This is Why Lobbyists Should Not Be Allowed into Presidential Campaigns

By Irwin Nowick

Last week, I wrote about the role of lobbyists influencing legislation. However, this article is not about guns or legislation but about the role of lobbyists in making foreign policy decisions. President Kennedy used to say “Domestic policy can only defeat us but foreign policy can kill us.” While the Georgia-Russia “war” is not getting much attention, it shows the failings of President Bush and Senator McCain.

First, this “war” is ANOTHER foreign policy and intelligence FAILURE (AS IN BIG TIME) by Team Bush. The President of the US gets at 9:00 a.m. every day an intelligence report. Given the spy satellites and the like, one would think that signs of mobilization on both sides of the border would be noticeable.

I assume that President Obama (and if I were President – President Nowick) would have had the Secretary of State immediately call in, whatever the hour was, the Georgian and Russian Ambassadors and tell them: (1) knock it off – we are aware of what is going on – stand down; and (2) the President wants to talk to both Putin and the Georgian President (Mikheil Saakashvili) via joint television video conference at the White House at the same time within 24 hours. In that 24 hour period the President should expect a full briefing of what we know, secure conversations with US allies in the region (Israel, Ukraine, and Turkey to get their thoughts) and what the recommendations are to resolve this. Instead we have mixed messages and another April Glaspie moment.

Viscerally, I share President Reagan’s views on Russia as the “Evil Empire”. Having said that, Russia has nukes (as to what state is unclear) and Georgia is not exactly innocent in this whole incident. Georgia may have provoked it and relied on the US to back it up. While Russia has tried to use the purported secession to achieve some otherwise unachievable foreign policy goals, Georgia walked into this. That is why tough diplomacy backed up with unspecified options being “on the table” should have been made clear before this situation escalated.

Two, Senator McCain showed why a lot of Republican Senators are very nervous about him being President. Besides some bellicose “shoot from the lip” comments, the motives of Senator McCain in vociferously siding with Georgia against Russia raises questions because his foreign policy adviser is Randy Scheunemann.

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