Sometimes, Presidential rhetoric is about blunt truths, boldly proclaimed. And sometimes, a different approach is best.
FDR said to a campaign audience in 1940 "Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars." In that campaign, he famously said "I hate war." To us, it is clear that both times he plainly, obviously, blatantly, was saying the opposite of what he meant and what he wanted; that he knew he was saying the opposite of what he meant and wanted; that he felt a higher good -- his continued service in a war he knew was coming -- gave him licence to misrepresent his thinking like this; that he felt, and he was probably right, that in some byzantine metaphysical crafty way he was, by these very prevarications, helping the country lead itself to the conclusion he had already long since reached. Arguably, among the results of this attitude was Unconditional Surrender on both sides of the world.
Dwight Eisenhower, regarded by most Americans at the time at the distilled essence of the benign, decent and straightforward Ordinary American, was indeed that and, in addition to that, was as shrewd, subtle, ruthless, and cunning a leader and orator as American history has produced. His is not called the Hidden Hand Presidency for nothing. Referring to Ike's routinely circular stream-of-consciousness outbursts at press conferences, Garry Wills writes in Nixon Agonistes:
What, then, is one to make of those famous meanderings at press conferences? They were a proof of Eisenhower's sense of priorities. He was intensely briefed by twenty or thirty staff experts before each press conference. He went into each session with certain things clearly in mind -- things he was determined to say, and the way they should be said; things he was determined not to say, and ways to circle around them. And he got the job done. The rest was fluff and filler -- but fluff under control. Even Hughes, Eisenhower's critic, grants that he "made not one politically significant verbal blunder throughout eight years of press conferences and public addresses."...Eisenhower revealed his conscious strategy in these matters during the tense days of the Quemoy-Matsu crisis. His press secretary, James Hagerty, advised him to take a no-comment stand. " 'Don't worry, Jim,' I told him as we went out the door. 'If that question comes up, I'll just confuse them.' "
The Eisenhower era is defined by this kind of calculated, soothing playacting, and so successful was it that many reputable historians still fall for the canard that Ike's Presidency was one of passivity, of indifference to results, of snoozy self-satisfaction -- almost the opposite of the plain record. John Kennedy based his Presidential campaign on it.
And Kennedy in his Inaugural Address gave an example of the other kind of Presidential leadership. Bluntly, shrilly, and stridently, he proclaimed a new era and a new kind of Total War that trapped the New Frontier, and his successors, in a bloody and expensive box. The famous passage "pay any price, bear any burden, support any friend, oppose any foe" defined his Presidency and left no room for the creative uncertainty, for the calming pause, for the relaxation of tension that can enhance perspective and broaden available prospects and options. That he and his court thought this kind of soaring bellicose rhetoric was in any way useful or constructive is in retrospect an alarming indication of their lack of preparation for high office, and explains much of what followed in Kennedy's conduct -- often reckless, impulsive, and ill-informed -- of foreign policy.
Wednesday night, from West Point, Obama delivered his formal rational for his decision to send some 30,000 more American military personnel to Afghanistan, coupled with an apparently firm 18-month drop dead date. A masterpiece of Presidential half-and-half, the speech left no one really certain what he thinks or is inclined to do. To be fair, it was consistent with his campaign rhetoric. In 2008 he said clearly and prominently that the "real war" was in Afghanistan and that our intervention in Iraq was a distraction as well as wrong and impractical. He believes it, and has in fact substantially drawn down America's footprint in Iraq and committed his Presidency to a complete evacuation by mid-2011. Given what is at stake in Pakistan, it should not be surprising that exiting Afghanistan is a more delicate matter.
Nonetheless, to those Americans like me who long for the day that America will leave Afghanistan and Iraq (not to mention many, many other places)-- thinking it long, long overdue even today -- the decision to send more troops is objectively a serious disappointment and a dismaying, perplexing setback. It is very easy to conclude, in the context of many other seeming compromises of principle, that he simply caved in to personal pressure from demanding Generals. To propose what is in effect a surge when increasing numbers of people in the country and the Congress can barely stomach being there (yesterday a Pew poll reported that 49% of Americans -- the highest number ever -- agree with the statement that "America should mind its own business internationally and let other countries get along as best they can") can only provoke the impulse to get out. But while getting out is a great big change from staying there without a surge, it is a bigger change still with a surge.
If, as many anguished liberals are starting to say out loud, Barak Obama is a pushover, a sellout, a compromiser of convenience, a man who cannot bear to tell anyone something that will make them stop smiling; if he has found his comfort zone in a pattern of capitulating to Republicans; if, indeed, he is a man with no convictions stronger than his own narcissism and relentless self-promotion -- and I would be the last to say there is no chance that any of the foregoing is, to one degree or another, true -- then his Presidency is indeed lost, all his supporters have been bitterly betrayed, and the right-wing reaction will be swift in coming and terrible to behold. And of course, that would be bad.
But perhaps things are not really the way they seem on the surface. In the same speech were these words:
FDR said to a campaign audience in 1940 "Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars." In that campaign, he famously said "I hate war." To us, it is clear that both times he plainly, obviously, blatantly, was saying the opposite of what he meant and what he wanted; that he knew he was saying the opposite of what he meant and wanted; that he felt a higher good -- his continued service in a war he knew was coming -- gave him licence to misrepresent his thinking like this; that he felt, and he was probably right, that in some byzantine metaphysical crafty way he was, by these very prevarications, helping the country lead itself to the conclusion he had already long since reached. Arguably, among the results of this attitude was Unconditional Surrender on both sides of the world.
Dwight Eisenhower, regarded by most Americans at the time at the distilled essence of the benign, decent and straightforward Ordinary American, was indeed that and, in addition to that, was as shrewd, subtle, ruthless, and cunning a leader and orator as American history has produced. His is not called the Hidden Hand Presidency for nothing. Referring to Ike's routinely circular stream-of-consciousness outbursts at press conferences, Garry Wills writes in Nixon Agonistes:
What, then, is one to make of those famous meanderings at press conferences? They were a proof of Eisenhower's sense of priorities. He was intensely briefed by twenty or thirty staff experts before each press conference. He went into each session with certain things clearly in mind -- things he was determined to say, and the way they should be said; things he was determined not to say, and ways to circle around them. And he got the job done. The rest was fluff and filler -- but fluff under control. Even Hughes, Eisenhower's critic, grants that he "made not one politically significant verbal blunder throughout eight years of press conferences and public addresses."...Eisenhower revealed his conscious strategy in these matters during the tense days of the Quemoy-Matsu crisis. His press secretary, James Hagerty, advised him to take a no-comment stand. " 'Don't worry, Jim,' I told him as we went out the door. 'If that question comes up, I'll just confuse them.' "
The Eisenhower era is defined by this kind of calculated, soothing playacting, and so successful was it that many reputable historians still fall for the canard that Ike's Presidency was one of passivity, of indifference to results, of snoozy self-satisfaction -- almost the opposite of the plain record. John Kennedy based his Presidential campaign on it.
And Kennedy in his Inaugural Address gave an example of the other kind of Presidential leadership. Bluntly, shrilly, and stridently, he proclaimed a new era and a new kind of Total War that trapped the New Frontier, and his successors, in a bloody and expensive box. The famous passage "pay any price, bear any burden, support any friend, oppose any foe" defined his Presidency and left no room for the creative uncertainty, for the calming pause, for the relaxation of tension that can enhance perspective and broaden available prospects and options. That he and his court thought this kind of soaring bellicose rhetoric was in any way useful or constructive is in retrospect an alarming indication of their lack of preparation for high office, and explains much of what followed in Kennedy's conduct -- often reckless, impulsive, and ill-informed -- of foreign policy.
Wednesday night, from West Point, Obama delivered his formal rational for his decision to send some 30,000 more American military personnel to Afghanistan, coupled with an apparently firm 18-month drop dead date. A masterpiece of Presidential half-and-half, the speech left no one really certain what he thinks or is inclined to do. To be fair, it was consistent with his campaign rhetoric. In 2008 he said clearly and prominently that the "real war" was in Afghanistan and that our intervention in Iraq was a distraction as well as wrong and impractical. He believes it, and has in fact substantially drawn down America's footprint in Iraq and committed his Presidency to a complete evacuation by mid-2011. Given what is at stake in Pakistan, it should not be surprising that exiting Afghanistan is a more delicate matter.
Nonetheless, to those Americans like me who long for the day that America will leave Afghanistan and Iraq (not to mention many, many other places)-- thinking it long, long overdue even today -- the decision to send more troops is objectively a serious disappointment and a dismaying, perplexing setback. It is very easy to conclude, in the context of many other seeming compromises of principle, that he simply caved in to personal pressure from demanding Generals. To propose what is in effect a surge when increasing numbers of people in the country and the Congress can barely stomach being there (yesterday a Pew poll reported that 49% of Americans -- the highest number ever -- agree with the statement that "America should mind its own business internationally and let other countries get along as best they can") can only provoke the impulse to get out. But while getting out is a great big change from staying there without a surge, it is a bigger change still with a surge.
If, as many anguished liberals are starting to say out loud, Barak Obama is a pushover, a sellout, a compromiser of convenience, a man who cannot bear to tell anyone something that will make them stop smiling; if he has found his comfort zone in a pattern of capitulating to Republicans; if, indeed, he is a man with no convictions stronger than his own narcissism and relentless self-promotion -- and I would be the last to say there is no chance that any of the foregoing is, to one degree or another, true -- then his Presidency is indeed lost, all his supporters have been bitterly betrayed, and the right-wing reaction will be swift in coming and terrible to behold. And of course, that would be bad.
But perhaps things are not really the way they seem on the surface. In the same speech were these words:
As President, I refuse to set goals that go beyond our responsibility, our means, our or interests. And I must weigh all of the challenges that our nation faces. I do not have the luxury of committing to just one. Indeed, I am mindful of the words of President Eisenhower, who - in discussing our national security - said, "Each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs."
Over the past several years, we have lost that balance, and failed to appreciate the connection between our national security and our economy. In the wake of an economic crisis, too many of our friends and neighbors are out of work and struggle to pay the bills, and too many Americans are worried about the future facing our children. Meanwhile, competition within the global economy has grown more fierce. So we simply cannot afford to ignore the price of these wars.
All told, by the time I took office the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan approached a trillion dollars. Going forward, I am committed to addressing these costs openly and honestly. Our new approach in Afghanistan is likely to cost us roughly 30 billion dollars for the military this year, and I will work closely with Congress to address these costs as we work to bring down our deficit.
But as we end the war in Iraq and transition to Afghan responsibility, we must rebuild our strength here at home. Our prosperity provides a foundation for our power. It pays for our military. It underwrites our diplomacy. It taps the potential of our people, and allows investment in new industry. And it will allow us to compete in this century as successfully as we did in the last. That is why our troop commitment in Afghanistan cannot be open-ended - because the nation that I am most interested in building is our own.
Barak Obama has been paying careful attention to the thinking of the nation. The schizophrenic nature of the speech -- melding Bush-esqe boilerplate about the Taliban with the growing anti-interventionist sentiment of the nation -- does not clarify anything about the President's thinking or future intent. But that was not the purpose of the speech. The purpose of the speech was to raise further questions about what the country wants in the future in the way of a foreign policy, and to do so in a fashion that the power centers in Washington cannot ignore. He has dramatically expanded the boundaries of permissible and relevant discussion, and all in the direction of "Come home, America."
Obama is emerging as a master at subtle techniques of discrete leadership. He is quietly and patiently guiding the re-emergence of populist agitation and making the Beltway respect it. He really is going to send the additional troops to Afghanistan, just like Roosevelt really could not prematurely rearm the nation; but as sentiment hardens and reality sets in, public support will identify him as the guy who honestly thought this through along with the nation. That is an enourmous asset to a President who may, after all, have to call for more sacrifice.
Obama is emerging as a master at subtle techniques of discrete leadership. He is quietly and patiently guiding the re-emergence of populist agitation and making the Beltway respect it. He really is going to send the additional troops to Afghanistan, just like Roosevelt really could not prematurely rearm the nation; but as sentiment hardens and reality sets in, public support will identify him as the guy who honestly thought this through along with the nation. That is an enourmous asset to a President who may, after all, have to call for more sacrifice.
George W. Bush believed in the direct, full-frontal assault on questions and problems. And here we are. If Obama listened to his far-left base and pulled out of Afghanistan without sufficient Republican and right-wing cover, and without the certain concurrence of the people, he would be blamed for any and all consequences and the blowback could be bad enough to put the far right in power for a generation. The Democratic base has to wait a little while so Obama can be assured of enough national support that doing the right thing in this case does not, in the end, make Dick Cheney President.
There really are crazies out there who might soon get nukes. How does that translate into this country, of all countries on Earth, doing all the heavy lifting of trying to stop it while nations like China and Russia -- much closer to the danger zone -- sit on the sidelines and feather their nest? If we face dangers from that part of the world, is it not true that the nations there face at least as great a danger? That is the growing attitude of this country, and that is where the momentum is. President Obama has put his finger on the pulse of the nation.
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