Carrie Budoff BrownSat Apr 12, 6:39 AM ET
In an election year debate crowded with weighty foreign policy issues
and marked by a sharp focus on the diplomatic approaches that Barack
Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton would bring to the White House, an
unusual flashpoint is beginning to emerge: the 2008 Summer Olympics in
Beijing.
What began as something of a peripheral campaign issue has quickly
turned into something different, with Obama and Clinton seizing on the
issue of boycotting the opening Olympic ceremonies as prima facie
evidence of the other’s central flaws.
Clinton was first off the mark to call for a boycott Monday, just
days after Obama passed up the opportunity by voicing a reluctance to
politicize the games. By Wednesday, Obama had edged closer to Clinton’s
position, saying a boycott should be considered, but not until closer
to the August opening of the Olympics.
To the Obama campaign, Clinton’s position smacks of something other than a thoughtful approach to human rights issues.
“That was the triumph of politics over sound diplomacy,” said a top
Obama foreign policy adviser, Susan Rice, in an interview Friday. “The
issue – and this is what Sen. Clinton completely missed in her approach
– is how do we maximize leverage on the Chinese to achieve the outcomes
we want on Tibet, on Darfur and other human rights concerns.
“If President Bush were to say today that he is not going to the
opening ceremonies – done, final – then we have squandered every ounce
of leverage we possibly have to work with the Chinese to get them to do
what we need them to do,” she said.
A Clinton spokesman dismissed the criticism as “curious.”
“As is too often the case, they have failed to take a position and
instead chosen words that try to satisfy everyone, but actually do very
little,” Clinton spokesman Jay Carson said. “Some may disagree with it,
but Sen. Clinton has taken a clear stand, while his position is
essentially the Olympic equivalent of the ‘present’ vote.”
For an issue newly-injected into the Democratic primary, the
individual campaign responses have a strikingly familiar feel to them:
Clinton colored as ever eager to find political advantage, Obama framed
as a talker who dodges tough issues.
Indeed, both camps see much in the current Olympic debate that underscores their long-running criticisms of the opposition.
While Clinton casts China's failure to deal peacefully with Tibet or
pressure Sudan to end genocide in Darfur as “opportunities for
presidential leadership,” it did not go unnoticed that her position
might have a political component to it, surfacing as it did during the
midst of her well-publicized campaign shakeup, on the heels of the
widely-televised Paris torch relay chaos.
As for Obama, his initial reaction when asked about the controversy was circumspect even by campaign trail standards.
“I'm of two minds about this,” Obama initially told CBS News, when
asked for his reaction to the decision by a few world leaders, but not
Bush, to stay away from the opening ceremonies. “On the one hand, I
think that what's happened in Tibet, China's support of the Sudanese
government in Darfur, is a real problem. I'm hesitant to make the
Olympics a site of political protest, because I think it's partly about
bringing the world together.'”
And as Obama declined several opportunities to embrace a boycott,
his refusal to take a hard line position was second-guessed not just on
its foreign policy merits, but for what looked to some critics as a
parochial-minded response.
Blogs pointed out that Chicago, his home base, is competing for the
2016 Summer Games and that one of his closest friends and advisors,
Valerie Jarrett, is assisting in the city’s bid effort.
By Wednesday night, Obama offered his strongest statement to date, but it was still equivocal.
“If the Chinese do not take steps to help stop the genocide in
Darfur and to respect the dignity, security, and human rights of the
Tibetan people, then the President should boycott the opening
ceremonies,” he said in a statement. A boycott of the opening ceremony
“should be firmly on the table, but this decision should be made closer
to the Games.”
Rice said Obama reached a “different endpoint” than Clinton.
“Obama is saying, ‘Let’s wait and use it as leverage,’” Rice said.
“Sen. Clinton’s failing is to make a politically inspired leap that is
politically unsound.”
Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, also said
this week he would go only if China improved its human rights rhetoric.
It shouldn’t be surprising to see the campaigns battle over the
Olympic boycott issue, several political experts said, because the
issues involved may speak to working-class voters with long-held
antipathy toward China on trade and economic issues.
“Blue collar workers and union members, in particular, are
focusing on China as the bad guy,” said Larry Sabato, a political
science professor at the University of Virginia. “It is NAFTA. It is
China. And it is easy. It is a political winner, especially in the
Democratic primaries. It may be a winner in the fall."
Public opinion, at least at this point, is split. A Rasmussen
Reports survey released Thursday found 31 percent of voters support
Bush boycotting the opening ceremonies, 45 percent opposed and 25
percent undecided.
The escalating debate on the Beijing Olympics follows a
tendency of American politicians, starting with the Tiananmen Square
massacre in 1989, to “gain political capital by trashing China,” said
Richard Baum, a political science professor and former director of the
University of California-Los Angeles Center for Chinese Studies.
“It is tapping into an emotional undercurrent,” Baum said.
“Most Americans still have that photo in their minds of the lone
civilian holding off the column of tanks and I think this is intended
to jar those images” of Tiananmen Square.
“It is an understandable attempt to mobilize votes for the
taking,” he said of the campaign rhetoric, “but it has diplomatic
ramifications.”