Argentine First Lady Becomes President. - a Peek into America's Future?

Supporters of Hillary Clinton may take heart from the recent Presidential election in Argentina, where voters have elected current senator and first lady Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner to succeed her husband Nestor as President. Will American voters in 2008 follow the lead of their Argentine brethren in selecting a first-lady to be President?

In both Argentina and America, any democrat (small d) ought to greet the election of a President's wife with mixed emotions. A woman President represents the ascendancy of a historically disenfranchised minority into the nation's highest office, and this shows welcome success in dismantling unjust barriers to political participation. In one of her most effective anecdotes, Hillary Clinton describes meeting 95 year old women who proudly recount that "they were born before women could vote, and now they'll live to see a woman President."

On the other hand, that free and competitive elections simply produce a transfer of power from one spouse to another (either immediately or with a lag) suggests dynastic dominance of a nation's political system. To the extent that dynastic succession centralizes political power along blood lines, the cause of popular sovereignty is erosion. Americans' attitudes toward the political dynasties which dot our nation's history - slightly embarrassed acknowledgment rather than celebration of the Adamses, the Roosevelts, the Kennedys, the Bushes, and now perhaps the Clintons - reflects unease over this erosion. I have been somewhat surprised at Barack Obama's reluctance to attack Senator Clinton by framing dynasties as damaging to democracy. If I were him, I would simply repeat George Will's observation that "change in America is not represented by Bush, Clinton, Bush, Clinton."

Lest I be accused of sexism in writing on the Argentine-American parallel, let me note that the men in question also share an interesting similarity. Both Bill Clinton and Nestor Kirchner entered office confronting by major challenges of national indebtedness. In Clinton's case, the tax cuts and spending increases of the Reagan years had created large federal budget deficits and a skyrocketing national debt. Clinton's first major policy initiative was a combination of tax hikes and spending cuts known as the 1993 Budget Reconciliation Act (predictably pilloried by Republicans as "the largest tax increase in history); implementation of this legislation contributed mightily to restoring fiscal soundness in America (alas, at least temporarily).

Ten years later, President Kirchner entered office to a fiscal situation far more dire than the one Clinton had faced in 1993. Argentina was burdened with $178 billion in public debt and largely unable to access international capital markets. In an act of considerable courage, Kirchner refused to adopt policies of budget austerity prescribed by the IMF and insisted that the IMF as well as private creditors must agree to a restructuring and rescheduling of debt payments if they hoped to be repaid any of the $93 billion in loans that Argentina had defaulted on in 2001. Though at the time many commentators warned that Kirchner's defiance would consign Argentina to economic ruin, his government in fact succeeded in persuading private creditors to accept repayment on terms far more lenient to Argentina. In 2005 Kirchner canceled completely Argentine repayments to the IMF. Kirchner's willingness to negotiate firmly with the IMF saved his country billions in loan payments, and was just on account of the IMF's bad policy advice in insisting that Argentina continue peso-dollar convertibility (a fixed exchange rate) even at the cost of crippling Argentina's export industries, mandating cuts in sorely needed social programs, and precluding a currency devaluation that could have averted a default and the ensuing disruptions. Since the IMF was partly to blame for Argentina's troubles, Kirchner was right to force the IMF to sacrifice some repayment in the interest of Argentine welfare.

Though the situations differed in severity and complexity, both Clinton and Kirchner responded to their nation's political distress with far-sightedness and courage. Clinton raised on the wealthy while also cutting spending, in the process gaining enemies on both the left and right. Kirchner defied the orthodoxy of international finance and showed that a nation could endure the largest national default in financial history and, with the right policies in place, still enjoy strong economic recovery. The electability of both men's wives is due in no small part to the salutary consequences of their husband's fiscal prudence.

Lesson? Anyone President seeking for his wife to someday succeed him should strive to make his nation less indebted, rather than more. This, among other reasons, is why I don't expect to see a "Draft Laura Bush" campaign anytime soon.