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Hegemony or Nothing

Gene Healy’s commentary on Chris Christie’s Reagan Library speech is a classic example of seeing what one wants to see in a politician: Christie has never been accused of being subtle, but you can read the speech as a subtle rebuke to neoconservatives and armed humanitarians on the left. A Christie-Obama race would have pitted […]

Gene Healy’s commentary on Chris Christie’s Reagan Library speech is a classic example of seeing what one wants to see in a politician:

Christie has never been accused of being subtle, but you can read the speech as a subtle rebuke to neoconservatives and armed humanitarians on the left.

A Christie-Obama race would have pitted our lean, ambitious president—who’s proven so profligate with American blood and treasure—against this brash bulky figure, arguing that we need to check our appetites and tighten our belts.

Unfortunately, Christie’s decision to stay out of the race just encourages this sort of hopeful speculation about what Christie might have meant, because there will be no Christie campaign advisers and policy statements to contradict it. What we know about Christie’s current staff and the people who were most eagerly pushing him to run ought to tell us that Christie was not going to be the candidate Healy imagines. If he was rebuking neoconservatives subtly or otherwise, they seem not to have noticed.

One of Christie’s main complaints in the speech is that somewhere in the world something is happening that the U.S. may not be influencing as much as it could be:

You see, without strong leadership at home—without our domestic house in order—we are taking ourselves out of the equation. Over and over, we are allowing the rest of the world to set the tone without American influence.

It goes without saying that Christie regards this as a problem that needs to be fixed. The idea that other nations might go through political upheavals and changes without our input or direction seems to bother him.

Whatever changes he might want to make to entitlements, Christie made it clear in his speech that he wanted no belt-tightening for the military or any other part of the government connected to national security:

I understand full well that succeeding at home, setting an example, is not enough. The United States must be prepared to act. We must be prepared to lead. This takes resources—resources for defense, for intelligence, for homeland security, for diplomacy. The United States will only be able to sustain a leadership position around the world if the resources are there—but the necessary resources will only be there if the foundations of the American economy are healthy.

Christie takes for granted that the U.S. must devote enormous resources to all of these things to “be prepared to act” and “to lead,” and he laments that our domestic problems are hindering our ability to “do good for other countries.” Presumably, his insistence that the U.S. should continue trying “to stop the spread of nuclear materials and weapons and the means to deliver them” is a nod towards perpetuating a dangerous, confrontational policy towards Iran. As I said last week, he recycles the ridiculous isolationist charge by setting up an opposition between “leading” and “turning our back on the world.” The choice he presents us is one between hegemony or nothing.

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