If I could poll Congress...

I wish I had the means to get every senator and House representative to answer this question anonymously:

If you were granted the power to personally appoint the next President, but it had to be a member of the party opposing your own, whom would you pick?

I wonder how many would pick the person they thought would be best for the country; whether some would pick someone they hoped would fail, but not so catastrophically as to destroy the country -- and what in fact those choices even mean. Someone of sincere ideological conviction would have to hope that his or her pick "failed" in some senses, i.e. in getting preferred policies enacted, while succeeding in others, perhaps mainly on the foreign policy front. 

Though I'm not in Congress, I have a preferred Republican, but my choice is a kind of cheat: Michael Bloomberg, a genuine RINO. Beyond that, I'm kind of clueless.  Huntsman seems able and sane, but I honestly probably just vacuumed that impression up from Fallows.  Bush Sr., I guess, is a little old for the job.

P.S. I wonder how many Republicans would choose Barack Obama.

Son of Bush Sr., cont.

Philip Stephens nicely captures a paradox in Obama's choice of well-established figures for his foreign policy team:

Mr Obama’s choice of foreign policy heavyweights is significant for its ambition rather than its caution. If he really does want to recast America’s relationship with the world, surrounding himself with seasoned players will make the task easier rather than harder. Why would a president who wanted to change things put the task in the hands of inexperienced acolytes?

To get there, however, I argued in today's FT that Stephens sets up a false dichotomy between change and continuity in U.S. foreign policy:

With regard to policy, Mr Obama has long signalled his admiration for the coalition-building skills and multilateralism of George Bush Sr. He has always framed his call for revitalised diplomacy and reinvestment in the tools of soft power as a restoration of the pre-George W. Bush foreign policy consensus, retooled to tackle urgent challenges such as global warming, nuclear weapons containment, and the murderous fury bred by widespread poverty.

Son of Bush Sr.? Obama prepares for state-croft

Some weeks ago, Obama let it be known that he admired the way foreign policy was conducted during the administration of George Bush, Sr. Today, the Wall Street Journal notes that "many of the Republicans emerging as potential members of the Obama administration have professional and ideological ties to Brent Scowcroft" -- Bush Sr.'s national security adviser. And it's widely reported that Obama will keep on Robert Gates as defense secretary. Gates was deputy national security adviser under Scowcroft.

The Journal article stresses policy affinities between Scowcroft and Obama -- most notably that both opposed going to war in Iraq. But "no drama Obama" is probably equally drawn to Scowcroft's management style. Here's how his eternally loyal deputy, Gates, described Scowcroft's modus operandi in his memoir, From the Shadows:

A dogged defender of the Presidency, Scowcroft's lack of egotism and his gentle manner made possible the closest working relationships with other senior members of the national security team. Further, the strong individuals who ran State, Defense, CIA, and the other key institutions of national security trusted Scowcroft as no other National Security Adviser has been trusted--to represent them and their views to the President fairly, to report to him on meetings accurately, to facilitate rather than block their access to the President. Scowcroft ran the NSC and its process as it should be run (457-58).

Gates himself ran the deputies committee, which oversaw the interagency NSC process. Of that group he claims:

The friendships--and-trust--that developed among the core members of the Deputies Committee in 1989-1991 not only made the NSC process work, but cut down dramatically on the personal backstabbing and departmental jockying that had been so familiar (459).

It's often been reported that Obama welcomes -- and in fact demands -- open debate from his advisers. Gates describes Bush Sr. in similar terms:

He was an eager learner and interested in reaching out beyond government experts for insights and information...his decision process was encompassed in small, frequent meetings of trusted advisers and an open dialogue with former senior officials and others, from whom Bush encouraged different views and debate (454).

Gates is not a disinterested observer: he is immensely proud of the role he played in Bush Sr.'s Administration. But he's not indiscriminate in praise, either: he describes Bush's foreign policy team as the most cohesive and effective among those of five presidents for whom he worked (Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush). It's plain that Obama's bent is to forge teams with the cohesion (as well as the intellectual firepower) that Gates claims for George H. W. Bush's foreign policy shop.

Related posts:
Obama and Gates in Sync on Pakistan
On the Same Page: Gates, Mullen, Powell, Obama
Back from the Shadows: Can Gates Steer the Surge?

McCain's signature: attack opponent's integrity

I remember George Bush Sr., while building a campaign on impugning Michael Dukakis' patriotism, protesting (paraphrasing here), "I'm not questioning his patriotism, just his judgment." Hypocrisy is the debt that vice pays to virtue. Bush at least recognized that openly questioning his opponent's patriotism was scurrilous.

McCain, on the other hand, has made a conscious choice to explictly base his campaign on the absurd allegation that Obama "would rather lose a war than lose a campaign." That's worse than a direct assault on patriotism - it's a denial of the Obama's integrity. Here's the latest:

I said, I will repeat my statement again, that he would rather lose a war than lose a campaign. Because anyone who fails to acknowledge that the surge has worked, who has consistently opposed it, consistently never sat down and had a briefing with General Petraeus, our commander there, would rather lose a war than a political campaign.

Obama has acknowledged that the surge reduced violence in Iraq. He's questioned whether the cost was worth the benefit, and whether the gains of the past year could not have been achieved without a troop buildup. His determination to remove U.S. troops from Iraq is part of a coherent, long-articulated strategy to concentrate more effort in Afghanistan/Pakistan. He may well be wrong about the surge, but to insist that his position is a motivated primarily by political calculation is despicable.

It's also a distraction. McCain is right to hammer home his difference with Obama on the surge. But the effective attack would be on Obama's judgment, not his motives, for opposing the surge and continuing to insist that troops be removed quickly from Iraq. He's handing Obama the opportunity to again decry the politics of personal destruction, a tack he used very effectively against the Clintons.

For McCain, though, the success of the surge, on which he did stake his political career, has devolved to monomania. No disagreement in good faith is possible:

It's clear to me that anyone who fails to acknowledge the success of the surge would clearly have a political consideration.

The irony is that the more McCain digs in on this charge, the more ground he yields to Obama on policy. First he followed suit by calling for additional brigades to be sent to Aghanistan (never mind that, in contrast to Obama, he did not bother to specify where they would come from). Now, pushed by the Iraqi government, he's admitted that sixteen months is a pretty good timetable for withdrawal of most U.S. troops from Iraq.

It should be noted, too, that accusing his opponent of putting personal political gain ahead of the national interest is not a counsel of desperation for McCain, but a longstanding political habit. McCain repeatedly made the same accusation against Bill Clinton. Here he comments on Clinton's liberal licensing policies for sale of technology to China:

Far more distressing is the charge that they [lapses in judgement re technology transfer] are, at least in part, a consequence of the President placing his own re-election before the supreme national interest. Sadly, that charge grows more credible every day. And if it is proven beyond a reasonable doubt, it will bring more of history's shame upon the President than his personal failings will, indeed, greater shame than any President has ever suffered.

McCain has a reputation for integrity, decency, honor. He's won kudos for renouncing attacks that play one way or another on Obama's background, religion, race. But the direct attack on integrity is worse than Rovian (though probably less effective than Rovian insinuation). It bespeaks a kind of lumbering, maladoit aggression in McCain's fundamental approach to political combat, visible also in his wilful distortion of Romney's position vis-a-vis the surge earlier this year. McCain may speak unctiously of respect for his opponent. But he has none.

Update, Sun. July 27: Chuck Hagel warned McCain to back off the patriotism charge on Meet the Press today, echoing Obama's theme that the attack is "unworthy" of McCain:

Hagel was asked about McCain’s recent campaign line that Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a campaign. “They’re better off to focus on policy differences. I think John is treading on some very thin ground here when he impugns motives and when we start to get into, “You’re less patriotic than me. I’m more patriotic.” I admire and respect John McCain very much. I have a good relationship. To this day we do. We talk often. I talked to him right before I went to Iraq, as a matter of fact. John’s better than that.”

A Senator's sum of all fears

Back in February, I began to wonder why House and Senate Democrats who did not like the idea of weakening FISA would continue to be cowed by a President with approval ratings in the twenties. Those who opposed the FISA bill passed by the Senate, which pretty much gave the Bush Administration everything it wanted (telecom immunity and "basket"warrants), seemed to have no rhetorical trouble countering the President's charges that they were putting lives at risk by allowing the warrants granted by last summer's Protect America Act (PAA) to expire. Here, for example, is Ted Kennedy:

Think about what we’ve been hearing from the White House in this debate. The President has said that American lives will be sacrificed if Congress does not change FISA. But he has also said that he will veto any FISA bill that does not grant retroactive immunity. No immunity, no new FISA bill. So if we take the President at his word, he is willing to let Americans die to protect the phone companies.

So why, four months later, is a new bill on the brink of passage that grants telecom immunity and guts pre-PAA FISA requirements? And why is Barack Obama among those who have dropped resistance?

A tentative hypothesis: it's not Bush or the remaining Rovian Republican operatives that Democrats are afraid of. It's Mike McConnell. A critical mass of Senators and Congressmen may believe that the Director of National Intelligence is telling the truth when he insists, repeatedly and categorically, that the intelligence agencies' ability to track and foil terrorist plots will be crippled if the spies are forced to seek individual warrants for suspects abroad whose calls and emails they want to track.

I don't know how credible McConnell is. Some of his specific talking points -- e.g, that each FISA warrant requires 200 man-hours (El Paso Times, 8/22/07), or that a German plot allegedly foiled last September could not have been cracked without the powers granted by the PAA (New York Times, 9/11/07)-- have been contradicted or forcefully debunked. His more sweeping claims -- for example, that without the PAA warrants the country would lose “50 percent of our ability to track, understand and know about these terrorists, what they’re doing to train, what they’re doing to recruit and what they’re doing to try to get into this country” (NYT, prior link) -- are impossible to verify; if there's any evidence in support, it's classified. Let's say that the man does not seem immune to overstatement.

On the other hand, McConnell was for years head of the NSA, the country's main electronic intelligence dragnet. He is by all accounts highly competent. He claims to be nonpartisan, says he's voted for people in both parties (though he doesn't say for what offices or in what proportions). He also says that he has spoken to over 260 Senators and House reps in his advocacy for the FISA bill he wants (El Paso Times, link above). Presumably, the information he gives at least the top echelon is more specific than what he tells the public. And he certainly doesn't equivocate.

The gist of what he's told those 260 lawmakers-- in groups, one-on-one, at whatever level of classification -- is surely exactly what he's told all of us: that intelligence capability will be crippled if we weaken the orders granted by last summer's PAA; that al Qaeda has reconstituted itself and is working flat out to attack us as destructively as possible; and that those who don't give him what he wants will be enabling the next attack.

My guess is that a Senator might imagine only one thing worse than having been painted "soft on terror" after the next attack. And that's to have been soft on terror before the next attack. ("Soft on terror" may be a stupid phrase for having preferred preserving civil liberties to allowing effective if perhaps unconstitutional antiterror activities. But whatever you call it, the fear of enabling the next attack must be powerful.)

Is it credible to think that by insisting that our intelligence personnel seek individual warrants to listen in on foreign-to-U.S. phone calls, Congress might enable plotting terrorists to evade detection? I don't know. But even a suspicion that such might be the case might be enough to convince many senators and congressional reps to give the intelligence chiefs what they want. Including a presumptive President.

Of course, whether McConnell is right or wrong has no bearing on whether the kind of non-particularized warrants he wants are Constitutional. What if he's right, and they're not?

The Faith-based initiative is absolut Obama

Obama's recent call to expand and renew George W. Bush's government outreach to faith-based charities has been widely denounced as one of several expedient quick-steps to the center.

Unlike his stark reversal on FISA legislation, Obama's faith initiative is consistent with longstanding tenets of Obama's thinking -- or, if you want to be cynical about it, of his positioning. His speech in Zanesville Ohio introducing this plan touched several interlocking core Obama themes.

Let me say at the outset that the conceptual coherence outlined below does not by any means prove that religious organizations can effectively abide by the ground rules Obama sketches out in this speech, or that government money can be effectively deployed by funding religious charity. My point is simply that the thinking behind the initiative is absolut Obama, not some sudden departure. Here are the Obamaist elements:

1. unity and universalism: Obama burst on the national scene at the Democratic National Convention in 2004 with a lyrical assertion that what unites Americans is stronger than what divides them. He said then: "It is that fundamental belief -- that I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper -- that makes this country work. It's what allows us to pursue our individual dreams and yet still come together as one American family." The claim to unity is cast in religious terms -- but religious on his terms, which in their ethical dimension are universal. While Obama professes and encourages personal and particular religious belief and expression, in the public square he insists on a kind of ethical Unitarianism. Here's how he put it in the Audacity of Hope (p. 219):

What our deliberative, pluralistic democracy does demand is that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals must be subject to argument and amenable to reason.

In Zanesville, Obama called for this universalism to play itself out in social action:

I'm not saying that faith-based groups are an alternative to government or secular nonprofits. And I'm not saying that they're somehow better at lifting people up. What I'm saying is that we all have to work together – Christian and Jew, Hindu and Muslim; believer and non-believer alike – to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

Obama would have us believe that the differences between religious groups can be subsumed in their work toward goals on which all can agree. Whether they can do so without imposing their particular beliefs on those they serve -- or on those whom they pay to serve -- depends on the design and execution of government ground rules.

2. Pragmatism: In a discussion of economic policy, Obama recently told The Wall Street Journal:

I tend to be eclectic. I do think we're in a different time in 2008 than we were in 1992. The thing I think people should feel confident in is that I'm going to make these judgments not based on some fierce ideological pre-disposition but based on what makes sense. I'm a big believer in evidence. I'm a big believer in fact. You know, if somebody shows me we can do something better through a market mechanism, I'm happy to do it. I have no vested interest in expanding government or setting up a program just for the sake of setting one up. It's too much work.

In Zanesville he cast the faith-based initiative in similar terms -- as something to be embraced because it's a practical way to marshall resources toward shared goals.

The fact is, the challenges we face today – from saving our planet to ending poverty – are simply too big for government to solve alone. We need all hands on deck.

3. Liberalism (which in Obama's book is pragmatism): After losing the Democratic majority in Congress, and as prelude to a long series of modest initiatives in social policy, Bill Clinton famously announced, "The era of big government is over." George Bush Sr., announcing the nation had "more will than wallet," touted American volunteerism as "a thousand points of light" -- i.e., as a substitute, or rather an ideologically preferable alternative, to government action to help the poor and needy. Obama, in contrast to both, casts faith- and community-based initiatives as a means to leverage government's power to address social ills. In a sense this is bigger government and in a sense it's smaller.

4. Fairness: Obama habitually casts his liberalism as a return, in the wake of a generation of government favoring the wealthy and powerful, to basic fairness. He presents fairness in turn as the deepest pragmatism, because only shared prosperity is sustainable. In Zanesville, he complained that political favoritism in the faith-based initiative led the Bush Administration to waste resources:

... the Office never fulfilled its promise. Support for social services to the poor and the needy have been consistently underfunded. Rather than promoting the cause of all faith-based organizations, former officials in the Office have described how it was used to promote partisan interests. As a result, the smaller congregations and community groups that were supposed to be empowered ended up getting short-changed.

Obama by way of contrast envisions marshalling every program large and small that proves itself effective:

Too often, faith-based groups – especially smaller congregations and those that aren't well connected – don't know how to apply for federal dollars, or how to navigate a government website to see what grants are available, or how to comply with federal laws and regulations... what's stopping many faith-based groups from helping struggling families is simply a lack of knowledge about how the system works.

Well, that will change when I'm President. I will empower the nonprofit religious and community groups that do understand how this process works to train the thousands of groups that don't. We'll "train the trainers" by giving larger faith-based partners like Catholic Charities and Lutheran Services and secular nonprofits like Public/Private Ventures the support they need to help other groups build and run effective programs. Every house of worship that wants to run an effective program and that's willing to abide by our constitution – from the largest mega-churches and synagogues to the smallest store-front churches and mosques – can and will have access to the information and support they need to run that program.

Again, this is leveraging -- government empowering large religious groups to empower small religious groups, which he sees as embodying creativity and responsiveness to local need.

5. Bottom-up social action: Obama begins this speech by pointing out that his public career began with a church-funded effort "to help lift up neighborhoods that were devasted by the closure of a local steel plant." He might have added that his years an organizer consisted mainly of attempts to marshall church groups to support attainable proejcts conceived by the people they were designed to serve. He is speaking directly from his own experience when he asserts:

You see, while these groups are often made up of folks who've come together around a common faith, they're usually working to help people of all faiths or of no faith at all. And they're particularly well-placed to offer help. As I've said many times, I believe that change comes not from the top-down, but from the bottom-up, and few are closer to the people than our churches, synagogues, temples, and mosques.

Obama's whole career is based on faith in bottom-up action. His first experience of such action was through church groups. His faith-based initiative is a return to the roots of his public career.

Related posts:
Obama and the vision thing
We've been here before: How Obama frames U.S. history
Audacity of Respect: What Obama Owes to Reagan II
Obama's Metapolitics
Obama gets down to tax brass
Obama brings it back to earth in Virginia
Feb. 5: Hillary's Speech was Better than Obama's
Truth and Transformation