The Bush Legacy: Lessons

In the Post, Bob Woodward, author of four books on President Bush -- "Bush at War," "Plan of Attack," "State of Denial" and "The War Within," provides 10 lessons that Obama and his team should take away from the Bush experience.

1. Presidents set the tone. Don't be passive or tolerate virulent divisions.

Instead of a team of rivals, Bush wound up with a team of back-stabbers with long-running, poisonous disagreements about foreign policy fundamentals.

2. The president must insist that everyone speak out loud in front of the others, even -- or especially -- when there are vehement disagreements.

Powell was right that to conclude that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden did not work together. But Cheney and Powell did not have this crucial debate in front of the president -- even though such a discussion might have undermined one key reason for war. Cheney provided private advice to the president, but he was rarely asked to argue with others and test his case… This sort of derision undermined the administration's unity of purpose -- and suggests the nasty tone that can emerge when open debate is stifled by long-running feuds and personal hostility.

3. A president must do the homework to master the fundamental ideas and concepts behind his policies.

The president should not micromanage, but understanding the ramifications of his positions cannot be outsourced to anyone.

4. Presidents need to draw people out and make sure bad news makes it to the Oval Office.

Bush sometimes assumed he knew his aides' private views without asking them one-on-one. He made probably the most important decision of his presidency -- whether to invade Iraq -- without directly asking Powell, Rumsfeld or CIA Director George J. Tenet for their bottom-line recommendation. (Instead of consulting his own father, former president George H.W. Bush, who had gone to war in 1991 to kick the Iraqi army out of Kuwait, the younger Bush told me that he had appealed to a "higher father" for strength.)

5. Presidents need to foster a culture of skepticism and doubt.

Presidents and generals don't have to live on doubt. But they should learn to love it. "You should not be the parrot on the secretary's shoulder," said Marine Gen. James Jones, Obama's incoming national security adviser, to his old friend Gen. Peter Pace, who was then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- a group Jones thought had been "systematically emasculated by Rumsfeld." Doubt is not the enemy of good policy; it can help leaders evaluate alternatives, handle big decisions and later make course corrections if necessary.

6. Presidents get contradictory data, and they need a rigorous way to sort it out.

In 2004-06, the CIA was reporting that Iraq was getting more violent and less stable. By mid-2006, Bush's own NSC deputy for Iraq, Meghan O'Sullivan, had a blunt assessment of conditions in Baghdad: "It's hell, Mr. President." But the Pentagon remained optimistic and reported that a strategy of drawing down U.S. troops and turning security over to the Iraqis would end in "self-reliance" in 2009. As best I could discover, the president never insisted that the contradiction between "hell" and "self-reliance" be resolved.

7. Presidents must tell the hard truth to the public, even if that means delivering very bad news.

For years after the Iraq invasion, Bush consistently offered upbeat public assessments. That went well beyond the infamous "Mission Accomplished" banner that he admitted last Monday had been a mistake. "Absolutely, we're winning," the president said during an October 2006 news conference. "We're winning." His confident remarks came during one of the lowest points of the war, at a time when anyone with a TV screen knew that the war was going badly. On Feb. 5, 2005, as he was moving up from his first-term role as Rice's deputy to become national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley had offered a private, confidential assessment of the problems of Bush's Iraq-dominated first term. "I give us a B-minus for policy development," he said, "and a D-minus for policy execution." The president later told me that he knew that the Iraq "strategy wasn't working." So how could the United States be winning a war with a failing strategy?

8. Righteous motives are not enough for effective policy.

"I believe we have a duty to free people," Bush told me in late 2003. I believe he truly wanted to bring democracy to Afghanistan and Iraq. In preparing his second inaugural address in 2005, for example, Bush told his chief speechwriter, Michael Gerson, "The future of America and the security of America depends on the spread of liberty." That got the idealistic Gerson so pumped that he set out to produce the foreign policy equivalent to Albert Einstein's unified field theory of the universe -- a 17-minute inaugural address in which the president said his goal was nothing less than "the ending of tyranny in our world."

But this high purpose often blinded Bush and his aides to the consequences of this mad dash to democracy. In 2005, for example, Bush and his war cabinet spent much of their time promoting free elections in Iraq -- which wound up highlighting the isolation of the minority Sunnis and setting the stage for the raging sectarian violence of 2006.

9. Presidents must insist on strategic thinking.

Only the president (and perhaps the national security adviser) can prod a reactive bureaucracy to think about where the administration should be in one, two or four years. Then detailed, step-by-step tactical plans must be devised to try to get there. It's easy for an administration to become consumed with putting out brush fires, which often requires presidential involvement. (Ask Obama how much time he's been spending on the Gaza war.) But a president will probably be judged by the success of his long-range plans, not his daily crisis management.

10. The president should embrace transparency. Some version of the behind-the-scenes story of what happened in his White House will always make it out to the public -- and everyone will be better off if that version is as accurate as possible.

On March 8, 2008, Hadley made an extraordinary remark about how difficult it has proven to understand the real way Bush made decisions. "He will talk with great authority and assertiveness," Hadley said. " 'This is what we're going to do.' And he won't mean it. Because he will not have gone through the considered process where he finally is prepared to say, 'I've decided.' And if you write all those things down and historians get them, [they] say, 'Well, he decided on this day to do such and such.' It's not true. It's not history. It's a fact, but it's a misleading fact."

Presidents should beware of such "misleading facts." They should run an internal, candid process of debate and discussion with key advisers that will make sense when it surfaces later. This sort of inside account will be told, at least in part, during the presidency. But the best obtainable version will emerge more slowly, over time, and become history.

The Party of Tomorrow

One of the trends becoming increasingly evident in modern political times -- perpetuated by Karl Rove and President Bush and embraced recently by John McCain and Sarah Palin -- is the Republican Party’s odd reliance on an electoral strategy that cedes the middle ground and focusing squarely and solely on its base. In that desperate attempt to appeal to those on the far right of the political spectrum, it has used fear tactics and the politics of personal destruction to cast Democratic opponents as nothing more than untrustworthy, soft, and unpatriotic – true threats to everything that a church-going, white, heterosexual living in a pro-America town would hold dear.

Shockingly (or not so much), all Republicans have to show for their efforts is more division, more resentment, more hostility, more ignorance and fewer Republicans. You reap what you sow. Indeed, it’s surprising that the Republicans failed to adopt the Obama strategy of playing down partisanship, building bridges and appealing to the best in us, and it’s humorous how they grew increasingly cynical about its ultimate effectiveness. You would think they’d learn from the lessons of recent history -- electoral landslides, a diminishing base, ceding ground to younger voters, no true standard-bearer, etc -- but no, the race for the next Chairman of the Republican National Committee has exposed nothing but more of the same. E.J. Dionne elaborates:

The message sent over the weekend may have been unintentional, but it was nonetheless powerful. While the candidates to chair the Republican National Committee prepared for a debate held yesterday by the Reagan-era group Americans for Tax Reform, the Democrats leaked word that their next national chairman would be Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia. The message: While Republicans are looking inward and focusing on appeals to the party's activist base, President-elect Barack Obama wants Democrats to concentrate their energies on recently acquired political terrain and the new converts who were central to his party's sweep last year.

…A top Obama adviser, using trademark Obama language, described Kaine as "a pragmatic progressive, less concerned about orthodoxies than about getting things done." In fact, Obama is already following the path blazed in Virginia by Kaine and his predecessor, incoming Sen. Mark Warner. Their approach was to pursue broadly progressive policies in a non-ideological way and to speak of playing down partisanship -- even as doing so was their way of building the Democratic Party's brand and broadening its base of support.

…By contrast, Republicans seem less focused on how to expand their party's appeal than on hunkering down to preserve ideological purity. For now, the underdogs in the chairmanship fight seem to be the two candidates outside the party's regional and ideological comfort zones, former Maryland lieutenant governor Michael Steele and Michigan state Chairman Saul Anuzis. They confront two Southerners, Chip Saltsman of Tennessee, now most noted for distributing the CD that included the song "Barack the Magic Negro," and Katon Dawson, the South Carolina party chairman. The incumbent, Mike Duncan of Kentucky, is seeking reelection, while former Ohio secretary of state Kenneth Blackwell has emerged as the candidate of the conservative stalwarts.

Structurally, it turns out to be much easier for Democrats than Republicans to reach out to moderates because Democrats are the more ideologically diverse party… Thus, when Democrats try to broaden their appeal, they are also addressing middle-of-the-road voters in their own party. Republicans who want to reach out have to fight their party, which is overwhelmingly inclined to stick with the true conservative faith.

Republicans would do well to pay attention to another trend: The young are leaning left. Voters under 30, according to the exit poll, are the only age group in which liberals outnumber conservatives, by 32 percent to 26 percent. And the last four years of the Bush presidency clearly turned this generation off to the GOP. In 2004, 18- to 29-year-olds tilted only narrowly Democratic, 37 percent to 35 percent. In 2008, 45 percent of the under-30s called themselves Democrat; only 26 percent called themselves Republican.

Right-wing loyalists can talk all they want about how President Bush's problem was that he wasn't "conservative enough," but the numbers show they are misunderstanding their party's problem. Obama and Kaine are appealing to a moderate country moving gradually in a progressive direction and have a party behind them prepared to grapple with the realities of politics now. Whoever takes the helm of the GOP will have to persuade a very conservative following that we are not living in Ronald Reagan's America anymore.

Speaking to the Muslim World

With inauguration just a month away, Americans are increasingly eager for President-elect Obama to take the nation's reigns from President Bush. The change he will undoubtedly bring may not be render itself through a long list of early accomplishments, but through a much-needed change (subtle or dramatic) in tone, approach, vision and candor. One of his first defining actions appears to be a major Obama speech delivered in an Islamic capital within the first 100 days of his presidency. The President-elect believes such a speech would “redefine our struggle” and take advantage of “a unique opportunity to reboot America’s image around the world and also in the Muslim world in particular.” The speech will reportedly convey “a message of no-tolerance toward terrorism, while emphasizing the values America wants to share with the world.” The what has been largely determined, it's the where that has stirred international anticipation.

Obama’s plan, still in the formative stages, immediately set off speculation over where the new American president would choose to deliver his message and what he would say… Obama did not indicate where he might give the speech, but snap speculation by some experts centered on Cairo. Egypt is a US ally, and a traditional center of Muslim culture. At the same time, the country is governed by an authoritarian regime – a point that would make it a bold setting for Obama to make the case for democracy in the Muslim world.

[Other recommendations have included] either Istanbul, Turkey; or Casablanca, Morocco. Choosing Istanbul would symbolize a desire to bridge the economic, political, and perception gaps between the West and the Muslim world, he says. Casablanca would demonstrate an interest in going “deeper into the heart of the Muslim world,” while offering the added advantage of being in an Arab country – since, as Masmoudi says, the issue of resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict would also have to figure into the speech.

Helene Cooper weighs the various options and decides upon Cairo:

So where should he do it? The list of Islamic world capitals is long, and includes the obvious —Riyadh, Kuwait City, Islamabad — and the not-so-obvious — Male (the Maldives), Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso), Tashkent (Uzbekistan). Some wise-guys have even suggested Dearborn, Mich., as a possibility.

…The consensus, after an entire day of reporting, is Cairo. Why Cairo? It’s a matter of elimination. I called Ziad Asali, the president of the American Task Force on Palestine, to gauge his thoughts. “Damascus would be cool, except it would look as if he was rewarding the Syrians and it’s too soon for that,” Mr. Asali said. True. Maybe in a year, if Syrian President Bashar al-Assad gets around to a land-for-peace deal with Israel. But for right now, I’m not really seeing Damascus as the spot for the big speech.

…Jakarta’s too easy. Mr. Asali thought so too: “Jakarta? People would yawn about that.” Sure, Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country — some 177 million Muslims live there — but the very fact that Mr. Obama once lived and went to school there would make choosing it seem like cheating. Baghdad? Definitely out-of-the-box, but it could appear to validate the Iraq war, which Mr. Obama opposed. Beirut? Too many Hezbollah members — Secret Service would flip its collective lid — and anyway, the Lebanese president has always been a Christian.

Tehran? Too soon for that. Amman? Been there, done that. Islamabad? Too dangerous. Ankara? Too safe. Plus the Turks aren’t going to be too crazy about being used for outreach to the Muslim world when they’re trying to join the European Union. I asked a senior Turkish diplomat what he thought. He immediately started acting, well, diplomatic. “We don’t have a problem with our Islamic identity,” he said. “But our system is secular.” Riyadh? Mr. Obama’s national security aides say no. Kuwait City? Abu Dhabi? Doha? “I don’t think it will be in the Gulf,” one foreign policy adviser to Mr. Obama said.

See? It’s got to be Cairo. Egypt is perfect. It’s certainly Muslim enough, populous enough and relevant enough. It’s an American ally, but there are enough tensions in the relationship that the choice will feel bold. The country has plenty of democracy problems, so Mr. Obama can speak directly to the need for a better democratic model there. It has got the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist organization that has been embraced by a wide spectrum of the Islamic world, including the disenfranchised and the disaffected. The Secret Service won’t like it one bit, but Cairo is no Islamabad. I called the Egyptian Embassy in Washington to ask officials there what they thought. Someone from Mr. Obama’s team had already mentioned the possibility, although embassy officials said Egypt has not been approached about a possible presidential trip to Cairo.

Still, Sameh Shoukry, the Egyptian ambassador, e-mailed me a statement. “Needless to say, the President of the United States is always welcome in Egypt,” it said. “Delivering such a speech from Cairo would no doubt reinforce the intended message. Cairo has long been a center of Islamic learning and scholarship, in line with Egypt’s central role in the Middle East.”

Michael Fullilove provides a recommendation of his own -- Jakarta:

Egypt, Turkey and Qatar have been suggested as possible sites for such a speech. But the best candidate is the country in which Mr. Obama lived as a child: Indonesia. Choosing Indonesia would throw light on the diversity and richness of Islam, which is not, contrary to lingering perceptions, practiced solely by Arabs or only in the Middle East. The country, home to the world’s largest Muslim population, does a reasonable job of managing its considerable religious heterogeneity. Going there would help Mr. Obama to reframe the debate in the West about Islam and terrorism.

An Indonesian audience would also make sense. Indonesians have been both victims and perpetrators of terrorist attacks, including the deadly Bali bombings. The government in Jakarta is an important partner in the effort against terrorism. Selecting Indonesia would demonstrate that Mr. Obama takes democracy seriously, given that Indonesia is a rowdy democracy — the third-largest in the world. It would show that President Bush’s misshapen democratization agenda has not turned his successor into an icy realist.

Reminding the world of Mr. Obama’s origins could help counter anti-Americanism. Who would have thought the United States would elect a president with memories of wandering barefoot through rice paddies and “the muezzin’s call at night”? Finally, a trip to Indonesia would indicate that Mr. Obama was serious about rebalancing America’s foreign policy. It would show that he understands the shift of global power eastward, and telegraph that Washington was finally going to take the nation — the linchpin of Southeast Asia — seriously.

Mr. Obama was criticized in the campaign as offering speeches rather than solutions. Cynics will say this time that you can’t fight terrorism with cue cards. But there is no better way to make an argument than with a speech — and for this speech, there is no better place to make that argument than Indonesia.

Preventing Genocide

In a recent editorial, the NY Times comments on a report by the Genocide Prevention Task Force, co-chaired by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Secretary of Defense William Cohen, which calls for the prevention of genocide to be a top priority for the incoming Obama Administration.

Darfur, Congo, Rwanda and, before that, Bosnia. It is hard to contemplate man’s capacity for inhumanity without feeling despair and paralysis. The world usually pays attention only after the killing has spun out of control, when ethnic, religious and political divides are rubbed so raw that the furies are infinitely harder to calm. By that point, the United States and others are faced with the agonizing choice of either intervening militarily or allowing the killing to go on.

A new report by a task force headed by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Defense Secretary William Cohen offers some hope, arguing that it is possible to prevent genocide before it spins out of control. It offers practical policy suggestions — what Mrs. Albright calls a “mechanism for looking at genocide in a systematic way” — for the next administration. The report says that early warning and prevention are key and calls on the White House to create a senior-level interagency committee directed by the National Security Council to analyze threats of genocide and mass atrocities around the world and consider appropriate preventive action.

When initial signs of mass atrocities are detected, the task force would also require the intelligence community to do a full policy review and prepare a crisis response plan. The goal is to engage leaders, institutions and civil society in affected communities urgently, and at an early stage when talk and other help may defuse the situation. The task force urges the United States government to spend an additional $250 million annually on crisis prevention and response efforts, with a portion going to help international partners, including the United Nations and regional organizations, build their capacity.

It is hard to generate political will to fix a problem before it has crested. But if there is any doubt about the need for a new policy and structure, consider the Bush administration’s desperate failure in Darfur. Four years after President Bush declared the mass killings there genocide, the horrors continue. As many as 300,000 people have been killed and 2.7 million driven from their homes. With the region increasingly engulfed in interrebel warfare, a political settlement appears to be even further out of reach.

We hope President-elect Barack Obama and his top aides will seriously consider the report’s policy recommendations before they, too, find themselves grappling with such agonizing choices.

Blago's Greatest Hits

On Politico, Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns provide their list of “the top ten moments to listen for when the recordings of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, his chief of staff John Harris and his wife and other advisers become public.”

1. “It’s got to be good”: On Nov. 4, Blagojevich was already plotting to use Illinois’s soon-to-be-open Senate seat to his advantage – and talked about opening the bidding. He said he planned to ask, “How much are you offering, [President-elect]? What are you offering, [Senate Candidate 2]? . . . Can always go to. . . [Senate Candidate 3].” Blagojevich wasn’t specific about what he wanted, but he did explain: “It’s got to be good stuff for the people of Illinois and good for me…It’s got to be good or I could always take [the Senate seat].”

2. “Fucking golden”: The next day, Blagojevich said again that he would appoint himself to the Senate if he didn’t get what he wanted from the Obama team. “I’ve got this thing and it’s fucking golden,” Blagojevich says. “I’m not giving it up for fucking nothing. I’m not gonna do it. And, and I can always use it. I can parachute me there.”

3. The trade: On November 7, Blagojevich, his chief of staff and a Washington-based adviser held a conference call suggesting a direct trade with Obama: the Department of Health and Human Services in exchange for appointing Obama’s favored successor — believed to be adviser Valerie Jarrett. “Rod Blagojevich indicated in the call that if he was appointed as Secretary of Health and Human Services by the President-elect, then Rod Blagojevich would appoint Senate Candidate 1 to the open Senate seat,” the complaint reads.

4. “Selfish grab”: The governor’s chief of staff, John Harris, advised him to avoid making “it look like some kind of selfish grab for a quid pro quo,” but Blagojevich was blunt about his motives: “I want to make money.” Later in the call, he put a price tag on his ambitions, saying he wanted a job that paid between $250,000 and $300,000.

5. Blago’s bank-shot: During a Nov. 7 conference call, Harris also suggested a three-way deal with Obama and the labor coalition Change to Win. From the FBI report: “Harris suggested that SEIU Official make Rod Blagojevich the head of Change to Win and, in exchange, the President-elect could help Change to Win with its legislative agenda on a national level.”

6. Flaming PEOTUS: On November 10, Blagojevich held a two-hour conference call with several advisers, including his wife, to figure out what options he could pursue if an administration appointment didn’t work out, as looked increasingly likely. Frustrated, Blagojevich told his advisers he didn’t want to give this “motherfucker [the President-elect] his senator. Fuck him. For nothing? Fuck him.” A new option the plotters raised: getting Mrs. Blagojevich appointed to a number of corporate boards in order to rake in more cash for the Blagojevich family. According to the FBI, “Blagojevich stated that he is ‘struggling’ financially and does ‘not want to be governor for the next two years.’”

7. Shaking down Buffett and Gates: A day later, on November 11, Blagojevich and one of his advisers discussed the possibility of Obama’s wealthy supporters cobbling together a 501(c)(4) organization for Blagojevich to run. The FBI reports the Illinois governor “raised the idea of the 501(c)(4) organization and asked whether ‘they’ (believed be the President-elect and his associates) can get Warren Buffett and others to put $10, $12, or $15 million into the organization.” Later, Blagojevich added another target to his shakedown list, suggesting: “the president-elect can ask Warren Buffett, Bill Gates and others for money for the organization.”

8. “My political situation”: On November 12, after a conversation with an SEIU official in which he pushed his 501(c)(4) plan, Blagojevich spoke with Harris about his criteria for choosing the next Illinois senator: “our legal situation, our personal situation, my political situation.” When Harris said Blagojevich’s legal situation was the most tenuous of the three, the governor replied “that his legal problems could be solved by naming himself to the Senate seat.”

9. White House hopes: Being governor of Illinois, possibly appointing himself to the Senate or taking on a posh private-sector gig wasn’t enough for Blagojevich, who expressed “a desire to remake his image in consideration of a possible run for president in 2016.”

10. “Hold up” Cubs cash: Angry at some of the Chicago Tribune’s editorials, Blagojevich threatened to hold up state support for the Tribune-owned Chicago Cubs unless the newspaper reorganized its editorial board. In response to an editorial calling for Blagojevich’s impeachment, the governor’s wife told her husband: “hold up that fucking Cubs shit. ... Fuck them.” Blagojevich urged Harris to approach the Tribune and tell them to “Fire those fuckers.”

Obama Wouldn't Play Ball

As reported on Kos, one of the most interesting parts of the Criminal Complaint about Governor Rod Blagojevich is the section that speaks to “Candidate 1”, Obama's preference to replace him in the US Senate. An excerpt:

By this time, media reports indicated that "Senate Candidate 1", an advisor to the President-elect, was interested in the Senate seat if it became vacant, and was likely to be supported by the President-elect. During the call, Rod Blagojevich stated, “unless I get something real good for [Senate Candidate 1], shit, I’ll just send myself, you know what I’m saying. ...And if I don’t get what I want and I’m not satisfied with it, then I’ll just take the Senate seat myself.” Later, Rod Blagojevich stated that the Senate seat “is a fucking valuable thing, you just don’t give it away for nothing.”

But Obama wouldn't play:

Rod Blagojevich stated that he is "struggling" financially and does "not want to be Governor for the next two years." Rod Blagojevich said that the consultants (Advisor B and another consultant are believed to be on the call at that time) are telling him that he has to "suck it up" for two years and do nothing and give this "motherfucker [the President-elect] his senator. Fuck him. For nothing? Fuck him." Rod Blagojevich states that he will put "[Senate Candidate 4]" in the Senate "before I just give fucking [Senate Candidate 1] a fucking Senate seat and I don't get anything."

Later in the conversation, Rod Blagojevich said he knows that the President-elect wants Senate Candidate 1 for the open seat but "they're not willing to give me anything except appreciation. Fuck them."

The Obama Team

With General Shinseki’s recent nomination as Secretary of Veterans Affairs, it’s becoming more and more apparent that Barack Obama is not only bringing a new cast of characters into the highest echelons of government but that, probably more importantly, he’s bringing a vastly different approach to governing. For a nation that remains largely divided, it’s critical. Instead of the political hacks and “loyal Bushies” of the past eight years, Obama’s Cabinet, particularly his national security team, are proof that he seeks good judgement and results, not complete deference to the boss, and that he rewards competence over loyalty. If true change is on the horizon, our nation will need serious people to lead us through serious times. In that regard, Obama is off to a good start.

The Times on the Obama national security team:

After years of watching American leadership crumble under the weight of bad decisions made in a White House shuttered to all debate, President-elect Barack Obama’s national security team is a relief. Starting with the selection of Hillary Rodham Clinton, his former rival, as secretary of state, the president-elect has displayed his usual self-confidence. Declaring that he prizes “strong personalities and strong opinions,” Mr. Obama, who has limited foreign-policy experience, showed that he wants advisers with real authority who will not be afraid to disagree with him — two traits disastrously lacking in President Bush’s team.

…Both the selection of Mr. Gates and the appointment of General Jones should ease Mr. Obama’s early relations with the Pentagon. The military’s leaders tend to lean Republican and often mistrust presidents who do not have any military service, as they initially did with Mr. Clinton. When the United States is fighting two wars, good ties with the military are crucial. Mr. Obama seems to have already scored points by reaching out to important commanders, like Gen. David Petraeus. There is no underestimating the challenges facing Mr. Obama, and he will need a strong team to help him. [His choices thus far] are a strong start.

The Post:

Barack Obama’s announcement of his national security team immediately prompted questions about whether he had created a "team of rivals" who would spend as much time feuding as formulating policy. That strikes us as unlikely. True, Secretary of State-designate Hillary Rodham Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates are Washington heavyweights with their own strong views about foreign policy and national defense, while incoming national security adviser Gen. James L. Jones has been NATO commander. If Susan E. Rice, nominated as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, has a relatively lighter résumé, she compensates by having the closest personal relationship with the president-elect, whom she served during the campaign.

…Mr. Gates, Ms. Clinton and Gen. Jones have also all questioned Mr. Obama's 16-month timetable for withdrawing from Iraq and underlined the need to end the war without touching off a surge of violence in the country. Mr. Obama appears to be tacking toward their position: While he reaffirmed his 16-month timeline yesterday, he also said his "number-one priority is making sure that our troops remain safe in this transition phase and that the Iraqi people are well served by a government that is taking on increased responsibility for its own security." While it's possible those priorities could be upheld during a 16-month withdrawal, most likely Mr. Obama's own team will press him for greater flexibility.

The president-elect said yesterday that he favors "strong personalities and strong opinions" around him in part because this prevents "groupthink." But groupthink may still be a danger on this team. Eager to correct the perceived errors of the Bush administration, Mr. Obama and his appointees are heavily invested in the notion that better diplomacy can answer Iran's drive for a nuclear weapon, ease the threat of terrorism from Pakistan and maybe even solve the Arab-Israeli conflict. We hope they are right. If they are wrong, particularly about Iran, someone in this group will need to speak up.

Former Bush speechwriter, Michael Gerson, offers his thoughts on Obama's "Team of Centrists:"

It is a lineup generous in its moderation, astonishing for its continuity, startling for its stability. A defense secretary, Robert Gates, who once headed the George Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M. A secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, who supported the invasion of Iraq, voted to label the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization and called direct, unconditional talks with Iran "irresponsible and frankly naive." A national security adviser, retired Gen. James Jones, most recently employed at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, who served as a special adviser to the Bush administration on the Middle East. A Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, who is one of Henry Paulson's closest allies outside the administration. A head of the Council of Economic Advisers, Christina Romer, whose writings and research seem to favor low tax rates, stable money and free trade.

It is tempting for conservatives to crow -- or liberals to lament -- that Barack Obama's victory has somehow produced John McCain's administration. But this partisan reaction trivializes some developments that, while early and tentative, are significant. First, these appointments add evidence to a debate about the political character of the president-elect himself. Conservatives have generally feared that Obama is a closet radical. He has uniformly voted with liberal interests and done nothing to justify a reputation for centrism.

Until now. Obama's appointments reveal not just moderation but maturity -- magnanimity to past opponents, a concern for continuity in a time of war and economic crisis, a self-confidence that allows him to fill gaps in his own experience with outsize personalities, and a serious commitment to incarnate his rhetoric of unity. …Whatever the caveats, Obama is doing something marvelously right: He is disappointing the ideologues. This is more than many of us hoped -- and it is causing some of us to raise our hopes in Obama again.

Even Henry Kissinger is getting into the act, providing his thoughts on the “Team of Heavyweights:”

President-elect Barack Obama has appointed an extraordinary team for national security policy. On its face, it violates certain maxims of conventional wisdom: that appointing to the Cabinet individuals with an autonomous constituency, and who therefore are difficult to fire, circumscribes presidential control; that appointing as national security adviser, secretary of state and secretary of defense individuals with established policy views may absorb the president's energies in settling disputes among strong-willed advisers.

It took courage for the president-elect to choose this constellation and no little inner assurance -- both qualities essential for dealing with the challenge of distilling order out of a fragmenting international system. In these circumstances, ignoring conventional wisdom may prove to have been the precondition for creativity. Both Obama and the secretary of state-designate, Sen. Hillary Clinton, must have concluded that the country and their commitment to public service require their cooperation.

…No one has ever been appointed national security adviser who had the command experience of retired Gen. James L. Jones, the former head of the Marine Corps and NATO commander. Inevitably, the facilitating function of the security adviser will be accompanied by a role in policymaking based on a vast, almost unique, experience.

...The continuation in office of Robert Gates as secretary of defense is an important balancing element in that process. Alone among the key players, he is at the end, not the beginning, of his policy contribution. Having agreed to stay on in a transitional role, he cannot be interested in the jockeying that accompanies all new administrations. The incoming administration must have appointed him with the awareness that he would not reverse his previous convictions. He must make the difficult adjustment from one administration to another -- a tribute to the nonpartisan nature of the conduct of his office in the Bush administration. He is a guarantor of continuity but also the shepherd of necessary innovation.

Process is no substitute for substance, of course. But even with this caveat, the new national security team encourages the hope that America is moving beyond its divisions to its opportunities.

Nothing To It

"As I'm chatting with Obama, the moderator says, 'Governor Richardson, what do you think of that?' And I look at him like a deer in the headlights. I was about to say that I hadn't heard, when Obama puts his hand over his mouth and says, 'Katrina.' So I gave my four-point plan on Katrina. When I was done and the debate moved on, I looked over and said, 'Thanks, you're okay.' He said, 'Nothing to it, brother.'"

Commerce Secretary-designate Bill Richardson on how his new boss saved him during a Democratic primary debate.

Foretelling...

From the Iowa Democratic Presidential Debate:

A Wartime Transition

The NY Times recently solicited op-ed contributions from a number of national security experts. They provide interesting perspectives on the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and the many challenges and opportunities awaiting President-elect Obama.

Anthony Cordesman, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, discusses the two-front war confronting the Obama Presidency.

He has less than two months to go from broad rhetoric to concrete day-to-day action. On Jan. 20, he will take over at a pivotal point in negotiating Iraq’s status of force agreement with the United States, in the middle of a winter military campaign in Afghanistan, and during a political, security and economic crisis in Pakistan. None of these issues will wait for America to deal with its financial problems. And no one involved believes that the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s northern territories can be fully won, or even transferred to Afghan and Pakistani hands, by even the end of President Obama’s first term. For at least the next two to three years, the war will intensify, and virtually all of the additional burden will be borne by the United States.
Leaks of a new National Intelligence Estimate have shown that we are now losing the war for several reasons: a lack of Afghan competence; a half-hearted Pakistani commitment to the fight; a shortage of American, NATO and International Security Assistance Force troops; too few aid workers; and nation-building programs that were designed for peacetime and are rife with inefficiency and fraud. This is why Gen. David McKiernan, the top commander in Afghanistan, and other military leaders have called for 20,000 to 25,000 more troops and warned that even those reinforcements may not be adequate.

Even with a potential drawdown in Iraq, the military is being stretched ever thinner. The Army already extends the deployment of troops beyond their commitments, and it and the Marine Corps may well find it impossible to meet their goals for shortening deployment cycles. As things stand, it will almost certainly take until 2011 to bring enough military advisers into Afghanistan to train its army and police forces to the level where locals can replace international troops. And with increasing terrorist attacks on non-governmental groups, many aid workers are being forced to leave the country.

…Even if the United States fully withdraws from Iraq in 2011, as Mr. Obama and the Iraqi government say they would like, we will remain on something very like a war footing there throughout the next presidency. While the combat burden on our forces will decline, withdrawal will be as costly as fighting. It will take large amounts of luck (and patient American prodding) for the Iraqi government to move toward real political accommodation while avoiding new explosions of ethnic and sectarian violence.

Even with progress on those fronts, we will have to withdraw while still helping to win a war, contain internal violence, limit Iranian influence and counter its nuclear program, create effective Iraqi security forces, and help Iraq improve its governance. Not a full war perhaps, but at least a quarter war in terms of continuing strains on our military and budget. ...In spite of recent progress under Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Mr. Rumsfeld’s inability to manage any key aspect of defense modernization has left the Obama administration a legacy of unfunded and expensive new trade-offs between replacing combat-worn equipment, repairing and rehabilitating huge amounts of weapons and equipment, and supplying our forces with new, improved equipment.

At best, President Obama will have to conduct the equivalent of one-and-a-quarter wars throughout his first term. At worst? The outside chance of war with Iran as well.

Fred Kagan, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, insists that we must capitalize on the common interests we share with Iraq vis-à-vis Iran.

Iraqis want to remain independent of Tehran, as they have now demonstrated by signing the agreement with the United States over Iran’s vigorous objections. They want to avoid military conflict with Iran, and so does America. Iraqis share our fear that Iran may acquire nuclear weapons, which would threaten their independence. And they resent Iran’s efforts to maintain insurgent and terrorist cells that undermine their government. Of course, the Iraqis recognize, as we do, that Iraq and Iran are natural trading partners and have a religious bond as majority Shiite. This may be to our benefit: the millions of Iranian pilgrims who will visit Iraqi holy sites at Najaf and Karbala over the coming years will take home a vision of a flourishing, peaceful, secular, religiously tolerant and democratic Muslim state.

The reintegration of Iraq into the Arab world is also under way. Many Arab states have already begun to open embassies in Baghdad. We should keep in mind that Iraq also shares interests with America regarding Saudi Arabia and Syria. Increasingly, Iraqi leaders speak quietly of replacing the Saudi kingdom as the dominant Arab state. Iraq also knows that Syria has allowed Al Qaeda fighters free passage across their common border for years, and has served as a staging base for Iranian support to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Washington and Baghdad have a common interest in persuading the Syrian regime to abandon its support of terror groups.

America will withdraw its forces from patrolling in Iraq and will significantly reduce the number of soldiers there over the coming years — that is not and never has been in question. The timing and nature of that withdrawal, however, is extremely delicate. It is vital that we help see Iraq through during its year of elections, and avoid the temptation to “front-load” the withdrawal in 2009. It is equally vital that we develop a broader strategic relationship with Iraq using all elements of our national power in tandem with Iraq’s to pursue our common interests. President Obama has the chance to do more in Iraq than win the war. He can win the peace.

Peter Mansoor, former executive officer to General David Petraeus, discusses an appropriate American withdrawal from Iraq that will leave that country intact.

Barack Obama has the opportunity to recast American policy toward Iraq in a meaningful way, by providing much-needed support to its political center. His administration should view the new status of forces agreement between Washington and Baghdad as a means to shape the withdrawal of our combat forces while maintaining enough leverage to guide Iraq toward a more stable future.

…The key now is to sustain the momentum toward reconciliation, even while combat forces are withdrawn — a delicate balancing act. Although insurgent attacks have been appreciably reduced and Al Qaeda in Iraq is devastated, considerable distrust remains among various ethnic factions and religious sects and within the Iraqi government. As honest brokers, American forces keep the peace in key areas. Yet it is possible that we can complete their departure over three years, as envisioned in the status of forces agreement, assuming that the Iraqi Army has matured enough to take on added responsibilities.

Up to four brigades and their associated support — 20,000 to 25,000 troops — could be withdrawn in 2009, which would provide reinforcements for the war in Afghanistan. Withdrawals should then accelerate, as the division of power and resources is cemented locally across Iraq, with half the remaining combat forces and their associated support withdrawn in each of the following two years. By the end of 2011 — subject to Iraqi concurrence, of course — some 20,000 to 40,000 troops would remain for an extended period. These would be mainly military advisers, counterterrorist units, combat aircraft crews and support, and intelligence and logistical personnel.

Much of the stability in Iraq stems from a patchwork of agreements across the country between local leaders and the American military or the Iraqi government. To make sure that these agreements endure, the Iraqi government needs to prove to its people that it represents their interests in these ways: by ensuring adequate representation in political life of all sects and ethnicities in the political life; by incorporating a significant number of the Sons of Iraq (Sunnis who have supported the counterinsurgency) into the police forces and other government jobs; by providing tangible incentives for the return of Iraqi refugees from abroad; and by equitably distributing government funds and services to all areas of Iraq.

…Even as we pull troops out, the United States is not without significant leverage. We provide the Iraqi armed forces needed assets, from intelligence and logistics to air support and advisers; our civilian advisers are helping to improve the efficiency of the Iraqi government; our global diplomatic leverage can help Iraq in a number of ways; and Washington can encourage business investment in Iraq, particularly in its dilapidated oil industry.

To nudge the Iraqi government in the right direction, the new administration must let it know, quietly but firmly, that the blank check given by the Bush administration is no longer in force. It should make clear that we, too, want to see the expeditious withdrawal of American combat forces, but only in a manner that ensures Iraq will not again dissolve into chaos and civil war. Long-term American diplomatic, economic and military support should be contingent on a comprehensive political solution with a fair division of power. The alternative — a sectarian Shiite government that marginalizes other sects and ethnicities and is perhaps aligned with Iran as well — is
unacceptable.

Syria First

As Aaron David Miller contends in the Post, while working toward a sustainable Arab and Israeli peace settlement, President-elect Obama should remain cognizant of the very real possibility that an Israeli-Syrian agreement could be right around the corner. An excerpt:

A new president eager to repair America's image abroad may be tempted to try for an agreement, but he should avoid the sirens' call. No conflict-ending agreement is possible now, nor is one likely to be anytime soon, and the stakes are too high for America to harbor illusions that would almost certainly lead to yet another failure. The gaps separating the two sides on the core issues (Jerusalem, borders, refugees and security) remain too wide, the current leaders are too weak to bridge them, and the environment on the ground is too complicated to allow for sustainable negotiations.

In Palestine, dysfunction and confusion reign. The Palestinian national movement is riven with geographic and political divisions between Hamas (itself divided) and Fatah (even more divided). There is little chance of creating a united Palestinian house that can take control of the guns and offer up a viable and unified negotiating position that any Israeli government could accept. Weak leadership and unstable coalition politics prevail in Israel, too. And Israeli settlement activity, which continues unabated, rounds out a nightmarish picture that ought to scare away any smart mediator. It would be folly to go for broke, given these conditions. The notion that trying and failing is better than not trying at all might be an appropriate rallying cry for a college football coach; it isn't a suitable foreign policy principle for the world's greatest power.

…The more compelling argument is for a major push on another negotiation: between Israel and Syria. Here, there are two states at the table, rather than one state and a dysfunctional national movement. A quiet border, courtesy of Henry Kissinger's 1974 disengagement diplomacy, prevails. And there are fewer settlers on the Golan Heights and no megaton issues such as the status of Jerusalem to blow up the talks. Indeed, the issues are straightforward -- withdrawal, peace, security and water -- and the gaps are clear and ready to be bridged.

For a president looking for a way to buck up America's credibility, an Israeli-Syrian agreement offers a potential bonus. Such a deal would begin to realign the region's architecture in a way that serves broader U.S. interests. The White House would have to be patient. Syria won't walk away from a 30-year relationship with Iran; weaning the Syrians from Iran would have to occur gradually, requiring a major international effort to marshal economic and political support for Damascus. Still, an Israeli-Syrian peace treaty would confront Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran with tough choices and reduced options.

None of this will be easy. An Obama administration, and particularly the new president, would need to be in the middle of things. It would be excruciatingly hard, time-consuming and expensive to satisfy Israel and Syria's economic and security needs, and a final agreement would most likely involve U.S. peacekeepers. More important, the United States would need to push the two sides further than they are now willing to go, on the extent of withdrawal from the Golan Heights in Israel's case, on normalization and security in Syria's. But with Israeli and Syrian leaders who are serious, and with a new administration ready to be tough, smart and fair in its diplomacy, a deal can be done.

So, Mr. President-elect, go ahead and try to buck up the Israeli-Palestinian cease-fire, train Palestinian security forces, pour economic aid into Gaza and the West Bank, and quietly nurture Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. But don't go for the endgame -- you won't get there. Instead, invest in an Israeli-Syrian peace, and, afterward, you might find, with a historic success under your belt and America again admired for its competence, you will be better positioned to achieve the success you want in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, as well.

Retaining Gates

The decision by Barack Obama to retain Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense is being met with mixed reviews. As reported in the NY Times:

President-elect Barack Obama has decided to keep Defense Secretary Robert M.Gates in his post, a show of bipartisan continuity in a time of war that will be the first time a Pentagon chief has been carried over from a president of a different party, Democrats close to the transition said Tuesday. …The move will give the new president a defense secretary with support on both sides of the aisle in Congress, as well as experience with foreign leaders around the world and respect among the senior military officer corps. But two years after President Bush picked him to lead the armed forces, Mr. Gates will now have to pivot from serving the commander in chief who started the Iraq war to serving one who has promised to end it.

In deciding to ask Mr. Gates to stay, Mr. Obama put aside concerns that he would send a jarring signal after a political campaign in which he made opposition to the war his signature issue in the early days. Some Democrats who have advised his campaign quietly complained that he was undercutting his own message and risked alienating war critics who formed his initial base of support, especially after tapping his primary rival, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, for secretary of state.

But advisers argued that Mr. Gates was a practical public servant who was also interested in drawing down troops in Iraq when conditions allow. “From our point of view, it looks pretty damn good because of continuity and stability,” said an Obama adviser, who insisted on anonymity to discuss confidential deliberations. “And I don’t think there are any ideological problems.” Associates said Mr. Gates was torn between a desire to retire to a home in Washington State and a sense of duty as the military faces the daunting challenges of reducing forces in Iraq and increasing them in Afghanistan.

… Mr. Gates, who served as C.I.A. director under the first President Bush, would not have to be reconfirmed by the Senate. The prospect of retaining him generated praise from the military establishment and Capitol Hill, where he is viewed as a pragmatist who turned the Pentagon around after the tumultuous tenure of Donald H. Rumsfeld.

…The developments came as Mr. Obama prepared to begin unveiling his national security team after the long Thanksgiving weekend. Besides formally announcing his nomination of Mrs. Clinton as secretary of state, Mr. Obama was expected to appoint Gen. James L. Jones, a retired Marine commandant and NATO supreme commander, as his national security adviser. …The team is shaping up as one of experience more than change, figures with long résumés but at times conflicting backgrounds. Nothing reflects that more than keeping a Republican-appointed defense secretary. Although Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Gerald R. Ford made no change at the top of the Pentagon when they took office, no president has kept a defense secretary from a predecessor in another party, Donald Ritchie, a Senate historian, said.

Some Democrats have viewed the selection of Gates with more skepticism -- arguing that it lends further credence to the faulty assertion that Democrats are weak on defense and tend to rely upon Republicans as Secretary of Defense. As noted on Kos, “if Gates stays the full four years, it would mean that from 1953-2013, a Republican will have held the SecDef post for 5.5 of 60 years. A list of Secretaries of Defense and party affiliation beginning with the Eisenhower years:

Charles E. Wilson - Republican (1953-57)
Neil H. McElroy - Republican (1953-59)
Thomas S. Gates - Republican (1959-61)
Robert S. McNamara - Republican (1961-1968)
Clark M. Clifford - Democrat (1968-1969)
Melvin R. Laird - Republican (1969-1973)
Elliot L. Richardson - Republican (1973)
James R. Schlesinger - Republican (1973-1975)
Donald H. Rumsfeld - Republican (1975-1977)
Harold Brown - Democrat (1977-1981)
Caspar W. Weinberger - Republican (1981-1987)
Frank C. Carlucci - Republican (1987-1989)
Richard B. Cheney - Republican (1989-1993)
Les Aspin - Democrat (1993-1994)
William J. Perry - Democrat (1994-1997)
William S. Cohen - Republican (1997-2001)
Donald H. Rumsfeld - Republican (2001-2006)
Robert Gates - Republican (2006-Present)-

And as reported, not everyone in the Obama camp is thrilled about the choice.

The speculation over Gates' tenure has been most intense inside the Obama transition team. The team received a request from Gates that, were he to stay, he would want to retain some of his top civilian assistants. The request led to concerns among the Obama transition staff: "Gates is not a neo-con or even a hardcore Republican," a person close to the process noted, "but the people around him sure as hell are." A former Bill Clinton administration official who has been deployed by Obama to conduct a series of "meet and greets" with top officials at the Pentagon scoffed at the notion of a continuation of Gates' tenure: "The [presidential] election was a clean sweep," he says, "and that includes Bob Gates. It's called a change in government."

But others inside Obama's close-knit group of advisors think that a continuation of Gates' tenure can provide Obama with a bridge to the nation's military leadership - essential, they say, because of US troop commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan. These advisors point out that Richard Danzig, a former secretary of the navy and reputed front runner for the Pentagon post ("always the smartest man in the room", as retired four-star US Marine Corps General Joe Hoar describes him), supports a continuation in Gates' tenure. Then too, Gates is apparently admired by Obama himself, who has been in close touch with a number of Gates' former colleagues (dubbed "graybacks"), like Brent Scowcroft, from the first George W. Bush administration. "The graybacks have weighed in, and they're all for Bob," a defense official says.

Presidential Counsel

As the Post reports, it's becoming clear that Joe Biden may not necessarily have a portfolio in the new Administration other than the role of a counselor. An excerpt:

…While Mr. Obama has moved quickly to assemble his White House staff and the beginnings of a cabinet, he is lagging behind even the chronically late President Bill Clinton in bringing clarity to the role his vice president will play. So far, Mr. Biden has not been given a defined portfolio, the way Al Gore was given the environment and technology in 1992. And Mr. Obama’s aides say they do not expect Mr. Biden to assume the kind of muscular role that Vice President Dick Cheney has played over the last eight years, although he is expected to put out a number of fires.

“I’m sure that there will be discrete assignments over time,” said David Axelrod, a senior adviser to the president-elect. “But I think his fundamental role is as a trusted counselor. I think that when Obama selected him, he selected him to be a counselor and an adviser on a broad range of issues.”

…Mr. Biden seems to be adapting. He is hiring for his office, including a chief of staff, Ron Klain, who has worked with him since he was chairman of the Judiciary Committee in the 1990s. With Mr. Obama having settled on Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state, Mr. Biden, whose most recent Senate post was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has privately told people that he recognizes he will not be the point man on foreign policy. Mr. Biden has also interviewed candidates for chief economist, and associates say he is honing his economic credentials.

…Mr. Biden is spending most weekdays in Chicago, where he stays in a hotel and has lunch once a week with Mr. Obama. [He has also] been involved in cabinet and policy decisions, offering advice to the president-elect, aides said.

The lack of specificity stands in contrast to the more clearly defined role of Mr. Gore. Within days of Mr. Clinton’s election in 1992, advisers to the president-elect said Mr. Gore would be in charge of a broad initiative on science and technology, heralding what they promised would be a new era in which the government’s focus on making armaments would shift to fostering new civilian technologies and industries. By early December 1992, even before Mr. Clinton had made any cabinet appointments, Mr. Gore was out in front on the environment, issuing a statement calling for an investigation of a hazardous-waste incinerator and signaling that the administration planned an aggressive approach to enforcing environmental laws. During an interview with Gannett on Dec. 8, 1992, Mr. Clinton said Mr. Gore would have “certain specific responsibilities over and above” a general advisory role, including “lobbying the Congress on our program, especially in the health care area, dealing with issues related to the environment and technology.”

As for the relationship between Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden, aides to both men insist that the relationship is strong, with each man settling into his role.

The Next Senator Clinton?

In today’s Post, Karl E. Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac argue why New York Governor David Paterson should appoint Bill Clinton to the Senate seat being vacated by his wife. I, for one, am not sold on this notion one bit. As is, Clinton will undoubtedly be a big enough distraction but this appointment could easily elevate him even more as the chief Democratic obstructionist/critic of the incoming Obama Administration. The former President is an amazing spokesman for the progressive cause in most instances, but he's recently shown extremely poor judgement and a lack of class in everything from his attacks on Barack Obama during the primaries to his shady business dealings overseas. Yes, he needs to move on. He may not be very comfortable standing outside of the spotlight but he needs to get used to it.

An excerpt of the Meyer-Brysac column:

Doing so would spare the governor the agonizing dilemma of choosing from the 20 or so Democrats already named as contenders for the junior senator's seat… In this no-win competition, Paterson has to balance claims of gender, race, ethnicity and geography. He could wind up gaining one grateful ally while alienating not only all the losers but also millions of members of the disparate constituencies that each represents.

Hence the appeal of Bill Clinton. Who in his party could question so historic and dazzling a choice? In a stroke, the appointment would provide Sen. Clinton's indefatigable husband with a fitting day job, serve the interests of a state beset by a meltdown in its most vital economic sector and offer a refreshing reverse twist on a tradition whereby deceased male senators, representatives or governors are succeeded by their widows. It wouldn't be the first time an emeritus U.S. president was sent to Congress. In 1828, John Quincy Adams, like his father a prickly but principled chief executive, lost his bid for a second term to Andrew Jackson, the first populist Democrat. Two years later, Massachusetts voters elected Adams to the House of Representatives, where he served until 1848. "Old Man Eloquent" was renowned for his impassioned opposition to slavery, leading an eight-year fight to reverse a "gag rule" promoted by Southerners that required the automatic tabling of any petitions opposing slaveholding.

…Who better than Bill Clinton to deepen and energize such a tradition? Why shouldn't former presidents continue their political lives in Congress? The British have long benefited from a tradition whereby former prime ministers acquire a seat and voice in the House of Lords. In today's unusual circumstances, surely beyond the imagination of any novelist, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would not have to fret about suitable protocol for dealing with her spouse on foreign trips were he occupied, full time, with senatorial duties.

A Military for a Dangerous New World

The NY Times expounds on one of President-elect Obama’s most-daunting challenges, and perhaps one of the “most complicated national security challenges in more than a generation” -- fighting two wars and addressing a number of domestic and international security threats while rebuilding a military under-strain and critically ill-equipped for its mission.

Troops and equipment are so overtaxed by President Bush’s disastrous Iraq war that the Pentagon does not have enough of either for the fight in Afghanistan, the war on terror’s front line, let alone to confront the next threats. This is intolerable, especially when the Pentagon’s budget, including spending on the two wars, reached $685 billion in 2008. That is an increase of 85 percent in real dollars since 2000 and nearly equal to all of the rest of the world’s defense budgets combined. It is also the highest level in real dollars since World War II.

To protect the nation, the Obama administration will have to rebuild and significantly reshape the military. We do not minimize the difficulty of this task. Even if money were limitless, planning is extraordinarily difficult in a world with no single enemy and many dangers. The United States and its NATO allies must be able to defeat the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan — and keep pursuing Al Qaeda forces around the world. Pentagon planners must weigh the potential threats posed by Iran’s nuclear ambitions, an erratic North Korea, a rising China, an assertive Russia and a raft of unstable countries like Somalia and nuclear-armed Pakistan. And they must have sufficient troops, ships and planes to reassure allies in Asia, the Middle East and Europe.

The goal is a military that is large enough and mobile enough to deter enemies. There must be no more ill-founded wars of choice like the one in Iraq. The next president must be far more willing to solve problems with creative and sustained diplomacy. But this country must also be prepared to fight if needed. To build an effective military the next president must make some fundamental changes.

More ground forces: We believe the military needs the 65,000 additional Army troops and the 27,000 additional marines that Congress finally pushed President Bush into seeking. That buildup is projected to take at least two years; by the end the United States will have 759,000 active-duty ground troops. That sounds like a lot, especially with the prospect of significant withdrawals from Iraq. But it would still be about 200,000 fewer ground forces than the United States had 20 years ago, during the final stages of the cold war. Less than a third of that expanded ground force would be available for deployment at any given moment.

Military experts agree that for every year active-duty troops spend in the field, they need two years at home recovering, retraining and reconnecting with their families, especially in an all-volunteer force. (The older, part-time soldiers of the National Guard and the Reserves need even more). The Army has been so badly stretched, mainly by the Iraq war, that it has been unable to honor this one-year-out-of-three rule. Brigades have been rotated back in for second and even third combat tours with barely one year’s rest in between. Even then, the Pentagon has still had to rely far too heavily on National Guard and Reserve units to supplement the force. The long-term cost in morale, recruit quality and readiness will persist for years. Nearly one-fifth of the troops — some 300,000 men and women — have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan reporting post-traumatic stress disorders.

The most responsible prescription for overcoming these problems is a significantly larger ground force. If the country is lucky enough to need fewer troops in the field over the next few years, improving rotation ratios will still help create a higher quality military force.

New skills: America still may have to fight traditional wars against hostile regimes, but future conflicts are at least as likely to involve guerrilla insurgencies wielding terror tactics or possibly weapons of mass destruction. The Pentagon easily defeated Saddam Hussein’s army. It was clearly unprepared to handle the insurgency and then the fierce sectarian civil war that followed.

The Army has made strides in training troops for “irregular warfare.” Gen. David Petraeus has rewritten American counterinsurgency doctrine to make protecting the civilian population and legitimizing the indigenous government central tasks for American soldiers. The new doctrine gives as much priority to dealing with civilians in conflict zones (shaping attitudes, restoring security, minimizing casualties, restoring basic services and engaging in other “stability operations”) as to combat operations.

Every soldier and marine who has served in Iraq or Afghanistan has had real world experience. But the Army’s structure and institutional bias are still weighted toward conventional war-fighting. Some experts fear that, as happened after Vietnam, the Army will in time reject the recent lessons and innovations. For the foreseeable future, troops must be schooled in counterinsurgency and stability operations as well as more traditional fighting. And they must be prepared to sustain long-term operations. The military also must field more specialized units, including more trainers to help friendly countries develop their own armies to supplement or replace American troops in conflict zones. It means hiring more linguists, training more special forces, and building expertise in civil affairs and cultural awareness.

Maintain mobility: In an unpredictable world with no clear battle lines, the country must ensure its ability — so-called lift capacity — to move enormous quantities of men and material quickly around the world and to supply them when necessary by sea. Except in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon has reduced its number of permanent overseas bases as a way to lower America’s profile. Between 2004 and 2014, American bases abroad are expected to decline from 850 to 550. The number of troops permanently based overseas will drop to 180,000, down from 450,000 in the 1980s.

Much of the transport equipment is old and wearing out. The Pentagon will need to invest more in unglamorous but essential aircraft like long-haul cargo planes and refueling tankers. The KC-X aerial tanker got caught up in a messy contracting controversy. The new administration must move forward on plans to buy 179 new planes in a fair and open competition. China is expanding its deep-water navy, much to the anxiety of many of its neighbors. The United States should not try to block China’s re-emergence as a great power. Neither can it cede the seas. Nor can it allow any country to interfere with vital maritime lanes.

America should maintain its investment in sealift, including Maritime Prepositioning Force ships that carry everything marines need for initial military operations (helicopter landing decks, food, water pumping equipment). It must also restock ships’ supplies that have been depleted for use in Iraq. One 2006 study predicted replenishment would cost $12 billion plus $5 billion for every additional year the marines stayed in Iraq. The Pentagon needs to spend more on capable, smaller coastal warcraft — the littoral combat ship deserves support — and less on blue water fighting ships.

More rational spending: What we are calling for will be expensive. Adding 92,000 ground troops will cost more than $100 billion over the next six years, and maintaining lift capacity will cost billions more. Much of the savings from withdrawing troops from Iraq will have to be devoted to repairing and rebuilding the force. Money must be spent more wisely.

If the Pentagon continues buying expensive weapons systems more suited for the cold war, it will be impossible to invest in the armaments and talents needed to prevail in the future. There are savings to be found — by slowing or eliminating production of hugely expensive aerial combat fighters (like the F-22, which has not been used in the two current wars) and mid-ocean fighting ships with no likely near-term use. The Pentagon plans to spend $10 billion next year on an untested missile defense system in Alaska and Europe. Mr. Obama should halt deployment and devote a fraction of that budget to continued research until there is a guarantee that the system will work.

The Pentagon’s procurement system must be fixed. Dozens of the most costly weapons program are billions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule. Killing a weapons program, starting a new one or carrying out new doctrine — all this takes time and political leadership. President Obama will need to quickly lay out his vision of the military this country needs to keep safe and to prevail over 21st century threats.

Hitchens on HRC

In his latest column on Slate, Christopher Hitchens unleashes on the likely appointment of Hillary Rodham Clinton as Secretary of State. As expected, he doesn't pull any punches. An excerpt:

In matters of foreign policy, it has been proved time and again, the Clintons are devoted to no interest other than their own. A president absolutely has to know of his chief foreign-policy executive that he or she has no other agenda than the one he has set. Who can say with a straight face that this is true of a woman whose personal ambition is without limit; whose second loyalty is to an impeached and disbarred and discredited former president; and who is ready at any moment, and on government time, to take a wheedling call from either of her bulbous brothers? This is also the unscrupulous female who until recently was willing to play the race card on President-elect Obama and (in spite of her own complete want of any foreign-policy qualifications) to ridicule him for lacking what she only knew about by way of sordid backstairs dealing. What may look like wound-healing and magnanimity to some looks like foolhardiness and masochism to me.

Madame Secretary?

It’s becoming clear that the appointment of Hillary Rodham Clinton as Secretary of State is a foregone conclusion to be made official early next week. As the vetting/decision-making process drags on, the chorus of cynics grows more and more vocal. Their concerns do not necessarily stem from her lack of qualifications, her temperament or even her ambition, but more from the business dealings of Bill Clinton and his foundation, as well as from the strained personal relationship between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

The Washington Post:

Word that President-elect Barack Obama is vetting Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) for secretary of state has set off a furious flurry of chatter. Some laud Mr. Obama for possibly re-creating the team of rivals favored by Abraham Lincoln. Others think it's a mistake bordering on heresy, if you listen to some of Mr. Obama's more ardent supporters, to reward a former rival who brings with her a lot of baggage -- and a globe-trotting husband and former president who's carrying much of it. Ms. Clinton strikes us as well qualified for the job. But that's not quite the end of the question.

…Choosing Ms. Clinton would show that Mr. Obama (and this comes as no surprise) is confident enough to surround himself with smart and capable people. As first lady and as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, she has learned the potency and perils of hard and soft power alike. Her vigorous campaigning for Mr. Obama this fall suggests an ability to function as part of a team. But if Mr. Obama chooses Ms. Clinton, he'll get Mr. Clinton -- two for the price of one, you might say.

And this is where critics of the Clintons, and even their supporters, have legitimate concerns. Some of these are backward-looking, regarding the hundreds of millions of dollars that Mr. Clinton has raised for his presidential library and foundation, including from foreign governments, foreign individuals and others with an interest in foreign affairs. We have long argued that presidents, sitting or retired, should not be permitted to collect this sort of secret cash for their libraries.

The imperative for disclosure is even greater in the case of the Clintons because of Ms. Clinton's continuing involvement in public life. Among those reported to have given $1 million or more are Kuwait, Qatar, Brunei, Taiwan and the United Arab Emirates; the Saudi royal family gave $10 million. If Ms. Clinton is to serve as the nation's chief diplomat, the nation is entitled to know what foreign interests have donated generously to help her husband.

Even more complicated is how the Clintons could pursue their parallel careers if she were to become secretary of state. Mr. Clinton would have to give up his lucrative foreign speechmaking and deal-brokering. And for all the good works of his foundation, which has focused on preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS, promoting sustainable growth and alleviating global poverty, it is difficult to see how Mr. Clinton's work with a nongovernmental organization could continue alongside Ms. Clinton's work for the U.S. government. When Mr. Clinton exhorted a foreign government to provide funding or cooperation, would he be carrying the implicit support of the U.S. government?

Consider Mr. Clinton's September 2005 trip to Kazakhstan with Canadian mining tycoon Frank Giustra, who has given $130 million to the Clinton foundation. The two men attended a banquet with Kazakh strongman Nursultan Nazarbayev; within a few days, Mr. Giustra had obtained preliminary agreements for his company to buy into uranium projects controlled by the state-owned uranium agency. Neither President Obama nor, if it comes to that, Secretary of State Clinton needs headaches like these.

Tom Friedman expands upon the importance of an honest and open relationship between a President and his Secretary of State.

The important question, the answer of which is not at all clear to me, is about the only relationship that matters for a secretary of state — the kind of relationship he or she would have with the new president. My question: Is Obama considering Mrs. Clinton for this job in order to get her off his back or as a prelude to protecting her back?

I covered a secretary of state, one of the best, James A. Baker III, for four years, and one of the things I learned during those years was that what made Baker an effective diplomat was not only his own skills as a negotiator — a prerequisite for the job — but the fact that his boss, President George H.W. Bush, always had Baker’s back. When foreign leaders spoke with Baker, they knew that they were speaking to President Bush, and they knew that President Bush would defend Baker from domestic rivals and the machinations of foreign governments. That backing is the most important requirement for a secretary of state to be effective.

…Foreign leaders can spot daylight between a president and a secretary of state from 1,000 miles away. They know when they’re talking to the secretary of state alone and when they are talking through the secretary of state to the president. And when they think they are talking to the president, they sit up straight; and when they think they are talking only to the secretary of state, they slouch in their chairs. When they think they are talking to the president’s “special envoy,” they doze off in mid-conversation.

…My question is whether a President Obama and a Secretary of State Clinton, given all that has gone down between them and their staffs, can have that kind of relationship, particularly with Mrs. Clinton always thinking four to eight years ahead, and the possibility that she may run again for the presidency. I just don’t know. Every word that is said between them in public, and every leak, will be scrutinized for what it means politically and whether there is daylight. That is not a reason not to appoint Mrs. Clinton. But it is a reason for everyone around the president-elect to take a deep breath and ask whether they are prepared to have the kind of air-tight relationship with Mrs. Clinton that is required for effective diplomacy.

When it comes to appointing a secretary of state, you do not want a team of rivals.

David Broder is a little more blunt in his opposition to Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State.

Making Hillary Rodham Clinton the secretary of state in Barack Obama's administration would be a mistake. I do not doubt that she could do the job -- and do it well… Equally, I admire Obama's readiness to reach out to former rivals and enlist their help in the governing enterprise he is launching. His serious discussions with Clinton, John McCain and Bill Richardson, among others, are testaments to his sincerity in wanting to move beyond the partisanship and personal differences that too often poison the atmosphere in Washington.

What, then, is the problem? Clinton is the wrong person for that job in this administration. It's not the best use of her talents, and it's certainly not the best fit for this new president. What Obama needs in the person running the State Department is a diplomat who will carry out his foreign policy. He does not need someone who will tell him how to approach the world or be his mentor in international relations. One of the principal reasons he was elected was that, relying on his instincts, he came to the correct conclusion that war with Iraq was not in America's interest. He was more right about that than most of us in Washington, including Hillary Clinton.

Of course, he will benefit from the counsel and the contacts that his secretary of state can offer. But remember, he provided another and probably more expert source of that wisdom when he picked Joe Biden, the veteran chairman of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, as his running mate. The last thing Obama needs is a secretary of state carving out an independently based foreign policy. He needs an agent, not an author.

Even if Hillary Clinton were ready to play such a subordinate role, which she might be, in return for a promise that her voice would be heard in the most serious policy debates, the presence of Bill Clinton makes that a doubly difficult assignment. The former president has, through the Clinton Global Initiative and his own extensive foreign travels and worldwide contacts, made himself a force in international affairs. It would be unfair, and unlikely, for him to shut down his own private foreign policy actions because they might conflict with his wife's responsibilities. But foreign leaders would inevitably see Bill Clinton as an alternative route toward influencing American policy. And he would be unlikely to remain silent.

Some commentators have suggested that Hillary Clinton is frustrated by her lack of seniority in the Senate and the fact that she is not yet a chairman of any of the committees handling big policy areas. I find that a curious notion. Her influence, which is vast, does not rest on seniority. It rests on the respect she has won from colleagues in both parties for her hard work, her preparation and her mastery of the substance of policy. Senators want her support for their efforts, and both Republicans and Democrats are eager to join hers, because they know she commands a unique audience both in the Capitol and across the country. That was true in the past, and it is even more true after the impressive campaign she ran for the presidential nomination.

If Clinton can be of service to Obama in Foggy Bottom, she can be of even greater value as an ally on Capitol Hill. I hope that is where she will be when January rolls around.

Maureen Dowd takes a more cynical view (as per usual) of the potential Clinton appointment.

Just as Bill elevated his sprawling, chaotic personality into a management style, so Barry is elevating his spare, calm personality into a management style. But then Obama surprised Bill and Hillary by offering her a chance at the secretary of state job. Maybe because the Clintonian perspective on anyone who opposes them tends to be paranoid, the couple wasn’t expecting such a magnanimous move and they were pleased to be drawn back in from the margins. “This,” said one who knows Bill, “allows him not to be angry.”

At least Bill has the satisfaction of seeing that he has roiled the previously serene and joyous Obamaland. It may be Obama’s very willingness to take the albatross of Bill from around Hillary’s neck and sling it around his own that impresses Bill. Obama is overlooking all his cherished dictums against drama and leaking and his lofty vetting standards to try and create a situation where the country can benefit from the talent of the Clintons while curbing their cheesy excesses, like their endless cash flow from foreigners. And in turn, Bill is doing all he can — he’s disclosing sketchy donors and business interests and figuring out how he could curb his global gallivanting to have fewer conflicts of interest — to help his wife get the job.

It says it all that, at the moment Washington became obsessed with news that Hillary was a contender for State, Bill was getting a half-million for an hour’s worth of chat sponsored by the National Bank of Kuwait, delivered from behind a podium with a camel and Arabic lettering on it. Last year, Bill made $10.1 million in speaking fees. If Hillary gets to be the Mistress of Foggy Bottom, Bill’s guilt over his primary tirades, which hindered her chances of becoming president, would be alleviated.

...One person who famously opposed Hillary’s presidential bid thinks she’d make a great secretary of state. “She’s smart and tough, a lot better than any of the old hacks like Holbrooke, Albright, etc.,” says David Geffen. “Barack Obama is going to run policy, and Hillary will be an effective communicator. It also takes Bill out of the game. It completely turns him into an ally — and probably a help to both of them. I think Obama is very smart to get as many smart people into the room as he can, to bring in Rahm and keep Lieberman and get Hillary into the cabinet. It brings an enormous amount of good will his way, and he’s going to need every ounce of it, given the wars and financial catastrophe America is facing. It’s getting bleaker every day. There are many, many, many more bubbles to burst.”

But why support Hillary for Madam Secretary if you don’t support her for Madam President? “I don’t think they’re the same job at all, do you?” he replied. I told him I agreed. Completely.