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?

Follow The Money–It’s Going To China

February 19, 2010 by admin | Filed Under Asia, Barack Obama, China, Cold War, Economic issues, George W. Bush, History, International Affairs, Middle East, Money, National Security, Nixon Administration, Obama administration, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | 1 Comment 

The other day, President Barack Obama met with the Tibetan Dali Lama in the White House—doing so in the Map Room as opposed to the Oval Office in an apparent attempt to mute any “official” aura for the meeting. It was sort of like trying to kowtow to one audience while powwowing with another. Likely the nuance was lost on the government in Beijing. Of course, past presidents have received the Tibetan leader—a man who has become a symbol for freedom and a persistent reminder of the oppression of his people at the hands of the Chinese regime.

It was 38 years ago this week that President Richard Nixon played the historic China Card—a geopolitical masterstroke during the Cold War. It was all part of a strategic view of the world and effectuated from a position of strength. We were powerful; they were backward—technologically, culturally, and with obvious political deficiencies. That moment remains a high water mark in Nixon’s presidency—a moment in time that even the most determined critics concede positively to his legacy.

But what would Mr. Nixon think now?

These days, admittedly, the whole issue of U.S.-China relations is a sticky one for our current President. It is one of many examples of how different things are when you are governing as opposed to campaigning for office—although it is hard to tell which is which in Washington these days. Mario Cuomo famously talked years ago about politics being “poetry” and governing “prose.”

Dealing with potential adversaries—and even some friends—is always best when you do so from a position of strength. It’s true in military and national defense (“peace through strength”) and it’s true in economics, as well. The scriptures remind us, “The borrower is servant to the lender.” And when one party is deep in financial debt to another a certain measure of leverage is ceded to the lender.

How this dynamic will play out in the immediate future is anyone’s guess, but owing nearly $800 billion to the Chinese should raise a flag—a red one. And it should come as no surprise if and when those to whom we owe such copious amounts of money begin to squeeze us on the international stage.

President Obama has been making great pains to try to change our image before the world, one that he believes George W. Bush perpetuated and that has led to our virtual “blackball” by many nations. But in fact, what he really should be concerned about is not “blackball,” but rather “blackmail.” The Chinese dumped $45 billion of T-bills a couple of months ago—wave of the future? And why shouldn’t one nation operating out of its own interests use such leverage? We would.

In fact, we have.

In 1956, there were two hot spots with the potential of blowing up into World War III, a revolution in Hungary—and a crisis in the Middle East involving the Suez Canal. Seen now in hindsight against the backdrop of the Cold War and as the moment when the last vestiges of old world colonialism gave wave to complete bi-polar hegemony pitting the United States against the Soviets, the Suez Crisis was as much about the exercise of economic clout as it was a diplomatic-military affair.

Gamal Abdel Nassar had emerged as a leader in Egypt as part of a 1952 coup overthrowing King Farouk and by 1954 he was firmly in place as that nation’s maximum leader. He immediately undertook a complete transformation of his country with massive public works and the progressive nationalization of industry. He was enamored of the Soviet system and soon it became clear that his nation would be taking that side in the Cold War. One project near and dear to his heart was the building of the Aswan Dam, which America at first agreed to help fund. But when Nassar sold arms to Soviet satellite Czechoslovakia and then recognized the People’s Republic of China, U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles withdrew our dam dollars.

In reaction to this, Nassar announced on July 26, 1956 a Nationalization Law freezing all the assets of the Suez Canal—in effect, a seizure of that vital passageway.

Opened in 1869, this 119-mile long man-made waterway connects the Mediterranean and Red Seas. Originally financed by the Egyptians and French, Britain became a major stakeholder and stockholder in 1875, and eventually the canal became part of the United Kingdom’s imperial portfolio in the region. Following World War II, and with the decline of the U.K.’s empire, the canal gradually became a diplomatic football—not to mention thorn. And the creation of the nation of Israel in 1948 caused tensions about the vital waterway to further increase.

In the aftermath of Nassar’s July 26 speech, Britain—led by Prime Minister Anthony Eden—and France, represented by Eden’s counterpart, Guy Mollet, began to plot how to ensure their access to the Suez Canal. Eventually, and in an alliance with Israel (a nation with the most to lose if the canal was closed to them), military action was planned and initiated.

Follow the money.

Meanwhile, the American President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, in the midst of a reelection bid, had already had a rough year in 1956—physically and politically. And shortly following election to a second term in the White House, he played some power politics of his own. Now, I should state here that I am not of the number in agreement with what he did in the Suez matter, anymore than I am about how we abandoned the freedom fighters in Budapest earlier that summer. I am simply using this story to describe a reality in all of life and politics—like it or not.

There is a golden rule in geo-politics: He who has the gold makes the rule.

Mr. Eisenhower did not want Britain, France, and Israel—all stated allies of the United States—creating a situation that might not play well with the Soviets and that had the potential to instigate a larger war. Here was the hero of Normandy putting the pressure on British Prime Minister Eden—a man who had worked closely with Ike while serving in Churchill’s War Cabinet.

“The borrower is servant to the lender.”

To apply pressure on Eden’s government to cease and desist, Eisenhower instructed U.S. Treasury Secretary, George M. Humphrey, to begin to sell off some of our government’s British bonds. Some of these bonds were holdovers from the U.K.’s World War II debt; others had been sold to us to help that nation’s economy rebound after the war. Eden’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, future P.M. Harold Macmillan, told him that the results would be devastating to the British economy.

Checkmate.

Anthony Eden was a broken man. He fled to a vacation-exile in Jamaica, spending time at Ian Fleming’s (of James Bond literary fame) estate there, but his health quickly deteriorated. He was taking amphetamines—had been for years under doctor’s orders after a botched gall bladder operation—and the drugs magnified his problems with insomnia and unraveling mental health. Soon, Mr. Macmillan took over at 10 Downing Street, but by then the Suez episode had hastened the sunset on the British Empire—and the Cold War morphed from a multi-national tag-team match into a virtual two-nation standoff.

Follow the money.

We are potentially in big trouble as a nation. Our security is threatened not only by Islamist terrorism—but also by some who have a lien on our title deed. Certainly, throughout our history we have dealt with nations and regimes in pragmatic and realpolitik ways, even having to hold our collective noses because of the stench of tyranny and oppression on the part of some of our momentary allies in a larger cause. But we have managed, for the most part, to deal with it—ugliness and all—because of the ability to approach everything from a position of strength: morally, militarily, and economically.

Now though, we not only depend on others for much of our energy, but we also owe an astronomical amount of money (the interest alone is unfathomable) to powerful entities. We should not be surprised that other nations no longer dance on cue—nor should we ever be surprised if and when some big bills come due with humiliating strings attached.

Or worse.

A Vital Political Question For 2010

February 5, 2010 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Annals of the Obama Administration, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Intelligence, International Affairs, Iran, Islam, National Security, Obama administration, Political Philosophy, Presidents, Terrorism, War on Terror | 1 Comment 

In the waning days of the 1980 presidential campaign, Republican nominee Ronald Reagan used his allotted time in the closing moments of his only debate with President Jimmy Carter to ask a question. It was one of the most effective rhetorical devices in American history.

“Are you better off today than you were four years ago?”

Because most Americans answered a resounding “No” that night, Mr. Reagan was able to pull the line out again four years later, this time as President and against Walter Mondale, who ran a quixotic campaign to oust him. And Americans answered by electing Reagan to a second term.

Over the years, the question about being “better off” has been used to great affect by many politicians, including later aspirants to the White House. It became, in effect, a rhetorical trump card.

Now there is another question in the room—one that was asked, in a manner of speaking, during several recent special elections and will be commonplace this November as all of us go to the polls in the “off-year” ritual. The question is: “Are you safer than you were four years ago?”

It is hard to find anything about President Barack Obama’s first term—at least anything of substance—that can be realistically characterized as successful. And by successful, I mean accomplishing one’s stated goals. Whether it was the healthcare bridge too far, cap-and-trade, or dramatically improving the economy, this administration has simply not delivered on what it promised. Of course, in the area of national security they have tried to make good on pledges, but have found the resistance to every move to be surprising strong.

And one gets the feeling that not only did they not see failure coming in the euphoria of those early halcyon days in charge—but they really don’t have a clue as to where to go from here. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the area of national security and dealing with the very real threat of Islamist terror. And nowhere are the stakes any higher.

The other day, Leon Panetta, Director of CIA, in concert with other leaders in the national security community, told Congress that a terror attack (the indication being that this would be an attempt of significant magnitude) is likely during the next three to six months. It was also suggested that this warning is based, at least in part, on information gleaned from the man who tried to blow up an American airplane en route to Detroit on Christmas Day, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Presumably, this so-called “underwear-bomber” has been cooperating with authorities lately, following the intervention of some of his family from Nigeria, such intervention being prompted by FBI visits to that country.

With its too-sad-to-be-farcical “you-could-have-had-me-at-enemy-combatant” Miranda prolonged delay, this episode is in a real sense a window into the thinking—some would say, lack thereof—of the Obama administration on the whole issue of terror, Islamism, “detainees,” and national security. It seems that there is this naïve insistence on seeing and framing the issues as something nuanced—an almost “shirts versus skins” game—instead of a very grave matter of life and death.

A President is sworn to protect and defend the Constitution and by extension, therefore, those under its cover. The founders and framers did not fashion a document for global governance, nor did they seek to extend its protection beyond “we the people.” But these days we are witnessing the most ambitious attempt ever to broadly interpret its provisions.

On the domestic side, “we” the people is giving way to “for” the people, as those wiser-than-the-rest-of-us seek to “fundamentally transform” (to use Mr. Obama’s words) America. And when it comes to foreign policy and international issues, apparently now this new-improved understanding of our Constitution—one that makes Franklin Roosevelt look like a paleo-conservative in comparison—reads, “they” the people. It covers not only illegal aliens, but also non-U.S. citizen enemy combatants, giving them more rights than any of us would ever receive in some Islamist majority country.

“Are you safer than you were four years ago?”

Iran moves arrogantly and confidently forward to develop the materials and technology to soon become a nuclear power. Just the other day, its President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, talked of delivering a blow to “global arrogance” as that nation marks the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution on February 11.

Sure we protest, but words from a teleprompter don’t make much impact on a man who thinks he gets his ideas directly from Allah. And at any rate—the whole first year of Mr. Obama’s administration and its mea culpa “we like you” overtures to the Islamic world, notwithstanding—there is no evidence that anyone who hated us when George W. Bush was in town, hates us any less now.

In fact, someone in the White House should take a look at something else the mahdaviatist President of Iran said the other day in that same speech:

“If the Islamic Revolution had not occurred, liberalism and Marxism would have crushed all human dignity in their power-seeking and money-grubbing claws. Nothing would have remained of human and spiritual principles.”

Did you see that? The enemy is “liberalism and Marxism.” So as the current administration tries to pursue some kind of rapprochement with Iran and other Islamist nations, while at the same time trying orchestrate a decidedly more liberal agenda domestically—one that smacks of “Marxist” thinking at many turns—something ironic is happening. The new “good guys” who tell us that America is now going be loved more around the world because bad old George Bush and the cranky conservatives are gone, have missed a key plot-point: Islamists hate democratic liberalism—with its socialist vision—even more than they hate militaristic neo-conservatism.

Oops.

Of course, I hope and pray that we are spared any such terror attack this, or any, year. And I pray that there remains a sufficient remnant of discerning men and women in key areas of expertise and responsibility across the land, people who have not bowed the knee to the Baal of liberal statism and diplomatic naïveté, in place to forestall such a disaster.

But I must admit, there seems to be an inexplicable zeitgeist, combining lackadaisical apathy with arrogance that makes me feel anything but safe.

Someone talked to me recently about how, if we are attacked, people will rally around our new president like they did George W. Bush in 2001. I countered that I wasn’t so sure. That was a different time—before we really knew what terrorism meant on these shores. Post game analysis back then revealed so many areas of weakness leading to that dreadful day of terror on Sept. 11.

If such a thing, or anything similar, were to happen these days, I am not sure that those in charge now would get the kind of good will that translates into a political pass—or future.

Time’s Man (Whoops, Person) Of All Time

December 21, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, News media, Nixon in the News, Presidents, Richard Nixon, Secretary Clinton | 1 Comment 

Tonight, Diane Sawyer, former aide in the Nixon White House who also was an editorial assistant for RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, made her debut as anchor of ABC’s World News Tonight. She did not get around to mentioning her old boss.

But over at NBC Nightly News, Brian Williams found some time for the thirty-seventh President. He reported on a blog called Teqnolog, which this weekend examined the thousands of images at Time magazine’s site to determine whose face had appeared on that venerable newsmagazine’s cover more often than any other.

The winner was not a complete surprise. I recall reading in Time once or twice in the last fifteen years that Richard Nixon had been on the cover more often than anyone else. But Technoloq did a breakdown on the 15 others who had appeared on the cover ten times or more. Here they are:

RN – 48 covers
Ronald Reagan – 45
Bill Clinton – 33
George W. Bush – 31
Jimmy Carter – 27
Barack Obama – 24
Gerald R. Ford – 20
Lyndon B. Johnson – 19
George H.W. Bush – 18
Dwight D. Eisenhower – 18
Hillary Clinton – 16
John F. Kennedy – 14
Saddam Hussein – 12
Franklin D. Roosevelt – 11
Al Gore – 10
John McCain – 10

It should be mentioned that these figures include covers in which the sixteen mentioned appear with other people, such as Henry Kissinger, or Leonid Brezhnev, or each other. (In fact, in 1976 Reagan, Carter and Ford were on the same cover.) In Nixon’s case, he appeared by himself on 24 of his 48 covers, while FDR and Hussein were solo on almost all of their covers.

It may not be much of a surprise that the Secretary of State was the only woman on this list (though the former Governor of Alaska may catch up by 2012), but to have Saddam Hussein appear on more covers than, say, Stalin or Castro or Gorbachev or even Churchill is somewhat startling.

The blog pointed out that President Obama, in less than two years, or about 100 weeks, since he scored his first Time cover, has risen to sixth place on this list, while it took RN until the early Seventies, nearly two decades after his first appearance, to get to 24 covers. Teqnolog remarked that at this pace, it would take Obama only another two years to surpass RN, by which time he’d still be in his first term, and that if he were re-elected and featured as frequently as he is now, he could perhaps have his face on as many as 150 covers.

And even if the President failed to be re-elected, he’d still stand a good chance of building on such a number – FDR, JFK, Reagan, and of course RN were on the cover more than once after leaving office.

Will Mr. Obama Seize His Big Mac Moment?

November 27, 2009 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under Afghanistan, American Politics, Barack Obama, Cold War, George W. Bush, History, Military, National Security, Obama administration, Presidents, Republican Party, Terrorism, U.S. History, War on Terror | 3 Comments 

This Tuesday, Barack Obama will travel to the United States Military Academy at West Point to deliver the most important address of his young presidency. He has obviously chosen the site for the speech with great care and in the hope that the backdrop – a storied scene on the Hudson – will engender an image of him as a strong and effective commander in chief.

It is probably a smart move, but one not without a measure of risk.

The President of the United States will be treated with respect and be received enthusiastically – all very appropriate and quintessentially American. But when the fanfare fades and the applause lines become fewer, he will have the tough job of articulating a compelling vision for the future of a war that has lost its name, if not its way.

Though Mr. Obama’s White House predecessor spoke at West Point twice – once in each term – not all presidents make this trip. Eisenhower, one of the two graduates of the academy who went on to become Commander in Chief (the other being fellow Republican, Ulysses S. Grant), never made a major speech there during his two terms as president. And his predecessor, the man from Missouri, avoided the place like the plague. President Truman saw West Point as a breeding ground for “stuffed shirts” – and at any rate, his firing of the academy’s former commandant – Douglas MacArthur – probably kept the presidential welcome mat in storage in the basement of the Thayer Hotel.

As Mr. Obama’s team prepares for this important speech, I wonder if the wordsmiths are taking time to consult the history of what has been said there by other presidents and prominent Americans?

Franklin Roosevelt gave the commencement address in 1939 to graduates who would soon be in harm’s way in Europe and the Pacific. He told that class:

During recent months international political considerations have required still greater emphasis upon the vitalization of our defense, for we have had dramatic illustrations of the fate of undefended nations. I hardly need to be more specific than that. Recent conflicts in Europe, the Far East and Africa bear witness to the fact that the individual soldier remains still the controlling factor.

However, when John F. Kennedy spoke to another graduating class on June 6, 1962 (inexplicably, for a president who prided himself on his sense of history, never mentioning that date as the 18th anniversary of D-Day), he shared a vision about changes in warfare, telling his honorable audience:

Your responsibilities may involve the command of more traditional forces, but in less traditional roles. Men risking their lives, not as combatants, but as instructors or advisers, or as symbols of our Nation’s commitments.

He, though, never lived to see how quickly “instructors or advisors” would become “combatants.”

The most recent president to make a major speech at West Point was George W. Bush, a man who usually does not fare well in the eloquence department, especially when compared to President Obama. Yet, what he had to say back in 2002 should be reviewed, not only by White House speechwriters, but also by all Americans – because the words still ring true:

Because the war on terror will require resolve and patience, it will also require firm moral purpose. In this way our struggle is similar to the Cold War. Now, as then, our enemies are totalitarians, holding a creed of power with no place for human dignity. Now, as then, they seek to impose a joyless conformity, to control every life and all of life.

America confronted imperial communism in many different ways – diplomatic, economic, and military. Yet moral clarity was essential to our victory in the Cold War. When leaders like John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan refused to gloss over the brutality of tyrants, they gave hope to prisoners and dissidents and exiles, and rallied free nations to a great cause.

Some worry that it is somehow undiplomatic or impolite to speak the language of right and wrong. I disagree. Different circumstances require different methods, but not different moralities. Moral truth is the same in every culture, in every time, and in every place. Targeting innocent civilians for murder is always and everywhere wrong. Brutality against women is always and everywhere wrong. There can be no neutrality between justice and cruelty, between the innocent and the guilty. We are in a conflict between good and evil, and America will call evil by its name. By confronting evil and lawless regimes, we do not create a problem – we reveal a problem. And we will lead the world in opposing it.

However, if I were on Mr. Obama’s speech writing team (corpulent opportunity), I would spend some time going over another famous speech made at West Point. It just may be the most relevant to current realities, not to mention one that we all need to hear again.

The date was May 12, 1962 and the speaker was retired General Douglas MacArthur. The Old Man was 82 years of age and his frail movements reflected it. But there was a spark of eloquence left in him; one that he fanned that day into a brilliant rhetorical flame.

When I watch Mr. Obama’s speech this Tuesday, it will be Big Mac’s speech that I use as the gold standard reference point. Here are some excerpts. The words speak for themselves:

Duty, Honor, Country: Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying points: to build courage when courage seems to fail; to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith; to create hope when hope becomes forlorn. Unhappily, I possess neither that eloquence of diction, that poetry of imagination, nor that brilliance of metaphor to tell you all that they mean.

The unbelievers will say they are but words, but a slogan, but a flamboyant phrase. Every pedant, every demagogue, every cynic, every hypocrite, every troublemaker, and, I am sorry to say, some others of an entirely different character, will try to downgrade them even to the extent of mockery and ridicule.

And through all this welter of change and development your mission remains fixed, determined, inviolable. It is to win our wars. Everything else in your professional career is but corollary to this vital dedication. All other public purpose, all other public projects, all other public needs, great or small, will find others for their accomplishments; but you are the ones who are trained to fight.

Yours is the profession of arms, the will to win, the sure knowledge that in war there is no substitute for victory, that if you lose, the Nation will be destroyed, that the very obsession of your public service must be Duty, Honor, Country.

The long gray line has never failed us. Were you to do so, a million ghosts in olive drab, in brown khaki, in blue and gray, would rise from their white crosses, thundering those magic words: Duty, Honor, Country.

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.

Setting The Record Straight On Social Security

August 13, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Congress, Democratic Party, George W. Bush, Healthcare, News media, Nixon Administration, Presidents, Republican Party, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

In this morning’s Washington Post, Paul Begala, one of the architects of Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign and later a major White House advisor, contributes an op-ed. In it he argues that, although supporters of an expansive health-care policy (single-payer or otherwise) may be thoroughly dissatisfied with whatever legislation ultimately comes out of the Senate and to President Obama’s desk, they’d be well advised to bite their tongues and support it. As an example he cites the original Social Security legislation of the New Deal, which was quite limited in scope:

No self-respecting liberal today would support Franklin Roosevelt’s original Social Security Act. It excluded agricultural workers — a huge part of the economy in 1935, and one in which Latinos have traditionally worked. It excluded domestic workers, which included countless African Americans and immigrants. It did not cover the self-employed, or state and local government employees, or railroad employees, or federal employees or employees of nonprofits. It didn’t even cover the clergy. FDR’s Social Security Act did not have benefits for dependents or survivors. It did not have a cost-of-living increase. If you became disabled and couldn’t work, you got nothing from Social Security.

If that version of Social Security were introduced today, progressives like me would call it cramped, parsimonious, mean-spirited and even racist. Perhaps it was all those things. But it was also a start. And for 74 years we have built on that start. We added more people to the winner’s circle: farm workers and domestic workers and government workers. We extended benefits to the children of working men and women who died. We granted benefits to the disabled. We mandated annual cost-of-living adjustments. And today Social Security is the bedrock of our progressive vision of the common good.

The phrase “our progressive vision” may be taken by some to suggest that the expansion of Social Secuirty was strictly the doing of Democrats, in which case the Post’s Ezra Klein wishes to correct that misconception:

The original Social Security legislation wasn’t “perhaps” a “cramped, parsimonious, mean-spirited and even racist” program. It simply was those things. But it was something else, too. A start. Over the next 50 years, it was built upon. But not only by Democrats. Some of the largest advances came when Republicans saw political opportunity in strengthening the entitlement. Begala implies that progressives eventually added cost-of-living increases to Social Security. In fact, it was Richard Nixon who signed that bill. Similarly, whether you like the structure of Medicare’s prescription drug benefit or not, it was a massive expansion of an entitlement program, and it was proposed and signed by George W. Bush.

After The “Beer Summit”

July 31, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, News media, Nixon in the News, Obama administration, Presidents, Richard Nixon | 3 Comments 

It is now a little over twenty-four hours since the eminent Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Sgt. James Crowley of the Cambridge (Mass.) Police Department sat down at a white lawn table on the South Lawn of the White House, joined by President Obama (with Vice President Biden acting as wingman, to broadly use a term of military and slacker lingo), in an effort to settle the differences that arose two weeks ago.

As most of the world knows – or at least that part of the world with access to cable and satellite TV – the incident that brought this meeting about occured on July 16 when Sgt. Crowley, answering a 911 report of a possible burglary, went to a house in Cambridge and found Prof. Gates in its foyer – quite naturally, since it was his own house. Gates, who had just struggled with a jammed front door (which was misinterpreted by a passerby who was the one who phoned 911), was in an irritated mood, and his conversation with the officer, when the latter asked for his identification, escalated to his arrest on a charge of disorderly conduct.

At first the incident was one for the inside pages of newspapers around the country and it took two days for all three network evening newscasts to run stories on it. But after extensive blogging and Twittering raised Prof. Gates’s arrest to the level of a national controversy, a reporter asked the President about it last week, at the very end of a press conference intended to focus exclusively on the health-care initiatives now in Congress. Since Obama is a onetime president of the Harvard Law Review who later taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago for an even dozen years, it would have seemed logical for him to reply that, given his friendship with Gates (and his even closer friendship with Gates’s legal advisor Charles Ogletree, his onetime professor at Harvard Law), it would be inappropriate for him to comment for the moment. Instead, he offered the opinion that "the Cambridge police" (ie, Sgt Crowley) had acted "stupidly" in bringing Gates downtown.

This provoked a firestorm of criticism from law-enforcement professionals around the country, not to mention regular citizens. Starting on July 23, when Obama made his remarks, the Pew Research Center began conducting a poll to determine the president’s current levels of popularity and support. It found that the whites polled, especially those from a blue-collar background, strongly disapproved of Obama’s statement on the Gates case, by a two-to-one margin. Indeed, the overall percent of those polled who approved of Obama’s performance dropped from 53 percent among those polled on July 23 and 24 to 46 percent on July 25, the day that Obama walked into White House Press Secretary Robert Gates’s briefing to say that his words could have been better "calibrated."

Shortly after Obama’s effort to clarify his remarks, the White House announced that he had invited Prof. Gates and Sgt. Crowley to come down to the White House and have a friendly beer – the post-Y2K version of smoking the peace pipe, presumably. Reporters clamored to know just what potent potables, as Alex Trebek would put it, were going to be on tap. At first the White House announced that Obama would have a Budweiser, then changed that to a Bud Light – a Chief Executive has to beware of those extra calories, y’know. It was also reported that Sgt. Crowley would order a Blue Moon.

As for Prof. Gates, at first it was suggested that he might have a beverage other than beer – after all, these tweedy academic types are hard to tear away from their sherry and white wine. But then it was learned that he, too, would order a beer – a Red Stripe.

These choices provoked a new controversy. Budweiser is now owned by the Belgian conglomerate that brews Stella Artois. Blue Moon is a Belgian-style beer made in Colorado by the Coors company, nowadays owned by the Canadian firm Molson. And Red Stripe, the quintessential Jamaican beer, is now the property of a British company. Not an American owned-and-operated brew in the bunch. So, at the last minute, Prof. Gates one-upped his companions by ordering Sam Adams instead – a rather fitting choice, since that beverage is named for the "firebrand of the Revolution" who was also a Boston native.(Vice President Biden, perhaps rather prudently, requested a non-alcoholic brew.)

After the beers were duly sipped, Sgt. Crowley informed the reporters that he and Gates had "agreed to disagree" (or, as the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank put it, were no longer "at lagerheads") and the situation seemed to have settled down, as the media moved on to the latest phenomenon of the Obama era, the "cash for clunkers" program.

But it’s hard not to look at that longshot of professor, policeman, President, and Veep sitting at that little white table and think that the Republic has come a long way from Martin Luther King Jr., Whitney Young, Roy Wilkins, and James Farmer meeting JFK and LBJ at the White House. In those days the issue of race in America was as serious as it still is now, but nobody cared much about what was in the glasses of those men (and one woman, Dr. Dorothy Height, the only one still with us) when they met.

But this time, the President’s attempt to "cool down" a situation that was a hot one, to the degree it was hot, mainly because of Gates’s response to a policeman’s polite questioning, was slightly ham-handed from start to finish. Many columnists with a conservative reputation have weighed in, but it’s worth noting that the Wall Street Journal’s Thomas Frank, as liberal a punditas there is in the Fourth Estate, hit the nail on the head:

Conservatives won this round in the culture wars, not merely because most of the facts broke their way, but because their grievance is one that a certain species of liberal never seems to grasp. Whether the issue is abortion, evolution or recycling, these liberal patricians are forever astonished to discover that the professions and institutions and attitudes that they revere are seen by others as arrogance and affectation.

The “elitism” narrative routinely blind-sides them, takes them by surprise again and again. There they are, feeling good about their solidarity with the coffee-growers of Guatemala, and then they find themselves on the receiving end of criticism from, say, the plumbers of Ohio.

The Gates incident was a trap that could not have been better crafted to ensnare President Barack Obama, who is himself a loyal son of academia’s most prestigious reaches, and to whom it was immediately obvious, even without benefit of the facts, that the Cambridge police “acted stupidly” in the situation.

Mr. Obama’s way of backing out of his gaffe was just as telling: He invited Mr. Gates and the policeman who arrested him to the White House for a beer, the beverage so often a gauge of a politician’s blue-collar bona fides. One symbolic gesture, hopefully, can exorcise another.

But one has to wonder if it’s as simple as that. As NewsMax.com noted this week, the Pew poll showed Obama with a lower approval number than Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon or George W. Bush had at this point in their presidencies – and Nixon was presiding over a country deeply divided and polarized, while Bush was a half-year past a bitterly disputed election. None of these three rode into office on the wave of adultation that Obama enjoyed. He’ll have to move rather more carefully, and choose his words with greater forethought, if he wants to avoid getting mired in more controversies like the Gates one.

Beirut Can Give Credit To Two

June 10, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Barack Obama, George W. Bush, International Affairs, Middle East | Leave a Comment 

Thomas Friedman believes that the defeat of Hezbollah and the empowerment of Lebanon’s Western backed coalition is a testament to Bush’s power politics and Obama’s persuasion:

While the Lebanese deserve 95 percent of the credit for this election, 5 percent goes to two U.S. presidents. As more than one Lebanese whispered to me: Without George Bush standing up to the Syrians in 2005 — and forcing them to get out of Lebanon after the Hariri killing — this free election would not have happened. Mr. Bush helped create the space. Power matters. Mr. Obama helped stir the hope. Words also matter.

The Original Decider

May 9, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Book Review, George W. Bush, News media, Nixon Administration, Nixon Center, Political Philosophy, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

From Michiko Kakutani’s review in yesterday’s New York Times of Presidential Command, the new book by the late Peter W. Rodman of the Nixon Center:

Mr. Rodman [argues] that Nixon, not Mr. Bush or Harry S. Truman, “deserves the title of the ‘decider,’ ” and that while the “exclusionary style of his management” led to the “demoralization and alienation of the rest of the government” — and for that reason should not be emulated — it “produced what was probably the most centralized, consistent and strategically coherent policy making of any modern presidency.”

Presidents Of The Twenty-First Century

April 4, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Entertainment, George W. Bush, Movies, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | 1 Comment 

Today in io9.com, the science-fiction blog which is part of the Gawker.com online group, Alasdair Wilkins takes a look at comic books, movies, science-fiction novels, and TV shows over the last half-century which have speculated on who might be sitting in the White House from 2001 until century’s end.

He begins with Lex Luthor. The real world had the saga of Bush vs. Gore, but in the sometimes tidier universe of DC Comics, the chrome-domed entrepeneur had little difficulty winning the Presidency in 2000. However, once in office, his popularity somewhat diminished with the public. Like his real-life counterpart, Luthor’s Administration faced many challenges and crises, but old Lex was inclined to let most of these sit on the back burner while he focused his energies on annihilating Superman. (Of course, many liberals would suggest that President Bush had a similar preoccupation with Saddam Hussein in his first term.)

After a couple of minor figures from the DC universe fill out Luthor’s term once Superman straightens things out, the next President in Wilkins’s chronology is the one figure who, so far, is actually the Chief Executive in real life: Barack Obama (who has been a character in a multitude of comics lately, joining forces with a host of superheroes from Spiderman on down to defeat various villains).

After Obama comes Arnold Schwarzegger, who, as Wilkins notes, showed up as President in The Simpsons Movie. (This raises the question, still unanswered in the two years since the film’s release: why did the film’s makers posit the Gubernator as President instead of his doppelganger from the TV show, Rainer Wolfcastle?)

Wilkins follows that with a list of Presidents that includes both fictional and real names. He points out that the short-lived CBS series Century City, set circa 2030, presented a United States over which Oprah Winfrey presided. (And, though he doesn’t mention it, an episode of The Boondocks, set in the present day, concluded with Oprah announcing her candidacy.) The three Zenon: Girl Of The 21st Century movies on the Disney Channel, set in 2049, portrayed an America run by Chelsea Clinton. (Hillary doesn’t show up in Wilkins’s chronology.)

During the 2080s the President is another African-American: Jim Briskin, from the late Fullerton resident Philip K. Dick’s 1966 novel The Crack In Space. (Dick, as his two biographies attest, was very interested in the Presidency, and especially in the 37th President: RN figures as “Ferris Fremont” in his Radio Free Albemuth.)

The chronology winds up in 2099 with Steve Rogers aka Captain America in charge, But never fear; as all regular viewers of Comedy Central know, just over 900 years afterwards, RN (or rather his head in a jar) will be Earth President, getting the planet through crises of varying magnitude. The Presidency of 2100 through 2999 awaits its chronicler.

The Gamble Deconstructed

March 31, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Book Review, George W. Bush, International Affairs, Iraq War | 1 Comment 

TNN’s Joshua Trevino wrote this review for Thomas Rick’s new book about the the final chapter of the Iraq War, The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008. What I found particular noteworthy was Trevino’s acknowledgment that though President Bush initially went full brace on a strategy that plunged us to failure, he showed un-reluctant and unflinching commitment to a strategy change that is now bearing success:

The most surprising — and least discussed — transitional figure in The Gamble is President George W. Bush. It’s no secret that the President was tightly bound to the persons and policies he chose to trust: a sometime virtue that became, in war, too often a flaw. In this light, his decision to support the surge over the record of his own leadership, the advice of his entire uniformed military leadership (excepting Petraeus himself), and his outgoing Secretary of Defense was a profound departure from expectations. Yet once he did shift course, he adhered to it with the same tenacity with which he pursued his previous strategy. As Ricks notes, it is certainly easy and even right to fault Bush for taking three years to get things right — but he was ahead of the actual leadership of the U.S. armed forces when he did. Ricks (who is, it should be noted, no Republican) also allows the reader a glimpse into the private conduct of the former President, who comes across as more than the incurious mouthpiece of popular media portrayals. “In these meetings [on Iraq strategy,]” Ricks reports one Army officer saying, “he is masterful — good political insights, good handle on the subject.” Among The Gamble’s many contributions to the history of this era must be a credit to George W. Bush, who got so many things wrong, but got this one big thing right.

Presidents And Autobiography

March 24, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, History, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

This morning Hillel Italie, the Associated Press’s man in the book world, takes a look at the genre of the Presidential memoir, in the wake of the deal former President George W. Bush made with Crown this month for his Decision Points.

Italie is usually a reliable reporter so it’s startling to come across this passage:

The planned structure of Bush’s memoir is unusual, but not the author’s expected generosity to himself. The presidential book has not only been distinguished by its lack of literary merit — Ulysses Grant excepted — but by the absence of any self-criticism beyond the most expected remorse, as in “My Life” and Bill Clinton’s already oft-expressed apology for his affair with Monica Lewinsky.

Memoirs are written for money, for revenge, for glory, for the first and perhaps last word. If we saw the world only through presidential eyes, the Great Depression would be Europe’s fault, not Herbert Hoover’s; liberals and other scoundrels were to blame for Richard Nixon’s fall; and James Buchanan was a great man worthy of the president who succeeded him — Abraham Lincoln.

It’s the first of these paragraphs that puzzles me. First of all, Ulysses S. Grant’s Personal Memoirs conclude with Appomattox; it’s not clear that he would have gone on to write about his much-maligned Presidency (which more recently has gotten higher marks from historians) had death not intervened. And his book, anyway, was far from the only such work by a President to win acclaim as well-written. Theodore Roosevelt’s autobiography was well-reviewed in its day and is still in print.

Granted, every Presidential autobiography from Truman to the present, with the possible exception of Jimmy Carter’s Keeping Faith (not a much-acclaimed volume) used “editorial assistance” to greater or lesser degrees. So far the word out of Dallas is that former President Bush is writing his book himself, and managed to complete over 30,000 words in the less than sixty days between his departure from office and signing the contract with Crown – a very creditable performance for any writer.

And, as every schoolchild knows, President Obama’s Dreams From My Father was written entirely by himself with a quill pen, in a log cabin outside Springfield, Illinois, with a hickory fire a-blazin’. A few days ago, Italie reported in another AP story that Obama is indeed contracted with Crown to write a book about his Presidency after he leaves office, though his compensation will not be limited to the $1.9 million advance he received from the company in 2005 for The Audacity Of Hope and two yet-unwritten books. It’ll be interesting to see if the book business will be sufficiently healthy by 2013 or 2017 that he can match Dubya’s $7 million, not to mention former President Clinton’s $12 million.

Night Of January 15th

March 19, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Media, Presidents | Leave a Comment 

Over the last 24 hours, the $7 million deal that former President George W. Bush signed with Crown Publishing for his book Decision Points, to appear in 2010, has been the talk of the book world. But today, another story of Presidents and publishing has been running a close second.

This morning, The Washington Times broke the news in print and online that a Senate financial disclosure report filed on Tuesday showed that President Obama, in the days before he took office, put together a half-million dollar deal, also with Crown.

A short history of Obama’s career as an author is in order. In 1995, a few years after he graduated from Harvard Law School, the future president published Dreams From My Father, a memoir for which he had contracted while still a student there. The volume, published by Random House subsidiary Times Books, sold just a few thousand copies in hardcover and paperback at the time, and soon went out of print.

In August 2004, just after his keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention, Obama contracted with Crown (another division of Random)  to reissue Dreams as a trade paperback on its Three Rivers Press imprint. This edition sold quite well, and in January 2005, not long after being sworn in as a Senator, Obama contracted with Crown again. For a $1.9 million advance, he agreed to write three books, one of them a children’s book.

The first book he completed under this contract was The Audacity Of Hope, which easily earned back the entire advance within less than a year of its publication in October 2006. However, Obama was still contracted for two more books, and before long his campaign schedule precluded work on the follow-ups to Audacity.

The solution that the President-elect and Crown reached to resolve this dilemma was finalized on January 15. According to the Times article, Obama will receive a $500,000 advance for a condensation/adaptation of Dreams From My Father for the young-adult market. The publisher retains half of the advance because it, rather than Obama, is doing the editorial work.

The contract also specifies that Obama, upon completing his term of office in 2013 or 2017, will write the third book he promised under the original contract. The nature of this book is not specified. If Obama wrote his Presidential memoirs as this title, Crown would have scored one of the biggest bargains in publishing history. But it seems more likely that this book would be about another subject, perhaps something along the lines of Bill Clinton’s Giving: How Each Of Us Can Change The World.

Both Obama and Bush used Bob Barnett of Washington’s Williams & Connolly law firm to put their deals together. For about a decade now, Barnett has been the go-to figure whenever major political figures get ready to put fingers to keyboard (or arrange for editorial “assistance” along those lines). He reportedly charges $950 an hour for his services, and when this is subtracted from your average multimillion-dollar advance, it’s a considerable bargain compared to the customary 15% commission deducted by literary agents from advances and royalties.

For Chapter 7, I’ll Need, Oh, 12 Years

March 19, 2009 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Book Review, George W. Bush, Richard Nixon | 3 Comments 

Robert Stein, a distinguished figure in U.S. publishing circles, notes the correlation between the methodology of President Bush’s upcoming memoir, Decision Points, which will study 12 epochal moments in his Presidency, and Richard Nixon’s first book, Six Crises. Predicting that W. will use the format to evade unpleasant subjects such as the aftermath of his decision to invade Iraq, Stein writes:

Nixon’s “Six Crises” similarly stopped short of Watergate by only covering events until 1960.

Six Crises stopped short of Watergate because it was published in 1962. It also stopped short of Vietnam and the breakup of the Beatles. Watergate got a third of the space in RN’s post-Presidential memoir.

Featured Articles — March 13, 2009

March 13, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under George W. Bush, Presidents | Leave a Comment 

Interesting Takes From Home And Abroad:

Obama’s ‘Science’ Fiction By Charles Krauthammer,  The Washington Post
Last week, the White House invited me to a signing ceremony overturning the Bush (43) executive order on stem cell research. I assume this was because I have long argued in these columns and during my five years on the President’s Council on Bioethics that, contrary to the Bush policy, federal funding should be extended to research on embryonic stem cell lines derived from discarded embryos in fertility clinics.

Steele ‘choice’ gaffe sparks GOP revolt By Ben Smith, The Politico
Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele’s series of gaffes turned into something more serious Thursday, as leaders of a pillar of the GOP—the anti-abortion movement—shifted into open revolt over comments in an interview with the men’s magazine GQ.

How to Surge the Taliban By Max Boot, Fred Kagan and Kim Kagan, The New York Times
These were the parting words to us from Brig. Gen. Sher Muhammad Zazai, commander of the 205th Corps of the Afghan National Army in Kandahar. He was echoing the sentiments of a group of village elders we had met days before in Khost Province, who assured us that they would never allow the Taliban to come back.

Quit blaming the market’s collapse on Obama. By Jonathan Chait, The New Republic
The one conservative talking point that has gotten the most traction since Barack Obama won the election is that he’s killing the stock market with his big-government agenda. Conservatives pundits started saying this in November, and mainstream news implies it constantly.

Pakistan Must Be Obama’s Leading Foreign Priority By Mort Kondracke, Roll Call
When the Obama administration settles on its “AfPak” strategy – that is, Afghanistan and Pakistan – top priority has to go to Pakistan. It’s the most dangerous place on earth: nuclear-armed, menaced by terrorists, economically in crisis and mired in political turmoil.

What is Nato for? by Serge Halimi, Le Monde Diplomatique
Nicolas Sarkozy wanted his presidency to mark a break with the “French social model”, recently restored to its former glory by the collapse of American-style financial capitalism. So did he determine to do away with another old French tradition, national independence?

Of Reset Buttons And DVDs

March 9, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Barack Obama, George W. Bush | Leave a Comment 

Michael Totten points out that President Bush may have been unmovable but his class and sophistication in diplomacy went a long way:

Barack Obama campaigned as the worldly and sophisticated diplomacy candidate after President George W. Bush was castigated for “alienating” our allies. I wasn’t happy about strained ties between the U.S., France, and Germany during the Bush administration’s first term, but those relationships were repaired when the congenitally anti-American French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder were replaced by Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel. Chirac and Schroeder weren’t just opposed to American policies, which of course was their right. They campaigned on anti-American platforms. (Imagine an American candidate for president bashing the French on the stump.) President Bush had his work cut out for him with those two, and it said something about who was mostly at fault when voters in France and Germany corrected the problem before he left office.

Nixon The Communicator

February 28, 2009 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Democratic Party, Election 2008, Featured Articles, George W. Bush, History, International Affairs, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History, Watergate | 1 Comment 

The recently released C-SPAN 2009 Historians Presidential Leadership Survey is an interesting, if predictable, snapshot of scholarly opinion about past chief executives. Honest Abe towers over the list, his position secured by history and his frequent postmortem appearances during the 2008 campaign and beyond. The rail-splitter has never been hotter. Look soon for some imagery morphing Lincoln and Che Guevera on a t-shirt near you.

Surprisingly – at least a bit – is that George Washington knocked Franklin Roosevelt out of the number two spot. Apparently the father of our country still trumps the father of modern big government.

Go figure.

Of course, recent retiree George W. Bush ranks in the lower tier – just above my ancestor (really) Millard Fillmore. But in fairness, a lot of modern historians have to actually die off before Mr. 43 will get much of a real without-the-venom look.

Richard M. Nixon ranks 27th on the list. Jimmy Carter ranks 25th. WhatEVER.

Clearly without Watergate, as well as every actual day of the Carter administration, Nixon would rank much higher. However, that’s asking a lot – even of historians. To so many, Nixon without Watergate would be like Kennedy without the Cuban Missile Crisis. In other words, the particular presidency defined by the crucial episode. However, it may just be that Nixon without Watergate would be more like JFK without the Bay of Pigs, or drugs and bimbos, but I am not going to win that one in most arenas, I know.

Jack Kennedy, by the way, moved from number eight to six in the recent survey. But again in all fairness – as with Lincoln, he did rise from the dead to campaign for candidate Obama.

These surveys analyze a president’s leadership in matters foreign and domestic. But I wonder what a ranking would look like if we tried to find out who the best communicators in the White House were?

It is quite clear that the public at large is enamored of our new president’s communication skills and, in fact, they are quite impressive. He is a gifted speaker and he knows how to use this ability very well. His predecessor was, by all accounts, not as accomplished as a speaker. It is like JFK following Ike. Both the great general and George W. had more than a few syntax challenges.

The list of presidents known as highly effective communicators usually includes Lincoln, FDR, Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan. Clearly that’s a solid list. Most would not instinctively put Richard Nixon on such a list, but he was in many ways one of the most effective communicators ever to rise to the presidency.

Nixon cadence may not now be recalled as Rooseveltian, nor do many remember his eloquence as matching that of JFK/Sorenson, but he was an absolute master of the spoken word in a particular method that is often overlooked – the extemporaneous speech.

By this I mean he spoke very often without notes – or just a few notes – though with extraordinarily thorough preparation. He used a written text for major remarks and addresses (acceptance speeches, inaugurals, Oval Office remarks, etc.). However, he never used a teleprompter – often to the chagrin of younger staffers and others (such as Billy Graham) who constantly encouraged its use.

It would be hard to imagine a leader today saying no to the teleprompter. It has become the well-traveled rhetorical road. Nixon stuck with the road less traveled.

Richard Nixon preferred to make a thoroughly detailed outline and then deliver the remarks sans notes. His famous “Checkers Speech,” which I have written about before, is a classic example of this. And throughout his career he used the same method – working out his thoughts on yellow legal pads and much of the time delivering them in a conversational manner. The concepts were fixed in his mind, but the language was that of the moment.

Some confuse extemporaneous with impromptu – but they are not the same. The former describes a method of delivering something very well prepared. The latter is “off the top” of the head, and Mr. Nixon despised this. In fact, history tells us that he really only did this once – when he gave his concession remarks after losing the California governor’s race in 1962. And we all know that didn’t turn out very well.

The key to Mr. Nixon’s ability to speak so effectively without notes was, I believe, his love for reading. He lived out what Francis Bacon famously said roughly 400 years ago: “Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.”

In his book In the Arena: A Memoir of Victory, Defeat, and Renewal, Nixon wrote about reading and the presidency:

A president must spend many hours a day reading for work. He should not forget to read for pleasure. Theodore Roosevelt, the most prolific reader of all American presidents, once said he would never go anywhere ‘not even to the jungles of Africa,’ without books to read. On safari he always had a book or two packed in his saddlebag or pocket so that no opportunity for reading would be lost. I did the same thing in the jungles of Washington.

It is considered clichéd these days to say, “leaders are readers” – but it’s still true. And great leaders tend to be effective speakers – the kind of people who read before they speak, not just while the teleprompter is on.

The Ginsburg Slam, Or Meeting The Media

February 4, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, News media, Obama administration, Obama family, Presidents, Public Opinion, Richard Nixon, TV News Personalities, U.S. History, economy | Leave a Comment 

Eleven years and three days ago, when the nation was ten days into the trauma that was l’affaire [Monica] Lewinsky (or Lewinski, as the late Richard Grenier initially spelled her name in his Washington Times column), the personal attorney of the errant intern, William H. Ginsburg, came to the nation’s capital and introduced a new term into the language of broadcasting.

All four major broadcast networks and CNN frantically wanted to get Mr. Ginsburg on the air,  with whatever revelations he might have about his client’s past deeds or future plans.  And he happily obliged them.  Between 9 am and noon EST that first of February 1998, he appeared on Fox News Sunday, Meet The Press, Face The Nation, This Week, and Late Edition — not revealing very much, but clearly enjoying the attention he’d garnered for being the keeper of the secrets of the minx sphinx in the Watergate.

The punditocracy was duly impressed, and “a full Ginsburg” afterwards became the chosen phrase to describe one who had managed to appear on the five Sunday morning talking-heads shows on the same day.  For more than two years, Mr. Ginsburg remained the only person who had accomplished this.

Then in July 2000, future Vice President Dick Cheney, shortly after his selection by then-Texas Governor George W. Bush, became the second to do so.  Four years passed, and then a few weeks before Election Day 2004, Democratic vice-presidential nominee John Edwards blessed the airwaves with five different views of the most famous political coiffure before the Age of Blagojevich.

In September of the following year, Homeland Security Secretary Michael  Chertoff managed the elusive full Ginsburg, and in September 2007, Sen. Hillary Clinton, in her final months as President-presumptive, did the same — the only woman to undertake the feat so far, and the last person to date.

In this brave new world, the rules have changed a little.  Last month Late Edition was replaced on CNN by State Of The Union, which concludes one hour after its predecessor did, at 1 pm. Therefore, a full Ginsburg, from now on, will not quite be the heroic achievement it once was.

And another fact which has diminished the luster of the full Ginsburg was that, until now, no sitting President had ever undertaken anything resembling it.  But a variation on the old full G – which I’ll call the Ginsburg Slam – has proven to be yet another in the ever-growing list of the dubious achievements of the Obama Administration.

A little over forty-eight hours ago, as former Senator Tom Daschle sweated before a Senate committee not quite satisfied with his account of how he failed to pay taxes in timely fashion for the services of a limo and driver, the White House was still assuring one and all that no matter what, the President was solidly behind his nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services.

But at 11 am yesterday morning Nancy Killefer, Obama’s choice for the newly-minted post of “Chief Performance Officer,” announced that she was removing herself from consideration because of her own tax troubles, and about two hours later Daschle did the same.  The President and his advisors decided that damage control was the order of the day.  How to handle it?

It would seem that the most logical way to approach the problem would be for President Obama to simply stroll into the White House press room after arranging for a few minutes of airtime, inform the assembled reporters and the nation that he regretted that the decisions of Killefer and Daschle had to be made, wish them well, take no questions, and return to the Oval Office and more consequential tasks.

Instead, he arranged for face-to-face conversations with ABC’s Charles Gibson, CBS’s Katie Couric, NBC’s Brian Williams, CNN’s Anderson Cooper (take that, Lou) and Fox’s Chris Wallace, informing each of them by turn, and at some length, that he had Screwed Up and was Really Sorry.  The mea culpas, taken together (or indeed separately), do not suggest Camelot redux.  After all, when John F. Kennedy botched the Bay of Pigs invasion, he promptly took the blame for it — once – and was rewarded with the highest approval rating achieved by a President before George W. Bush topped him in the weeks after 9/11.

Instead, Obama’s use of several hours of President Time (time that could be employed to work on the economy, or terrorism, or finally choosing a pup for Malia and Sasha, or something) to repeat his regrets five times over and ask for forgiveness isn’t an approach calculated to impress our adversaries abroad, whether Hugo Chavez or Kim Jong Il or a nameless thug in western Iraq, that the Chief Executive is brimming with determination or resolve.   Rather, it brings to mind some of the unhappier moments of the Carter era.  You have to wonder what’s going to happen when the killer rabbit shows up.

The way in which the Daschle debacle was handled suggests that President Obama has a preoccupation with winning over the media that makes Lyndon Johnson’s agonies over each new Scotty Reston or Walter Lippmann column look almost, well, Nixonian.  It’s 180 degrees removed from the approach of George W. Bush, who may well be concerned now with what the historians will write but, when in office, reasoned that if he did the occasional sit-down with Brit Hume or Tony Snow or Tim Russert, then everything else would take care of itself.

One has to wonder what the future has in store.  Will MTV’s Kurt Loder or the correspondent from Disney Radio be added to the list of people to whom the President must speak whenever a bill fails to pass, or whenever he knocks over an unwary staffer on the basketball court?  It’s time for some realistic thinking about media relations in the West Wing.

Nixon/Vietnam, Bush/Iraq, Obama/Afghanistan?

January 26, 2009 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Afghanistan, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Iraq War, Richard Nixon, Vietnam | 1 Comment 

A site called Democrats.com, while still displaying an “impeach Bush and Cheney” feature, already sounds as though it could be persuaded under certain circumstances to update the names. Writes David Lindorff:

Based upon the ludicrous premise that Afghanistan is the biggest military threat facing the US today, our new president, Barack Obama,is preparing to send another 30,000 US troops to that country,effectively doubling the number of American soldiers already there.Inevitably, this will mean more killing and more anger towards Americaamong the local population.

Al Qaeda members, meanwhile, have largely moved away from the battle to Pakistan, a much larger nation to the east of Afghanistan, whichraises the question: What the hell are we trying to do in Afghanistan?

Let’s get it straight. No Afghan has ever, to my knowledge, harmed the United States. I’m not sure most Afghanis, if they could scrape together the money to go to the US, would even know where this country is. (Okay, most Americans probably couldn’t tell you where Afghanistan is, either, but at least we have libraries, and computers, which the geographically challenged can turn to in order to locate the place.That’s not true for the people of Afghanistan, who have neither.)

For eight years, America has been attacking and destroying a country that is about as dangerous a threat to America as is Mali, or Haiti, or the Comoros Islands. If Obama follows through and doubles the number of troops fighting over there, it will just make this whole policy twice as stupid.

The Afghanistan commitment must be watched carefully. The U.S. military is right to say that more resources are needed to accomplish the mission it has been given by civilian commanders. The question then becomes what Obama’s mission will be. Is he acting on his campaign rhetoric, when he accused Sen. McCain of being unwilling to follow Osama bin Laden to his cave? Does he want to keep a hawkish anchor to rightward to cover his big-government moves at home? Is he listening too much to the military’s demands for more resources and thus risking letting the tactics drive the strategy?

Lindorff obviously minimizes the remaining dangers to U.S. security interests lurking in those forbidding mountains. Wherever a potent al-Qaeda and its enablers are, there must we be (though the danger of destablizing Pakistan also looms, yet another “another Vietnam” for Obama). But for the sake of the tens of thousands of young Americans preparing to redeploy as well as Afghanistan’s people, this is a time for an inexperienced leader to remember how the same dangerous land broke the mighty British and Soviets.

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