President Obama offered up a good list of policies, but there was no clear vision of the future to go with it.

A couple of days ago I wrote an essay in anticipation of President Obama's State of the Union speech. Assuming a "pivot" back to the economy, I defined two kinds of economic speeches he could give: the plain vanilla, commodity speech every president gives, or one that very much anticipated the future. I underlined my own hopes for the second kind of speech.

However, Tuesday night's speech was, I would argue, an extremely high-level version of the first type of economic speech. Of course, it was good -- on his worst day ever, President Obama is not capable of giving a bad speech. The specific policies and proposals he put forward were mostly right. He gave important prominence to critical areas such as climate change.

It also has to be said that, once again, President Obama was incredibly lucky in his competition. Senator Rubio, the most recent Republican savior, gave a pedestrian response accompanied by a now-famous swig of water. Senator Rubio comes off as an admirable man, and I had no problem with the water thing, but he's not in the president's league, and you continue to wonder when the Republican Party will come up with a narrative that actually has anything to do with American life. I think our system badly needs a viable Republican "story."

However, classy as the president was, he did not provide that narrative either. This speech did not give a coherent, passionate vision of America today, a vision that would impel movement in the directions he wants.

A few thoughts about the actual policies the president stressed: middle class jobs, the minimum wage, preschool education, infrastructure, manufacturing technology institutes, a market-based climate initiative, and a European Free Trade deal. It's a perfectly good list, and a pragmatic, straightforward case can be made for all of them. Some may actually happen. My sense is that a substantial trade deal with Europe is within reach, and if Europe ever recovers, a deal would add a couple of tenths to our growth rate. Some probably won't happen. I doubt that the national minimum wage will be raised, although I think it would be good for the country if it were. And we aren't going to see the miraculous reemergence of a bipartisan market-based climate approach.

But in the end, it's just a list. The following did not happen with respect to these policies: there were no priorities, there was no sense that we have to make choices, and there was no overall story that makes this set of policies seem to be something we have to do.

This is my core problem with the speech and why it's a lost opportunity. I refer everyone to David Brooks's recent column, "Carpe Diem Nation." His core point is this: "Instead of sacrificing the present for the sake of the future, Americans now sacrifice the future for the sake of the present." He's right, and this should have been the frame of the president's State of the Union speech.

We are confronting enormous change. We have to figure out how to cope with it. We know that this "coping" will cost a lot. But we are spending every marginal dollar on our entitlements. We can and should raise more revenues, but anyone who thinks much more will come out of the income tax by whacking the wealthy again is dreaming. So we have to make choices, but, even more important, some core of America needs to be united around a commonly held story about America and its future.

The hell of it is this isn't that hard. The story is completely obvious and would be bought into by a large number of Americans. The future of our economy is quite positive -- more so than any other developed region of the world. And for us the choices really aren't excruciating. It's just important in our polarized politics for the right and the left to pretend they are. I believe that President Obama could both have begun to build the foundation of a really big legacy and raised the probabilities of his policies becoming real if he had chosen to take the risk of telling the story of America's next chapter.

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.

As the presidential race arrives at the finish line, both sides have engaged in increasingly harsh rhetoric about how they’ll handle China. This is due largely to voters’ concerns about American jobs moving overseas, the amount of U.S. debt held by China, and the U.S.-China trade deficit. Romney says one of the first things he’ll do in office is to label China a currency manipulator, something the Obama administration has not done, and claims Obama has a record of being too soft on China. (Check out this Romney campaign ad attacking Obama on China.) Obama in turn defends his administration’s record of bringing trade cases against China and attacks Romney for making money by doing business with Chinese companies during his time with Bain Capital (shown in the Obama campaign’s response to the Romney ad above). However, there are several crucial points that voters might miss if they’re only watching the campaign ads.

1. What are the real differences between Obama and Romney’s positions on China? Who is being dishonest (or at the very least misleading)?

Despite the antagonistic language used on the campaign trail, there’s not as much as difference between the candidates as you might think, and both of them have been misleading.

Both Obama and Romney pledge to be more aggressive in enforcing trade deals with other countries -- especially China. The two candidates also vigorously defend high-profile agreements that send U.S. manufacturing jobs overseas. Unsurprisingly, they are also both guilty of misconstruing the facts in order to garner votes. According to Time, “Both sides’ attacks are misleading — and, like so much campaign rhetoric, drastically oversimplified.” When it comes to Romney’s attacks, U.S. exports to China have actually boomed during the Obama administration, and Obama has done more than past presidents to protect U.S. trade interests, including imposing tariffs on Chinese solar panels and tires. The attacks on Romney’s China record don’t hold up either. Romney wasn’t actively running Bain when it invested in companies that outsourced jobs, and while Romney likely profited from such investments anyway, Bain was neither the only firm engaging in the practice nor the first.

2. How much influence has China had on U.S. economic woes?

There are links that exist, but the situation is being drastically oversimplified in the campaign.

The trade deficit with China has indeed had an impact on the U.S. economy. According to a recent report from the Economic Policy Institute, “Growing U.S. trade deficit with China cost more than 2.7 million jobs between 2001 and 2011, with job losses in every state.”

On the other hand, one must remember that China is currently the U.S.’s fourth largest trading partner, and the two are inextricably economically linked. Thus, it is in the U.S.’s best interest for the Chinese economy to continue to flourish. As the Washington Post puts it, “China and the United States are the twin engines of global growth, and both need each other to take steps to keep economic activity going.” It’s this latter point that you won’t see coming up in the campaign ads.

3. What exactly happens if China is labeled a currency manipulator?

Labeling China a currency manipulator would really just mean that the Treasury Department would have to negotiate with China over the price of its currency, something it has already been doing for some time.

However, if that translates into corresponding legislation such as tariffs, the situation could escalate into a trade war. (It’s worth noting that this is something that Romney told the Wall Street Journal is “the last thing I want.”) A trade war would lead to falling American exports to China and more expensive Chinese imports. According to a recent Brookings analysis, “In the worst case, a Romney decision to go to the brink with Beijing on the value of its currency would result in a mutually damaging trade war that slowed economic growth and increased unemployment in both countries and caused inflation and higher interest rates in the United States.”

4. What effect is all this anti-China rhetoric having on Sino-U.S. bilateral relations? In other words, how is China perceiving this?

Unsurprisingly, China is not too happy with all this.

In response to the Romney ad mentioned above, Chinese state media called it “ironic that a considerable portion of this China-battering politician’s wealth was actually obtained by doing business with Chinese companies before he entered politics.” But will this actually translate into any sort of action? According to the same Chinese state media source, if Romney’s “mud-slinging tactics were to become U.S. government policies, a trade war would be very likely to break out between the world’s top two economies, which would be catastrophic enough to both sides and the already groaning global economy.” However, we can only speculate about whether whoever takes office will actually act as harshly with China as he says he will on the campaign trail.

There’s a serious “chicken and the egg” problem with public opinion when it comes to China in this campaign. The American public is worried about China’s rise (more worried about than the experts, according to this fascinating Pew poll), so the candidates act tough on China to garner votes, spouting oversimplified sloganeering rhetoric, which makes the public even more worried about China, and so on. I can only hope that once the election is over this vicious cycle will be broken and our national politicians will no longer have an incentive to so mislead their constituents on the China threat.   

The question then becomes whether the worry they’ve stirred up during the campaign will impact the foreign policy that follows. Will the extent to which misleading campaign rhetoric has amplified American fears about China’s rise then constrain whoever becomes president such that he must pursue a very aggressive foreign policy towards China? Given that the Pew poll analysis predicts that the experts counseling the president will advocate a less hawkish plan of action, there’s good reason to be skeptical.

Leslie Bull is a Roosevelt Institute | Campus Network Senior Fellow for Defense and Diplomacy.

Foreign policy shouldn't forget the important role of economic development.

The people, in their millennial and revolutionary march toward manifesting here on earth the dignity that is in every human soul, hold as their credo the Four Freedoms enunciated by President Roosevelt in his message to Congress on January 6, 1941. These Four Freedoms are the very core of the revolution for which the United Nations have taken their stand. We who live in the United States may think there is nothing very revolutionary about freedom of religion, freedom of expression, and freedom from the fear of secret police. But when we begin to think about the significance of freedom from want for the average man, then we know that the revolution of the past 150 years has not been completed, either here in the United States or in any other nation in the world. We know that this revolution cannot stop until freedom from want has actually been attained.

…Some have spoken of the "American Century:" I say that the century on which we are entering—the century which will come out of this war—can be and must be the century of the common man. – Henry A. Wallace, 1942

In his recent address to the American Legion, and in numerous other pronouncements he has made about U.S. foreign policy, Mitt Romney has called for the establishment of “an American Century.” In such a century, he argues, America must have “the strongest economy and the strongest military in the world” in part because “without American leadership, without clarity of American purpose and resolve, the world becomes a far more dangerous place, and liberty and prosperity would surely be among the first casualties.”

The notion of the establishment of an “American Century” is not new. Such sentiments have been around since the establishment of the Republic, but the phrase itself gained common currency during World War II when Henry Luce, the founder, publisher, and editor of Time, Life, and Fortune Magazine, published a widely read and somewhat controversial article under the same title in February 1941.

To Luce, the American century meant “a sharing with all people” the U.S. Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence, and Constitution. He also insisted that the U.S. must share “our magnificent industrial products [and] technical skills.” He had little doubt that the world would accept American leadership because, unlike 19th century England and other imperialist powers, American prestige was based on the world community’s faith in “the good intentions” and “ultimate strength and intelligence of the American people.”

It is important to remember that Luce’s call for the establishment of an “American Century” was inspired in part by his backing of FDR’s call for greater U.S. support for the British struggle against the Nazis, especially through the establishment of the program known as Lend-Lease, which was passed by Congress a few weeks after his article was published. It is also important to remember that in doing so, Luce had joined FDR and other internationalists in trying to kill off American isolationism (or what perhaps may be more accurately defined as a policy of non-intervention) once and for all.

Viewed in this light, Luce’s call for the establishment of an American Century renders his but one voice in a growing chorus calling for greater U.S. participation—and leadership—in the mid-20th century struggle against the twin evils of fascism in Europe and militarism in Asia. But Luce’s emphasis on the promotion of “an American Century,” with its implicit suggestion that the United States should impose its values on the world, made some of his contemporaries uncomfortable, and to a certain extent distinguished his vision of American leadership from those of FDR and other key members of the Roosevelt administration.

In sharp contrast to Luce, for example, FDR’s vice president, Henry A. Wallace, in what is widely regarded as one of the most important speeches to come out of the war, called not for the establishment of an American century, but rather for the establishment of “the century of the common man.” His was a century where “no nation will have the God-given right to exploit other nations,” where “older nations will have the privilege to help younger nations get started on the path to industrialization,” and where there “must be neither military nor economic imperialism.”

Wallace also insisted that “when the time of peace comes, the citizen will again have a duty, the supreme duty of sacrificing the lesser interest for the greater interest of the general welfare.” For, like FDR, Wallace firmly believed that above all else the Second World War was caused in large part by the global economic crisis that brought on the Great Depression and the concomitant rise of fascism. It is for this reason that both he and President Roosevelt placed such a great emphasis on the need to rid the world of poverty and despair. Viewed from this perspective, FDR’s call for “freedom from want” and Wallace’s call for “the century of the common man” take on a much greater meaning and weight than Luce’s call for the establishment of the “American Century.” To promote American values and institutions was not enough. To truly make the United States secure—even at a time when the United States possessed unparalleled military power—the American people and government would have to concern themselves with the basic health and well-being of all peoples, “everywhere in the world.”

Unfortunately, since the onset of the “War on Terror,” U.S. foreign policy has largely turned away from this emphasis on humanitarian assistance and instead become increasingly militarized. As a result, we have de-emphasized the role of international development and adherence to the rule of law in our foreign policy and in the process have placed an enormous burden on America’s armed forces, who are now expected to not only engage in combat, but also to engage in nation-building—a task traditionally carried out under the auspices of the State Department.

Moreover, thanks to our relentless drive toward what historian Andrew Bacevich has called our “mindless pursuit of military supremacy,” we have neglected developing a more nuanced and sophisticated approach to the international challenges America faces in the world today. This emphasis on the pursuit of military—as opposed to “soft “—power has in many respects reduced our influence on world events and ironically rendered the United States something of a bystander in the drive for human rights and democracy in Egypt and other parts of the Arab world.

This is unfortunate, for after 10 years of engagement in the “war on terror,” strong evidence has emerged showing that one of the root causes of contemporary terrorism remains economic deprivation. Equally important, the same empirical data suggests that the widespread use of military force as the primary instrument in the American struggle against terrorism has given the most at-risk populations a greater motivation toward terrorist acts—the same economically deprived populations that would benefit substantially from an increase in U.S. foreign aid.

Yet the use of foreign aid in the execution of American foreign policy is rarely mentioned by either political party (one suspects because of the widespread misconception that approximately 25 percent of the federal budget goes to foreign aid, when the actual figure is less than 1 percent). Instead, we hear endless calls for the maintenance and expansion of American military power, based on the idea that “when America is strong,” as Mr. Romney says, “the world is safer.”

Both Franklin Roosevelt and Henry Wallace would surely agree with this statement. But they also understood that the development of military power and the promotion of freedom abroad are not enough to render the United State secure. As FDR observed in his Second Bill of Rights speech, the long years of depression and war brought us to “a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. ‘Necessitous men are not free men.’ People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.”

Surely the same thing could be said today about the social and economic conditions that have helped give rise to the religious and political extremism that stands at the root of our struggle against terrorism. If this indeed is the case, should we not be placing a greater emphasis on the alleviation of poverty, the promotion of education, and the need to foster economic self-reliance in the execution of U.S. foreign policy? Instead of promoting an “American Century,” wouldn’t it be better to promote the “century of the common man”?

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.

Francois Hollande's novel economic policies in France should be monitored closely, to see if they are successful. 

The new president of France, Francois Hollande, has announced unusual new economic measures that everyone should pay attention to. They represent a decided turn away from the destructive policies of the eurozone so far, and even violate basic neoclassical economic principles. We all ought to watch closely to see if they succeed.

While almost everyone in Europe is calling for lower wages, Hollande is raising his country’s minimum wage faster than inflation. He thus has favored a view of the economy called demand-led growth, which suggests higher wages will increase demand sufficiently to promote more growth. It is a version of Keynesianism, long since dropped by most American Keynesians. I discuss this at some length in a piece for New America Foundation, called "A Case for Wage-Led Growth."

He is also proposing a 75 percent income tax on those who make more than 1 million euros a year, and higher taxes on dividends. Many think raising taxes in a recession is anathema, but raising taxes on the rich will not hurt the nation. It will not affect their spending very much.

Thus, he stokes demand with higher wages for lower income people and satisfies the budget crisis with higher taxes on the wealthy. Not bad. There are hints he will also propose budget cuts, which would mistakenly play into the hands of the austerity advocates. We shall see.

The problem of course is that the wage increase is skimpy, to say the least. Another problem—and a bigger one—is that a higher-wage policy has to be taken broadly across Europe and led by the Germans. This is what I advocate in the New America piece. While German ministers have talked about higher wages there, they are not taking aggressive action.

Still, let’s keep an eye on the French experiment. It is a bit of fresh air in a compression chamber of stifling, self-centered economic policy-making.

Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow Jeff Madrick is the Director of the Roosevelt Institute’s Rediscovering Government initiative and author of Age of Greed.