President Barack Obama's re-election gives him four more years to carry out his US global development policy vision. While no one expects the lame duck session to produce mighty development policy, my colleagues and I have a few ideas explained in short videos that could help President Obama and his development team get a running start on his second term.
In remarks at the Clinton Global Initiative today, US presidential candidate Mitt Romney said US foreign assistance needs an upgrade for the modern, global economy.
What’s going to be President Obama’s legacy on Africa? President Clinton championed AGOA, still the core of US-Africa trade relations. President Bush built PEPFAR and the MCC. There’s an outside chance that Feed the Future could be Obama’s lasting contribution, but I think the jury’s still out. So what kind of big impact-big splash effort could we hope for in the next four years, from either a second Obama term or a new Romney administration?
With the US presidential election fast approaching we’ve heard almost nothing about US leadership on global development from the candidates or their surrogates. This is a striking difference from 2008 when development issues made the national agenda and were featured in roundtable discussions at both conventions. While development wasn’t entirely missing from this year’s conventions—check out U.S. Global Leadership Coalition’s recaps of its co-sponsored events on foreign policy and development—it seems to us that it’s been missing from the broader conversation on the campaign trail. Lacking such public pronouncements, we dug into the Democratic and Republican 2012 Party Platforms for indications of where the parties stand on policies that affect development. Admittedly, the platforms don’t provide a lot of detail and certainly aren’t blueprints for the next administration. But right now it’s about all we have to go on. And if past platforms are any indication, at least some of the parties’ stated positions will become future administrations’ policy.