Until: a blog by Joe Perez

Laurie Garrett, author of Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health and senior fellow for global health, Council on Foreign Relations, discussed president George W. Bush’s efforts to combat AIDS in Africa in “Bush to Tout AIDS Program” on the radio today.

She said, ”Only Nixon could have gone to China, well maybe only Bush could have pulled this off [fought AIDS in Africa] with the right coalition of forces behind him so that congress and the Senate would support this scale of level of spending.”

Sometimes journalists say the stupidest things. The thinking goes: it must have required a Republican to massively increase the US government’s AIDS spending to $15 billion over 5 years, because everyone knows Republicans are stingy with money and they don’t like people with AIDS either (not to mention people from the Third World). If a Democrat had proposed the same program, Republicans would surely have defeated it because everyone knows what bleeding hearts they are.

If Garrett is correct, then it stands to reason that Barack Obama would have to be the worst possible president for bolstering the U.S. commitment to combat AIDS in Africa. Not only is he a bleeding heart liberal, but he’s got a Kenyan grandmother and is beholden to the AIDS lobby (one of those liberal special interest groups). There’s no way he can trump Bush’s groundbreaking record!

Or so the common prejudices, offered as keen wisdom by Garrett, goes. But this would overlook a few inconvenient details. First, Obama the candidate has committed to continuing the progress made by president Bush. His website promises:

There are 40 million people across the planet infected with HIV/AIDS. As president, Obama will continue to be a global leader in the fight against AIDS. Obama believes in working across party lines to combat this epidemic and recently joined Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) at a large California evangelical church to promote greater investment in the global AIDS battle.

Secondly, in the Senator’s 2006 World AIDS Day speech, he commits himself to change in both spending and work in the cultural sphere:

Yes, there must be more money spent on this disease. But there must also be a change in hearts and minds; in cultures and attitudes. Neither philanthropist nor scientist; neither government nor church, can solve this problem on their own - AIDS must be an all-hands-on-deck effort.

In his speech, Obama strikes a delicate balance between recognizing the spiritual components to the AIDS epidemic and affirming the need for practical solutions. He says that HIV is increasingly contracted “because sex was no longer part of a sacred covenant, but a mechanical physical act”. That’s not something you would expect a typical liberal politician to say (but then Obama’s political instincts are more Integral than classically liberal).

Obama doesn’t fall for the trap of simply falling for the religious right’s anti-AIDS preaching. He says, ”[I]f condoms and potentially microbicides can prevent millions of deaths, they should be made more widely available… I know that there are those who, out of sincere religious conviction, oppose such measures. And with these folks, I must respectfully but unequivocally disagree.”

It seems that Obama would take the best features of Bush’s AIDS efforts — the increased spending, and the recognition of a spiritual dimension to the problem — but reform them. Science is increasingly telling us that in African cultures abstinence-only measures aren’t as effective as more comprehensive approaches, and Obama would put science ahead of politics.

That’s why Obama has pledged to reauthorize Bush’s AIDS program, reassess its effectiveness, and add “at least an additional $1 billion a year in new money over the next five years”. Currently, most of Bush’s AIDS funds go to African countries, But Obama says he will expand the program to meet needs of the sick in Southeast Asia, India, and Eastern Europe.

Although Obama has given a major speech on the worldwide dimensions of the AIDS epidemic, details regarding his plans for HIV/AIDS research and treatment in the U.S. are sketchy. He supports funding for needle-exchange programs. We can hope that more details will be forthcoming.

It doesn’t take a Nixon to lead the world’s fight against AIDS. It takes a president with the moral fortitude to make it a top priority, the depth of vision to recognize the need to address both cultural and social dimensions to the epidemic, and the political strength to see it done. What Bush did for AIDS in Africa, Obama can do for AIDS worldwide.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 20th, 2008 at 2:48 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.