News Journal: Hyper partisanship and ignorance will do us in

I wrote a column some time ago about how, in the last century, second presidential terms have always been politically more difficult and legislatively less productive on domestic issues than the first term was. This has been true even if a president had a Congress controlled by his own party.

No wonder then that most presidents tend to spend more time and energy on foreign policy issues in their second terms. They have a lot more freedom of action than they do on domestic policy. And traditionally, foreign policy has been essentially bipartisan. Politics really did stop at the water’s edge for most of our history. One of the most important committees in Congress, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, had an especially strong tradition of bipartisanship and collegiality. Of course members of Congress disagreed, with each other and with the president, but they gave the president broad authority to set foreign policy goals and negotiate with other countries.

That tradition seems to have come to an end. Whatever your politics, it is undeniable that Speaker John Boehner’s invitation to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to speak before the House of Representatives, without informing the White House, was unprecedented. As was the letter 47 Republican senators sent to the leaders of Iran.

What’s going on?

Hyper partisanship run amok is only part of the answer. The us versus them days of the Cold War era included some real crises, but they were relatively easy to define and understand. Two superpowers. Mutual assured destruction. Looking back, it was a time when the world was a lot simpler than it is today.

If you had told anyone back then that the differences between Shia and Sunni Muslims would become a critical concern in our foreign policy, 999 out of 1,000 Americans wouldn’t have known what you were talking about. In fact, when we went to war in Iraq, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee didn’t know the difference.

Yet today those differences color the Israeli-Palestine problem, the Iranian expansion in the Middle East, the Arab Spring fallout, the rise of ISIS, the problems in Yemen, Syria, and Libya, and much more At the same time, the White House and the State Department are dealing with a newly aggressive Russia, China’s bullying of its neighbors and its new economic power, a nuclear-armed North Korea, a European Union that may be fracturing and – again, much more.

It is easy to understand the frustration of many Americans who seem to believe that the most powerful country in the world, both militarily and economically, should be able to control what goes on in the world. It is not so easy to explain to them why we don’t and can’t.

Understanding the myriad foreign policy problems we face today is complicated by the 24/7 demands of cable news and the Internet, where it doesn’t take much to be interviewed as an expert. Take the Iranian nuclear negotiations that we, along with the UK, Russia, France, Germany and China, have been involved in for many months. I am amazed by all the pundits who already have firm opinions, pro or con, about the treaty that may result. Doesn’t it make sense to at least see what the final product looks like before making judgments?

There is so much ignorance about foreign policy on display among politicians and pundits it is hard to choose which ones to cite. The cable blowhards are easy pickings. More importantly, potential presidential candidate Senator Marco Rubio was so confused by Middle East complexities that in a recent Senate Foreign Relations hearing he told Secretary of State John Kerry, “I believe that much of our strategy with regards to ISIS is being driven by a desire not to upset Iran.” Huh? ISIS is composed of fanatical Sunnis. Iran is a Shiite country. Kerry had to explain, “Iran would welcome our bombing of ISIS. Actually they want us to destroy ISIS. ISIS is a threat to them.”

It is a potent mixture – hyper partisanship, wishful thinking about America’s power, and ignorance. If they combine to destroy this and future Republican or Democratic presidents’ ability to conduct foreign policy, an already dangerous world will become far more so.

Ted Kaufman is a former U.S. Senator from Delaware.