By Samuel Rubenfeld
Former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo joined Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, for a panel discussion last Thursday at the John Cranford Adams Playhouse on what issues the next president will face when they take office in January 2009.
Haass spoke first, focusing on his field of expertise, U.S. foreign policy, while Cuomo followed, speaking about domestic concerns. Each delivered opening statements while seated, before answering questions from the discussion’s moderator, Meena Bose, chair of the University’s Peter S. Kalikow Center for the Study of the American Presidency.
Haass said the next administration’s foreign policy will not be defined by Iraq, because though John McCain and Barack Obama differ on how to go forward there now, both eventually want to draw down U.S. forces.
“Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and globalization will likely dominate the next administration’s foreign agenda,” Haass said. Afghanistan and Pakistan are becoming “one theater of operations,” Haass said, adding that U.S. involvement there will go up because Pakistan is “unwilling or unable or both” to confront terrorists in its tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.
Regarding globalization, under which Haass included issues such as weapons of mass destruction, terrorism and pandemic disease, he said “we have not built the institutions, regionally or globally, to confront this situation.”
Cuomo spoke about the struggling economy and how many of the next president’s proposals may have to wait as a result. “2009 will not be a good year for the new president,” he said.
He lamented the declining manufacturing industry: “We are a country living off its finances, not its exports…. We have to get back to making things and exporting money.”
To wit, Cuomo proposed creating an infrastructure bank and depositing between $50 billion and $80 billion in it for repairing bridges, roads and other infrastructure. “Investing in new technology and alternative, renewable energy sources gets at the oil problem,” Cuomo said.