Russians Reject Our Reset Button In Favor Of Theirs

October 16, 2009 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under Book Review, Cold War, History, U.S. History, Vice President Biden | 2 Comments 

U. S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton got a lesson in geopolitics this past week. It may be best described by comparing the now-all-rage reset button metaphor to that gizmo put out by office supply giant, Staples – yes, that red button that when pushed says, “That was easy!”

From the moment the use of the term “reset” as a synonym for do-over, start-over, or make-over, entered the political vocabulary – inserted by none other than that wonderful wordsmith, Vice President Joe Biden – it has been applied foremost to our relationship with Russia. But as a recent, likely very reluctantly chosen, headline in the Washington Post indicated, a reset button can often create an error message.

“Russia Not Budging on Iran Sanctions: Clinton Unable to Sway Counterpart,” was how the largely pro-administration paper put it.

This past week, while my wife and I were enjoying a few days in Maine, she went shopping for things for the grandkids and I, as is my very predictable pattern, gravitated toward the local bookstore, this one a newly constructed establishment in Kennebunkport. Among my catch for the day was an interesting and well-written work by Nicholas Thompson, who has, in fact, written for the Washington Post, about two men who greatly influenced U.S. policy during The Cold War – George Kennan and Paul Nitze. The author is actually the grandson of the latter. The Hawk and the Dove: Paul Nitze, George Kennan, and the History of the Cold War, is a great read describing two giants who maintained an uneasy friendship, while usually working on opposite sides of the foreign affairs street.

Early in the book, there is a passage about a memo written by George Kennan in May of 1945. The diplomat was living and working in Moscow when the war in Europe ended. Most Cold War buffs, such as myself, know very well of Kennan’s memo writing skills. His February 1946 “long telegram” is considered to be one of the seminal documents of the period, in which he described the Soviet Union’s “neurotic view of world affairs” and the “instinctive Russian sense of insecurity,” not to mention their, “secretiveness and conspiracy.”

But the memo written roughly 10 months earlier, though largely overlooked at the time due to his relatively insignificant role as “nothing more than a highly competent clerk,” is one that all the reset button aficionados in the State Department and elsewhere should revisit right about now.

Kennan began with the quaint, “Peace, like spring, has finally come to Russia,” but the reader is quickly confronted with the fact that the change of seasons was “far more noticeable on the Moscow scene.” And in language similar to what he would use in 1946, he bluntly acknowledged that Joseph Stalin knew just what buttons to push to get the United States to do his bidding. The Russians were already manipulating reality and events and had been all along. Kennan wrote: “They observe with gratification that in this way a great people can be led, like an ever-hopeful suitor, to perform one act of ingratiation after the other without ever reaching the goal which would satisfy its ardor and allay its generosity.”

In case some haven’t noticed, all this talk about the United States pushing the reset button is meaningless because the Russians have long since pushed theirs. And it took them back about 65 years.

Jesus told some of his disciples of the need to be at times “wise as serpents and harmless as doves.” This kind of clear-headed approach balances good intentions with a realistic view of the fact that others may not be operating from similar motives. You can almost see the image of Gorbachev rolling his eyes about now, as he stood next to Ronald Reagan again and again and heard that phrase, “Trust, but verify.”

By the way, is it just me or has anyone else actually tried to reboot a computer to fix a problem only to have the error right there again on the screen when the machine came back on?

Political reset buttons are, of course, pure contrivance. What some are really longing for is to erase the past eight years – or the past 50. Let’s all go back to August of 2001, or December of 1989, or July of 1941 – wouldn’t that be cool? Sure. It also, though – and please get this – can’t happen. To even try to do so is like trying to glean public policy philosophy from the script of Napoleon Dynamite:

Uncle Rico: Kip, I reckon… you know a lot about… cyberspace? You ever come across anything… like time travel?
Kip: Easy, I’ve already looked into it for myself.
Uncle Rico: Right on… right on.

Many these days are betting the future on the fact that the leaders of Russia, Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela will approach global politics with the same level wisdom as those serving on the Nobel Peace Prize committee (did they meet in Amsterdam this year?). Good luck with that. Go ahead and press all the reset buttons you can find or create. But in the end, let’s hope that someone, somewhere has kept a paper copy of the map back to reality, because it will certainly be needed.

An aging and seriously ill Franklin Roosevelt gave the store away to Mr. Stalin and company at Yalta. His inexperienced successor, Mr. Truman, didn’t do much better at Potsdam. But of course, they were dealing with a Soviet dictator and we are dealing with Vladimir Putin. Putin is nothing like Stalin, right?

Of course he’s not. Putin is taller and looks better without his shirt (possibly channeling his inner-Mussolini). Anyone knows that.

Actually, Mr. Putin has more in common with the pock-faced “man of steel” than most people care to notice. He is driven by power and operates as his own Lavrentiy Beria. The guy is one dangerous dude.

It took a glorified clerk and a recently-rebooted-out-of-office politician to remind the world that danger was the default human experience. Kennan wrote his telegrams, read by insiders, and a man named Winston Churchill gave a speech about “the sinews of peace” and that ominous “iron curtain,” heard by the world.

Let’s hope that there are clerks somewhere in our camp writing about reality and that their warnings will be noticed. Let’s also pray that there will be voices crying in a wilderness disguised as never-never land, voices that will refuse to be silenced. The message of danger is never a comfortable one to deliver or receive, but without it we may find ourselves with no real comfort zone at all.

I say let’s forget about this whole reset button nonsense. Frankly, what some in Washington should actually be concerned about is an eject button. It is shaped like a lever and every voting booth in the country will be equipped with one over the next few Novembers.

Feelings, Nothing More Than Feelings

May 29, 2009 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Featured Articles, History, Obama administration, Political Philosophy, Presidents, Supreme Court, U.S. History, Vice President Biden | 1 Comment 

Empathy is all the rage these days. It’s the hot new word that some would like to become the transcendent Zeitgeist. It’s all about being inside the skin of others, feeling their pain, and rendering judgment accordingly. The nation is a big emergency room, people are bleeding, limbs are falling off, as are the wheels of society, this is no time for textbook medicine, no time for looking at the flight instruments – let your gut guide you.

Crash and burn.

Empathy, by definition, can only be felt and expressed by someone with a common life database. It’s very different from sympathy. While some would suggest that the best – and to them, the only – way to really bring about a vision of social justice, is for those making vital decisions and pronouncements to be marinated in empathy, history tells us that great strides have been made without it.

It was just regular old, vanilla, garden-variety, sympathy that worked for Lincoln. He couldn’t empathize with slaves, because he never had to live that way. Sympathy feels for the plight of another, but not necessarily by having “been there.”

As a minister, for years I could sympathize and show compassion to congregants who had lost a parent, but until I lost my mother in 2002, I really couldn’t empathize. Before her death, I could say: “I am so sorry for your loss, I want to do my best to provide comfort to you.” Since her passing it is now: “I am so sorry for your loss. I know exactly how you feel. I lost my mom a few years ago and it still hurts.”

So, should I limit my ministry expressions to cases where I actually understand stuff because I have gone through it? When I minister to someone who has experienced pain I have not known, am I somehow ill equipped?

Better – should I be in my job only because I have had the requisite experiences that make me empathetic to a wide-variety of individuals? Or is it OK to reach out, even if it is just plain old empathy-deficient and second-rate sympathy that I can offer?

To make empathy the litmus test – and that is what is happening right now, it trumps everything – is to render all else not nearly as important. But empathy is by definition a narrow focus and there is no guarantee that decisions guided predominately by it are right. What happens, for example, when the cries of those one empathizes with because of certain commonalities clash with the rights of those who don’t elicit or even deserve empathy?

What we have here is a prescription for a trend in the legal system of our nation to gain virtually unstoppable momentum en route to becoming the new national orthodoxy. And it has all been talked about before – a long time ago. Many now look back on the days of the New Deal and Franklin Roosevelt’s government-by-experimentation as a golden example of what should be done now. He talked much about the Constitution of the United States being a “living” document.

That’s code. In my world – that of theology and scripture – the same thing has been used for a long time to suggest that you can’t really take a lot of the Bible literally, that it is always subject to interpretation in light of the times. But understanding historical context, intent of authors, etc., is vital.

To find out what something means; first figure out what it meant.

When you find out what something meant, and, well, the nation doesn’t like what it means today, there is one remedy – change the Constitution via amendment. This is a process designed to be ugly, messy, political, and deliberately slow – with millions of minds working on it – not just nine. To short cut that pathway is not empathy, or even sympathy; it’s pathetic.

When you go back and read the Federalist Papers, Common Sense, and other materials from our foundational era, you get the sense that those guys would have a hard time making it to the political big-time now. You see, they would probably begin a spoken thought with: “Here’s what I think” – or, “I think this.” Eyes would incessantly roll to that in our day when everyone knows you start such a sentence with: “Here’s what I feel.”

It’s about feelings, nothing more than feelings.

Speaking of that cool New Deal period, in many ways there is another ghost haunting the White House these days, beyond that of Mr. Roosevelt (who also couldn’t really empathize with the poor, but alas, he did sympathize). The spirit of “Friendly” Henry A. Wallace seems to be alive and well – too bad for America.

Wallace was Roosevelt’s second vice president, serving from 1941 to 1945, and every American should be thankful that our 32nd chief executive dumped him in favor of Harry Truman for the 1944 election. Henry was one strange guy, and had he been VP when FDR died, we would have had a real lunatic-in-chief running the store.

Try to imagine a combination of Joe Biden, Deepak Chopra, Jerry Brown, with a dash of Ralph Nader.

In 1936, while Mr. Roosevelt was running for reelection and contemplating his first new term action – to change/pack the Supreme Court – Wallace was his Secretary of Agriculture. Henry wrote a book that year about the constitution, and it was reviewed in the July 4, 1936 issue of Newsweek, with a picture of him on the cover, and the words: “Secretary Wallace Warns the Court.”

The article is very revealing and has a ripped-from-today’s-headlines feel. Frankly, Mr. Wallace was all about the empathy. Among the things the article about the-man-who-could-have-been-president said were that he insisted: “It (the court) can, by relying on one set of precedents rather than another, shut its eyes to fundamental economic and social trends. It can do this, but it will be at the cost of the faith of the people and ultimately at the cost, I fear, of the court itself.”

Wallace clearly, according to the Newsweek story, believed that “a broadly interpreted Constitution” would yield “ample room for the still-distant development” of what he loved to refer to as his “cooperative society.” His vision was for “a national commonwealth rid of competition and based on cooperative production, marketing, and consumption.”

In other words, the guy was all about an empathetic interpretation of the Constitution.

Poor Henry Wallace. He was born out of due time. Like Eugene V. Debs and Norman Thomas (grandfather of current Newsweek man Evan Thomas, of the now infamous “We’re All Socialists Now” cover), the dreamer who served as Vice President of the United States for four years never lived to see his fantasies go mainstream. He’d sure be having fun today.

Wallace was dumped, largely because some strange and embarrassing letters were floating around – stuff he had written to a guy named Nicholas Constantin Roerich, a self-styled Russian mystic. The correspondence was sappy and scary with thoughts like:

“My Dear Guru: The search, whether it be for the lost world of Masonry or the Holy Chalice or the potentialities or the age to come is the one supremely worthwhile in objective. All else is Karmic duty. Here is life.”

It took me a few readings of that to figure out what the guy meant, but I finally deciphered it. He was simply saying:

“It’s the empathy, stupid.”

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.

The President At Notre Dame

May 16, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, California politics, Congress, Culture, Democratic Party, Domestic issues, Election 2008, Lifestyle, Media, Obama administration, Political Philosophy, Presidents, Public Opinion, Religion, Republican Party, Supreme Court, Vice President Biden, economy, education | 1 Comment 

Tomorrow President Obama will receive an honorary degree at the University of Notre Dame, the nation’s quintessential Catholic institution of higher learning, and will deliver an address to the assembled graduates. The invitation extended by the school’s president has stirred considerable controversy (and plenty of vocal protests) because of the President’s espousal of the pro-choice viewpoint on abortion throughout his career. (It has been noted here and there that other pro-choice politicians like New York’s onetime Governor Mario Cuomo and the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan appeared at previous Notre Dame commencements without much incident. But it may have helped that they were lifelong Catholics, unlike Obama.)

The Chief Executive’s appearance tomorrow is an opportunity for him to extend a conciliatory hand to the large number of Americans who, whether or not they voted for him in November, are not supporters of some of the radical programs being espoused by a considerable number of Democratic-affiliated groups, such as an expansion of legal abortion, decriminalization of marijuana and other drugs, and gay marriage.

It seems to become more evident by the month that when voters sought “change” in voting for Obama and Vice President Biden last month, a substantial percentage of them were mainly concerned with the economy, health care, and perhaps increased opportunity of education, and were not that keen on the other aspects of “change” as defined in the agendas of MoveOn.org or other groups. This would especially apply to voters in the states surrounding the Deep South, large portions of the Catholic electorate, and churchgoing African-American voters nationwide.

In California, the voters in the latter group helped Obama carry the state, but at the same time provided the margin that passed Proposition 8 which reversed the California Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage. And it turns out that on abortion, the percentage of voters supporting Roe vs. Wade and the pro-choice line, after peaking during the Clinton years, has steadily been declining, to the point that this week, a Gallup poll revealed that a bare majority of those whose opinion was sampled – 51% – described themselves as “pro-life.”

This strongly indicates that a considerable number of voters – perhaps poised on becoming the majority – would not be looking forward to Al Franken taking his seat in the Senate and locking in a (theoretically) filibuster-proof majority that would then fulfill all the left’s fondest dreams in the social arena.

The events of the last few weeks involving Miss California USA, Carrie Prejean, might prove a harbinger of things to come. A few weeks ago, during the Miss USA pageant, Ms. Prejean, educated at Christian schools, was asked by the online gossip columnist Perez Hilton, one of the pageant’s judges, what her opinion was of gay marriage. The contestant replied that her own view was that marriage could only exist between a man and woman – which is still officially the view of Congress, as expressed in the Defense of Marriage Act, passed by a majority of both parties and signed by President Clinton a decade ago.

Hilton (followed by an avalanche of bloggers and left-leaning pundits) subjected Ms. Prejean to ridicule. But instant polls soon made it clear that most Americans supported her right to express her opinion, and even Gavin Newsom, the San Francisco mayor who spearheaded the legalization of same-sex unions in his city, acknowledged her right to free speech.

Ms. Prejean was then ridiculed as a hypocrite, after some rather mild and fairly tasteful photos of her in an unclad state appeared online. But Donald Trump, owner of the Miss USA pageant, rejected pressure to strip her of her crown, and so in recent days the beauty queen has managed to largely prevail in the court of public opinion.

The way this particular controversy has played out has not been conveniently timed for the supporters of same-sex marriage. As I noted last week in my post “Gay Marriage At The Crossroads,”  the District of Columbia city council just voted to recognize such unions as performed in other states. Under the Home Rule Bill, Congress has a right to challenge this decision – and GOP lawmakers have made it clear that they will pursue this option, which means that in a matter of months each member of Congress will have to vote yes or no on this question.

The issues of abortion, gay marriage, and narcotics delegalization will also be prominent when the President selects a nominee to replace Justice David Souter on the Supreme Court. It seems less and less likely that any thoroughly liberal, MoveOn-approved choice would automatically sail through the Senate.

So I think that the best approach for the President tomorrow is not to mouth a series of platitudes predicated on the idea that his listeners (or the American public in general) will automatically accept all of his positions, but to acknowledge that there are differences of opinion and to express a willingness to work within the Constitution to achieve a consensus that will bridge these differences. If he does that, and follows through, he may considerably improve the chances of his party maintaining control of Congress in 2010. If he pursues a partisan path, however, the GOP – perhaps as early as the Virginia election this year – could be on the comeback trail.

Relax — You Got The Gig

April 23, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Vice President Biden | Leave a Comment 

The Big Issue is a London-based street paper that has attracted some attention thanks to an interview in the Scottish edition with former Opposition Leader and current British Council Chairman Neil Kinnock.

Joe Biden’s 1988 presidential bid was derailed when he was caught plagiarizing one of Lord Kinnock’s speeches, and the two have been friends ever since.

Biden predicted Obama – “a genius” – would win the Democrats’ nomination as far back as October 2007, according to his old friend Neil Kinnock.

Kinnock told The Big Issue in Scotland about a conversation in Washington D.C. when Biden was still in the Presidential race. “I remember speaking to Joe and him saying it was going to be Barack Obama up against John McCain. He said: “You can put money on it – Obama’s a genius.” 

“I said: “What kind of genius? Like who?” He said: “Well, there isn’t one person I could compare him to, but he’s like a cross between Denzel Washington and Franklin Roosevelt.”

DSPQ

March 13, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Double Standard Paranoia Quotient, Vice President Biden | Leave a Comment 

As reported today on the “Politics Nation” blog at real realclearpolitics.com, Vice President Biden joined some of his former congressional colleagues “to trumpet funding for passenger rail in the stimulus funding.”  The Veep claims to be among the top five Amtrak riders of all time.

So comfortable with the group was Biden that he was heard using the f-word a little too close to the open mic as he greeted them. Of course, his predecessor was caught doing the same, but in a more negative context.