Seven American soldiers serving in Iraq wrote the following op-ed piece that appeared in The New York Times on August 19, 2007. I recently reread it and urge everyone to do so. Only one salient fact has changed since they wrote it.
The War As We Saw It by Buddhika Jayamaha, Wesley D. Smith, Jeremy Roebuck, Omar Mora, Edward Sandmeier, Yance T. Gray and Jeremy A. Murphy
Viewed from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal. Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched. As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day. (Obviously, these are our personal views and should not be seen as official within our chain of command.)
The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework. Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes are offset by failures elsewhere. What soldiers call the "battle space" remains the same, with changes only at the margins. It is crowded with actors who do not fit neatly into boxes: Sunni extremists, Al Qaeda terrorists, Shiite militiamen, criminals and armed tribes. This situation is made more complex by the questionable loyalties and Janus-faced role of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Army, which have been trained and armed at United States taxpayers' expense.
A few nights ago, for example, we witnessed the death of one American soldier and the critical wounding of two others when a lethal armor-piercing explosive was detonated between an Iraqi Army checkpoint and a police one. Local Iraqis readily testified to American investigators that Iraqi police and Army officers escorted the triggermen and helped plant the bomb. These civilians highlighted their own predicament: had they informed the Americans of the bomb before the incident, the Iraqi Army, the police or the local Shiite militia would have killed their families.
As many grunts will tell you, this is a near-routine event. Reports that a majority of Iraqi Army commanders are now reliable partners can be considered only misleading rhetoric. The truth is that battalion commanders, even if well meaning, have little to no influence over the thousands of obstinate men under them, in an incoherent chain of command, who are really loyal only to their militias.
Similarly, Sunnis, who have been underrepresented in the new Iraqi armed forces, now find themselves forming militias, sometimes with our tacit support. Sunnis recognize that the best guarantee they may have against Shiite militias and the Shiite-dominated government is to form their own armed bands. We arm them to aid in our fight against Al Qaeda.
However, while creating proxies is essential in winning a counterinsurgency, it requires that the proxies are loyal to the center that we claim to support. Armed Sunni tribes have indeed become effective surrogates, but the enduring question is where their loyalties would lie in our absence. The Iraqi government finds itself working at cross purposes with us on this issue because it is justifiably fearful that Sunni militias will turn on it should the Americans leave.
In short, we operate in a bewildering context of determined enemies and questionable allies, one where the balance of forces on the ground remains entirely unclear. (In the course of writing this article, this fact became all too clear: one of us, Staff Sergeant Murphy, an Army Ranger and reconnaissance team leader, was shot in the head during a "time-sensitive target acquisition mission" on Aug. 12; he is expected to survive and is being flown to a military hospital in the United States.) While we have the will and the resources to fight in this context, we are effectively hamstrung because realities on the ground require measures we will always refuse - namely, the widespread use of lethal and brutal force.
Given the situation, it is important not to assess security from an American-centered perspective. The ability of, say, American observers to safely walk down the streets of formerly violent towns is not a resounding indicator of security. What matters is the experience of the local citizenry and the future of our counterinsurgency. When we take this view, we see that a vast majority of Iraqis feel increasingly insecure and view us as an occupation force that has failed to produce normalcy after four years and is increasingly unlikely to do so as we continue to arm each warring side.
Coupling our military strategy to an insistence that the Iraqis meet political benchmarks for reconciliation is also unhelpful. The morass in the government has fueled impatience and confusion while providing no semblance of security to average Iraqis. Leaders are far from arriving at a lasting political settlement. This should not be surprising, since a lasting political solution will not be possible while the military situation remains in constant flux.
The Iraqi government is run by the main coalition partners of the Shiite-dominated United Iraqi Alliance, with Kurds as minority members. The Shiite clerical establishment formed the alliance to make sure its people did not succumb to the same mistake as in 1920: rebelling against the occupying Western force (then the British) and losing what they believed was their inherent right to rule Iraq as the majority. The qualified and reluctant welcome we received from the Shiites since the invasion has to be seen in that historical context. They saw in us something useful for the moment.
Now that moment is passing, as the Shiites have achieved what they believe is rightfully theirs. Their next task is to figure out how best to consolidate the gains, because reconciliation without consolidation risks losing it all. Washington's insistence that the Iraqis correct the three gravest mistakes we made - de-Baathification, the dismantling of the Iraqi Army and the creation of a loose federalist system of government - places us at cross purposes with the government we have committed to support.
Political reconciliation in Iraq will occur, but not at our insistence or in ways that meet our benchmarks. It will happen on Iraqi terms when the reality on the battlefield is congruent with that in the political sphere. There will be no magnanimous solutions that please every party the way we expect, and there will be winners and losers. The choice we have left is to decide which side we will take. Trying to please every party in the conflict - as we do now - will only ensure we are hated by all in the long run.
At the same time, the most important front in the counterinsurgency, improving basic social and economic conditions, is the one on which we have failed most miserably. Two million Iraqis are in refugee camps in bordering countries. Close to two million more are internally displaced and now fill many urban slums. Cities lack regular electricity, telephone services and sanitation. "Lucky" Iraqis live in gated communities barricaded with concrete blast walls that provide them with a sense of communal claustrophobia rather than any sense of security we would consider normal.
In a lawless environment where men with guns rule the streets, engaging in the banalities of life has become a death-defying act. Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise, while we have substituted Baath Party tyranny with a tyranny of Islamist, militia and criminal violence. When the primary preoccupation of average Iraqis is when and how they are likely to be killed, we can hardly feel smug as we hand out care packages. As an Iraqi man told us a few days ago with deep resignation, "We need security, not free food."
In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are - an army of occupation - and force our withdrawal.
Until that happens, it would be prudent for us to increasingly let Iraqis take center stage in all matters, to come up with a nuanced policy in which we assist them from the margins but let them resolve their differences as they see fit. This suggestion is not meant to be defeatist, but rather to highlight our pursuit of incompatible policies to absurd ends without recognizing the incongruities.
We need not talk about our morale. As committed soldiers, we will see this mission through.
They will not all “see this mission through.” Even before the article was published, Staff Sergeant Jeremy A. Murphy was shot in the head on August 12, and suffered a severe brain trauma. He is expected to survive. On September 10, Sergeant Omar Mora and Staff Sergeant Yance T. Gray and five other Americans were killed when the five-ton truck in which they were riding overturned. What are American soldiers doing in Iraq? Dying.
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Saturday, September 22, 2007
WILL HEALTH CARE BE THE PRIMARY DOMESTIC ISSUE IN THE 2008 ELECTION?
Americans are aware of the paradox that, although the United States has the most sophisticated and innovative medical establishment in the world, more than one-quarter of all Americans derive very little benefit from it. At least forty-five million people in the United States have no health insurance and another forty million cannot count on enough coverage to provide for appropriate treatment in the event of a major disease or long-term care. President George W. Bush, with his curious form of compassionate conservatism, has pointed out that the emergency wards of hospitals are open to all. He has not pointed out that many emergency wards have closed because hospitals cannot afford them, that the cost of emergency treatment is far greater than timely and regular medical care, and that emergency treatment is often too late to be of value.
The present congressional consideration of health care for children has reminded the president that he is not only a compassionate conservative; he is also a fiscal conservative, despite the fact that, since taking office, he has turned a great surplus into the greatest indebtedness in American history, several times setting records for the biggest single yearly dollar increase in the debt. Nevertheless, despite the harsh criticism by former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan, that Bush has betrayed conservatism, he plans to stem the tide of borrowing that has, on average, exceeded $500 billion a year by threatening to veto a children’s health insurance bill that would provide coverage for an additional four million children (beyond the 6.6 million already covered) at an additional cost of only $35 billion over five years. If Congress passes the bill and Bush vetoes it, health care for children will provide the centerpiece for what the Democrats will seek to make the defining domestic issue in the 2008 election.
On September 20, five leading Democrats – Joseph Biden, Hillary Clinton, Christopher Dodd, John Edwards, and Bill Richardson (Barack Obama was invited, but declined) – participated, with Judy Woodruff as moderator, in a wide-ranging ninety-minute discussion of health care. It was less confrontational than other public discussions in which the Democratic candidates have participated, but it was more informative because it was thoughtful and reasonably detailed. While there were a few not-so-subtle thrusts directed by one candidate at another, it was clear that all five believe in national health coverage, although they differ as to how it can be achieved.
Apparently, some doctors share that conviction. In 2004, in a physician-sponsored random sample of Massachusetts doctors, 63.5 percent of the 904 responding doctors believed a single-payer plan provided the best care for most people, 25.8 percent chose a fee-for-service system, and 10.7 percent selected managed care. Although many respondents doubted that most of their physician colleagues would support a single-payer system, most agreed that government has a responsibility to ensure the provision of medical care, it would be worth giving up some income to reduce paperwork, insurance firms should not play a major role in health care delivery, and they would prefer to work under a salary system. Of course, this may not reflect national preferences among doctors, but each of these changes could play an important role in a national health insurance system.
Earlier this year, John Edwards was the first Democrat to propose a detailed health care plan. One idea appears to have caught on with other Democratic aspirants. Edwards and his leading rivals agree that the American people should have the same health plan as members of Congress, which includes unlimited doctor visits, no deductibles and no co-payments, at a cost of $35 a month. Edwards has now gone further, promising legislation that would end the health insurance of the president and Congress in six months if they fail to adopt a comparable program for all Americans. Edwards would also minimize, if not eliminate, the role (and the profits) of insurance companies.
Barack Obama has also offered a detailed plan which would insure all children and require employers to share the costs of insuring workers, but would not mandate insurance for everyone. Hillary Clinton’s new plan would require it. Clinton would offer the equivalent of the congressional plan as one option, but she opposes the creation of a federal agency to achieve this objective. None of her rivals has taken Clinton to task for her commission’s 1994 recommendation to President Bill Clinton of a complex proposal that no one seemed to understand, except for its clear rejection of the single payer plan that had been favored in 1992-93 by many Democratic leaders in Congress.
The various plans sometimes differ or are unclear as to the extent to which individuals could buy coverage, employers would contribute, or the national government would underwrite the costs. When the Democratic candidates speculate as to the cost (often estimated at $100 billion or more), they tend to agree that a large part of this could be paid by repealing the income tax cuts on incomes above $200,000 enacted in the Bush presidency. Edwards would go further and increase the tax on investment income to the rate on earned income. Several candidates propose efficiencies in the health and tax systems that would serve to cut the cost of health care.
All of this stands in sharp contrast with the positions of the leading Republicans. Rudolph Giuliani predicts that the various Democratic plans would increase taxes and decrease the amount and quality of patient care (for example, increasing the waiting time to obtain an appointment). Giuliani advocates a $7500 tax deduction per taxpayer to defray insurance costs and tax credits for poor workers to supplement Medicaid and employer contributions. John McCain would go further than some of his Republican rivals, favoring prescription drug coverage for the elderly and expanded children’s coverage. Mitt Romney would offer incentives for the states to expand affordable coverage, condemning the Democratic proposals as “European-style socialized medicine.” The other Republican hopefuls (Fred Thompson, Sam Brownback, Mike Huckabee, Ron Paul, and Duncan Hunter) all voice variations of “market-based solutions” and “market-driven expansion” of affordable coverage to express their opposition to any government-run program, let alone guaranteed universal coverage.
Numerous statistics demonstrate that far less prosperous countries have far better health records. The United States ranks seventeenth in the percentage of one-year-old children who are fully immunized against polio. China and Brazil both rank ahead of the U.S. in this regard. Many countries, including Jordan and Egypt, have lower rates of low birth-rate babies than the U.S. Shockingly, but not surprisingly, these figures reflect the fact that, among industrialized nations, the United States has the highest percentage of children living below the poverty line.
The World Health Organization (WHO) of the United Nations has often pointed out that the United States ranks behind other industrial nations in what the WHO calls “healthy life expectancy.” All of these and other health statistics show a wide disparity along racial and ethnic lines, with blacks and Hispanics overrepresented among the least privileged populations. Dr. Ashish Jha of the Harvard School of Public Health has testified that surgeons are very much less likely to offer bypass surgery to black men than to white men who have had a heart attack similar to that suffered by President Bill Clinton.
“Socialized medicine” is a phrase that critics will employ and advocates will shun. Rational examination discloses that, by other names, socialization of public benefits have a place -- an honored place -- in American public policy. Free public education is the oldest example. More than seventy years ago, critics railed against adoption of the Social Security Act, which provides an assured old-age income to almost all older Americans. Medicare is Social Security’s logical extension, in that it extends health care beyond the recipient’s ability to pay. Scare tactics, such as condemnation of reform as “socialism” without a rational analysis of what particular reforms do or fail to do, will not dispose of the challenge, not if the American people believe, as evidence increasingly indicates they do believe, that the government has a role to play in the protection of health and the provision of essential health services.
The candidates are obliged to answer these questions. Where does universal health coverage exist and how well does it work? Does the quality of health care and its cost decline or improve under a government-mandated health care program? Is it compatible with private medical insurance? Does it require the regulation of pharmaceutical companies and drug prices? What is most remarkable is that this debate in the United States will take place, if it takes place, decades after it was resolved in other industrial countries. And that also raises the question as to why the richest country in the world, with its unparalleled medical research and resources, has come so late to this issue.
If you wish to subscribe to Thinking Out Loud, e-mail thinkingoutloud@stanleyfeingold.com, and write “subscribe.” The price of your subscription is your occasionally thinking out loud by responding. Please send your comments, criticisms and corrections to the same e-mail address. I intend to post a weekly essay of under 1500 words. To unsubscribe, write “cancel.” For earlier essays, go to www.stanleyfeingold.com. Stanley Feingold
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 3007
POSTSCRIPT to September 15:
Does the President or the General decide whether and how to wage war?
MoveOn's sharp criticism of General Petraeus (calling him General Betray Us) is a stupid tactic and a completely false assessment of moral and military responsibility. This clumsy personal attack permits defenders of the Iraq war to deflect criticism of its conception and conduct and focus on a misguided attempt at character assassination. General Petraeus is neither the savior President Bush has represented him as being nor is he the subversive officer MoveOn has portrayed. He is simply the general President Bush has settled on to be the spokesman for his failed policies. The war is Bush's war. The false rationale for invading Iraq was accepted by President Bush. The grievous errors committed in the conduct of the war were the responsibility of the Commander-in-Chief, President Bush, who had the power to reverse errors. He did not. The loss of American prestige and good-will throughout the world is the consequence of policies pursued by President Bush. The absence of an exit strategy results from an inability to assess alternatives or face reality by President Bush.
Similarly, any charge that lays responsibility for America's greatest foreign policy failure upon Vice President Cheney or former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld or the proselytizers for American hegemony ignores the fundamental fact that none of the grievous errors could have taken place without the action of President Bush. It is even more inexcusable to blame the general who was eager or willing to carry out the president's orders. What President Truman reminded himself of in the Oval Office has not changed. The buck stops there.
Saturday, September 15, 2007
DOES THE PRESIDENT OR THE GENERAL DECIDE HOW OR WHETHER TO PROSECUTE WAR?
It is difficult to imagine a precedent for the buildup to and presentation of what President Bush called “the Petraeus report” (there has been no formal report, simply the general’s testimony) before House and Senate committees on the status of America’s war in Iraq. General Petraeus has been in charge of American forces in Iraq one half-year into the so-called “surge,” in which 30,000 additional troops had been added to the 130,000 already engaged in Iraq. President Bush’s prime-time address after the general’s two days of testimony invoked the general so often, one might have concluded that he was referring to the delivery of a new sacred text.
In fact, there was nothing new or unanticipated in the general’s testimony. That could not come as a surprise. A commanding general on active service does not rebut or qualify his president’s optimistic prognosis. If he did, he would be removed, as President Lincoln removed General George McClellan as commander of the Army of the Potomac, because of his failure to engage the Confederate Army and win the Civil War.
Similarly, when a general takes actions that contradict the president’s behavior, he will be removed. President Harry S Truman relieved General Douglas MacArthur of his command for insubordination when he issued an unauthorized statement threatening to expand the Korean war into China if it resisted, while the president was preparing to engage North Korea and China in peace negotiations. MacArthur’s independence led to the loss of many American lives. (These events are retold in David Halberstam’s posthumous The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War, excerpted in “MacArthur’s Grand Illusion,” in the October 2007 issue of Vanity Fair.) General Omar Bradley expressed the prevalent military as well as political sentiment when he said that General MacArthur’s action “would have involved us in the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time against the wrong enemy.”
Disagreement is not the only inappropriate behavior for a general. It is also undesirable for a general to allow himself to become (albeit at the president’s instigation) a spokesperson for what is, after all, the president’s partisan politics. No longer simply a general, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell remained for the American public the general above politics and the Bush Administration’s most credible spokesperson when he was prevailed upon to address the United Nations to justify what would subsequently be America’s unilateral invasion of Iraq. Virtually no assertions of “facts” were true in Powell’s presentation of the doubtful and untruthful “evidence” supporting Iraq’s close alliance with Al Qaeda, possession of weapons of mass destruction, and intention to employ those weapons against the United States. Nevertheless, the authority of General Powell’s endorsement seemed credible to a public that would have been skeptical if these claims had come from another spokesperson.
That was the position that General Petraeus put himself into when just weeks before the 2004 presidential election, The Washington Post published an op-ed piece by him. Ever the optimist, General Petraeus saw “tangible progress” in Iraqi security forces, enabling “Iraqis to shoulder more of the load for their own security.” Petraeus detailed military victories and the increased capacity of the police forces. Regrettably, General Petraeus has not enjoyed the military success that the president and he have both implied that he has had. Sectarian warfare has escalated in areas under his command. His efforts at reaching political agreements have failed, as have the efforts of others. The loss of billions of dollars of Iraqi weapons have led to a major criminal investigation of Army mismanagement. Despite the general’s praise, recent reports recommend that the police should be disbanded because of their dismal failure to improve security.
Three years later, in his long-anticipated evaluation of the “surge,” the general once again has said that some progress had been made on the ground, adding that there were fewer fatalities in some areas in recent months [but didn’t count Sunnis killing Sunnis, Shias killing Shias, or assassination by being shot in the front of the head as distinct from the rear], and that some tribal groups that once used their weapons to kill Americans had entered into agreement with the Americans to use their new American-supplied weapons to kill insurgents. In passing, the president and general have acknowledged that no progress had been made to create a unified government in the devastated country. Most revealing of the limits of military judgment was the answer General Petraeus couldn’t give when asked whether America is safer. He confessed that he has not entertained that question.
It is appropriate that a general should echo the military judgment of the president, if he agrees with it. What is deliberately deceitful is the president’s pretense that he will be guided by the conclusions of his generals, as Bush stated one month before the general came home: “Troop levels will be decided by our commanders on the ground, not by political figures in Washington, D.C.” He couldn’t wait for General Petraeus’s testimony and flew to a secret desert air base 120 miles from Baghdad to declare that the surge is working. Of course, he already knew the general’s conclusion, because when Bush disagrees with a general, the general is removed or retired.
What did generals think of the invasion? General Eric Shinseki, then Army Chief of Staff, asked by a Senate committee to estimate the number of ground troops necessary to support the invasion of Iraq, replied “several hundred thousand.” Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowiz immediately declared that was ‘’wildly off the mark.” Shinseki soon retired. Commander-in-Chief United States Central Command General John Abizaid has since said that Shinseki’s estimate was correct. General Bernard Trainor has described a willfully self-deluding planning process. General William Odom, former director of the National Security Agency, has said that the American invasion of Iraq might be the worse strategic mistake in American history.
What did generals think of America’s conduct in Iraq? General Antonio Taguba, charged with reporting on the documented horrors and humiliations suffered by prisoners at Abu Ghraib (which provided the terrorists with their most persuasive recruitment tool) concluded that the crimes deserved severe punishment. Instead, the Department of Defense punished only the lowest-ranking soldiers and General Taguba was exiled to a Pentagon desk job and early retirement. CENTCOM General Anthony Zinni, later Bush’s special envoy to the Middle East, has stated: “In the lead up to the Iraq war and its later conduct, I saw at a minimum, true dereliction, negligence and irresponsibility; at worst, lying, incompetence and corruption.” Our mistakes, Zinni argues, include denying priority to the war on Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, disbanding the Iraqi army, and deBaathifying the police. The result of our ill-advised unilateral aggressive intervention, General Zinni concluded, is that “we are now being viewed as the modern crusaders, as the modern colonial power in this part of the world.”
Did the generals think that the “surge” was desirable? When General Abizaid was pressed this past November by Senator John McCain on the need for an increased U.S. military presence, he replied: “Senator McCain, I met with every divisional commander, General [George] Casey, the core commander, General [Martin[ Dempsey [head of the Multi-National Security Transition Command in Iraq}, we all talked together. And I said, in your professional opinion, if we were to bring in more American troops now, does it add considerably to our ability to achieve success in Iraq? And they all said no. And the reason is because we want the Iraqis to do more. It is easy for the Iraqis to rely upon us to do this work. I believe that more American forces prevent the Iraqis from doing more, from taking more responsibility for their own future.”
What did generals think of the civilian strategists of the war? General Paul Eaton, who helped revive the Iraqi army, described Rumsfeld as “incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically.” General John Batiste, commander of an infantry division in Iraq, turned down a promotion and a tour in Iraq as the second-ranking military officer, and chose to retire rather than continue to work for Rumsfeld. In 2006, according to a Military Times poll, almost 60 percent of the members of the United States Armed Forces do not believe that the civilians in the Pentagon had their “best interests at heart.”
Each month of the surge so far has cost $10 billion and the lives of one hundred American troops. Senator McCain warns that withdrawal would increase “the potential for genocide, wider war, spiraling oil prices and the perception of strategic American defeat.” Those grim consequences may occur. But it is the responsibility of President Bush, not of his generals, to clearly spell out when and under what circumstances the risk of these dire consequences of American withdrawal would be reduced. Absent President Bush’s clear analysis and projection of America’s future prospects in Iraq, his unstated cynical answer is that this is his legacy to a future Administration.
If you wish to subscribe to Thinking Out Loud, e-mail thinkingoutloud@stanleyfeingold.com, and write “subscribe.” The price of your subscription is your occasionally thinking out loud by responding. Comments, criticisms and corrections are welcome. I intend to post a weekly essay of under 1500 words. To unsubscribe, write “cancel.” Stanley Feingold
In fact, there was nothing new or unanticipated in the general’s testimony. That could not come as a surprise. A commanding general on active service does not rebut or qualify his president’s optimistic prognosis. If he did, he would be removed, as President Lincoln removed General George McClellan as commander of the Army of the Potomac, because of his failure to engage the Confederate Army and win the Civil War.
Similarly, when a general takes actions that contradict the president’s behavior, he will be removed. President Harry S Truman relieved General Douglas MacArthur of his command for insubordination when he issued an unauthorized statement threatening to expand the Korean war into China if it resisted, while the president was preparing to engage North Korea and China in peace negotiations. MacArthur’s independence led to the loss of many American lives. (These events are retold in David Halberstam’s posthumous The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War, excerpted in “MacArthur’s Grand Illusion,” in the October 2007 issue of Vanity Fair.) General Omar Bradley expressed the prevalent military as well as political sentiment when he said that General MacArthur’s action “would have involved us in the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time against the wrong enemy.”
Disagreement is not the only inappropriate behavior for a general. It is also undesirable for a general to allow himself to become (albeit at the president’s instigation) a spokesperson for what is, after all, the president’s partisan politics. No longer simply a general, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell remained for the American public the general above politics and the Bush Administration’s most credible spokesperson when he was prevailed upon to address the United Nations to justify what would subsequently be America’s unilateral invasion of Iraq. Virtually no assertions of “facts” were true in Powell’s presentation of the doubtful and untruthful “evidence” supporting Iraq’s close alliance with Al Qaeda, possession of weapons of mass destruction, and intention to employ those weapons against the United States. Nevertheless, the authority of General Powell’s endorsement seemed credible to a public that would have been skeptical if these claims had come from another spokesperson.
That was the position that General Petraeus put himself into when just weeks before the 2004 presidential election, The Washington Post published an op-ed piece by him. Ever the optimist, General Petraeus saw “tangible progress” in Iraqi security forces, enabling “Iraqis to shoulder more of the load for their own security.” Petraeus detailed military victories and the increased capacity of the police forces. Regrettably, General Petraeus has not enjoyed the military success that the president and he have both implied that he has had. Sectarian warfare has escalated in areas under his command. His efforts at reaching political agreements have failed, as have the efforts of others. The loss of billions of dollars of Iraqi weapons have led to a major criminal investigation of Army mismanagement. Despite the general’s praise, recent reports recommend that the police should be disbanded because of their dismal failure to improve security.
Three years later, in his long-anticipated evaluation of the “surge,” the general once again has said that some progress had been made on the ground, adding that there were fewer fatalities in some areas in recent months [but didn’t count Sunnis killing Sunnis, Shias killing Shias, or assassination by being shot in the front of the head as distinct from the rear], and that some tribal groups that once used their weapons to kill Americans had entered into agreement with the Americans to use their new American-supplied weapons to kill insurgents. In passing, the president and general have acknowledged that no progress had been made to create a unified government in the devastated country. Most revealing of the limits of military judgment was the answer General Petraeus couldn’t give when asked whether America is safer. He confessed that he has not entertained that question.
It is appropriate that a general should echo the military judgment of the president, if he agrees with it. What is deliberately deceitful is the president’s pretense that he will be guided by the conclusions of his generals, as Bush stated one month before the general came home: “Troop levels will be decided by our commanders on the ground, not by political figures in Washington, D.C.” He couldn’t wait for General Petraeus’s testimony and flew to a secret desert air base 120 miles from Baghdad to declare that the surge is working. Of course, he already knew the general’s conclusion, because when Bush disagrees with a general, the general is removed or retired.
What did generals think of the invasion? General Eric Shinseki, then Army Chief of Staff, asked by a Senate committee to estimate the number of ground troops necessary to support the invasion of Iraq, replied “several hundred thousand.” Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowiz immediately declared that was ‘’wildly off the mark.” Shinseki soon retired. Commander-in-Chief United States Central Command General John Abizaid has since said that Shinseki’s estimate was correct. General Bernard Trainor has described a willfully self-deluding planning process. General William Odom, former director of the National Security Agency, has said that the American invasion of Iraq might be the worse strategic mistake in American history.
What did generals think of America’s conduct in Iraq? General Antonio Taguba, charged with reporting on the documented horrors and humiliations suffered by prisoners at Abu Ghraib (which provided the terrorists with their most persuasive recruitment tool) concluded that the crimes deserved severe punishment. Instead, the Department of Defense punished only the lowest-ranking soldiers and General Taguba was exiled to a Pentagon desk job and early retirement. CENTCOM General Anthony Zinni, later Bush’s special envoy to the Middle East, has stated: “In the lead up to the Iraq war and its later conduct, I saw at a minimum, true dereliction, negligence and irresponsibility; at worst, lying, incompetence and corruption.” Our mistakes, Zinni argues, include denying priority to the war on Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, disbanding the Iraqi army, and deBaathifying the police. The result of our ill-advised unilateral aggressive intervention, General Zinni concluded, is that “we are now being viewed as the modern crusaders, as the modern colonial power in this part of the world.”
Did the generals think that the “surge” was desirable? When General Abizaid was pressed this past November by Senator John McCain on the need for an increased U.S. military presence, he replied: “Senator McCain, I met with every divisional commander, General [George] Casey, the core commander, General [Martin[ Dempsey [head of the Multi-National Security Transition Command in Iraq}, we all talked together. And I said, in your professional opinion, if we were to bring in more American troops now, does it add considerably to our ability to achieve success in Iraq? And they all said no. And the reason is because we want the Iraqis to do more. It is easy for the Iraqis to rely upon us to do this work. I believe that more American forces prevent the Iraqis from doing more, from taking more responsibility for their own future.”
What did generals think of the civilian strategists of the war? General Paul Eaton, who helped revive the Iraqi army, described Rumsfeld as “incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically.” General John Batiste, commander of an infantry division in Iraq, turned down a promotion and a tour in Iraq as the second-ranking military officer, and chose to retire rather than continue to work for Rumsfeld. In 2006, according to a Military Times poll, almost 60 percent of the members of the United States Armed Forces do not believe that the civilians in the Pentagon had their “best interests at heart.”
Each month of the surge so far has cost $10 billion and the lives of one hundred American troops. Senator McCain warns that withdrawal would increase “the potential for genocide, wider war, spiraling oil prices and the perception of strategic American defeat.” Those grim consequences may occur. But it is the responsibility of President Bush, not of his generals, to clearly spell out when and under what circumstances the risk of these dire consequences of American withdrawal would be reduced. Absent President Bush’s clear analysis and projection of America’s future prospects in Iraq, his unstated cynical answer is that this is his legacy to a future Administration.
If you wish to subscribe to Thinking Out Loud, e-mail thinkingoutloud@stanleyfeingold.com, and write “subscribe.” The price of your subscription is your occasionally thinking out loud by responding. Comments, criticisms and corrections are welcome. I intend to post a weekly essay of under 1500 words. To unsubscribe, write “cancel.” Stanley Feingold
Friday, September 7, 2007
DOES RONALD REAGAN HAVE A CONSERVATIVE HEIR?
Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980 marked the beginning of an extraordinary change in American politics, made evident by sharper ideological differences between the leadership of the major parties than had been seen since before the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt. The one-sidedness of the 1932 Democratic triumph ushered in a era of one-party dominance that resulted in rheir control of the House of Representatives for fifty-eight and of the Senate for fifty-two of the next sixty-two years and five consecutive presidential victories before losing to an unbeatable war hero.
This was achieved initially as a result of the Democratic Party’s remarkable ability to hold together the most disparate interests. Southern white supremacists were there because they had been there since Lincoln “freed the slaves.” Twentieth-century working-class immigrants were there because there was no congenial home for them in a Republican Party whose leaders represented capitalist power and a laissez-faire philosophy epitomized in Calvin Coolidge’s observation that the business of government is business. Black Americans were there because they were ignored by the party that had ended slavery and they responded to the New Deal’s egalitarianism.
Republicans recognized that they had to make a broader appeal and, in choosing presidential nominees, they reached beyond conservative ideologues to nominate New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey (twice) and former Democrat Wendell Willkie before winning the presidency with General Dwight D. Eisenhower, whose domestic political leanings were largely unknown. Eisenhower was the candidate of the liberal internationalist wing of the party, barely and bitterly winning the nomination in 1952 against Ohio Senator Robert A. Taft, an authentic and beloved conservative widely known as Mr. Republican.
This shift toward more moderate Republican presidential candidates was reflected in efforts to broaden the party base, in order to make it more cross-sectional and multi-factional. Nevertheless, the Democratic Party remained more liberal, despite the power of conservative southerners who chaired most of the major congressional committees, and the Republican Party remained more conservative, despite the presence of eastern internationalists and middle-western LaFollette populists. The Democrats did a better job of keeping their coalition than the Republicans did of creating theirs, as was evident in the civil rights controversies, when both the leading advocates and leading opponents of racial equality were in the Democratic Party.
After Vice President Richard Nixon’s close defeat in 1960, conservatives captured enough Republican Party state organizations to nominate Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, who, true to his promise to offer “a choice, not an echo,” championed the reduced size of government, repeal of the graduated income tax, an end to federal aid to education, and voluntary Social Security. Goldwater had written The Conscience of a Conservative, and he became the embodiment of that conscience.
In retrospect, Goldwater’s overwhelming defeat (equaled only by Democrat George McGovern’s loss eight years later) can be seen as the birth pangs of a new conservative alliance. Goldwater won only his home state of Arizona and the five southern states with the greatest proportion of black citizens, the states in which the issue of race was most important. The Solid South of a century after the Civil War was solid no more. The change begun by the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education outlawing segregated public education was accelerated by passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965. The political landscape was decisively altered by school busing, forced school integration, affirmative action in higher education and hiring, white flight, race riots, and the perception of increased street crime. The enduring political consequence has been that no Democratic presidential candidate since Lyndon Johnson in 1964 has received a majority of white votes.
Despite the existence of laws inspired by religious beliefs (Sunday closing laws, prohibiting the mailing of immoral material, criminalization of birth control information and devices, and the insertion of “under God” into the Pledge of Allegiance), religious political influence abated after the 1925 Scopes “monkey trial,” in which a young science teacher was convicted for teaching evolutionary theory. It was a pyrrhic victory for religious orthodoxy because the public reaction was a political defeat for the public teaching of religious doctrine.
Religious moral conviction reemerged as a political force in 1965 when the United States Supreme Court upheld the right of married couples to obtain contraceptives. In 1973 in Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court went further in recognizing a woman’s right to an abortion, inspiring a powerful grass-roots movement that has ever since aspired to reverse this decision by the selection of Supreme Court Justices who are likely to vote to overturn Roe or, short of that, limit the permissible period or methods of abortions.
The new mobilization of religious and racial conservatism became allied with the economic conservatism of business protectionism, laissez-faire government, and fiscal conservatism to reshape the Republican Party. It needed a candidate who would articulate this new conservative coalition, and it found him in Ronald Reagan. Reagan was identified with opposition to abortion, obscenity and pornography; respect for the flag and support for school prayer, and certain and severe punishment for violent crimes. Reagan’s presidency accompanied – and perhaps inspired – the revival of religious fundamentalism and equating American patriotism with Republican conservatism.
It is only peripherally relevant to this alliance symbolized by Reagan that his behavior was not nearly as conservative as his rhetoric. He frequently invoked God, but was not a churchgoer. He had been a populist before he became a conservative and, as president, he supported raising Social Security taxes rather than cutting benefits. In 1964, he characterized Medicare as socialized medicine, but Medicare spending increased by more than ten percent in each year of his presidency. He promised to decrease the size of government; it increased. He promised to cut the budget; it grew larger. He promised to decrease entitlements; in office, he supported vast increases. He promised to abolish two Cabinet departments; they were retained and another was created. He promised to outlaw abortion; nothing happened. Nevertheless, the symbolic reality was that Reagan made most Americans feel good about themselves and their country, and conservatives believed that they had an ally in the White House.
The conservative coalition could not feel a similar comradeship with Reagan’s vice president and successor, George H. W. Bush, who was defeated after one term, in part because of the bitterness of economic conservatives at his betrayal of his pledge of “no new taxes.” But they had captured the party machinery and, aided by Democratic President Bill Clinton’s political ineptitude and neglect of the party organization, succeeded in winning control of Congress in 1994, holding it for the last six years of the Clinton presidency and the first six of George W. Bush, the truest conservative to occupy the White House in the lifetime of anyone now living.
Even in victory, insecurity was apparent in the now-powerful conservative coalition. Where earlier conventions featured major addresses by staunch conservatives, in 2004 the most prominent speakers included John McCain, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Rudolph Giuliani. It can be dismissed as window-dressing, but it was clearly designed to entice more customers into the store. The reason was that the existence of a new conservative majority had not yet been established.
Al Gore outpolled Bush in 2000 and the party vote that year for the House was almost a dead heat, with little more than one vote in every thousand separating them. Four years later, the Republican margin of victory for House candidates was less than three votes in every thousand votes cast. Democrats received more votes than Republicans in the one hundred Senate races from 2000 to 2004 or 2002 to 2006. Republican control of Congress was due more to gerrymandering in the House and its dominance in the rural, less populous states than to greater popular support.
Is the confidence of the conservative coalition in the rightness (take it either way) of their cause diminishing? Their three leading aspirants for the 2008 presidential nomination are a former Governor of ultra-liberal Massachusetts, a former Mayor of New York City (neither of which any Republican can hope to win), and a distinguished Senator whose complex public record ranges from excoriating President Bush to embracing his most controversial policies. Fred Thompson has finally announced his candidacy as the savior of the conservative cause. Better known as a television and movie actor than as an eight-year Senator, his conservative credentials are modest compared with the records of many past and present Governors and members of Congress.
In order to win the nomination, each of these four leading candidates must now vow that he is the most authentic heir to Reagan Republicanism without identifying himself to closely with the current president, and then, to win the election, he must radically moderate his positions to win the support of a much broader electorate. Reagan could preach in 1980 that it was “morning in America.” Is it possible that it is now much later in the day – perhaps too late for his conservatism?
If you wish to subscribe to Thinking Out Loud, e-mail
thinkingoutloud@stanleyfeingold.com, and write
“subscribe.” The price of your subscription is your
occasionally thinking out loud by responding.
Comments, criticisms and corrections are welcome.
I intend to post a weekly essay of under 1500 words.
To unsubscribe, write “cancel.” Stanley Feingold
This was achieved initially as a result of the Democratic Party’s remarkable ability to hold together the most disparate interests. Southern white supremacists were there because they had been there since Lincoln “freed the slaves.” Twentieth-century working-class immigrants were there because there was no congenial home for them in a Republican Party whose leaders represented capitalist power and a laissez-faire philosophy epitomized in Calvin Coolidge’s observation that the business of government is business. Black Americans were there because they were ignored by the party that had ended slavery and they responded to the New Deal’s egalitarianism.
Republicans recognized that they had to make a broader appeal and, in choosing presidential nominees, they reached beyond conservative ideologues to nominate New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey (twice) and former Democrat Wendell Willkie before winning the presidency with General Dwight D. Eisenhower, whose domestic political leanings were largely unknown. Eisenhower was the candidate of the liberal internationalist wing of the party, barely and bitterly winning the nomination in 1952 against Ohio Senator Robert A. Taft, an authentic and beloved conservative widely known as Mr. Republican.
This shift toward more moderate Republican presidential candidates was reflected in efforts to broaden the party base, in order to make it more cross-sectional and multi-factional. Nevertheless, the Democratic Party remained more liberal, despite the power of conservative southerners who chaired most of the major congressional committees, and the Republican Party remained more conservative, despite the presence of eastern internationalists and middle-western LaFollette populists. The Democrats did a better job of keeping their coalition than the Republicans did of creating theirs, as was evident in the civil rights controversies, when both the leading advocates and leading opponents of racial equality were in the Democratic Party.
After Vice President Richard Nixon’s close defeat in 1960, conservatives captured enough Republican Party state organizations to nominate Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, who, true to his promise to offer “a choice, not an echo,” championed the reduced size of government, repeal of the graduated income tax, an end to federal aid to education, and voluntary Social Security. Goldwater had written The Conscience of a Conservative, and he became the embodiment of that conscience.
In retrospect, Goldwater’s overwhelming defeat (equaled only by Democrat George McGovern’s loss eight years later) can be seen as the birth pangs of a new conservative alliance. Goldwater won only his home state of Arizona and the five southern states with the greatest proportion of black citizens, the states in which the issue of race was most important. The Solid South of a century after the Civil War was solid no more. The change begun by the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education outlawing segregated public education was accelerated by passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965. The political landscape was decisively altered by school busing, forced school integration, affirmative action in higher education and hiring, white flight, race riots, and the perception of increased street crime. The enduring political consequence has been that no Democratic presidential candidate since Lyndon Johnson in 1964 has received a majority of white votes.
Despite the existence of laws inspired by religious beliefs (Sunday closing laws, prohibiting the mailing of immoral material, criminalization of birth control information and devices, and the insertion of “under God” into the Pledge of Allegiance), religious political influence abated after the 1925 Scopes “monkey trial,” in which a young science teacher was convicted for teaching evolutionary theory. It was a pyrrhic victory for religious orthodoxy because the public reaction was a political defeat for the public teaching of religious doctrine.
Religious moral conviction reemerged as a political force in 1965 when the United States Supreme Court upheld the right of married couples to obtain contraceptives. In 1973 in Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court went further in recognizing a woman’s right to an abortion, inspiring a powerful grass-roots movement that has ever since aspired to reverse this decision by the selection of Supreme Court Justices who are likely to vote to overturn Roe or, short of that, limit the permissible period or methods of abortions.
The new mobilization of religious and racial conservatism became allied with the economic conservatism of business protectionism, laissez-faire government, and fiscal conservatism to reshape the Republican Party. It needed a candidate who would articulate this new conservative coalition, and it found him in Ronald Reagan. Reagan was identified with opposition to abortion, obscenity and pornography; respect for the flag and support for school prayer, and certain and severe punishment for violent crimes. Reagan’s presidency accompanied – and perhaps inspired – the revival of religious fundamentalism and equating American patriotism with Republican conservatism.
It is only peripherally relevant to this alliance symbolized by Reagan that his behavior was not nearly as conservative as his rhetoric. He frequently invoked God, but was not a churchgoer. He had been a populist before he became a conservative and, as president, he supported raising Social Security taxes rather than cutting benefits. In 1964, he characterized Medicare as socialized medicine, but Medicare spending increased by more than ten percent in each year of his presidency. He promised to decrease the size of government; it increased. He promised to cut the budget; it grew larger. He promised to decrease entitlements; in office, he supported vast increases. He promised to abolish two Cabinet departments; they were retained and another was created. He promised to outlaw abortion; nothing happened. Nevertheless, the symbolic reality was that Reagan made most Americans feel good about themselves and their country, and conservatives believed that they had an ally in the White House.
The conservative coalition could not feel a similar comradeship with Reagan’s vice president and successor, George H. W. Bush, who was defeated after one term, in part because of the bitterness of economic conservatives at his betrayal of his pledge of “no new taxes.” But they had captured the party machinery and, aided by Democratic President Bill Clinton’s political ineptitude and neglect of the party organization, succeeded in winning control of Congress in 1994, holding it for the last six years of the Clinton presidency and the first six of George W. Bush, the truest conservative to occupy the White House in the lifetime of anyone now living.
Even in victory, insecurity was apparent in the now-powerful conservative coalition. Where earlier conventions featured major addresses by staunch conservatives, in 2004 the most prominent speakers included John McCain, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Rudolph Giuliani. It can be dismissed as window-dressing, but it was clearly designed to entice more customers into the store. The reason was that the existence of a new conservative majority had not yet been established.
Al Gore outpolled Bush in 2000 and the party vote that year for the House was almost a dead heat, with little more than one vote in every thousand separating them. Four years later, the Republican margin of victory for House candidates was less than three votes in every thousand votes cast. Democrats received more votes than Republicans in the one hundred Senate races from 2000 to 2004 or 2002 to 2006. Republican control of Congress was due more to gerrymandering in the House and its dominance in the rural, less populous states than to greater popular support.
Is the confidence of the conservative coalition in the rightness (take it either way) of their cause diminishing? Their three leading aspirants for the 2008 presidential nomination are a former Governor of ultra-liberal Massachusetts, a former Mayor of New York City (neither of which any Republican can hope to win), and a distinguished Senator whose complex public record ranges from excoriating President Bush to embracing his most controversial policies. Fred Thompson has finally announced his candidacy as the savior of the conservative cause. Better known as a television and movie actor than as an eight-year Senator, his conservative credentials are modest compared with the records of many past and present Governors and members of Congress.
In order to win the nomination, each of these four leading candidates must now vow that he is the most authentic heir to Reagan Republicanism without identifying himself to closely with the current president, and then, to win the election, he must radically moderate his positions to win the support of a much broader electorate. Reagan could preach in 1980 that it was “morning in America.” Is it possible that it is now much later in the day – perhaps too late for his conservatism?
If you wish to subscribe to Thinking Out Loud, e-mail
thinkingoutloud@stanleyfeingold.com, and write
“subscribe.” The price of your subscription is your
occasionally thinking out loud by responding.
Comments, criticisms and corrections are welcome.
I intend to post a weekly essay of under 1500 words.
To unsubscribe, write “cancel.” Stanley Feingold
Saturday, September 1, 2007
IS A VICE PRESIDENT NECESSARY?
The thought must occur to President Bush’s harshest critics that, as unpopular as he is, even they fear the possibility of his departure before the end of his second term. There cannot be many Americans who might consider removing Bush who would be pleased by the prospect of replacing him with Vice President Cheney.
It isn’t a unique situation. President Richard Nixon was deeply embroiled in the Watergate scandal shortly after his reelection in 1972, but those who most condemned his shameful behavior feared that, if he were removed from office, Vice President Spiro Agnew would become the president. (The authors of the Constitution had not clearly indicated that, in such circumstances, the vice president would succeed to the title of president, but John Tyler, the first vice president whose president died one month after taking office, had himself sworn in, and every succeeding vice president has done the same.) Fortunately for Nixon’s critics, Agnew resigned nine months into his second term in an agreement that allowed him to escape trial on charges of having committed bribery, extortion, and tax evasion during his tenure as governor of Maryland. This cleared the way for the congressional inquiry into Nixon’s unlawful conduct that led to his resignation less than a year later. Imagine that Nixon had left office before Agnew, and this ignorant, bigoted and corrupt man, chosen as Nixon’s running-mate because he had delivered his state’s support to Nixon at a crucial point in the 1968 nomination campaign, had become President of the United States.
In the same fashion, imagine if President George H.W. Bush had departed from the presidency and been replaced by Vice President Dan Quayle, a choice of a running-mate that shocked even Bush’s supporters. Quayle was an amiable, ill-prepared and under-equipped Senator who is best-remembered two decades later for his misspelling of “potato” (he told a student to add an “e”) and a number of verbal gaffes, perhaps most famously his reference to the United Negro College Fund slogan, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste,” as “What a waste it is to lose one’s mind or not having a mind is being wasteful. How true that is.”
Today a very unpopular President Bush has an even more unpopular Vice President Dick Cheney. When Congress was examining President Nixon’s role in the Watergate break-in, a business associate reported that Cheney said (and Cheney has never denied saying it), that Watergate was “a political ploy by the president’s enemies.” His support for unchecked executive power was later on the public record when, as a member of Congress, he opposed congressional investigation of possible abuses of power in the Iran-Contra scandal and commended Colonel Oliver North as “the most effective and impressive witness certainly this committee has heard.”
As Vice President, Cheney has repeatedly stated that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11, that terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi established an Al Qaeda operation in Iraq, and made other claims that have been totally refuted; he persuaded President Bush to sign an order denying foreign terrorism suspects access to any military or civilian court (without informing either Secretary of State Powell or National Security Adviser Rice); he advocated “robust interrogation” of suspects, a code phrase for torture; he refused to tell Congress whom he had met to develop energy policy; he has refused to respond to a subpoena from a congressional committee, and offered the far-fetched claim (abandoned after widespread ridicule) that he was not an “entity within the executive branch.”
Of course, if he were not vice president, Cheney could make all of these unfounded (literally anti-republican and anti-democratic) claims, and President Bush could, as he has, adopt them as his own. However, because he is vice president, if President Bush was removed from office, Cheney would become president. It is beyond argument that neither Agnew nor Quayle nor Cheney would have received serious consideration as a presidential candidate. On the evidence of their political backgrounds, Agnew and Quayle would have been major embarrassments as President of the United States and Cheney would be an unmitigated disaster. His arrogance, obdurateness, passion for secrecy, and disrespect for the clear mandates of the Constitution would inspire unending constitutional crises.
Once upon a time, the vice presidency was a position that inspired ridicule. Mr. Dooley, Finley Peter Dunne’s famous fictional politician, observed: “Th’ prisidincy is th’ highest office in th’ gift iv th’ people. Th’ vice-presidency is th’ next highest an’ th’ lowest, It isn’t a crime exactly. Ye can’t be sent to jail f’r it, but it’s a kind iv a disgrace. It’s like writin’ anonymous letters.” In a similar humorous and derogatory spirit, the office was lampooned in the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical Of Thee I Sing, when Vice President Alexander P. Throttlebottom discovers that his sole constitutional power is to preside over the U.S. Senate, in which he cannot introduce legislation or speak, but can cast tie-breaking votes, which don’t occur once in the average vice president’s career.
The vice presidency is no longer a laughing matter. All four nineteenth century vice presidents who succeeded to the presidency upon the death of the president had been at odds with the presidents under whom they served, and all failed to be nominated in their own right before the next election. By contrast, four of five vice presidents who succeeded upon the death of a president in the twentieth century were subsequently elected in their own right. The fifth, Gerald Ford, who succeeded on the resignation of President Nixon, failed to be elected, in large part because of the blanket pardon he had given to Nixon. Altogether, the five 20th-century vice presidents who succeeded to the office served (including four elected terms, to which they would not have been elected if they had not been first elevated to the presidency) for a little more than 22 years and ten months, very nearly a quarter of a century.
In addition, other elections have been critically influenced by an earlier president’s choice of a running-mate. VP Nixon lost in 1960 but won twice in 1968 and 1972. Former VP Mondale lost in 1984, VP Bush won in 1988, and VP Gore was denied his victory in 2000. The presidential election of 2008 will be only the third election since 1900 in which neither an incumbent president nor a present or past vice president is a major party candidate.
The argument that an incumbent vice president is better prepared to assume the presidency is often untrue.
John Tyler, the first vice president to succeed on the death of an elected president, provides an instructive lesson. One month after his inauguration in 1841, President William Henry Harrison died and Tyler became president, opposed to most of Harrison’s policies and reviled for the next four years by the party that had elected him. Theodore Roosevelt, almost certainly the most highly regarded president who succeeded on the death of a president, became vice president because the death of President William McKinley’s first vice president gave Republican New York State boss Thomas Platt the opportunity to get rid of Roosevelt as the state’s governor by having him “kicked upstairs” to the vice presidency, where he would never be heard from again. Of course, those who got rid of Roosevelt did not anticipate McKinley’s assassination six months into his second term, when Roosevelt became the president and profoundly reshaped the politics of his party and the nation.
Dick Cheney to the contrary notwithstanding, vice presidents have rarely been the confidante of the president. When Harry Truman was sworn in as president immediately after the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Secretary of War Henry Stimson took him into a corner to tell him about the atomic bomb. Before that, no one had thought it important to tell the vice president.
There has to be a better way. Suppose a sudden vacancy occurred in the presidency. That day the members of Congress could either quickly convene or be polled. On the first or second ballot, a new president could be chosen. If a majority of the 535 members of Congress were of the same party as the departed president, they would choose a leader of that party, more often than not one who would have declined selection as vice president in our present system. If a majority of the members of Congress were not of the president’s party, they would opt for a change, very possibly choosing their party’s defeated presidential candidate.
Presidential candidates often make this choice of a running-mate at the very last moment in a national convention, sometimes as a quid pro quo for convention support or as a concession to their opponents in the party. We don’t choose a president in order for him to choose his successor, but that us what so often occurs. There has to be a better way, and that way would involve the elimination of the office of vice president.
It isn’t a unique situation. President Richard Nixon was deeply embroiled in the Watergate scandal shortly after his reelection in 1972, but those who most condemned his shameful behavior feared that, if he were removed from office, Vice President Spiro Agnew would become the president. (The authors of the Constitution had not clearly indicated that, in such circumstances, the vice president would succeed to the title of president, but John Tyler, the first vice president whose president died one month after taking office, had himself sworn in, and every succeeding vice president has done the same.) Fortunately for Nixon’s critics, Agnew resigned nine months into his second term in an agreement that allowed him to escape trial on charges of having committed bribery, extortion, and tax evasion during his tenure as governor of Maryland. This cleared the way for the congressional inquiry into Nixon’s unlawful conduct that led to his resignation less than a year later. Imagine that Nixon had left office before Agnew, and this ignorant, bigoted and corrupt man, chosen as Nixon’s running-mate because he had delivered his state’s support to Nixon at a crucial point in the 1968 nomination campaign, had become President of the United States.
In the same fashion, imagine if President George H.W. Bush had departed from the presidency and been replaced by Vice President Dan Quayle, a choice of a running-mate that shocked even Bush’s supporters. Quayle was an amiable, ill-prepared and under-equipped Senator who is best-remembered two decades later for his misspelling of “potato” (he told a student to add an “e”) and a number of verbal gaffes, perhaps most famously his reference to the United Negro College Fund slogan, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste,” as “What a waste it is to lose one’s mind or not having a mind is being wasteful. How true that is.”
Today a very unpopular President Bush has an even more unpopular Vice President Dick Cheney. When Congress was examining President Nixon’s role in the Watergate break-in, a business associate reported that Cheney said (and Cheney has never denied saying it), that Watergate was “a political ploy by the president’s enemies.” His support for unchecked executive power was later on the public record when, as a member of Congress, he opposed congressional investigation of possible abuses of power in the Iran-Contra scandal and commended Colonel Oliver North as “the most effective and impressive witness certainly this committee has heard.”
As Vice President, Cheney has repeatedly stated that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11, that terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi established an Al Qaeda operation in Iraq, and made other claims that have been totally refuted; he persuaded President Bush to sign an order denying foreign terrorism suspects access to any military or civilian court (without informing either Secretary of State Powell or National Security Adviser Rice); he advocated “robust interrogation” of suspects, a code phrase for torture; he refused to tell Congress whom he had met to develop energy policy; he has refused to respond to a subpoena from a congressional committee, and offered the far-fetched claim (abandoned after widespread ridicule) that he was not an “entity within the executive branch.”
Of course, if he were not vice president, Cheney could make all of these unfounded (literally anti-republican and anti-democratic) claims, and President Bush could, as he has, adopt them as his own. However, because he is vice president, if President Bush was removed from office, Cheney would become president. It is beyond argument that neither Agnew nor Quayle nor Cheney would have received serious consideration as a presidential candidate. On the evidence of their political backgrounds, Agnew and Quayle would have been major embarrassments as President of the United States and Cheney would be an unmitigated disaster. His arrogance, obdurateness, passion for secrecy, and disrespect for the clear mandates of the Constitution would inspire unending constitutional crises.
Once upon a time, the vice presidency was a position that inspired ridicule. Mr. Dooley, Finley Peter Dunne’s famous fictional politician, observed: “Th’ prisidincy is th’ highest office in th’ gift iv th’ people. Th’ vice-presidency is th’ next highest an’ th’ lowest, It isn’t a crime exactly. Ye can’t be sent to jail f’r it, but it’s a kind iv a disgrace. It’s like writin’ anonymous letters.” In a similar humorous and derogatory spirit, the office was lampooned in the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical Of Thee I Sing, when Vice President Alexander P. Throttlebottom discovers that his sole constitutional power is to preside over the U.S. Senate, in which he cannot introduce legislation or speak, but can cast tie-breaking votes, which don’t occur once in the average vice president’s career.
The vice presidency is no longer a laughing matter. All four nineteenth century vice presidents who succeeded to the presidency upon the death of the president had been at odds with the presidents under whom they served, and all failed to be nominated in their own right before the next election. By contrast, four of five vice presidents who succeeded upon the death of a president in the twentieth century were subsequently elected in their own right. The fifth, Gerald Ford, who succeeded on the resignation of President Nixon, failed to be elected, in large part because of the blanket pardon he had given to Nixon. Altogether, the five 20th-century vice presidents who succeeded to the office served (including four elected terms, to which they would not have been elected if they had not been first elevated to the presidency) for a little more than 22 years and ten months, very nearly a quarter of a century.
In addition, other elections have been critically influenced by an earlier president’s choice of a running-mate. VP Nixon lost in 1960 but won twice in 1968 and 1972. Former VP Mondale lost in 1984, VP Bush won in 1988, and VP Gore was denied his victory in 2000. The presidential election of 2008 will be only the third election since 1900 in which neither an incumbent president nor a present or past vice president is a major party candidate.
The argument that an incumbent vice president is better prepared to assume the presidency is often untrue.
John Tyler, the first vice president to succeed on the death of an elected president, provides an instructive lesson. One month after his inauguration in 1841, President William Henry Harrison died and Tyler became president, opposed to most of Harrison’s policies and reviled for the next four years by the party that had elected him. Theodore Roosevelt, almost certainly the most highly regarded president who succeeded on the death of a president, became vice president because the death of President William McKinley’s first vice president gave Republican New York State boss Thomas Platt the opportunity to get rid of Roosevelt as the state’s governor by having him “kicked upstairs” to the vice presidency, where he would never be heard from again. Of course, those who got rid of Roosevelt did not anticipate McKinley’s assassination six months into his second term, when Roosevelt became the president and profoundly reshaped the politics of his party and the nation.
Dick Cheney to the contrary notwithstanding, vice presidents have rarely been the confidante of the president. When Harry Truman was sworn in as president immediately after the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Secretary of War Henry Stimson took him into a corner to tell him about the atomic bomb. Before that, no one had thought it important to tell the vice president.
There has to be a better way. Suppose a sudden vacancy occurred in the presidency. That day the members of Congress could either quickly convene or be polled. On the first or second ballot, a new president could be chosen. If a majority of the 535 members of Congress were of the same party as the departed president, they would choose a leader of that party, more often than not one who would have declined selection as vice president in our present system. If a majority of the members of Congress were not of the president’s party, they would opt for a change, very possibly choosing their party’s defeated presidential candidate.
Presidential candidates often make this choice of a running-mate at the very last moment in a national convention, sometimes as a quid pro quo for convention support or as a concession to their opponents in the party. We don’t choose a president in order for him to choose his successor, but that us what so often occurs. There has to be a better way, and that way would involve the elimination of the office of vice president.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)