets that reduced Belgium’s budget deficit.  No government workers were furloughed, as will happen starting Tuesday if congressional members don’t pass a continuing resolution to fund the US government.

To the north of the United States, Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper caused a bit of a constitutional brouhaha when he prorogued the Canadian parliament in both 2008 and 2009 on the basis of potentially political considerations.  In Canadian parliamentary procedure, prorogation is something between a temporary recess and the dissolution of parliament — it’s the end of a parliamentary session, and the prime minister can prorogue parliament with the consent of Canada’s governor-general.  Harper raised eyebrows among constitutional scholars when he hastily prorogued the parliament in December 2008 after the center-left Liberal Party and the progressive New Democratic Party formed a coalition with the separatist Bloc Québécois in what turned out to be a failed attempt to enact a vote of no confidence against Harper’s then-minority government.

The governor-general at the time, Michaëlle Jean, took two hours to grant the prorogation — in part to send a message that the governor-general need not rubber-stamp any prime ministerial requests for proroguing parliament in the future.

Harper again advised to prorogue the parliament from the end of December 2009 through February 2010, ostensibly to keep parliament in recess through the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, though critics argued he did so to avoid investigation into his government’s knowledge of abusive treatment of detainees in Afghanistan.  Again, however, proroguing parliament didn’t shutter Canadian government offices like the US government shutdown threatens to do.

Moreover, in parliamentary systems, it’s not uncommon for a government to survive a difficult vote with the support of the loyal opposition.  But in the United States, House speaker John Boehner has typically (though not always) applied the ‘majority of the majority’ rule — or the ‘Hastert’ rule, named after the Bush-era House speaker Denny Hastert.  In essence, the rule provides that Boehner will bring for a vote only legislation that’s supported by a majority of the 233 Republicans in the 435-member House of Representatives, the lower congressional house (Democrats hold just 200 seats).  So while there may be a majority within the House willing to avoid a shutdown, it can’t materialize without the support of a majority of the Republican caucus.  That means that 117 Republicans may be able to hold the House hostage, even if 116 Republicans and all 200 Democrats want to avoid a shutdown.

Realistically, that means that anything that Boehner can pass in the House is dead on arrival in the US Senate, the upper congressional house, where Democrats hold a 54-46 advantage.

There’s simply no real analog in the world of comparative politics.  Even the concept of a debt ceiling is a bit head-scratching to foreign observers — US treasury officials say that the government will face difficulties borrowing enough money to achieve the government’s obligations if it fails to lift the debt ceiling of $16.7 trillion on or before October 17.

Denmark stands virtually alone alongside the United States in having a statutory debt ceiling that requires parliamentary assent to raise the total cumulative amount of borrowing, but it hasn’t played a significant role in Danish budget politics since its enactment in 1993:

The Danish fixed nominal debt limit—legislatively outside the annual budget process—was created solely in response to an administrative reorganization among the institutions of government in Denmark and the requirements of the Danish Constitution. It was never intended to play any role in day-to-day politics.

So far, at least, raising Denmark’s debt ceiling has always been a parliamentary formality, and it was lifted from 950 billion Danish kroner to 2 trillion Danish kroner in 2010 with support from all of Denmark’s major political parties.

Contrast that to the United States, where a fight over raising the debt ceiling in summer 2011 caused a major political crisis and major economic turmoil, leading Standard & Poor’s to downgrade the US credit rating from ‘AAA’ to ‘AA+.’  The Budget Control Act, passed in early August 2011, provided that the United States would raise its debt ceiling, but institute a congressional ‘supercommittee’ to search out budget cuts.  When the supercommittee failed to identify budget savings before January 2013, it triggered $1.2 trillion in ‘sequestration’ — harsh across-the-board budget cuts to both Democratic and Republican priorities that took effect earlier this year, though they were originally designed to be so severe so that they would serve as an incentive for more targeted budget adjustments.

Despite the fact of the dual crises facing the US government in October, the yield on the 10-year Treasury note has actually declined in recent weeks, indicating that while US political turmoil may spook global investors, they still (ironically) invest in Treasury notes as a safe haven:

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Continue reading How the US government shutdown looks to the rest of the world →

Iran, United States

Obama-Rowhani call a historic first step in securing better US-Iranian relations

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Today, for the first time since 1979, the leaders of the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran held a bilateral discussion when US president Barack Obama called Iranian president Hassan Rowhani to discuss a potential solution to the international stalemate over Iran’s nuclear energy program.USflagIran Flag Icon

It wasn’t the handshake that everyone thought might have been possible earlier this week in New York at the United Nations General Assembly, but it’s still a remarkable step — and could result in real movement between Iran and the ‘P5 + 1’ countries over the future of the Iranian nuclear program and crippling UN sanctions.

It’s important to remember that there’s a long history of misfires on US-Iranian relations, with former Iranian presidents like Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammed Khatami making overtures to the United States that went unrewarded — everything from Iranian assistance to Bosnian fighters in the 1990s to Iranian assistance to bring the Northern Alliance to support the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

Even Rowhani, as Iran’s first nuclear negotiator in 2003, was burned when he offered a moratorium on further Iranian enrichment.  That concession led to nothing but the empowerment of anti-American hardliners, who came to power with the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president in 2005.

It follows a relationship that, even before the 1979 revolution that brought Shiite ayatollahs to power in Iran, was troubled — Iranians, even today, haven’t forgotten the role that the United States played in toppling former Iranian prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953 and boosting the repressive regime of the Iranian shah through the 1979 revolution.

As I wrote shortly after Rowhani’s staggering election as president in June 2013:

The Obama administration’s challenge is to forge a strategic path with Iran’s new president that undermines the hardliners in both Iran and in the United States.  Whether Iran likes it or not, it has to demonstrate to the world that it’s not pursuing clandestine nuclear weaponry.  But whether the West likes it or not, it must ultimately acknowledge that Iran — a sovereign nation of 75 million people — has a right to its own nuclear energy program on terms that respect the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic, and Obama will have to back up his weekend olive branch with substantive alms that show the United States is serious.

The discussion follows a potentially even more historic meeting between US secretary of state John Kerry and Iran’s even more moderate, English-speaking foreign minister Javad Zarif (pictured below) over a potential breakthrough in the standoff over Iran’s nuclear energy program.

KerryZarif

One telephone call between presidents and one meeting between foreign ministers doesn’t exactly mean that Iran and the United States will have solved all of their issues.  Rowhani’s reluctance to meet with Obama in New York earlier this week demonstrates that, while Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei (who remains the most powerful leader in Iran) may have blessed Rowhani’s diplomatic initiatives, strong opposition remains within the Islamic Republic, including within the conservative ‘principlist’ camp and from within the Revolutionary Guards.  The Obama administration will also face opposition — from its Middle Eastern ally Israel (which boycotted Rowhani’s largely conciliatory speech to the UN on Monday) and from neoconservative hawks from within the Republican Party in the United States.

But there’s a deal here: the United States doesn’t want to go to war with Iran, Iran doesn’t necessarily want nuclear weapons (and it especially wants Israel to give up its not-so-secret nuclear weapons) and Iran desperately wants an end to the sanctions that have harmed its economy.

This week’s diplomatic advances also follow the surprisingly moderate response from Iran over the Syrian chemical weapons crisis, even as the United States was considering a unilateral strike Bashar al-Assad’s regime at the time:

Although Iran has become a pariah state in recent years over its nuclear energy program (and the corresponding US and European fear that Iran is trying to develop a nuclear weapons program as well), many Iranians were the victims of the last major chemical weapons attack in the Middle East when Iraqi president Saddam Hussein deployed mustard gas and sarin against Iran during the Iraq-Iran war of the 1980s — with the knowledge and acquiescence of the United States, which wholeheartedly supported Iraq in the 1980s.

Rowhani made clear through his presidential Twitter feed this week that he condemned the use of chemical weapons, in Syria or elsewhere.

Rowhani, a former Rafsanjani aide who united both the moderate camp and Khatami’s more liberal camp (including the ‘Green movement’ supporters from the contested 2009 election), was elected in large part for the perception that he could negotiate an end to international sanctions that have crippled Iran’s economy.  He handily defeated five other challengers to win a first-round victory in the June election, including two principlists — Iran’s former hardline nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili and populist (and popular) Tehran mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf:

Continue reading Obama-Rowhani call a historic first step in securing better US-Iranian relations →

Germany, United States

That ‘transcending ideology’ thing from Obama 2008? Angela Merkel did it. Obama hasn’t.

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Last Sunday’s election wasn’t just a victory for the German center-right — it was a very personalized victory for Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, who will become just the third postwar chancellor to serve three terms.*  USflagGermany Flag Icon

Germans largely saw Merkel as the only viable chancellor candidate (sorry, Peer Steinbrück!), and they flocked to support Merkel for steering Germany largely unscathed through a global financial crisis and a subsequent eurozone crisis in an export-oriented economy that’s still growing and producing jobs for Germans.  They admire the fact that she’s steered the eurozone through the worst of its sovereign debt crisis and avoided the single currency’s implosion, all while tying bailouts for Greece and other Mediterranean countries to austerity and reform measures that would make more profligate countries (like Greece) more ‘German’ in their approach to state finances.

But beyond the infantilizing ‘Mutti’ meme or the idea that Merkel represents a ‘safe pair of hands,’ she has won over many Germans because she’s been such a pragmatic and non-ideological leader.  Though Merkel leads the ostensibly center-right Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands (CDU, Christian Democratic Party), it’s really hard to know what the CDU stands for these days other than the continuity of another Merkel government — and that’s likely to pose a difficult challenge for Merkel’s successor in 2017 or 2021 or whenever.

Merkel’s made some ideological compromises to her Bavarian counterparts, the Christlich-Soziale Union in Bayern (CSU, the Christian Social Union)  — for instance, she has avoided the question of marriage equality, preferring that the German constitutional court largely deliver equal rights and benefits to same-sex partners at a time when both conservative governments (in the United Kingdom) and leftist governments (in France) deliver legislative solutions.

By and large, though, Merkel eschews ideological litmus tests.  Merkel campaigned on an economic agenda that varies only slightly with that of her rival center-left Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD, Social Democratic Party).  While the SPD favored a €8.50 minimum wage, Merkel pushed a sector-by-sector minimum wage approach.  Both parties supported increasing elements of the German social welfare model, such as child allowances and a rise in pensions.  While the SPD and other leftists pushed for tax increases, Merkel has been content to draw a line at merely no tax increases, to the disappointment of Merkel’s liberal coalition partners, the Freie Demokratische Partei (FDP, Free Democratic Party), who were completely wiped out of Germany’s parliament in Sunday’s elections.  After the nuclear meltdown of the Fukushima reactor in Japan in 2011, Merkel announced that Germany would phase out nuclear energy, thereby accomplishing in one fell swoop one of the German left’s top priorities since the 1970s — and perhaps the top policy goal of the Die Grünen (the Greens).

German political scientists refer to it as ‘asymmetric demobilisation‘ — Merkel has so blurred the lines between her position and the SPD position that on the top issues — economic policy, Europe, foreign affairs — the SPD can’t draw an effective contrast to her.

Merkel, in essence, has governed as a perfectly non-ideological leader.

Sound familiar?

It should to most Americans, who elected Barack Obama in 2008 in large part due to his pledge to transcend the increasingly polarized politics of the United States.  Here’s what Obama said upon accepting the Democratic Party’s nomination for president that summer:

America, our work will not be easy. The challenges we face require tough choices, and Democrats as well as Republicans will need to cast off the worn-out ideas and politics of the past…. For eighteen long months, you have stood up, one by one, and said enough to the politics of the past. You understand that in this election, the greatest risk we can take is to try the same old politics with the same old players and expect a different result.

In effect, Merkel has done, in her quiet and unassuming way, what Obama has utterly failed to do — govern in a way that transcends traditional ideological divides.

You could say that Obama’s rhetoric is the standard boilerplate that any change candidate serves up in American politics — the same ‘Washington-is-not-the-answer’ tropes that Republicans and Democrats have rolled out since Ronald Reagan swept to power 33 years ago on an appealing anti-government message.  But Obama’s reputation in 2008 came mostly from his keynote address to the 2004 Democratic national convention on this precise issue:

Yet even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America — there’s the United States of America. There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America. The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don’t like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

So there’s a lot of reason to believe that Obama genuinely believed he could transform the political dynamic in American politics.

But his absolute lack to do so is perhaps Obama’s greatest failure as a president.  Say whatever you want about his policies, the Obama era in many ways constitutes a high-water mark for American political polarization.  Republicans now lean even more to the right, in the thrall of a tea party movement that demands no compromise from Republican officeholders.

There are all sorts of rationales that explain why Merkel has succeeded in becoming non-ideological and why Obama hasn’t — but none of them are completely satisfying.  Continue reading That ‘transcending ideology’ thing from Obama 2008? Angela Merkel did it. Obama hasn’t. →

Syria, United States

John McCain is the Jimmy Carter of the right: a free radical running his own shadow diplomacy

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If you thought the idea of Russian president Vladimir Putin’s op-ed in The New York Times was insufferable, don’t worry, comrades — US senator John McCain of Arizona is coming soon to a Pravda newsstand near you.freesyria Syria Flag IconUSflag

Typically, US foreign policy is conducted at a very concentrated level among a top coterie of constitutional officers and White House staffers.  The 535-member US Congress likes to get in on the act too, from time to time, just as it did when US president Barack Obama called for a congressional vote on potential military action against Bashar al-Assad in punishment for his regime’s use of chemical warfare on August 21.

But sometimes, there are free agents who, by benefit of their success in public life, can conduct a virtual shadow foreign policy.  For over three decades, the most exceptional example has been former president Jimmy Carter, whose post-presidential diplomacy has caused fits for many of his successors in the Oval Office, including Democrats like Obama and Bill Clinton as well as Republicans like George W. Bush.

But even before his failed 2008 presidential run, McCain has increasingly become another Jimmy Carter — in his willingness to engage in shadow diplomacy, often to the dismay of both the Bush and Obama administrations.  Except Carter is liberal and dovish and McCain is conservative and hawkish.

Carter honed his approach as a mercenary-for-peace in the 1990s, when he attempted to use his special status as a former US president to broker peace everywhere from Haiti to Sudan.  He visited Cuban president Fidel Castro in 2002, despite the fact that US-Cuban relations have been strained since the 1959 Cuban revolution and the 1963 missile crisis, and he endorsed the electoral process in Venezuela’s 2004 recall election that kept Hugo Chávez, another anti-American leader, in office.  Carter spoke out early and often against the Bush administration’s push to invade Iraq in 2003 to a rare degree among former US presidents, and he remained a critic of the Bush administration’s Iraq policy throughout the 2000s.  Carter, most recently, has criticized the Obama administration for the use of unmanned drones in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere, and for keeping the Guantánamo Bay prison open for detainees suspected of terrorism.

You might think that Carter’s approach is a brilliant way to nudge US foreign policy toward more peaceful outcomes — he won the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize largely on the basis of his post-presidential work.  But you might also think that Carter’s approach complicates often delicate situations by introducing another (unwelcome) cook to the kitchen, and Carter’s diplomacy typically causes more frustration than enthusiasm from within the White House.

Likewise, the Obama administration won’t welcome McCain’s latest move, which will raise the decibel level with what’s certainly likely to be a provocative Pravda piece.  It comes two days after McCain saw the need to release his own statement about Moscow’s mayoral elections.  (Isn’t that the U.S. state department’s job rather than the ranking member of the US Senate’s armed services committee?)

Neither Carter nor McCain would exactly welcome the comparison — Carter said during the 2008 election campaign that McCain was ‘milking every possible drop of advantage’ from his military record as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, and McCain a year later called Carter the worst president of the 20th century.  Continue reading John McCain is the Jimmy Carter of the right: a free radical running his own shadow diplomacy →

Libya, Syria, United States

How to distinguish Obama’s congressional vote on Syria from Libya example

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With a surprise twist on a holiday weekend in the United States, president Barack Obama announced that he would seek a vote in the U.S. Congress prior to launching a missile strike on Syria in retribution for last Wednesday’s chemical attack on the outskirts of Damascus.USflagSyria Flag Icon freesyriaLibya_Flag_Icon

Coming in the wake British prime minister David Cameron’s humiliating defeat over a resolution in the House of Commons authorizing the possibility of British force late last week, Obama argued that, while he has already made a decision to punish Syrian president Bashar al-Assad for the chemical attacks in his capacity as commander-in-chief of the U.S. armed forces, he has also decided to seek authorization for use of force from Congress:

Having made my decision as Commander-in-Chief based on what I am convinced is our national security interests, I’m also mindful that I’m the President of the world’s oldest constitutional democracy.  I’ve long believed that our power is rooted not just in our military might, but in our example as a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

Obama’s surprise announcement postpones any US action until at least the week of September 9 — well after chemical weapons inspectors from the United Nations will report back next week about the nature of the attack and well after next week’s G20 meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia, where president Vladimir Putin, an Assad ally, has repeatedly blocked action against Assad (a Russian ally) by the UN Security Council and earlier today, called the possibility of US and Western punitive strikes ‘utter nonsense.’

While Obama’s decision will hearten critics on both the American left and right who have called for a greater legislative role on the Syria question, it’s unlikely to satisfy hawkish critics like U.S. senator John McCain of Arizona who has pushed Obama toward supporting regime change in Syria, and it’s also unlikely to satisfy dovish critics who believe there’s no U.S. national interest in launching military strikes on the Assad regime.  It will also leave multilateralist critics dissatisfied, given that Obama stated clearly that he was willing to act without the backing of what he called a ‘paralyzed’ Security Council.

But it’s also an unexpected position for an administration that pushed the boundaries of the 1973 War Powers Resolution just two years ago when it ordered military action in Libya.  At first glance, Obama’s 2011 decision to support the UN-authorized, NATO-enforced effort to establish a no-fly zone and to arm rebels fighting against Libya’s late strongman Muammar Gaddafi without congressional authorization arguably violated his constitutional obligation to Congress, while a limited military strike on Syria lasting just a few days to a few weeks would not require congressional approval under any view of the War Powers Resolution.

So what gives?  How can the Obama administration reconcile its position on Libya with its newfound enthusiasm for Congress on the Syrian question?  The answer could transform the nature of U.S. foreign policy and the ability of the U.S. president to act decisively in the future. Continue reading How to distinguish Obama’s congressional vote on Syria from Libya example →

Syria, United Kingdom

Cameron loses House of Commons vote on Syria military intervention

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The joint US and European will to respond to last Wednesday’s chemical attack on the eastern outskirts of Damascus has received a blow after the British House of Commons voted narrowly 283 to 272 against a resolution that would have provisionally authorized British military intervention in Syria — a staggeringly rare defeat for a British government on a matter of foreign policy.Syria Flag Icon freesyriaUnited Kingdom Flag Icon

The vote comes as a blow not only to UK prime minister David Cameron, who suffered defections from nearly three dozen skeptical Conservatives as well as additional Liberal Democratic members of his own governing coalition, but also interventionists in the United States who are urging US president Barack Obama to launch an aggressive attack on the regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.  It is very unlikely that the United States would proceed with unilateral military action without British support, which is unlikely to come anytime soon in light of Cameron pledge to respect the parliamentary decision:

I can give that assurance. Let me say, the House has not voted for either motion tonight. I strongly believe in the need for a tough response to the use of chemical weapons, but I also believe in respecting the will of this House of Commons. It is very clear tonight that, while the House has not passed a motion, it is clear to me that the British parliament, reflecting the views of the British people, does not want to see British military action. I get that and the government will act accordingly.

It’s a vote that has the potential to turn the US-UK relationship upside down, to turn Middle Eastern realpolitik upside down, to turn British politics upside down and even to turn US politics upside down.  For a sitting prime minister to lose a vote like this is a huge reversal in the relationship between an ever-more powerful British executive and an ever-more feeble parliament on issues like security policy and foreign affairs.

Most immediately, it means that a U.S.-led missile strike, which seemed imminent yesterday, will now be postponed until early next week, at the earliest, when chemical weapons inspectors from the United Nations have had an opportunity to provide their initial assessment of what happened in Ghouta and eastern Damascus.  The vote also comes after several news organizations reported that U.S. and allied intelligence agencies are assured that while the chemical attack came from pro-Assad forces, they are uncertain who ordered the attack amid indications that Assad and his top military brass were caught unaware.  Meanwhile, French president François Hollande has backed off earlier, more urgent calls for military action.

Cameron’s massive defeat does not necessarily preclude a vote next week after the United Nations reports back as to which party — and which chemical agent — is to blame for the horrific Damascus attack.  If the UN report, together with US and European intelligence, all points to Assad’s culpability, Cameron and Obama will have a much stronger case for an aggressive response, either inside or outside the United Nations Security Council.

Meanwhile, the vote is perhaps the largest political victory in Ed Miliband’s three-year tenure as leader of the Labour Party.  Miliband firmly opposed the resolution even after Cameron offered to submit to a second vote before authorizing military action, making today’s resolution essentially a vote for the principle of the British government’s potential military intervention.  The vote capped a tumultuous 24 hours in Westminster, with Cameron’s allies accusing Miliband of giving ‘succour’ to the Assad regime, which probably didn’t make it likelier that Labour would close ranks with the Tories over a potential Syria intervention.  It was a principled stand for Miliband and, though he’s closer to British public opinion on Syria than Cameron, it was also a courageous stand for a young opposition leader to oppose a sitting government on such a crucial matter of foreign policy.

Miliband’s line boils down to one sentence from his statement earlier today: ‘Evidence should precede decision not decision precede evidence’: Continue reading Cameron loses House of Commons vote on Syria military intervention →

United States

Yellen is the ‘tan socks’ candidate for Fed chair — and that’s why Obama should pick her

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janetyellen

Financial reporter David Wessel provides a hilarious anecdote about Ben Bernanke, currently the chair of the Federal Reserve, from his days on the Bush administration’s economic team in his 2009 book, In FED We Trust: Ben Bernanke’s War on the Great Panic, that captures in capsule form one of the reasons why Bernanke has made such a great Fed chair: USflag

One day, Bernanke showed up for a monthly Oval Office meeting wearing a dark blue suit and light tan socks.

Bush notices. ‘Ben,’ the president said, according to one participant, ‘where did you get those socks?’

‘Gap,’ replied Bernanke. ‘Three pair for seven dollars.’

The president wouldn’t let it go, mentioning Bernanke’s light tan socks repeatedly during the forty-five-minute meeting.

At the next month’s meeting, Bernanke had convinced nearly the entire staff, as well as U.S. vice president Dick Cheney, to wear tan socks, getting the last laugh on Bush.  Beyond the innocent prank, the implication is clear enough — Bernanke, always a bit of an outsider in Washington, was wearing tan socks in a city of black socks.  That’s perhaps appropriate for a Jewish economist who grew up in South Carolina.

That distance has been one of the understated keys to Bernanke’s success as Fed chair since 2006 — he’s a rare Fed chair who has enough distance from official Washington to be a credibly independent central banker but also sufficient experience to navigate Washington’s politics.  Despite his eight-month stint as chair of the Bush administration’s Council of Economic Advisers, Bernanke had also chaired Princeton University’s economics department for six years and served as a member of the Fed’s seven-person Board of Governors from 2002 to 2005.  He’s not the kind of Washington fixture that Alan Greenspan had increasingly become in his 19 years as Fed chair, nor is Bernanke’s wife a consummate political insider like NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell, Greenspan’s wife.

As Felix Salmon writes today at Reuters, the Fed chair is one of the two most important officers in the United States.  Bernanke’s successor, who will take office in February 2014, will be even more important to world politics, in at least an indirect capacity for his role in global markets, than U.S. secretary of state John Kerry, U.S. treasury secretary Jacob Lew or U.S. defense secretary Chuck Hagel.

Right now, there are two frontrunners:

  • Lawrence Summers, treasury secretary in the Clinton administration from 1999 to 2001, Harvard University president from 2001 to 2006 and the hard-charging director of the Obama administration’s National Economic Council from 2009 to 2010; and
  • Janet Yellen, vice chair of the Federal Reserve since 2010, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco from 2004 to 2010, and the chair of the Clinton administration’s Council of Economic Advisers from 1997 to 1999.

The conventional wisdom is that Summers has an edge, because Obama knows him so well, and trusts him, on the basis of his role earlier in the administration.  So Obama therefore prefers to appoint Summers, as do all of the top economic policymakers close to Obama, such as Lew, former treasury secretary Timothy Geithner and current NEC director Gene Sperling.

The conventional wisdom is also that while Summers is a exceedingly brilliant and talented economist, he is not someone who values collaboration, a key trait for someone whose goal is to lead the 12-member Federal Open Market Committee that is comprised of the seven members of the Board of Governors and a rotating slate of five of the 12 regional Federal Bank presidents.  The substantive knocks on Summers are even greater.  He supported deregulation within the financial industry during the Clinton administration that allowed for the proliferation of new financial derivatives markets, and he opposed the ‘Volcker Rule’ in the 2010 Dodd-Frank package of financial reforms that restricts banks from using deposits in riskier trading.  That’s not counting his controversial turn at Harvard, when he was forced to resign over comments suggesting that men have a greater natural aptitude for the sciences nor does it take into account the conflicts of his post-government employment with private-sector Wall Street firms like Citigroup and hedge fund D.E. Shaw or his lack of actual experience within the Federal Reserve system.

Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution argues that Summers is preferable to Yellen because Summers has more ‘right-wing street cred,’ and therefore might work more easily with the current Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives and a potential future Republican presidential administration, both because he’s taken more criticism from the left than Yellen and because of Yellen’s background at Berkeley.

But Salmon argues that Yellen would be a better chair on the day-to-day matters that are crucial to stabilizing the U.S. and global economy (noting that any Fed chair would respond to a financial crisis guns-a-blazin’).  Ezra Klein, at The Washington Post‘s Wonkblog, argues that we don’t know which candidate would be stronger on financial regulation, another key Fed role.  Paul Krugman argues that Yellen’s detractors are motivated by rampant sexism:

Sorry, but it’s hard to escape the conclusion that gravitas, in this context, mainly means possessing a Y chromosome.

In the grand scheme of things, both Yellen and Summers are likely to pursue similar policies.  Even though Yellen has been labeled an inflation ‘dove,’ there’s no indication that either Yellen or Summers will abandon Bernanke’s January 2012 decision to set an explicit 2% inflation rate target for the first time in Fed history.  But the next Fed chair will most certainly wind down the Fed’s extraordinary ‘quantitative easing’ actions of the past five years whereby the Fed has purchased assets, bonds and other securities at an unprecedented rate, thereby boosting liquidity in the global financial system.

The reason to appoint Yellen is not because she is a woman, because she’s an inflationary ‘dove,’ because we think she might be a stronger advocate of financial regulation or even because she has more experience within the Fed.  It’s because she will be seen to have more independence  at a time when central bank independence will be crucial to the Fed’s success — that makes Yellen the ‘tan socks’ candidate for Fed chair, and it’s the key reason why Yellen’s nomination should be a slam-dunk case for Obama. Continue reading Yellen is the ‘tan socks’ candidate for Fed chair — and that’s why Obama should pick her →

United States

Chris Christie, Rand Paul and the coming Republican fight over U.S. foreign policy

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I argue this morning in The National Interest that the recent spat between New Jersey governor Chris Christie and U.S. senator Rand Paul from Kentucky over foreign policy is a lot more complex than the ‘pro-security hawk’ versus ‘libertarian isolationist’ paradigm.USflag

Rather, the coming fight over foreign policy in the Republican Party as we approach the 2014 midterm elections and the pre-primary phase of the 2016 election will take place on three planes:

  • the familiar security/liberty fight over PRISM, whistleblowers, homeland security and other civil liberties matters;
  • unilateralists (in the mould of former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton) versus multilateralists like former World Bank president Robert Zoelick; and
  • the traditional IR theory fight between realists (who are often in line with Paul and other libertarians) and liberals (including hawkish neoconservatives as well as liberal interventionists).

While they may be on opposite sides of the liberty/security spectrum, we don’t know where any of the 2016 hopefuls may ultimately land, including Christie himself, to say nothing of U.S. senators Ted Cruz of Texas or Marco Rubio of Florida or U.S. congressman Paul Ryan:

We still don’t know where Christie’s ultimate views on international-relations theory lie because that’s not exactly one of the key concerns of a U.S. state governor. But given that the battle for the future of Republican foreign policy is actually three interconnected fights, it could well be that, despite their other disagreements, he and Paul find common cause against more aggressive neoconservative voices.

The bottom line is that we likely know where the Democrats will fall on all of these fights, especially if their nominee is former U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton.  That makes the Republican Party an interesting laboratory these days for new ideas and original thinking in American foreign policy.

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Don’t rule out Joe Biden in 2016 U.S. presidential election

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Although today’s been a big day for U.S. president Barack Obama, it’s been nearly as big a day for his vice president, Joseph Biden, who was also sworn in for a second term as vice president — and a vice president who’s had a very important role to play in the Obama administration with respect to foreign policy.USflag

Biden, who first ran for president in 1988, and who served in the Senate from Delaware from 1973 until becoming vice president in 2009, hasn’t exactly made it a secret that he harbors presidential ambitions in the future.

Even if Biden ultimately decides against a run, his ability to project a credible shot at a 2016 campaign means that he won’t descend into lame-duck status over the next four years, which means he’ll be as relevant as ever on international policymaking.

He’s had a few good news cycles recently, and as outgoing secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton starts to bid farewell to the limelight to consider the next stage of her own career, it’s worth noting that if Clinton and Biden both run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, Biden won’t be a pushover — though Clinton is currently very much the favorite.  Biden, who’s 70, isn’t so much older than Clinton, age 65 and recently subject to her own health scare (Ronald Reagan was the oldest person to be inaugurated, at age 69 when he took office in 1981).

Even The Washington Post‘s Ezra Klein thinks Biden is a serious contender.

So in between bouncing around inaugural balls, here are five quick points on why you can’t dismiss Biden — and why he’ll continue to retain political currency on the U.S. foreign policy conversation as 2016 approaches: Continue reading Don’t rule out Joe Biden in 2016 U.S. presidential election →

Puerto Rico, United States

Could Puerto Rico really become the 51st U.S. state?

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In addition to the defeat of Puerto Rico’s budget-cutting governor Luis Fortuño in yesterday’s gubernatorial election, Puerto Ricans have also voted in a two-question referendum in opposition to its current commonwealth status, marking the worst result for the status quo in four such referenda in half a century. 

That doesn’t mean Puerto Rico is exactly on the fast track to become the 51st state of the United States.

There are reasons to believe that the path to statehood would encounter obstacles both from U.S. legislators in Washington, D.C. as well as difficulties in San Juan — not least of which due to the fact that Puerto Rico’s newly elected governor, Alejandro García Padilla, opposes Puerto Rican statehood and is likely to prioritize creating jobs and reducing crime over constitutional status issues.

The island is currently a U.S. territory, and since 1952, its constitutional status has been as a ‘commonwealth’ of the United States.  More on that below.

Tuesday’s referendum

First, let’s examine the actual referendum and the result.

The referendum itself was a complex two-question vote.  Puerto Ricans were first asked whether the commonwealth should continue to have its present form of territorial status.  Puerto Ricans were also asked which non-territorial option they prefer among three options: becoming a U.S. state, becoming independent, or becoming a ‘free associated state’ — think of the latter option as ‘independence light‘ akin to the relationship that Palau and the Marshall Islands have to the United States or like the relationship the Cook Islands have with New Zealand.

See the second prong of the ballot question:

Puerto Ricans could vote on the second question regardless of their position on the first question, so voters who support the current commonwealth status could nonetheless vote for their preferred non-commonwealth status as well.

Around 1.82 million voters participated in the referendum.  On the first question, 53.99% of voters voted that Puerto Rico should not continue to have its present form of territorial status, and 46.01% supported the current status.  In four referenda since 1967, that’s clearly the strongest vote against Puerto Rico’s commonwealth status.

On the second question, though, the headline statistic that most U.S. media are reporting is that 61.15% of Puerto Rican voters supported statehood (with 33.31% supporting a ‘free associated state’ and just 5.53% supporting full independence).

But that overstates the case, because over 486,000 voters cast either invalid or blank votes on the second question.  When you take those into consideration, statehood won just 44.62% of total votes, blank and invalid votes ‘won’ 27.04%, the ‘free associated state’ option won 24.31%, and full independence won 4.04%.

So while statehood seems to be the preferred alternative, not even a majority of the voters who took part in the referendum actually cast a vote for statehood.  Furthermore, we don’t know how ‘yes’ and ‘no’ voters actually voted on the second question, so there’s no way to know, what the anti-commonwealth voters, as a group, actually prefer.

Accordingly, the result isn’t a clear victory for much of anything, let alone statehood.  That may be fine — it’s just a non-binding referendum anyway.  As noted above, García Padilla and his Partido Popular Democrático de Puerto Rico (the PPD, Popular Democratic Party of Puerto Rico) is opposed to statehood, so it seems less likely that Puerto Rico will aggressively pursue statehood than if the incumbent, Luis Fortuño of the pro-statehood Partido Nuevo Progresista de Puerto Rico (the PNP, New Progressive Party of Puerto Rico) had won reelection.

Notably, however, Puerto Rico’s ‘resident commissioner,’ its non-voting representative to the U.S. House of Representatives, has the chief responsibility of introducing legislation to admit Puerto Rico as the 51st state. Puerto Rico’s resident commissioner, Pedro Pierluisi — who was only narrowly reelected on Tuesday with a 1% margin — belongs to the pro-statehood PNP.  Pierluisi, indeed, has indicated that he favors introducing such legislation.  We’ll find out, I guess.

Proponents of statehood chafe at the idea that Puerto Rico is somehow less equal, that it’s a colonial remnant from the imperial era.  Other supporters believe that full statehood would help lift Puerto Rico’s economic status by creating more links to the mainstream U.S. economy — the island’s GDP per capita of just $24,000 is almost half of GDP per capita on the mainland, the island has been stuck in a recession for the past six years and poverty, crime and unemployment are much higher there than on the mainland.

Opponents argue that statehood would not deliver many more benefits than Puerto Ricans currently enjoy, while subjecting it to less autonomy and more responsibility for U.S. federal taxes.  Furthermore, opponents worry that statehood could endanger the unique ‘boricua’ culture of the predominantly Spanish-speaking territory.  Needless to say, if you’ve ever been to San Juan, you realize quickly that it’s a world away from even heavily Latino U.S. cities like Miami, Los Angeles or New York. Nonetheless, Puerto Ricans are already well assimilated into U.S. culture and life — indeed, there are more mainland citizens of Puerto Rican descent in United States than on the island, and Puerto Ricans on the U.S. mainland share a rich cultural heritage, especially within the ‘Nuyorican’ diaspora that emerged in New York in the 20th century.

Since 1952, independence has remained a fairly unpopular option, although if Puerto Rico were a sovereign nation, it would be the Caribbean’s fourth most-populous country, after Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.  Its $96.26 billion economy would become the largest economy in the Caribbean, dwarfing not just the Cuban ($60.8 billion) or Dominican ($55.6 billion) economies, but also Central American ones, such as Panamá’s ($30.7 billion) and Costa Rica’s ($41.0 billion).

Puerto Rico’s status in context

Tuesday’s vote was the just the most recent of four increasingly complex referenda on Puerto Rico’s status since becoming a commonwealth in 1952.  Continue reading Could Puerto Rico really become the 51st U.S. state? →

Puerto Rico, United States

Who is Alejandro García Padilla?

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Although voters in the United States chose to retain a Republican House of Representatives, a Democratic Senate and a Democratic president in Barack Obama, it wasn’t as good a night for incumbents in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.

Alejandro García Padilla (pictured above), a Puerto Rican senator, narrowly defeated Puerto Rico’s governor Luis Fortuño in Tuesday’s Puerto Rican gubernatorial election and Fortuño conceded the race earlier this afternoon — with over 96% of the votes counted, García Padilla leads with 47.85% to just 47.04% for Fortuño.

The result will cap what was generally a good night for García Padilla’s Partido Popular Democrático de Puerto Rico (the PPD, Popular Democratic Party of Puerto Rico), which also took back control of Puerto Rico’s Asamblea Legislativa (Legislative Assembly) from Fortuño’s Partido Nuevo Progresista de Puerto Rico (the PNP, New Progressive Party of Puerto Rico), and which also won the mayoral race in San Juan, Puerto Rico’s capital and largest city.

So who is García Padilla? And how will García Padilla will his administration differ from Fortuño’s?

García Padilla, age 41, an attorney and former law professor, was elected to Puerto Rico’s Senate in 2008 as the PPD’s most popular vote-winner.  He previously served as the secretary of consumer affairs under former PPD governor Aníbal Acevedo Vilá from 2005 to 2008.

García Padilla’s victory first and foremost likely means an end to the austerity policies of his predecessor.

As governor, Fortuño has essentially eliminated Puerto Rico’s $2 billion budget deficit, but he’s done so by cutting public sector jobs and reducing spending on higher education, even while he reduced taxes 50% for individuals and 30% for business.  The implementation of his economic program has drawn considerable attention in the United States, and Fortuño himself is somewhat of a star within the Republican Party — he and his wife had primetime speaking roles during the Republican National Convention in August.  If Mitt Romney had won Tuesday’s U.S. presidential election, it seemed likely that Fortuño could even be elevated to a cabinet position in a Romney administration.

Fortuño, already on the ropes after losing two referenda earlier in the summer to reduce the number of legislators in Puerto Rico’s legislative assembly and to give judges the right to deny bail in certain murder cases (Puerto Rico, uniquely, entitles everyone to bail regardless of the crime), was never quite a favorite for reelection.

García Padilla ran a stinging campaign against the harshness of Fortuño’s austerity measures in the face of an economic climate even more troubling than on the U.S. mainland — the economy has been in recession for six years, unemployment remains relatively high at 13.6% and the poverty level has reached a staggering 45.6%.  Meanwhile, crime is rising steadily, with over 1,000 murders in 2011 alone.  Puerto Rico’s GDP per capita of just around $24,000, about half that of the United States, makes it already much less prosperous than the mainland.  Continue reading Who is Alejandro García Padilla? →

China, United States

Two systems, two transitions: China, U.S. face leadership crossroads simultaneously

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Next week, arguably the two most important countries in the world will kick off two very different leadership transitions.

On Tuesday, November 6, the United States of America will hold a general election.  For the 57th time since 1790, Americans will vote for U.S. president, at once the country’s head of state and head of government.  The winner will most certainly be one of two men: the Democratic Party incumbent, former Illinois senator Barack Obama (pictured above, right) or the Republican Party challenger, former Massachusetts governor Willard ‘Mitt’ Romney.  Americans will also determine who will control the both the lower and upper houses of the U.S. legislature.‡  The new Congress will be sworn in early in January 2013 and the president will be inaugurated (or reinaugurated) on January 20.

On Thursday, November 8, the People’s Republic of China will watch as the 18th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (中国共产党) gets underway in Beijing, where all but two of the members of the Politburo Standing Committee, China’s foremost governing body, will step down and new members will be appointed in a once-a-decade leadership transition.  China’s ‘paramount leader’ Hu Jintao (pictured above, left), the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and PRC president since 2002, is expected to be replaced by Xi Jinping as general secretary, with the other state offices to follow through early 2013.  China’s premier, Wen Jiabao, is expected to be replaced by Li Keqiang.  Otherwise, the Politburo Standing Committee is expected to be reduced from nine to seven members and will include Xi, Li and five new faces — generally known as the ‘fifth generation’ of China’s leadership.

Despite their vastly different political systems, it’s fitting that the two transitions will coincide so neatly for the two most powerful countries in the world, both so alien culturally and interlinked economically — and there are parallels for both the superpower of the 20th century and a rising superpower of the 21st.  For every ‘5,000 years of history,’ there’s a corresponding ‘shining city on a hill.’  The United States has George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and 1776; China has Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and 1949.

The United States is the world’s third-most populous country with 315 million people, the third-largest country by land area, and the world’s largest economy with a GDP last year of over $15 trillion.  China, meanwhile, is the world’s most populous country with 1.347 billion people, the second-largest country by land area, and the world’s second-largest economy with a GDP last year of $11.3 trillion.

In 2012, if we don’t quite live in a bipolar world, we certainly live in a multipolar world where the United States and China are first among equals, and the U.S.-Chinese relationship will, of course, be a major focus of both governments over the next four years and beyond.

Indeed, Chinese relations have been an issue throughout the U.S. presidential election.

China emerged, if not unscathed, certainly more economically powerful than ever before following the 2008-09 global financial crisis, and China may well have the world’s largest economy within the next decade.  But the juggernaut of its double-digit economic growth, which has been fairly consistent throughout the past 20 years, is showing signs of sputtering, and a Chinese slowdown (or even a recession) would have a major impact upon the global economy.

Romney has vociferously attacked China for manipulating its currency, the renminbi, to keep the cost of its exports low, and Obama’s treasury secretary Timothy Geithner has made similar, if more gentle, criticisms.  Notably, however, the renminbi has appreciated about 8.5% since Obama took office in January 2009, chiefly because the Chinese government has hoped to cool inflationary pressure.

The level of U.S. debt held by the Chinese government has also become an important issue, especially with the U.S. budget deficit at its highest level (as a percentage of GDP) since World War II.  China, however, holds only about $1.132 trillion out of a total of around $15 trillion in U.S. debt, which is down from its high of around $1.17 trillion in 2011 — meanwhile, Japan has accelerated its acquisition of U.S. debt and may soon hold more than China.  The outsourcing of jobs previously filled in the United States has long been an issue across the ideological spectrum of U.S. domestic politics, with respect to China and other Asian countries.

In reality, however, other issues are just as likely to dominate the next generation of Chinese and American leadership.  With both militaries looking to dominate the Pacific (note the growing U.S. naval presence in the Philippines and throughout the Pacific), geopolitical stability throughout the region will be more important than ever — not just the perennial issue of Taiwan, but growing concerns about North Korea’s autarkic regime, tensions between China and Japan over territorial claims or other future hotspots could all spur wider crises.

As China’s middle class grows in size and purchasing power, and as the United States continues to boost its exports, China will become an increasingly important market for U.S. technology, entertainment and energy in the next two decades.  China’s accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001 and its increasing role as a trading partner with the United States mean that trade-related issues — such as the case that the United States brought against China in the WTO last month on cars and auto parts — will only become more important.

But while the U.S. federalist constitutional structure — with its tripartite separation of powers — has been set in place since the adoption of its Constitution in 1787, the Chinese structure is a more recent creation.  The Chinese Communist Party holds a National Congress every five years, with a handover of power every ten years, vesting power in a collaborative Politburo Standing Committee that makes all key policy-making decisions, a process that came into being only really with the passing of Deng Xiaoping in the 1990s.

After Deng, Jiang Zemin and the so-called ‘third generation’ of China’s political leadership essentially regularized the current process, and the ‘fourth generation’ led by Hu and Wen that assumed leadership in 2002 and 2003 is now set to pass leadership on to the ‘fifth generation’ under Xi and Li.

China’s party-state essentially has a dual structure: the state institutions of government (the National People’s Congress and the State Council) and the structure of the Chinese Communist Party are essentially parallel — the same people control both.  So from a wide base of over 2,000 delegates to the National Party Congress, around 200 will form the Party’s Central Committee, just 25 the more important Politburo and, after next week’s transition, merely seven will form the Politburo Standing Committee.  Those seven will also hold the key offices of state — as noted, Li is expected to become China’s premier, the head of the PRC government and Xi, as general secretary of the  Party, will serve as the president of the PRC and the chair of the Central Military Commission, the entity that directs the People’s Liberation Army, China’s main armed forces. Continue reading Two systems, two transitions: China, U.S. face leadership crossroads simultaneously →

Puerto Rico, United States

Who is Luis Fortuño? A primer on Puerto Rico and the Republican Party’s favorite boricua.

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Tonight, at the U.S. Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida, the list of primetime speakers will feature the governor of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, Luis Fortuño.

Although Suffragio doesn’t normally wade into U.S. politics, Puerto Rican politics lies fairly far afield from mainstream American politics, notwithstanding the plum role that Fortuño will fill tonight at the convention in his support for U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

Fortuño was elected governor of Puerto Rico in 2009, winning 52.8% of the vote to just 41.3% for the incumbent, Aníbal Acevedo Vilá, who had been implicated in a corruption scandal.  As governor, Fortuño immediately embarked upon a relatively unpopular program of cutting $2 billion from Puerto Rico’s budget, resulting in over 12,000 layoffs of state employees.  Fortuño also passed and implemented Law 154, which imposed a temporary excise tax on certain overseas sales, while also cutting taxes 50% for individuals and 30% for businesses.  Ultimately, Fortuño brought the budget deficit from $2 billion in 2009-10 to just $333 million in 2012-13 — his zeal for cutting budgets and for lowering taxes has attracted a significant amount of regard from Republicans on the U.S. mainland, and he was even mentioned as a potential vice presidential candidate for Romney.

Political parties in Puerto Rico, however, aren’t organized along the same ideological lines as on the U.S. mainland — Fortuño belongs to the Partido Nuevo Progresista de Puerto Rico (the PNP, New Progressive Party of Puerto Rico), which is first and foremost a proponent of full statehood for Puerto Rico.  In contrast, the Partido Popular Democrático de Puerto Rico (the PPD, Popular Democratic Party of Puerto Rico) favors Puerto Rico’s current status as a commonwealth.  A smaller third party, Partido Independentista Puertorriqueño (Puerto Rico Independence Party) favors Puerto Rico’s full independence — it looks and feels much like a traditional Latin American populist/leftist party, and it has attracted the support of the likes of high-profile Latin American figures, including author Gabriel García Márquez.

Continue reading Who is Luis Fortuño? A primer on Puerto Rico and the Republican Party’s favorite boricua. →