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Yepsen: Iowans can lead on foreign issues

By David Yepsen
Des Moines Register
Posted on Sunday April 22, 2007

Iowa City, Ia. – If anyone understands the power of Iowa’s caucuses, it’s Jimmy Carter. The unknown former Georgia governor’s victory here in 1976 helped slingshot him to the presidency. His template for campaigning in Iowa is still used today.

Now Carter wants to use Iowa again, this time to promote peace in the Middle East. He came to the University of Iowa last week to urge Iowans to question presidential candidates about the region and the steps the nation should take to bring peace there.

Without that peace, there’s no real hope of ending terrorism or keeping the U.S. secure, he said.

He asked his audience to ask presidential candidates to take a pledge: “If elected president, I will do everything possible to promote negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians to achieve peace and security for Israel and a secure and contiguous state for the Palestinians.”

“If they won’t tell you that, don’t support them,” he said.

Carter’s message sounds reasonable and evenhanded, yet he and his latest book – “Palestine Peace Not Apartheid” – have sparked controversy. Supporters of Israel fear it could erode traditional U.S. support for that nation, and contend it’s not critical enough of Palestinian leaders.

Despite that, there should be no argument about having the Middle East discussion Carter suggests. And Iowa is as good a place as any to have it. Nothing could be more “Iowan” than a civil conversation.

On this topic, we don’t have a large population of Iowans of Arab ancestry. Nor is the Jewish community here a huge one. That means neither side can dominate the debate, the electorate or pressure candidates one way or another.

Which brings me to my second point. Just what should the discussion include? Given the level of vitriol that can accompany talk of the Middle East, how can we expect any candidate to want to wade into the thicket? (When I told an editor I was writing about the Middle East, she said emotions run so high, it makes an immigration discussion look tame.)

So I turned to an old teacher. University of Iowa history professor David Schoenbaum is an expert on the Middle East and is one of those academics who thinks I’m still owed some instruction for the tuition money I paid the school 35 years ago. (Or perhaps he thinks I didn’t get it the first time.)

Either way, I still get extra lectures or readings from him from time to time. So when I ran into Schoenbaum last week here, I asked for a list of the sorts of foreign-policy questions Iowans should be asking presidential candidates. His e-mail arrived just a few hours later. His suggestions include: – What are your top three foreign-policy priorities, and why? – How would you get America out of Iraq without leaving behind another Afghanistan? – Given the weakness of the Israeli government, the Palestinian Authority and American credibility in the region after four years of war in Iraq, what would you do to revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process? – What would you do to reduce our dependence on foreign (Chinese, Korean, Japanese) savings and foreign (Venezuelan, Nigerian, Indonesian, Middle East) oil? – What are your cures for global warming, which military experts say has national-security implications. How to you pay for them? – Can we subsidize corn exports, close our market to sugar imports and limit illegal immigration from Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, at the same time?

That’s not a complete list. But between it and what President Carter suggests, it’s a start.