Viral "rivals"

"Team of rivals" is starting to, er, rival "throw under the bus" as the campaign cliche of the year. Andrew Sullivan is now dreaming of an Obama cabinet containing two Clintons, one Gore, and one Edwards (why not two?)

Okay, Doris Kearns Goodwin is a very good writer, and Lincoln's cabinet had some strong personalities, but this notion of herding giants or coopting adversaries is really becoming a fetish -- maybe another wished-for antidote to Bush's coalition of the shilling.

Rivalry in a cabinet is not in itself a good. It may be a necessary byproduct of bringing the best people together. And competition of ideas is good. But there's no intrinsic benefit to throwing as many scorpions in a bottle as possible.

Exit, slashing

New York, June 3, 2008 -- Well, what did you expect? She stood up there and sabotaged the nominee. She patted him on the head like a prize pig, or like a defeated rival, and then she did her best to undercut his candidacy. Her speech was a trip down memory lane, a review of her most toxic fratricidal messages....who will be the strongest candidate and president? Who will be ready to lead? To her followers: you're the hard-working men and women...no one could hear "hard-working" without filling in her prior poisonous appositive, "white." The dishonest boast: we won more primary votes than any candidate ever. The argument the party rejected: we won the swing states necessary to get to 270. Then came the address to her 18 million supporters as if they were a nation apart. In answer to the question, "what does Hillary want?" her answer: I want the 18 million woho voted for me to be respected, heard, no longer invisible." That was a stickup, pure and simple.

Who else would seek the vice presidency with a bludgeon? Who else would put the nominee in a position where he has to reject her bid or else signal to the world that he can be rolled? Always, always always she overplays her hand. She brings herself down...but she brings others with her.

Can Obama cope with success in Iraq?

John McCain would not be where is if the surge had not led to real improvements in security, and possibly the beginnings of real political rapprochement, in Iraq. It makes sense that Republican primary voters would be more responsive to signs of progress than would the electorate as a whole. A strong majority of Americans still say that the war was a mistake, and a strong majority still favor swift withdrawal. But perceptions may lag a changing reality by several months. If conditions in Iraq continue to improve between now and November, McCain may reap a rich harvest.

Say what you like about McCain's repeated and egregious misstatements of foreign policy fact (Iran aiding al Qaeda, troop levels down to pre-surge levels, we've fruitlessly negotiated with Iran for decades, etc. etc.), his strategic straitjacket (every troublesome dictator is Hitler; every Democratic leader from Bill Clinton to Barack Obama is Neville Chamberlain; McCain is Churchill-in-waiting), his over-reliance on force and coercion (advocating a hyper-aggressive stance against North Korea in 1999, 2002 and 2006; advocating force against Saddam since 1998), his strategic incoherence (assembling a League of Democracies, aka a permanent 'coalition of the willing,' that would isolate China and Russia and undercut the UN). As wrong as he was in cheerleading our entry into Iraq, he may have been equally right about the potential of the surge (though we'll never know what the effect of following the Iraq Study Group blueprint would have been).

Maliki's latest military successes in Basra, Sadr City and possibly now in Mosul, and Sadr's latest rope-a-dope should make unbiased observers at the very least hesitate to assert that the apparent progress is all a bridge to nowhere. And from a political point of view, serially denigrating sign after sign of progress is not a good place to be.

All of which is to say that a McCain attack like this one, delivered yesterday in Arlington to AIPAC, packs a force to be reckoned with:

Another matter of great importance to the security of both America and Israel is Iraq. You would never know from listening to those who are still caught up in angry arguments over yesterday's options, but our troops in Iraq have made hard-won progress under General Petraeus' new strategy. And Iraqi political leaders have moved ahead - slowly and insufficiently, but forward nonetheless. Sectarian violence declined dramatically, Sunnis in Anbar province and throughout Iraq are cooperating in the fight against al Qaeda, and Shia extremist militias no longer control Basra - the Maliki government and its forces are in charge. Al Qaeda terrorists are on the run, and our troops are going to make sure they never come back.

It's worth recalling that America's progress in Iraq is the direct result of the new strategy that Senator Obama opposed. It was the strategy he predicted would fail, when he voted cut off funds for our forces in Iraq. He now says he intends to withdraw combat troops from Iraq - one to two brigades per month until they are all removed. He will do so regardless of the conditions in Iraq, regardless of the consequences for our national security, regardless of Israel's security, and in disregard of the best advice of our commanders on the ground.

This course would surely result in a catastrophe. If our troops are ordered to make a forced retreat, we risk all-out civil war, genocide, and a failed state in the heart of the Middle East. Al Qaeda terrorists would rejoice in the defeat of the United States. Allowing a potential terrorist sanctuary would profoundly affect the security of the United States, Israel, and our other friends, and would invite further intervention from Iraq's neighbors, including an emboldened Iran. We must not let this happen. We must not leave the region to suffer chaos, terrorist violence and a wider war.

Andrew Sullivan, reflecting on the Maliki government's recent gains, emphasizes the policy challenge but does not look at the political challenge that those gains pose for Obama:

The trap Obama must not be caught in is one of excessive pessimism. Conditions now favor expeditious withdrawal more than they did only a few months ago. But the manner of withdrawal, its pace, and its concomitant diplomacy now require a different cast, and may require an even different one next February and March. None of this means that this war was not a mistake; it does suggest it need not in the medium term be a catastrophe. Petraeus deserves the lion's share of the credit; luck and time and the self-defeating nihilism of the Jihadists have helped. But Bush and McCain equally merit points for pursuing the surge, even though the metrics pointed to failure. Obama needs to capitalize on these gains, not dismiss them.

The hard task of "capitalizing on those gains" will be the unquestioned business of the next president. What's more problematic for Obama is to position himself during the campaign to be able to do that -- and to maintain credibility through the campaign if progress in Iraq continues. As Sullivan suggests, Obama in office may plausibly be able to maintain or even further progress in Iraq by steadily drawing down troops (and in fact, McCain has responded to the political pressure generated by his "100 years statement"to indicate that he will look for opportunities to do the same). What's hard is for Obama to grant now that progress in Iraq is not all illusory or temporary, that the surge was at least a major catalyst of that progress, that fostering stability in Iraq is a necessary goal, and that doing so may conflict at times with unbroken troop withdrawal. He has to find a way to acknowledge during the campaign what Samantha Powers spilled off-message: that "listening to the generals" may affect strategy as well as tactics.

The toxic part, politically, is that McCain's claim that "America's progress in Iraq is the direct result of the new strategy that Senator Obama opposed" has real bite, and Obama may need to find a way to acknowledge its partial truth. The elements of framing such an acknowledgment might include asserting that a) drawing down the U.S. troop presence remains crucial to furthering the Iraqi government's sovereignty, to the health of our armed forces, and to advancing our core strategic needs elsewhere, e.g. Afghanistan; 2) the surge's success is welcome but cannot be sustained in a vaccuum; building on gains requires the kind of concerted multi-front diplomatic effort proposed by the Iraq study group, and also requires a visibly shrinking U.S. presence; 3) the surge was means to an end of Iraqi self-sufficiency; its gains cannot be sustained with 'more of the same.'

There is at least a symmetry in the gravitational pull of both candidates toward the center. McCain needs to walk back his enthusiasm for an unending troop presence, and Obama needs qualify his commitment to a rigid withdrawal timetable. McCain needs to answer for enabling and cheer-leading a war that Americans will always regard as a mistake, , and Obama may ultimately be challenged to explain his rooted opposition to the surge.

UPDATE: The New Yorker's George Packer has weighed in with a blueprint for Obama adjusting his position on troop withdrawal.

Obama channels Elizabeth Edwards

I may be a bit behind the curve here, but it looks like in his latest stump speech Obama has taken a leaf from Elizabeth Edwards' book. His concise litany of McCain's economic inadequacies includes a quick swipe at McCain's healthcare plan:

Senator McCain wants to double down on the Bush economic plan. Rather than reforming an unfair tax system and offering the middle class some relief, he's offering more tax loopholes for corporations and the wealthy we just can't afford. Rather than making health care affordable for every American, like I've proposed, he's offering a health care plan that puts coverage at risk and that's designed for folks who are already healthy and able to afford health care at any price. And rather than standing up for robust trade that works for all Americans, as I do, he's supporting more trade deals that work for Wall Street, but not for Main Street. And rather than standing up for robust trade that works for all Americans, as I do, he's supporting more trade deals that work for Wall Street, but not for Main Street.

It was Elizabeth Edwards, of course, who pointed out that under the McCain plan, which relies on tax breaks to enable all of us to purchase healthcare on the open market, neither she nor McCain would be able to buy an affordable plan, because both have pre-existing conditions. Word is, too, that Ms. Edwards prefers Clinton's healthcare plan to Obama's (and possibly Clinton herself as candidate). Perhaps this talking point does double-duty -- bow to Elizabeth, swipe at McCain.

Obama the negotiator

When asked about his lack of executive experience, Obama often says, "look at my campaign" -- which combined unmatched analysis of the delegate map with equally impressive execution when it came to getting out the targeted vote/caucus. Others have countered that historically, running a brilliant campaign does not correlate particularly well with governing effectively.

This campaign is unprecedented, however -- in length, in candidate exposure, and in the relative strength of the opposition that Obama first overtook and then held in check. And while the campaign's vote-targeting tactical brilliance is not in itself sufficient to predict effective use of executive power in office, a more fundamental aspect of Obama's performance in this most gladitorial of nomination fights bodes very well for the way he's likely to govern.

What we've seen is the way Obama handles aggressive opposition. Now, in the credentials fight, we've had a good look at his negotiating style. The Wall Street Journal reports today that Obama had the votes to force an even split in the halved Michigan delegate delegate count. Instead, he instructed his supporters to allow a split that gave Hillary a proportion reflecting most of her "victory" margin against unnamed opposition. Obama also authorized a means of splitting the Florida halved delegation that cost him an extra handful of delegates.

Obama gave up something he could afford to lose.: a total of 19 delegates in Florida and 10 in Michigan, which won't slow his march to the nomination. That gave him a strong majority for halving both delegations. How many negotiators willingly leave something on the table? By doing so, Obama may have closed out the match. He undercut the basis for any Clinton challenge and exposed, to the point of absurdity, the self-serving sophism of the Clinton campaign's continuing crocodile tears over allegedly disenfranchised voters. Set off against Obama's magnanimity, Harold Ickes and Tina Flournoy's continuing carping looks simply unhinged:

We strongly object to the Committee’s decision to undercut its own rules in seating Michigan’s delegates without reflecting the votes of the people of Michigan.

The Committee awarded to Senator Obama not only the delegates won by Uncommitted, but four of the delegates won by Senator Clinton. This decision violates the bedrock principles of our democracy and our Party.

We reserve the right to challenge this decision before the Credentials Committee and appeal for a fair allocation of Michigan’s delegates that actually reflect the votes as they were cast.

Obama allows Clinton a victory margin in a vote that wasn't supposed to count, in which no other name appeared on the ballot, and which can never be reconstituted to reflect the will of the Michigan voters as an untainted contest would. And the Clinton camp begrudges Obama the remainder, proposing an allocation 73 delegates to Clinton, 55 remaining uncommitted. The Obama camp initially proposed a 64-64 allocation but then supported a compromise that basically split the difference, giving Clinton a 69-59 margin. Obama's people held out against the the 73-55 split because acquiescing would have entailed keeping the 55 uncommitted. Yes, there's illogic in the way the votes were allotted. But to count Clinton's votes with no counterbalance is the sound of one hand clapping.

The same soft-touch mastery is clear in Obama's decision to actively discourage his supporters from demonstrating outside the RBC meeting, leaving the unleashed Clinton partisans to make an hysterical spectacle of themselves. earlier, in wildly overcharged rhetoric Hillary had equated failing to seat the full Florida delegation with cutting off the Florida recount in the 200o election. Yesterday, her supporters, with their cries of Denver Denver, and McCain in November, evoked the Bush camp's goon squad deployed to intimidate the election officials executing the recount in Florida's contested counties.

Those who fret that Obama lacks a "killer instinct" take note: he has beaten the Clinton machine. He is diminishing the authority and credibility of her continued opposition every day. And he's doing it in a way openly calculated to bring all but the most intransigent Clintonites back into the Democratic fold.

Somehow I get the feeling that he'll handle multi-directional opposition to the health plan he unveils with rather more nuance than Hillary mustered in '93. And I'm comfortable with him going eye-to-eye with whatever world leaders, rogue or otherwise, he determines it makes sense to meet.

Economics, Post-American Style

Fareed Zakaria has devoted a book to sketching in the portrait of a Post-American World. In today's Financial Times, columnist Philip Stephens --the first non-eponymous winner of a Wolf-Munch-Rock award -- gets across the economic reality of the coming multipolarity in 1200 words. "Globalisation," Stephens begins, "belonged to us; financial crises happened to them." No more:

the boot is now on the other foot. The IMF is forecasting that the advanced economies will just about keep their heads above water. With luck, growth this year and next will come in at a touch above 1 per cent. If they do avoid recession - and most of my American friends think it unlikely as far as the US is concerned - they will have to thank robust growth rates in Asia and Latin America. The forecast for China is growth of about 9 per cent in both years, for India 8 per cent and for emerging and developing economies as a whole something more than 6 per cent.

The old powers have not grasped this new reality. There are nods, of course, to a need to restructure international institutions. The rising nations, you hear western politicians aver, must be given more of a voice. More seats, maybe, at the World Bank, the United Nations and, yes, on the board of the IMF. But the assumption is that the rising powers will simply be accommodated within the existing system - a small adjustment here, a tweak there and everything will be fine again. Missing is a willingness to see that this is a transformational moment that demands we look at the world entirely afresh.

Like Zakaria, Stephens sees the world at the end of a 200 year cycle of Western dominance. Also like Zakaria, he does not regard 'decline' as a foregone conclusion. But coming changes will be wrenching:

The response of governments thus far has lain somewhere between despair and denial: there is nothing to be done in the face of global market forces; or the benefits of globalisation will eventually trickle down. The active education and welfare policies necessary to ease the adjustment have been conspicuous by their absence. How do you tell your electorates that all the old assumptions about welfare capitalism must be rethought?

Difficult. But these two sets of pressures - between nations and within them - cannot indefinitely be ignored. That way lies an inexorable slide into the beggar-thy-neighbour protectionism that would make the recent financial storm seem like a summer squall. However it is handled, the adjustment process to the new world order will be wrenching. The US and Europe, after all, have between them have enjoyed the best part of two centuries of effortless political and economic hegemony.

There is no reason they should not continue to prosper in a world where power is more evenly spread. Globalisation need not be a zero-sum game. But if the west is going to adapt, it must recognise that it can no longer expect to write the rules.

League of Democracies, anyone?

The FT columnists, collectively, are unmatched in their ability to compress broad economic and geopolitical trends into the confines of a column. They wear whatever ideological framework they subscribe to lightly, cram their columns with facts, often explore multiple points of view, and sometimes seem to be thinking their way toward a conclusion as they write. When you get tired of the bloviosphere, try parking your eyeballs at ft.com for a space. You're alloted a few articles without a login.

McCain's errors on Iran: fruitful and multiplying

John McCain continues to oversimplify the threats to U.S. security emerging from the Middle East. In his speech on nuclear security delivered iin Arlington, VA, May 27, he said:

President Ahmadinejad has threatened to wipe Israel off the face of the earth, and represents a threat to every country in the region - one we cannot ignore or minimize.

No one should to minimize the insanity of Ahmadinejad, a Holocaust denier who cut his teeth psyching up Iranian pre-teens for suicide runs across minefields in the Iran-Iraq War. But when dealing with a madman, you have to listen carefully. And Ahmadinejad, while certainly expressing a death wish for the Israeli state, did not in fact threaten to "wipe Israel off the face of the earth."

The literal meaning and full context of Ahmadinejad's words, uttered at a "World without Zionism" conference and misquoted by McCain, have been credibly detailed by the artist Arash Norouzi, co founder of the Mossadegh Project (devoted to restoring and honoring the memory of the democratically elected Iranian leader deposed by a CIA-orchestrated coup in 1953). In an article posted on the Mossadegh Project website, Norouzi makes the following points:

1. Ahmadinejad was quoting Ayatollah Khomeini when he uttered the infamous words.

2. The literal translation is as follows: "The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time. This statement is very wise". This is an expressed wish for regime change, not a threat to annihilate a people.

3. Ahmadinejad's 'thesis' was that Khomeini predicted the destruction of four regimes, and three of them have in fact "vanished": the Shah's, the Soviet Union, and Saddam's (two of them without any contribution from Iran). The implication is that the fourth will follow. The means are left unspecified.

That "wiped off the face of the map" was a mistranslation -- albeit one originated by Iranian authorities -- is a verifiable fact spelled out by multiple sources.

McCain's adoption of the mistranslation is of a family with his other errors about Iran. One, in this same speech, pointed out by Hilzoy (hat tip: Andrew Sullivan), is that we've "tried talking" to the Iranian government "repeatedly over the past two decades" (Hilzoy: Does McCain not understand that the stated policy of the U.S. government since April 7, 1980 has been to NOT TALK TO THE IRANIANS. And that we have not negotiated with Iran over their nuclear weapons program). Another is McCain's now-famous assertion that Iran is aiding al Qaeda in Iraq. These gross errors fit neatly together: Iran aids our own worst enemy (in the Land of McCain, there's no difference between Al Qaeda proper and Al Qaeda in Iraq, and al Qaeda's mortal hostility toward Shiites is of no consequence); Iran is a mortal threat to Israel (possibly, but the evidence here is hyped); Iran has proved fruitless to negotiate with.

Where does that leave us? "Bomb, bomb Iran"? Oh, that was just McCain's little joke. God forbid the Iranians should be crazy enough to misinterpret it.

Raising the specter of a world in which many states obtain nuclear weapons, McCain's looks back with nostalgia to a time "when the threat of mutually assured destruction could deter responsible states from thinking the unthinkable."The implicit contrast here is between that old-time paragon of "responsibility," the Soviet Union, and the mad mullahs of Iran. Never mind that the era of MAD between the U.S. and USSR began in the time of Stalin, a one-time ally whose regime was a thousand times more murderous than that of Iran's admittedly brutal mullah's; that we reached the brink of nuclear war with the Soviets two or three times at least; that far from regarding them as a "responsible" adversary, we acted for four decades on the assumption that they were bent on world domination. With them it was "responsible" to negotiate; with the Iranians, negotiation is rank appeasement. At the same time, McCain is of that school that yearns desperately to elevate diverse threats from the Islamic world to the status of a Cold War-level adversary.

This is not to say that Amadinejad's world-view and deeds are not appalling, or that Iran's pursuit of nuclear technology and rooted hostility to Israel should not be regarded as grave threats. Mistranslating Ahmadinejad's words to exaggerate their threat is a matter of, pardon the expression, nuance. (But nuance is making a comeback, even within the Bush Adminstration: today, according to the Financial Times, a spokesman for national security advisor Stephen Hadley justified use of the term "War on Terror" on the grounds that "We recognize that the use of the word 'Islamic' before the word terrorist can be heard by Muslims...as lacking nuance." ) International relations are not a U.S. political campaign--there's nothing to be gained by willfully distorting an adversary's words, however hateful.

Taken at face value, McCain's "Bomb, bomb Iran" clowning is every bit as inflammatory as Ahmadinejad's invocation of Khomeini. Indeed the threat is far more credible. Iran currently lacks the means to erase Israel from the page of time. On the other hand, McCain's self-appointed fellow traveler across the commander-in-chief threshold, Hillary Clinton, has gleefully reminded the world that the U.S. is fully able to "obliterate" Iran. The current U.S. president, with the full support of McCain (and the tepid support of Clinton), invaded Iran's near neighbor on premises that proved to be false. And McCain's own logic seems to suggest that talking to Iran is pointless.

The End of HIstory: Coming to China?

To my astonishment, I found tears streaming down my face this morning as I read the NYT account of Chinese parents whose children were crushed under collapsed school buildings in the earthquake last week unleashing their rage at local government officials. The tears were mainly -- but not, I think, solely -- a matter of empathy for bereft parents. Something else is afoot -- a sense that the rage of those parents, allowed only one child by a state they believe to have countenanced shoddy school construction, may be the first tremor of a political earthquake.

On Tuesday, an informal gathering of parents at Juyuan Middle School in Dujiangyan to commemorate their children gave way to unbridled fury. One of the fathers in attendance, a quarry worker named Liu Lifu, grabbed the microphone and began calling for justice. His 15-year-old daughter, Liu Li, was killed along with her entire class during a biology lesson.

“We demand that the government severely punish the killers who caused the collapse of the school building,” he shouted. “Please, everyone sign the petition so we can find out the truth.” [snip]

Gauging from the outbursts of recent days, any delay will only embolden infuriated parents. In their confrontation with Communist Party officials on Saturday, the parents encircled the vice secretary of the Mianzhu city government and called her a liar for her report on the destruction of the Fuxin school that failed to mention that 127 students had been killed.

“Why can’t you do the right things for us?” they shouted. “Why do you cheat us?” For the next 20 minutes they screamed at her until she passed out and had to be carried away by an aide.

The next day, the parents directed their ire at Mr. Jiang. When his answers proved unsatisfying, they began their march to Chengdu. Mr. Jiang dropped to the ground several times and begged them to stop. “Please believe the Mianzhu Party committee can resolve the issue,” he said. They kept walking.

Three hours later, the police tried to intervene. During the ensuing struggle, the broken glass from the framed pictures of dead children left several parents bleeding. After a tense standoff, the marchers agreed to board government buses to Deyang, the county seat. There, they met with the vice mayor, who promised he would start an investigation the following day.

While it's impossible to read this account without feeling the parents' unspeakable grief, it's also astonishing to witness (from a great distance) an accelerated political coming of age. These people would seem to be beyond fear of consequences, beyond inbred deference to authority. They also seem to have tasted enough prosperity, and enough hope, and enough progress in the society around them, to make a short leap, under agonizing stimulus, to holding their government accountable.

In the past few years, as authoritarianism has made something of a worldwide comeback fueled in large part by petrodollars, it's become fashionable to scoff at Francis Fukuyama's argument, developed in detail in The End of History and the Last Man (1992), that after the collapse of communism human society is moving inexorably toward liberal democracy. Fukuyama sees sheer competitive pressure driving underdeveloped societies, first toward capitalism, and then, as economic growth creates a middle class, toward democracy As wealth accumulates in an authoritarian free market country, Fukuyama suggests, a critical mass of people acquire both the means and the motivation to ensure that they can't be robbed or stymied by an unaccountable government.

Citing rapid economic growth in China, Russia and parts of the Middle East, many have questioned recently whether societies with no prior democratic tradition can't continue to rapidly accumulate wealth without ceding political power to the people. Not forever. Those parents cut by the glass enclosing their dead children's portraits, negotiating a meeting with the vice mayor and obtaining his promise to start an investigation the next day, know something about government accountability.

Hillary's Panopticon

"Vote for the top tee shirt design" invites the Hillary Clinton website. And one of the five choices really seems to me to capture Ms. Clinton's world view. Hillary, it blazons across a field of dense type listing denizens of the fifty states ("Alabamians, Arizonians..."). We're all a part of her bigger picture.

In its quasi-benevolent -- or should I say omnibenevolent? -- way, this Planet Hillary vision seems as overdetermined as her use of an assassination to illustrate a long campaign season. Hillary's got us all in her sights. She will take care of us all. It's all about her.

At her best, Hillary expresses and doubtless feels what would be called a "paternal" view of government if she were male ("maternal" doesn't really hit it). She has the solutions; we can hand her the ball, and huddle at her feet. As she suggested on February 5, she is Lady Liberty, embodiment of our body politic, speaking for us with a royal 'we':

So today we say with one voice -- give us the child who wants to learn, give us the people in need of work, give us the veterans who need our care. We say give us this economy to rebuild and this war to end. Give us this nation to heal, this world to lead, this moment to seize.

And, as she suggested in a December video, she is Santa, wrapping up our future for us in gifts labeled "universal healthcare," "alternative energy," "bring troops home," "middle class tax breaks" and "universal pre-k" (we're all in her kindergarten class).

We're all a part of her bigger picture feels creepier than those earlier top-down images of governance. Why? Because "all" by this point would seem to refer primarily to "hard working Americans, white Americans"? Because her "picture" of this campaign's metrics and ethics seem so radically at variance with that of the larger reality-based community?

Or is it because the "bigger picture" of anyone so desperately willing to say and do anything to get elected evokes something like Total Information Awareness, the Bush Administration's program to integrate reams of data about each of us and put it at the government's fingertips?

Please, Hillary -- stop staring at us.

Obama serves up Wesleyan Kool-Aid

As a Wesleyan alumnus and strong supporter of Barack Obama, I must confess that I have a problem with Obama's Commencement Address delivered at Wesleyan University yesterday.

Obama explicitly cast himself in the tradition of John F. Kennedy -- and the entire Kennedy family -- in calling on students to serve their country and the world. Well and good. Obama has the standing to issue that call. As a young man, he walked the walk, choosing the hard path of community organizing, making a success of it, shaping a political career that's grounded in his experience of working with ordinary people to influence politicians. That's why I support him.

Still, there's something simplistic, unduly binary, even misleading about advice framed like this:

Now, each of you will have the chance to make your own discovery in the years to come. And I say "chance" because, as President Roth indicated, you won’t have to take it. There's no community service requirement in the outside world; no one's forcing you to care. You can take your diploma, walk off this stage, and chase only after the big house and the nice suits and the other things that our money culture says you should buy. You can choose to narrow your concerns and live life in a way that tries to keep your story separate from America's.

But I hope you don't.

I prefer the advice of a Brown professor -- I'm afraid I can't recover who it was -- who spoke at a small alternative graduation service in 2005 for students who were missing graduation because of athletic tournaments (the women's rowing team and the Ultimate Frisbee team). To paraphrase loosely, he said, I hope you do the work you were meant to do. And by the way, if that means poring over spreadsheets for fourteen hours a day rather than teaching children in Ghana, do that.

To be fair, Obama did not directly suggest that everyone ought to choose a career directly focused on public service. He did speak at length about volunteer activities. But the implication lingers that graduates who choose the professions that lead to "the big house and the nice suits" are selfishly wasting their talents.

Obama of course knows, and often acknowledges in speech passages addressed to competitiveness, that this country and the world depend on private enterprise to generate jobs and wealth. Notwithstanding some recent Wall Street bashing, he would doubtless also acknowledge that even the "malefactors of great wealth," when they're not too busy malefacting, play their part in allocating capital where it is most productive. And that Democratic Party powers such as Richard Rubin and Jon Corzine did well to spend decades doing what they do best before turning their energies to the public sector, and that if they'd become inner city elementary school teachers or even microfinance program developers the world probably wouldn't be better off. And that even corporate tax attorneys and CFOs and mid-level marketing executives do their parts to help job-generating companies survive and thrive (probably, today, without creating as many domestic jobs as we'd wish).

I'm sure Obama would not suggest otherwise. But the way he framed choices implied otherwise. And at Wesleyan in particular, he tapped directly into prejudices embedded this many a decade in the culture of the place.

When I was at Wesleyan, many of my classmates were getting themselves arrested at nuclear power plant demonstrations - and the more power to them for their commitment. My friends were ashamed of the trappings of wealth and favored reverse status symbols -- and better that way than shamelessly flaunting it, I think. I took history and English classes with avowed Marxists, and the more foolish they.

Those teachers did not make me a Marxist -- I was always kind of proud of being the lone and sometimes vocal holdout in "Speculative Philosophy of History" (okay, there were only six other students in the class -- ah, small liberal arts schools). But I did imbibe a distaste for capitalism not all that distant from the scorn of high-minded young gentlewomen in Victorian novels for neighbors who engaged in trade. It took me a decade to get over that prejudice. And I think that Obama -- in casual swipes if not in the direct import of his advice -- tapped right into that prejudice yesterday.

Memorial Day Special: Donate FF Miles to Wounded Soldiers and their Families

Click here to donate Frequent Flier miles to hospitalized military service members and their families. Participating airlines listed below.

The program is run by Fisher House. The Fisher House Foundation donates "comfort homes," built on the grounds of major military and VA medical centers, and provides other services to wounded vets. The homes enable family members to be close to a loved one at the most stressful times - during the hospitalization for an unexpected illness, disease, or injury.

Participating airlines:

AirTran Airways
Alaska Airlines
American Airlines
Continental Airlines
Delta Air Lines
Frontier Airlines
Midwest Airlines
Northwest Airlines
United Airlines
US Airways

Note that Fisher House agreements with individual airlines only permit airline tickets for military (or DoD civilian employees) hospitalized as a result of their service in Iraq, Afghanistan, or surrounding areas, and their families. These tickets can not be used for R&R travel, ordinary leave, emergency leave, or other travel not related to a medical condition.

Texeira on Obama: Yes he can

Ruy Texeira, co-author of The Emerging Democratic Majority (2002) and of America’s Forgotten Majority: Why the White Working Class Still Matters (2000) provides essential perspective to those spooked by Hillary Clinton's "Bill, he cannot win" whispers about Barack Obama. From John Harwood in the NYT political blog The Caucus:

Mrs. Clinton’s claim that she is best positioned to win the “hard-working Americans, white Americans” has become the linchpin of her argument that she is more electable than Mr. Obama.

But Mr. Teixeira, who is not backing either candidate, does not buy that argument. He dismisses intraparty contests as “pretty poor evidence” of whether Mr. Obama, as the Democratic nominee, could attract the blue-collar support he would need against Senator John McCain the presumed Republican nominee.

And how much blue-collar support would Mr. Obama need? Not a majority, said Mr. Teixeira. Though blue-collar Democrats once represented a centerpiece of the New Deal coalition, they have shrunk as a proportion of the information age-economy and as a proportion of the Democratic base.

Al Gore lost working-class white voters by 17 percentage points in 2000, even while winning the national popular vote. Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts lost them by 23 points in 2004, while running within three points of President Bush over all. Mr. Teixeira suggests that Mr. Obama can win the presidency if he comes within 10 to 12 percentage points of Mr. McCain with these voters, as Democratic candidates for the House did in the 2006 midterm election.

In recent national polls, that is exactly what Mr. Obama is doing. A recent Washington Post/ABC News poll showed Mr. Obama trailing by 12 percentage points with working-class whites; a poll by Quinnipiac University showed him trailing by seven points. In each survey, Mr. Obama led over all by seven points.

Clinton's wins in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and West Virginia have prompted a long second look at Obama's prospects in the general. News reports have proliferated focusing on voters, from the coal mines of Kentucky to the leisure villages of Florida, who say outright or signal indirectly that they will not vote for a black man. There's no question that we're in uncharted territory. But it helps to have a 'hard target number' for the most recalcitrant group from someone as versed in electoral demographics as Ruy Texeira.

Obama does it...with Integrity

Ten weeks ago, as the Democratic nomination fight teetered on the brink of its really ugly phase (with Wright and bittergate yet ahead), David Brooks mocked the Obama campaign's purported belief that "they can go on the attack, but in the right way. They can be tough and keep their virginity, too. " Strange for a conservative to denigrate and sexualize a politician's attempt to restore a measure of integrity to public discourse, but Brooks did rather pungently frame the task Obama has set for himself.

Now we're in the end game, and guess what -- Obama has beaten Clinton, and maintained his integrity. In fact, he's beaten Clinton in large part because he's maintained his integrity while she has publicly sacrificed hers, shred by shred. The contrast in the way each has handled the other's gaffes has been dispositive.

Recall Hillary's gleeful seizure of Obama's "bitter" remarks -- remarks betraying a measure of condescension that she's more than matched on multiple occasions -- as a campaign bludgeon. This was at the height of their endless Pennsylvania slugfest. Here's CNN's account on April 12:

INDIANAPOLIS, Indiana (CNN) - Hillary Clinton sought on Saturday to fan the flames surrounding Barack Obama's controversial assertion that voters in some small towns are "bitter."

Clinton told an audience of automotive workers here that she was "taken aback by the demeaning remarks Sen. Obama made about people in small town America."

"Sen. Obama's remarks are elitist and out of touch," she said. "they are not reflective of the values and beliefs of Americans, certainly not the Americans I know, not the Americans I grew up with, not the Americans I lived with in Arkansas or represent in New York."

Clinton aides said they planned to make Obama's comments central to their message on the campaign trail this weekend. The New York senator will campaign across Indiana Saturday, and will return to Pennsylvania on Sunday.

In a soft-spoken denunciation of her Democratic rival that lasted several minutes, Clinton played up her own faith and Midwestern roots before attacking point by point Obama's claims that people who feel disenfranchised in small town America "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

"Americans who believe in God believe it's a matter of personal faith," she said, to periodic applause. "People of faith I know don't cling to religion because they are bitter. People embrace faith not because they are materially poor but because they are spiritually rich."

On the issue of guns, Clinton said: "People of all walks of life hunt, and they enjoy doing do because its an important part of their life, not because they are bitter."

By that date, the Clinton campaign was already clothing supporters in "I'm not bitter" tee shirts.

Now contrast Obama's response to Hillary's bizarre, disturbing, overdetermined reference to RFK's assassination on Friday. As soon as the news broke, the campaign did stick the shiv in. It was an arthroscopic cut, unimpeachably appropriate, tightly restrained, and not repeated:

Sen. Clinton's statement before the Argus Leader editorial board was unfortunate and has no place in this campaign.

The New York Post that very swiftly poured gasoline on the fire, misleadingly headlining its scoop, "Hillary Raises Assassination Issue." But the understated Obama campaign statement struck the match (a one-match fire, as we liked to shoot for in summer camp). Hillary's comment is impossible to interpret -- yes, she was illustrating that primary fights have often stretched into June, but why illustrate the case with an assassination? -- and the Obama camp did not pretend to. But their statement did validate most readers' and viewers' impression that there was something deeply creepy about the RFK allusion.

Obama himself waited a day to respond directly. When he did, speaking to Radio Isla Puerto Rico, it was with the magnanimity that's become a personal signature. Yet that very magnanimity drew a sharp if unstated contrast to Clinton's response to his own longest-resonating gaffe:

I have learned that when you are campaigning for as many months as Senator Clinton and I have been campaigning, sometimes you get careless in terms of the statements that you make and I think that is what happened here. Senator Clinton says that she did not intend any offense by it and I will take her at her word on that.

The Obama campaign's two-step response to the assassination allusion culminates a pattern established over many months. Repeatedly, Obama's attacks -- occasions on which he has called out the Clinton campaign tactics -- have been precisely calibrated to highlight flaws that Hillary (and Bill) were displaying day-by-day on the campaign trail. But these rebukes have been modulated by statements of praise, validations of the overall Clinton effort, even excuses for their excesses. A few occasions on which he's killed with kindness:

March 30 news conference in a high school gym in Johnstown, PA:

My attitude is that Senator Clinton can run as long as she wants. Her name is on the ballot. She is a fierce and formidable opponent, and she obviously believes she would make the best nominee and the best president.

Beaufort, S.C., Jan. 24: Playing the adult in the Clinton sandbox:

Black voters shouldn't blame Senator Clinton for running a vigorous campaign against me," he said. That should be a source of pride. It means I might win this thing. When I was 20 points down, I was a 'person of good character' and my health-care plan was 'universal.' The fact that we've got this fierce contest indicates I'm doing well, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that....

Let me sort of dispose of the whole issue of President Clinton. I have said this repeatedly. He is entirely justified in wanting to promote his wife's candidacy," Obama said. "I have no problem with that whatsoever. He can be as vigorous an advocate on behalf of her as he would like. The only thing I'm concerned about is when he makes misstatements about my record. That's what I'm seeking to correct.

Good Morning America, Jan. 21:

You know the former president, who I think all of us have a lot of regard for, has taken his advocacy on behalf of his wife to a level that I think is pretty troubling...He continues to make statements that are not supported by the facts -- whether it's about my record of opposition to the war in Iraq or our approach to organizing in Las Vegas.

Obama's attacks on Clinton have not been any the less effective for their soft edges. From January on, he has used her attacks to argue that her immersion in Rovian politics -- her willingness, as he's said at his sharpest, to "say anything to get elected" and "calculate and poll-test" positions -- has distorted her judgment and limited her power to reform the political process, as he has pledged to do. In a sense, that's a character attack, as Geoff Garin charged in an April 25 op-ed. But it's one that resonates, as Hillary has demonstrated these limitations over and over. Obama has simply added accents to the self-portrait she's drawn.

Surprise, Mr. Brooks: Obama has managed to "attack, but in the right way." And "virginity" is your hangup. Obama does it with integrity.

Related posts:
Pause, refresh: Obama's core case against Clinton
Obama endorses Hillary!
Changing 'the rules' on Clinton
Debunked! Obama spanks the Clinton Kids again
Truth and Transformation
Obama Praises Clinton, and Buries Him
Obama: Man, those Clinton Kids are Something

Hillary's double message about Bill

While listening to the first 58 minutes of Hillary's now-infamous interview with the Argus (SD) Leader, it dawned on me that her "ready on day 1" pitch includes an implicit rebuke of Bill Clinton's administration. One subtext seems to be, 'don't pick a candidate as unready to take office as Bill was.'

I can't find a transcript, but to paraphrase, Hillary said that one thing she learned from the ride with Bill is that a new President has a narrow window, about a year, to get a major part of his/her agenda enacted. In a sense, Bill did this. In that first spring, his Administration bobbed and weaved its way to a deficit reduction package that passed the Senate on VP Al Gore's tiebreaking vote. That proved to be the keynote for Clinton's signature achievement: restoring economic confidence and growth by getting the Federal budget on a firm footing.

But that major achievement was a Plan B bi-product of internal struggles to find a focal point. Bill's first year was otherwise a disaster ride, his authority eroded by a string of small-bore screwups: an uproar and ignoble compromise over gays in the military; the Travelgate brouhaha, the serial scotched attorney general nominations. And all the while, Hillary herself was ginning up the trainwreck that was supposed to be the Clintons' signature accomplishment: universal healthcare.

Was the country wrong to take a flier on Bill? Hillary's viability depends on answering 'no' (and I agree). But if there's anything Bill wasn't, it was "ready on day one."

58 minutes later: the good part of Hillary's SD interview

An irony of Hillary's assassination gaffe is that she was at her very best (notwithstanding that on the tape she looks ready to drop) throughout the rest of a substantive, wide-ranging discussion with the Argus Leader. From Native American policy to the varieties of potential ethanol sources to western water policy, she was Clintonian in her mastery of policy detail. You can understand why she thinks she's 'ready' to be President. If it weren't for her long sequence of duplicitous, predatory, Rovian tactics and comments, I would agree.

In fact the interview contained a Clintonian answer to Obama's metapolitics - his pitch that we've got to change the way our political system functions before we can enact good policy. Obama's argument is that the U.S. government can't put the common good first as long as lobbyists control legislation, and that we can't have serious policy debates until we break through the Rovian politics of personal destruction and distorting attacks. In this debate, Hillary said that we can't engage in serious long-range planning and policy-making until we change the mindset bequeathed us by Ronald Reagan -- that government can't solve anything, that the business of government is to shrink and undermine itself.

The two diagnoses are related. The anti-government stance goes with a messianic faith in the marketplace, a belief that business unleashed and unregulated will create the wealth that government only inhibits. Those holding that belief system naturally enough opened the lobbying floodgates. Not that there wasn't plenty of corruption and interest-driven legislation in the long era of Democratic control of Congress -- but it metastasized with the advent of the Gingrich-Delay crowd and their K Street Project, and it took over the executive branch in the Bush era. So Obama and Clinton are both right. The antigov mindset created a system in which legislation is for sale and political 'debate' becomes a cover for positions essentially dictated by lobbyists.

Robert Reich, in Supercapitalism, suggests that it's the hyper-competition of global capitalism that created the pressures that brought this system into being. Reaganite antigovernment ideology, from that point of view, is more result than cause. Reich has few answers as to how citizens and politicians can take the government back. Hillary's answer is reverse engineering: get a mandate for the right policies, and the attitude toward government will change. Obama's approach is a frontal assault: remain personally free from lobbyist money, get a mandate to write legislation to reign in lobbyist influence, change political discourse by personal example. Will either (or any of their successors) get anywhere? It may seem naive to say yes. But there have been periods, as both like to say, in which the U.S. government has risen to enormous challenges and successfully engaged in long-range planning. Democracy's saving grace, as long as there's a critical mass of power remaining with voters to throw one crowd out and bring new people in, is self-correction. We're in the midst of an attempted course correction. We'd better get there.

It was different the first time

Why didn't Clinton's invocation of the Kennedy assassination on March 6 ignite the firestorm it did this time? The two statements were different. The first tightly situated the assassination allusion as a data point showing that nomination battles have historically lasted into June:

I think people have short memories. Primary contests used to last a lot longer.We all remember the great tragedy of Bobby Kennedy being assassinated in June in L.A. My husband didn't wrap up the nomination in 1992 until June. Having a primary contest go through June is nothing particularly unusual.

An ugly choice of illustration if you think about it, but the surrounding 'thesis statements' it was supposed to support made it less likely that listeners would think about it. Contrast the report from today's interview. Asked, "you don't buy the unity argument?" she responded:

"I don’t because I’ve been around long enough," she said. "My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. You know, I don't understand it. And there's lots of speculation about why it is."

Same data points, thinner frame. Or a different frame, one that seems to evoke some opaque point of paranoia: what's behind the pressure for me to get out of the race? From that charged field, the assassination reference spills out all over.

P.S. There are weird resonances in Clinton's apology as well:

“The Kennedys have been much on my mind in the last days because of Senator Kennedy, and I regret that if my referencing that moment of trauma for our entire nation and particularly for the Kennedy family was in any way offensive. I certainly had no intention of that whatsoever.”

“My view is that we have to look to the past and to our leaders who have inspired us and give us a lot to live up to. And I’m honored to hold Senator Kennedy’s seat in the United States Senate from the state of New York, And have the highest regard for the entire Kennedy family. Thanks."

It's inspirational to look back to Bobby Kennedy's assassination as an illustration of the length of campaigns past? And what's up with that statement of regard for the whole family? Does she feel the need to reassure us that her deadly nightshades aren't directed at the Kennedys either?

Okay, what'd she mean this time?

Every week brings a new low for Hillary Clinton. I think that this comment to the Argus (SD) Leader hits the third rail -- and may get her run out of the race on a rail. Asked "you don't buy the party unity argument?" - that is, the argument that she's hurting the party by continuing to run -- she said:

I don’t because I’ve been around long enough, My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. You know, I don't understand it. And there's lots of speculation about why it is.

Once again, as with her "hard working Americans, white Americans" comment, I think you have to distinguish between Hillary's real-time thought process while speaking this and the unconscious bilge that propelled it. Her point was that nomination fights often carry into the summer. (Never mind that the claim that Bill didn't wrap up his race until June is almost entirely bogus; he was nominee presumptive by mid-March. ) Bill was fighting into June; Bobby Kennedy was just getting going in June when he was assassinated; the conscious point is that the nomination was far from settled at that time. But, as Ambinder asks,

why didn't she bring up Ted Kennedy in 1980? Or Gary Hart in 1984? I think she was pointing to primary races where the eventual nominee was unknown at this point in the cycle.... But 1984 would apply more, her husband was the de-facto nominee at this point, and the compressed calender really renders such comparisons null and void.

It's hard to escape the conclusion that what propelled this example was Hillary's background thought that anything can happen.

You can't go home again to the White House

A major-party Presidential nominee who aims to change the trajectory of American politics suddenly becomes enamored of inviting a former White House occupant -- once the candidate's bitter rival for the nomination -- to take the second slot on a dream ticket. The 'dream' is to rapturously unify a divided party -- quelling doubts about a candidate who represents a leap of faith that many of the party faithful may be unwilling to make.

A powerful former high-ranking public servant lurks behind the prospective veep, reportedly demanding almost co-presidential powers on his liege's behalf -- and a strong role for himself. Ultimately the dream evaporates, as the nominee demurs at proposals to cede vast swaths of the President's Constitutional authority to a vice president who will function as "chief operating officer."

This happened in 1980. On the eve of the Republican convention, presumptive nominee Ronald Reagan reached out to offer former President (and former Vice President) Gerald Ford the second spot on the ticket. Three or four top aides on each side met to hash out the details, with Henry Kissinger chief among those in the Ford camp. According to Howell Raine's report in the New York Times (July 18, 1980):

The so-called "dream ticket" fell apart because to have endowed the Vice Presidency with enough power to make the offer attractive to Mr. Ford would have eroded Mr. Reagan's authority as President, one Regan aide said. Mr. Reagan said Mr. Ford also had a persistent and finally insurmountable visceral feeling that it would be wrong for the two to run together.

As reported by the Times, the principals were oddly passive in the negotiating process. The Ford camp, led by Kissinger, "astonished Mr. Reagan's aides in the degree to which they would have watered down Mr. Reagan's powers to run the Government." The proposals included giving Ford veto power over major cabinet appointments and the right to make other appointments. They also seem to have included making Kissinger Secretary of State.

Gerald Ford was no Hillary Clinton. The deal failed as much because of his recognition that what his aides were asking was preposterous as because of Reagan's similar recognition.

Imagine the Obama camp negotiating with the Clintonites. While the Clinton team would be in no position to ask for overt prerogatives of the magnitude demanded by the Ford team for the former President, the principal's will to power would be unchecked.

Obama is no fool. Like Reagan and Ford, he will feel in his gut that a prospective President can't share power with a former White House occupant. This year's 'dream ticket,' like that of 1980, will fade like morning dew.

Karl Rove pimps out the swiftboat

Perhaps Karl Rove is running for Vice President. He's using his freehold on the Wall Street Journal's op-ed page to test attack lines on Barack Obama that are, well, Rovian. Here's how he characterized comments by Obama attempting to place the threats posed by Iran and other 'rogue states' in context:

On Sunday at a stop in Oregon, Sen. Obama was dismissive of the threats posed by Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba and Syria. That's the same Iran whose Quds Force is arming and training insurgents and illegal militias in Iraq to kill American soldiers; that is supporting Hezbollah and Hamas in violent attacks on Lebanon and Israel; and that is racing to develop a nuclear weapon while threatening the "annihilation" of Israel.

By Monday in Montana, Mr. Obama recognized his error. He abruptly changed course, admitting that Iran represents a threat to the region and U.S. interests.

Conveniently, Rove neglects to quote Obama before slipping into a schoolmasterly lecture about the carefully prepared negotiations of Nixon and Reagan. Obama was not in fact 'dismissive' of the threats posed by rogue states; his aim was to defuse the hysteria of the Bush Administration's years-long effort to inflate these threats to the magnitude of those posed by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Here's a CNN digest of what Obama actually said:

"Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union," Obama said. "They don't pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us, and yet we were willing to talk to the Soviet Union at the time when they were saying we're going to wipe you off the planet.

"We should use that position of strength that we have to be bold enough to go ahead and listen. We might not compromise on any issue, but at least we should find out are there areas of potential common interest, and we can reduce some of the tensions that have caused us so many problems around the world," Obama said.

Obama said he was aware of the "grave" threat Iran poses to the United States, but that it was "common sense" that Iran is less of a threat today to the U.S. than the Soviet Union was during the Cold War.

Nor did Obama "recognize an error" and walk these statements back the following day; he simply elaborated:

The Soviet Union had the ability to destroy the world several times over, had satellites spanning the globe, had huge masses of conventional military power, all directed at destroying us," he said. "So, I've made it clear for years that the threat from Iran is grave. But what I've said is that we should not just talk to our friends. We should be willing to engage our enemies as well. That's what diplomacy is all about...

Iran is a grave threat. It has an illicit nuclear program. It supports terrorism across the region and militias in Iraq. It threatens Israel's existence. It denies the Holocaust," he said. "The reason Iran is so much more powerful than it was a few years ago is because of the Bush-McCain policy of fighting in Iraq and refusing to pursue direct diplomacy with Iran. They're the ones who have not dealt with Iran wisely.

In his attempt to bring the rogue state threat to scale, Obama seems to be channeling in an argument spun out by Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria last October:

The American discussion about Iran has lost all connection to reality. Norman Podhoretz, the neoconservative ideologist whom Bush has consulted on this topic, has written that Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is "like Hitler … a revolutionary whose objective is to overturn the going international system and to replace it in the fullness of time with a new order dominated by Iran and ruled by the religio-political culture of Islamofascism." For this staggering proposition Podhoretz provides not a scintilla of evidence.

Here is the reality. Iran has an economy the size of Finland's and an annual defense budget of around $4.8 billion. It has not invaded a country since the late 18th century. The United States has a GDP that is 68 times larger and defense expenditures that are 110 times greater. Israel and every Arab country (except Syria and Iraq) are quietly or actively allied against Iran. And yet we are to believe that Tehran is about to overturn the international system and replace it with an Islamo-fascist order? What planet are we on?

You don't have to think that the threats posed by Islamic extremism and nuclear proliferation are "overblown," as John E. Mueller has argued in a book of that title, to appreciate Obama's attempt to counter Cold War nostalgia that craves a superpower-weight enemy against which the U.S. can define itself.

As Obama fights to break the spell of Rovian fear-mongering, I do wish he hadn't weakened himself in the famous YouTube debate exchange last summer, when he responded "I would" to the question, "Would you be willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea?" Hillary was quite right to call him out on this. I thought at the time and continue to think that Obama didn't fully absorb the question and didn't mean to say that he'd meet all five personally within a year--just that, on principle, it makes sense to be willing to meet when there's something to be negotiated. But in post-debate dueling he went the other route and tried to suggest that Hillary wouldn't be willing enough to negotiate with rogues. This is one major instance of Obama's sometime tendency to dig deeper when he's in a hole.

Still, that error is as nothing compared to McCain's serial expressions of strategic incoherence. McCain's vision of a decades-long but casualty-free occupation along the lines of our presence in Korea and Japan betrays the kind of Cold War imprinting Obama is trying to defuse (our presence in those countries was part of global competition with the Soviets and their allies). His assertion that Iran backs al Qaeda in Iraq reveals a penchant for lumping all "Islamic extremists" together into one monolithic adversary, as strident Cold Warriors did with the Soviet Union, China, and Vietnam. His "bomb bomb Iran" 'joke' is infinitely more "dismissive" of the nature of the threats we actually face than Obama's contextualizing.

Gates repudiates Rumsfeld's "army you have" doctrine

As noted in a prior post, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates' May 15 speech to defense contractors situated his immediate tactical and spending priorities within his broader strategic outlook. In brief: in a debate within the military between those who want to focus military spending and planning primarily on counterinsurgency and asymmetric warfare and those who believe that in the long term, we will face more substantial threats from emerging major powers (e.g., China, China, and China), Gates comes down strongly on the counterinsurgents' side. He cast the question as one of risk management: for the foreseeable future, we will likely face multiple challenges from "Smaller, irregular forces - insurgents, guerrillas, terrorists," whereas it's highly unlikely that we'll face a conventional military challenge from powerful nation state."

In the short term, those priorities, as well as a personal commitment to support of U.S. troops, translate into placing top priority on what troops need now - to avoid getting killed, to detect insurgent activity as it happens, and to care for wounded and psychologically damaged solders when they return. And his progress report on these fronts included a devastating if implicit indictment of Rumsfeld's leadership.

Politely, here as elsewhere Gates cast the Pentagon's "leadership shortcomings" as a product of decades of bureaucratic inertia. Nonetheless, the failures he addressed were recent and acute:

My priorities are focused on better supporting our troops in combat and include:

• Sending more intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets to Iraq and Afghanistan;
• Providing troops the best possible protection on dangerous roads in Iraq and Afghanistan; and
• Improving outpatient care and support for our wounded.
  

These are issues I take seriously – and very personally.

Each goes directly to our profound, even sacred, obligation to do everything we can to support the men and women currently fighting on the front lines – people like the four we recognized tonight - to see that they are successful on the battlefield and properly cared for at home. These needs require the Department to focus on the reality that we are in the midst of two wars and that what we can provide our soldiers and commanders three or four years hence isn’t nearly as important as what we can provide them today or next month. In each case, there was some sort of leadership shortcoming:

• A lack of vision or sense of urgency;
• An unwillingness or hesitancy to upend assumptions and practices that have accumulated in a largely peacetime military establishment; and
• An assumption that the war would soon be over and therefore we shouldn’t impinge on programs that produce the kinds of equipment and capabilities that probably would not be needed in today’s combat.
  

A common mantra at Defense is that the rest of the government isn't at war. Well, a lesson I learned fairly early on was that important elements of the Defense Department weren't at war. Preoccupied with future capabilities and procurement programs, wedded to lumbering peacetime process and procedures, stuck in bureaucratic low-gear. The needs of those in combat too often were not addressed urgently or creatively.

True, Rumsfeld also cast himself as a scourge of Pentagon's hide-bound thinking and bureaucratic inertia. True, too, that Rumsfeld preceded Gates in advocating increased reliance on UAVs. More broadly, though, Rumsfeld was focused on developing new IT capabilities and concentrating firepower in the hands of ever-fewer troops achieving ever-quicker victories -- as seemed at first to happen in Afghanistan. Once mired in protracted conflict, it was 'you go to war with the army you have' -- a comment that bespoke a lack of commitment to improving the capabilities of those troops mired in conflict. That lack of responsiveness to conditions on the ground is what Gates is trying to redress now.