Foreign Policy Expertise Is the Indispensable Quality for a President

Recently I was writing a working paper on what voters should consider in choosing a new president. In the middle of my analysis, I tumbled to something I had not realized before. I determined that a candidate's performance in the foreign-policy arena is far and away more important than his performance in any other domain.

Errors in domestic policy can be damaging, be wasteful, and are not easy to reverse. Yet the cost of foreign-policy errors can be colossal in blood and treasure. Further, the correction of foreign-policy mistakes often require a Herculean effort and prodigious amounts of time, both person-hours and calendar time.

World War I resulted from a horror show of mistakes, miscalculations, communication lapses, and other types of errors perpetrated by almost every country in Europe. Mistakes made in the treaty ending World War I and in its implementation led directly to World War II, as Pat Buchanan argues in his new book, Churchill, Hitler, And the Unnecessary War.

If Clinton had seen the writing on the wall after the first Twin Towers attack in 1993, as many people did, and treated extremist Muslim terrorism as a high priority item and/or as a military issue, rather than a law enforcement issue; the world might have looked totally different and better today. If he had taken Osama bin Laden when Sudan and then Saudi Arabia offered him to Clinton in 1996 or if he had taken him out on one of the two opportunities he had in 1999 and 2000, 911 may not have occurred and we might not be fighting extremist Muslim terrorism today. If W. had begun his first term with the understanding that terrorism was a major and growing threat, rather than an annoyance, and acted accordingly; 911 might still be just an emergency number.

We can ultimately control and correct mistakes within our borders. It may take an election cycle or two, but, if enough people are against the "error," it can be corrected. For foreign policy errors, even with 100% backing from the US population; other governments, countries, populations, and groups may resist the reversal. It might take a hundred years, many millions of lives, and uber trillions of dollars to correct a mistake unleashed internationally.

Hence, the a voter's s estimate of a candidate's future successfulness in foreign policy is far more important and should be weighted much heavier than the candidate's expected performance in the domestic policy arena.