Senate Republicans passed up an opportunity for the U.S. to lead because of half-baked arguments and conspiracy theories.

You wake early in the morning to the sound of your doorbell ringing, followed by a heavy knock on the front door. Bolting up in bed, you hear the ominous whir of a helicopter’s blades circling above your house. You race to wake up your disabled children and tell them to stay close and take only what they can carry. But even as you make a break for the back door, a glimpse of shadowy figures through your curtained windows tells you it’s already too late. They have you surrounded. The United Nations Peacekeepers are here to take your kids to school.

This scenario is not too far removed from the nightmare future some Republicans claimed would unfold if the Senate had ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities earlier this week. That’s why, despite strong bipartisan support, the treaty failed in a 61-38 vote on Tuesday, five votes short of the required two-thirds majority. Another day, another missed opportunity in America’s most dysfunctional deliberative body. But this particular case of mindless obstructionism is both a bad omen for the possibility of progress in President Obama’s second term and a real blow to children and adults throughout the world whose physical and mental disabilities continue to pose serious economic and social challenges.

The convention, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2006 and since ratified by 126 countries, aims to “promote, protect and ensure the full and equal enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms by all persons with disabilities, and to promote respect for their inherent dignity.” In addition to outlining basic principles for fair and equitable treatment of the disabled, it established a committee of human rights experts tasked with monitoring progress and issuing non-binding recommendations pursuant to those goals.

Pretty scary stuff, right? Well, yes, according to people like Rick Santorum, one of the treaty’s most vocal critics. Writing at Glenn Beck’s online news hub, The Blaze (where I go for all my sober analysis of international human rights law), Santorum warned that ratifying the treaty could “potentially eradicate parental rights for the education of children with disabilities” and “allow our beliefs and values to be outsourced to outside entities that may not always have our best interests in mind.” Somehow, a measure meant to promote equal opportunity and increased accessibility was twisted into a law that would allow a shadowy council of bureaucrats in Geneva to authorize forced abortions and ban home-schooling for students with special needs.

After Republicans blocked the treaty, Santorum took a victory lap at The Daily Beast, writing that he opposes the treaty:

because our nation has been the worldwide leader when it comes to protecting the disabled. We should be telling the U.N., not the other way around, how to ensure dignity and respect for the disabled.

… However, the United States passing this treaty would do nothing to force any foreign government to change their laws or to spend resources on the disabled. That is for those governments to decide.

So if I’m reading Santorum correctly, he’s claiming that the treaty would allow the UN to dictate U.S. law, but not other countries because they write their own laws, but U.S. law is already stronger than anything the UN could ask for anyway, so the U.S. should be telling other countries what laws to write. In other words, he opposes it because Barack Obama signed it.

Anyone hoping that President Obama would have an easier time pushing a progressive agenda through Congress in his second term should be concerned that incoherent arguments like this managed to persuade 38 Republican senators to oppose the treaty. Of the eight Republicans who crossed party lines to support it, three will not be returning to office in January. This was a treaty originally negotiated by George H.W. Bush and endorsed by John McCain and Bob Dole, not some hippy business about stimulus spending or climate change. While the constitutional two-thirds requirement created an extra hurdle to clear, it’s telling that even this benign measure couldn’t escape the legislative graveyard that is the U.S. Senate. Harry Reid’s proposed changes to filibuster rules can’t come soon enough, but in cases like this, there’s no substitute for a minority party that actually wants to help govern rather than obstruct.

And despite opponents’ claims to the contrary, America’s failure to ratify the treaty is in some sense a symbolic rebuke to people with disabilities and an abdication of its role as a world leader. Santorum is right to point out that the U.S. has historically led on this issue. As many news reports have pointed out, the Americans with Disabilities Act, which passed in 1990 with broad bipartisan support, actually served as the inspiration for the UN convention. That just makes it sadder that failure to ratify the treaty now puts the U.S. behind the curve compared to Burkina Faso.

With or without our help, there’s plenty of work to be done. The UN’s fact sheet notes that there are roughly 650 million people living with disabilities throughout the world, facing unemployment rates as high as 80 percent and literacy rates as low as 1 percent. At the same time, the U.S. is in danger of undermining its own progress in this area by slashing programs like Medicaid, which delivers benefits to 8 million people with disabilities. Rejection of this treaty is just the latest sign that helping the disadvantaged, whether they’re born with physical impairments or born into poverty, is not a priority for Republicans in Congress.

In his Four Freedoms Address, FDR declared, “Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere. Our support goes to those who struggle to gain those rights or keep them. Our strength is our unity of purpose.” This conception of freedoms entails responsibility to the global community rather than isolation from it. Having our legislation held up as the international model for the rights of the disabled should be a source of national pride, not more partisan paranoia. Like the fringe theories about Agenda 21, discomfort with this convention seems to have less to do with the failings of the UN than with the right’s fears that its own agenda will be judged by the world and found wanting.

Tim Price is Deputy Editor of Next New Deal. Follow him on Twitter @txprice.

As part of our series "A Rooseveltian Second Term Agenda," a call to return to a foreign policy based in FDR's vision of shared peace and prosperity.

Even though we come from different places, we share common dreams: to choose our leaders; to live together in peace; to get an education and make a good living; to love our families and our communities. That’s why freedom is not an abstract idea; freedom is the very thing that makes human progress possible — not just at the ballot box, but in our daily lives.

One of our greatest Presidents in the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, understood this truth. He defined America’s cause as more than the right to cast a ballot. He understood democracy was not just voting. He called upon the world to embrace four fundamental freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. These four freedoms reinforce one another, and you cannot fully realize one without realizing them all.—Barack H. Obama, University of Yangon, November 19, 2012

In his historic visit to Burma, also referred to as Myanmar, President Obama spoke at length about the journey Burma is taking from dictatorship to democracy, a transition he said has the potential to inspire people the world over as “a test of whether a country can transition to a better place.”

President Obama made it clear that his journey to Burma—the first by an American president—was inspired in part by his own desire to encourage the people and government of Burma to press ahead with their democratic reforms so that the “flickers of progress” that the world has seen will not be extinguished. The president’s visit was also notable for his repeated insistence that America was a “Pacific nation,” whose “future was bound to those nations and peoples to our West.” But perhaps the most significant aspect of his speech was his decision to frame his remarks around a concept first articulated by Franklin D. Roosevelt at one of the darkest moments of the Second World War—the need to build a world founded on four fundamental human freedoms.

At a moment when Adolf Hitler had proclaimed the onset of “a new order” in Nazi-occupied Europe, and when Japanese militarists had seized much of China and were poised to expand their grip on Southeast Asia, Franklin Roosevelt proposed “a greater conception,” a “moral order” that represented the very antithesis of the “tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.” FDR’s order was based on the idea that all people—“everywhere in the world”—deserved the right to enjoy freedom of speech and expression; freedom of worship; freedom from want; and freedom from fear.

He articulated this vision in part because of the critical need to gain the support of the American people and Congress for the passage of the Lend-Lease Bill that was pending on Capitol Hill. But the enunciation of the Four Freedoms and initiation of Lend-Lease—which would make it possible for the United States to provide arms and munitions to Great Britain free of charge—was also inspired by a much deeper conviction: that the security of the United States was tied directly to the health and well-being of other nations.

For many Americans today, World War II and the Great Depression are two separate events. But for the generation that lived through these unparalleled crises, nothing could be farther from the truth. In their minds, and in the mind of Franklin Roosevelt, the two were inextricably linked. The Great Depression, after all, was not confined to the United States, but represented a worldwide economic crisis that helped inspire anti-democratic forces in both Europe and Asia—anti-democratic forces that helped give rise to the fascist movements in Germany and in Japan that would initiate the most destructive war in human history.

In light of this, Franklin Roosevelt remained convinced that the Second World War had economic causes. Moreover, as the war progressed, he became more and more convinced that America’s security was tied to the security of the rest of the world. As such, it was not enough for the United States to rely solely on the strength of its armed forces to provide for the nation’s safety; we also had to concern ourselves with the political, social, and economic health of other regions of the world since, as FDR put it in 1944, “true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence”…and “people who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.”

It was this basic idea that inspired not only the Four Freedoms, but also the many institutions and practices that were put in place during and after the war to foster international cooperation and a more prosperous, healthy, and peaceful world. Many of these institutions and practices—like the United Nations, International Monetary Fund, World Bank. and multilateral trading regime—are with us still, so that much of the world we live in today is the world shaped by the vision of Franklin Roosevelt.

In recent years, however, we seem to have moved further and further away from this vision to a foreign policy that is dominated largely by the use of military force—no doubt inspired in part by the advent of modern technology, such as drone aircraft. This is unfortunate, for even though President Obama has shown willingness to use other means to pursue America’s interests abroad, his foreign policy to date has remained highly militarized.

His eloquent speech in Burma may indicate that he has decided to pursue a more progressive foreign policy agenda in his second term, one based on the recognition that the best means to keep America safe in the long term is to ensure that the hopes and aspirations of people the world over to enjoy freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear stand not, as Roosevelt said, as some “vision of a distant millennium,” but as “a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation.”

David Woolner is a Senior Fellow and Hyde Park Resident Historian for the Roosevelt Institute. He is currently writing a book entitled Cordell Hull, Anthony Eden and the Search for Anglo-American Cooperation, 1933-1938.

FDR knew that America's willingness to fight inequality was more important than its ability to wage war.

Our strength is measured not only in terms of the might of our armaments. It is measured not only in terms of the horsepower of our machines.

The true measure of our strength lies deeply imbedded in the social and economic justice of the system in which we live.

For you can build ships and tanks and planes and guns galore; but they will not be enough. You must place behind them an invincible faith in the institutions which they have been built to defend. – Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1938

In their recent debate on foreign policy, both President Obama and Governor Romney made a point of linking America’s security with the health of the U.S. economy. Governor Romney, for example, argued that the ability of the United States to promote “the principles of peace” abroad “begins with a strong economy here at home,” while President Obama said that thanks to our experiments with nation-building in places like Iraq, “we've neglected…developing our own economy, our own energy sectors, our own education system. And it's very hard for us to project leadership around the world when we're not doing what we need to do here.”

Both candidates are correct, of course, in pointing out that a healthy economy—and in Mr. Obama’s case, a healthy education system and energy sector—are critical to the overall strength of the nation and hence our ability to project American influence overseas. But as has been the case with so much of this campaign, neither man had much to say about another critical element of national health that also plays an important part in our foreign policy: the social health of the nation.

Roughly 70 years ago, when the United States was living in a far more dangerous world than we are living in today, Franklin Roosevelt argued that America’s place in the world was not merely dependent on our military and economic power, but also dependent on our ability to create a society where social and economic justice were paramount. For Roosevelt, this meant building a nation which, in “arming itself for defense has also the intelligence to save its human resources by giving them that confidence which comes from useful work,” which in “creating a great navy has also found the strength to build houses and begin to clear the slums of its cities and its countryside,” and which as “the industrial leader of the world has the humanity to know that the people of a free land need not suffer the disease of poverty and the dread of not being wanted.”

Indeed, in gazing out over a world where anti-democratic forces were on the march, Roosevelt also insisted that “unhappy events abroad” had “re-taught us two simple truths about the liberty of a democratic people.” The first truth was that “the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism—ownership of Government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. The second truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if its business system does not provide employment and produce and distribute goods in such a way as to sustain an acceptable standard of living.”

For Roosevelt and the generation that lived through the Depression and war, these truths were very real, and as such the conviction that the health and strength of the nation were linked directly to its ability to deliver social and economic justice for all its people was regarded, not as a luxury, but as a critical component of national security.

And yet on the campaign trail today we hear very little about the vital need to address the same disturbing trends that FDR warned us about all those decades ago: the vast and growing unequal distribution of wealth among the American people, the dangers of the rise of “private power” to the exercise of democracy, the fact that in America today roughly one-third of our citizens have rejoined the ranks of the poor or near poor.

No, instead what we hear is an endless stream of uninspiring messages about each candidate’s “plans” to create jobs, reduce the deficit, and “keep America strong.” But after living through four long years of the Great Recession and bearing witness to a society where 400 individuals now own more wealth that the bottom 150 million combined, the American people deserve more than mere platitudes. They want to hear their leaders articulate a vision for America that involves the creation of a better and more just society, a society that will inspire what Roosevelt called “the anguished common people of this earth.”

President Obama has offered hints of this in his call to move the country forward, but in the dangerous world that our parents and grandparents inhabited, Franklin Roosevelt went much further. In the final and anxious days of the 1940 election, for example, he reminded his fellow citizens that they were a generation living in “a tremendous moment of history,” where the “surge of events abroad” had led some to ask whether “the book of democracy” might “now to be closed and placed away upon the dusty shelves of time.” For Roosevelt the answer was clear and unequivocal:

All we have known of the glories of democracy—its freedom, its efficiency as a mode of living, its ability to meet the aspirations of the common man— all these are merely an introduction to the greater story of a more glorious future.

We Americans of today—all of us—we are characters in this living book of democracy.

But we are also its author. It falls upon us now to say whether the chapters that are to come will tell a story of retreat or a story of continued advance.

I believe that the American people will say: "Forward!"

David Woolner is a Senior Fellow and Hyde Park Resident Historian for the Roosevelt Institute. He is currently writing a book entitled Cordell Hull, Anthony Eden and the Search for Anglo-American Cooperation, 1933-1938.

The last debate wasn't just about foreign policy. It was about the diverse and difficult responsibilities of being president of the United States.

"Bullfight critics ranked in rows crowd the enormous plaza full, but he's the only one who knows, and he's the man who fights the bull."

For me, that sums up the debate. The president won. He was the commander-in-chief and he played a strong hand well. This isn't a foreign policy blog, but if you step back from the absurdities of the charge/counter-charge of a campaign, he and Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretaries Gates and Panetta have carried out foreign policy well in an incredibly difficult and confusing time.

Governor Romney did not do badly, but he is like a pilot: there are old pilots and there are bold pilots, but there are no old bold pilots. He doesn't have any particularly new ideas, and the ones he hints at having are either profoundly wrong, profoundly dangerous, or both.

"Hint" is a good verb. He hints at deep disapproval. He'd be stronger, firmer, altogether better. Events would be less disorderly, and the world would dance to his commands. But he actually wouldn't do anything differently. Stay in Iraq or Afghanistan? Divorce Pakistan? Invade Iran? Put troops in Syria? Really show China what's what? On all of these issues you get the impression that he actually doesn't have a different policy; he is depending on his strong jaw and magnetic personality to command events. Should he actually win, his policy would be exactly the same, except he might actually get himself bullied into a hasty bombing campaign against Iran. Does anyone think "Bibi" wouldn't be over in a heartbeat to collect his receivable?

The major preoccupation of that alternate universe White House would be attempting to demonstrate constantly that there was some sort of difference from the Obama policies. Heck, maybe the world really will sit up and do right with a President Romney. But trapped as he is between the neo-cons who have learned nothing and President Obama's mostly successful policies, he was reduced to throat-clearing and ankle-biting. And if his whole approach depends on the argument that he'd do the same things but somehow better, you have to remember that this is man who managed to insult the United Kingdom over the management of the Olympics. (Yes, they used to be enemies, and we all remember the unpleasantness of 1812.)

This was all sort of fun. But I did have a somewhat deeper thought -- a profound appreciation for America and for how tough being president is. A really long time ago, I was in a small group of appointees with President-elect Carter a month or so before the inauguration. (I know the fashion now is to be contemptuous of President Carter, but I'm not. I revered the man, loved working for him, and still revere him.) Anyway, I was mostly in such awe that I was even there -- how did someone from Loudoun County High School get here? -- that I couldn't talk. But I could think, sort of. What I thought about was the two faces of the president's job. On the one hand, he had to grapple with the actual issues, facts, and arguments as they affected the most important nation in the world, and then he had to turn around and persuade a nation of 225 million people (at that time).

I felt the same way 37 years later watching President Obama and this debate. You grapple with the most difficult possible issues of foreign policy, some completely unpredictable -- at least, I haven't seen the Romney crowd claim yet that they knew all about the Arab Spring. All of them are confusing, information is never particularly good, and most of the time getting the right thing done in one event runs right into the players and calculations involved in some other event. All you can do is approach each calmly, try to keep a larger framework intact, and live every time with the thought that you didn't do it perfectly.

Then you have to turn around and debate your opponent, in front of millions, on the details of these policies. Your opponent doesn't have to deal with all of them at the same time, as you do, and he makes it clear that he would have done everything perfectly. There is a lot you can't say. Every syllable you utter is going to be parsed by every head of government in the world. And any big misstep can both screw up something big and cost you the presidency.

I could tell that President Obama was both frustrated and, at times, angry about being in this position. But you know what? It's part of the deal. It's what we do in America, and our presidents better be good enough to handle it. I thought President Obama more than met that test. I also thought again as I looked around the bar where I watched this debate en route, a bar that was packed full with maybe half of the audience foreign-born, how proud I am to be a citizen of the country that holds these debates and doesn't think they are anything special. 

Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow Bo Cutter is formerly a managing partner of Warburg Pincus, a major global private equity firm. Recently, he served as the leader of President Obama’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) transition team. He has also served in senior roles in the White Houses of two Democratic Presidents.