Frank’s Case Book

As the British Empire was expanding its reach both for military supremacy and trade, navigation at sea was a limiting factor. Latitude, the angular distance from the equator, was relatively easy to determine in the sixteenth century. It could be measured by the angle between the horizon and the North Star or by the sun’s angular position at noon coupled with tables of solar declination.

Unfortunately, determination of longitude was more difficult. In principle, it could be calculated astronomically or with a sufficiently accurate clock. The necessary astronomical observations, though useful on land, were impossible to make from a bobbing platform of a ship. The most accurate clocks relied on a pendulum as a timekeeper. However, the motion of the ship and the large changes in temperature rapidly degraded such a clock’s accuracy.

The British were painfully reminded of this inadequacy in 1707. After a victory over the French, four British warships were destroyed when through a longitude navigation error they struck shoals around the Scilly Islands, and thousands of sailors perished. Clearly dead reckoning based on estimated speed was not sufficient for navigation.

This prompted the British Parliament in 1714 to offer the Longitude Prize, 20,000 pounds for a practical method of measuring longitude to within 60 nautical miles. In the popular book Longitude, Dava Sobel, artfully describes John Harrison’s three-decade pursuit of the prize through the steady improvement of his clocks. Sobel’s story explained Harrison’s very human struggle. It took decades to effectively claim his prize. The Longitude Board established to adjudicate the prize always seemed to keep moving the threshold for the prize. Harrison finally claimed the balance of his prize in 1765.

Now in response to rapidly increasing oil prices, Senator John McCain has suggested that we might mimic the success of the Longitude Prize with an $300 million prize for anyone or group that can produce a battery with “the size, capacity, cost and power to leapfrog the commercially available plug-in hybrids or electric cars.”

It is hard to argue against the offer of such a prize, not as substitute for additional action, but as away to draw attention and excitement to the technological challenge. Certainly, there is little cost to the prize unless its challenge is successfully met. Under those circumstances, no one would begrudge the prize.

There is one important lesson we can apply from the Longitude Prize. During his efforts, Harrison was granted stipends from the Longitude Board for promising innovations. If the government ultimately offers a Battery Prize, it should offer intermediate awards for important, but incremental steps along the way. This would maintain interest and keep monetary awards within reach. For example, there might be a prize for an alternate battery chemistry with higher energy density, that might still be more expensive than a conventional battery.

Innovation does not always occur at large institutions with large budgets. Indeed, “out of the box” thinking is hard to nurture at large research establishment and private companies. A Battery Prize might be just he motivation for a break through. There is certainly little downside.

Perhaps there should be a special category in books stores for tell-all books by former members presidential administrations. Let’s face it. A book in praise of a current administration will likely end up in a discount bin soon after release or probably not be published at all. A critical book draws attention. The recount of behind the scenes conversations are hard to document so controversies quickly degenerate to he-said-he-said arguments. without resolution.

David Stockman was the Director of the Office of Management and Budget under Ronald Reagan and a point man for a much of the budgets cuts the Reagan administration implemented. When Stockman left government he cashed in on his public service with the memoir, Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed, which was highly critical of the Reagan economic plan. Of course, the book was hailed as the product of honest reconsideration of Reagan’s policies and the media just lapped it up. A couple of decades later, most remember Reagan and his time positively and only political junkies remember Stockman. Stockman has had a checkered career in finance since then.

When Georege Stephanopoulos,  President Bill Clinton’s Communications Directory retired,  he wrote  All Too Human. It describes the mental summersaults required for otherwise discerning and perceptive people to sustain the suspension of disbelief required to protect the President. Stephanopoulos’s key insight is that the ferocity and devotion required to support the political fight consumes so much intellectual and emotional energy, there is little strength left for doubt. The Clinton Administration was none too amused. However, Stephanopoulos has managed to maintain his prominence as a pundit and ABC journalist.

Now Scott McClellan has written a tell-all book about his time a press spokesman for President Bush with the not so clever title What Happened. Those not inclined to support president quickly seized upon the book.  Unlike other Bush press spokesman Ari Fleischer or Tony Snow who were respected by the press even while acting as vigorous spokesman for the president, McClellan not particularly well-respected for his competence. The book has a air of desperation about it.

This controversy will pass and only avid partisans will remember much about McClellan. However, McClellan will not be much respected by Conservatives and the Left will ignore him after he ceases to be useless. McClellan will fall into obscurity unless he moves further to the Left. It will be interesting to see what path he chooses.

The Clintons have been nothing if not persistent opportunists whose immunity from embarrassment coupled with an entitlement attitude have produced a governor, a senator, and at least one president. Persistence is the Clinton lesson.

After the success of the first Gulf War, the first President George Bush reached a remarkable approval rating of 89%. The conventional wisdom held that 1992 would be a Republican year and President Bush would sweep to re-election. Prominent Democratic hopefuls decided to pass up the 1992 Democratic nomination. Big names like Senators Lloyd Benson, Bill Bradley, and Al Gore as well a popular New York Governor Mario Cuomo decided to sit out 1992. However, relatively unknown Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton beat out Governor Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown for the Democratic nomination.

The economy soured in late 1991. Although it recovered in part by November 1992, President Bush’s popularity reached more conventional levels. Then third-party candidate millionaire Ross Perot parlayed his populist message to 19% of the popular vote. It lured enough moderates and conservatives away from Bush to yield the election to Clinton who won with a plurality of  43%. This  victory was, when perceived, from a year earlier  a unlikely turn of events that taught the Clintons: you can never tell what will happen if you keep your hat in the ring.

Since the Democratic nomination will almost certainly go to Senator Barack Obama, it is reasonable to ask why Senator Hillary Clinton remains in the race. The reason is probably because you can never know what will happen. Moreover, if she stays in, she may be able to force herself onto the ticket. As a vice-presidential nominee she would likely succeed Obama as presidential nominee in years ahead. If for some reason, Obama was not be able to complete his term a Vice-President Clinton would step in. In any case, if someone else becomes Obama’s vice-president, it would introduce a new and potential potent rival on the Democratic side.

A couple of days ago, Senator Clinton brought up Senator Robert Kennedy’s 1968 assassination with regard to how long primaries last. At this risk of practicing psychology without license, I offer the speculation that Hillary committed a Freudian slip. She did not mean to encourage assassination or invoke some sinister possibility. She was thinking out loud her thoughts about why to remain in the race for the nomination. She was simply pulling the curtain from the private Clinton motto of refusing to concede because you never know what will happen.

From those on the Left we heard the refrain that we should care about what are allies think of us. The unpopularity of Bush among Europeans is marshaled as evidence as to the failure of his foreign policy. What conclusion are we the draw when Bush appears at the the parliament of a US ally to a standing ovation? I guess not much if that ally is Israel.

This week George Bush delivered a well-received speech to the Knesset reaffirming the commitment of the US to Israel. Masada is a plateau overlooking the southern end of the Dead Sea, where first century Jews committed mass suicide rather than submit to the the Romans. It is a potent symbol of Jewish resistance. Bush invoked this symbolism when he said to receptive audience, “Citizens of Israel: Masada shall never fall again, and America will be at your side.

Later Bush criticized those, many of them in Europe, who wish to attempt to purchase peace at the expense of Israel”

“Some people suggest if the United States would just break ties with Israel, all our problems in the Middle East would go away. This is a tired argument that buys into the propaganda of the enemies of peace, and America utterly rejects it. Israel’s population may be just over 7 million. But when you confront terror and evil, you are 307 million strong, because the United States of America stands with you.”

As noteworthy as these commitments are, we are in a election year and the speech was received with political sensitive ears. Bush warned against empowering terrorists with the legitimacy of negotiation:

“Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: “Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.” We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

Senator Barrack Obama was not named and the paragraph would have likely been ignored after single day  like the rest of the speech by a media that isn’t much interested. Yet Obama considered it a “a false political attack.”

Why he really reacted the way he did?  Perhaps it was just political calculation. It is not obvious that the paragraph was intended as an attack, at least not directly at Obama, but what was false about it. Certainly, Obama does not dispute the history of Nazi appeasement. So his objection must reduce to whether negotiation with “terrorist and radicals” amounts to appeasement. Does unconditional negotiation grant terrorists and radicals an implicit concession of legitimacy? Obama says he is ready to debate anywhere and anytime about foreign policy.  Allow me to submit the debate topic for which Obama can take the affirmative: “Negotiation with terrorists is not appeasement.”

Appeasement is not the same as negotiation nor is it even identical to  trading land for peace.  Rather it is acquiescence to aggression with the hope that the aggression will be forestalled. The quintessential example was British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s Munich Agreement in 1938 with Nazi Germany. Chamberlain agreed to cede Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland to “appease” Hitler expansionist ambitions. Chamberlain’s subsequent boast of “peace in our time” was contradicted when a year later Hitler invaded Poland.

Nonetheless, the “land for peace” equation is not necessarily appeasement. The Israelis managed to swap the Sinai Peninsula, originally seized from Egypt in the Six Day war, for a peace that has lasted decades. The Israelis found  a earnest partner for negotiation in Anwar Sadat. Unfortunately, Sadat was assassinated by the same radical Islamic movement that Bush warned about in his speech to the Knesset.

Hence, the question about negotiation that lies in the debate between Bush and Obama reduces to whether Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah more closely resemble Sadat or Hitler as a negotiation partner. At present, given the vicious anti-Semitism of radical Islam, the case for an affinity to Hitler rather than Sadat is easier to make.

It is hard to be insightful and original and much safer to avoid contradiction of the conventional wisdom. In journalism the prevailing conventional wisdom is the simple narrative that most in media subscribe to. There are many stories that could be written about, but those that support the implicitly agreed-upon media narrative gain traction by constant repetition. You can tell that a narrative has achieved a certain prominence when it becomes the basis for jokes by late-night comedians.

President Gerald Ford was a star high school and college football player.  Nonetheless, after a few physical mishaps, the media drew a narrative of a physical klutz. Every time Ford, as would any normal human being, tripped or bumped into some object, the event would receive play in the media. As a consequence, Ford received an undeserved reputation. The media had used isolated, unrepresentative facts to create an untrue picture of Ford.

In another example, former vice-president Dan Quayle, despite being an attorney and Senator, acquired the media reputation as a simpleton. Hence, when he misspelled “potato,” the event comported with the media narrative and was continually repeated, reinforcing the media picture of Quayle.

By contrast, Al Gore, had the reputation for being smart. Hence, when he misspoke a metaphor and said, “A zebra does not change its spots,” the incident did not receive much media attention. The incident was not consistent with the prevailing narrative of an intelligent Gore,  so it was not accorded much media attention.

It is important to be aware of this effect because we are likely to witness it this election year. Since Senator John McCain is 71, some of his political opponents would like to persuade sympathetic elements of the media that the appropriate narrative should paint McCain as loosing his mental capacities due to age. In pursuit of this narrative, it is likely that silly misstatements by McCain, mistakes that we all make, will be given undo attention.

When such events occur, it should be remembered that anyone can misspeak, and that even someone as intelligent and verbally gifted as Senator Barack Obama can momentarily believe that the US is composed of 57 states.

The war in Iraq and how to proceed from this point are difficult to debate. People have erected entrenched positions and are not open to evidence that might undermine those ideas. Moreover it is hard to find contemporaneous eye-witness accounts as to what is happening on the ground in Iraq.  Michael Yon’s on-site accounts provide a notable exception.

Micheal Yon is a former member of the Green Berets who has managed to become perhaps the most useful and prolific independent embedded journalist in Iraq. During his years in Iraq he has traveled with various different US and British troops throughout Iraq. His willingness to follow these troops into dangerous areas, armed only with a camera, has earned him the trust and respect of Coalition  forces.

Yon has regularly posted dispatches on his blog from Iraq. Now Yon has published a book, Moment of Truth in Iraq, which extend the stories behind these blogs to a more complete narrative.

When Yon first traveled to Iraq in 2004, he was frustrated by the US military establishment’s inability to deal with or even recognize the best way to deal with the Iraq insurgency. The Iraqis needed security and normalcy. There were simply not enough troops to provide these.  His critique angered some in the military and Yon had difficulty in returning to Iraq.

After the liberation of Iraq in 2003, the Coalition’s inability to provide security allowed Al Qaeda to gain a foothold. Al Qaeda’s goal was to further de-stabilize Iraq by trying and many times succeeded in instigating sectarian violence.

Yon’s thesis is that the reason that Al Qaeda did not ultimate succeed in 2004-2005 when it might have is the same reason that hope remains in Iraq.  Al Qaeda does not rule, it destroys. In areas, where they dominated they proved cruel lords, raping and killing indiscriminately, while rigidly enforcing rigid religious rules on others. Al Qaeda has no problem deliberately killing civilians to seize political advantage. Iraqis have come to recognize Al Qaeda do not offer a promising future.

On the other hand, while Americans have made mistakes, by and large,they  want to help Iraqis. With the recent surge in troops, American have been able to provide more security. Iraqis have seen Americans kill Al Qaeda and quickly returned to help build schools. Iraqi have seen American troops take personal risks to mitigate damage to civilians. Iraqis have seen American troops help fairly mediate disputes between Iraqis while they rebuild. It is this inherent goodness on the part of American troops on the ground that makes victory in Iraq possible.

Early in the war, some who disagreed with the war used the abuses at Abu Ghraid to make this event a symbol of the war and unfortunately of American troops. Perhaps with time the Yon’s famous picture from Iraq will come to be the iconic image of the Iraq War. It shows an American soldier sheltering a young Iraqi girl as he pulls her from the site of a suicide bombing.

As a consequence of the surge and the strategy employed by General Petraeus, Yon concludes:

“The war isn’t over yet. Victory remains in question. The choice is ours, the time is now — for a moment of truth in Iraq. What are we going to do?”