Leon Panetta reflects on time in Washington
Former Secretary of Defense and CIA Director Leon Panetta spoke on the contested nature of politics in the 2016 presidential election, as well as the geopolitical and domestic challenges that the next president will face at the President’s Distinguished Lecture Monday evening in Town and Gown.
Panetta, who worked under the Barack Obama administration after serving 16 years in the House of Representatives, began by describing his roots as the son of Italian immigrants, who taught him the value of hard work at an early age. Perseverance, Panetta said, is crucial for politicians to actually work towards solving the issues facing the United States rather than simply bandaging them up.
“In a democracy we govern either by leadership or by crisis,” Panetta said. “Unfortunately, we largely govern by crisis today. We wait until an issue becomes critical, bringing us to the edge of going off a cliff, and then rather than dealing with the issue, we do a temporary fix and kick the can down the road.”
According to Panetta, these problems are many and varied, starting with the domestic politics of the current election cycle. A failure of established leadership to meet the needs of the American people, Panetta said, has led numerous presidential candidates to take increasingly extreme positions — such as building a wall along the Mexican border, barring all Muslims from entering the United States or promising to shut down the “big banks” on Wall Street — rather than working together to address real problems.
“What we are dealing with today is an angry and frustrated public that feels that too often the so-called establishment has not delivered what was promised,” Panetta said. “Candidates are making all kinds of promises that will never be delivered on. The last thing we need is to have more promises that have no chance of success — four more years of gridlock or paralysis could badly damage this country.”
This partisanship is reflected in gridlock in Washington, which Panetta said is “the worst it’s been in 50 years.” Failure to balance the budget, pass immigration reform and fill a Supreme Court vacancy are hallmarks of a government that is too mired in conflict along party lines to govern effectively — an issue that Panetta said requires leaders who are willing to take risks, make difficult choices and offend those in their own party in order to do what is right.
“We need people to make tough decisions,” Panetta said. “The next president is going to have to be willing to call on the leadership and the Congress to sit down and make the decisions that will not only discipline our budget but make investments in key areas for our future. It takes leadership and a willingness to sacrifice … And it’s not going to be easy, but it is what is needed.”
At the same time, the United States is facing increasing pressure from both allies and enemies abroad, as Panetta said that the country is facing more “flash points” that have the potential to quickly escalate into war than at any other time since the end of World War II. These include “failed states” such as Syria, Libya and Yemen, as well as aggressive actors such as Russia and North Korea. Panetta stressed that despite progress made post-9/11 to prevent large-scale terrorist attacks from occurring in the United States, the threat from terrorism is the most immediate challenge that the United States faces in the foreign policy arena.
“ISIS is a clear and present danger to the United States,” Panetta said. “It has the capacity to strike anytime, anywhere. The president has set the right mission, which is to defeat ISIS, and he’s put the right elements in place. But the reality is that these efforts must be intensified if we are to truly defeat ISIS and remove them from the territory that they control.”
The solution to such problems, Panetta said, rests with the American people, who can exercise their right to vote to make change on the national level. The president that they elect, according to Panetta, must be able to “break the gridlock in Washington to deal with critical issues facing this country,” a process that will require legislating away from party lines.
“I believe in American leadership,” Panetta said. “We’ve faced crises in the past — world wars and recessions and depressions and natural disasters. Yet somehow we’ve always risen to the occasion, and I think we will again because the fundamental strength of this country doesn’t reside in the District of Columbia. It resides in the people — in your spirit, your resilience, your common sense and in your willingness to fight.”