Obama embraces Romney advisor's theory on 'The Myth of American Decline'

Posted By Josh Rogin Thursday, January 26, 2012 - 6:21 PM Share

President Barack Obama is personally enamored with a recent essay written by neoconservative writer Bob Kagan, an advisor to Mitt Romney, in which Kagan argues that the idea the United States is in decline is false.

"The renewal of American leadership can be felt across the globe," Obama said in his State of the Union address Tuesday evening. "From the coalitions we've built to secure nuclear materials, to the missions we've led against hunger and disease; from the blows we've dealt to our enemies, to the enduring power of our moral example, America is back."

"Anyone who tells you otherwise, anyone who tells you that America is in decline or that our influence has waned, doesn't know what they're talking about," Obama said.

Just hours earlier on Tuesday, in an off-the-record meeting with leading news anchors, including ABC's George Stephanopoulos and NBC's Brian Williams, Obama drove home that argument using an article written in the New Republic by Kagan titled "The Myth of American Decline."

Obama liked Kagan's article so much that he spent more than 10 minutes talking about it in the meeting, going over its arguments paragraph by paragraph, National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor confirmed to The Cable.

National Security Advisor Tom Donilon will also discuss Kagan's essay and Obama's love of it Thursday night with Charlie Rose on PBS.

Kagan's article examines and then sets out to debunk each of the arguments that America is in decline, which include commonly held assumptions that America's power and influence are waning due to its economic troubles, the rise of other world powers, the failure of U.S. efforts to solve big problems like the Middle East conflict, and the seeming inability of the U.S. government to tackle problems.

"Much of the commentary on American decline these days rests on rather loose analysis, on impressions that the United States has lost its way, that it has abandoned the virtues that made it successful in the past, that it lacks the will to address the problems it faces. Americans look at other nations whose economies are now in better shape than their own, and seem to have the dynamism that America once had, and they lament, as in the title of Thomas Friedman's latest book, that ‘that used to be us,'" Kagan writes.

But Kagan argues that the United States has gone through several similarly challenging periods in the past and has always managed to rebound and come out ahead. He writes that American decline is a risk, and a dangerous one at that, but by no means is it a foregone conclusion.

"In the end, the decision is in the hands of Americans," he writes. "Decline, as Charles Krauthammer has observed, is a choice. It is not an inevitable fate-at least not yet. Empires and great powers rise and fall, and the only question is when. But the when does matter. Whether the United States begins to decline over the next two decades or not for another two centuries will matter a great deal, both to Americans and to the nature of the world they live in."

For the White House, the Kagan article, and the forthcoming book it's based on, The World America Made, offer the perfect rebuttal to GOP accusations that Obama has willingly presided over a period of American decline or has been "leading from behind" on foreign policy.

Romney hits on this theme often, such as when he said in a December debate, "Our president thinks America is in decline. It is if he's president, it's not if I'm president."

In his foreign policy white paper, Romney states clearly that he believes that Obama has resigned himself to American decline.

"A perspective has been gaining currency, including within high councils of the Obama administration, that regards the United States as a power in decline. And not only is the United States regarded as in decline, but that decline is seen as both inexorable and a condition that can and should be managed for the global good rather than reversed," the white paper reads.

But as the economy slowly improves, that argument is harder to make, and the Obama campaign is now trying to use Romney's own assessment against him.

"Governor Romney may be rooting for slips and falls here. We're concentrating on moving this economy forward," Obama's political advisor David Axelrod said earlier this month.

The fact that it is Kagan refuting Romney's argument is especially sweet for the White House, because Kagan is a special advisor to the Romney campaign on national security and foreign policy.

Contacted by The Cable, Kagan said he was pleased Obama liked his essay and he is further pleased that Obama is not resigned to an America in decline.

"I think it's important that the president also doesn't see the nation in decline and I hope his policies reflect that and not the idea we should be accommodating American decline as a lot of people are recommending," said Kagan. "I hope he rejects that and still believes we should provide the kind of leadership we are capable of."

Kagan is currently a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a columnist for the Washington Post.

Saul Loeb-Pool/Getty Images

EXPLORE:2012 ELECTION POSTER 4, BARACK OBAMA, DECLINE WATCH, ELECTION 2012, MITT ROMNEY, OBAMA ADMINISTRATION
 

CHASVOICE

3:27 AM ET

January 27, 2012

Romney’s Advisors Are Leftist Elites

Romney’s Advisors Are Leftist Elites

http://chasvoice.blogspot.com/2011/10/romneys-advisors-are-leftist-elites.html

 

LITTLEMANTATE

4:36 PM ET

January 27, 2012

Kagan and his ilk are fine with America

being a bellicose, hegemonic nation, whose prosperity and energy are concentrated in the hands of the top 25% or so and in its military and corporate exoskeleton. Who cares about internal rot? Look at the good things happening in Uganda!

America's greatness, it would seem, lie less in domestic prosperity and attendant high standard of living for the citizenry than in ongoing crusades and maintenance of the empire. Who cares about the citizens, they are just sources of revenue to carry on the Great Work.

 

PCDE

5:11 PM ET

January 27, 2012

Bob Kagan's wife is...?

Obama's favorite neocon, Bob Kagan, just happens to have a wife working in the Obama Administration. Her name is Victoria Nuland and she is the spokesperson for the Dept. of State. One would think that the author of this column would include this basic information.

Another question, what do Nuland, Dennis Ross, and Stuart Levey (Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence) all have in common?

Each previously worked for GW Bush and have very close ties to Israel. Hope, Change, and no daylight between America and Israel means that the same old hacks keep getting the same jobs .... and nothing changes ..... just closer to another war for Israel's benefit ....this time against Iran.

 

JAC323

4:42 AM ET

February 4, 2012

More of the same?

The titanic is going down, quick we need to rearrange the deck chairs.

 

RADIMAN

5:50 PM ET

January 29, 2012

US Decline - Not just yet!?

Financial experts are very up-beat this month about prospect for the US - "the economy slowly improves": maybe not so slowly compared with European and Chinese troubles. The appetite of US citizens to consume and the resources of the nation are huge, the citizens are well educated, and adoption of the latest technologies is high. So, why say decline?

 

BRASSIA

1:01 AM ET

February 2, 2012

wait until Obama's term

wait until Obama's term ends...he isn't done with us yet...

 

OATKAMAC

4:00 PM ET

February 3, 2012

As usual, what does Obama actually know?

One might feel better if one had some idea concerning Obama's grasp of
the question of American decline. Kagan's summary struck me as reasonably balanced, some blind spots, an amazing plunge into the Iran/1953/Guatemala/1954 blowback fiascos--very brave for a rightie--and overall, lots of points covered. And what I took as the central point--who can possibly know if the United States is losing its grip as the dominant great power?--that is an honest historian talking, worthy of the son of the great Donald Kagan.

The real question goes to the extent of the President's historical education, knowledge, and understanding generally, and to the subject of American decline. He appears to have had a solid education by the standards of the
day, and certainly some exposure to political philosophy, which gets a person knee-deep into history at the very least. But then, is there more? The SoU sentence is not what I would distill from Kagan's piece. And while that might be no more than the standard, "let's-show-them-I'm not wet" political cheerleading, one shudders to think that foolish dismissiveness of that order is actually inside the President's head!

So I would put it to you that FDR and JFK both had the sort of historical training that is largely now out of fashion. I would also note that the two
men benefited from that training in their performance.

I would also put it to you that in that sea of Obama advisers and small set
inner circle, not one historian is discernible. And a collection of political science and economics majors, let alone journalism, business, and communications majors, will look down, hard and practical, at the present,
and do no more.

So, we are not in a position to lay aside the possibility that Obama is, in Michael Crichton's memorable phrase, "a temporal provincial".

This is not a particularly useful trait in an American President, but if Obama is, the guy immediately before, even if force-reading histories, looks more lost in time by a fare-thy-well.

I would also submit that President Obama appears eminently capable
of growing in this area.

Therefore, to grow historically, the President ought to...

Read Kevin Phillips (another, albeit liberated, Republican) and his Wealth and Democracy, which fully engages certain worsening conditions in America and their links to decline, with comparisons to imperial Spain
and Great Britain. Please feel free to keep book off public book list.

Have dinner with some historians, including some who put you off the last
time.

Bring an old friend, Kagan, and Phillips to the dinner. All deserve to be there, two know the topic, and the friend might just keep it light.

After all that's done, time to find a grizzled old liberal historian, careerist motivations largely shot, and put her/him on staff.

 

GOD_EMPEROR_OBAMA_THE_NEW_MOHAMMAD

7:05 AM ET

February 14, 2012

I'm doing the best that I can!

Try as I might, but the GOP just won't let me lift America up to the Kenya or even the Greek level. I already have homeless in all the major cities, getting $60 a day! That is fantastic, don't thank me just continue to worship me.

Let us pray: god emperor Obama (the new mohammad) who is in the white house (yeah, WHITEHOUSE bitches) holy is my name, my kingdom has come, my will be done, or I just go and cry to MSNBC, MediMatters, or NY times, in the USA as it is in Kenya, Italy, Greece, or Somalia , I will give you your daily state sponsored oatmeal and government cheese. In the god emperor Obama (the new mohammad) name we pray!

 

John Hudson reports on national security and foreign policy from the Pentagon to Foggy Bottom, the White House to Embassy Row, for The Cable.

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