So asks the Huffington Post-it's actually a guest post from Gary Hart-yes that Gary Hart:
"During the Cold War years, 1947 until 1991, every U.S. president sought, one way or the other, to limit Soviet nuclear arsenals. Since no one, regardless of hardline rhetoric, discovered a formula for unilateral disarmament on the Soviet side while we continued to build new nuclear weapons, even the most conservative presidents came to realize that negotiated agreements offered the only way out.
"Predictably, conservative Members of Congress trusted agreements negotiated by conservative presidents and often opposed those negotiated by progressive presidents, though the terms of the agreement, including verification provisions, were often very similar."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-hart/waiting-for-the-statesmen_b_7811180.html
See, I'm not sure how differnet it would have been. I agree the Dems would have supported it-but it's tough to imagine a Bush-Cheney deal with Iran; Cheney wanted to do another regime change in Iran in fact.
A lot of Republicans would have criticized it even then-after Nixon's detente Democrats liked the move better than Republicans.
Sure, the partisan mood music will always make the GOP` oppose anything a Democratic President does but there is substance here at work as well Republicans don't like diplomacy very much.
In negotiations you speak of the carrot and the stick but GOPers would rather we throw the carrot away. Hart points out the nature of negotiations:
"Opposition to arms control and reduction agreements focused on the untrustworthiness of the Soviet regime, the absolute conviction that the Soviets would secretly cheat, a desire not to do anything that might benefit the Soviets even if it benefited us, and an unspoken conviction that we needed the Soviets as an enemy not a negotiating partner."
"If this all sounds familiar these days, it should. The same arguments are now being used in response to the agreement just negotiated by Secretary of State John Kerry with the Iranian Government."
Usually Republicans make grave declarations like 'We don't negotiate with terrorists' but Hart points out that in fact you don't negotiate with friends.
We see how the GOP handles negotiations with Democrats in Congress so it isn't shocking that their negotiation skills are non existent.
We know of their inability to take yes for an answer. You can sum up Obama's philsophy by what he said when he interviewed Hillary for Secretary of State after a bitter and bruising primary campaign match.
Both sides had said things that might have seemed tough to take back. Hillary at first demurred is offer. His response I think sums up his attitude up perfectly: 'I want to get to yes. What do I have to do to get to yes?'
"There are a host of reasons why. Some of them are technical: Sanctions need to be targeted to be effective, and most of the big-ticket items had already been hit. Another reason is geopolitical: The harder the U.S. pushed for sanctions, the more it risked cracking the international support for the sanctions regime. And then there is the issue of timing. Simply put, sanctions were a card in the U.S. foreign policy deck. When Iran decided to enter negotiations for sanctions relief, the U.S. had to play that hand."
“What happens when the other side says yes?” said Joe DeThomas, who spent three years at the State Department during the Obama administration working on sanctions against both Iran and North Korea. “There were negotiating positions on the table. And when the other side comes back and says 'We are prepared to agree to that,' what kind of negotiation do you have when you say, 'Ah, no, we decided we are going to break your other leg and we are going to renege'?”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/obama-iran-sanctions_55a8099fe4b0c5f0322cba80?
So it's not even that they are not good negotiators-they simply aren't negotiators, they don't believe in them.
"During the Cold War years, 1947 until 1991, every U.S. president sought, one way or the other, to limit Soviet nuclear arsenals. Since no one, regardless of hardline rhetoric, discovered a formula for unilateral disarmament on the Soviet side while we continued to build new nuclear weapons, even the most conservative presidents came to realize that negotiated agreements offered the only way out.
"Predictably, conservative Members of Congress trusted agreements negotiated by conservative presidents and often opposed those negotiated by progressive presidents, though the terms of the agreement, including verification provisions, were often very similar."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-hart/waiting-for-the-statesmen_b_7811180.html
See, I'm not sure how differnet it would have been. I agree the Dems would have supported it-but it's tough to imagine a Bush-Cheney deal with Iran; Cheney wanted to do another regime change in Iran in fact.
A lot of Republicans would have criticized it even then-after Nixon's detente Democrats liked the move better than Republicans.
Sure, the partisan mood music will always make the GOP` oppose anything a Democratic President does but there is substance here at work as well Republicans don't like diplomacy very much.
In negotiations you speak of the carrot and the stick but GOPers would rather we throw the carrot away. Hart points out the nature of negotiations:
"Opposition to arms control and reduction agreements focused on the untrustworthiness of the Soviet regime, the absolute conviction that the Soviets would secretly cheat, a desire not to do anything that might benefit the Soviets even if it benefited us, and an unspoken conviction that we needed the Soviets as an enemy not a negotiating partner."
"If this all sounds familiar these days, it should. The same arguments are now being used in response to the agreement just negotiated by Secretary of State John Kerry with the Iranian Government."
Usually Republicans make grave declarations like 'We don't negotiate with terrorists' but Hart points out that in fact you don't negotiate with friends.
We see how the GOP handles negotiations with Democrats in Congress so it isn't shocking that their negotiation skills are non existent.
We know of their inability to take yes for an answer. You can sum up Obama's philsophy by what he said when he interviewed Hillary for Secretary of State after a bitter and bruising primary campaign match.
Both sides had said things that might have seemed tough to take back. Hillary at first demurred is offer. His response I think sums up his attitude up perfectly: 'I want to get to yes. What do I have to do to get to yes?'
http://www.amazon.com/Hard-Choices-Hillary-Rodham-Clinton-ebook/dp/B00C69EP1S/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1437135172&sr=1-1&keywords=hillary+clinton&pebp=1437135182325&perid=1YZG8J4SCA95M7NYNANQ
The GOP on the other hand can't seem to handle yes. If you negotiate with them and you say yes, their response is to smack you in the face and demand more concessions. Kind of like Angela Merkel with Greece"There are a host of reasons why. Some of them are technical: Sanctions need to be targeted to be effective, and most of the big-ticket items had already been hit. Another reason is geopolitical: The harder the U.S. pushed for sanctions, the more it risked cracking the international support for the sanctions regime. And then there is the issue of timing. Simply put, sanctions were a card in the U.S. foreign policy deck. When Iran decided to enter negotiations for sanctions relief, the U.S. had to play that hand."
“What happens when the other side says yes?” said Joe DeThomas, who spent three years at the State Department during the Obama administration working on sanctions against both Iran and North Korea. “There were negotiating positions on the table. And when the other side comes back and says 'We are prepared to agree to that,' what kind of negotiation do you have when you say, 'Ah, no, we decided we are going to break your other leg and we are going to renege'?”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/obama-iran-sanctions_55a8099fe4b0c5f0322cba80?
So it's not even that they are not good negotiators-they simply aren't negotiators, they don't believe in them.
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