Last night’s debate was, in part, an argument about experience. Vivek Ramaswamy, a transparent dilettante, served as both Trump surrogate and target for most everyone else on the stage, and his lack of familiarity with policy was an easy line of attack for his opponents. That dynamic is deceptive, though. Everybody looks like Henry Clay compared to Ramaswamy, and without his presence, the experience argument could’ve taken a different turn.
On most of Republican primary voters’ priorities, all the serious — read: non-Ramaswamy — candidates can make colorable arguments that they’re capable of getting things done. On inflation, immigration, countering the Left, beating Joe Biden, and curbing federal spending, most can convincingly say they have a plan. The GOP electorate’s next-most-important issue after those, foreign policy, is a different story. In a normal world, two candidates in particular would emphasize it to draw a distinction between themselves and the rest of the pack.
Though most of the candidates on the stage last night have impressive résumés — governors, senators, and a former DEA administrator — only Nikki Haley and Mike Pence have any meaningful experience dealing with foreign policy. Haley has made her time as United Nations ambassador a centerpiece of her campaign, with her team sending out email blasts during and after the debate touting the “toughness” she brought “to dictators and murderers at the U.N.” She also got off one of last night’s best attacks against Ramaswamy on the subject, saying he has “no foreign-policy experience and it shows.”
Pence did get some points in on America’s role in the world, restating his position on aid to Ukraine, but his failure to address his own experience on that front was a missed opportunity. It was the former vice president, after all, whom the Trump administration dispatched to Europe to clean up his boss’s mess and reaffirm the United States’ commitment to its NATO allies. Pence, not Trump, was the one who called Juan Guaidó and promised U.S. support after Venezuela’s shambolic 2019 election. In 2018, he gave perhaps the most stridently anti-China speech of any high-ranking American official in history.
Though foreign policy is not No. 1 on the voters’ list of concerns, it portends to be an important issue as we head toward 2024. With the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine and the threat of China over the horizon, Haley and Pence would do well to emphasize their qualifications. And Republican voters who remain conservative internationalists should give their candidacies a close look.