If you are on the Titanic, it doesn't matter where you sit.
In the most recent Obama administration shake up, Bob Gates will be leaving the Department of Defense, Leon Pannetta will move from the CIA to DoD, General David Petraeus will move from Afghanistan to the CIA and Ryan Crocker will move from Texas A&M (from whence came Bob Gates) to Afghanistan. As in the previous major changes in the White House staff and the economic team, competent, experienced hands are being replaced by...competent experienced hands. And so as Rahm Emanuel became Bill Daley and Larry Summers became Gene Sperling, we witness another changing of the guard designed to right the course of this haphazardly lurching administration that cannot seem to find its footing either at home or abroad.
The problem is that the root of the issue may not lie with the staff, but rather with the person doing the staffing.
Looking at this most recent reorganization, I have to ask what it will achieve? Putting partisanship aside, I do not question the competence of Panetta, Petraeus and Crocker, or their patriotism. They are all proven public servants, and certainly as qualified to hold their new positions as many who have come before them. But these appointments promise little improvement in our foreign policy and national security, which continues to be directed by a President who cannot or will not get his team moving in a coherent direction.
Mr. Obama famously campaigned on a message of change, and in general change can be good--that is if it is change with a purpose. But there is a sort of grim sameness to these changes. More "gown-ups" are being called in, more of the non-partisan career types who will make the trains run on time. But it is increasingly apparent that these trains, even if they be efficiently managed high-speed ones, have no particular destination and we are in a global situation in which a lack of policy is even worse than a bad policy.
The best hope is that the President will shake himself free from his inclination to respond to individual events based on the recommendation of the loudest voice in the room at the moment--perhaps in the hopes of silencing the ruckus--and develop a serious vision for his foreign policy team. That hope, however, may prove to be as ephemeral as Mr. Obama's campaign rhetoric. We will more likely settle for hoping Messrs. Panetta, Petraeus, and Crocker (and is it cynical to expect we are going to hear Mr. Gates' name again before January, 2012?) can hold things together in their respective fiefdoms for the next twenty months, and that we don't encounter too many icebergs in the interim.
Published at Redstate.com
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Nancy Pelosi Is Right: Elections Shouldn't Matter As Much As They do
In an ideal world, of course.
Speaking at Tufts University on April 8th, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi had one of those marvelous moments of self-revelation in which a usually polished politician speaking casually and without a script among like-minded friends says what everyone is thinking--what everyone knows to be true--in this case what is considered an unquestionable "fact" by their audience. As you can see from the video, there was not a murmur when Pelosi circled around to her punch line that "elections should not matter as much as they do." She went on to lament that the lack of "shared values" had lead to the unpleasantness of last Friday in Congress with all the shouting and staying up late and worries over who would get to keep their Blackberrys.
The thing is, Pelosi is right. Elections are burdensome things. They are expensive, intrusive and all to frequently unfair. Even when you win, the cycle of fundraising and campaigning distracts from the business at hand.
Elections are particularly burdensome when you lose. Then their inconvenience becomes glaringly apparent. New crops of politicos have to be trained over and over again to do the same tasks as their predecessors. Perfectly able, even accomplished lawmakers are routinely tossed out on their ears to make way for the ignorant and green. Majorities and minorities ebb and flow, leading to confusion over policy and priorities. Your treasured projects, nursed and nurtured in good faith, are threatened by the newcomers who do not share your values--who may in fact be devoid of values altogether and may nip those tender shoots in the bud.
Really when you look at it from Pelosi's perspective, it all seems at best counter-intuitive and at worst barely civilized.
There has been some well-founded outrage at Pelosi's apparent disdain for the democratic process stemming from post-2008 mid-term sour grapes. I suspect, however, that the root of the problem for those of us who find her remarks disturbing rather than self-evident is less the word "election" and more the word "shared"--as in the values Pelosi believes we must all have in common to achieve a utopia free from those burdensome elections.
Variants of "share" are popular in President Obama's rhetoric as well, and I expect we will hear it several times from him this afternoon. I have noticed it as a curiously condescending word choice from a politician who is in my age group recalling what you would expect to hear from a parent or teacher, a disconnect he does not appear to see. It seems he understands the term differently. This new "sharing" is transitioning from being the free exercise of generosity--a learned trait for most humans--to being an obligatory act of subjugation to the state. You do not learn to share as a moral choice; you are told to do it. Should you attempt not to share what is yours--be it values or money--this government seems increasingly eager to put you back on the path of righteousness.
I find I am not comfortable with this obligatory sharing. I am one of those who do not consider pregnancy to be a punishment or gainful employment to be a prison. I am not eager to share my values with those who disagree on the first point or my money with those who differ on the second. As we consider the calls for us all to just get along, Nancy Pelosi's off-hand comment serves as a useful reminder of what too much compromise--too much sharing--can get us.
As unfortunate as it may seem at times, elections must continue to be our burden to bear.
Speaking at Tufts University on April 8th, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi had one of those marvelous moments of self-revelation in which a usually polished politician speaking casually and without a script among like-minded friends says what everyone is thinking--what everyone knows to be true--in this case what is considered an unquestionable "fact" by their audience. As you can see from the video, there was not a murmur when Pelosi circled around to her punch line that "elections should not matter as much as they do." She went on to lament that the lack of "shared values" had lead to the unpleasantness of last Friday in Congress with all the shouting and staying up late and worries over who would get to keep their Blackberrys.
The thing is, Pelosi is right. Elections are burdensome things. They are expensive, intrusive and all to frequently unfair. Even when you win, the cycle of fundraising and campaigning distracts from the business at hand.
Elections are particularly burdensome when you lose. Then their inconvenience becomes glaringly apparent. New crops of politicos have to be trained over and over again to do the same tasks as their predecessors. Perfectly able, even accomplished lawmakers are routinely tossed out on their ears to make way for the ignorant and green. Majorities and minorities ebb and flow, leading to confusion over policy and priorities. Your treasured projects, nursed and nurtured in good faith, are threatened by the newcomers who do not share your values--who may in fact be devoid of values altogether and may nip those tender shoots in the bud.
Really when you look at it from Pelosi's perspective, it all seems at best counter-intuitive and at worst barely civilized.
There has been some well-founded outrage at Pelosi's apparent disdain for the democratic process stemming from post-2008 mid-term sour grapes. I suspect, however, that the root of the problem for those of us who find her remarks disturbing rather than self-evident is less the word "election" and more the word "shared"--as in the values Pelosi believes we must all have in common to achieve a utopia free from those burdensome elections.
Variants of "share" are popular in President Obama's rhetoric as well, and I expect we will hear it several times from him this afternoon. I have noticed it as a curiously condescending word choice from a politician who is in my age group recalling what you would expect to hear from a parent or teacher, a disconnect he does not appear to see. It seems he understands the term differently. This new "sharing" is transitioning from being the free exercise of generosity--a learned trait for most humans--to being an obligatory act of subjugation to the state. You do not learn to share as a moral choice; you are told to do it. Should you attempt not to share what is yours--be it values or money--this government seems increasingly eager to put you back on the path of righteousness.
I find I am not comfortable with this obligatory sharing. I am one of those who do not consider pregnancy to be a punishment or gainful employment to be a prison. I am not eager to share my values with those who disagree on the first point or my money with those who differ on the second. As we consider the calls for us all to just get along, Nancy Pelosi's off-hand comment serves as a useful reminder of what too much compromise--too much sharing--can get us.
As unfortunate as it may seem at times, elections must continue to be our burden to bear.
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