"Alexander Haig is reported to be in critical condition at Johns Hopkins Hospital. For those of you wondering, "who the heck is that?"
OMG, I am.....old. And I am too young to remember Haig's incarnation in the Nixon years!
Haig had one of the swiftest ascensions through the ranks in modern US Army history, thanks primarily to Richard Nixon and Nixon's desire to use Haig as an alternative diplomatic tool to Kissinger, Haig's nominal superior, which required that Haig have a sufficiently impressive rank to deal with foreign statesmen. Something like Lt. Colonel to full general and SACEUR in 5 years.
Of course, by now we know the General has passed-away. The case cannot just be made - it was made - General Haig was a true warrior and diplomat; maneuvering well on or off the battlefield. Many will remember Alexander Haig's remark during the crisis that followed President Reagen's having being shot, "he was in charge" statement. There was no arrogance in that statement - it was what the man of his caliber was prepared to do and did do behind the scenes. One is not awarded Silver Star and Distinguished Services Cross Medals for sitting on his haunches in times of crisis. As noted by zenpundit, the General was very instrumental in Nixon's foreign policy and in addition, was a steadfast presence within Nixon's failing administration during the turmoil brought about by Watergate. Unfortunately, brought into the Reagan administration, his command presence was resented by Nancy Reagan and others, and he left public service under what I consider a bum wrap. Let me close by saying General Alexander Haig's epitaph could very well read similar to a famous marshal of the old west, Wyatt Earp, "he was a hard man, among hard men, during hard times, and was never found wanting." Thank you for the opportunity to say my piece - repose eternal mon General.
I never understood the hubbub over his "I'm in charge" statement. He did not say, "I have assumed powers of the Presidency." He said, "I'm in charge." I don't think he was going to start issuing Executive Orders. I think he was saying that he was taking charge until the VP got there. I'm not aware of why that is problematic. Sure, the Secretary of State is not the next guy in line for the Presidency, but he was not assuming the official duties. He was filling a leadership gap. That's not the same thing. Then again, I guess the people who got upset about it at the time aren't/weren't the sharpest knives in the drawer.
Not a bad suggested epitaph, but I've always regarded "bad motherfucker" as high praise.
My prior comment seems to have disappeared. Undaunted and undeterred, I shall try again. "I am in charge" bothers me not a whit. My understanding of the situation - based on reading Robert MacFarlane's memoirs (?) - was that there was fear the Soviets would exploit any window of opportunity. With POTUS in uncertain condition and VPOTUS away from the White House, according to MacFarlane's narrative, Haig merely sought to ensure the Soviets perceived no such window. As for the jump from two-star to four-star, I am not greatly bothered. It quite possibly implies not that Haig was good at (not that that's necessarily a bad thing) Beltway politicking, but rather, simply that Beltway politicking was good to him; others needed him as a four-star, and he became a four-star accordingly. I do have an issue with his running for president. For a person to enter the race for elected office, without ever having engaged in the grueling work that is campaigning - without having paid their dues, in other words - smacks of hubris, in my opinion.
ADTS
Sorry for the commenting SNAFU. This site functions only as well as my programming skills permit, which is to say, not very.
I'm leery of any former military officer jumping into politics unless they've been away from it for a long time and, regardless of how long they've been away from it, I'm leery of anyone who campaigns on their service rather than their fitness for office.
On your point, I don't understand why "paying one's dues" must or should take the form of campaigning. You pay your dues by performing duties that demonstrate and develop your fitness for the office. That includes work that familiarizes you with the workings of the processes and functioning of government, that develops and demonstrates leadership and judgment, and demonstrates your values and ethical behavior. Campaigning doesn't seem to do any of that. In many ways, accentuates the opposite. It only demonstrates one's ability to demonize, give speeches, stoop down to the level of the lowest common denominator, and to tear down without presenting alternatives. Campaigning is the opposite of principled leadership. It is mob incitement.
Schmedlap,
No worries on the commenting SNAFU. My programming skills are non-existent (although I hope to change that in the not-too-distant future) so for the moment you've got me beat.
Immediately after writing my comment I thought to myself, "DD Eisenhower." And I suppose part of my reaction was a Pavlovian one to a candidate nearby who has lost the last two races, which she should have won, which one person whose opinion I value attributes to her never having gotten her hands dirty running for lower-rung offices first.
On to the substance of your respones. I cannot argue with sentences two and three - indeed, how else should one be judged than by for fitness for office? I'm not sure I agree with your sentences four through seven. First, "mob incitement?" Conventions, say, can be exuberant, to be sure, but a mob? Surely you exaggerate. Second, "the opposite of principled leadership." I am sure lower forms of principled leadership can be found than a political campaign, although what I suppose you mean to say is, political candidates do not act like the leaders they seek to become.
The heart of of your comment, though, is sentence 6. Speaking of Robert MacFarlane, I am reminded of Robert Timberg's superb "The Nightingale's Song," where he details MacFarlane's time as a Marine in Washington in the 1970s. I forget how it went, but two lines that stick in my head are, "Congress is f*d up, but it's supposed to be f*d up," and "If you cannot get the American people to support your policy, then you ought to reexamine the policy." I'll concur that if one is a lousy public speaker - and even nominally bad public speakers in politics are probably still excellent public speakers relative to the population as a whole - one will probably not get elected. And I'll concur that demonization occurs. I'm less convinced that "tearing down without alternatives" occurs, in large part because the policy debates become pro forma - candidates make sure they have plans for everything, just so they cannot be accused of lacking a plan for something. Those plan admittedly might be superficial, which is closer to your claim, but nonetheless, I'm not sure how often "without alternatives" occurs.
It's the lowest common denominator claim that strikes me. It gets to whether one can trust the American people (or I suppose people in any democracy) to make intelligent choices regarding their leaders. If one thinks not, then are there other mechanisms by which democracy can work (eg, countermajoritarianism vis-a-vis the Supreme Court, multiple veto points within Congress such that individual elected officials can stymie other elected officials - in other words, the division of power within American government)? I wish I had read my Federalist Papers prior to responding to your post. On some level, I agree with you - campaigns boil candidates down to slogans, and the candidates are marketed by people who market soap and software in off-years; at the same time, the people who "boil" engage in "microtargeting" is my understanding, so rather than the lowest common denominator, they aim for specific groups - but I'm also struck by the pessimism your post implies for (American only?) democracy.
ADTS
First, "mob incitement?" ... Surely you exaggerate.
No, not at all. The 2008 Presidential election is a great example. The Obama campaign had two parts: keep the anti-Bush mob riled up by demonizing him and present a newcomer as a blank slate on which everyone could place their hopes and dreams. It was, on a macro scale, how a local agitator would stir up a mob.
"... although what I suppose you mean to say is, political candidates do not act like the leaders they seek to become."
I don't know what they seek to become, other than more powerful. What I see is a system of misaligned incentives that is eerily similar to the problems discussed about executive compensation on Wall Street. The complaint about Wall Street is that executives only have incentives to maximize short-term gains. The same is true of politicians. A campaign is nothing but a year-long exercise in promising short-term, short-sighted promises intended solely to get in power or to entrench an incumbent in power. Both the company executive/director and the politician appeal to the selfish desires of the shareholders/voters as a means to obtaining control of some instrumentality (a corporation or an office). What about the long-term health of the corporation/government?
"I'm less convinced that 'tearing down without alternatives' occurs... candidates make sure they have plans for everything, just so they cannot be accused of lacking a plan for something. Those plan admittedly might be superficial..."
So it's an alternative in name only, but not in substance. That's not really an alternative. In a court room, that would be called a promise made in bad faith, which often is grounds for paying damages to the promisee who relied upon that promise. In less formal circles, such as my father’s dinner table, it’s called “bullshitting.”
"It's the lowest common denominator claim that strikes me. It gets to whether one can trust the American people (or I suppose people in any democracy) to make intelligent choices regarding their leaders."
Yes, but not consistently without education and reliable information. For all the accolades our educational system gets, it's not really very good. For all of the freedom and prestige of our press, it is not a profession serving society. It's tough to make collective intelligent decision when people get their news from MSNBC, CNN, Fox, Networks, Talk Radio, Huffington, and FreeRepublic. TV, radio, and internet “news” are nothing but ideological echo chambers full of bomb throwers like Olbermann and Beck or variety shows like the Today Show (let's do an interview with Beyonce, check up on the weather, and then have a concert in Rockefeller Plaza!). That's why the tickets in the last election included Barack Obama and Sarah Palin.
"... the people who "boil" engage in ‘microtargeting’ is my understanding, so rather than the lowest common denominator, they aim for specific groups..."
There's always an overarching theme (meaningless things like "compassionate conservatism" or "hope and change.") But in regard to LCD and target groups, I don't think that's mutually exclusive. Take any issue. Look at the target group. Think of who the most salient stakeholders are - the ones most likely to go to the polls and/or make noise. The message that will stir them to action is generally the LCD for that group. On the issue of Medicare, we scare seniors with suggestions that they’ll lose their health care and die. On the issue of Social Security, nobody will even go there because the other side will accuse them of taking away the checks of people at or near retirement.
"... but I'm also struck by the pessimism your post implies for (American only?) democracy.”
It's tough not to be pessimistic right now. I know of nobody - left, right, academic, blue collar, etc - who is optimistic right now. But, no, it's not American only. I am thankful that our system is not as bad as the ones in Europe. There, people expect the gov't to provide them with a job, strikes are common, power is highly centralized. I'm not optimistic about things improving, but I am thankful they're not as bad as Europe.
Schmedlap:
Thank you for your thoughtful and comprehensive response. You’re hard to debate with and prevail (not that this is a competition), and much of the following consists of, “I agree with you.”
I’ll be candid and put my cards on the table. I voted for Obama, support him today, wish he would pass health care reform; my father canvassed for Obama in three states, none his own (reliably blue) state. I’d classify myself as a liberal moderate. I do have good friends who are conservatives, with whom I can drink a beer (or four) and solve the world’s problems in an hour, even though I know this falls into the “Some of my friends are” cliché. I concur that Obama was a blank slate onto which people projected their own desire and “hopes” for change. I suspect – and I doubt you’d disagree – that this is why Congresses and the Presidency turn over with a predictable frequency. People fail to recognize problems are structural and complex and nature, and think that switching politicians will lead to an end to these problems. Obama merely represented a campaign that was more explicit about exploiting this phenomenon, even, of course, incorporating it into his own campaign slogan. I just can’t think of this as a mob, though. I very well may be misunderstanding you, but mob to me has connotations of people run amok – spontaneous pogroms come to mind.
I agree with you that politicians’ overarching goal is to seek or maintain power, namely, obtaining or maintaining office. And I agree with you that corporate CEOs’ overarching goal is to maximize personal rather than profit. There are some caveats I would append to each statement. I do think politicians, at least at the margins, seek to introduce policy change; see, eg, GW Bush with respect to Iraq, or BH Obama with respect to health care reform. And the law imposes fiduciary duties on corporations, corporate officers, and boards of directors. But once more, for the most part, I agree with you.
As far as plans go, I did not expound as articulately as I would like. My own view of plans derives from how I was educated as an undergraduate studying international relations, and adheres to what I wrote above regarding structural problems. It is in many ways indeed irrelevant, and I’m reminded of the adage that no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy. Foreign policy agendas might be written up, but when they encounter reality, they often are disregarded, overtaken by events, or simply impossible to implement (both Carter and Obama come to mind). Perhaps foreign policy is an extreme example, but I think it can be extended to other spheres. Plans are campaign tools.
I thought your “lowest common denominator” paragraph to be the most interesting, because it is the one with which I disagree the most. It reminds me of the efficient markets hypothesis in finance and economics – provide more information to investors and other actors, and the market will perform better (or, at least, assets will be priced more accurately. My own take is different. First, there is the increasing prevalence of behavioral economics, that people make bad decisions irrespective of the information with which they’re provided. I doubt news and information sways people. People pick their news. They resist opposing views. How many undecided voters are there really? What information – “plans” – do they rely upon to make their decisions? Who would you rather have a beer with – McCain or Obama? Most fundamentally, should we trust undecided voters, or educated voters, to make proper choices? I’ve certainly met enough educated fools in my day to reject education and exposure to information as a surefire proxy for good decision making and well-founded opinions, at least in the realm of politics. I reject emphatically the view that more information is necessarily good; it is better than less information, but I harbor my own skepticism about democracy. Second, my view of the American education system is a complex one, and I’ll leave that for another post (basically, we probably lead the world in research at universities, while the remainder of American education is markedly less stellar).
You’re right that there are multiple lowest common denominators. My grandfather was one. He once voted, to my surprise, for some candidate due to the candidate’s position on stem cell research, which I hardly would have guessed would have been a priority for him (usually he voted for whomever proposed lower taxes). But that voters (like politicians) are self-interested (at least as a group) is a given. Might there not be a cancel-out effect, though, in which LCD targeting of multiple groups means that the spectrum of policy positions is represented? I continue to wrap my brain around the question of how our democracy works – and perhaps it doesn’t, or will cease to – but microtargeting, and the introduction of marketing techniques to political campaigns, does not strike me as a threat to democracy. Again, I raise the issue of countermajoritarianism, as well as the need for supermajorities to pass legislation, all designed to reign in the passions of the masses with the reason of the elites (and yes, I know how that makes me sound).
You’re right – few if any are optimistic right now. I’m actually far less disdainful – if disdainful at all – regarding Europe. Unemployment is high, and strikes are common (although my knowledge regarding both is sporadic and more anecdotal. I do think the health care system most if not all of Europe possesses is a superior phenomenon to what we have in the US; to me health care should be a basic civil right like education, which isn’t to say it would be perfectly distributed, just like not everyone attends schools of equal caliber, but a baseline ought to be introduced. Infrastructure in Europe is also superior to that of the US, from what little I know about the subject (see, eg, Stephen Walt) There are aspects of the Continent that we should not be afraid to emulate, American exceptionalism notwithstanding.
I hope this time the paragraph separator works. And sometime you’ll have to show me how to italicize text.
Regards
ADTS
"People fail to recognize problems are structural and complex and nature, and think that switching politicians will lead to an end to these problems. Obama merely represented a campaign that was more explicit about exploiting this phenomenon, even, of course, incorporating it into his own campaign slogan. I just can’t think of this as a mob, though. I very well may be misunderstanding you, but mob to me has connotations of people run amok – spontaneous pogroms come to mind."
I think of it as a mob because the "failure" to recognize the complexity of problems is not due to trying and failing, but rather due to refusing to try. People are not looking to educate themselves or do any work to identify problems and look for answers. They want someone to blame, a bogeyman to demonize, easy answers, and delusional promises. They stake out which team they’re on (a party, an ideology, a group) and then start shouting down the teams with whom they have the least in common. The people
have run amok.
"... I’m reminded of the adage that no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy. Foreign policy agendas might be written up, but when they encounter reality, they often are disregarded, overtaken by events, or simply impossible to implement … Plans are campaign tools."
Obviously, this is a matter of interpretation and we'll probably agree to disagree, but as I see it the problem is that plans announced during a campaign are not made in good faith. They are not crafted to best address a problem because that would result in making some people (voters) unhappy. Campaign plans are tools to deliver promises to a captive audience. The audience is concerned about problem X, the campaign delivers a proposal that purports to address problem X and, along the way, makes grand promises. The plan is sufficiently vague that the drafter can claim great and wonderful effects if the plan is implemented, while simultaneously promising little to no discomfort to any voters. I’ve got an entire casebook of court decisions in which corporations try to pull stunt like that and they get sued by their shareholders.
"People pick their news. They resist opposing views."
I’d be curious what you consider to be news. I agree that people pick their information sources. They pick what programs/pubs/sites they watch/listen to/read. But when the selections are made in a way to ensure that all of the information is one-sided and firebreathing nonsense, then that doesn't cross the threshold from "information" selection to "news" selection.
"I reject emphatically the view that more information is necessarily good; it is better than less information..."
Agree with that. Information is only useful if it is accurate, complete, relevant, and timely. People deliberately choose information that is incomplete (slanted), irrelevant (ad hominem), and often not timely (backward looking nonsense about Republicans freeing slaves or Democrats bringing us civil rights – as if those are the same parties that exist today). I'd say the nature of the previous three attributes also undermines the accuracy of most "news-like" information.
"I do think the health care system most if not all of Europe possesses is a superior phenomenon to what we have in the US; to me health care should be a basic civil right like education, which isn’t to say it would be perfectly distributed, just like not everyone attends schools of equal caliber, but a baseline ought to be introduced."
I think comparisons of our health care system to those in Europe (made by opponents and proponents of change) are like comparing our Constitution to France’s. Our Constitution is appropriate for us because it suits our culture. France’s Constitution is appropriate for them because it suits their culture. Likewise with health care, education, et cetera. Systems exist within a cultural context (which is why we can’t just transpose our systems in Afghanistan, to use a more extreme example). I raised the comparison to Europe partly for this reason. A lot of people look to them as some kind of higher ideal when such a comparison is highly inappropriate.
I’ll leave the civil rights/education thing alone, lest this comment turn into not just a thread, but an entire blog of its own.
I agree that we ought to ensure this does not turn into an entire blog of its own. Thank you again (sincerely) for your thorough and thoughtful conversation.
Respectfully,
ADTS
I figure if I end the conversation, I should at least do so by acknowledging your thoughtful post with a response of my own. Because I agree with much of what you write, though, my commentary will be fairly (extremely?) light.
In re: mob: I concur more and more with your description of a mob, even if I think it possesses different connotations than the one you’re ascribing to it. You’re right that people fail to recognize the complexity of problems, but I wonder if that’s because of cognitive limitations (people simply aren’t smart enough to , expertise limitations (how many policy papers can people read, and how can they filter good think tanks from biased ones) or simply time limitations (self-explanatory). Once more, I recognize how snobbish that makes me seem, but these are my highly-improvised attempts to form hypotheses regarding said phenomenon.
Once more, I agree increasingly that campaign plans are not made in good faith. They are equivalent to campaign promises, easily discarded once the election is complete. I do wonder if campaign plans are the same as campaign promises – whoever reads campaign plans in detail? – but the question is largely an academic one.
What is news is a great question, and I cannot wrap my head around it. Obviously there is no such thing as unbiased news. The answer I come up with off the top of my head is the Economist, but obviously it has a libertarian slant (not that that’s a bad thing). Once more, I concur with your assessment of the news: it is increasingly partisan. That’s perhaps not surprising: my understanding is that the profession (like many professions) of apolitical journalism came about relatively recently. Just as it came about rather than always was, so to speak, there seems no reason that it can cease to be. Hence Realclearpolitics, Daily Kos, Olbermann, Maddow, Hannity, and the like. The only sensible answer I can give to your question prompt does not really answer the prompt at all: something that separates the editorial page from the news page.
I’ve always been on the fence regarding cultural explanations, because I look at it as an incredibly powerful force, but one that is equally incredibly difficult to denote with any precision.
Once more, thank you for an enjoyable and thought-provoking discussion.
ADTS
Wow, you're among the few commenters to successfully format your comment in XHTML.
I would just say that I didn't mean to suggest that news "is increasingly partisan." It has always been partisan. The problem is that people are actively seeking out partisanship.