Saturday, January 20, 2007

The Limits to Loyalty

Former Senator George MCGOVERN: I have to tell you something I've never said before publicly. I voted for him in 1976.

Larry KING: What?

MCGOVERN: When he -- yes, I did. And at Thanksgiving dinner that year, I never said anything about this to Eleanor or to her five children. But I told them at Thanksgiving time I had voted for President Ford, even though he lost. And I told them why, because I thought he had come in at a difficult time. I didn't know President Carter very well then. And I just felt more comfortable somehow with Gerry Ford. Whereupon my wife Eleanor said, so did I vote for him.

We went around that table -- this is hard to believe -- all five of my kids voted for him. So they get seven votes out of the McGovern family for President Ford and Senator Dole, my long-time Republican friend.

I voted for Carter again in 1980. So with my brand of political luck, I voted against Carter when he won, I voted for him when he lost. But I can justify both of those votes.

KING: What a great story. Thank you, George McGovern, on the occasion of the passing of Gerald Ford.

MCGOVERN: Could I also add one -- could I add one thing?

KING: Yes.

MCGOVERN: Larry, I supported the pardon for President Nixon. I suppose I was the person that suffered more from the cover-up of Watergate while I was running against Mr. Nixon than anyone else. But I supported that idea of a pardon even before President Ford granted it.

I called Barry Goldwater and asked him, at 6:00 one morning in the summer of '74, what would you think of you and I on a bipartisan basis calling for a pardon for President Nixon? He wasn't enthusiastic about it.

Larry King Live, January 2, 2007


Rumsfeld and Cheney and the president made a big mistake in justifying going into the war in Iraq. – Former President Gerald R. Ford, in an interview with Washington Post Reporter Bob Woodward

"I haven't made any decisions. I just haven't even thought about where my place is," (Former Rhode Island Senator Lincoln) Chafee said at a news conference Thursday when asked whether he would stick with the Republican Party or switch to be an independent or Democrat.

When asked if his comments meant he thought he might not belong in the Republican Party, he replied: "That's fair."

Chafee unsure of staying with GOP after losing election


After allegations of sexual misconduct, current California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show with his wife Maria Shriver during the California state recall election in 2003. Shriver and Winfrey are old friends. beginning in the 1970s when both were reporters in Baltimore. Winfrey has not openly discussed her party affiliation, but it is difficult to imagine that she would be a conservative, or a supporter of President Bush. And, of course, Shriver is a member of the Kennedy clan, a paramount symbol of the Democratic Party in America. Yet, here both women were supporting Schwarzenegger, a huge supporter (at the time) of President Bush.

And thus, family and friends trump principle. Even though John Kerry won California in the 2004 Presidential election, every so-called moderate voice such as Schwarzenegger’s helped Bush win. So, it is possible to hypothesize that Maria Shriver and other members of her clan (and the word “clan” is meant in the most primitive way) and Oprah Winfrey indirectly helped George Bush win a second term.

The few remaining Republican moderates in the Senate, Lincoln Chafee, Arlen Specter, Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, through their continued membership in the Republican Party, enabled the most extreme elements in American politics to control the Senate. Similarly, House GOP moderates such as Christopher Shays enabled the extreme politics of Tom DeLay. In each case these moderates went against their principles, first by ensuring that the Republican caucuses held majorities in each chamber thereby providing radical conservatives with committee chairmanships, which reduced oversight and increased corruption, and by voting with their party on party-line votes, with certain exceptions, notably Lincoln Chafee’s vote against the Iraq War authorization.

Perhaps these moderate GOP politicians thought that the pendulum would swing back, that their actions were necessary for the survival of their kind. But since the first President Bush’s apostasy – renouncing choice, and reversal on the concept that supply-side economics was “voodoo economics” – the moderate faction of the GOP has been on an inexorable decline, and is now nearly extinct. The reason for this is precisely that the GOP moderates did not stand up for moderate principles, making it more and more likely that moderate Democrats and independents would not vote for them. Lincoln Chafee, with more than a 60% approval rating, lost for this very reason, along with the knowledge that any Republican, even a liberal, could still provide the GOP caucus a majority, giving conservatives status as the majority party and important committee chairmanships.

On the other side of the aisle, liberal Democrats must be aghast at former Senator and presidential candidate George McGovern’s admission that he voted for Republican Gerald Ford in the Presidential election of 1976. McGovern, the hero (along with Eugene McCarthy) of the anti-war movement in the Vietnam War Era, voting for the man who pardoned Richard Nixon. The man who had the most reason to never vote for the Republican Party, did, putting his principles above simple party loyalty.

Perhaps the late, former President Gerald Ford could have taken a lesson from McGovern, and instead of requiring that Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward, and others, wait for his death to publish interviews expressing his serious reservations on the war in Iraq, had put those views out into the public realm when it might have made a difference. It is unfortunate that even such a good man would put loyalty to his party above loyalty to his country.

Friday, January 12, 2007

The Limits of Comparison

Weekly Standard Editor FRED BARNES: "Well, in truth, as Senator [Harry] Reid said, the President is not doing what his commanders on the ground have urged, mainly because their policy has failed. Baghdad is not secure. It's the center of great chaos and turmoil and violence in Iraq, so he's done what Abraham Lincoln did. When your commanders are not winning, you bring in new commanders. And, after all, he is the Commander-in-Chief. ..." – Roundtable on Fox News Sunday, January 7, 2007.

New York Daily News Columnist Michael GOODWIN: I think the reality about Iraq, Lou, the president as well as a lot of members of Congress are hiding behind the generals, whatever the generals want, the generals, the generals, the generals.

CNN Anchor Lou DOBBS: You're right about this, I am so sick about hearing this president and the previous defense secretary, say whatever the commanders say is what we'll do. There was a chain of command.

GOODWIN: It wasn't true in many cases. But ultimately the commander in chief is supposed to decide. I'm reminded of Abraham Lincoln in the Civil War. He was firing people left and right until he got the people he wanted to do what he wanted.

Lou Dobbs Tonight, January 5, 2007


President Bush is being compared to Lincoln. In an apparent turnaround (crueler observers would deem it a “flip-flop”), the Commander-In-Chief is asserting his constitutional role and has essentially fired Generals John Abizaid (retirement) and George Casey (kicked upstairs) because they did not believe in the wisdom of his new Iraq strategy (although there have been reports that Abizaid eventually came around). The turnaround is that, previously, the President portrayed the selection of commanding generals as something akin to the Immaculate Conception, without any input from the executive branch, and that he was merely following their requests and recommendations, whereas now he has actually selected generals who will follow and believe in his new plan.

The comparison to Lincoln is this: During the course of the Civil War, Lincoln relieved many generals of their commands (many entries at Lincoln Timeline), especially after losing battles, and even after winning battles if the general’s actions were insufficient. The most famous example of the latter is Lincoln’s firing of General George B. McClellan, commander of the Union armies, after the general’s defeat of Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s forces at Antietam, because McClellan did not pursue Lee’s retreating Army of Northern Virginia.

The comparison fails on other levels. At the onset of the Civil War, Lincoln submerged himself in the study of military strategy and tactics. He felt free to discuss very particular aspects of military plans with his generals – see examples at Lincoln Letter 1 and Lincoln Letter 2. It is difficult to imagine our current President taking such detailed interest in military planning.

And Lincoln wrote his own speeches, some of the most remarkable documents ever produced by an American leader. They reveal a combination of passion and logic, a concision that emanated from an individual who had great knowledge. President Bush’s flat and diffident delivery of his speech on Iraq policy and strategy – he seemed to be reading something that was written for him, a figurehead reading a list prepared by bureaucrats. We have no recordings of Lincoln’s speeches, but surely Lincoln showed more passion and knowledge when he spoke than the current President.

Thursday, January 04, 2007

The Executioner's Holiday

It was surprising that President George W. Bush did not attend the ceremony honoring the late, former President Gerald R. Ford under the Capital Dome last Saturday. It makes sense that Vice President Richard Cheney would give a eulogy in that ceremony, given his previous relationship with the late President. But President Bush's complete absence from the proceedings was odd. Bush did not appear at the equivalent ceremony for former President Ronald Reagan in 2004, but Bush was then hosting the G-8 Summit in Sea Island, Georgia. During the remembrance for Ford, Bush was in Crawford, Texas, with no apparent scheduling conflicts.

Was Bush’s absence simply disregard for a "lesser" President? Was it pique at Woodward's revelation that Ford opposed the Iraq War? Was it the same lazy inertia that kept Bush in Crawford at the beginning of Katrina? Why would Bush pass up the most positive of photo ops?

It has been an odd week or so, a confluence of high-profile endings. The death of James Brown, not just a musician, but also an important element in and commentator of social change from the 1960s. Then came Ford's passing, immediately followed by Bob Woodward's previously recorded interviews with Ford. And, finally, the announcement and execution of Saddam Hussein's death sentence.

These news-cycle-worthy events occurred during the period of Bush's "listening tour" and planning new policy for Iraq, designed to help the attention-deficit prone American public forget that the Iraq Study Group ever existed. It seems that The Decider is performing a strategic procrastination, dillydallying to avoid doing something willynilly in the midst of the hullaballoo and hurlyburly that is Iraq – at least that’s the idea. (This is what happens to writers who read Safire's "On Language" column.) Also, the other member of the Iraq War Club, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, was vacationing at Robin Gibbs' home in Miami.

Now this would have been perfect timing for Saddam’s execution, with the leaders of both the US and UK out of range, during the holidays with it’s slow news cycles. But Ford’s death and the following commemorations threw a monkey wrench into the works, forcing various members of the Administration into the public eye, except, apparently, for Bush. It doesn’t seem right that the 3 hours a day that Bush is working on Iraq would prevent him from attending.