Polls and Public Opinion

Is the third time really the charm? Former Vice President Joe Biden certainly hopes so. He first threw his hat in the ring for the 1988 Democratic nomination but ended up dropping out of the race months before the Iowa caucuses—then, as now, the first official nominating event—because of charges that he had plagiarized from a British politician’s speech and exaggerated his own accomplishments. He tried again two decades later. He stuck around until the Iowa caucuses, but finished fifth and dropped out of the race. If Biden does win next November, he will become only the third vice president in one hundred and eighty years to become president by election rather than by the death or resignation of the sitting president. Richard Nixon and George H.W. Bush are the other two. The Basics Name: Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. Date of Birth: November 20, 1942 Place of Birth: Scranton, Pennsylvania Religion: Roman Catholic Political Party: Democratic Party Marital Status: Married (Jill Jacobs); previously married to Neilia Hunter (died in 1972) Children: Joseph "Beau" (died in 2015 at age 46); Robert Hunter (49), Naomi (died in 1972 at age 1); and Ashley (37),   Alma Mater: University of Delaware (BA); Syracuse University (JD) Career: Lawyer; U.S. Senator (1973–2008), U.S. Vice President (2009–2017) Campaign Website: https://joebiden.com/ Twitter Handle: @JoeBiden Biden’s Announcement Biden announced his candidacy on April 25 by releasing a video. Building on an argument he first laid out in an op-ed he wrote after the neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville in 2017, he recounted America’s values and argued that President Donald Trump posed a “threat to this nation…unlike any I have ever seen in my lifetime.” Biden went on to say that “everything that has made America America is at stake” in November 2020. Notably missing from the announcement video was any mention of foreign policy. Biden’s Story Biden was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania. When he was ten, his father moved the family to Claymont, Delaware. Biden played football and baseball in high school, and was also a good student. He studied history and political science at the University of Delaware, where he also played football. He then earned a law degree at Syracuse University. Biden says that “during my adolescent and college years, men and women were changing the country—Martin Luther King, Jr., John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy—and I was swept up in their eloquence, their conviction, the sheer size of their improbable dreams.” After getting his law degree, Biden moved to Wilmington, Delaware to practice law. He jumped into politics in 1970 and he won a seat on the Newcastle County Council. Two years later, he became the fifth-youngest person ever elected to the Senate. He was twenty-nine on Election Day; he hit the constitutionally mandated minimum of thirty years of age thirteen days later. Biden liked life in the Senate, and Delaware voters liked having him there. They re-elected him five times. His thirty-six years and thirteen days of service make him the eighteenth longest serving senator in U.S. history. Part of his appeal to his constituents was that he commuted daily between Wilmington and Washington on Amtrak rather than move to the nation’s capital. That trip on the Acela, Amtrak’s fastest train, takes about eighty minutes each way if everything goes according to plan, which as anyone who takes Amtrak knows, often isn’t the case. During his six terms in the Senate, Biden chaired both the Senate Judiciary Committee (1987-95) and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (2001-2003 and 2007-2009). When Barack Obama announced Biden as his running mate in 2008, he said of Biden: "He's an expert on foreign policy whose heart and values are rooted firmly in the middle class. He has stared down dictators and spoken out for America's cops and firefighters. He is uniquely suited to be my partner as we work to put our country back on track." Biden’s professional successes have come against a backdrop of tragic personal losses. Weeks after winning his first Senate election, Biden’s wife, Neilia, and his one-year-old daughter Naomi, were killed in a car accident that also injured his young sons, Beau and Hunter. As an adult, Beau was diagnosed with brain cancer and died in 2015. Biden’s Message Biden’s 2020 campaign slogan is “Our Best Days Still Lie Ahead.” He argues that Election 2020 is a battle for the “soul of America.” He believes that “history will look back on four years of this president, and all he embraces, as aberrant moment in time.” However, if Trump wins reelection, “he will forever and fundamentally alter the character of this nation.” Lest anyone miss the point, Biden has labeled Trump as an "existential threat" to the nation. Biden’s Foreign Policy Views Biden has been involved in national politics and foreign affairs since he took his first oath of office as U.S. senator back in January 1973 as a thirty-year old. A thorough discussion of the foreign policy positions he has taken would fill books. A sense of his worldview can be seen in the votes he cast during his thirty-six years in the Senate: War Powers Resolution (for); Panama Canal treaties (for); funding for the Contras (against); INF Treaty (for): Gulf War (against); NAFTA (for); permanent normal trading relations with China (for); creation of the World Trade Organization (for); Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (for); post-9/11 military authorization (for); and the Iraq War (for). In all, Biden charted a mainstream, liberal internationalist approach to foreign policy. That, of course, is precisely the foreign policy that Trump ran against. As might be expected from someone with traditional foreign policy views, Biden wants to turn the clock back on Trump’s America First. In an address to the Munich Security Conference back in February, the former vice president stressed restoring U.S. foreign policy. He criticized the Trump administration’s approach to transatlantic relations and offered his firm support for NATO and the European Union. Noting the rifts that had developed between the United States and many of its allies, Biden said that “this too shall pass” and that the United States “will be back” to its position of global leadership. The restoration theme ran through the foreign policy speech Biden delivered in July. As part of his “blueprint” for repairing what he called “the damage wrought by” America First, Biden vowed to pursue a “forward-thinking foreign policy.” He would restore U.S. membership in agreements like the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate agreement, as well repair relations with America’s closest friends and allies. Biden also pledged to convene a summit of the world’s democracies during his first year in office “to put strengthening democracy back on the global stage.” A challenge that Biden would face in enacting his foreign policy vision is one that haunts any restoration effort—the damage that has been done may not be reparable. Biden says he would take a tougher line on Russia than the Trump administration has. Writing on the pages of Foreign Affairs last year, he argued that “the Russian government is brazenly assaulting the foundations of Western democracy around the world.” Biden’s proposed solution is U.S. global leadership: “The United States must lead its democratic allies and partners in increasing their resilience, expanding their capabilities to defend against Russian subversion, and rooting out the Kremlin’s networks of malign influence.” That said, Biden thinks that “Washington must keep the channels of communication open with Moscow. At the height of the Cold War, American and Soviet leaders recognized that, whatever their differences, they could not afford a miscalculation that might lead to war. They had to keep talking. The same is true today.” Biden has not taken a similarly tough line on China. He made news back in May when he dismissed claims that China poses a serious economic threat to the United States, saying: “China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man…. They’re not competition for us." At a subsequent campaign stop in Iowa, Biden turned to a time-tested congressional maneuver: he revised and extended his remarks. He admitted that "we are in a competition with China. We need to get tough with China. They are a serious challenge to us, and in some areas a real threat." Biden went on to note that Trump’s tariffs were "exacerbating the challenge" facing the United States. He argued that the United States would be better served by focusing its efforts on improving its domestic economy to outcompete China. Although restoration looks to be a guiding theme of Biden’s foreign policy, he is seemingly lukewarm on reviving the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) as a way to compete with China. Although he supported TPP while a member of the Obama administration, he now says that he would not rejoin it “as it was initially put forward.” He instead wants to renegotiate it, and “to make sure that there's no one sitting at that table doing the deal unless environmentalists are there and labor is there.” More broadly, Biden has borrowed language from the protectionist playbook as he has tried to rebrand himself as something other than the free-trader he was while in the Senate and the Vice President’s office. Back in May he told reporters: I’m a fair trader. That’s why I’ve been arguing for a long time that we should treat other countries the way in which they treat us, which is, particularly as it relates to China: If they want to trade here, they’re going to be under the same rules. Has Biden truly abandoned the trade views he championed for more than forty years? Or has he merely had a convenient campaign conversion? One piece of evidence for the latter position is that he has repeatedly and correctly pointed out that the United States stands to lose a lot if it walks away from trade agreements: When it comes to trade, either we're going to write the rules of the road for the world or China is–and not in a way that advances our values. That's what happened when we backed out of TPP–we put China in the driver's seat. That's not good for our national security or for our workers. TPP wasn’t perfect but the idea behind it was a good one: to unite countries around high standards for workers, the environment, intellectual property, and transparency, and use our collective weight to curb China’s excesses.  That phrasing suggests that Biden, more so than say, Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren, would look for a way to get trade deals done. Of course, striking trade deals and getting others to join a collaborative effort to pressure China would require making concessions as well as demands. Those concessions would likely alienate some voting blocs. In what looks to be a bid to reassure supporters, and one that probably would be a smart thing to do on the merits, Biden says he “would not sign any new trade deal until we have made major investments in our workers and infrastructure.”  Like most of his Democratic rivals, Biden says he “would bring American combat troops in Afghanistan home during my first term.” That doesn’t mean, however, that he has pledged to take all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan. In virtually the same breath as his promise to withdraw troops, Biden admits he may maintain a “residual U.S. military presence in Afghanistan” that would focus “only on counterterrorism operations.” His reason for the caveat is understandable, especially after what he witnessed when the Obama administration withdrew U.S. troops from Iraq: We need to be clear-eyed about our limited enduring security interests in the region: We cannot allow the remnants of Al Qa’ida in Afghanistan and Pakistan to reconstitute, and we must destroy the Islamic State presence in the region. Americans are rightly weary of our longest war; I am, too. But we must end the war responsibly, in a manner that ensures we both guard against threats to our Homeland and never have to go back. The problem, of course, is that counterterrorism operations could end up looking a lot like current U.S. military operations in Afghanistan. Biden has also joined with his fellow Democratic candidates in calling for an end to U.S. support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen. He also wants to reassess the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia, especially in the aftermath of the brutal murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Biden says he would stand up to Saudi Arabia: “I would want to hear how Saudi Arabia intends to change its approach to work with a more responsible U.S. administration.” This approach is consistent with Biden’s broader complaint that Trump has abandoned traditional U.S. support for human rights and instead pursued a “love affair” with dictators: “I just don’t know why this administration seems to feel the need to coddle autocrats and dictators from Putin to Kim Jong Un to Duterte.”  Speaking of dictators, Biden favors taking a harder line against Nicolas Maduro: The violence in Venezuela today against peaceful protesters is criminal. Maduro's regime is responsible for incredible suffering. The U.S. must stand with the National Assembly & Guaidó in their efforts to restore democracy through legitimate, internationally monitored elections. Biden wants the United States to enforce “stronger multilateral sanctions” against Maduro’s supporters of the regime. He has also called for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Venezuelans currently in the United States and for more support to countries caring for Venezuelans who have fled abroad. Biden has joined with other Democrats in calling for major steps to combat climate change. Besides rejoining the Paris Climate Accord, he proposes to lead “a diplomatic initiative to get every nation to go beyond their initial commitment.” His $1.7 trillion climate change plan would, among other things, prohibit the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), the Export-Import Bank, and the International Development Finance Corporation from financing coal-fired power plants in developing countries. Biden says his goal is to get the United States to net-zero emissions by 2050. More on Biden Biden wrote Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose in 2017. It reflects on the year that he spent carrying out his vice presidential duties while dealing with his son Beau’s losing struggle with brain cancer. Biden’s other book, Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics, which he wrote before running for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, is a traditional political memoir. In January, POLITICO Magazine detailed the personal tragedies that Biden has endured with the death of his wife and infant daughter in a 1972 car accident and the 2015 death of his son Beau from a rare form of brain cancer. The New Yorker argued in April that Biden “is going all in on the old conventional wisdom, which is that Presidential elections four years into a Presidency are almost always referendums on the incumbent, and this incumbent presents a very large target.” POLITICO Magazine wrote back in June about what it called the “Two-Biden Problem,” saying that “during his long career, he [Biden] has frequently engaged with controversial issues—from busing to judges to abortion to crime. In doing so, he’s tried to push for the most liberal position that could still appeal to a majority of voters. The danger for Biden is that this story leaves him open to the charge that he was never all that liberal in the first place.” Back in June the New York Times examined Biden’s first presidential campaign in the 1980s, calling it a “calamity.” The New York Times Magazine profiled Biden in July and asked whether Democrats would embrace Biden’s effort “to take America back to a time before Trump.” Biden answered eleven questions from the New York Times on executive power. In response to a question about the limits of any presidential war power, he answered, “As is well established and as the Department of Justice has articulated across several administrations, the Constitution vests the President, as Commander in Chief and Chief Executive, with the power to direct limited U.S. military operations abroad without prior Congressional approval when those operations serve important U.S. interests and are of a limited nature, scope, and duration. CFR asked Biden twelve foreign policy questions. When asked to name America’s greatest foreign policy accomplishment since World War II, he said it “was the work of the United States and our western allies to rebuild after a devastating global conflict.” He said that biggest mistake the United States has made since World War II “was President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord. Climate change is an existential threat. If we don’t get this right, nothing else matters.” Corey Cooper, Brenden Ebertz, Elizabeth Lordi, and Anna Shortridge assisted in the preparation of this post.  

Update: Bernie Sanders announced on April 8, 2020, that he was suspending his campaign.  Is the second time the charm? Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders certainly hopes so. Back in 2016, the self-proclaimed democratic socialist gave heavily favored Hillary Clinton a surprisingly tough run for the Democratic presidential nomination. Sanders and many of his followers are convinced that if the Democratic Party leadership and its campaign rules hadn’t been tilted so heavily in favor of the former First Lady he would have won the nomination and defeated Donald Trump in the general election. If Sanders does make it to the White House he would, at seventy-nine years of age, be the oldest person elected president. (Ronald Reagan currently holds the record; he was nearly seventy-four when he was elected to his second term.) He would also be the first Jewish American elected president. And, of course, he would be America’s first democratic socialist president. The Basics Name: Bernard (Bernie) Sanders   Date of Birth: September 8, 1941 Place of Birth: Brooklyn, New York Religion: Jewish Political Party: Independent   Marital Status: Married (Jane O'Meara) Children: Levi (49); and three stepchildren: Heather (48), Carina (45), and David (44) Alma Mater: Brooklyn College, University of Chicago (BA) Career: Mayor of Burlington, Vermont (1981-1989); U.S. Representative (1991-2007); U.S. Senator (2007-present) Campaign Website: https://berniesanders.com/ Twitter Handle: @BernieSanders Sanders’s Announcement Sanders announced his second run for the White House in an interview with Vermont Public Radio on February 19. He released his official announcement video later that morning. Sanders called for a grassroots movement of one million volunteers to support his campaign and to take on special interests. He said he is running so he could tackle a long list of challenges facing the United States, including wealth inequality, voter suppression, inadequate childcare, a regressive tax system, healthcare, student debt, immigration, and gun violence. He called Trump “a pathological liar, a fraud, a racist, a sexist, a xenophobe, and someone who is undermining American democracy as he leads us in an authoritarian direction.” Unlike most of his Democratic presidential rivals, Sanders mentioned foreign policy in his announcement video. He said America needs “trade policies that reflect the interests of workers and not multinational corporations” and he called for “a foreign policy which focuses on democracy, human rights, diplomacy, and world peace. The United States must lead the world in improving international cooperation in the fight against climate change, militarism, authoritarianism, and global wealth inequality.” Sanders’s Story Sanders grew up in Flatbush, Brooklyn, in a lower-middle class. He was the son of Jewish immigrants. His father’s family came from Poland, his mother’s from Russia. His father was a paint salesman and his mother a homemaker. Much of his father’s family was killed during the Holocaust. He says that made him recognize at an early age the importance of elections because “an election in 1932 ended up killing fifty million people around the world.” Sanders attended Brooklyn College for a year and then transferred to the University of Chicago. There he joined the Young People’s Socialist League, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Student Peace Union, and the Congress on Racial Equality, where he protested the segregation of university-owned housing and Chicago public schools. After graduating from Chicago in 1964 with a degree in political science, Sanders bounced from job to job, first in New York City, then in Vermont. He was variously a freelance writer, filmmaker, carpenter, aide at a psychiatric hospital, preschool teacher, and researcher for the Vermont Department of Taxes. Sanders moved to Vermont in 1968. He ran unsuccessfully for governor in 1972 and 1976 and for the U.S. Senate in 1972 and 1974 on the Liberty Union ticket. He then lowered his sights and ran for mayor of Burlington in 1981 as an independent. He won and served for four terms. But his desire for higher office didn’t abate. He ran and lost a gubernatorial election in 1986 and a U.S. House race in 1988. Sanders’s losing streak for higher office came to an end in 1990 when he won Vermont’s at-large congressional seat running as an independent. He served eight terms in the House before being elected to the Senate in 2006. He was reelected in 2012 and 2018. Sanders sought the Democratic nomination in 2016. He won twenty-three primaries and caucuses, ultimately losing to Secretary Hillary Clinton. Not bad for someone who wasn’t a member of the Democratic Party. Sanders sits on four Senate committees: Budget; Environment, Energy, and Health; Education, Labor, and Pensions; and Veteran’s Affairs. He is also a member of the Democratic leadership, despite not being a Democrat. He is the longest serving independent member of Congress in U.S. history. Sanders’s Message Just like in his 2016 campaign, Sanders is seeking to establish a grassroots movement that demands that the government work for all and not just the few. He believes multinational corporations exercise too much political power, and he regularly attacks Wall Street, health-insurance companies, Big Pharma, the fossil-fuel industry, and the military-industrial complex. He believes Americans are “inherently entitled” to health care, education, a clean environment, and decent paying jobs. Sanders says that his calls for progressive policies that were once considered “too radical,” like Medicare-for-all, a $15-an-hour-minimum wage, and free college tuition, are now supported “by a majority of Americans” and a part of the “political mainstream.” So his 2016 campaign “began the political revolution. Now it is time to complete that revolution and implement the vision that we fought for.” When asked about what he will do differently in 2020, Sanders has simple answer: “We’re gonna win.” Sanders’s Foreign Policy Views Foreign policy has never been Sanders’s passion. He has sponsored very few foreign policy bills in his nearly three decades on Capitol Hill. He generally avoided foreign policy issues back in 2016. For five months after he declared his candidacy, his campaign website didn’t have a section dedicated to foreign policy. When he did address foreign policy he often struggled to explain his positions. His lack of interest was so striking that a group of Democratic-leaning former government national security officials signed a letter criticizing his “continued lack of interest in and knowledge of essential foreign policy and national security issues.” Sanders made it a point to burnish his foreign policy credentials in time for his second run for the White House. In 2017, he hired his first full-time Senate foreign policy advisor. He then gave two major foreign policy speeches outlining what a progressive foreign policy would look like. The first speech was in September 2017 at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. That’s where Winston Churchill gave his famous "Iron Curtain" speech in 1946. The second was last October at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). Both speeches were long generalities, short on actionable specifics. At Westminster, he stressed: The goal is not for the United States to dominate the world. Nor, on the other hand, is our goal to withdraw from the international community and shirk our responsibilities under the banner of “America First.” Our goal should be global engagement based on partnership, rather than dominance. This is better for our security, better for global stability and better for facilitating the international cooperation necessary to meet shared challenges. His SAIS speech stressed what he sees as “a troubling trend in global affairs”: There is currently a struggle of enormous consequence taking place in the United States and throughout the world. In it we see two competing visions. On one hand, we see a growing worldwide movement toward authoritarianism, oligarchy, and kleptocracy. On the other side we see a movement toward strengthening democracy, egalitarianism, and economic, social, racial, and environmental justice. This struggle has consequences for the entire future of the planet—economically, socially, and environmentally. Neither speech talks much about what Sanders would do as president. That’s perhaps not surprising given that it can be easier to identify a problem than to figure out how to solve it. As Sanders told the New Yorker, “Look, this is very difficult stuff.” He added, “I should have prefaced everything by saying I most certainly do not believe I have all the answers or that this is easy stuff. I mean, you’re dealing with so much—my God.” (Sanders told the Intercept something similar: “Anyone who thinks there is a simple solution in dealing with all of the horrific and longstanding conflicts in the world would be mistaken … Where we’ve got to be radical is to understand we cannot continue with simply using military as a means of addressing foreign policy issues.”) Of course, presidents are the ones responsible for figuring out the details. Sanders followed up his Westminster College and SAIS speeches with an article in June for Foreign Affairs on counterterrorism policy and ending America’s “forever wars.” He argued that “we need to rethink the militaristic approach that has undermined the United States’ moral authority, caused our allies to question our ability to lead, drained our tax coffers, and corroded our own democracy.” He thinks that endless wars “draw attention away from economic corruption” that has a bigger impact on people’s lives. As with his two major foreign policy speeches, Sanders’s Foreign Affairs article said little about what specifically he would do as president. Sanders’s main message on foreign policy is that the United States should rely less on its military and more on it its diplomacy. Like many of his fellow Democratic candidates, he supports withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan and Syria. However, he opposes the Trump administration’s unilateralist approach in both countries. Sanders says the withdrawals need “to be done with our allies, not through tweets.” And unlike many of his Democratic rivals, he won’t commit to getting U.S. troops out of Afghanistan before the end of his first term in office. He instead says that he “would withdraw U.S. military forces from Afghanistan as expeditiously as possible,” adding that “withdrawing troops does not mean withdrawing all involvement, and my administration would stay politically engaged in these countries and do whatever we can to help them develop their economy and strengthen a government that is responsible to its people.”  Sanders has been a leading Senate critic of U.S. support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen. He co-sponsored the resolution that would have ended that support. However, Trump vetoed the bill and the necessary votes don’t exist in Congress to override that veto. Sanders also opposes Trump’s decision to leave the Iran nuclear deal, calling it “the latest in a series of reckless decisions that move our country closer to conflict.” He says he “would re-enter the agreement on day one of my presidency and then work with the P5+1 and Iran to build upon it with additional measures to further block any path to a nuclear weapon, restrain Iran’s offensive actions in the region and forge a new strategic balance in the Middle East.” Sanders has no problems with Trump’s effort to negotiate with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. He further agrees with Trump that the United States needs to "put all of the pressure that we can" on North Korea, both economically and politically. He is willing to give North Korea some sanctions relief if Pyongyang agrees to dismantle some of its nuclear arsenal. He would then pursue additional negotiations aimed at “the eventual elimination of all North Korean nuclear weapons.” Many Democratic presidential candidates have recognized Juan Guaidó as the legitimate president of Venezuela. But not Sanders. When asked earlier this year if Nicolas Maduro, who has presided over the impoverishment of Venezuela and the destruction of its democracy, should step down as president, Sanders refused to say yes or no. He has said that “the United States should support the rule of law, fair elections and self-determination for the Venezuelan people,” but seems more worried that “the United States has a long history of inappropriately intervening in Latin American countries; we must not go down that road again." Sanders has a record of being sympathetic to Latin American dictators who profess to be socialists. Back in the 1980’s he called Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega “an impressive guy” and praised Fidel Castro for having made “enormous progress” in “improving the lives of poor people and working people.” Sanders is one of Trump’s harshest foreign policy critics, but shares his disdain for U.S. trade policy. Sanders strongly opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and supported Trump’s decision to exit the deal: I am glad the Trans-Pacific Partnership is dead and gone. For the last 30 years, we have had a series of trade deals—including the North American Free Trade Agreement, permanent normal trade relations with China and others—which have cost us millions of decent-paying jobs and caused a ‘race to the bottom’ which has lowered wages for American workers. Now is the time to develop a new trade policy that helps working families, not just multinational corporations. Sanders doesn’t think TPP is salvageable and “under no circumstance would we rejoin the Trans-Pacific Partnership under a Sanders administration.”  Sanders’s support for parts of Trump’s trade agenda is not surprising. Sanders has proudly opposed every trade agreement presented during his time in Congress. But the basis of his disdain for America’s trade agreements differs from Trump’s. The president thinks U.S. trade deals have given too much to America’s trade partners; Sanders thinks they have given too much to multinational corporations at the expense of American workers. That’s why he supported Trump’s decision to renegotiate NAFTA and then opposed the deal Trump struck. In his view, “a re-negotiated NAFTA must stop the outsourcing of U.S. jobs, end the destructive race to the bottom, protect the environment, and lower the outrageously high price of prescription drugs. Clearly, Trump’s NAFTA 2.0 does not meet these standards and I will strongly oppose it in its current form.” Sanders similarly both supported and criticized Trump’s tariffs on aluminum and steel. He was fine with “imposing stiff penalties on countries like China, Russia, South Korea and Vietnam to prevent them from illegally dumping steel and aluminum into the U.S. and throughout the world.” And he says “of course” he would use tariffs as a negotiating tool. However, he objected to imposing tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum from Canada and the European Union, calling the policy “haphazard and reckless” and “an absolute disaster.” Why the difference? Sanders says “it simply makes no sense to start a trade war with Canada, the European Union and others who are engaged in fair trade, are not cheating and where workers are paid a living wage with good benefits.” More broadly, he thinks Trump’s use of tariffs “is totally irrational and it is destabilizing the entire world economy.” Last week, Sanders unveiled his plan to combat climate change, which he also calls the Green New Deal. He proposes to spend $16 trillion dollars to eliminate fossil-fuel use in the United States by 2050. To put that number in perspective, the annual U.S. GDP is $21 trillion. Joe Biden puts a price tag of $1.7 trillion on his climate plan, and Elizabeth Warren has pledged to spend $2 trillion to promote clean manufacturing and exports. More on Sanders Since the 2016 election, Sanders has written Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In, Bernie Sanders Guide to Political Revolution, and Where We Go from Here: Two Years in the Resistance. The New York Times Magazine profiled Sanders back in 2007, calling the then freshman senator “an awkward fit in the chummy realm of Capitol Hill. He is no pleaser or jokester by anyone’s prototype.” Politico Magazine profiled Sanders back in 2015, describing his life before elected office as one of a “radical and an agitator in the ferment of 1960s and '70s Vermont, a tireless campaigner and champion of laborers who didn’t collect his first steady paycheck until he was an elected official pushing 40 years old.” Back in 2015 the New Yorker explored the appeal of Sanders’s populist message, concluding that “though Sanders is steadfastly earnest, the youthful enthusiasm for him often partakes of irony. Whimsical buttons feature the slogan ‘Feel the Bern,’ and Tumblr is full of memes that play up the contrast between Sanders’s age and his popularity with hipsters.” Last year, the New Yorker assessed Sanders’s legacy on progressive politics, saying that “since the 2016 election, the Sanders movement has been tricky to pin down—at times it has seemed to embody the Democratic future and at others to be disappearing quickly into the past.” Last November New York Magazine tagged along as Sanders mulled over whether to make a second run at the White House and found that his advisors were split—some “think his path to the White House has never been clearer. But other friends warn him there’s a good chance that if he enters the race, his first day will be his best day.” Sanders appeared on a CNN Town Hall back in April. Earlier this month Sanders spent an hour on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast. Sanders answered eighteen questions for the New York Times. When asked where he would go on his first international trip as president, he answered: “I have no idea. There are a lot of hot spots around the world.” CFR asked Sanders twelve foreign policy questions. When asked to name America’s greatest foreign policy accomplishment he named two—the Marshall Plan and the creation of the United Nations. He named the war in Iraq as America’s greatest foreign policy blunder. Corey Cooper, Elizabeth Lordi, and Aliya Medetbekova assisted in the preparation of this post. 

Update: Michael Bennet announced on February 11, 2020, that he was ending his campaign for president. Prostate cancer is the second most common type of cancer among American men. One in nine American men will be diagnosed with it during their lifetimes. Colorado Senator Michael Bennet is one of them. He learned of his diagnosis this past March. Calling himself “fortunate” because the cancer was detected early, he underwent surgery in April. His spokesperson said the operation was “completely successful and he requires no further treatment.” Rather than abandoning his plans to run for the presidency, Bennet went ahead with them, explaining that "this unanticipated hurdle only reinforces how strongly I feel about contributing to the larger conversation about the future of our country, and I am even more committed to drive that conversation in a positive direction." Bennet is not the first presidential candidate to have been diagnosed with prostate cancer. Then-Sen. John F. Kerry was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2003 during his presidential bid and took several weeks off from campaigning for treatment. The Basics Name: Michael Farrand Bennet Date of Birth: November 28, 1964 Place of Birth: New Delhi, India Religion: Unaffiliated, spiritual Political Party: Democratic Party Marital Status: Susan Daggett (m. 1997) Children: Caroline (19), Halina (17), Anne (14) Alma Mater: Wesleyan University (BA), Yale Law School (JD) Career: Businessman, lawyer, U.S. senator from Colorado Campaign Website: https://michaelbennet.com/ Twitter Handles: @MichaelBennet & @SenatorBennet Bennet’s Announcement Bennet announced his candidacy on May 2 on CBS This Morning. He told host John Dickerson that “this country faces two enormous challenges, one is a lack of economic mobility and opportunity for most Americans and the other is the need to restore integrity to our government.” The Bennet campaign supplemented the CBS appearance with a video and an essay posted on Medium. The video is titled “7,591 words,” the number of words in the Constitution. Bennet portrays himself as a workhorse rather than a show horse, saying he “didn’t go to Washington to get attention but to pay attention.” As a “pragmatic idealist” he vows to fix healthcare, pass a tax-cut that benefits working-class Americans, and invest in education. He didn’t discuss foreign policy other than to say that money spent on “tax cuts for the wealthy and wars in the Middle East” could have been used to rebuild America’s infrastructure, address climate change, and improve public education. The Medium essay elaborated on Bennet’s proposals for cleaning up politics and improving domestic policy. Foreign affairs received only passing mention when he criticized President Donald Trump for pursuing “a foreign policy that drops our proud tradition of encouraging democracy and trade in order to start trade wars with our allies and play patsy to dictators.” Bennet’s Story Bennet was born in New Delhi, India, where his father was working as an aide to the U.S. ambassador to India. Although he was born outside of the United States, he is considered under U.S. law to be a “natural-born citizen” and eligible to be president. Bennet’s mother was born in Warsaw in 1938 and survived the Holocaust as a child in the Warsaw Ghetto before emigrating to the United States in 1950. Bennet was raised in Washington, DC. He struggled with dyslexia and repeated the second grade. He recalls being upset that friends like future National Security Adviser Susan Rice moved on to the third grade without him. He attended St. Alban’s day school in Washington, where recorded a lot of B’s and his friends called him “Flobie.” He went to Wesleyan University, the same college as his father and grandfather. (His father was president of Wesleyan from 1997 to 2005.) He flourished there. He was elected president of the student government and graduated in 1987 with an honors degree in history. Bennet spent his first year after college on a public affairs fellowship in New York City studying city government. He then served as a personal assistant to Ohio Governor Richard Celeste, who had worked with his father at the U.S. embassy in New Delhi. Bennet says he “learned an unbelievable amount from Dick Celeste. I didn’t realize how much I had learned until I started running for office myself.” Bennet then went to Yale Law School, graduating in 2003. He did well for himself during his time in New Haven, becoming editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal. He then clerked for the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Baltimore. He took a job at a prestigious Washington law firm, Wilmer, Cutler and Pickering, but quickly decided it wasn’t for him. He left to serve as a special assistant to the deputy attorney general during the Clinton administration. After that came a stint as a special assistant to the U.S. Attorney in Connecticut. In 1997, Bennet moved to Denver with his wife, a fellow Yale Law grad, who had accepted a job there. A Yale law degree is a pretty good credential, and apparently so is attending Wesleyan. A well-connected Wesleyan alumnus put Bennet in touch with Denver billionaire Phil Anschutz. Bennet quickly had a job as managing director of an investment firm even though he admitted during his interview that he wasn’t good with numbers. The Wesleyan connection proved helpful again in 2003 when Bennet became an adviser to fellow Wesleyan alum, John Hickenlooper, who was running to become Denver’s mayor. Hickenlooper won the race and named Bennet his chief of staff. Bennet was obviously committed to helping Hickenlooper succeed; he left behind as much as $7 million in unvested compensation when he moved over to City Hall. Hickenlooper repaid that loyalty. In 2005, he appointed Bennet, who had no training in education policy, superintendent of the Denver Public Schools. In 2009, Colorado Senator Ken Salazar resigned his seat after President Barack Obama nominated him to be secretary of the interior. The betting money was that Colorado’s governor would ask Hickenlooper to fill the seat. He instead appointed Bennet, who had never before run for public office. For someone with no experience, he was pretty good at campaigning. He won election in 2010 and reelection in 2016. Bennet currently serves on the Agriculture, Finance, and Intelligence committees. Bennet’s younger brother James is the editorial page editor for the New York Times. When Michael announced his candidacy, James recused himself from all opinion coverage of the 2020 campaign. The senator says he feels “terrible” that his decision to run for president affected his brother’s job and joked that “I don’t think that he’s secretly hoping that I’ll drop out, but you never know.”  Bennet gained national attention in January when he took to the floor of the Senate to denounce Texas Senator Ted Cruz for shedding “crocodile tears” over the government shutdown, noting that back in 2013 Cruz had helped engineer another government shutdown that had harmed Bennet’s home state of Colorado. The clip of Bennet’s remarks is the most watched Senate floor speech in C-SPAN’s history. Bennet’s Message Bennet’s campaign slogan is “Building Opportunity Together.” At the core of his agenda is addressing stagnant wages, rising costs, and economic inequality. He attributes these challenges to globalization, automation, and unfair competition with China. Bennet also hopes to distinguish himself in a crowded Democratic field by touting his moderation and bipartisan record. He argues that “it is possible to write policy proposals that have no basis in reality, and you might as well call them candy.” He’s convinced “that’s not where people are. I don’t think believe that stuff. I think they want to see a serious approach to politics and a serious approach to policy.” Bennet’s Foreign Policy Bennet looks to be a liberal internationalist at heart. Rather than emphasizing how the United States should do less of overseas, as many of his Democratic presidential rivals are doing, he wants to “reclaim U.S. global leadership on security, fair economic competition, and freedom.” He would do that by working to “re-engage our allies and build coalitions of partners to protect against current threats, prepare for security challenges of the future, and advance American interests.” The question that Bennet and all liberal internationalists have to grapple with, of course, is whether the appetite for U.S. global leadership exists, either at home or abroad, especially after four years of America First. Bennet believes that “Russia, not China” is the greatest threat to U.S. national security “because of what they've done with our election.” He favors imposing additional sanctions on Russia for its election interference. Last week, in a bid to put pressure on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to pass election-security legislation, he released a book titled Dividing America: How Russia Hacked Social Media and Democracy. As the subtitle indicates, it examines how Russia used social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to influence the 2016 presidential election. Bennet is asking his supporters to buy a copy to be sent to Senator McConnell. So far nearly 3,000 people have agreed to do just that. Bennet hasn’t said nearly as much about how he would deal with Russia on other foreign policy issues. He hasn’t said much either about his approach to dealing with China. Like most of his Democrat rivals, he argues that Trump is right that China is a problem, especially when it comes to trade, but that his policies are backfiring. He thinks the smart strategy would be “to mobilize the whole world. Because basically the entire world has the same interests that we do, vis a vis China, in terms of trade.” Most of the other Democratic presidential candidates have staked out similar positions. Like them, Bennet hasn’t provided details on what he wants Beijing to do or how he would get Beijing to do it. Likewise, Bennet argues that China is “supporting a surveillance state” with its Belt and Road Initiative. His solution is to “forge strong alliances with people all over the world.” He hasn’t said, however, what the United States should offer others to convince them not to follow Beijing’s lead. One solution that has been offered to blunt China’s ability to write the rules of the global economy is the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Bennet’s track record on TPP is mixed. Unlike, say, Senator Bernie Sanders or Senator Elizabeth Warren, he voted back in 2015 for the trade promotion authority that made the TPP negotiations possible. A year later, in the midst of his re-election campaign, he said he couldn’t vote for the deal as is. He hasn’t said whether he would have the United States join a revised TPP. Like his rivals for the Democratic nomination, Bennet opposes the so-called Forever Wars. Back in 2010 during his first race for Senate, he said that the United States should commit to leaving Afghanistan as early as July 2011. His view hasn’t changed in the intervening nine years. He says that he will have U.S. troops out of Afghanistan before his first term in office ends: “If you’re a kid in college or you’re 18 or 19 years old, you’ve only known us being at war. We’ve spent $5.6 trillion in the Middle East. It’s time for us to come home from Afghanistan.” Bennet is like his fellow presidential candidates in another way. He hasn’t made the case that Americans will like the consequences of leaving Afghanistan behind. Bennet opposed the Trump administration’s April 2018 airstrikes on Syria, arguing that “President Trump risks pulling the United States into a broader conflict with this military action.” He further argued that, “the decision to use military force against the Syrian government must be made in pursuit of a comprehensive objective and with authorization from Congress.” A President Bennet could find himself disagreeing with Senator Bennet, much as President Obama disagreed with Professor Obama. Like the other Democratic senators running for president, Bennet has voted to end U.S. military support for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen. He parted company with them, however, on the withdrawal of U.S. troops from of Syria. Back in January, they all voted against a sense-of-the-Senate resolution that Senator McConnell offered arguing that “the precipitous withdrawal of United States forces from either country could put at risk hard-won gains and United States national security.” Although the resolution implicitly rebuked Trump for announcing a sudden U.S. troop withdrawal, Bennet was the lone Senate Democratic presidential candidate to vote yes. Bennet supported the Iran nuclear deal and thinks that Trump was “reckless” to withdraw the United States from the deal. He says his “strategy would be to, first of all, reconstitute the Iran deal or a version of the Iran deal.” He believes that “if we can make it stronger, we should certainly make it stronger.” He hasn’t said precisely how he would strengthen the agreement or how he would get Tehran to agree to tougher terms. Bennet has been more cautious than many of his fellow Democrats in his remarks about Trump’s handling of relations with North Korea. His standard line is that “North Korea’s nuclear program poses a grave threat to the international community.” He believes that “any American president deserves support for pursuing a diplomatic approach toward the complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. But North Korea’s track record requires all parties to be cautious about any agreements made by its leader.”   Bennet agrees with all of the Democratic challengers that climate change threatens American security and prosperity. He proposes to “reduce emissions in line with the most aggressive targets set by the world’s scientists and achieve 100 percent clean, net-zero emissions as soon as possible, and no later than 2050.” To achieve this goal he would create a “Climate Bank” that will administer $1 trillion in federal funding over ten years for private sector innovation and infrastructure investment. Bennet says he will “work with allies and partners to develop a plan to meet the needs of the millions of individuals already displaced by the effects of climate change” and to prepare for political conflicts that arise from climate change. In April, Bennet joined a bipartisan group of senators to introduce the Venezuela Emergency Relief, Democracy Assistance and Development (VERDAD) Act. The bill endorses U.S. support for opposition leader Juan Guaido, authorizes $400 million of new humanitarian assistance, and removes sanctions on officials who defect from the Maduro government. Bennet has worked on immigration issues during Senate career. Back in 2013 he was part of the so-called Gang of Eight that drafted a comprehensive immigration reform bill. He thinks it continues to offer a way forward. More generally, Bennet does “not think illegal immigration is a major problem in the United States. I do think our broken immigration system is a major problem.” He disagrees with his fellow presidential candidates who argue for decriminalizing illegal border crossings, and he favors increased border security funding. More on Bennet Bennet has two books out this year. One is Dividing America. The other is The Land of Flickering Lights: Restoring America in an Age of Broken Politics. Released in June, the ad copy says that it  “lifts a veil on the inner workings of Congress to reveal ‘through a series of actual stories—about the people, the politics, the motives, the money, the hypocrisy, the stakes, the outcomes—the pathological culture of the capital and the consequences for us all.’” Shortly after The Land of Flickering Lights was published, Bennet discussed the book and his run for the presidency with Colorado Public Radio. Back in 2017, Bennet went on the Ezra Klein Show to discuss why he frequently despairs over how the Senate does—or perhaps more accurately, doesn’t—do its job. The Atlantic profiled Bennet back in March when he was considering a presidential run and called him “the Democrat who wants to stop the rage.” Bennet appeared on a CNN Town Hall back in May and said, among other things, that his first three phone calls would be to the America’s European allies, the prime minister of Israel, and the heads of Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. Bennet sat down with the New Yorker’s “Politics and More” podcast to discuss his presidential campaign. Bennet met with the Washington Post editorial board in July to discuss his vision for America. Bennet sat down with both Mother Jones and the Vergecast last week to discuss what he hopes to accomplish by releasing Dividing America. Bennet answered eighteen questions for the New York Times. When he was asked where he would go on his first international trip as president, he said “I probably would go to Europe to reassert that the alliance is strong.” Brenden Ebertz and Aliya Medetbekova assisted in the preparation of this post.

Update: Pete Buttigieg announced on March 1, 2020, that he was ending his campaign. Fact can be more interesting than fiction. In 2000, a high school senior won the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library’s annual Profiles in Courage essay contest by extolling the virtues of the country’s only independent member of Congress, Bernie Sanders of Vermont. To the student, the self-described socialist was an “inspiring example” of a political leader willing to “eschew political and personal comfort and convenience because they believe they can make a difference.” Nineteen years later, Peter Buttigieg found himself standing next to now-Senator Sanders in a Democratic presidential debate. But the South Bend mayor wasn’t there to praise his high school idol but to upstage him. When asked whether voters should take age into account when deciding whom to support given the forty-year gap between the two men, Buttigieg graciously allowed that “I don’t care how old you are. I care about your vision.” He then added, “I do think it matters that we have a new generation of leaders stepping up around the world.” If Buttigieg wins next November, he will be the youngest person ever to become president, and at thirty-nine years and one day the first thirty-something to take the oath of office. The Basics Name: Peter Paul Montgomery Buttigieg Date of Birth: January 19, 1982 Place of Birth: South Bend, Indiana Religion: Episcopalian Political Party: Democratic Party Marital Status: Married (Chasten Glezman) Children: None Alma Mater: Harvard (BA), Pembroke College of the University of Oxford (MA) Career: Naval intelligence officer in the Navy Reserve (2009-2014), Mayor of South Bend (2012-present) Campaign Website: https://www.peteforamerica.com/ Twitter Handle: @PeteButtigieg Buttigieg’s Announcement Buttigieg officially kicked off his campaign in South Bend, Indiana, on April 15. He did so in what was once a Studebaker car factory and now a tech hub. That was a fitting setting for a speech that plugged the potential for America’s economic revival. Buttigieg said that he is offering “something totally different” than those who use “resentment and nostalgia” to reach communities like South Bend and sell “an impossible promise of returning to a bygone era that was never as great as advertised.” Buttigieg calls for forward thinking and innovation to replace the “politics of the past.” He didn’t suggest what a Buttigieg foreign policy doctrine might look like. Buttigieg’s Story   Buttigieg is the son of two University of Notre Dame professors. His father, an immigrant from Malta who died this past January, was a literary critic. His mother is a linguist. Buttigieg inherited their academic abilities. He was his high-school valedictorian, went to Harvard, and then was named a Rhodes Scholar. Oh, and he speaks eight languages. (He taught himself Norwegian so he could read a favorite writer without having to rely on an English translation.) After graduating from Oxford, Buttigieg worked as a consultant for McKinsey and Company from 2007 to 2010. He joined the U.S. Navy Reserves in 2009, served until 2017, and reached the rank of lieutenant. He was summoned to active duty in 2014 and spent six months in Afghanistan. He worked on efforts to disrupt Taliban and al-Qaeda financial support networks in the country. Buttigieg took an unpaid leave from his day job, being the mayor of South Bend, to serve on active duty. He was first elected to that post in 2011. He was just twenty-nine at the time and the youngest mayor of any city with at least 100,000 people. He was re-elected in 2015. To put the size of Buttigieg’s constituency in perspective, he won roughly 19,500 votes in his two elections combined, or less than one quarter of the seats in Notre Dame Stadium. In comparison, Bill De Blasio won more than 725,000 votes when he won re-election as New York’s mayor in 2017. In May 2015, Buttigieg wrote an essay for the South Bend Tribune announcing that he is gay. He says he decided to come out because he wanted “to have a personal life” and because Mike Pence, who was Indiana’s governor at the time, had signed a bill to give businesses the ability to discriminate against gays and lesbians based on religious grounds. In 2018, Buttigieg married Chasten Glezman.  Buttigieg’s Message Buttigieg stresses three core principles: freedom, security, and democracy. He argues that there is more to freedom than “freedom from” government; there is also “freedom from” corporations and “freedom to” live one’s full life. When he discusses security he stresses cybersecurity and what he considers the “great security issue of our time,” climate change. And he wants to reinvigorate America’s democracy by tackling electoral reform, voting rights, money in politics, and gerrymandering. But Buttigieg’s talk about freedom, security, and democracy comes with a second message: he is young and “it’s time for a new generation of American leadership.” While he said at the July Democratic presidential debate that he doesn’t care how old the candidates are, he deftly finds ways to make the case that his generation didn’t create the problems that America faces but it is the one that can fix them. He is calling for “a fresh start for America” and says he will carry out generational change. He says he is driven “by the awareness that we face not just another presidential election, but a transition between one era and another, a fact of which the current presidency is as much as symptom as a cause. I believe that the next three or four years will determine the next thirty or forty for our country and our world.” Buttigieg’s Foreign Policy Views Back in June, Buttigieg gave a major foreign policy speech at Indiana University. He took pains near the start of the nearly hour-long address to lower expectations by insisting, “I do not aspire to deliver a full Buttigieg Doctrine today.” The mayor was good to his word. The well-crafted, occasionally inspirational speech hit mostly broad themes and generally avoided specific policy questions, such as how he would respond to the threat he says China poses or whether he would seek to revive the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The thrust of the speech was to make the case for revitalizing American global leadership and the liberal international order, though he didn’t use that phrase. He instead put it this way: “My central purpose is to argue that the world today needs America more than ever—but only if America can be at her best.” If Buttigieg didn’t provide an exact accounting of how America can be at its best or what sacrifices Americans need to make that happen, he did mention a few specifics. He said he would fight to “repeal and replace” the 2001 congressional authorization of the war in Afghanistan that successive presidents, both Democratic and Republican, have used to justify U.S. military counterterrorism operations around the world. (He didn’t say, however, what he would replace it with.) He also vowed to recommit the United States to the Iran nuclear deal, saying that “whatever is imperfections, this was perhaps as close to a true ‘art of the deal’ as it gets.” He likewise vowed to rejoin the Paris climate agreement, noting that he was one of more than four hundred U.S. mayors who had committed their cities to honor the agreement’s goals. Buttigieg has addressed some foreign policy specifics outside of his Indiana University speech. Like pretty much all of his Democratic rivals, he has argued “that there has to be an end to endless war.” Unlike many of his Democratic rivals, however, he hasn’t committed to removing all U.S. troops from Afghanistan before the end of his first term. He says that “the hard part is figuring out whether we can get out well, or whether we’re going to get out poorly.” Buttigieg thinks it is unrealistic to expect quick denuclearization in North Korea. He favors instead “striking an initial freeze agreement that would have North Korea cease production of fissile material and end nuclear and missile testing, all verified by international inspectors, in exchange for targeted sanctions relief, which could be reversed if the North Koreans did not uphold their end of the bargain.” He hasn’t said what his alternative would be if Pyongyang isn’t interested in what he has to offer. Buttigieg looks to be seeking middle ground on trade. He opposes rejoining TPP, arguing like most of his Democratic rivals that it “lacks critical trade provisions on labor, environment, and the digital economy, and does not align closely enough with the needs and interests of American workers.” On the other hand, he says it is a “fool’s errand to think that you’re gonna be able to get China to change the fundamentals of their economic model by poking them in the eye with some tariffs.” And he acknowledges that trade can create “good jobs, they pay well” and that it gets blamed for too many of America’s economic woes: “I mean, NAFTA happened a while ago. And a lot of the jobs that were lost then, it would be very hard to bring back no matter what because of automation.” Buttigieg’s solution is to “insist on policies that ensure that working families in cities like mine can play a more appealing role in the story of globalization than the role of victim.” What those policies are remains to be seen. Given Buttigieg’s relative youth and modest government resume, the question of whether he is ready to be commander in chief has come up. He has a ready-made answer: he has “more military experience than anybody who has arrived in that office on day one since George H.W. Bush.” He adds that the fact he was called to active duty in Afghanistan gives him a unique perspective on foreign policy. “It was one thing to learn about foreign policy when I was a student at Oxford, it’s another thing to learn about foreign policy when sent to a war zone on the orders of a president. You understand at a very deep and personal way what is at stake.” Reporters who press Buttigieg on whether a Midwest mayor is prepared to handle international questions should expect pushback. When The View put that question to him, he responded: “I felt pretty involved in international questions when I was deployed to Afghanistan.” More on Buttigieg Buttigieg recently published his first book, Shortest Way Home: One Mayor's Challenge and a Model for America's Future. The Washington Post noticed Buttigieg back in 2014 when it called him “the most interesting mayor you’ve never heard of.” The Washington Post Magazine profiled Buttigieg back in January, describing him as “a combination Boy Scout and lovable dork” and labeling him “the longest of 2020 presidential long shots.” Buttigieg’s appearance at a CNN Town Hall in March helped propel him from unknown small city mayor to the upper half of the Democratic field. New York Magazine followed Buttigieg as he campaigned in April and concluded that even by the standard of presidential candidates he “is still unusually controlled. Even his modulations are the same from speech to speech and interview to interview. In most of them, he uses the phrase “theory of the case,” meaning his belief that defeating Trump—and Trumpism—is a job for someone who understands the folks who put him in office well enough to convince them that there’s another way.”  Buttigieg sat down with Vox back in May to discuss everything from his qualifications to be president to his economic plans to his belief that America should “play a special role” in world politics. Politico Magazine analyzed Buttigieg’s transformation from “a virtual unknown with a puzzling last name and a lane to the presidency that most pundits considered notional at best” to top tier candidate. Politico attributes the rise to Buttigieg’s ability to position himself “as both a groundbreaker and traditionalist, a norm-breaker and rule-follower: He’s an openly gay candidate who proclaims the virtues of marriage; the mayor of a midsized Midwestern city and an Afghanistan combat veteran and practicing Episcopalian who is observant enough that he gave up alcohol for Lent.” The New Yorker explored what it sees as the paradox of the Buttigieg candidacy: “He has placed himself in a performative role, without the benefit of a performative personality.” That is, he comes across “as more prosaic political character—he has a habit of giving answers in numbered sequence, and he uses phrases like ‘pathway to peace.’” The Atlantic thinks that Buttigieg looks more to Harry Truman than to Barack Obama on foreign policy. (Buttigieg named one of his dogs “Truman.”) Last month the New York Times asked why Buttigieg waited until he was thirty-three to come out as gay and concluded that “he may have waited far longer than most young gay men today. But ever the overachiever, he made record time in setting a new bar. In less than four years he went from being single and closeted to being married and out as a gay candidate for president. Buttigieg answered eighteen questions for the New York Times. When he was asked where he would go on his first international trip as president, he answered that he had “probably better become president before finalizing that decision.” CFR asked Buttigieg twelve foreign policy questions. He believes “America’s greatest foreign policy accomplishment has been our leadership of global efforts to promote the values that animate our own and other great democracies, to the benefit of the security and freedom of our people.” He thinks that America’s greatest foreign policy mistake “has been the failure to use our leadership more vigorously in key areas of international change: to bend the benefits of globalization more equitably to improving the everyday lives of poor and middle-class citizens, especially women and minorities, in our own and other nations; to combat climate change and nuclear proliferation; and to stand strong against the recent surge of anti-democratic forces around the world.”  Corey Cooper, Elizabeth Lordi, and Aliya Medetbekova assisted with the preparation of this post.  

Update: Elizabeth Warren announced on March 5, 2020, that she was ending her campaign. As politicians, Ronald Reagan and Elizabeth Warren are opposites. He wanted to unleash the power of the market; she wants to curtail its abuses. But for all of their policy differences, the two share one thing in common—both switched political parties. Reagan joined the Republican Party in his early fifties. Before then he was a registered Democrat. “I didn't leave the Democratic Party,” he liked to say. “The party left me.” Warren made the opposite journey. She was a registered Republican until her forties. Why? She says it’s “because I thought that those were the people who best supported markets. I think that is not true anymore.” So did Warren vote for Reagan? For years she declined to say. Now she says that the last GOP nominee she voted for was Gerald Ford in 1976. If Warren succeeds in becoming president, she no doubt hopes to have a presidency as consequential as Reagan’s. The Basics Name: Elizabeth Ann Warren Date of Birth: June 22, 1949 Place of Birth: Oklahoma City, Oklahoma Religion: Raised Methodist; Attends various Christian churches Political Party: Democrat Marital Status: Divorced (Jim Warren); Married (Bruce Mann) Children: Amelia (47) and Alexander (42) Alma Mater: Attended George Washington University; University of Houston (BS); Rutgers School of Law (JD) Career: Law professor (1979-2012), Chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (2008-2010), Special Advisor for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (2010-2011), U.S. Senator (2013-Present) Campaign Website: https://elizabethwarren.com/ Twitter Handle: @ewarren Warren’s Announcement Warren launched her campaign in Lawrence, Massachusetts, an old mill town thirty-five miles north of Boston. Back in 1912, Lawrence made national headlines when workers at the Everett Mill walked off the job in the so-called Bread and Roses Strike after their wages were cut. So it wasn’t an accident that Warren, who is pitching herself as a defender of the working class, announced her run in Lawrence. She walked out to the podium with Dolly Parton's song “9 to 5” playing on the speakers. Warren called President Donald Trump "the latest—and most extreme—symptom of what's gone wrong in America." She said that undoing the acts of this administration won’t be enough and that there needs to be “big, structural change” to the “rigged” system that benefits the wealthy and the powerful. She laid out her economic platform, which includes a wealth tax, Medicare for All, and a Green New Deal. She promised to limit the power of big corporations by breaking up monopolies and making it easier for workers to join unions. She also vowed to fight political corruption in Washington, strengthen voting rights, and reform the criminal justice system. What she didn’t mention was foreign policy. Warren’s Story Warren was born Elizabeth Herring in Oklahoma City and grew up there and in Norman. She was the youngest of four children who she says “grew up on the ragged edge of the middle class.” That was in part because her father suffered a heart attack that saddled the family with extensive medical bills. Warren nonetheless excelled in school. She became a state debate champion, earned her high-school diploma when she was just sixteen, and was awarded a full scholarship to attend George Washington University. She left GW after two years to marry her high school sweetheart, Jim Warren. But she didn’t give up on her studies. She earned a bachelor’s degree in speech pathology at the University of Houston. She was the first member of her family to graduate college. Warren moved to New Jersey when her husband was transferred there for work. She had a baby and initially decided to be a stay-at-home mom. After two years, she enrolled at Rutgers School of Law. That led to a thirty-year career as a law professor that took her to Rutgers’ Newark School of Law, the University of Houston Law Center, the University of Texas, the University of Michigan, the University of Pennsylvania, and finally Harvard. Her specialty was bankruptcy and commercial law. Much of her work highlighted how U.S. laws often hurt working- and middle-class Americans. Beginning in the 1990s, Warren’s stature in the legal profession led to invitations to advise and serve on government commissions. In 2008, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid asked Warren to chair the Congressional Oversight Panel charged with monitoring the $700 billion bank bailout known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Two years later, President Barack Obama appointed her as Assistant to the President and Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), an agency that she had proposed creating in 2007, before the financial crisis. She was rumored to be the pick to become the CFPB’s first head, but Republican opposition dissuaded the White House from nominating her. The visibility that Warren gained from her Washington service fueled her political ambitions. In 2011, she declared herself a candidate for the Senate seat once held by Edward Kennedy. Her YouTube video explaining why calling for higher taxes wasn’t class warfare went viral. She defeated Senator Scott Brown with nearly 54 percent of the vote and won re-election in 2018 with 60 percent. Because her term doesn’t expire until 2025, her 2020 run is not jeopardizing her Senate seat. Despite considerable urging from her supporters, Warren passed on running for president in 2016. She instead campaigned for Hillary Clinton, saying "when Donald says he'll make America great, he means greater for rich guys just like Donald Trump." She gave the keynote address on the first night of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. She railed against big banks, corruption, and deregulation, while highlighting that she was “the daughter of a janitor, a daughter who believes in an America of opportunity.” In the Senate, Warren serves on the Armed Services, Banking, and Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committees as well as on the Special Committee on Aging. Warren’s Message Warren’s core message is that “America’s middle class is under attack. How did we get here? Billionaires and big corporations decided they wanted more of the pie, and they enlisted politicians to cut them a fatter slice.” She intends to change that by pursuing policies like a wealth tax and higher income taxes. Her critics say this amounts to socialism. Warren’s response is straightforward: “I am a capitalist…. I believe in markets…. But only fair markets, markets with rules. Markets without rules is about the rich take it all, it’s about the powerful get all of it. And that’s what’s gone wrong in America.” Warren’s Foreign Policy Views Warren’s conviction that elites have stuck it to working-class Americans shapes her approach to foreign policy. Last November she explained her foreign policy agenda on the pages of Foreign Affairs. (A companion speech at American University covered much the same territory.) She argued that Americans like to tell themselves how “we built a liberal international order…. But in recent decades, Washington’s focus has shifted from policies that benefit everyone to policies that benefit a handful of elites.” In particular, “international economic policies and trade deals have worked gloriously well for elites around the world, they have left working class people discouraged and disaffected.” The solution is “to pursue international economic policies that benefit all Americans, not merely an elite few.” The accuracy of this diagnosis of America’s ills can be debated. But Warren clearly sees foreign policy through an economic lens rather than a security lens. Her showcase essay made no mention of NATO or alliances more generally, and it said nothing about what security threats she thinks the United States faces around the world. Last month Warren laid out her preferred trade policy, or what she calls her “economic patriotism agenda.” Politico pointed out that the plan “is closer to Donald Trump’s agenda than Barack Obama’s.” Warren proposes to change both how trade policy is made in the United States and what Washington asks of its trading partners. In terms of the former, she wants more public involvement and more transparency, to the point of publishing the drafts of potential trade deals. In terms of the latter, she would hold negotiating partners to stringent labor and environmental standards. Warren’s plan has attracted criticism, including from experts sympathetic to her calls to curb the power of multinational corporations. The critics argue that the transparency she seeks will make agreements impossible to negotiate—trade partners won’t budge if their concessions become news before any deal is final—and her standards for entering into negotiations are so high that the United States doesn’t meet them itself. Perhaps more fundamentally, the premise of her trade plan, which is reflected in the title she gave it, “Trade—On Our Terms,” is flawed. As reactions to Trump’s trade policies show, America’s trading partners aren’t reacting to Washington’s demands by negotiating on its terms but by negotiating trade agreements among themselves  that increasingly leave American exporters on the outside looking in. Given how Warren views trade policy in general, it’s not surprising that she opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) or has said positive things about Trump’s turn to tariffs. She thinks that TPP is yet another example of multinational corporations, and particularly pharmaceutical companies, getting their way at the expense of ordinary Americans. As for tariffs, her view is that “when President Trump says he's putting tariffs on the table, I think tariffs are one part of reworking our trade policy overall.” Her main complaint with Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum is that the administration is using exemptions from the tariffs to reward friends and punish adversaries. Of course, that criticism can be leveled against all tariff schedules with any flexibility—they create real or perceived opportunities for political favoritism. On many other issues Warren strikes the same themes as other progressive Democrats. That is certainly true of climate change. She thinks it is the biggest geopolitical threat facing the United States. She supports a Green New Deal and has released five plans for tackling the problem. She laments that “the United States is a leader in climate policy. It's just leading in the wrong direction right now." It’s also true of American combat operations overseas. When asked if there will still be U.S. troops in Afghanistan by the end of a first Warren term, she says, “No.” She approved of Trump’s decision last December, subsequently reversed, to withdraw troops from Syria, though with the caveat that “when you withdraw, you gotta withdraw as part of a plan.” She voted against the sense-of-the-Senate resolution that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell offered warning against a precipitous withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria. Warren likewise opposes U.S. support for the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen. In all, she wants to reduce the U.S. military presence in the Middle East because “to continue to keep troops and more troops forever and ever and ever in that part of the world, it is not working and pretending that somehow in the future it is going to work by some unmeasured version of it—it’s a form of fantasy that we simply can’t afford to continue to engage in.” Like most of her Democratic rivals, Warren hasn’t discussed the likely consequences of a U.S. retreat from the Middle East or made the case that they will be better for America’s security than the current state of affairs. Warren opposes Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, saying it “breaks our word, hurts our credibility with our allies, empowers Iranian hardliners, and doesn't make us any safer here at home.” She’s equally critical of Trump’s diplomacy toward North Korea. After Trump met with Kim Jong-un at the DMZ in June she tweeted: “Our President shouldn’t be squandering American influence on photo ops and exchanging love letters with a ruthless dictator.” Warren says she would focus her initial diplomatic energies on striking a deal to limit North Korea’s weapons and put off the effort to cut North Korea’s arsenal to a later round of talks. Warren hasn’t said what she would offer Pyongyang, or threaten it with, to get the deal she wants. Warren similarly opposes Trump’s decision to leave the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty: “We should be holding Russia accountable for its violations—not torching the treaty that has prevented a dangerous arms race for over 30 years.” She proposes to follow three core nuclear security principles while in office: no new nuclear weapons; “more international arms control, not less,” which would include “extending New START through 2026”; and no first use, the idea that “deterrence is the sole purpose of our arsenal,” and as such, the United States will use nuclear weapons only in retaliation for their use. Warren says she wants to re-build America’s alliances. After last year’s NATO summit, she tweeted “America is strongest when we work together with our allies–including the 28 NATO members who share our democratic values. Undermining NATO is a gift to Putin that @realDonaldTrump seems all too happy to give.” Whether Warren’s more restrained and protectionist foreign policy will rally America’s allies or alarm them is an open question. But she certainly wants to put more effort and more resources into U.S. diplomacy. Among other things, she proposes to double the size of the foreign service and the Peace Corps, open diplomatic posts in underserved areas, invest more resources in language training, and create the diplomatic equivalent of ROTC on college campuses. More on Warren Warren is an academic, so she has written and edited a lot of books, mostly specialized treatises with titles such as The Laws of Debtors and Creditors. She wrote a book in 2003 with her daughter, Amelia, called The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke. Warren’s latest book is This Fight Is Our Fight: The Battle to Save America's Middle Class, published in 2017. Vogue profiled Warren in 2010 when she was running the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, saying she was a “grandmother with big blue eyes, soft blonde hair, and the honeyed accent of the Oklahoma plains,” but also “something of a knife in the gut.” POLITICO Magazine examined Warren’s rapid rise in politics, saying that “in 2004, she was a respected but little-known academic with an obscure specialty. Then Dr. Phil called.” POLITICO Magazine also charted Warren’s transformation from “diehard conservative” to the “woman now at the forefront of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.” The New Yorker’s profile of Warren described her as “one of the most vital voices in American politics. Her participation in the Democratic primary can only enrich it.” Vanity Fair concluded that Warren is “quite skilled at drilling down to a simple, comprehensible point, usually having to do with economic justice. Her anecdotes go over well.” The Washington Post has fact-checked the controversy over Warren’s claims of Native American ancestry. Warren answered eighteen questions for the New York Times. When she was asked where she would go on her first international trip as president, she answered: “I think I’d go to Central America.” Corey Cooper, Brenden Ebertz, and Elizabeth Lordi assisted in the preparation of this post.

Update: Beto O'Rourke announced on November 1, 2019, that he was ending his campaign. When Richard Nixon lost California’s governor’s race in 1962, political pundits declared his dream of becoming president dead. After all, winning presidential candidates usually come off of electoral victories and not electoral defeats. But six years later, Nixon proved the pundits wrong and won the presidency. One Democrat hoping to tap that Nixon magic is Beto O’Rourke. He ran a surprisingly tough campaign in 2018 against incumbent Texas Senator Ted Cruz, sparking talk that deeply red Texas might be turning purple if not blue. O’Rourke came up short in the end, but his strong showing opened up the door to a presidential bid. If O’Rourke does repeat Nixon’s feat, he would become the first president since James Garfield to have served in the U.S. House but not also been a governor, senator, or vice president. The Basics Name: Robert (Beto) Francis O'Rourke Date of Birth: September 26, 1972 Place of Birth: El Paso, Texas Religion: Roman Catholic Political Party: Democratic Party Marital Status: Married (Amy Hoover Sanders) Children: Ulysses (12), Molly (10), and Henry (8) Alma Mater: Columbia University (BA) Career: El Paso City Councilmember (2005-2011); U.S. Representative (2013-2019) Campaign Website: https://betoorourke.com/ Twitter Handle: @BetoORourke O’Rourke’s Announcement O’Rourke’s announced his entry into the presidential race on March 14 by releasing a video on social media. In the video he argued that “the challenges we face right now; the interconnected crises in our economy, our climate, and our democracy have never been greater,” adding “they will either consume us or afford us the greatest opportunity to unleash the genius of the United States of America.” He also highlighted the need to “reassert our global leadership and end these decades-long wars and be there for everyone woman and man who’ve served in them.” I am running to serve you as the next president. The challenges we face are the greatest in living memory. No one person can meet them on their own. Only this country can do that, and only if we build a movement that includes all of us. Say you're in: https://t.co/EKLdkVET2u pic.twitter.com/lainXyvG2n — Beto O'Rourke (@BetoORourke) March 14, 2019 O’Rourke followed up the video release two weeks later with a campaign kickoff event in El Paso. Some 6,000 people turned out for his speech. Unlike many of his Democratic rivals, O’Rourke discussed foreign policy in his announcement speech: And when it comes to international leadership—this current administration, responsible for spurning our true friends and alliances forged in sacrifice from the generations before ours, squandering a standing this country has enjoyed for nearly 80 years, must be replaced by an administration that strengthens our historic friendships, earns the respect of the world not just in how we treat people in other countries but how we treat people in our own country and brings the world together around otherwise intractable problems—from building on the Paris agreement to achieve even bolder action on climate, to pursuing nuclear disarmament, to ending our wars and finding peaceful, diplomatic paths forward. He also addressed the refugee problem at the southern border saying “we must focus on this hemisphere and once again make it a foreign policy priority of this country—we can either address the problems in Central America at our border or help the people of Central America address them at home. This country can once again take its place as the indispensable nation, doing what no other country can, for ourselves and for the world.” O’Rourke’s Story O’Rourke was born in El Paso, Texas. His father was a popular local politician and his mother owned a furniture store. After completing his sophomore year at a high school in El Paso, O’Rourke transferred to Woodberry Forest, an all-male boarding school in Virginia. He then went to Columbia University, where he rowed crew and majored in film before switching to English. After graduating from Columbia in 1995, O’Rourke moved to Albuquerque. He worked part-time jobs and formed a punk-rock band called the Swedes. He later returned to New York where he nannied for a wealthy Upper West Side family, worked as an art mover, and helped at his uncle’s startup Internet-service provider. He moved back to El Paso in 1997, working at his mom’s store and playing drums in a band called Sheeps. He also launched his own web-design company, Stanton Street Technology Group, and started an online news magazine about El Paso. After his father was killed in 2001 while riding a bicycle, O’Rourke started an alternative weekly newspaper called Stanton Street. It only lasted fifteen issues, but it sparked his interest in local politics. He won a seat on the El Paso City Council in 2005. O’Rourke ran for Congress in 2012, defeating an eight-term incumbent. In Congress, O’Rourke was to the right of many of his fellow Democrats. O’Rourke gained national visibility with his 2018 Senate run. Cruz had defeated his Democratic opponent in 2012 by nearly sixteen percentage points. O’Rourke cut that margin of victory to just two percentage points and raised more than $80 million along the way. O’Rourke’s Message   O’Rourke is running on optimism about what America can do when it unleashes “the genius” of its people. He says that his campaign is “for everyone in this country, for all of America...no one left behind,” and that it is all about bringing people together. He thinks that the key to his success will be his ability “to listen to people, to help bring people together to do something that is thought to be impossible.” He is not concerned about finding a clear path to the White House because he knows one is there—“I just feel it.” As O’Rourke charts his course he has vowed to run a positive campaign, promising to never “demean or vilify another candidate or really anybody.” O’Rourke said at the start of his campaign that he wanted to highlight El Paso during his travels because "we have something very special here in El Paso, and I'm excited to bring that to this conversation and to share our perspective from the U.S.-Mexico border with the rest of the country." To his horror and the horror of all Americans, El Paso vaulted into the national conversation earlier this month after a white supremacist killed twenty-two people and injured two dozen more at a local Walmart. O’Rourke was in Las Vegas at the time and was visibly (and understandably) shaken as he announced he was suspending his campaigning to return to El Paso. He subsequently said that part of the blame for the shooting lays with President Trump for repeatedly using language that is “promoting racism.” O’Rourke’s Foreign Policy Views O’Rourke believes that “our existential threat is climate change.” His first campaign policy proposal was a ten-year, five-trillion-dollar plan that would recommit the United States to the Paris climate agreement and seek to produce zero-net carbon emissions by 2050. The plan had some specifics, like ending government fossil-fuel leases, but it also left unanswered a number of important questions, like whether it would impose a carbon tax. Many climate activists called the plan ambitious, but some complained it was not ambitious enough. Like many of his Democratic rivals, O’Rourke worries about America’s “forever wars.” He has pledged to “end the wars that we are in” and vowed that no U.S. troops will be in Afghanistan by the end of his first term. In 2014, he was one of two House Democrats who voted against an aid package for Ukraine, which included $1 billion in loan guarantees and about $150 million in direct U.S. assistance, as well as sanctions on Russian officials. O’Rourke defended his opposition to the aid package on the grounds that a yes vote would have meant “us becoming a participant in yet another war” and that he didn’t see how “deepening U.S. military involvement in Ukraine is going to solve that country's problems. I’m not down with more war for the United States.” He says that as president he will “support Ukraine’s efforts to defend itself against Russian aggression” and stresses that the way to do that is by “helping Ukraine build institutions that will stabilize its democracy” rather than by providing it with military aid.  More broadly, O’Rourke thinks that the way to avoid forever wars is to take issues of war and peace to Congress. He told Stephen Colbert that “before we send another service member in harm’s way” he would get congressional authorization. “It’s the only way we stop this country from going to war without end.” This formulation overlooks one thing—Congress authorized the very forever wars that O’Rourke, and many Americans, oppose. How to write use-of-force authorization that both empowers and constrains the presidency is a circle that Congress has not yet found a way to square. O’Rourke would prefer to privilege diplomacy over military operations: “the much tougher but far more important work to do is to lead with diplomacy, holding the card of military involvement as the last resort.” O’Rourke backed the Iran nuclear deal because “without firing a single shot, without sacrificing the life of a single U.S. service member, it was able to stop the country of Iran from pursuing nuclear weapons.” He believes that Trump’s decision to leave the deal has weakened the United States and made conflict more likely in the future. O’Rourke’s views on trade don’t track with those of many self-described progressive Democrats, though they do with Democratic voters more generally. He supports NAFTA. He thinks that after twenty-five years it needed to be updated, but he doesn’t think “we had to threaten to leave NAFTA to improve NAFTA.” O’Rourke voted to give the Obama administration fast-track authority to negotiate the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), though while he was a member of Congress he never committed to voting for the deal that was struck. He said during his 2018 Senate race that he would have voted against it if it had come to a vote because it didn’t do enough to protect worker rights. He says that as president he will not join the successor agreement to TPP “unless we are able to negotiate substantial improvements to protect workers, the environment, and human rights” and get “effective enforcement mechanisms.” O’Rourke opposed Trump’s decision to impose tariffs on the import of steel and aluminum as well as his imposition of tariffs on Chinese imports. While acknowledging that Trump has “legitimate” complaints about other countries’ trade policies, he doesn’t think the United States should “hold other countries of the world accountable…at the expense of our farmers, our growers, our producers, those who are fundamental to the success of the U.S. economy.” More on O’Rourke O’Rourke co-authored a book in 2011 with El Paso City Representative Susie Byrd, called Dealing Death and Drugs: The Big Business of Dope in the U.S. and Mexico. The book criticizes the War on Drugs and makes the case for decriminalizing marijuana. Buzzfeed profiled O’Rourke during his 2018 Senate campaign and called him “a prolific, prodigious sweater,” adding “Rather than recoiling, his supporters see it as a badge of honor—proof of how relentlessly he’s campaigning to win over every voter in the second-largest state in the union.” Vanity Fair profiled O’Rourke as he entered the presidential race and described his lack of specificity on many issues as a strength rather than a weakness because “positions on issues matter, of course, but they aren’t everything. Indeed, in the Trump era it may well be that harnessing intense voter passion is more important when facing a bombastic cult of personality who draws on Fox News rage-ratings.” The profile also created a bit of a fuss because O’Rourke was quoted as saying “Man, I’m just born to be in it” when talking about the 2020 race. Critics said the comment was presumptuous and suggested male privilege. O’Rourke expressed regret for the remark, which made the magazine’s cover. Just two-and-a-half months after O’Rourke entered the race and with his failure to climb up the polls, the New Yorker asked “Can Beto Bounce Back?” The conclusion was that “the evidence is piling up” that O’Rourke’s preference for driving himself from town to town to meet voters and listen to their concerns “will not work on the national level, at least not this year. To have any chance, he must turn to television, where empathy, careful listening, and voracious curiosity are not the coin of the realm.” O’Rourke appeared on a CNN Town Hall in May, replicating for a national audience the more than 150 town halls he had held since announcing his candidacy. The Washington Post profiled O’Rourke and his wife, Amy, concluding that “they are at once the most modern and most conventional of the families running for president in 2020. They are pioneers of social media, broadcasting much of their lives in real time; affluent, white and traditional—the political equivalent of ‘The Truman Show.’” Politico asked, what is O’Rourke’s most distinctive policy position? Its answer: “To be determined. There’s no signature issue yet, no single policy proposal sparking his campaign. Convening crowds—and listening to them—is the central thrust of his early presidential bid.” O’Rourke answered eighteen questions for the New York Times. One of the questions was where he would take his first international trip. His answer? “I would go to Mexico, our most important neighbor.” CFR asked O’Rourke twelve foreign policy questions. He cited “shaping the global order following World War II” as America’s greatest foreign policy accomplishment since World War II. In contrast, “Our greatest foreign policy mistake was the invasion of Iraq in 2003.”  Corey Cooper and Elizabeth Lordi assisted in the preparation of this post.

Update: Bill de Blasio announced on September 20, 2019, that he was ending his campaign. Height is an advantage in presidential politics. Throughout American history, the taller of the two major party candidates has won the popular vote two-thirds of the time. That’s good news for Bill de Blasio, the mayor of New York and 2020 presidential candidate. He is 6’5” tall. That is taller than every one of his Democratic rivals and two inches taller than President Donald Trump. Indeed, if de Blasio makes it to the White House, he would be the tallest president ever, edging out Abraham Lincoln by an inch. Of course, height isn’t necessarily destiny. Take the 2016 presidential nomination races. Hillary Clinton was an inch shorter than Bernie Sanders, and Trump was shorter than both Jeb Bush and George Pataki. The Basics Name: Warren de Blasio (born Warren Wilhelm Jr.) Date of Birth: May 8, 1961 Place of Birth: Manhattan, New York Religion: None Political Party: Democratic Party Marital Status: Chirlane McCray (m. 1994) Children: Chiara (24), Dante (21) Alma Mater: New York University (BA), Columbia University (MIA) Career: Political organizer and politician Campaign Website: https://billdeblasio.com Twitter Handles: @BilldeBlasio & @NYCMayor De Blasio’s Announcement De Blasio announced his candidacy on May 16 by releasing a video titled “Working People First.” The video is blunt about what he sees as America’s challenge: “There’s plenty of money in this country. It’s just in the wrong hands.” He says Americans feel as if they are “stuck, or even going backwards” while the “rich got richer.” He paints Trump as a “bully” and says “I have beaten him before and I will beat him again.” The video doesn’t mention foreign policy. De Blasio followed up the video’s release by appearing on ABC’s “Good Morning America” with his wife Chirlane McCray to discuss his vision for America. Host George Stephanopoulos pointed out that polls showed that 76 percent of New Yorkers opposed de Blasio’s run for the White House. The mayor dismissed the numbers and said he was eager to take on Trump, whom he called “Con Don.” Once again, foreign policy didn’t come up. The announcement was supposed to be a surprise, but things didn’t go as planned. The day before de Blasio was set to announce, an enterprising high-school student in St. Louis noticed that the Iowan Woodbury County Democratic Party had posted an invitation on Facebook to a meeting with de Blasio in “Sioux City is his first stop on his Presidential announcement tour.” The student tweeted the post. The tweet went viral. Reporters who had been told of de Blasio’s plans on the condition they not report on them until he announced, broke the press embargo. Those news leaks in turn gave de Blasio’s critics in New York City a heads up. While he was on the “Good Morning America” set, protesters were standing outside chanting “Liar!” De Blasio’s Story De Blasio was born Warren Wilhelm Jr. in New York City. His parents moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1966, and divorced a year later. When de Blasio was eighteen, his father committed suicide while battling lung cancer. De Blasio changed his surname to de Blasio-Wilhelm in 1983 to recognize that his mother and her extended family had largely raised him. In 2001, he formally adopted de Blasio as his surname. De Blasio’s time in Cambridge explains why he is an anomaly among New York mayors when it comes to sports fandom; he roots for the Red Sox. (His predecessor as mayor, Michael Bloomberg, grew up in nearby by Medford, Massachusetts, but rooted for the Yankees while mayor.) After graduating from Cambridge’s Rindge and Latin High School, de Blasio returned to New York City. He attended New York University and majored in metropolitan studies. He then earned a master’s degree in international affairs at Columbia University. After a brief time working in Maryland as a political organizer on Central America issues, de Blasio returned to New York for good. He first worked for a nonprofit dedicated to improving health care in Central America. In 1989, he volunteered to work on the campaign of David Dinkins, the first and so far New York’s only African-American mayor. Dinkins won, and de Blasio was soon a mayoral aide. While working at City Hall, de Blasio met his wife, who is African American. The couple recall having been taunted for their interracial relationship and facing initial resistance from their families. In 1997, de Blasio was appointed as the regional director for HUD for New York and New Jersey under Bill Clinton. He went on to manage Hillary Clinton’s successful 2000 U.S. Senate campaign. De Blasio decided to run on his own in 2002, winning a seat on the New York City Council. In 2009, he was elected New York City’s Public Advocate. He used that post to criticize Bloomberg’s education and housing policies. Then in 2013, he won the race to succeed Bloomberg. He was re-elected in 2017. New Yorkers are split on how well de Blasio is doing his job. He is far more popular among black voters than white or Asian voters. He has some significant policy accomplishments, including a $15-an-hour minimum wage, universal pre-K, and expanding health care. Many of these achievements came during his first term. He has also rubbed many New Yorkers the wrong way. As one story put it, “he can come off as sanctimonious, arrogant, stubborn, and preachy about the gravity and scope of what he’s doing.” An example his critics often use of his supposed arrogance is that he travels eleven miles every day from Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s official residence, to work out at a Brooklyn Y.M.C.A. He doesn’t take the subway, but goes via a gas-guzzling SUV that requires a police escort. The trip frequently causes traffic jams. De Blasio speaks Italian and has offered to do interviews in Italian. De Blasio’s Message De Blasio’s campaign slogan is “Working People First.” He says he is fighting for the middle class, especially “working families,” and that “everyday Americans are getting screwed.” He touts what he has accomplished in New York and promises to bring it to the rest of the country. At the core of his agenda is taxing extreme wealth and extreme income. De Blasio’s Foreign Policy Views De Blasio’s career has focused on New York City issues, so he doesn’t have an extensive record on national security and foreign policy. His campaign website has a policies page, but it lists only two policy categories: “The de Blasio Fair Share Tax Plan” and the “21st Century Workers’ Bill of Rights.” Neither discusses foreign policy. But before turning his focus to New York City politics, his first interest was Central America. During the 1980s he supported the Sandinista National Liberation Front and opposed the Reagan administration’s support for the contras. He and his wife honeymooned in Cuba, which was illegal for Americans at the time. The campaign has given de Blasio opportunities to sketch out his foreign policy views. During the first round of Democratic debates, he said that Russia was America’s greatest geopolitical challenge “because they’re trying to undermine our democracy and they’ve been doing a pretty damn good job of it.” De Blasio has declined to join with most of his fellow self-identified progressive candidates in pledging to remove U.S. troops from Afghanistan. He thinks it is a war that has “gone on too long” and he hopes one day to remove all of our troops. But he thinks it is unwise to commit to a troop withdrawal before a peace deal is in place. When a reporter pressed him to give a yes/no answer on an Afghanistan troop withdrawal, he replied, “Some things, my friend, I think you would agree, are not always a yes or a no.” Like his Democratic rivals, de Blasio opposes U.S. support for the Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen. Back in March, he applauded the Senate’s passage of a resolution that would have ended U.S. support, calling the intervention “brutal and immoral.” More broadly, he wants Congress to more vigorously exercise its war powers. “As president I would want the Congress to authorize major military actions because getting away from that has made it bluntly too easy for these kind of interventions to occur without the kind of thinking we need in advance and often with really bad outcomes.” De Blasio is also like the other Democratic candidates in having supported the Iran nuclear deal. He has committed to rejoining the deal if he becomes president. He has also said that he sees “a purposeful march to war that some are trying to engineer in the Republican Party” and he worries that “at some point, Donald Trump will see it as a helpful distraction.” Like other Democratic candidates running under the progressive banner, de Blasio dislikes America’s trade deals. During the second round of Democratic debates he criticized Trump for “trying to sell NAFTA 2.0. He's got a new name for it. It's just as dangerous as the old NAFTA. It's going to take away American jobs like the old NAFTA, like it did to Michigan. And we cannot have Democrats be party to a new NAFTA.” He has been a long-time critic of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Back in 2015 he said it would be a “huge mistake” for Congress to approve so-called fast-track treatment of the deal. What’s unclear is what kinds of trade deal would meet de Blasio’s approval and how many other countries would be willing to meet those terms. De Blasio is also a big proponent of a Green New Deal. He likes to point to the changes he has pushed as mayor to reduce New York’s carbon emissions to show what he would do as president. “I’ve proven it can be done in the biggest city in the country…we’re proving these things really do work.” During his mayorship and before Trump became president, de Blasio made New York City a sanctuary city by limiting its cooperation with federal immigration authorities. He supported the creation of a city ID card that immigrants can use as proof of residency. Earlier this year, he announced a plan to spend $100 million to provide health care to undocumented immigrants. More on De Blasio New York Magazine joined de Blasio on the campaign trail in South Carolina and noted that “he is practically alone among 2020 contenders in not having gotten the kind of magazine profile that presages a run for president, one of the few who hasn’t been on Pod Save America or Desus & Mero or other places where the real campaign is being run.” Last month Vox asked why de Blasio was so disliked in his hometown and concluded that his problem “largely seems to be one of style.” De Blasio sat down last week for a lengthy interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity that touched upon the Green New Deal among other topics. Last weekend the New York Times Magazine ran an article saying that de Blasio “seems sick of his city—and the feeling is mutual.” De Blasio answered eighteen questions for the New York Times. One of the questions was where he would take his first international trip. His answer? “I’d start with a trip to the European Union.” Brenden Ebertz assisted in the preparation of this post.

Update: Tim Ryan announced on October 24, 2019, that he was ending his campaign. Niles, Ohio, is one of the few places in the United States that can say it is the birthplace of a president. America’s twenty-fifth president, William McKinley, was born and raised in the town, which is located just northwest of Youngstown. If Tim Ryan gets his way, Niles will become the birthplace of two American presidents. The Democratic presidential candidate was born in Niles one hundred and thirty years after McKinley. One downside for the town in having a second presidential son would be finding a way to recognize the accomplishment. Niles already has a monument to McKinley, a replica of the house he grew up in, and a public library and high school named after him. The Basics Name: Timothy John Ryan Date of Birth: July 16, 1973 Place of Birth: Niles, Ohio Religion: Roman Catholic Political Party: Democratic Party Marital Status: Married (Andrea Zetts) Children: Brady (4); Stepchildren: Mason (16) and Bella (15) Alma Mater: Bowling Green State University (BS); University of New Hampshire School of Law (JD) Career: Lawyer; Ohio State Senator (2001-2002); U.S. Representative (2003-present) Campaign Website: https://timryanforamerica.com/ Twitter Handle: @TimRyan Ryan’s Announcement Tim Ryan announced his candidacy on ABC’s “The View,” where he said he is running as someone who speaks to the problems of rural and Rust Belt America. He distinguished himself from President Trump by saying that the president “wants to go back to the old economy; he’s talking about old steel mills and old coal mines. I am saying where are our kids going to work and how do we come together.” Ryan released a video introducing his candidacy. It highlights how he grew up in a factory town and how his family members worked in factories. He says that “a lot of people have been left behind” in America and that he wants “to be there for them.” He adds that Americans “aren’t looking for liberal solutions or conservative solutions, they’re asking for real-world solutions.” The announcement video didn’t mention foreign policy. Ryan’s Story Ryan’s parents divorced when he was seven and he was raised by his mother, who was a courthouse worker. He was the star quarterback at John F. Kennedy High School in Warren, Ohio. He went to Youngstown State University to play football, but a knee injury derailed that plan. He transferred to Bowling Green University with the aim of becoming a teacher. But then he landed an internship in Washington, DC, and his career plans turned toward politics. He earned his law degree from the University of New Hampshire School of Law. Ryan worked as an aide to Ohio Democratic Congressman James Traficant in the 1990s. Ryan then returned home and won a seat in the Ohio state senate. In 2002, Traficant was expelled from the House after his conviction on bribery and racketeering charges. Ryan saw his opportunity. He defeated several better known candidates on his way to winning Traficant’s old seat. He credits his opposition to NAFTA as a major factor in his victory. Ryan was just twenty-nine when he was elected. He has won reelection seven times since. He is a member of the House Appropriations Committee. He chairs the Legislative Branch subcommittee and is a member of the Defense and Military Construction subcommittees. He was previously a member of the Armed Services Committee. Ryan made a name for himself in 2016 when he unsuccessfully challenged Nancy Pelosi to be the House Democratic Leader. After the 2018 midterm elections, he initially opposed Pelosi’s bid to return as House Speaker. That challenge failed as well and he ended up voting for her. Ryan says he has challenged Pelosi because he is tired of Democrats losing legislative seats and he thinks that the Democratic House leadership needs more Midwestern representation. Ryan’s Message Ryan is positioning himself as the defender of America’s forgotten workers. He says that he decided to run for president when his daughter told him, “You have to do something” after her friend’s father lost his job when the local GM factory shutdown. (He has also told a version of the story in which the plant closure forced the friend’s father to transfer jobs.) He believes that a mix of bad policies and neglect has “destroyed the middle-class, forcing our economy into crisis and pushing the American Dream out of reach.” He wants to change that. Ryan calls himself a “reform-minded Democrat.” He believes in free-enterprise and argues that “the progressive agenda is what’s best for working families.” He is confident that most progressives will see him as someone who can win the Midwestern states necessary to beat Trump. He also sees himself as a uniter—“a leader with the courage, strength, and experience to put partisan politics aside.” Ryan believes that there is a “quiet revolution happening in our country” and that if we “put our shoulder into it, it’s going to happen.” Ryan’s Foreign Policy Views Given Ryan’s focus on rejuvenating industrial and rural America, it’s not surprising that he frequently talks about the economic challenge that China poses to the United States. In the first Democratic debate back in June, his answer to the question of the biggest geopolitical challenge facing the United States was “China, without a question. They’re wiping us around the world, economically.” Elsewhere he said that China is “cleaning our clock” and taking it to America around the globe: China is coming at us. They are in Africa. They are locking down long-term deals in Africa for raw materials. They’re building islands in the South China Sea. They’ve got very detailed, long-term programs like their One Belt, One Road, where they’re connecting Asia to the Middle East. They’ve got a Make It In China 2025, where they’re really trying to take over manufacturing in the world. They’re investing hundreds of billions of dollars in artificial intelligence, additive manufacturing, wind, solar, high-speed rail. And we aren’t even acting like we’re in a competition with them. How does Ryan propose to turn back the China challenge? To begin with, he supports Trump’s use of tariffs because “China's been cheating for years, and they've been dumping products artificially, lowered the prices…And it's wiping out steel across the country, not to mention what they do with intellectual property and a variety of other things.” But while Ryan wants to be as tough as possible as he can on China, he also said that “we don't want a trade war.” He hasn’t explained how his use of tariffs would be more effective than Trump’s or produce less collateral damage for the industries he is trying to help. Ryan has been clear, however, on what he wouldn’t do to meet the China challenge—join a revised version of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. He believes it “has been negotiated under the cover of darkness, it does nothing to protect American workers or lift the standards of workers abroad and further erodes sovereign protections that countries have to hold companies accountable for bad actions abroad.” Ryan criticizes the Trump administration for not having a long-term strategy to compete with China, saying “you go to China, they have their defense department, their infrastructure plan, their soft power plan within the context of their state department. You look at their research, you look at their development. Everything is pushing in one direction on how do you dominate industries. And right now we have no plan.” Ryan hasn’t outlined what his plan would look like let alone present an integrated set of policies that link means to costs to objectives. However, he has praised now former Secretary of Defense James Mattis for putting together “really the only comprehensive long-term plan for acquisition, technology, and readiness within, and creating a lethal force within the National Defense Strategy.” Ryan sees “having people in the State Department” and “having a long-term, sophisticated, diplomatic operation, being in touch with China, continuing to talk to them and having a relationship with them in the long term” as part of the solution. He goes on to say that “having an economic strategy of our own in that region of the world, making sure that we are competing globally, we're not retreating from, you know, NATO and our relationships that we have militarily and diplomatically in that region, and letting our friends and allies know that we are going to be with them and compete in this global economy” is essential and that “there's none of that going on right now in the Trump administration.” Ryan supports Trump’s efforts to increase defense spending because that “funding helps us keep our position as a leader on the world stage.” He also favors getting America’s allies to spend more on their own defense, and sees it as a way to reduce U.S. defense costs: People say well, what the hell do we need to be friends with this country or that country. Well, if you peel the onion back one layer, you realize well, they’ve got five submarines and they help us in Iraq, and they help us in Syria, and they help us here and they help us there. Those are costs and expenses we don’t have to incur, because we have friends. And so yeah, we’ve got to build more submarines, because we are falling behind. But we also have to make sure we keep those relationships with our allies, because we utilize their material and their weapon systems, too. Ryan attributes the surge of migrants and refugees along the U.S.-Mexico border to Trump’s “laziness,” saying that the president “has failed to address the issues in Central America…He doesn’t read his presidential daily briefing. He ignored this problem. We want presidents to deal with the root of the problems. Central America is a mess and we are doing nothing to stabilize that region.” Climate change doesn’t come up in Ryan’s public remarks as much as it does with many other Democratic presidential candidates. He believes that to meet the challenge “we need the magic and innovation of our free enterprise system to be a big part of this.” He is optimistic that if we “align the environmental incentives with the financial incentives, that we can actually do it a lot quicker than most people think.” Ryan parts ways with many of his Democratic rivals when it comes to U.S. troop deployments overseas. In the first Democratic debate, he supported maintaining U.S. troops in Afghanistan. He acknowledged that “nobody likes it” and that “it’s long. It’s tedious.” But he argued that if the United States retreated “the Taliban will grow. And they will have bigger, bolder terrorist acts.” He does hope, however, to bring the bulk of U.S. combat troops home from Afghanistan by the end of his first term in office. Ryan supported the Trump administration’s airstrikes against Syria in 2017 and 2018. He described the attacks as sending a “message that our nation and our allies will not stand by while international law is broken by the use of chemical weapons against innocent men, women, and children.” He nonetheless has criticized the president for not consulting with Congress about the strikes and for not having developed a strategy for dealing with Damascus. One U.S. military operation Ryan opposes is support for the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen. He believes that the United States “cannot continue to be complicit in the killing of innocents and we cannot be tied to crimes of the Saudi government.” Ryan missed the votes the House held in February and in April calling for an end to the U.S. support for the Yemen operation. Ryan supported the Obama administration’s decision to strike a nuclear deal with Iran. He has criticized Trump for exiting the agreement, calling his decision “completely reckless.” However, he doesn’t think it is possible to re-enter the agreement as is. He wants to negotiate a new version of the deal that “extends restrictions even further into the future." More broadly, Ryan believes that costs of withdrawing from the world outweigh the costs of having an active presence in it: “We must have our State Department engaged. We must have our military engaged to the extent they need to be. But the reality of it is, this president doesn't even have people appointed in the State Department to deal with these things, whether we're talking about Central America, whether we're talking about Iran, whether we're talking about Afghanistan. We've got to be completely engaged.” More on Ryan Ryan has two books to his credit. A proponent of meditation, he wrote a book originally published in 2012 and titled A Mindful Nation. It was re-released in 2018 as Healing America: How a Simple Practice Can Help Us Recapture the American Spirit. His second book, released in 2014, was The Real Food Revolution: Healthy Eating, Green Groceries, and the Return of the American Family Farm. It promotes healthy eating. POLITICO Magazine profiled Ryan last year, pointing out that roughly forty-five thousand of Ryan’s supporters in 2016 also voted for Trump. Ryan attributes this to their similar stances on China and their willingness to take on the establishment. Time Magazine noted that Ryan has been a member of the NRA and opposed abortion rights during his career and concluded that “he is banking his potential in booting Trump from the White House will be more important that deviations from what is now party orthodoxy.” In a second piece, Time Magazine explored his chances of winning the nomination, saying that “the party is fielding its most diverse group of contenders in history, including firebrands, pioneers and coalition builders,” which leaves little room for a “little-known Midwestern Congressman who was against abortion rights until 2015 and has made rebuilding the party’s connection with blue collar voters the centerpiece of his campaign.” Ryan answered eighteen questions for the New York Times earlier this summer. One of the questions was where he would take his first international trip. His answer? “Europe.” CFR asked Ryan twelve foreign policy questions. He cited the creation of “a world order that has led to the proliferation of democracy, democratic ideals and the raised standard of living for every human being alive today” as America’s greatest foreign policy accomplishment” since World War II and “moves since 9/11 including the war in Iraq” as the biggest mistake.  Corey Cooper, Brenden Ebertz, Elizabeth Lordi assisted in the preparation of this post.

Update: Kirsten Gillibrand announced on August 28, 2019, that she was ending her campaign. It has been a while since Americans have elected successive presidents from the same state. Not since November 2, 1880, in fact.* That’s when Republican James A. Garfield of Ohio won the right to succeed fellow Republican and Ohioan Rutherford B. Hayes. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand hopes to break that streak next November 3, one hundred and fifty years and one day after it began. She, like President Donald Trump, hails from New York. Her election would allow New York to boast being the home state of six presidents. Only Ohio (seven) and Virginia (eight) can claim more. And, of course, Gillibrand would also be the first woman elected president. *Democrat Grover Cleveland of New York succeeded Republican Chester Arthur of New York as president in 1885. However, Arthur wasn’t elected president. He became president after Garfield’s assassination in 1881. The Basics Name: Kirsten Elizabeth Gillibrand Date of Birth: December 9, 1966 Place of Birth: Albany, New York Religion: Roman Catholic Political Party: Democratic Party Marital Status: Married (Jonathan Gillibrand) Children: Theodore (15) and Henry (10) Alma Mater: Dartmouth College (BA); University of California, Los Angeles (JD) Career: Lawyer; U.S. Representative (2007-2009); U.S. Senator (2009-present) Campaign Website: https://2020.kirstengillibrand.com/ Twitter Handle: @SenGillibrand Gillibrand’s Announcement Gillibrand appeared on the “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” in mid-January to announce that she had formed a committee to explore a possible presidential run. Two months later, she gave her formal announcement speech. Her choice of venue? In front of the Trump International Hotel in New York City. After quoting the final line of the Star Spangled Banner, she asked, “Will brave win?” Her answer: “The truth is, brave hasn't always won. And brave isn't winning right now.” She accused President Trump of “tearing apart the moral fabric of this country” and called his hotel “a shrine to greed, division and vanity.”  Foreign policy got only the briefest of mentions in the thirty-minute speech. She said: “We need to repair our relationship with allies and stop fawning over our adversaries. We need to leverage our diplomatic tools to make Americans more prosperous and more secure, and always treat military force as the last resort. We must bring an end to our endless wars. America's commander in chief is not a dictator, and the decision to deploy our troops can never be made lightly or unilaterally without Congress.”  Gillibrand also released an announcement video that parallels her announcement speech and is titled, “Brave Wins.” It says she is running for president because America needs a “leader who makes big, bold, brave choices.” Gillibrand cited her top priorities as universal health care, paid-family leave, ending gun violence, a Green New Deal, and getting “money out of politics.” Foreign policy didn’t merit a mention. Gillibrand’s Story Gillibrand was born into a political family. Her grandmother was the president of the Albany Democratic Women’s Club and the long-time confidante of Erastus Corning II, Albany’s mayor for forty-one years. Her parents were lawyers. Her father worked as a lobbyist. Her nickname growing up was “Tina.” She attended the Emma Willard School, an all-girls boarding school in Troy, New York, that counts among its alumnae Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Gillibrand majored in Asian Studies at Dartmouth, where she was a varsity squash player. She also studied abroad in China and Taiwan. She says she still “speaks a little bit of Mandarin” and she has introduced herself to at least one news crew in Mandarin. After graduating magna cum laude from Dartmouth, she earned her law degree from UCLA. Gillibrand started her legal career as an associate at the New York law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell. She then spent a year clerking for the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Albany. She returned to Davis Polk & Wardwell, where she spent much of her time defending Philip Morris, the tobacco producer. Her policy career began when she spent the last year of the Clinton administration as special counsel to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, where she worked under future New York governor, Andrew Cuomo. After moving over to another Manhattan law firm in 2001, Gillibrand relocated to Albany to plan a run for Congress. She decided against running in 2004 on the advice of Senator Hillary Clinton, who had become her mentor after she worked on Clinton’s Senate campaign in 2000. It was good advice. In 2006, Gillibrand defeated a four-term Republican incumbent for the right to represent New York’s 20th Congressional District, which is centered on Albany. She won reelection easily in 2008. Senator Clinton’s decision to join the Obama administration as secretary of state created an opportunity for Gillibrand. Lots of high profile names were discussed for the open seat, but New York’s governor decided Gillibrand would succeed Clinton until a special election could be held. She was elected to the seat in her own right in 2010 and then re-elected in 2016. Because she is not up for re-election until 2022, she is not putting her Senate seat in jeopardy by running for president. Upon joining the Senate, Gillibrand made it a priority to push for repeal of the Pentagon’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. Gillibrand portrays herself as pivotal in securing the legislation’s passage. Many of her fellow lawmakers credit her with raising the issue’s visibility but disagree that her role was pivotal. During her time in the Senate, Gillibrand has devoted considerable effort to combating sexual harassment and assault. She created a stir in 2017 when she said that Bill Clinton should have resigned over the Monica Lewinsky scandal. One Clinton staffer called her a “hypocrite” for taking advice and support from the Clintons for two decades. Shortly thereafter, Gillibrand became the first senator to call for Senator Al Franken’s resignation after he was accused of sexual harassment. That decision rankled some fellow senators and Democratic Party donors. Gillibrand sits on the Agriculture, Armed Services, and Environment and Public Works committees. She also sits on the Special Committee on Aging. Gillibrand’s hobbies include baking and tennis. She admits that she curses a lot, so much so that one year she vowed to give up the habit for Lent. In 2017, she dropped an “f-bomb” in the middle of a speech as she criticized Trump. She told Stephen Colbert that she’s “gonna definitely try” not to swear on the campaign trail. She says that the word she will miss the most rhymes with “duck.” Gillibrand’s husband, Jonathan, is a British venture capitalist. They met on a blind date in 2001 when she was at Davis Polk & Wardwell and he was studying for his MBA at Columbia University. After meeting Kirsten, he shelved his plans for returning to England. Gillibrand’s Message Gillibrand’s slogan is, “Brave Wins.” Her pitch is that she is the candidate who will fight the tough battles and make bold decisions. As part of that strategy, she is branding herself as a “young mom” who is going to “fight for other people's kids as hard as I would fight for my own." Her focus is on the economic issues facing families. She promises to fight for healthcare as a right, better public schools, higher wages, and accessible job training. Her campaign website calls her a “fighter for families, equality and justice.” Gillibrand touts her history of transparency and her battle against the corrupting influence of money in politics. She announced last year that she will no longer accept donations from any corporate PACs. Gillibrand, perhaps more than any other candidate, is putting women’s issues at the center of her campaign. She has been referred to as the #MeToo Senator. She is highlighting her work in combatting sexual assault in the military, drafting and sponsoring legislation for equal pay and paid family leave, and campaigning for women candidates. Gillibrand is also positioning herself as the anti-Trump senator. She has voted against Trump's nominees and policies more than any other member of Congress. At the same time, she highlights her bipartisan record in Congress. Gillibrand’s Foreign Policy Views Gillibrand laid out her foreign policy worldview in a July speech to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. She is, not surprisingly, critical of Trump’s America First policies. She believes that “We need to restore our leadership in the world with strength and compassion, not fear and hate” and that “we need a strong and strategic foreign policy, not endless wars.” She says her administration would “work with—not alienate—our allies, maintain international commitments and leverage diplomatic and humanitarian strategies before resorting to military ones.” Gillibrand hasn’t spoken in detail about how she would handle relations with China and Russia or whether she agrees with claims that we have entered a period of renewed great power competition. China and Russia may be the two countries with the greatest ability to help or hinder U.S. foreign policy, and Gillibrand may have spent her youth studying China, but she mentioned them only in passing in her formal remarks to the Chicago Council. During the question and answer session she said that China “is certainly an adversary but there’s enormous potential in that relationship.” She says we “will do far better through intense engagement than through isolation.” She added that as president she would “stand up to Russia.” Gillibrand has been far clearer about her stance on military interventions in the Middle East. She’s generally against them. She ran for Congress in 2006 as an opponent of the Iraq war. In 2011, she supported “limited” U.S. involvement in Libya in 2011, saying “the President has been clear, this is a limited action in coordination with a broad coalition of allies, including those in the Arab world, who have asked for help in protecting civilians.” She feels differently about current U.S. military operations. She criticized the April 2017 airstrike on Syria. Her objection, however, wasn’t to punishing the Assad government for using chemical weapons but the fact that Trump ordered the strike on his own initiative: “Unilateral military action by the U.S. in a Middle East conflict causes grave concern, given the lack of any Authorization for Use of Military Force from Congress and the absence of any long-term plan or strategy to address any consequences from such unilateral action." She took the same view when the president ordered another round of airstrikes a year later: “Assad’s use of chemical weapons against his own people was evil. However, President Trump has no legal basis for this strike. He does not have an authorization for the use of military force against Syria.” Concerns about the legal basis for military actions overseas show up in Gillibrand’s assessments of other U.S. military operations abroad. She doesn’t think that the president has the authority deploy U.S. troops to northern and eastern Syria. She argues that “we should be drawing down our troops not only in Afghanistan, but the remainder in Iraq and in Syria. And then give Congress the opportunity that if they believe we should be in combat missions in any of these countries that we actually file a new Authorization for Use of Military Force.” She hasn’t discussed what the likely consequences of such withdrawals would be or how she sees the subsequent state of affairs better serving U.S. interests. Like all of the Democratic presidential candidates, Gillibrand opposes U.S. support for the Saudi-backed war in Yemen. Last December, she tweeted “Thousands of Yemeni civilians have been killed by the Saudi-led bombing campaign—and millions are suffering the effects of hunger and disease because of the war. The Senate must do everything it can to end this humanitarian crisis.” The president vetoed a bill that Congress passed that would have ended U.S. support for the Yemen war. Gillibrand is like all of the other Democratic candidates in another way. She thinks that the United States is better off being a part of the Iran nuclear deal rather than withdrawing from it. She supported the deal when it was inked back in 2015, acknowledging its limitations but concluding that the United States had “no viable alternative” for stopping an Iranian nuclear weapons program. Her views didn’t change with the passage of time. She says that “President Trump needlessly broke with our European allies when he unilaterally withdrew the US” from the deal, thereby “putting America at a level of risk we have not seen in years.” When Trump announced that he was withdrawing the United States from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, Gillibrand joined other Democratic senators in criticizing the president for “abandoning generations of bipartisan U.S. leadership around the paired goals of reducing the global role and number of nuclear weapons and ensuring strategic stability with America's nuclear-armed adversaries." In January, she joined with Elizabeth Warren and several other Democratic senators in sponsoring the Prevention of Arms Race 2019 Act. The bill would prohibit the Defense Department from procuring, flight-testing, or deploying any missiles that would be banned under the INF treaty unless a range of conditions were met. Gillibrand was supportive when Trump announced he would meet with North Korea dictator Kim Jong-Un in Singapore. She saw it as “a positive step in the right direction because we're talking about engagement of diplomacy and political solutions as opposed to military ones. She remained optimistic in the immediate wake of the summit, saying: “I am grateful that he is making the effort to try diplomacy and to try to bring people together towards a peaceful resolution.” As months passed and North Korea took no irreversible steps to reduce its nuclear or missile capabilities, she changed her tune slightly. While continuing to say she is “grateful” that Trump is trying diplomacy, she has called the Hanoi Summit “a political stunt” and urged the president to tackle the issue “in a different way, with the support of allies, with the support of the world community, with the support of experts as opposed to…shoot from the hip.….I don't think the way he's tried to do it is the most effective.” One topic on which Gillibrand agrees with Trump is Venezuela. She supported the administration’s decision to recognize Juan Guaidó as the country’s interim president. She supports using economic sanctions against the Maduro government. She opposes sending U.S. troops to Venezuela. Like all of her Democratic rivals, Gillibrand believes that addressing climate change should be a top priority. She would “pass a Green New Deal” and “put a price on carbon.” Trade issues haven’t been a major focus of Gillibrand’s Senate career. Like most of her Democratic rivals, she portrays trade deals as harming American families and workers. Back in 2015 she voted against granting the Obama administration fast-track authority for negotiations on what became the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). She opposed the TPP when it was negotiated, and now she opposes entering its successor agreement the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) unless it is modified to incorporate a list of labor, environmental, and enforcement conditions. The odds that the CPTPP’s eleven members will agree to all those conditions are low. Like most other Democrats, her criticisms of Trump’s policies focus more on his tactics than on his objectives. She says Trump’s strategy toward China “has been a complete failure and extremely disruptive.” She would like to rewrite Trump’s rewrite of NAFTA, calling it a “bad trade agreement.” She thinks it is a “give away to drug companies,” should include more environmental protections, and provide better terms for New York’s dairy farmers. Gillibrand also says she would penalize companies that outsource jobs overseas. She has co-sponsored the Level the Playing Field in Global Trade Act of 2019. It would require future trade agreements to include enforceable wage, workplace, and environmental standards. The United Auto Workers, the Communications Workers of America, the United Steelworkers, and the AFL-CIO have endorsed the bill. Back in 2017 Gillibrand voted against waiving the law that would have barred General James Mattis from serving as secretary of defense because he had not been retired from the military for at least seven years. She called Mattis “an extraordinary general,” but argued that “civilian control of our military is fundamental to the American democracy.” The waiver passed and Gillibrand was the only senator to vote against Mattis’s confirmation. More on Gillibrand Back in 2014, Gillibrand wrote a book called Off the Sidelines: Speak Up, Be Fearless, and Change Your World. She also released a children’s book last year titled Bold and Brave: Ten Heroes Who Won Women the Right to Vote. New York Magazine wrote in 2009 that Gillibrand’s “folksiness comes with a sharp edge” and quotes an unnamed Democratic activist saying “she’d run you over with a train if you got in her way.” In 2010, Vogue described Gillibrand as “nothing if not genuine,” with a style that is “folksy and earnest” and “radiates kindness,” but who nonetheless manages to be “direct and no-nonsense.” A 2013 New Yorker profile examined how Gillibrand succeeded to Clinton’s Senate seat and argued that she has ”a near-evangelical confidence in the prospect of bipartisanship, in the restoration of the Senate, and in herself” and that “she is prone to near-rote recitations of her talking points. She is vanilla, but she’s strong vanilla.” A 2017 profile in the Intelligencer identified one of Gillibrand’s strengths as having a “nose for where her constituents, and the country, are headed. Through some combination of happenstance and remarkable political instincts, she often manages to show up there early.” In 2017, Politico Magazine profiled how Gillibrand came to take the lead in the Senate on stopping sexual assault in the military. She points to watching The Invisible War, a 2012 movie that highlighted military efforts to cover up the scale of the problem, as a galvanizing moment. The movie’s director called Gillibrand’s questioning in a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on sexual assault “superhero stuff. She was unrelenting.” But, Gillibrand has been criticized by some of her colleagues and by military officials who found it “dangerous” that “a senator who hasn’t served in the military” is pushing for these changes. CBS’s 60 Minutes pressed Gillibrand in February 2018 on why she changed her position on issues like guns and immigration when she moved from the House to Senate. She said she really “didn’t take the time to understand why these issues mattered because it wasn’t right in front of me. And that was my fault. It was something that I am embarrassed about and I’m ashamed of.” In May, Politico Magazine examined why Gillibrand’s presidential campaign had languished and concluded that she had been too careful, mistakenly believing that “she can’t afford to alienate one bloc of voters.” Gillibrand sat down with the New York Times in June to answer eighteen questions. One of the questions was where she would take his first international trip. Her answer? “I would go to Israel, and I would travel throughout the Middle East. CFR asked Gillibrand twelve foreign policy questions. She cited “strong alliances that the United States has nurtured” as America’s greatest foreign policy accomplishment since World War II. She declined to cite a single greatest foreign policy mistake and instead opted to say that the United States “has too often remained embroiled in battle beyond its time.” Corey Cooper, Brenden Ebertz, and Elizabeth Lordi assisted in the preparation of this post.

Update: Cory Booker announced on January 13, 2020, that he was ending his campaign. Is America ready for a president who is single and a vegan? Cory Booker, New Jersey’s junior senator, certainly hopes so. The fifty-year-old former Rhodes Scholar would be the first bachelor elected president since a never-married Grover Cleveland won back in 1884 and just the third ever. (James Buchanan, who makes every list of America’s worst presidents, was the first bachelor to make it to the White House.) No sitting U.S. president has ever been a vegetarian, let alone a vegan, though Bill Clinton adopted a mostly vegan diet after he left the White House. So the jelly beans, cheeseburger pizzas, and pork rinds that made their way to the Oval Office in past presidencies aren’t likely to be found in the White House during a Booker presidency. The Basics Name: Cory Anthony Booker Date of Birth: April 27, 1969 Place of Birth: Washington, DC Religion: Baptist (Raised Methodist) Political Party: Democratic Party Marital Status: Single Children: None Alma Mater: Stanford University (BA, MA); Oxford University (MA); Yale University (JD) Career: Lawyer; Member of the Newark City Council (1998-2002); Mayor of Newark (2006-2013); U.S. Senator (2013-present) Campaign Website: https://corybooker.com/ Twitter Handle: @CoryBooker Booker’s Announcement Booker announced his presidential run back in April at a rally in his hometown of Newark, New Jersey. He touched on a wide range of subjects in his thirty-minute speech, including stagnating wages, the decline of family-owned farms, and legalizing marijuana at the federal level. Foreign policy got two brief mentions. The New Jersey senator complained of “decades of unjust policies that have destroyed our economy and extracted money from our commonwealth and plowed into tax cuts for the wealthy and wars overseas we didn’t have to fight.” He also vowed “to meet the crisis of climate change because we have no other choice.” Booker also released an announcement video titled “We Will Rise.” The video draws a distinction between Booker and everyone in the race. He lives in Newark, so he is "the only senator who goes home to a low-income, inner city community." The announcement video doesn’t mention foreign policy at all. Booker’s Story Cory Booker was born in Washington, DC. His parents—Cary and Carolyn—were civil rights activists and executives at IBM. They moved to Harrington Park, New Jersey, just months after Cory was born. They succeeded in buying a house in the overwhelmingly white suburb only by arranging for a white couple to bid on the property. When Booker’s father showed up at the closing with a lawyer, the seller’s real estate agent punched the lawyer and sicced a dog on the elder Booker. Booker was a great student and star football player in high school. He made USA Today’s All-USA Team his senior year. Coaches from around the country, including legendary Notre Dame coach Lou Holtz, traveled to Harrington Park to recruit him. Former President Gerald Ford called to urge him to become a University of Michigan Wolverine. He opted to attend Stanford and play for Jack Elway, father of Hall-of-Fame quarterback John Elway. Booker’s college football career didn’t meet the expectations that many people had for him. He never started a game and didn’t play in one until he was a junior. He finished his career as a tight end with just twenty catches and one touchdown. His best game, though, came when it mattered most. In his senior season, he caught two passes as Stanford upset number-one ranked Notre Dame in South Bend. While Booker didn’t shine on the college gridiron, he excelled in the classroom and on campus. He earned a bachelor’s degree in political science in 1991 and was senior class president. He added a master’s degree in sociology in 1992. He was awarded a Rhodes scholarship and earned another master’s degree in history. He then attended Yale Law School, graduating in 1997. After earning his law degree, Booker moved to Newark where he provided legal services to low-income families in the city. He was elected to the city council in 1998 when he was twenty-nine. While a councilman, he went on a hunger-strike to protest living conditions in a Newark housing project. He ran for mayor for the first time in 2002, but lost to a longtime incumbent. The documentary Street Fight tracked that unsuccessful election bid. Booker ran again for mayor in 2002 and won. He was thirty-seven. Booker’s mayoral style was defined by his social media savviness and his rapport with the city’s historically underserved communities. His policy priorities were bringing investments to the city, education reform, and fighting crime. He was also a hands-on mayor. Among other things, he shoveled an elderly man’s driveway, took in a dog left outside on a frigid night, and carried a neighbor out of a burning house. In 2013, Booker won a special election for the Senate after the incumbent officeholder died. The victory made Booker New Jersey’s first African-American senator. He won a full term in 2014. Booker is the only one of the seven Democratic senators running for the presidency whose term ends in 2020. If he fares poorly in the first formal nominating events, he will face the decision of whether to drop out of the race to pursue a second full term in the Senate. Booker sits on the Environment and Public Works, Foreign Relations, Judiciary, and Small Business and Entrepreneurship committees. Booker had his last non-vegan meal on Election Day 2014. For the previous twenty-two years he had been a vegetarian. He stopped eating meat when he was at Oxford. He says that he simply felt much better eating a vegetarian diet. Although many meat-eaters seem threatened by vegans, he doesn’t think being a vegan will hurt him at the polls. “I remember somebody teasing me when I was getting ready to run for mayor in Newark: ‘There’s no way a black city is going to elect a vegetarian!’ But people did.” Booker is a big Star Trek fan. He particularly liked The Next Generation. He also likes The Big Bang Theory. Booker’s Message Booker’s campaign slogan is “We Will Rise.” He stresses the importance of working together. He says “The lines that divide us are nowhere near as strong as the ties that bind us. When we join together and work together — we rise together.” He is calling for a “revival of civic grace.” He says he has experience bringing people together: “I grew up knowing that the only way we can make change is when people come together.” Booker’s Foreign Policy Views Booker believes that climate change is, along with nuclear proliferation, the greatest geopolitical threat to the United States. When President Trump announced he would be withdrawing from the Paris climate deal, Booker said that the decision “is a vicious blow to American leadership in the world and to our future. When it comes to addressing an issue as urgent as climate change, President Trump is just plain wrong.” He pledges to rejoin the Paris agreement during the first hours of his presidency. But he worries that people expect presidents to be “saviors.” The reality is that “it’s not going to be one person in one office” that solves the problem. “We need to do it in partnership with others on the planet.” One of Booker’s chief foreign policy complaints is that the United States has overused its military in recent years, and as a result, made itself and others less secure. Unlike many of his Democratic rivals, however, he refuses to set deadlines for withdrawing U.S. troops from combat zones overseas. He says that “we cannot have forever wars.” However, he thinks that “it is a mistake in presidential campaigns to start putting timelines on our military.” He supports having “a debate and vote on an Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) against ISIS.” The challenge, of course, is coming up with authorization language that satisfies a majority of both houses and the White House. The flip side of Booker’s concern that the United States has overused its military is that it has underused its diplomats. Booker opposed the Trump administration’s effort to slash the State Department’s budget, saying, “It is outrageous to me that you have an administration on one side of their mouth want to talk about being tough against ISIS and against terrorism,” adding “I would say, if you're looking at a toolbox, one of the most critical assets we have is the activities being done to diplomacy, to USAID and through other CVE (countering violent extremism) efforts that are not about a military.” Booker has criticized the Trump administration’s policy toward Saudi Arabia, saying “We need to reexamine that entire relationship.” Booker said of Jamal Khashoggi’s murder last October, “I’m worried that this has been skewed from the start. I’m worried about efforts to cover this up and I’m worried about our administration willing to just go along and get along because of a lot of the financial interests that we might have,” adding, “I hope that whoever ever holds that presidential office stands as a moral leader nationally and globally and not somebody that would compromise for arms sales.” He also connected Khashoggi’s case with the “humanitarian disaster” in Yemen. Booker has long cited Saudi Arabia’s military intervention in Yemen as the reason he opposes U.S. arms sales to Riyadh. “There are better ways for America…to fight for peace and security in that region…and I fear that what’s happening now is contributing to the crisis in the region, contributing to an environment that creates fertile ground for terrorists to thrive.” Booker has criticized U.S. policy toward Syria. He argued that the April 2018 U.S. airstrikes against Syria for using chemical weapons were taken “without any comprehensive strategy or the necessary congressional authorization.” He called Trump’s December 2018 vow to withdraw U.S. troops quickly from Syria as “reckless and dangerous.” However, like all of the other senators running for president except for Michael Bennet, Booker voted against a sense-of-the-Senate resolution that Mitch McConnell offered expressing concern that a “precipitous withdrawal” of U.S. forces from Afghanistan and Syria “could put at risk hard-won gains and United States national security.” Iran is another issue where Booker parts from the Trump administration. Booker agrees that Iran threatens the United States and its allies. He cosponsored a 2013 bill that toughened sanctions on Tehran. He had reservations about the deal that President Obama struck to constrain Iran’s nuclear program, but ultimately supported it. He explained his decision this way: “It is better to support a deeply flawed deal, for the alternative is worse.” The same reasoning explains his opposition to Trump’s decision to withdraw from the deal. Booker staunchly supports Israel, especially when it comes to self-defense: “I support Israel’s right to defend itself. Full stop.” He was one of the few Democrats in 2017 to support the Israel Anti-Boycott Act, which bars U.S. companies from joining an international boycott of Israel. However, he created a stir in August 2018 when he was photographed holding a sign, created by a group that supports the boycott, divest, and sanctions movement, that said: “From Palestine to Mexico, all the walls have got to go.” Booker’s spokesman said that the senator “didn’t realize it had anything to do with Israel. He hopes for a day when there will be no need for security barriers in the State of Israel, but while active terrorist organizations threaten the safety of the people living in Israel, security barriers are unfortunate but necessary to protect human lives.” Booker joined with all other Senate Democrats in opposing the nomination of David Friedman to be U.S. ambassador to Israel, saying that Friedman “would damage the prospects of finding a two-state solution between the Israelis and Palestinians, the only path to a lasting peace that would bring true security and Middle East stability.” Booker believes that the Trump administration has it exactly backward with its hardline approach to the migrants coming to the United States from the Northern Triangle of Central America—El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. “Donald Trump isn't solving this problem. We've seen under his leadership a surge at our border. We solve this problem by making investments in the Northern Triangle to stop the reasons why people are being driven here in the first place, and we make sure we use our resources to provide health care to affirm the values and human dignity of the people that come here, because we cannot sacrifice our values, our ideals as a nation for border security. We can have both by doing this the right way.” Polls may show that Democratic voters favor free trade. Booker, however, isn’t pushing a free-trade agenda. He wants “to be known as a pro-fair trade Democrat” and has tweeted that trade deals need to be “much more fair to U.S. companies.” He voted against the fast-track legislation that authorized Obama to negotiate the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). When pressed recently on whether he favored renegotiating TPP or doing away with it, he declined to give a clear answer. He instead said: “I’m saying that if we are going to win in Asia, we need to bring together the allies that we have there, and do a deal that works for us to counter and check China in a substantive way.” More on Booker Booker has written one book, United: Thoughts on Finding Common Ground and Advancing the Common Good. It was published in 2016. Booker is good friends with fellow 2020 contender Kirsten Gillibrand. When Booker entered the race, Gillibrand tweeted “Congratulations and welcome to the race to one of my closest friends, @corybooker! I'll be cheering you on—just, you know, not TOO hard.” Booker said running against Gillibrand and Kamala Harris will be like a “sibling rivalry.” Booker sat down with the Atlantic last December for an interview on why he talks so frequently about love. His answer? “My faith tradition is love your enemies. It’s not complicated for me, if I aspire to be who I say I am. I am a Christian American. Literally written in the ideals of my faith is to love those who hate you.” Jonathan Van Meter wrote in New York Magazine that “Cory Booker’s got a lot of love to give, and he’s betting that’s what it will take to win in 2020.” Vogue profiled Booker in 2012 when he was the energetic, tweeting mayor of Newark, saying “His heroics aren’t merely expressions of physical courage—though they certainly are that. They’re applications of a theory of civic revitalization, which says that a single leader, visibly doing the right thing, can influence a whole community’s behavior.” POLITICO Magazine asked “Is Cory Booker for Real?” and argued that he “has wrestled throughout his career with what it means to be a black politician who came of age in a white-dominated world, and how to extrapolate his unique experience in Newark with the larger concerns of the nation.” Booker sat down with the New York Times in June to answer eighteen questions. One of the questions was where he would take his first international trip. His answer? “I’ve given a lot of thought to that, and it’s not something I am going to be telling the New York Times about right now.” CFR asked Booker twelve foreign policy questions. He offered up the “peaceful spread of democracy around the world” as America’s greatest foreign policy accomplishment since World War II. The Iraq war was his choice as America’s greatest foreign policy mistake. Corey Cooper, Brenden Ebertz, and Elizabeth Lordi assisted in the preparation of this post.

Update: Amy Klobuchar announced on March 2, 2020, that she was ending her campaign. Harvard and Yale have a storied rivalry. Yale holds the advantage when it comes to victories on the gridiron and, at least since 1945, on the hardwood. But when it comes to who has had more undergraduates become president, Harvard holds the lead. Five of its undergrads have become president—both Adamses, both Roosevelts, and John F. Kennedy. In contrast, just three Yalies can make the same claim—William Howard Taft and the elder and younger Bush. Minnesota’s senior senator, Amy Klobuchar, hopes to narrow that gap. A magna cum laude graduate of Yale College, Class of 1982, she would also be the first Minnesotan to become president. And yes, the first woman president. The Basics Name: Amy Jean Klobuchar Date of Birth: May 25, 1960 Place of Birth: Plymouth, Minnesota Religion: United Church of Christ Political Party: Democratic Party Marital Status: Married (John Bessler) Children: Abigail (23) Alma Mater: Yale University (BA); University of Chicago (JD) Career: County Attorney for Hennepin County (1999-2007); U.S. Senator (2007-present) Campaign Website: https://www.amyklobuchar.com/  Twitter Handle: @amyklobuchar Klobuchar’s Announcement Amy Klobuchar announced her bid for president on February 10 in Minneapolis. A less hardy politician might have noted that the average high temperature in the Twin Cities in February is 26 degrees and given the speech indoors at a local sports arena or civic auditorium. The Minnesota senator opted instead to roll the dice with the weather and give her speech outdoors. She lost. Almost as soon as she began speaking it began to snow heavily. The hatless Klobuchar was unfazed. She spoke for twenty-four minutes. What is perhaps even more impressive is that some nine thousand Minnesotans braved the elements to listen to her lay out her agenda, which includes lowering the cost of prescription drugs, protecting online privacy, and rejoining the Paris climate agreement. Unlike most of her fellow Democratic presidential contenders, Klobuchar discussed foreign policy in her announcement speech. Alluding to President Trump’s America First policies, she said, “Even if you want to isolate yourselves from the rest of the world, the rest of the world won't let you. International problems come banging at your door, just as opportunities come knocking.” She went on to say, “We need to stand strong and consistently with our allies. We need to be clear in our purpose. We must respect our front-line troops, diplomats and intelligence officers who are there every day risking their lives for us. They deserve better than foreign policy by tweet.” Klobuchar’s Story Klobuchar grew up in Plymouth, a suburb of Minneapolis. Her mother was an elementary school teacher and her father a columnist for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Klobuchar was valedictorian of her high school class. She then headed to New Haven, where she eventually graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in political science. While at Yale, she interned for fellow Minnesotan, Vice President Walter Mondale. He became her mentor. After graduating from the University of Chicago Law School in 1985, Klobuchar returned to Minneapolis to join the law firm of Dorsey & Whitney. She concentrated on telecommunications law. In 1993, she became a partner at Gray, Plant, Mooty, Mooty & Bennett—one of Minneapolis’s oldest law firms. Klobuchar notched her first political win before she even ran for public office. Twenty-four hours after her daughter was born, Klobuchar was forced to leave the hospital even though her daughter Abigail had been born with a condition that prevented her from being able to swallow. Klobuchar lobbied the Minnesota state legislature to pass a bill that became one of the first laws in the country allowing mothers and newborns to stay in the hospital for forty-eight hours. That provision became federal law during the Clinton presidency. Klobuchar turned to politics in 1998, winning election as Hennepin County Attorney. (Hennepin County encompasses Minneapolis and several of its suburbs, but not St. Paul.) Her fellow lawyers thought she was pretty good at her job. In 2001, Minnesota Lawyer named her "Attorney of the Year." The voters of Hennepin County agreed. They reelected her as county attorney in 2002.  Klobuchar won an open U.S. Senate seat in 2006, making her the first woman elected senator from the “Land of 10,000 Lakes.” She won reelection handily in 2012 and again in 2018. In 2016, Medill News Service ranked Klobuchar first on a list of senators who had the most bills enacted into the law. Klobuchar sits on the Senate Agriculture, Commerce, Judiciary, and Rules committees. Klobuchar’s Message Klobuchar likes to depict herself as “Minnesota nice”—someone who has the ability to “disagree without being disagreeable.” That image took a hit as she was declaring her candidacy. Several news outlets ran stories alleging that she routinely mistreated her staff, so much so that in 2015 the Senate Democratic Leader, Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, told her privately to change her behavior. Old stories about how Klobuchar’s office staff had the highest turnover rate quickly resurfaced even as some of her staffers defended her leadership and accused critics of a sexist double standard. Klobuchar took the stories, which included one that had her eating a salad with a comb, in stride. “Yes, I can be tough, and yes, I can push people,” she admitted. “I have high expectations for myself. I have high expectations for the people that work for me. But I have high expectations for this country.” Klobuchar is presenting herself as the candidate for everyone, delivering a message of unity. She also describes herself as someone who can get things done, pointing to her record in Senate and her time as Hennepin County Attorney as proof. She describes her campaign as "homegrown," saying "I don't have a political machine. I don't come from money. But what I do have is this: I have grit." Klobuchar’s Foreign Policy Views Klobuchar outlined her foreign-policy worldview during a CNN town hall in February. She says that America’s relationships abroad have “certainly been damaged” during the Trump administration and she believes “we must stand with our allies.” She also said “We must invest in diplomacy,” but at the same time, she believes there’s a need to “modernize our military,” which includes cybersecurity. She also thinks that the United States should “stand as a beacon of democracy .… To me, we must stand with our allies. We must be consistent with our foreign policy, and we must listen to our troops, listen to what the military is saying, listen to our intelligence officers.” Klobuchar fleshed out some of her national security views in an article she wrote in 2015 after terrorist attacks in San Bernardino, Mali, Paris, and Egypt. She argued against “large-scale deployment of American troops” and instead supported “intensified air strikes with our allies and the deployment of American Special Forces to help support local forces combating terrorists.” She thinks “strong local and regional troops on the front lines” are necessary “to make real progress.” Klobuchar supports the Iran nuclear deal. When the Obama administration negotiated the deal back in 2015, she wrote: “While the agreement is by no means perfect, I have concluded that it is our best available option to put the brakes on Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon.” She thinks Trump was wrong to withdraw from the deal. “Donald Trump told us when he got out of it that he was going to give us a better deal. Those were his words. And now we are a month away from the Iranians, who claim now that they're going to blow the caps on enriching uranium …. He has made us less safe than we were when he became president. So what I would do is negotiate us back into that agreement, is stand with our allies, and not give unlimited leverage to China and Russia, which is what he has done.”  Klobuchar similarly opposes the Trump administration’s decision to continue U.S. support for the Saudi-backed war in Yemen. She acknowledges that “we have an important alliance with Saudi Arabia and an important trade relationship, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t stand up when you see the kind of horror we have seen in Yemen and when you see the kinds of human rights violations we have seen in the death of Mr. Khashoggi.” She voted first in December 2018 and then again in March 2019 in favor of legislation that would have ended U.S. support for the war. The first bill died in the House and the second was eventually vetoed by the president. One national security issue on which Klobuchar departs from both the president and some of her Democratic presidential rivals is the U.S. military presence in Syria. She opposed Trump’s decision last December, later reversed, to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria. She said at the time: “I just don’t think you pull out suddenly and do this to your allies, and especially to the Kurds who we trained to fight for us and who are going to be sitting ducks there.” However, she voted no when Mitch McConnell offered a sense-of-the-Senate resolution expressing concern that a “precipitous withdrawal” of U.S. forces from Afghanistan and Syria “could put at risk hard-won gains and United States national security.” She then voted for the larger bill that contained the sense-of-the-Senate resolution that she opposed. It’s hard to say where Klobuchar comes down on trade issues. Her campaign website lists five broad issue areas—health care, shared prosperity and economic justice, climate, a safer world, and a strong democracy. None of them includes a discussion of trade policy. Minnesota is a farming state that has felt the consequences of the trade war with China. When the president first imposed tariffs on Chinese imports, Klobuchar said “Trade is important to Minnesota agriculture. That trade must be fair.” She added that “China must come to the table and negotiate with the U.S. instead of retaliating.” Klobuchar has said that some of America’s trade deals needed to be revisited. At the same time, however, she is “concerned with some of the rhetoric.” Her plan for her first 100 days in office refers a few times to trade. However, those mentions are secondary topics like trade with Cuba and restarting the President’s Trade Council. Tariffs, NAFTA, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and the World Trade Organization don’t draw a mention. Klobuchar has co-sponsored the Honest Ads Act. It seeks to prevent foreign interference in future elections by ensuring that political ads sold online have the same transparency and disclosure requirements as ads sold on TV, radio, and satellite. “First and foremost this is an issue of national security—Russia attacked us and will continue to use different tactics to undermine our democracy and divide our country, including by purchasing disruptive online political ads. We have to secure our election systems and we have to do it now.” Klobuchar has used her time in the Senate to try to combat human trafficking. At the 2016 Democratic National Convention she said, “As long as ISIS is selling girls for 156 dollars and parents in Nigeria are left with nothing but bows and arrows to chase a terrorist who steal their daughters in the middle of the night, we will never have a just and good world.” More on Klobuchar Klobuchar turned her senior essay at Yale into a book titled Uncovering the Dome. It tells the story of the ten-year political battle behind the building of the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis. (The “Dome” was demolished in 2014.) She also published a memoir in 2015 called The Senator Next Door. Elle profiled Klobuchar back in 2010, saying “She is scary smart (and not just because she graduated from Yale in political science and then went to law school at the University of Chicago). She has managed in her first couple of years in the Senate to be disarmingly effective.” A 2014 New York Times article about rising women in the Democratic Party dubbed Klobuchar “the former prosecutor with made-for-state-fair charms.” Vogue recently called her “Personable, Popular, [and] Pragmatic” and noticed “She loves to turn a gaffe into a joke, and a joke into an opportunity to win over a crowd.” A New York Times video described Klobuchar as a “worker bee” who “isn’t a centrist” but also “hasn’t embraced some of the party’s most progressive ideas either.” Vox profiled Klobuchar, saying “Her candidacy will likely be focused on trying to make the case for pragmatism. The question is whether her vision, or the rising progressive wing’s vision, is where Democratic Party voters want to go.” Vogue wondered back in January whether Klobuchar might be the Democrats’ “secret weapon.” Klobuchar answered eighteen questions for the New York Times. When she was asked where she would go on her first international trip as president, she answered: “I would go to Canada, and I would go to visit our NATO allies.” Corey Cooper, Brenden Ebertz, and Elizabeth Lordi assisted in the preparation of this post.

Update: Jay Inslee announced on August 22, 2019, that he was ending his campaign. The two dozen candidates competing for the Democratic presidential nomination are all hoping to get to Washington. But so far no U.S. president has come from Washington. Governor Jay Inslee hopes to change that. The Washington state native has plenty of experience in the city of Washington. He served nine terms in the U.S. House of Representatives and he did it representing two different congressional districts, one in a rural part of the state and another in suburban Seattle. Inslee is running a somewhat unconventional bid for the White House. Rather than focusing on a range of issues that matter to voters, he’s going all-in on one issue: climate change. How well he does will be one indicator of whether climate change has emerged as an issue that drives votes. The Basics Name: Jay Robert Inslee Date of Birth: February 9, 1951 Place of Birth: Seattle, Washington Religion: Protestant Political Party: Democratic Party Marital Status: Married (Trudi) Children: Three sons (Joe, Jack, and Connor) Alma Mater: Attended Stanford University; University of Washington (BA); Willamette University School of Law (JD) Career: Washington State Representative (1989-1993); U.S. Representative (1993-1996; 1999-2012); Governor of Washington (2013-present) Campaign Website: https://jayinslee.com/ Twitter Handle: @JayInslee Inslee’s Announcement Inslee used his campaign announcement video to make clear that his presidency would tackle one issue above all: climate change. He calls it “the most urgent challenge of our time.” Inslee is optimistic that Americans can “rise up” and transform the economy to “run on 100 percent clean energy,” which will “bring millions of good paying jobs to every community across America.” He did not bring up his plans for U.S. foreign policy. Inslee’s Story Inslee was born in Seattle. He touts the fact that that he is a “fifth-generation Washingtonian who has lived and worked in urban and rural communities on both sides of the state.” His father taught high school—Jimi Hendrix was one of his students—and coached football. His mother worked at Sears. Inslee played basketball in high school. His team made the state championship his senior year. Stanford was Inslee’s original college destination. Financial reasons, however, led him to transfer to the University of Washington, where he graduated with a degree in economics in 1973. Three years later he got his law degree from Willamette University Law School. Inslee then moved to Selah, Washington, a town of about 7,000 people in the south central part of the state, to practice law. Selah is in orchard country, hence, its nickname: Apple Juice Capital of the World. Inslee's first foray into politics came when he and his wife fought to get a new public high school built in Selah. He was elected in 1989 to serve in the Washington House of Representatives. In 1992, he won a seat in the House of Representatives in the other Washington. His time in the nation’s capital was short. He lost his bid for reelection in 1994, as did a lot of Democrats that year. Inslee attributes that defeat to his having voted in favor of a ban on assault weapons. He moved back to Seattle to practice law, lost a gubernatorial bid in 1996, and served a brief stint as regional director for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In January 1999, Inslee was headed back to Washington, DC, having won a seat representing a congressional district covering part of suburban Seattle. He was a good fit for his district. Inslee was reelected seven times. He then won the governorship in 2012 and was reelected in 2016. Inslee chaired the Democratic Governors Association in 2018, a year in which Democrats picked up seven governorships. That job gave him opportunities to raise his national profile by appearing on the campaign trails and news shows. Inslee’s Message Inslee sees climate change as his “driving motivation.” He rejects the idea, however, that he is running as a single-issue candidate. In his view, climate change is “all-encompassing.” It affects economic, health, and national security issues. He also sees climate change as a way to drive economic growth and to connect to the economic anxieties of people in the states critical to beating President Trump. Inslee contrasts himself to Trump. He describes the president as a “pessimist,” while “we are the optimists, we are the can-do people. We don’t fear the future, we build it. We don’t fear challenge, we embrace it.” He equates his call to defeat climate change with JFK’s call to put a man on the moon, which he describes as “the bugle of inspiration” that “united the country to a new mission statement.” Inslee’s Foreign Policy Views Inslee focused his congressional efforts on energy and natural resources issues rather than on foreign policy. He voted against the 2002 resolution authorizing the Iraq War, a point he emphasized in subsequent elections. Like his fellow Democratic presidential candidates, Inslee thinks that Trump’s foreign policy choices are hurting the United States. On the first night of the first round of Democratic presidential debates, moderator Chuck Todd asked, “What is the biggest threat—what is—who is the geopolitical threat to the United States?” Inslee answered, “The biggest threat to the security of the United States is Donald Trump. And there's no question about it.” The governor gave perhaps the fullest explanation of his foreign policy views in an address to the Council on Foreign Relations last month in New York. He put climate change front and center in his remarks, calling for “a global climate mobilization” that would make tackling the climate-change challenge “the organizing principle of our entire foreign policy thought process.” To that end he has: proposed twenty-seven separate policy initiatives that you might think of as a full-court press to address this issue and build the international economy. And it only starts—and I want to make this point—it only starts with making sure that we do not leave the Paris Agreement. Obviously, we have not left, as you know. It only starts with that. That is, like, table stakes into the discussion, because we know the Paris Agreement is, frankly, woefully inadequate to the science, and the science demands us to accelerate our efforts dramatically to get this job done. Inslee calls Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement “a shameful course of action that will jeopardize the health and prosperity of our children and grandchildren.” He adds, “The U.S. cannot credibly remain a world leader while withdrawing from an agreement that reflects the overwhelming desire of the global community. President Trump has put our nation on the wrong path, and the wrong side of history." Inslee helped lead the creation of the U.S. Climate Alliance, which coordinates state efforts to implement policies that advance the goals of the Paris Agreement. Inslee’s fellow presidential candidate, John Hickenlooper of Colorado, also joined the effort. Inslee considers climate change to be a national security threat “because it is going to drive mass migrations that destabilize governments around the world,” and while “Trump will not listen to his generals. I have, and I have talked to intelligence officials.” Indeed, Inslee thinks that: We have a commander in chief who's AWOL right now on climate change. This is a real national security threat, causing instability around the globe. The last thing we should be doing is using our military bases to ship coal. This would only encourage the further burning of fossil fuels and exacerbate this threat. We are running out of time to act on climate change. Climate is not the only policy Inslee thinks that Trump has gotten wrong. He also thinks that Trump’s trade policies have hurt the economy. He says that “there is no question that we need to make sure that our trading partners abide by their obligations under international trade agreements. But ill-considered tariffs will only hurt Washington companies and other U.S. consumers and industries who rely on competitive access to foreign markets.” Trump’s handling of alliances also gets low marks from Inslee:  He has weakened the United States' national security every way he can by removing the ability to bring alliances to bear on North Korea or Iran or on climate change or in any direct—Venezuela or anything else. He has severely weakened our ability to be effective in protecting international security because he has eliminated virtually every alliance, to have a working relationship with every alliance we have. We are stronger in an alliance against North Korea than singularly. We are stronger in an alliance involving Iran than singularly. And he has made us a single actor. So, he has weakened our ability significantly. Inslee wants to decrease the risk of nuclear war. He would do so by going beyond trying to reduce the number and type of weapons and to look at regulating how they are maintained: You cannot continue to have thousands of warheads on a hair trigger and not have, at some point, some accidental discharge. And I believe this is one of the things we have to encourage.... I believe we have to reach international agreements, where you cannot launch without 24-, 48-hour systems, where everyone knows you're heading to the button, so that it allows people to have some discussion before an accidental discharge. There have been two instances in the last 30 years: once when the U.S. believed we were under a full-scale Soviet attack in our command center. And once when the Soviets believed there were six warheads headed toward Moscow. Twice. That's already happened twice. So, I believe we have to change the command and control system where it can't launch within a reasonable period of time, and the world knows you're heading towards a launch.” Trump’s refugee policies have also triggered Inslee’s ire. He has criticized Trump’s travel ban, cuts in the number of refugee admissions, lower funding for UN refugee programs, and closing refugee resettlement offices around the United States. Inslee says he is “proud” that he was the first governor to fight against the travel ban and that his state was the first to sue the Trump administration over the issue. After Trump ordered air strikes against Syria in April 2018, Inslee wrote a letter to the State Department saying, “While this Administration decries these atrocious attacks against humanity, it still unconscionably condemns Syrians to suffer these atrocities.” He added, “It is time for us to renew our American commitment to supporting those in need during a time of crisis.” He then tied in his opposition to the travel ban, saying “We could be providing a lifeline, but instead we are turning our back. I urge you to swiftly review and reverse the current policies that are restricting the ability of qualified refugees to be admitted into the United States. This is, after all, about humanity.” More on Inslee In 2013, Inslee co-wrote Apollo's Fire: Igniting America's Clean Energy Economy with Bracken Hendricks. The Atlantic looked at the prospect of a campaign focused squarely on climate change, saying “Inslee wants to be the climate guy. But some of the people around him worry that if he is actually going to do this, he can’t be only the climate guy—written off as an issue candidate who’s not a serious contender to be president.” The New Yorker profiled Inslee, saying he has an “eager and direct manner: his thoughts emerge in lists (“No. 4 is . . .”) and his mind moves toward details. And though he has not been a single-issue governor, the case for his Presidential candidacy rests on his decades-long interest in political solutions to climate change.” Ella Nilsen at Vox interviewed Inslee. One of her takeaways? “Inslee is treating climate change like an umbrella issue under which other issues like the economy, health care, and national security also fit.” Rolling Stone also profiled Inslee’s candidacy, saying “For someone who’s spent his career working on the climate, Inslee is the most unlikely of things: an optimist.” New York Magazine assessed Inslee’s chances of running a successful single-issue campaign, saying “the recent precedents aren’t great for Inslee or any other single-issue candidate. This approach will, however, make it easier for Inslee to keep his identity separate from that of the other 20 or 30 or 40 presidential aspirants.” Corey Cooper, Brenden Ebertz, and Elizabeth Lordi assisted in the preparation of this post.

Update: John Hickenlooper announced on August 15, 2019, that he was ending his campaign. Political strategists often ask whether a presidential candidate is someone a voter would want to have a beer with. In the case of former Governor of Colorado John Hickenlooper, they have a candidate who knows how to make beer. The geologist-turned-entrepreneur-turned-politician made his fortune operating brewpubs. If Hickenlooper succeeds in becoming the forty-sixth president of the United States, he won’t be the first to take office with experience in the brewing arts. George Washington had his own recipe for “small beer.”   The Basics Name: John Wright Hickenlooper Jr. Date of Birth: February 7, 1952 Place of Birth: Narberth, Pennsylvania Religion: Quaker Political Party: Democratic Party Marital Status: Married (Robin Pringle); Divorced (Helen Thorpe) Children: One son (Teddy)   Alma Mater: Wesleyan University (BA, MS) Career: Geologist; Entrepreneur; Mayor of Denver (2003-2011); Governor of Colorado (2011-2019) Campaign Website: https://www.hickenlooper.com/ Twitter Handle: @Hickenlooper Hickenlooper’s Announcement Hickenlooper opened his campaign by saying he’s running for president because Americans are “facing a crisis that threatens everything we stand for.” The threat? You guessed it, President Donald Trump. Hickenlooper added that “as a skinny kid with Coke bottle glasses and a funny last name, I’ve stood up to my fair share of bullies.” The governor wants to be known for more than opposing Trump, however. He says his time as mayor of Denver and governor of Colorado shows that he can bring the “progressive change Washington has failed to deliver.” Foreign policy was noticeably, but not surprisingly, absent from the announcement video. Hickenlooper’s Story Hickenlooper was born in Narberth, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia. He is the great-grandson of Andrew Hickenlooper, a Union general in the Civil War, and the grandson of Smith Hickenlooper, a federal judge. Hickenlooper was eight years old when his father died of intestinal cancer. One of the elder Hickenlooper’s friends was Kurt Vonnegut. The famed novelist gave the younger Hickenlooper advice he says he took to heart: “Be very careful who you pretend to be, because that’s who you’re going to be.” Hickenlooper describes himself as a socially awkward child and teenager who had few friends. He suffered from acne, bad eyesight, dyslexia, and prosopagnosia (or face blindness), a condition that makes it difficult to remember familiar faces. He nonetheless managed to get into Wesleyan University in Connecticut. He graduated in 1974, a year ahead of Bill Belichick, the coach of the New England Patriots. Hickenlooper majored in English as an undergraduate. He then traded in the humanities for the sciences, earning a master’s degree at Wesleyan in 1980 in geology. That led him to trade in the East Coast for the Rocky Mountains, moving to Colorado to work in the petroleum industry. He was laid off in 1986. After failing for months to find a new job, he started his own business—a brewpub in a run-down section of Denver. It was the right move. The business—and the neighborhood—flourished. He went on to open fourteen other brewpubs and restaurants across the country. The geologist-turned-entrepreneur then decided to try his hand at politics. In 2003, he was elected mayor of Denver, a post he held for two terms. In 2005, Time named him one of “The 5 Best Big City Mayors.” Hickenlooper is credited with putting the city’s finances in the black and for tackling homelessness. In 2010, Hickenlooper ran for governor and won. Colorado voters re-elected him in 2014. Frequently described as a pro-business Democrat, he oversaw a surge in Colorado’s economy during this time in office. Part of Colorado’s economic boom owed to the success of hydraulic fracturing, which Hickenlooper supported and which led environment critics to nickname him “Frackenlooper.” Hickenlooper opposed as “reckless” the ultimately successful 2012 effort by Colorado voters to legalize the possession of up to one ounce of marijuana for recreational use, just as he had opposed a similar effort by Denver voters six years earlier. He has since softened his stance and says legalizing marijuana use “might work.” Hickenlooper and fellow presidential candidate Michael Bennet have a history. When Hickenlooper was Denver’s mayor, Bennet was his chief of staff. When Colorado Senator Ken Salazar resigned in 2009 to become Secretary of the Interior, Hickenlooper was rumored to be the pick to finish his term. Colorado’s governor, however, appointed Bennet, who by that time was superintendent of Denver Public Schools. Hickenlooper’s Message Hickenlooper’s campaign pitch can be summarized in two words: “problem solver.” When George Stephanopoulos asked the governor what sets him apart from the other candidates, he answered: “I am really the one candidate out there that has a very strong record of bringing people together and getting things done.” He regularly points to his success in curbing methane emissions in Colorado, extending healthcare coverage to most Coloradans, and instituting universal background checks for firearms purchases in Colorado. Hickenlooper calls himself an “extreme moderate.” When asked earlier this year about the traction that ambitious ideas like the Green New Deal and Medicare for All were gaining in the Democratic Party, Hickenlooper said “I reject the notion that it should become a litmus test of what it takes to be a good Democrat.” At the same time, he thinks, “In many ways, I’m a lot more progressive than a lot of these other folks.” Hickenlooper is running on the idea that he can defeat Trump with a progressive brand of pragmatism. Hickenlooper caused a stir back in March when he refused to call himself a capitalist during an interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. He said that he did not like labels because "I’m not sure any of them fit." He changed his mind two days later, telling CBS’s Face the Nation that he was “happy” to call himself a capitalist. Then in May he penned an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal headlined, “I’m Running to Save Capitalism.” He followed that up by telling delegates to the California Democratic Convention in June that “if we want to beat Donald Trump and achieve big progressive goals, socialism is not the answer." The crowd booed. Hickenlooper’s Foreign Policy Views Hickenlooper has discussed his foreign policy views only in broad terms. He dislikes Trump’s approach to the world. The governor believes that we need “to work together as a country” and that we “can’t be threatening our closest allies” or “disregarding our top experts,” specifically mentioning those in the Department of Homeland Security and the National Security Council. He also thinks that having allies serves U.S. national interests. “We gauge our standing in the world by the number of allies who trust us and stand with us through the worst of times.” The first round of Democratic debates did not give Hickenlooper—or any of the other candidates—much opportunity to discuss foreign policy. The topic barely came up. When moderator Chuck Todd asked all ten candidates “what is the first relationship you would like to reset as president,” Hickenlooper and Andrew Yang were the only ones who answered “China.” The governor noted that the Chinese “have been cheating and stealing intellectual property,” but argued that Beijing’s cooperation will be critical if “we are going to deal with all of the challenges of the globe.” Trade is one area where Hickenlooper has experience and developed views. While governor he led trade delegations overseas to drum up business and investments for Colorado. It is not surprising, then, that he says that Trump’s use of tariffs has hurt U.S. industries and left “large numbers of our citizens worse off.” Last September, he co-wrote a letter with Ohio Governor John Kasich that laid out his objections: We appreciate the desire to revise and seek updated, fair and equitable trade agreements. However, we strongly urge our negotiators to address these opportunities without closing markets, imposing tariffs or enacting government regulations that threaten to negatively affect our manufacturers and agricultural producers, as well as the businesses and rural communities so dependent upon their profitability. Hickenlooper sees climate change as “a defining challenge of our time.” After Trump announced in 2017 that the United States would withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, Hickenlooper signed an executive order committing Colorado to join the U.S. Climate Alliance, a group of states committed to upholding the Paris Agreement’s goals. At the signing ceremony, Hickenlooper said that Colorado will “tap into this market force that is already moving” and accelerate work toward climate goals “regardless of what the federal government decides to do.” That said, Hickenlooper is not a fan of the Green New Deal, at least not in form that Sen. Edward Markey (D-MA) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) advanced earlier this year. While agreeing that a massive federal effort to reduce carbon emissions and develop clean energy is needed, Hickenlooper thinks that the Markey/Ocasio-Cortez approach sets unachievable goals, relies too much on government, and addresses too many issues unrelated to climate change. Hickenlooper’s preferred version of a Green New Deal would:  also involve historic federal investments and incentives in electric storage, modern transmission and science to nurture the industries that will serve as the pillars of the clean economy we need to save our planet. The federal government also must play a very active role through smart regulation and well-calibrated tax policy to shape the markets in which these firms compete. Hickenlooper repeated his criticism of the Green New Deal at the first Democratic presidential debate. More on Hickenlooper In 2016, Hickenlooper wrote a memoir, The Opposite of Woe: My Life in Beer and Politics. One of the stories he tells there is how he took his mother to the movie Deep Throat because he did not know what X-rated meant. The New Yorker profiled Hickenlooper in 2012 when he was a governor tackling social issues in a swing state, saying “The cautious moderate has become a liberal hero” because of his efforts to tighten guns laws in the wake of the Aurora, Colorado mass shooting and his support for same-sex marriage. Before Hickenlooper formally joined the Democratic presidential race, the Denver Post assessed his chances and asked whether he would be bold enough to make it to Oval Office: “Colorado political observers also are wondering whether the cautious, consensus-building approach that has marked his governorship is too timid for the national stage or whether it’s just what the United States needs after the chaos of the Trump administration.” James Hohmann at the Washington Post speculated that Hickenlooper’s entrance “should be viewed as the opening salvo in a broader battle to pull the center of gravity in the Democratic debate back toward the middle and to emphasize the importance of electability if President Trump is going to be defeated in 2020.” Politico characterized Hickenlooper as a down-to-earth person willing to pick up a broken glass and to admit he’s “not the smartest guy out there,” but then wondered whether those same traits might keep him from winning the nomination. Corey Cooper, Elizabeth Lordi, and Brenden Ebertz assisted in the preparation of this post.

The diplomacy between President Trump and Kim Jong-un resonates with the American public, as shown in a recent poll by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Americans have long considered North Korea one of the top threats to national security, and the desire of Trump to talk largely aligns with the public preference for diplomacy over military conflict. But as Trump prepares for a second meeting with Kim, he should keep in mind that American support will hold only if he is able to reduce the North Korean threat while maintaining, rather than weakening or discarding, capabilities of the alliance between the United States and South Korea. Read more at The Hill.  

In a matter of days, Donald J. Trump and Kim Jong-un will meet to build upon progress made in the June 2018 Singapore Declaration, in which both sides pledged to normalize relations, achieve peace, and work toward "complete denuclearization." The meeting follows growing momentum in inter-Korean relations, including three summit meetings between Moon Jae-in and Kim and initial steps designed to transform the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) into a peace zone. Meanwhile, the U.S. and South Korea have finally reached a deal in a contentious negotiation over burden sharing, concluding a one-year agreement in which South Korea pledged to increase its contribution by 8.2% over the prior year’s levels. The level of South Korean support for the U.S. military presence on the peninsula provides a useful proxy for understanding attitudes toward South Korean foreign policy and inter-Korean relations, in addition to serving as an important barometer of support for the U.S.-ROK alliance. The Asan Institute and Council on Foreign Relations conducted a joint survey of Korean attitudes in January 2019 (full results are available here) at a time of anticipation for a second U.S.-North Korea summit, dramatic initial steps toward inter-Korean tension reduction, and an impasse between the United States and South Korea over the level of South Korean financial support for USFK (U.S. Forces Korea). Major takeaways from the survey include the following: Despite dramatic steps toward reduction of conventional military tensions between the two Koreas around the Demilitarized Zone, there is still strong support across every cohort within Korean society for USFK as a reliable partner in assuring South Korea’s security. A majority of South Koreans believe that current USFK levels should be maintained for the time being. Two-thirds of South Koreans surveyed continue to believe that U.S. extended deterrence commitments are credible, and three out of five believe the continued USFK presence on the peninsula does not threaten peace negotiations with North Korea. South Korean support for continued USFK presence in the future has dropped by about 10% since the peak of military tensions in 2017. Though a majority of Koreans still believe USFK will be necessary for South Korea’s security in the future, the level of support for USFK decreases in the event of Korean unification. Prior to the conclusion of the cost sharing agreement, 45% of Koreans supported maintaining Korean contributions to USFK at current levels, while 28% believed contributions should increase and 17% said contributions should decrease.  A plurality of Koreans (40%) support implementation of the Moon administration's plans for Korea to assume the operational control of forces in wartime, while 30% oppose proceeding with the transfer. South Korean support for the U.S.-ROK alliance remains relatively strong for the time being. This is particularly striking in contrast to the drop in South Korean support for USFK that occurred in the early 2000s during a period of inter-Korean reconciliation. Today, Korean public views of tension reduction with North Korea remain cautious, and the USFK presence provides a useful hedge that enables experimentation with the confidence and security building measures contained in the Comprehensive Military Agreement (CMA). The widespread Korean perception that the U.S. force presence does not impede the peace-building process supports this view. Furthermore, the relationship between Trump and Moon has thus far remained more positive than the past U.S.-ROK relationship under progressive South Korean presidents and George W. Bush. Trump’s outreach to Kim Jong-un and his abandonment of the rhetoric of "fire and fury" has bolstered Trump’s popularity in South Korea. But his demand for a dramatic hike in South Korean financial support for USFK is at odds with the trend toward reduced inter-Korean tensions and could erode high levels of South Korean support for the U.S.-ROK alliance. Though levels of South Korean public support for USFK remain high, alliance mismanagement or a failure by the Trump administration to maintain close relations with the Korean public may lead to a long-term slippage of public support for the alliance and for the U.S. force presence on the Korean Peninsula. This post originally appeared on Forbes.