MOVE-ON AD

Mark Kleiman is right about the new Move-on ad :

In one sense, the ad's question is a good one: If it won't wreck the economy to spend $87 billion helping Iraq, why would it wreck the economy to deal with some of our domestic needs? But the basic appeal is to the worst sort of isolationist stinginess that opposes all "foreign aid" because "charity begins at home."

I suppose I ought to be pleased to see the stinginess about helping people abroad that Republicans have used against Democrats for so long turned against them. But I'm not, really. The ad mostly makes me tired.

Read the rest. If we're going to have a foreign policy that is engaged with the world and designed to promote decent regimes (a late 1940s foreign policy, perhaps?), we're going to need fiscal priorities that match those goals (like a late 1940s commitment to spending on both domestic and foreign policy). Bush is wrong for putting tax cuts first and contributing to running up the deficit. Move-on is also wrong, however, to appeal to isolationist sentiments and to imply that we shouldn't be spending money in Iraq at all.