There is a long and not very encouraging tradition of October surprises involving foreign policy shaking up presidential campaigns.In 1968, Nixon aides passed word to the South Vietnamese president to resist peace proposals from the Johnson administration that were aimed at helping the candidacy of Hubert Humphrey. In 1972 Henry Kissinger gave a dramatic -- and highly misleading -- news conference just before the election announcing that "peace is at hand" in Vietnam. In 1980, again just days before the election, the Iranians broke off negotiations with the Carter administration on releasing the Americans held hostage at the U.S. embassy. In 2000, the attack on the U.S. Navy ship Cole may have helped the chances of George W. Bush.
This year, the Republicans are trying to turn the Banghazi attacks into a foreign policy issue rather than a narrower question of balancing risks and resourcing security. Now it turns out that the issue of an October surprise came up in the infamous "47 percent" tape of Gov. Romney's Florida fundraiser. One of the contributors asked whether Romney could take advantage of a problem like Carter's with the hostages, and Romney replied, "I mean, if something of that nature presents itself I will work to find a way to take advantage of the opportunity." I guess that shouldn't be surprising any more.
Monday, October 15, 2012
Lincoln the politician
Abraham Lincoln was a great president -- and a skilled politician. He knew how to inspire people, build coalitions, sideline his rivals, and defeat his enemies. Too many people like to think he must have been above the fray because he accomplished so much and was personally quite admirable. It's useful to be reminded that Lincoln succeeded as he did because he was good at politics. Years ago, I got my first understanding of Lincoln the politico in David Donald's great biography.
Now we have a long article on the same theme by Sidney Blumenthal. Worth reading. In truth, all of our greatest presidents have been good at politics.
Now we have a long article on the same theme by Sidney Blumenthal. Worth reading. In truth, all of our greatest presidents have been good at politics.
Romney and the neocons
Presidential campaigns attract people who want jobs, especially people who worked in an earlier administration and want back in the game. Once Mitt Romney was the likely Republican nominee, he was surrounded by former officials from Bush 41 and 43 administrations, both pragmatists like Bob Zoellick and neocons like John Bolton. Romney has sung from both hymnbooks in recent months, but now the campaign is putting out the word that it wants to put daylight between Romney and the neocons.
It might be true. It's certainly a useful line to put out when those advisers seem trigger happy, eager to get America into another war or two, and the public doesn't want to hear it.
It might be true. It's certainly a useful line to put out when those advisers seem trigger happy, eager to get America into another war or two, and the public doesn't want to hear it.
deficit delusions
Russell Long, longtime Senator from Louisiana, summed up the American attitude toward taxation as, "Don't tax you, don't tax me, tax that fellow behind a tree." The same attitude applies to cutting federal programs in order to reduce the deficit. A new Pew poll not surprisingly finds that the only changes approved by a majority of those surveyed are taxes on incomes over $250,000 and limiting the tax deductions for large corporations. Reducing funds for defense, science, education and the poor all get majority disapproval.
The only way around such views, I think, is a package of revenue increases and spending cuts that's big enough to make a difference, but with particular items small enough to be tolerable.
The only way around such views, I think, is a package of revenue increases and spending cuts that's big enough to make a difference, but with particular items small enough to be tolerable.
Saturday, October 13, 2012
telephone trivia
You can date a movie by the cars, the clothes and hairstyles, or by the telephone technology. I seen recent movies that depend on texting and older movies where the plot depended on an inability to reach someone on the move. There are even older films, like the gripping "Sorry, Wrong Number" that turn on the availability of a human operator. It's fun to watch, and to remember the old days.
How many people today know why there are no letters on the dial -- sorry, I guess they're all keypads now -- for 1 and zero? The answer derives from the fact that early phones connected to a central operator by lifting the receiver and creating a click. More here. When direct dialing was introduced, and the system worked by the number of clicks, not the different tones on modern phones, a single click was reserved for reaching a trunk link or an operator. The exchanges were built around names using the first two letters -- hence PEnnsylvania 6-5000, the Glen Miller song from World War II. Over time, phone numbers expanded from 6 to 7 to 10 digits. As recently as the 1980s, I had a weekend cottage served by a small rural telephone company that let us call anyone local by dialing only four numbers. You could also choose between private [individual] and "party" [shared] lines, where you could listen to your neighbors, and they to you, and new calls could not be made until the other party ended their call.
Another difference between now and then was the high cost of long distance calls. Many families had little 3-minute egg timer hourglasses by the phone so that they would keep their holiday calls to family members short. When I first started working in Washington, I would drive to work on weekends in order to use the office WATS [wide area telephone service] line for calls to my parents in Denver. Now we can have Skype video calls almost anywhere in the world for the price of an out of state call four decades ago.
How many people today know why there are no letters on the dial -- sorry, I guess they're all keypads now -- for 1 and zero? The answer derives from the fact that early phones connected to a central operator by lifting the receiver and creating a click. More here. When direct dialing was introduced, and the system worked by the number of clicks, not the different tones on modern phones, a single click was reserved for reaching a trunk link or an operator. The exchanges were built around names using the first two letters -- hence PEnnsylvania 6-5000, the Glen Miller song from World War II. Over time, phone numbers expanded from 6 to 7 to 10 digits. As recently as the 1980s, I had a weekend cottage served by a small rural telephone company that let us call anyone local by dialing only four numbers. You could also choose between private [individual] and "party" [shared] lines, where you could listen to your neighbors, and they to you, and new calls could not be made until the other party ended their call.
Another difference between now and then was the high cost of long distance calls. Many families had little 3-minute egg timer hourglasses by the phone so that they would keep their holiday calls to family members short. When I first started working in Washington, I would drive to work on weekends in order to use the office WATS [wide area telephone service] line for calls to my parents in Denver. Now we can have Skype video calls almost anywhere in the world for the price of an out of state call four decades ago.
Cuban missile crisis revisited
I finished the revisionist history book on the 1962 Cuban missile crisis and was persuaded that Kennedy administration officials, including Bobby Kennedy and Ted Sorensen deliberately misled the American people on what happened. There was no "Trollope ploy." The president actually overrode the unanimous views of his advisers when he decided to accept the Soviet offer to remove U.S. nuclear-armed Jupiter missiles from Turkey and Italy in exchange for withdrawal of Soviet missiles from Cuba. And despite years of denials, the United States did promise not to invade Castro's Cuba.
Les Gelb also has a good piece on the lessons of the crisis. There was a diplomatic bargain, deliberately kept secret but real nonetheless. This was not a case of Soviet surrender to American threats. I hope would-be commanders-in-chief would learn that lesson -- and also learn how close we came, through accidents and misjudgments to a nuclear exchange that likely would have led to a civilization-destroying nuclear war.
Les Gelb also has a good piece on the lessons of the crisis. There was a diplomatic bargain, deliberately kept secret but real nonetheless. This was not a case of Soviet surrender to American threats. I hope would-be commanders-in-chief would learn that lesson -- and also learn how close we came, through accidents and misjudgments to a nuclear exchange that likely would have led to a civilization-destroying nuclear war.
military measures
Campaign discussions of defense issues routinely degenerate into scary numbers and misleading comparisons. The GOP ticket, for example, warns that we will soon have the smallest navy since before World War I. Numerically true, but highly misleading. Many Democrats like to point out that the United States is spending more on defense than the rest of the world combined and, even with recent cuts as we draw down from Iraq and Afghanistan, are spending at levels above the average during the Cold War. Also numerically true, but no justification for either cuts or increases in future spending. Still other analysts say that we are wasting money on the wrong kinds of weapons acquired in the least efficient way.
The true test of military strength is not what we spend, but what we get for those expenditures; not how many particular units, people, or weapons we have compared with others, but how well they can perform in combat. Regrettably, we have a predictable tendency to make decisions in peacetime on the basis of efficiency and in wartime on the basis of effectiveness.
Over time, these cross-pressures tend to balance out. We still tend to put a premium on systems that are best for offense rather than defense; we still prefer high tech promise over lower tech reliability; we continue to underestimate the true costs of most equipment we acquire. On the other hand, we eventually embraced unmanned aerial vehicles; we eventually adopted counterinsurgency doctrine and trained units for it; we traded numbers for capabilities time and again -- even when that left the navy with fewer ships than in 1916.
I wish our debates would focus on threats, capabilities, combat effectiveness, and ways to reduce long term costs rather than on the misleading measures tossed about in the current debates.
The true test of military strength is not what we spend, but what we get for those expenditures; not how many particular units, people, or weapons we have compared with others, but how well they can perform in combat. Regrettably, we have a predictable tendency to make decisions in peacetime on the basis of efficiency and in wartime on the basis of effectiveness.
Over time, these cross-pressures tend to balance out. We still tend to put a premium on systems that are best for offense rather than defense; we still prefer high tech promise over lower tech reliability; we continue to underestimate the true costs of most equipment we acquire. On the other hand, we eventually embraced unmanned aerial vehicles; we eventually adopted counterinsurgency doctrine and trained units for it; we traded numbers for capabilities time and again -- even when that left the navy with fewer ships than in 1916.
I wish our debates would focus on threats, capabilities, combat effectiveness, and ways to reduce long term costs rather than on the misleading measures tossed about in the current debates.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)