The speech was greeted with deathly silence by an audience that probably contained very few Romney voters. But Romney was certainly right that traditional aid has not been very effective, that outside assistance won't help much in countries with bad economic policies, and that aid will work best by leveraging private investment. A blogger for the Center for Global Development, a liberal group which supports increased aid, praised Romney for the proposal. The New York Times editorial board even found something nice to say.
The proposition that aid should be the handmaiden to private sector-led growth is scarcely the unfamiliar idea it once was. The same insight led President Bush to establish the Millennium Challenge Corporation, which directs American assistance to relatively well-governed countries. The Obama administration has consistently sought to increase funding for the MCC. Liberals have long since accepted that old-fashioned aid doesn't work, just as they have accepted that welfare can lead to dependence. So Romney is shadow-boxing once again, rhetorically separating himself from an administration approach which, in fact, he largely accepts. But the CGI speech leaves the impression that he would prefer a more modest policy, since the "assistance packages" he had in mind would be limited to "developing the institutions of liberty, the rule of law, and property rights."
One could easily imagine a much more ambitious Romney approach -- and one more in line with his governing philosophy. If trade can do much more than aid to promote growth in poor countries, then of course rich countries must lower trade barriers just as poor countries must. You could cut foreign aid -- as a President Romney would almost surely do -- and more than compensate for the effect by increasing exports to the United States from the affected countries. And for a free-market ideologue like Romney, free trade is as much an intuitive principle as low taxes. Alex MacGillis of The New Republic recently unearthed the video of a 2009 speech in which Romney made a profoundly cogent and passionate case that lowering trade barriers with China, and with the rest of the world, would be good for American and good for others. Watching it, I thought for the first time: This is a really smart guy.
But of course MacGillis's point is that this would never happen: the Mitt Romney of 2012 accuses Obama of failing to protect American workers from Chinese trade violations, and promises to be much tougher. There's no political mileage right now in free trade. It's striking that Romney never sounds as intelligent making the protectionist argument as he did in the 2009 speech -- no one sounds very bright when they are arguing against their own beliefs. And that, of course, is why Romney rarely sounds convincing when he talks about the Arab Spring or Syria or Afghanistan or democracy promotion. He's speaking for effect, rather than from conviction.
At next month's foreign policy debate, Romney is sure to be firing at Obama from all possible directions, as he has throughout the campaign. It's unlikely to do him much good, since voters stubbornly refuse to view Obama as weak and irresolute on foreign affairs. Romney might do himself a service -- he'd certainly do voters a service -- if he stood in one place and made a limited but coherent case. He could argue that America will have better luck promoting capitalism than democracy, not because the one is more important than the other but because it is easier to teach. He could argue that the United States should be prepared to work with autocratic countries which nevertheless offer protection to property rights and the private sector. He could stand up for free trade. Of course, if Romney thought that America wanted to hear astringent truths, he would have been telling them. Still, pandering hasn't worked very well for him either. If he's going to lose, he might as well lose with conviction.
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