Wow! Is it that bad?

Rosa Brooks is a law professor who served in the Pentagon earlier in the Obama administration and is obviously well-connected to inside circles on national security policy. But she has a piece on the Foreign Policy website that argues that Obama's foreign policy team is dysfunctional.

Some of her criticisms are misplaced. She says the President has no grand strategy or a strategy-producing office -- but that's been largely true for most of the last 65 years, with a few minor exceptions such as the Nixon-Kissinger years. She suggests that current officials are bad managers and don't know enough about their jobs. That may be true of a few people, but I've seen and heard many of these folks -- outside of the policy discussions, of course -- and doubt that they merit such criticism. She goes further, and urges Obama to "get rid of the jerks."  She must have had some nasty arguments with somebody, for I think she exaggerates the number of truly objectionable personalities there are in high positions. [I remember a lot of people considered Dick Clarke, the counter-terrorism official at the NSC in three administrations, for having sharp elbows and a loud voice, but he got good results.]

I do agree with Ms Brooks in criticizing Obama's reluctance to use some of his political capital on the Hill to fight harder for some of his foreign policy goals. And I'm worried if some of her asides are true, such as her claim that "McDonough and Donilon can barely stand each other" and "Cronyism" determines who attends White House meetings.  But the bulk of her arguments sound like sour grapes.

missing debate issues

The respected, though aging, CBS newsman Bob Schieffer will moderate Monday's encounter between President Obama and Governor Romney on foreign policy issues.

Here's the list of broad topics issued by Schieffer:

America’s role in the world

Our longest war — Afghanistan and Pakistan

Red lines — Israel and Iran

The changing Middle East and the new face of terrorism — I

The changing Middle East and the new face of terrorism — II

The rise of China and tomorrow’s world

What's missing? Big stuff.

No questions on the Pentagon or defense spending -- a clear point of difference between the candidates.

No questions on the criteria for the use of force, whether in Iran or Syria or ... Mexico.

No questions on the war powers of the President, either regarding Iran or drones or targeted killings.

No questions on [my favorite topic of] civil-military relations.

Maybe Schieffer will shoehorn some of these issues into his announced topics, or maybe the candidates will broaden their answers. I hope so. Otherwise, this will be a truncated and woefully inadequate one.

budget pipe dreams

I got all excited when I read that the Bipartisan Policy Center had developed a "grand bargain to avoid the 'fiscal cliff." Then I read the 3-page proposal.  It's superficially interesting but could never happen in practice.

The BPC wants Congress to follow an "accelerated regular order" -- meaning, no Senate filibusters allowed and committees of jurisdiction do all the work -- to pass a deficit reduction package. That sounds reasonable, but Senators would have to agree to carve out an exception to their right to filibuster in this case. In fact, the same result could be achieved by following the reconciliation process, as was done to pass Obamacare.

The real flaw in the proposal is the demand for an automatic "backstop" that would occur if Congress failed to adopt the required laws. The last time we tried that, barely a year ago, it was called a "sequester" and now everybody is complaining that they passed it. The BPC explain this backstop this way:

The Executive Branch shall eliminate any shortfall – whether from the failure of the debt reduction bill to become law or from insufficient debt reduction contained therein – by achieving the requisite amount of debt reduction compared to the current policy baseline: half of the savings would come from reductions to all mandatory and entitlement programs (with the exception of Social Security) and half from reductions in all federal tax expenditures. The framework recognizes that the backstop of cuts in mandatory programs and tax expenditures will require flexible treatment – certainly, cutting an entitlement program involves different considerations than cutting a tax expenditure.

I really don't see how the President alone, absent votes by Congress on new laws, could reduce spending on mandatory and entitlement programs, and especially not on tax expenditures. Remember, his chief constitutional responsibility is to see that the laws are faithfully executed. If the law says people get a tax deduction for a charitable contribution or home mortgage interest, how can the President can change the law or the tax collection rules or the forms to make that happen. Dumb idea in pursuit of a worthy goal.

military endorsements of politicians

The Center for a New American Security has a report just out examining the influence of military endorsements of candidates. The CNAS press release summarizes the findings:

• Military endorsements may benefit Democratic candidates more than Republicans by dispelling historical notions that Democrats are not strong on defense issues.
• The extent to which military endorsements damage a candidate's campaign is modest enough that such warnings can be ignored.
• However, endorsements may produce troubling effects regarding public views of the military. The survey provided some evidence that endorsements and politicization may undermine confidence in the military as an institution over the long term.

Ultimately, the authors conclude that "military endorsements are just attractive enough for campaigns to use them, yet not so attractive that it is impossible to think they would ever stop." They argue in support of those like Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey who would seek to eliminate military endorsements in presidential campaigns, and suggest steps that campaigns can take to help establish a taboo against these endorsements.

Sounds reasonable to me. There's a real danger if the people view the military as a partisan force, and it's not correct to say that retired generals aren't really treated as spokesmen for the active force.

October surprises

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.

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.

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.