Hillary Clinton’s speech Wednesday about the Iran nuclear deal and the tea-party rally against the deal headlined by Donald Trump and Ted Cruz may help shift foreign policy to a more prominent place in the 2016 presidential campaign.
So far, candidates who have raised the topic of national security, including Marco Rubio and Scott Walker, have not gone much beyond sloganeering. And most skirmishes have been retrospective, such as the back and forth between Jeb Bush and Secretary Clinton on Iraq.
It’s common this early in a campaign cycle to hear more rhetoric than clear policy positions about the way ahead. But a more forward-looking debate that deals with real-world challenges is needed, especially on issues where Congress has been deadlocked: cybersecurity legislation is stalled, no authorization has been passed for the use of military force against Islamic State one year into that campaign, and China’s evolving role in U.S. politics raises questions ahead of this month’s bilateral summit.
The above excerpt was originally published in The Wall Street Journal.
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