Obama No FP PDF

How would a Romney/Ryan administration have handled the ISIS
challenge? TNI poses the question to the former Vice Presidential candidate.
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Paul Ryan: The Obama
Administration Has No Foreign
Policy
Paul Ryan
October 30, 2014
Editors Note: Harry J. Kazianis, Managing Editor of the National Interest,
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submitted the following questions to former Vice Presidential candidate and
author of the recent book The Way Forward: Renewing the American Idea
Congressman Paul Ryan. Below are his responses:
Kazianis: Thinking back to the Presidential campaign of 2012, if there was one
single thing you could go back and undo or decision you would change, what
would it be?
Ryan: The outcome! I think the country
would have been much better off if Mitt
Romney had been elected president. But
one of the things I learned is that 88
daysthe amount of time I was on the
ticketis not nearly enough time to make
your case to the American people.
Basically, you get stuffed into a cannon
and shot out into the middle of country,
and its really hard to articulate a vision in such a short amount of time with the
media and the opposition coming after you.
Thats one of the reasons I wanted to write this book: I wanted to speak for
myselfon my own termswithout the fog of an election surrounding me. To this
day, the 2012 campaign informs my view of what it will take to renew the
American idea and get our country back on track. Leaders need to offer a clear
vision of what they will do to fix our countrys problems. And if I had to do it over
again, I would have pushed for more opportunities for our party to do precisely
that.
Kazianis: Looking ahead to the 2016 Presidential race, your name has come up
quite a bit as a possible candidate. Instead of asking you the obvious question,
Will you run?, what, in your view, is the most important skill one needs to have
to be a successful president? Is there a particular president or historical leader
that guides your own thinking?
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Ryan: One leader who shaped a lot of my thinking was my mentor, Jack Kemp.
He taught me that you always want to be expanding the tent and you can do that
by speaking to peoples aspirations. He had an amazing amount of energyit was
just infectiousand it drew people to him and to our party. In a way, Im trying to
pick up where he left offto make the conservative movement into a national
movement once again.
Kazianis: I would now like to turn to a topic that you have quite a bit of expertise
on: the nations fiscal health. It seems like the question of the deficits that rack up
year over year has left the news cycle as issues like ISIS, the state of affairs in
Ukraine and other topics now dominate the headlines. While we no longer have
$1 trillion deficits year over year, we do owe a substantial sum of money to
nations like China and others. Do you feel Republicans have given up on this issue
as the economy has improved slightly?
Ryan: I believe that there is plenty of blame to go around in both parties for the
countrys current fiscal situation. I think that for much of the last administration
and even before that, Republicans in Washington abandoned their core principles
of fiscal responsibility. When I first got to Congress in 1999, earmarks were the
biggest sign that the spending culture was out of control. A Member of Congress
even went to jail for abusing them. What I saw was a party that had lost its
principles and looked hypocritical. They said they were for fiscal conservatism,
but they didnt act like it. I think thats one of the reasons why Republicans lost
the majority in 2006.
When President Obama took office, things got much worse. The Democrats had
total control over the government, and in my opinion, they vastly overreached.
The result has been the worst economic recovery since World War II. Today,
millions of men and women not only aren't working; they aren't even looking for
work. Thats just not good enough.
Our debt is over $17 trillion dollars and deficits are estimated to go back up in a
few short years, so we have to address our fiscal situation before it gets worse.
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Thats why, for the fourth year in the row, I wrote and passed a budget that pays
off the debt and grows the economy. So I would like to think that, in recent years,
we have taken steps in the right direction to restore our fiscal responsibility.
Kazianis: Do you feel there is still possible momentum to reduce the deficit
substantially in the years ahead and come closer to something resembling a
balanced budget?
Ryan: This is why elections are so important. We currently have a president who
is focused on cutting military spending while massively expanding entitlements,
and whose only solution to balance the budget is to raise taxes.
Meanwhile, Senate Democrats went years without even passing a budget, and
there wasnt any break in the impasse until Senator Patty Murray and I put
together the Bipartisan Budget Act in 2013. That provided some small spending
reductions, but not nearly enough to solve the problem.
With the divided government weve had, the momentum hasnt been there in
recent years, but its not for a lack of trying on my part. Ive passed four balanced
budgets since becoming chairman of the Budget Committee, and my budgets pay
down the debt by reforming government programs so that they work without
bankrupting the country. There are good proposals out there for balancing the
budget, but most will never see the light of day, because we dont have the right
leadership in Washington. Thats the real problem.
Kazianis: Over the last few years, President Obama has attempted to work
towards multiple new free-trade agreements that, if signed, could be major
economic as well as geopolitical game changers for the regions they impact. If you
could, please give us your assessment of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Do
you feel the agreement as constructed would create more jobs and economic
growth? How would you characterize the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment
Partnership (TTIP)? How would this help or hurt the U.S. economy?
Ryan: The Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership would reassure our
4 of 10 10/30/14, 6:47 AM
friends in Eastern Europe. And the Trans-Pacific Partnership would reassure our
friends in Asia. And as we draw our friends closer in a time of danger, we'd put
our rivals on notice: There are costs to confrontation and benefits to
collaboration. And I think both trade agreements would help our economy. They
would help create jobs by giving our exporters access to new markets. So I think
its vital we develop these partnerships.
Kazianis: Turning to matters of international affairs, the United States has a
number of challenges on its plate. When it comes to the threat posed by the
Islamic State or ISIS, do you feel President Obama has the right strategy to
combat this challenge? How would a Romney/Ryan White House have tackled
ISIS?
Ryan: When it comes to foreign policy, my biggest criticism of this
administration is that it doesnt have one. What we need is a comprehensive
strategy to deal with this threat. That means support for moderate Muslims in the
region and cooperation with moderate Muslim countries.
I believe we couldve done more to get a Status of Forces Agreement in Iraq as the
military recommended. The president insisted we could never achieve an
agreement without a vote in the Iraqi legislature, and yet now we have one, even
though we didnt have a vote. We also couldve helped the Free Syrian Army at a
much earlier stage in this crisis when it was so much easier to separate the good
guys from the bad guys, and the president chose not to do that.
To be fair, I think the president has changed his policies for the better, but I think
one of the reasons we are where we are is that he made some terrible mistakes.
The intelligence community has been warning about ISIS for quite some time, so
this isnt a new problem. The administration helped create the vacuum in Syria
and in Iraq, which gave them the ability to take over whole pieces of these two
countries. Now, hes got a better policy today, and he needs to see it through.
Im glad hes changed his policy and I think hes going in the right direction. I just
think we need to learn from the mistakes that have been made in the past, and not
5 of 10 10/30/14, 6:47 AM
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second-guess and micromanage our military. Lets give them the missionto
defeat ISISand then give them the flexibility to complete the mission.
Image: Flickr/Gage Skidmore/CC by 2.0
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How would a Romney/Ryan administration have handled the ISIS

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