Frank’s Case Book

“At the summit, true strategy and politics are one.” — Winston Churchill.

It has long been a concern of political philosophy to structure military organizations in democratic societies that are strong enough for legitimate defense while sufficiently constrained to protect civilian society from excessive military influence. In the words of Plato, how does a society create a military, “gentle to their own and cruel to their enemies?”

In mature, constitutional democracies, this problem has largely been solved. There is no real probability that a Western-style democracy in North America or Europe will fall in a military coup. Nonetheless, the relationship between a civilian-controlled military and its civilian leaders remains a serious question.

In 1959, Samuel Huntington wrote The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations, which has come to be the seminal piece on the subject and is studied at military colleges. Huntington made the case for what is now the conventional wisdom about civilian-military operations. According to Huntington, the role of civilian leadership is to set clear, achievable military objectives and then allow a professional military to design and implement the means to achieve these objectives.

This conventional wisdom has been reinforced by what many people believe is the lesson of the Vietnam War. In Vietnam, President Johnson is perceived as having restrained the military from achieving victory, while micromanaging to the point of personally reviewing target lists.

Professor Eliot Cohen of the Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Relations of the Johns Hopkins University in Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime turns this reasoning exactly on its head. Cohen argues that successful wars are best conducted with intimate control by civilian authorities over military decisions and a constant dialogue between civilian command authorities and military commanders. As military strategist Claus Von Clausewitz explained “war is simply a continuation of political intercourse.” Waging war is not a single decision. Rather it is a set of continuing decisions in response to changing circumstances many with direct political import. War necessitates decisions on alliances, strategies, means, and limits that are more political than empirical. As Georges Clemenceau explained, “War is too important to be left to generals.”

In making his case, Cohen examines the war record of four successful wartime leaders: Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War; Georges Clemenceau, French leader in World War I; Winston Churchill Prime Minister of Britain during World War II, and David Ben-Gurion, Prime Minister of Israel during the Israeli War for Independence.

In all these situations, Huntington’s admonition to acquiesce to expert military advise was not even possible given the fact the generals often differed sharply in the their advice and perspective. Through constant oversight, questioning, prodding, and haranguing, these leaders forced their generals to devise and implement coherent military strategies. This often involved reorganizing military commands and individuals to adequately implement civilian decisions. Abraham Lincoln had to work through a series of generals until he found ones that were competent and aggressive enough to implement his vision of victory.

If Lincoln had simply instructed George McClellan to defeat the South and not intimately involved himself in the conduct of the war, the United States would likely be two countries today. One of these countries may have maintained the institution of slavery throughout the nineteenth century. If Clemenceau had relinquished authority to Marshal Ferdinand Foch, an even harsher peace would have been imposed on post-war Germany than the disastrous Treaty of Versailles. Indeed, Foch could have caused a greater political rift with England and the US that would have inhibited the alliance against Nazi Germany during World War II. Without the continuous and severe audit of the military’s judgment by Churchill in practical and detailed military matters, resources would have been squandered and lives lost, perhaps changing the outcome of the war. If Ben-Gurion had not leashed in disparate military groups forcing them into a single coherent command during the formation of Israel, the Israel Defense Forces may have never marshaled the limited resources necessary to defeat an enemy that overwhelmingly out numbered them.

In Vietnam, rather than there being too much civilian oversight, there was far too little critical supervision. Despite a reputation for abrasiveness, President Lyndon Johnson never forced his generals to formulate a coherent strategy for winning the war when their efforts were clearly ineffective. It would be impossible to imagine Abraham Lincoln allowing a General William Westmoreland to remain in command for four years of ineffectiveness. The military never really gave Johnson any options above merely more of the same: more bombing, more firepower and more soldiers. Indeed the sheer size of the American forces delayed the transition of the indigenous South Vietnamese Army from a petty bureaucratic impotent institution into a force that could effectively defend South Vietnam with only modest US assistance. Johnson should have reassigned generals and commanders until he found a set that demonstrated a successful strategy for victory, if indeed such a strategy existed.

Cohen argues that Vietnam does not make the case for letting generals run the war. Rather Vietnam is a classic example of a debacle that can follow inadequate civilian direction of the military. As President George Bush contemplates war with Iraq, he should not be so foolish as to employ the dogs of war without retaining some control over their leashes. In many ways, how and when to attack Iraq has important political imports. The responsibility to make these decisions resides with the president.

Originality is not safe. Trying to duplicate past successes is boring, but it offers the greatest chances for repeating. That explains why when one genre of television show is successful, like Survivor, the show is duplicated or permutations along the same theme appear. The same can be said of politics.

On the national level, Bill Clinton was the Democrat’s latest and biggest success. In 1991, fresh off the victory of the Gulf War, the first President George Bush’s approval rating was astronomical. Many of the Democratic heavy-weights, like then Senator Al Gore, declined to run. They did not want to squander an opportunity to be the party’s nominee in a futile effort. This left the field open for relative unknowns, like an obscure former Governor of a small southern state, Bill Clinton.

Random factors seemed to fall in Clinton’s favor. Although the recession had ended by early 1992, unemployment rates still had not responded and the economy appeared sluggish. This, accompanied by what some considered a diffident attitude by President Bush, who seemed preoccupied with foreign policy rather than domestic discontent, provided Clinton an opening. Moreover, maverick third-party candidate Ross Perot garnered 19% of the popular vote and may have very well tipped the outcome in the 1992 in Clinton’s favor. Nonetheless, give credit where credit is deserved, Clinton took the political gamble and won.

Clinton was the recipient of a few political advantages that have helped Democratic presidential hopefuls. First, he was from the South. No Democrat from a state north of the Mason-Dixon line has been elected President since 1960, when John Kennedy won. Not only have Democrats from the north, or northwest not won, they have been clobbered. Just ask George McGovern, Walter Mondale, and Michael Dukakis. Jimmy Carter from Georgia defeated President Gerald Ford in 1976 and Tennessee’s Al Gore won a popular national majority in 2000. If Gore had just managed to win his home state, he would have won in the Electoral College and be president today. It is clear, if the Democrats want to win, they would best look toward a candidate from the South.

Second, Clinton effectively nurtured an image as a moderate. He was a member of the Democratic Leadership Council that had tried to wrest the Democratic Party from its more Liberal elements that up until that point had doomed Democrats to losses in three sequential presidential elections. Jimmy Carter too had run as a fiscally conservative moderate. Whatever, one’s evaluation of how they governed, Clinton and Carter did not run as traditional Liberals.

If Democrats are looking for a candidate that has a reputation as a moderate and is from the South, Senator John Edwards from North Carolina, who just declared his intention to run for president, fits the bill. Add to that his youthful and vigorous appearance, and the current President George Bush could have a formidable opponent.

Bush’s current popularity ratings are high, but if the economy does not rebound and if the War on Terrorism is perceived in 2004 to be inconclusive, Bush like his father could prove to be more vulnerable than he now appears. If so, Edwards’ political bet could pay off.

David Broder of the Washington Post notes that Edwards’ political gamble in running for president may be an all or nothing proposition. Apparently, “Votes he cast on labor union matters and some social issues have won favor from important national Democratic constituencies but do not sit well with many voters at home.” Edwards appears to be lurching to the political Left for help in the Democratic primaries.

In dealing with a potential Edwards candidacy, Republicans would want to emphasize his more Liberal positions. What part of the political spectrum does John Edwards occupy?

Professor Keith Poole of the University of Houston uses an “Optimal Classification” algorithm to cluster Senators and Representatives based on their voting patterns. He can rank politicians as more or less Liberal or Conservative depending on how often their votes align with other Liberals or Conservatives. The rankings can be a little wacky because there are a lot of votes on matters that are more partisan and organizational than ideological. Nonetheless, the rankings are an interesting way to order by a combination of partisanship and ideology.

As one might expect in the 107th Senate, the three most Liberal Senators were Russell, Feingold (D-WI), Mark Dayton (D-MN), and Jon Corzine (D-NJ). Interestingly, the late Paul Wellstone (D-MN) ranked fourth. On the other end of this one-dimensional spectrum, the three most Conservative members of the Senate were Don Nickles (R-OK), Phil Gramm (R-TX), and Jon Kyl (R-AZ).

In such a ranking, John Edwards is only the 38th most Liberal member of the Senate. That places him toward the Conservative end of the Democrats. However, there is a significant distance between Republicans and Democrats and ordered ranking has its limitations. Being toward the Right of the Democratic Party does not necessarily place Edwards at the nation’s political center.

The Americans for Democratic Action score Edwards as having voting with them 70% of the time. The mean score for all Democrats is 86% and for all Republicans 11%. The other side of the political spectrum ranks Edwards in an analogous way. Where Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina gets a 99% ranking from the American Conservative Union, Edwards hovers between 12 and 16%.

Despite the label of moderate, it is reasonable to expect that Edwards is about as far Left as his constituency will allow and, like Lieberman in 2002, he might move further to the Left to please other Democrats.

Edwards’ background as an “aw shucks” sort of trial lawyer means not only will he have plenty of financial backing in the election, it means that he is skilled in talking everyday folks in to making themselves feel good by taking money from Peter to pay Paul.

The combination of Southern heritage, an appearance of moderation in ideology, and an ability to connect with ordinary people, will make Edwards a formidable candidate if he can survive the Democratic primaries. If their goal is to win the presidency in 2004, the Democrats could certainly do a whole lot worse than picking Edwards and not much better. He ought to be the candidate that Republicans fear most.

There are many Conservatives like David Horowitz who rail ceaselessly about the Liberal bias on campus and the consequent lack of a diversity of ideas. William F. Buckley, by contrast, has generally been unafraid of the fact that much of academia leans to the Left. He once observed that good students drive out, or at least ignore, bad teaching. Teachers who are too ideological will likely turn off as many students as they persuade.

Much of politics in the US winds up being a contest between Democrats and Republicans. Despite many rhetorical differences, in practice they govern more similarly than either would care to admit. As a consequence, most Americans and most students are too busy with their daily interests to pay much more than passing attention to politics. Political apathy is perhaps the sign of a mature society that has largely already reached a consensus on large political questions.

Although campuses across the country lean to the Left, the strongest, contingent of Left wing professors inhabit pseudo-intellectual departments like Women’s Studies. The dominant purpose of these departments is not research and honest pedagogy, but ideological proselytization. Students who gravitate to these disciplines largely already have a suitable ideological predilection. Few new converts are secured. The remaining student body will ignore these courses unless they view them as an easy way to pad their grade point averages.

Nonetheless, the Left-ward tilt on campuses has the salutary effect of toughening Conservative-minded students. While Left-leaning students can safely roam like sheep through campus with their ideas unchallenged and unmolested, Conservatives must either learn how to argue their cases in an unfriendly and unsympathetic environment or remain silent. Those who speak up grow in self confidence as they learn to critique their professors and fellow students. In short, the Left on campus has nurtured a new generation of lively and irreverent Conservatives.

Perhaps this is nowhere more apparent that at Dartmouth University in New Hampshire. In the 1980’s, the Dartmouth Review, a Conservative magazine, emerged. The pages of the publication served as a voice for Conservative students frustrated by the uniformity of ideas enforced by political correctness on campus. The Dartmouth Review was been a constant thorn in the side of the Dartmouth Administration and Liberal professors across campus. Many of the stunts the Dartmouth Review staff embarked upon to generate good copy were in bad taste and sophomoric, but remember many of the culprits were sophomores. This crucible has formed a number of Conservative pundits including talk show host Laura Ingraham and writer Dinesh D’Souza.

In his recent book, Letters to a Young Conservative, D’Souza attempts to instruct a new generation of Conservatives. The book is structured as a series of letters to Chris, a fictitious campus Conservative. D’Souza spends much of his time speaking on college campuses. He is thus intimately familiar with the usual arguments of college professors and offers Chris guidance on how to respond.

Though many of the notions D’Souza explains are plain vanilla Conservative ideas, he explains them in a cheerful, straightforward, and lucid way. The book is an excellent primer and source of moral support for the emerging Conservative undergraduate.

Many Conservatives are Conservative by temperament and grow into political Conservatives later. Ingraham and D’Souza represent a new breed on energetic Conservatives who have learned to use the rhetorical methods of the 1960’s radicals on campus to frustrate many of the same radicals who have managed to acquire tenure. For this we have Liberal college campuses to thank.

There are many places where politicians can get themselves into trouble. They can stumble in a response while thinking on their feet in a debate. They can misspeak under the pressure of poignant questioning by the press. Good politicians learn to deal with these situations. Politicians rarely commit political suicide at a birthday party. The Republican Senate Leader Trent Lott managed to rhetorically hang himself.

On December 5, friends of Senator Strom Thurmond were gathered to celebrate the retiring Senator’s 100th birthday. It would have been possible to lavish praise on Thurmond for his length of service, for rising up from his segregationist past, for his love of country. No! Lott had to praise Thurmond’s run for president as a Dixiecrat on the platform of continued segregation in 1948. After making a point of the fact that Mississippi voted vote for Thurmond, Lott added, “If the rest of the country had followed our lead we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years, either.”

Now, it is possible to argue that perhaps Lott was speaking of Thurmond’s stand on national defense or that Lott was carried away on the occasion of Thurmond’s birthday. However, the key element of Thurmond’s presidential run was his segregationist policies. Intended or not, Lott’s statement implied an endorsement of those ugly policies.

Since that time, Lott has profusely apologized and recognized the error of his statement. I am sure that the Lott of 2002 is not a segregationist. Lott should not be demonized more that his statement warranted. However, that does not mean that Lott should remain the Senate leader. Much of politics is about symbolism. Having someone who is tainted, no matter how indirectly, with segregation and who is apparently politically inept would not serve his Republican colleagues well. Lott should step down from his Senate leadership position.

This may be hard for some Republicans to accept. They could be rightly upset with the apparent double standard of former KKK member and Democratic Senator Robert Byrd using the n-word and not enduring nearly the same amount of negative attention. Senator Edward Kennedy who soundly criticized Lott was silent about Byrd’s remarks. Former President Bill Clinton has many times lavished praise and honors on the segregationist Arkansas Senator William Fullbright whom Clinton viewed as a mentor. Clinton has immunity from such criticism. Most have forgotten that Jessie Jackson used an anti-Semitic epithet. There is much truth in the quip by Rush Limbaugh that the fastest way for Lott to extricate himself from this self-inflicted mess is to switch parties.

How much more ennobling would it have been if some of the leadership in the African-American had accepted Lott’s apology, worked for true reconciliation, and tested Lott sincerity. There was just too much political advantage to be gained from ignoring that course.

Sure, there may be a double standard, but double standards sometimes are a consequence of holding yourself and your allies to higher ones.

Charity compels us to feel a genuine sympathy for Democratic Senate Leader Tom Daschle. He’s had a rough time of it recently. Last year his office was sent an anthrax-laden envelope that could have killed or seriously sickened members of his staff or the Senator himself. In early 2000, Daschle managed to gain control of the Senate for the Democrats by inducing Vermont Republican Senator Jim Jeffords to become an independent and vote with the Democrats for organizational purposes. Unfortunately for Daschle, Democratic Senate control lasted less than two years, as Republicans regained the majority in the Senate and extended their majority in House in the 2002 mid-term elections.

Daschle has long been criticized by Conservative pundits and commentators, but after the 2002 elections he was also roundly criticized by the Left for his failed leadership. Given a sluggish economy, Democrats had high hopes of maintaining and extending their hold on the Senate and re-taking the House. No wonder Daschle feels beleaguered. One receives the impression that Daschle feels like Senator Morris Udall who having lost in a primary to Jimmy Carter is reported to have said, “The people have spoken — the bastards.” [1]

What else can explain Dachle’s pouting and whining performance last week when he complained that criticism from Conservative talk show hosts was inducing threats on him and his family? Daschle specifically lashed out at Rush Limbaugh for calling him — now prepare your self — an “obstructionist.” Daschle complained that when he was labeled an obstructionist, “There was a corresponding, a very significant increase in the number of issues that my family and I had to deal with. And I worry about that.” Surely Daschle does not believe that the use of this pejorative induces violence, or he would not have used the same precise term himself to label his Republican adversaries.

It was not like Alec Baldwin who on national television said “We should go to Washington and stone Henry Hyde to death… And then we should go to his house and kill his family.” Baldwin was surely jesting, but these remarks were far more irresponsible than characterizing someone has an “obstructionist.”

Politics has always been filled with lively and colorful invective. Perhaps the British are the most adept at the quick insulting witticism. Of one opponent, Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli once remarked, “The right honorable gentleman is reminiscent of a poker. The only difference is that a poker gives off the occasional signs of warmth.” Of another he said, “A crafty and lecherous old hypocrite whose very statue seems to gloat on the wenches as they walk the States House Yard.” It is too bad no one made a similarly clever observation during the Clinton perjury scandals.

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was the recipient of many insults. She was labeled as the “Attila the Hen” by MP Clement Freud; the “Immaculate Misconception” by MP Norman St John-Stevas; and a “half-mad old bag lady” by MP Tony Banks. Reagan also had is poetically proficient detractors. Gore Vidal once described President Ronald Reagan as “a triumph of the embalmers art.” The Democratic Party used to have a cartoon at its web site showing George Bush pushing a elderly lady in a wheel chair down stairs. It was not particularly clever, but certainly not unexpected. [2]

Politics requires self-possession and a skin as thick as an elephant’s. Daschle seems to have forgotten how to laugh at himself and lost the ability to reconcile himself to both political victory and defeat. Perhaps Rush Limbaugh will mercifully ease up on Daschle. As Disraeli once said of another political opponent, “Debating against him is no fun, say something insulting and he looks at you like a whipped dog.”

[1] This quote is also attributed to Dick Tuck who lost a legislative race in California.
[2] Insult Monger.

The election returns last Tuesday for the Republicans were statistically remarkable and they follow a statistically remarkable election in 2000. Given the state of the economy in 2000, models of election outcomes constructed by political scientists predicted that Vice-President Al Gore would win the election with 56 percent of the vote. Perhaps Gore was a particularly inept and unattractive presidential candidate. Perhaps Gore was just too burdened with the Clinton scandals. Nonetheless, the 2000 presidential election should not have even been close and Bush eked out a victory.

Traditionally, the president’s party looses in the Congressional elections two years after the presidential election. Sometimes they loose big, sometimes they loose small, but the president’s party rarely wins Congressional seats. Last week, the Republicans bucked this historical trend and gained a few seats in the House. Before this last election, no president flipped the Senate to his party. Last week, President George W. Bush and the Republicans did this. All this is even more remarkable given the fact the electorate is pretty well evenly split ideologically.

Perhaps Bush was just the fortunate recipient of the natural tendency of Americans to rally around the president in times of war. However, after a series of opportune elections that defy statistical tendencies, it is time to concede that the supposedly dim witted president has managed to outwit the politically sophisticated Democrats.

After the Republicans swept into control of the House of Representatives in the 1994 elections under Newt Gingrich, Republicans read too much into the results. There was not a major ideological shift. The electorate was just fed up with the Clinton Administration’s first two years. Republicans started talking about a new American Revolution, large reductions in the size of government, and started portraying themselves as radicals. Americans are too sated to be radicals and re-elected Clinton in 1996.

No matter how unprecedented and successful for Republicans, last Tuesday did not represent a sea change in ideology. It was the country saying that in times of war, it does not want divided ineffectual government. The country simply gave Bush a tentative free hand to see what he could accomplish.

To his credit, Bush sent out a memorandum to Republicans not to gloat. Bush has accumulated substantial political capital. He must be willing to use it, but use it wisely. Importantly he can get his judicial nominees to the floor of the Senate, but he would be wise to avoid ideological lightening rods, and push through a series of solidly Conservative nominees. He can push through tax cuts, but would be wise to do so in the context of fiscal spending discipline.

In some ways, the Democrats lost seats in the House and lost the Senate altogether, less because of ideology and more because they didn’t seem serious. Democrats managed to make a last minute substitution of Frank Lautenberg for the politically flagging Senator Robert Torricelli in apparent violation of the letter of election law in New Jersey. Democrats won the Senate seat handily, but for much of the country Democrats seem more interested in retaining power than playing by the rules. This view of Democrats was reinforced in Minnesota, when a memorial service for Senator Wellstone, who had died tragically in a plane crash, turned into a highly partisan political rally. Finally, Democratic Chairman Terry McAuliffe’s Ahab-like puerile efforts to unseat Jeb Bush in Florida diverted necessary resources from races that Democrats had a better chance of winning. The potential embarrassment of President George Bush was more important than helping other Democratic candidates in other states.

The Republican and Democratic Party web sites on November 9, 2002 provide a metaphor for the seriousness of the parties. The lead story at the Republican site was “Bush Hails Unanimous Passage of Security Council Resolution on Iraq.” The Democratic site’s lead story is that “SEC Chair Harvey Pitt Resigns in Wake of Scandals.” While the Republicans are concerned about war and peace, Democrats are worried about the chairmanship of the Securities and Exchange Commission. That issue surely has its place, but it seems rather anemic as a rallying cry.

When the Republicans faired poorly in the 1998 elections, I wrote:

“If anything, Republicans should learn that rather than just trying to slide to an election victory, they must articulate their vision. Sometimes, such forthrightness will lose, sometimes it will win, but half-hearted, timid Republicans will inevitably lose.”

The same advice applies to Democrats. They must have a vision beyond mere political victory. Democrats can now decide if they wish to tact to the Left, to be a “choice not an echo.” They will likely do so with Representative Nancy Pelosi as the House Minority Leader. If Pelosi leads the Democratic Party to the Left, particularly with regard to national security issues, they may be true to their principles, but the Democrats will spend some time in the political wilderness. That is not necessarilly a bad thing for Democrats in the long run.

Or Democrats could choose to follow the moderate Democratic route, the route outlined by the Democratic Leadership Council. After all, when Democrats Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton ran as moderates they won the presidency. Liberal candidates, George McGovern, Walter Mondale, and Michael Dukakis lost. Moderate Democrats are closer to sharing the mood and tempermant of the country.

Either choice is possible and defensible. The Democrats must decide who they are and what they stand for. Whatever they decide, Democrats need to be serious.