Ivo Dalder looks at Republican 2000 platform

This is a lot more detailed than my mere memory of those days is, but it deserves a second look to compare what Bush intended to do after defeating Gore. From Ivo Dalder:

* The administration has run America’s defenses down over the decade through inadequate resources, promiscuous commitments, and the absence of a forward-looking military strategy. [As opposed to breaking the Army and Marine Corp, sending troops to war without adequate body armor and equipment, and only deciding to increase force levels five years into a global conflict.]
* The arrogance, inconsistency, and unreliability of the administration’s diplomacy have undermined American alliances, alienated friends, and emboldened our adversaries. [My all-time favorite!]
* World trade talks in Seattle that the current administration had sponsored collapsed in spectacular failure. [Doha anyone?] An initiative to establish free trade throughout the Americas has stalled because of this lack of Presidential leadership. [Ah, yes. Bush’s leadership on this issue really has made a difference — 6 years later and we’re not a step closer to a deal.]
* The problems of Mexico have been ignored, as our indispensable neighbor to the south struggled with too little American help to deal with its formidable challenges. [Think the Mexicans feel they’ve gotten any help from Bush lately? After declaring the relationship with Mexico America’s most important on September 9, 2001, Bush has ignored our southern neighbors ever since.]
* The tide of democracy in Latin America has begun to ebb with a sharp rise in corruption and narco-trafficking. [And since then, only America’s friends in Latin America have won elections… Not!]
* With weak and wavering policies toward Russia, the administration has diverted its gaze from corruption at the top of the Russian government, the slaughter of thousands of innocent civilians in Chechnya, and the export of dangerous Russian technologies to Iran and elsewhere. [The biggest mistake wasn’t seeing Putin’s soul…]
* A generation of American efforts to slow proliferation of weapons of mass destruction has unraveled as first India and Pakistan set off their nuclear bombs, then Iraq defied the international community. Token air strikes against Iraq could not long mask the collapse of an inspection regime that had — until then — at least kept an ambitious, murderous tyrant from acquiring additional nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. [North Korea? Iran? Oh, and what do we do when inspectors in Iraq return?]

Ivo Dalder got these from the the 2000 GOP foreign policy platform.

Actually those proposals were not a bad basis for building a decent foreign policy. What happened? As we learned from early on, the Bush White House does politics. It does not do policy.

What's the difference?

Politics is doing things that provide direct payoffs to those Bush supporters who can influence votes. The goal is to achieve reelection and retain power.

Policy is taking a set of priorities like those proposed in the 2000 GOP foreign policy platform and taking organized actions by government to achieve the goals in that platform.

Bush's (and Cheney's) goal has been their own reelection and retention of power, not making the world a better place for Americans and everyone else to live in. This short take, comparing the promises made in 2000 to the reality that the GOP has left us at the end of 2006 demonstrates that quite well.