Running Against Hooverville–The Presidential Blame Game

February 26, 2010 by admin | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Bush Administration, Election 2012, George W. Bush, History, Obama administration, Politics, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | 20 Comments 

In the immediate aftermath of the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961, President John F. Kennedy stood before the nation accepting the total blame for what had happened. He referred to an old saying about victory having a thousand fathers, but defeat being an orphan, and identified himself as the responsible officer in the government. Even though the whole initiative had been first devised and planned by the Eisenhower administration.

JFK’s poll numbers moved dramatically—up. There is something refreshing—though sadly rare—about a political leader saying “My bad.”

In the 19th century, a British politician stood in Parliament and remarked that trying to get his particular point across was akin to flogging a dead horse to make it pull a load. We call this beating a dead horse today. And every time President Obama or a member of his administration plays the blame Bush card, he is beating that proverbial dead horse. It is also getting really old.

Everyone on Facebook has an information page and there is an entry labeled “relationship status.” Some mark “married” or “in a relationship,” others say “single.” Then there are those who put: “It’s complicated.” When it comes to Presidents and those who come before or after, it’s really complicated. Some chief executives have managed to rise above the propensity for personal paltriness—others, not so much.

And it goes way back.

Thomas Jefferson, who ran a particularly aggressive campaign against former-and-would-be-again-much-later friend, John Adams, in the 1800 race, continued the attack on his predecessor well into his own presidency. He regularly smeared Mr. Adams for maladministration of presidential powers, though apparently willing to benefit from things Adams had done that he had opposed at the time. The anti-military, anti-big government Jefferson, had no qualms about using navy Adams had built (opposed by TJ) to deal with the Barbary Pirates; nor did he hesitate to use broad executive powers in the whole matter of the Louisiana Purchase—the kind of action candidate Jefferson would have likely decried as tyrannical.

Democrat Andrew Jackson wouldn’t even pay a courtesy call on outgoing President John Quincy Adams. Mr. Adams then refused to attend his successor’s inauguration. Jackson spent significant time in office tearing down his predecessor—blaming Adams and the whole fierce campaign for his wife’s death after the election. That one was very complicated.

Speaking of Presidents and courtesy calls, Dwight Eisenhower and his wife, Mamie, sat famously in the car under the White House portico, snubbing the Trumans. But when it came to blaming his predecessor for the mess he inherited, he chose the path of just ignoring and dismissing Mr. Truman like the junior military officer he saw him to be.

Abraham Lincoln had great reasons and resonant issues to use to place blame for the country on the verge of disintegration he inherited in 1861 because his predecessor, James Buchanan, did virtually nothing to deal with the brewing national disaster. But Mr. Lincoln seemed to have a capacity to rise above cheap politics—dealings with his own Cabinet-made-of-would-be-rivals also demonstrated the 16th President’s ego tempering skills.

Of course, many times Presidents have succeeded men from the same party and, though they might have wanted to really make the guy before look bad, they realized that it was political suicide. Martin Van Buren could certainly have blamed the panic of 1837 on Andrew Jackson, who destroyed the National Bank, but party realities forbade it.

Warren Harding didn’t spend a lot of time or energy blaming Woodrow Wilson for the nation’s woes in the early 1920s. Ronald Reagan used Jimmy Carter as a punching bag for a short while, but quickly moved on. Even Richard Nixon didn’t waste time passing the buck back to LBJ. In fact, their relationship was remarkably good, considering their history.

Now, Franklin Roosevelt—well that’s another story. He used predecessor Herbert Hoover as his whipping boy for at least a decade—and one wonders if this example is the one that resonates with the current administration.

FDR ran a skillful campaign against Hoover in 1932, allied with the forces of economics and history in play at the time. Hoover was an unpopular president as a result of the onset of the Great Depression. Once hailed for his genius at organization and engineering, his name was even part of the vocabulary signifying good economy, as in the popular 1920 Valentine’s Day card:

“I’ll Hooverize on dinner,
On fuel and tires too,
But I’ll never learn to Hooverize
When it comes to loving you.”

By 1932, however, his star had fallen and shantytowns across America were dubbed, “Hoovervilles.” However, today’s prevalent narrative that Hoover was a do-nothing president and then the great activist Roosevelt rode to the White House on a white horse, is at best an apocryphal exaggeration—at worst, it’s a lie.

In fact, Mr. Roosevelt, famous smile and all, was simply an effective and cynical politician who knew how to practice demagoguery with the best of them. He was also a very petty man. One example is in the naming—better, renaming—of the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River. It had been named for Herbert Hoover in 1931 not just because he was the President at the time (there were already dams named for Calvin Coolidge and Theodore Roosevelt extant), but also because he had been a major driving force in the project since the early 1920s during his highly successful tenure as Secretary of Commerce. He, being an engineer by training and trade, even played a crucial role in how it would work and be constructed—effectuating something called the Hoover Compromise allowing the project to go forward at a critical juncture.

After his humiliating defeat by the Roosevelt juggernaut in November of 1932, Mr. Hoover stopped at the construction site of the dam and remarked for the press:

“It does give me extraordinary pleasure to see the great dream I have so long held taking form in actual reality of stone and cement. It is now ten years since I became chairman of the Colorado River Commission—This dam is the greatest engineering work of its character ever attempted by the hand of man—I hope to be present at its final completion as a bystander. Even so, I shall feel a special personal satisfaction.”

But by the time the project was completed in 1936, it had been renamed by the Roosevelt administration as the Boulder Dam and Hoover was never invited to be part of any festivities. Of course, by that time Mr. Roosevelt was running for reelection against Republican nominee Alf Landon of Kansas.

But FDR was really running against Hoover one more time.

The other day, during that good-for-nothing White House meeting on health care, there was a telling exchange between President Obama and Senator John McCain. He told McCain that the campaign was over. He meant their campaign.

The battle against all things George W. Bush, however, still rages. And most likely this will continue through the 2012 campaign. After all, if you can’t run on a record of accomplishment—find a dead horse to beat and hope the people are dumb enough not to notice the abuse and absurdity.

The big question is: Will George W. Bush be as durable a whipping boy as was Herbert Hoover—or better yet—is Barack Obama as arrogant, cynically petty, or politically cunning as was Franklin D. Roosevelt?

Who You Gonna Believe? Me Or My Book?

August 31, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Bush Administration, War on Terror | 3 Comments 

Charles Barkley famously admitted that he hadn’t read his autobiography.  Now former (and first) Homeland Security czar Tom Ridge presents prospective readers with a new twist to the old punchline of the cheater caught in flagrante delicto: Who are you gonna believe — me or your lying eyes?

USA Today reports Mr. Ridge’s complete fold —which the paper’s headline generously describes as packpedaling— regarding his recent headline-grabbing (and, more to the point, book-launching) “revelation” that Don Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft vigorously urged him to raise the nation’s security threat level shortly before the 2004 election in order to help George W. Bush’s re-election.

His most explosive accusation: that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Attorney General John Ashcroft pressed him to raise the national threat level after Osama bin Laden released a videotape criticizing President Bush shortly before Election Day 2004. Ridge writes he rejected raising the level because bin Laden had released nearly 20 such tapes since 9/11 and the latest contained nothing suggesting an imminent threat.

Noting that Bush’s approval ratings typically went up when the threat level was raised, Ridge writes that Ashcroft and Rumsfeld pushed to elevate it during a “vigorous” discussion.

“Ashcroft strongly urged an increase in the threat level, and was supported by Rumsfeld,” he writes. “There was absolutely no support for that position within our department. None. I wondered, ‘Is this about security or politics?’ ”

Although he prevailed and the threat level was not elevated, Ridge writes that the episode reinforced his decision to resign. He did so weeks after the election.

Last week, when word got out about Ridge’s accusations, Rumsfeld’s spokesman Keith Urbahn issued a statement calling them “nonsense.”

Now, Ridge says he did not mean to suggest he was pressured to raise the threat level, and he is not accusing anyone of trying to boost Bush in the polls. “I was never pressured,” Ridge said.

Rick Perlstein On The Town Hall Demonstrators

August 16, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Bush Administration, Congress, Double Standard Paranoia Quotient, George W. Bush, Healthcare, New Media, News media, Nixon Administration, Nixonland Nitpicks, Obama administration, Political Philosophy, Presidents, Public Opinion, Richard Nixon, Sarah Palin, TV News Personalities, U.S. History | 9 Comments 

A little over a year ago, when Rick Perlstein published his mammoth study of “the American berserk” – the original subtitle of Nixonland – in the years between 1965 and 1972, he concluded his 748-page saga of heated hardhats and howling hippies (or was it the other way around?) by arguing that the culture and political wars of the late Sixties and early Seventies had not only not died, but had never really gone away.

Perlstein maintained that the 37th President’s legacy to the nation was “a notion that there are two kinds of Americans: one kind viewing themselves as “people of faith,” patriots, “nonshouters,” and viewing the other kind – “liberals,” “cosmopolitans,” “intellectuals” – as “un-Americans, anti-Christians, amoralists, aliens [Perlstein's emphasis].”

The book’s final paragraphs read:

Do Americans not hate each other enough to fantasize about killing one another, in cold blood, over political and cultural disagreements? It would be hard to argue they do not.

How did Nixonland end? It has not ended yet.

When Nixonland appeared, several reviewers criticized that penultimate statement, and said that Perlstein clearly was mistaken to think that the passions of that time still ran as strong.

But that was last year, and now that many of this month’s “town halls” about the proposed health-care legislation across the country have featured very heated rhetoric, not only at the meetings themselves, but among the crowds assembled outside the venues, Perlstein has written an op-ed for the Washington Post that makes it clear that he considers himself vindicated in his argument.

Now, anyone following the town hall meetings closely knows that many speakers at them have been as fervent about single-payer care and the proposed legislation’s failure to incorporate it, though not as visible in TV sound bites as the ones who have been waving pocket copies of the Constitution and arguing against the bill’s big-government tendencies.

But the leftist voices at the meetings count for nothing where Perlstein is concerned. What he sees is nothing less than the return of the right-wing fervor that swept through parts of America during the Kennedy years. And the op-ed’s title, though probably the work of a dependably liberal Post staffer, sums up its attitude toward the liberatarian and conservative voices at these gatherings: “In America, Crazy Is A Pre-Existing Condition.”

Yes, all the objections raised to the mammoth scope of the bill, and to the possibility that it marks the start of a path which will see Americans turn over as large a percentage of their income to the state as was the case in Sweden at the height of its cradle-to-grave system – or perhaps more – yes, all the worries raised by hard-working citizens, in Perlstein’s opinion, are on a par with the fears of almost 50 years ago that fluoride in drinking water would brainwash children into being Communists, or whatever members of the John Birch Society were supposed to have believed in those days.

(I have to admit that sometimes fluoride does worry me a bit. The other night I was gargling with that new Listerine “Whitening Formula,” or whatever it’s called, in which the active ingredient is sodium fluoride. On the back of the bottle I noticed an instruction not to drink or eat anything for 30 minutes after using it. If the idea is to keep fluoride out of my system, then why would it be in my drinking water? But then again, my dentist tells me there’s been an upsurge in cavities because kids don’t drink as much tap water as they once did. End of digression.)

In the op-ed, Perlstein states:

Liberal power of all sorts induces an organic and crazy-making panic in a considerable number of Americans, while people with no particular susceptibility to existential terror — powerful elites — find reason to stoke and exploit that fear. And even the most ideologically fair-minded national media will always be agents of cosmopolitanism: something provincials fear as an outside elite intent on forcing different values down their throats.

Why, of course, “crazy-making panic” is endemic only to conservative Americans, otherwise defined, in the world of the Post, as those people who still insist on regarding Sarah Palin as a political force even after her daughter’s former fiance has started dating Kathy Griffin. Those thousands upon thousands (or maybe millions upon millions) of words, many of them still online, which fretted about Guantanamo in the Bush years presaging internment camps for the young and disaffected in the United States? That was legitimate political discourse, nothing irrational about it.

(As is, presumably, the post at a left-leaning site I read the other day that compared the present political situation in America to that of Germany in about 1930. Anyone for Obama as the new Heinrich Bruening?)

Although, as I write, it will be several more hours before Perlstein’s piece appears in the antiquated ink-on-paper format, it has already stirred up several dozen responses from across the political spectrum. Matt Yglesias has one of the most thoughtful posts about it on the Left. He focuses on these remarks of Perlstein’s:

You never heard the late Walter Cronkite taking time on the evening news to “debunk” claims that a proposed mental health clinic in Alaska is actually a dumping ground for right-wing critics of the president’s program, or giving the people who made those claims time to explain themselves on the air. The media didn’t adjudicate the ever-present underbrush of American paranoia as a set of “conservative claims” to weigh, horse-race-style, against liberal claims. Back then, a more confident media unequivocally labeled the civic outrage represented by such discourse as “extremist” — out of bounds.

As opposed to the “in-bounds” rhetoric of the SDS and Black Panthers, which got substantial on-air attention. But let’s look at today’s situation. In Portsmouth, New Hampshire, when President Obama held his town hall meeting about health care this week, William Kostric, a self-described “free stater,” was spotted in the crowd by an MSNBC crew with a sign reading “Time To Water The Tree” (it referred to a quote attributed to Thomas Jefferson, which concludes “with the blood of patriots and tyrants”) – and a gun strapped to his leg, which he had a permit to carry.

It turned out that Kostric had not simply brought the weapon to provide a headache to Secret Service personnel who had to worry about any individuals who might not be carrying weapons simply to “make a statement.” He meant for the gun to attract media attention and stir curiosity about what he wanted – which turned out to be, presumably like all the “crazies” Perlstein describes, to get on TV.

And which program finally extended an invitation to appear? Was it Glenn Beck’s show, or Sean Hannity’s, or The O’Reilly Factor, or any of the other shows which, as every schoolperson in Santa Monica or Marin County knows, are diabolically constructed by “elites” to inflame the heartland? No, it was Hardball with Chris Matthews, a show which is not usually viewed as a hotbed for “crazies.”. I assume that Kostric chose Hardball because MSNBC was the channel that gave him visibility. (He also appeared on Alex Jones’s radio talk show, a venue more along the lines of his personal views, but certainly not the creation of any media “elite.” Indeed, Michael Savage, singled out as a rabble-rouser by Perlstein, has not had Kostric appear on his program.)

Perlstein doesn’t seem to realize that most of those who are concerned about the drawbacks of the health-care bill are voicing heartfelt and rational objections. They know that every citizen of the country already is shouldering a share of the national debt equivalent to nearly a fifth of a million dollars and they hope that there’s some way to keep it from going to a quarter of a million. They were not happy with the idea of a President doing his best Lyndon Johnson imitation and insisting that Congress pass over a thousand pages of slapped-together taxes and regulations before the end of last month, before it became clear that would not happen. (And compared to the versions of the health-care bill now in the works, even the most hastily drafted bills of LBJ’s Great Society look like they were penned by James Madison or George Mason.)

But that doesn’t matter to Perlstein; for him, “the tree of crazy is an ever-present aspect of America’s flora.” However, he’s not going unchallenged about this. One of the more impressive retorts so far has come from Stephen Bainbridge, a professor at UCLA’s law school. The professor sums up the op-ed as follows: “we lefties are rational, nice, kind people who are puzzled by conservative crazies. We’ve got no crazies on our side, of course. Just nice rational people like me.” Then Bainbridge lists some “rational” responses to perceived threats from the Right by left-wing organizations, starting with the Weathermen.

Bainbridge’s post got this prompt response from Perlstein, who says: “I hate the Weathermen. Read my book. So does everyone I know on the left.”

Well, it may be that everyone Rick knows on the Left deplores what the Weathermen, as a whole, became, or some of its actions. But individual former members of the Weathermen, whether or not they still think they were justified in what they did, certainly are not hated by many of his colleagues – indeed, quite the opposite, as Bill Ayers’s recent well-attended book tour demonstrates.

And, before I forget: does Perlstein mention Richard Nixon in his article? Yes, he does, classing RN as one of the “vultures” who exploited the fears sprouting from the “tree of crazy” – and, somehow, managed, by doing so, to secure a 49-state victory in 1972.

With a little help from 47,168,710 “crazies.” Count ‘em.

Multiple Choice

June 3, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Bush Administration, War on Terror | 1 Comment 

Is this:

(a) a run of the mill red herring?

(b) an irrelvant detail richoceting off the wall?

(c) the sound of another shoe dropping?

North Korea Is Not The New Iraq

June 1, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Barack Obama, Bush Administration, International Affairs, Military, North Korea, Obama administration | Leave a Comment 

Peter Feaver who writes at Foreign Policy’s sole conservative outlet, Shadow Government, imagines a showdown with Pyonyang without the success of the surge in Iraq:

At the broader strategic, political, and psychological levels the situation would have been bleak in the extreme. The United States would have been a defeated power, and our position in the region would be in jeopardy. Assume for the sake of argument that the situation only reached moderate-case proportions, not the worst-case scenarios that would be all-too-plausible. Assume, therefore, that the United States would merely be scrambling to reassert deterrence against a rising Iran, reassure our oil-rich allies, and honor defense commitments to Israel — set aside more dire situations like a region-wide Sunni vs. Shia conflagration.

In that world, would Obama actually have a richer menu of military options in North Korea now? Would he have the political will/capital to commit the recently defeated U.S. ground forces in the very place where the “America mustn’t fight land wars in Asia” strategic lesson was first forged? Or, to be fair to the original argument, would he at least have more leeway than he has now?

I don’t see it. On the contrary, I see him as having slightly more options now for dealing with North Korea than he otherwise might have precisely because Bush reversed the trajectory in Iraq. To be sure, the progress in Iraq is still fragile and reversible — and there are ominous signs of that reversibility with the uptick in violence in the months since Obama codified a rigid withdrawal timeline. But the success of Bush’s surge strategy (crediting, of course, the courageous efforts of General Petraeus, General Odierno, and Ambassador Crocker, not to mention the brave men and women deployed in Iraq, who actually implemented the strategy) has gone some way to restoring America’s global strategic leverage. At a minimum, it seems to me inarguable that our strategic leverage is greater now than it would have been if we continued on the old trajectory.

Stanley Kutler On The Sotomayor Choice

May 30, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Bush Administration, Presidents, Richard Nixon, Senate, Supreme Court, U.S. History | 3 Comments 

At the Huffington Post Stanley I. Kutler, professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin, discusses President Obama’s selection of Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court. Professor Kutler, who was the subject of some TNN posts last year concerning challenges to transcriptions of White House recordings that he presented in his book Abuse Of Power, begins with the statement, referring to Judge Sotomayor’s rise from poverty to the heights of accomplishment, that “[l]ife narratives are compelling, and Sotomayor clearly has one, perhaps side-by-side with the President’s — and Clarence Thomas.”

To mention Justice Thomas in this context is bound to make many liberals wince. Like Judge Sotomayor, the justice was educated in Catholic schools – and he subsequently converted to the Catholic faith, whereas Judge Sotomayor was born into it. Judge Sotomayor’s views, as expressed off the bench at various academic forums, sometimes suggest some kinship to those of the late Dorothy Day, who combined social radicalism with a committed pro-life agenda, and who unhesitatingly called abortion “genocide.”

In a previous TNN post I noted that in one case concerning a challenge to the Bush Administration’s refusing to fund international organizations that advocated abortion, Judge Sotomayor decided for the administration. Her opinion in that case did not conform to the idea of abortion-as-universal-human-right supported by much of the pro-choice contingent. It makes one wonder whether she might turn out to be the Harriet Miers of the Obama era – too conservative on one or two particular issues for some in the President’s party, far too liberal in other issues for the opposition.

Another concern of Kutler’s in this article, not unexpectedly, is to wax nostalgic for the days before 1968 (and the ascension of the dreaded RN to the White House), when “Supreme Court nominations only rarely resulted in contentious confirmation battles.” He remarks that among Franklin D. Roosevelt’s nominees to the Court, only Hugo Black stirred much opposition, as a result of his brief membership in the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. Well, by the time FDR had the chance to make his first nomination to the Court, the Democrats were solidly in control of the Senate, and that remained the case until the end of his Presidency. If he had had to confront a predominantly Republican Senate over his Court choices, as RN was obliged to confront one that was Democratic, Roosevelt might well have had one or two or more of his choices rejected. Before FDR, Herbert Hoover had had one of his Court selections narrowly rejected by a Republican-controlled Senate (John J. Parker). And then again, Kutler seems to forget the titanic struggle between the White House and a Democratic-controlled Congress over FDR’s “court-packing” plan in 1937.

Between FDR and Nixon, only Harry Truman, from 1947 until 1949, and Dwight D. Eisenhower were faced with Congresses in which the opposition had a majority. Truman was not called upon to fill a Court vacancy during that time; Eisenhower’s five choices all enjoyed considerable bipartisan support. At the end of his Presidency, Lyndon Johnson met with opposition to his choice of Abe Fortas to replace Earl Warren as Chief Justice, partly from Southerners in his own party, and the nomination was withdrawn.

Since RN, the selections made by Presidents to the Court have almost always met with trouble if the Senate was controlled by the opposing party. (Gerald Ford’s selection of John Paul Stevens, and George Bush’s choice of David Souter, were the exceptions.) When the Republicans were the Senate majority from 1981 until 1986, Ronald Reagan’s selections of Justices O’Connor and Scalia, and his elevation of Justice Rehnquist to Chief Justice, went through the Senate comfortably. When the Democrats were back in control of the Senate, that chamber rejected Robert Bork. So, Kutler’s notion to the contrary, strife between the White House and the Senate over Court choices didn’t start with Nixon, and if it hasn’t ended since his time, that’s not his doing.

Kutler also muses on the subject of judicial activism vs. strict construction, that duality upon which many a debate about the Court has centered since the 1960s. He somewhat slyly remarks that whereas Nixon’s statements after the Engel v. Vitale decision of 1962, which ruled against prayer in public schools, criticized Justice Black’s majority opinion as leaning too far toward a strict interpretation of the Establishment Clause, as President he was a strong supporter of a literal interpretation of the Constitution. Kutler makes it clear that he sees Judge Sotomayor as leaning toward the activist side, and that he thinks this is all for the best. But are liberals really ready for the judge to be an activist where it might be inconvenient for them?

Laughing Matters

May 24, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Bush Administration, Comedy | Leave a Comment 

According to the old saying, many a true word is spoken in jest. 

In many cases, only some true words are spoken in jest.

In all cases, jest is a matter of taste and few jests are really all that funny.

In the case of SNL’s cold open last night, some words were true, most jests fell flat, and the whole thing was delivered without any particular spirit, conviction, or sense of timing, while being badly read off cue cards.

Night At The Supermax

May 22, 2009 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Bush Administration, History, National Archives, National Security, Obama administration, Presidents, Terrorism, Vice President Biden, War on Terror | 1 Comment 

When Harry Truman was whistle-stopping his way into political history en route to his upset of Thomas Dewey in the 1948 presidential election, he used many set pieces again and again from the back of his train. And they always worked. One example was to accuse the Republicans of misleading the American people. Harry said that the GOP lived by the philosophy, “If you can’t convince them; confuse them.”

I wonder what Truman would make of his distant Democratic successor in the White House. Would the man known for his plain talking sign off on President Obama’s brand new method of communication – one that would impress even George Orwell?

It might be best called transcendent-speak – the art of talking above-it-all.

Our president describes things like abortion and his approach to national security in language that defines the new administration as kind of “hovering-yet-right-in-the-middle,” with just about everyone else described as finger-pointing partisans and fear-mongering extremists.

Barack Obama’s recent speech about national security, delivered against the backdrop of all things historic and constitutional, was a case in point. By now, we all know that while Mr. Obama was speechifying at the National Archives, former Vice President Dick Cheney was weighing in with an address of his own at the American Enterprise Institute. It was split-screen heaven for policy junkies. I am now waiting for someone to YouTube some sound bites from both men, with the music of “Dueling Banjoes” from the movie Deliverance playing. This analogy works on several levels.

Mr. Cheney, by the way, won that one on points. And don’t even get me started on how well he’d do against Joe “da-bunker’s-dis-way” Biden.

Digging through all the rhetoric in President Obama’s speech – trying to separate wood, hay, and stubble, from yet more wood, hay, and stubble, I found one true thing. He said: “My single most important responsibility as President is to keep the American people safe.” He indicated that it is always on his mind (cue Willie Nelson song here).

Understanding responsibility and accepting responsibility are, however, two very different things. I find myself hoping against hope that he is not telling us everything – that deep down he gets it, or that he has his fingers crossed, or something. I want to believe that Mr. Obama is as much of a realist as most presidents quickly become on matters of national security (Jimmy Carter doesn’t count, of course). I am praying that he holds a few tough trump cards in reserve. But, let’s say I have my doubts.

You see, the president has a hard time even really talking about the enemy we are supposed to be vigilant against. He refers almost vaguely to “an extremist ideology” and talks about the high-tech threat from “a handful of terrorists.” And he says, in an effort to show how full his presidential-plate is, we are fighting two – count ‘em – two wars.

Two wars? Were we fighting two wars from 1941 to 1945? Or were the European and Pacific theaters possibly somehow related by a toxic affinity? When Italy was against us, were we then fighting three wars?

Of course not – there may have been several fronts, but it was the same war. And the leaders back then didn’t have a problem with naming the ideology. Roosevelt railed against the Nazis. Though Mr. Churchill talked about “Narzees” – raising the possibility that there was yet one more war, if you count it all that way.

In fairness, Mr. Obama did mention our historical success in overpowering “the iron fist of fascism,” even though in order to actually win, in those now long gone days, required a fist of our own – as opposed to an outstretched hand. But when he talked about us being “indeed at war with al Qaeda and its affiliates,” I found myself thinking: “Affiliates? Affiliates?”

That’s it. Out with the war on terror, in with a war on those pesky “affiliates.”

Mr. Obama again defended his position on the closure of the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay. He reminded us of his oft-used assertion that, “the existence of Guantanamo likely created more terrorists around the world than it ever detained.” It’s a cool line, but impossible to prove.

“If you can’t convince them; confuse them.”

One of the president’s great ideas would be to send many of the current Gitmo detainees to one of our “federal, supermax prisons.” But if his goal is to see that these misunderstood men escape unpleasant confines, anyone who knows anything about Gitmo and the federal prison system will tell you that conditions and treatment are worse in a supermax facility than at Gitmo. How will this play when the “affiliates” find out how bad the new home is and then use the new conditions as a recruitment tool. Where next?

People who have been to Gitmo tell me that the detainees there are treated better than anyone in our federal system. In fact, some tell me that those bad guys have it better than many of our nation’s fighting heroes in Iraq and Afghanistan!

The biggest irony of all as Mr. Obama’s policies evolve, is that he is apparently acknowledging that some of the more dangerous detainees may have to be held indefinitely. So much for absolute principles – there is some wiggle room after all. But of course, it’s all part of the “mess” he inherited.

On the flipside, Mr. Cheney seemed to speak with a good deal more of the “common sense” the guy on the other side of the screen (presumably, the left side) talked about. He said: “In my long experience in Washington, few matters have inspired so much contrived indignation and phony moralizing as the interrogation methods applied to a few captured terrorists.” He decried what he described as, “Recklessness cloaked in righteousness.”

This week, the Senate voted to deny $80 million for the closure of Gitmo. There is also legislation in the pipeline with wide support that would require a “threat assessment” for all of the remaining 240 detainees before any other decision about their future is made.

As for President Obama, he calls opposition to his approach fearmongering. He says that some are using, “words that are calculated to scare people rather than educate them.” And he adds, “Bear in mind the following fact: Nobody has ever escaped from one of our federal ‘supermax’ prisons, which hold hundreds of convicted terrorists.”

He’s right. But the insertion of new and dangerous terrorists, complete with some of the structural changes that would be needed to create the image that these men will not be treated badly, raise the possibility of rendering the facilities a little more vulnerable. Not to mention the idea that some of the terrorists might be treated better than the other inmates because of political considerations, might just create, shall we say, unrest on the part of the all the regular criminals. In other words, it could all lead to a really bad night at the supermax.

Fearmonger – that’s an interesting term. It’s all the rage these days, like pandemic. The word, “monger,” means “a dealer in a specific commodity.” One can be a fishmonger, for example. Of course, using the suffix with fear is designed to create the idea that someone is spreading something destructive, even devilish.

Was it fearmongering when the government had us all freaked out a few weeks ago about the swine flu? Most of us would say “no.” Disease is serious stuff and we are wise to take heed to warnings and wisdom.

I suggest that a little fear in a dangerous world is quite wise. The problem, as I see it, is not fearmongering, but rather, pipe-dream-mongering. Americans should not be paralyzed by fear, but we should be concerned enough to know that we are not even close to being out of the terror-filled woods. When there is a toxic virus, you don’t send those infected to school with the other kids. When it comes to terrorist detainees, Gitmo is their home.

There’s no place like home.

Hating On Rummy

May 21, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Bush Administration, Military | Leave a Comment 

As former Vice President Dick Cheney squares off against the Obama administration, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has up to this point been holding his powder as his critics have skewered him for what they believe is the arrogant, stubborn and authoritarian manner that lead to the mismanagement of the Iraq War. Interestingly enough at the Nixon Libary last night, Bush’s first appointment as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the retired (and very non-partisan) General Richard Myers spoke glowingly of the previous Pentagon chief. According to Myers, Rumsfeld was the most intellectually curious official in cabinet meetings, pressing the rock-ribbed President to see all sides of an issue before any weight was thrown behind key national security decisions. Ben Domenech of The New Ledger similarly deflects against the effigial and very anti-intellectual opinions on Rumsfeld, and contrasts the SECDEF with the dense critics who hold them:

Since leaving office, Rumsfeld infamy has only grown in most corners of the mainstream press — he makes a very natural target, and he has mostly stayed quiet even when his former allies were using him as a scapegoat. But other stories show a more complex picture. I was surprised by reports that have appeared in recent years detailing how the SECDEF expressed significant doubts about the invasion of Iraq — as someone who opposed the Iraq war (I believed then as now that Iran, not Iraq, poses a greater threat), I never thought that Secretary Rumsfeld and I would have any real agreement on the matter. Now writing his memoirs, Rumsfeld’s office today is clothed with signed photographs, images, and awards from a lifelong career spent in the arena, stretching all the way back to photos taken with Ike during his first Congressional campaign, signed pictures of great men of the ages, of soldiers and citizens he’s met along the way.

The walls are full of these pictures and tokens. But of images like the ones Draper features, there are none. There is one reminder that you could call spiritual, however: burned scraps from the plane that struck the Pentagon on 9/11, unavoidable and out in front. If you want to know how Rumsfeld expresses his personal motivations, you need look no further.

Damned If She Did. Now Damned If She Didn’t.

May 19, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Bush Administration, Congress, Domestic issues, Intelligence, National Security, Obama administration, War on Terror | Leave a Comment 

James Kirchick’s provocative lede in his piece —“Is Nancy Pelosi a liar or a hypocrite?”— on today’s Politico pretty much tells the story that follows:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accomplished two unusual feats last week: She got the head of the CIA to call her a liar, and she implicated herself in what her left-wing base must, by dint of its own contrived logic, consider a war crime.

And today in “The Swamp,” Mark Silva reports a new CNN Opinion Research Corp. Poll that can’t have gone down too well in the Speaker’s Office:

 

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has taken a fall in public opinion, according to a new CNN Opinion Research Corp. poll showing that nearly half of all Americans surveyed do not approve of the way the California Democrat is handling her job as speaker of the House.

The newest results come from a survey taken after the speaker accused the CIA of misleading her about the interrogation tactics that were being used on suspected terrorists several years ago. The CIA maintains that it briefed Pelosi on water-boarding and other tactics in September 2002, but the speaker maintains she was not told waterboarding was being used then. House Republican Leader John Boehner, siding with the CIA on the credibility question, accuses Pelosi of changing stories.

In the May 14-17 survey, just 39 percent said they approve of the job that Pelosi is performing as speaker and 48 percent said they disapprove. Only 12 percent voiced no view. In January, 51 percent had said they approved of the speaker’s performance and just 22 percent voiced disapproval.

And in his column today, Rich Lowry examines the tortuous logic of the Speaker’s position (or at least of one of her several positions) on this subject:

For Pelosi’s account to be accurate, the CIA must have engaged in one of the most baroque and ineffectual conspiracies in the history of Washington. Remember: Pelosi claims that the CIA lied to her in a September 2002 classified briefing and told her that it hadn’t waterboarded high-level al Qaeda detainee Abu Zubaydah. To support her version, Pelosi needs to stack implausibility on top of implausibility in a precarious Jenga tower of self-justification.

The CIA must have convinced Porter Goss, the Republican congressman (and subsequent CIA director) who was present at the 2002 briefing, to lie and pronounce himself “slack-jawed” at Pelosi’s account. It must have forged the “contemporaneous records” CIA Director Leon Panetta has cited that show Pelosi was told of the waterboarding. It must have either pulled the wool over Panetta’s eyes or enlisted the active engagement of the Obama nominee in a monstrous machinery of deception.

A Convenient Omission

May 13, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Bush Administration, New Media | 1 Comment 

Jay Nordlinger at National Review writes that Maureen Dowd — who pens weekly at the grey lady — left out a convenient fact about former President Jimmy Carter when justifying her argument that former Vice President Cheney’s criticisms are tantamount to what the right calls treason:

She begins with the story about how ex-president Carter wrote to members of the U.N. Security Council, as Bush 41 was trying to assemble a coalition against Saddam Hussein. Carter wanted them to resist the administration’s efforts. I thought Corner readers might like to know an interesting detail about this — a detail not included in the Dowd column.

Carter did not inform the administration that he was writing these governments, urging them to resist the American president. The administration learned about it when Canada’s prime minister, Brian Mulroney, called the secretary of defense — Dick Cheney.

A Star Is Born

April 28, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Bush Administration, National Security, News media, Obama administration | 3 Comments 

Judging from the first two samples, Ross Douthat’s Tuesday columns will be welcome additions to The New York Times‘ op-ed page.

Today’s —”Cheney For President“— posits an interesting (if backhanded) “what if”:

Watching Dick Cheney defend the Bush administration’s interrogation policies, it’s been hard to escape the impression that both the Republican Party and the country would be better off today if Cheney, rather than John McCain, had been a candidate for president in 2008.

Last Thursday, another Cheney —daughter Liz— appeared on MSNBC and turned out to be an able, articulate, appealing, civil, and immensely patient spokesperson for her beliefs.  For some twenty minutes of excellent television, she held anchor Norah O’Donnell’s feet to the uncomfortable (not to say unaccustomed)  fire of accuracy and accountability.

Needless to say, the chances of Ms. Cheney being invited back to continue the mauling any time soon are slim to nil, so I planned to embed the video of her combined spectacular-debut-cum-farewell-performance as both must viewing and historical artifact.

“Now this argument about the Geneva Conventions — in terms of this idea that somehow Al-Qaeda abides by the Geneva Conventions — if Al-Qaeda captures an American they cut his head off.” —  Liz Cheney on MSNBC:

MSNBC’s website welcomes blogs to embed its videos — and then provides a defective code that only results in blank space.

Although not a drop of conspiratorialist blood flows through my increasingly arteriosclerotic veins, the thought did briefly cross my mind that perhaps the cable network was less than anxious for this particular embed —in which the highly polished studio floor is wiped with Ms. O’Donnell— to be easily accessible to a wider audience.  But I checked and it turns out that all MSNBC clips are similarly embed-resistant.  So MSNBC is guilty of incompetence not obstruction.

The upshot is that you will have to do some work yourself.  But, trust me, your effort will be rewarded.

If you click here you can see the discussion of the meaning and consequences of the release of the CIA documents.

Click here and watch the discussion of the propriety of Vice President Cheney raising questions about some of President Obama’s actions and inactions.

And click here for a few thoughts about the future of the Republican Party.

Liz Cheney is an attorney, a  former AID official, Deputy Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, and head of DOS’ Iran Syria Policy and Operations Group.  She served on the Bush-Cheney campaign staffs in 2004 an 2008.  In her spare time, she is a mother of five.

The Great Torture Enhanced Interrogation Techniques Debate

April 27, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Bush Administration, Terrorism | Leave a Comment 

Nixon Foundation neighbors,  Chapman University Dean John Eastman and visiting professor John Yoo debate professors Katherine Darmer and Larry Rosenthal on the issue of torture.

For Extra Credit: How Is The 2000 Election…

April 27, 2009 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Barack Obama, Bush Administration, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

…like the Hiss case?

A Word From Deacon Philip

April 24, 2009 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Bush Administration, Terrorism | 6 Comments 

The world’s leading Sept. 11 expert on the torture debate.

Let’s At Least Avoid The Political Torture

April 23, 2009 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Bush Administration, Obama administration, Terrorism | Leave a Comment 

Dick Cheney and Hillary Clinton show us what Nancy Pelosi’s torture investigation would look like.

We Need The Whole Story On Torture

April 16, 2009 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Bush Administration, Terrorism | 3 Comments 

Exactly what was done in our name — and exactly why.

Where Is Condi?

April 6, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Bush Administration | Leave a Comment 

Stanford Review, an independent and conservative student bi-weekly at the university, has this exclusive on Condoleezza Rice’s return, as a Hoover Fellow.

Thanks For Nothing

April 1, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Bush Administration, News media | 2 Comments 

As very briefly reported this morning on The Caucus –-The New York Times‘  politics and government blog, DOJ has decided to drop all charges against Alaska Senator Ted Stevens and file a motion to set aside the jury’s guilty verdict — a verdict that is generally considered to have been responsible for the defeat for re-election last November.  

As of 12:45 PM there is still no story on the Times‘ website.  WaPo has a good story by Del Quentin Wilber on its website.

It will be interesting to see just how many column inches and how much air time is given to this part of the story for which, in its earlier stages, there were few if any limitations.

Attorney General Holder announced that, in addition to dismissing all the charges and withdrawing the indictment, the case won’t be retried.  

General Holder states that DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility will conduct a thorough review of the prosecution’s conduct — and hastens to add that “This does not mean or imply that any determination has been made about the conduct of those attorneys who handled the investigation and trial of this case.”

A lot of trouble and treasure could have been saved, and the rights of the residents of Alaska would have been better served, if DOJ had shown the same kind of punctilious concern for Senator Stevens’ rights.

In this case, General Holder is cleaning up a mess left to him by the Bush administration.   Bush Justice perversely launched the rickety juggernaut based on dicey evidence against a sitting Senator.  And did so expressly against DOJ regulations that forbid bringing indictments too close to an election.  

To its lonely credit, The Wall Street Journal was on the job following the story —the shocking story— of the degrees of political calculation and prosecutorial skullduggery that characterized Bush Justice’s handling of  the Stevens case from the get-go.

So Senator Stevens has been vindicated.  Great.  Thanks a lot.  And better late than never to be sure.  But now where does he go to get his good name —and his Senate seat— back?

Obama Is The New Bush

March 23, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Bush Administration, Iraq War, Obama administration | Leave a Comment 

Abe Greenwald explains that there have been no changes in Iraq policy between inauguration and now:

One must remember that Barack Obama is not referring to the benefits of any change that he’s made in Iraq policy — because he hasn’t made any. He is saying that the Iraq War and the future U.S. commitment there, as outlined by the Bush and Maliki governments, have left him with the smoothest, most promising issue on his daily agenda. It turns out that with the heat of campaigning lifted, the Iraq War is finally acknowledged as what it is: a success.

Ironically, and tragically, Obama won’t use this as an issue around which to rally much needed American support. He has spent too long talking down the war to now cite it as an example of American endurance. But for the former president, sitting in Texas, this must have felt pretty good. No matter how many signing ceremonies are to follow.

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