More Bacevich

I finally watched An Inconvenient Truth yesterday. Sure, it's a slideshow, but it's a really good one. You've already read a thousand reviews. Suffice to say, it is good. There is one element worth mentioning. It reminded me of the recent Moyers interview of Andrew Bacevich in that Gore put a shared onus on the leadership and the people. We can blame Bush 43 all we want, but it is our behavior that is the problem. You can watch it here.

If you can't get enough (and who can?) here is an earlier (2005) Bacevich interview where he discusses American militarism.

The price of books

Rick Perlstein's Nixonland has been widely hailed as an excellent political book, so it is odd that his previous volume is so rare that it costs over $100 to get the paperback. Papercuts discusses the book's price as well as the phenomenon of expensive books in general. I admit I am rather tickled that I bought a copy at Goodwill for five bucks last fall. (via Amconmag)

Your Government Failed You

Richard Clarke worked for decades in the United States government's national security world. He reached the upper levels of government serving as an Assistant Secretary State and as the chief counter-terrorism official. He left government in 2003 over his disagreements overIraq policy. Shortly thereafter he wrote Against All Enemies, a memoir of his service, as well as a sharp critique of the Bush Administration's terror policy. In his latest book, Your Government Failed You, expands his critique from the personalities and policies of the Bush Administration to the structure and culture of the national security apparatus.

There isn't much that escapes Clarke's scrutiny. The Defense Department reforms meant to avoid another Vietnam failed to prevent Iraq, but helped make it worse. The turf wars, resource allocation and hiring practices of the intelligence community fail to prevent strategic surprise. The Homeland Security Department is described as a underfunded, sum weaker than its parts agglomeration that serves more as a new spoils system than a provider of security.

What is particularly challenging about fixing the issues laid out is the great difficulty in fixing them. In many cases, major legislation will be required and the necessary compromise will take quite a bit of time to implement. More worrisome is whether any single Administration can tackle all of these things in a single or even two terms.

Topics like defense reorganization and the role of the National Guard might be rather dry, but Clarke is writing for both the lay reader and the policy wonk. He provides specific detail about what to fix, but does so in an fashion that doesn't require subject matter expertise. I am particularly happy that Clarke includes global warming (and cyber-security) as a national security issue and that it be treated with the same urgency as issues like terrorism. In terms of threats to the homeland, global warming is probably the worst of all.

None of these issues will be easy to fix and fixing any will be made all the more difficult by the change in the people doing the work. The ideal of government service has certainly faded in this country. Kai Bird, in his masterful the Color of Truth (which, if you can't guess, is gray,) describes the noblesse oblige that led the privileged like the Bundy brothers to seek government service. This is gone, but the government hasn't helped the cause either. On the one hand it continues to outsource key jobs, which may save a bit of money but also fails to develop long term leaders for the government. Then it makes the hiring practices overly long, complicated and demanding and provides pay scales that often require great sacrifice of those who might serve.

In the book, Clarke lays out a number of policy prescriptions to fix the problems he addresses. The most critical one has to be the human resources question. If the government doesn't have the right people to do the work, all the other fixes will come to naught. It is here that Clarke provides the hope that his list of changes might actually be achievable. When the government has the right people in place, it can work wonders.

Pennsylvania Avenue

John Harwood and Gerald Seib, who write for the NY Times and the WSJ respectively, have written a book called Pennsylvania Avenue, which provides a series of profiles about power brokers in todays Washington DC. The book's meta-story is that DC is intensely gridlocked and that certain actors like lobbyists, fundraisers and finally cooperative Congressfolk are finding ways to bridge gaps and get work done in the city.

The book consists of a series of profiles of actors who find ways to make things work. Some like Ken Duberstein are directly involved in policies and making them happen. Others like David Rubenstein, founder of the Carlyle Group and Lea Berman, the social secretary, show more of how things happen, as opposed to how compromise is found, in the City. The Rubenstein story is illustrative about how money has gained greater power in DC and the Berman story is centered on a state visit from China and the wide range of protocol and signaling that takes place in a state dinner.

The authors have a lot of experience in DC and clearly have a lot of access. They interview all of the people in the book and get their viewpoint on a wide range of issues. Reading Karl Rove's take on politics is interesting, and good to read in his own words. I also liked the optimistic stories of ideological enemies finding ways to work together in Congress. This book will have the greatest appeal to political junkies who want an insider's look at how things are actually accomplished in the city. Those with only a cursory interest will find less in this book.

You can listen to both of them talking to Diane Rehm here.

Genius of America

In The Genius of America, Eric Lane and Michael Oreskes argue that a large part of America's success has been on a "Constitutional Conscience" and that since the Carter Administration this Conscience has weakened to the point of collapse.

This Conscience arose at the Constitutional Convention when James Madison and others crafted a series of compromises meant to protect the views and interests of both minority and majority viewpoints. The series of checks and balances and the belief in the political process as a means of solving problems kept the country growing and developing as well as laying the groundwork for the expansion of rights. The idea developed is that means are equal in importance to the ends, as policy that is crafted quickly and without care is very often worse than no policy at all (see, for example, Iraq.)

The first half of the book is of greatest value to those without a political science/government background, but the second is where the book shines.In the latter half, the authors identify a trend towards trying to circumvent the political process through a variety of means whether fully illegal like Ollie North, or legal like the use of propositions and referendums. The latter is pernicious because it requires only a straight vote of participants, and normally not even a majority of voters. And you can bet that few voters will go beyond the insipid TV ads meant to drive votes. A law on the other hand must survive committees in both houses and then votes in both houses. And there are trained professionals, the staff, who make sure that the interests and values they support are considered in the law.

In the Bush 43 years, we have the added problem of an rapacious executive branch grabbing as much power as possible and a Congress cowering and kowtowing like a weak spouse desperate to avoid a beating. The traditional role of oversight is finally re-emerging with the likes of Henry Waxman, but it will take more than that to revive the idea of the Conscience.

The authors do not deeply probe into how to fix it, but they do identify a problem at the education level. It's not immediately obvious than the means matter as much as the ends, especially to our impatient populace, but it is worth investing in understanding. It would also help if our popular historians moved to describe systemic issues as well as personal ones.

The authors will have a live chat with Larry Sabato today at 3PM EST on the Washington Post.