Daniel Lubetzky

– As we gear towards the general election, a word of caution for US Presidential candidates about an important constituency that will not vote for them –

According to conventional wisdom, Presidential candidates can take campaign stances that will curry favor with particular constituencies of voters, only to be forgiven for adjusting campaign positions once they face the realities of the highest office.

The truth is that a campaign defines how the electorate will see their President – and this all the more true when shaping the President’s image in the eyes of the largest constituency that will actually not vote for them: the international community.

While domestically the President may be able to somewhat reshape his/her image through defining moments and actions, this is far less feasible internationally.

Only Americans vote for their President, but foreigners care almost as much – and sometimes more – about who will lead the most powerful nation in the world.

International impressions about a candidate are forged quite early, and they are far harder to change. Longer distances yield local media coverage that tends to be more one-dimensional and absolute, less nuanced, and more sporadic. Foreign coverage will also tend to be defined more narrowly from the prism of a particular nation’s foreign affairs agenda, as opposed to a plethora of domestic issues.

President Bush caused particular suspicion abroad during his 2000 campaign mocking Al Gore, and then again John Kerry in 2004, for their ‘multilateralism.’ He made it a pillar of his campaign to emphasize he would only pursue narrowly-defined American interests. He rejected the Kyoto protocols not only on their substance but on what they implied – that American policy would be harmonized with – or subservient to – global agendas for climate control.

Perhaps this stance helped him win over nativist constituencies. And he had little to fear about alienating foreigners who by definition could not vote. But global karma caught up with him and has as much to do with his Administration’s ultimate ineffectiveness as any other factor.

Foreign Heads of State in rare uniform fashion viewed him apprehensively, and large swaths of people reviled him across the globe. They could not vote him out. But they could vote with their policies and their currencies. Not only did Bush struggle to build his coalition in Iraq, but the ‘America’ brand was tarnished, American goods disfavored, and the dollar weakened.

America’s perceived weakness today is directly connected to displeasure with Bush’s unilateralist policies, whose perceptions were cemented during his campaign pronouncements even more than through his Administration’s work.

Even when Bush did positive international work, his image (and that of his Administration) had been unalterably shaped. He funded the fight against AIDS and pressed against poverty through far greater foreign aid than his predecessors. But he got no credit for it. Once international personas are shaped, it is close to impossible to alter them.

The same is true with foreign leaders from other nations – Putin vs. Gorbachev, Chirac vs. Sarkozy, Sharon vs. Peres – they are a brand unto themselves and will be hard-pressed to change it abroad no matter what different policies they may enact.

Starting with this general election, future candidates for the US presidency will hopefully bear in mind that the world is watching, and their statements will not be forgotten after the dust settles.

Both Obama and McCain seem to be more in tune to the foreign-policy-shaping impact of their campaign statements than President Bush was. Their visions for foreign policy could not be in greater contrast. McCain projects unwavering strength against militant absolutism and nihilism. Obama urges soft power and diplomatic engagement in tandem with military might. Neither perspective can be dismissed as unfounded or demagogic. Not even history will help us judge such a poignant question to such complex and dire circumstances.

But both will do well to remember that their campaign pronouncements will shape their international personas and will thus have almost as much impact on their ability to advance American (and possibly global) interests as the policies they enact thereafter if elected.

I was initially persuaded by media and pundit assertions that what is behind this meteoric rise in raw materials is at least connected to "speculation" – ie, hedge funds plowing in billions into commodity future contracts and other financial investments that make the goods artificially rise in cost.

But look at the Deutsche Bank chart (which my law school buddy Stanley Haar shared with me) below.

Non-Exchange traded commodities have risen more than those traded on exchanges. Unless hedge funds are also buying the physical goods in all these sectors, the more likely culprits are sheer global over-consumption and over-consumerism.  For years the mantra was that we should only hope the rest of the world will have a standard of living that is closer to the Western world’s.  Now that India and China are more than catching up, we are learning how this taxes our planet.

A better plan would be for all of us to learn to live just a little bit more modestly and less wastefully. 

To handle the energy, the scarcity of natural resources from food to raw materials, the dangers of increasing waste and overflowing landfills, and to slow down the threats of climate change, a wide range of measures are being discussed, from tech and scientific progress to come up with cleaner renewable energies, to carbon-trading, resource-planning, energy conservation, etc. etc.

But what policy makers don’t talk about and which our world needs to come to terms with is that we need to learn to live more modestly! So much waste in every aspect of our lives.  SUVs drive me nuts.  The digital economy could not arrive soon enough – more consumption will increasingly be digital, which takes less space and energy, hopefully.

Is a slow-down in consumerism going to lead to "economic pain" from less economic growth? And if so, isn’t that a price we should need to accept as a condition to continue inhabiting this planet?

Goldman Sachs reckons consumers are handing over $1.8 trillion a year to oil producers.

-The Economist

These states include Iran, Venezuela, Russia…  No wonder "authoritarian-driven economies" have looked so good over the last few years.  No wonder Iran and Venezuela can afford divisive hegemonic policies.

Look at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar,’ every ‘supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

- Carl Sagan, commenting on a picture of planet Earth taken 4 billion miles away by NASA, showing a fragile speck of blue adrift in an unimaginably vast sea of space. See a film with Carl Sagan’s commencement address at the Pangea Day website.

The film-maker Jehane Noujaim dreamt a day when people across the world would see the same films, images and messages on the same day, at the

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I just got this very cool invitation from Laurel Rapp, who runs our International Education Program…

You’re Invited: Global Town Hall Meeting
(webcast live to your classroom!)

Ever wonder what young Israelis and Palestinians growing up in conflict zones hope for, dream about, and are working to change?
Ever wonder what both groups are doing to end the conflict between their two peoples?  
Ever wonder what our role as citizens of the world should and can be?

If you’ve ever wondered and would like to know more, please join Empower Peace and OneVoice on Monday, May 19, for a Global Town Hall Meeting webcast from East Jerusalem linking Israeli and Palestinian youth leaders with students and young people from around the world.

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Like Hotel Rwanda, Beyond the Gates (aka Shooting Dogs) peers into the genocide in Rwanda, here from the eyes of an older priest and a young teacher who witness the slaughter by Hutu militia wielding machetes on Tutsi refugees as UN peace-monitors stand by.  Less than 15 years ago this true story took place.  After witnessing the inhuman carnage from close, helpless to save a mother and her baby, Joe Connor, the idealistic English teacher, asks Christopher, the exhausted Catholic priest:

Joe: How much pain can a human being take, do you think?
If you feel enough pain, does everything just shut down…
before you die?

Christopher: I don’t know, Joe.

Joe: ’cause you’d think that, wouldn’t you? You’d think there’d be some, something in the design, some shut-off valve, if you feel enough pain?

Christopher: I hope so.

Joe: Yeah, God knows.  [chuckles] Maybe we should ask him…  If he’s still around.

Christopher: I think it’s time we packed our bags.

The UN then begins a withdrawal, evacuating foreigners, but abandoning the compound, and the refugees.  What could Joe do? What can the priest do?

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Philip Stephens wrote an excellent column in the Financial Times about our craving for simple theories and categorizations to describe the new world order of the day, and the uncomfortable reality that geo-political

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