The NYT is reporting that President-elect Obama picked his three key national security advisors because they share his view that we need a fundamental shift in the direction of U.S. foreign policy:

[A]ll three of his choices — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as the rival turned secretary of state; Gen. James L. Jones, the former NATO commander, as national security adviser, and Robert M. Gates, the current and future defense secretary — were selected in large part because they have embraced a sweeping shift of resources in the national security arena.

The shift, which would come partly out of the military’s huge budget, would create a greatly expanded corps of diplomats and aid workers that, in the vision of the incoming Obama administration, would be engaged in projects around the world aimed at preventing conflicts and rebuilding failed states.

Whether they can make the change — one that Mr. Obama started talking about in the summer of 2007, when his candidacy was a long shot at best — “will be the great foreign policy experiment of the Obama presidency,” one of his senior advisers said recently.

But the adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said the three have all embraced “a rebalancing of America’s national security portfolio” after a huge investment in new combat capabilities during the Bush years.

Mr. Obama’s advisers said they were already bracing themselves for the charge from the right that he is investing in social work rather than counterterrorism, even though President Bush repeatedly promised such a shift, starting in a series of speeches in late 2005. But they also expect battles within the Democratic Party over questions like whether the billion dollars in aid to rebuild Afghanistan that Mr. Obama promised during the campaign should now be spent on job-creation projects at home. . . .

“This is not an experiment, but a pragmatic solution to a long-acknowledged problem,” Denis McDonough, a senior Obama foreign policy adviser, said in an interview on Sunday.

“During the campaign the then-senator invested a lot of time reaching out to retired military and also younger officers who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan to draw on lessons learned,” Mr. McDonough said. “There wasn’t a meeting that didn’t include a discussion of the need to strengthen and integrate the other tools of national power to succeed against unconventional threats. It is critical to a long-term successful and sustainable national security strategy in the 21st century.”

This is nothing less than a revolutionary change in how the United States thinks about and interacts with the rest of the world.  Obama’s vision, as I’ve noted before, is both pragmatic and idealistic:  he sees the United States as both a leader and a model, but also recognizes that it cannot be that without the necessary resources:

[A]n Obama administration is likely to pursue a foreign policy based on sound strategic principles and coherent tactics.  Realism should trump ideology, and principles should trump interests. Call it pragmatic idealism, if you must apply a label.

In addition, an Obama administration will repair America’s disastrously dysfunctional foreign policy apparatus:  providing the State Department with the resources it needs; streamlining foreign assistance; reestablishing a robust and proactive public diplomacy; and clarifying the overlapping roles of State, NSC, Defense, and Homeland Security.  It will emphasize both innovation and results, rewarding creativity and encouraging critical thinking.

As the Times notes, both Jones and Gates have gone out of their way to speak out for these kinds of changes.  Clinton doesn’t have a similar track record, but I would be very surprised were she not to share their views.

But make no mistake: this will not be an easy task.  The military-industrial complex and its allies in Congress will resist any attempt to redirect resources away from DOD (in fact, they’re already trying).  Reform of the rest of the national security apparatus — particularly State, USAID, and DHS — will take considerable time and nearly infinite patience.  Reestablishing some sort of public diplomacy capacity with the personnel, resources, and independence necessary to accomplish an extraordinarily difficult mission will take even longer.

This is an enormous undertaking.  To use a popular cliché, Obama is trying to turn a supertanker, and that will take time.  But that doesn’t mean it isn’t possible.

One last observation:  if the NYT story is correct, Hillary’s move makes a lot more sense than it did before.  Obama is tasking her with nothing less than a total overhaul of the way the United States conducts foreign policy — the first such effort since Harry Truman tasked George Marshall and Dean Acheson to modernize American national security policy in the aftermath of the Second World War.

If she pulls it off, she’ll go down in history, along with Madison, Monroe, Seward, Marshall and Acheson, as one of the greatest Secretaries of State in American history.  And in the process, she just might lay the groundwork for a future Presidential run — and do it with a record of accomplishment that she could not have matched had she spent the next eight years in the Senate.

This is going to be fun to watch.

Related posts

• Transition Watch: Anger in the Ranks
• The Foreign Policy Team: No Surprises
• Transition Watch: Iraq
• The Fake Controversy over Samantha Power
• Why Hillary Still Might Say No

This may be the coolest thing I have ever seen.  Bruce Lee plays ping pong. . . with nunchucks.

I’d like to see Chuck Norris do that.

h/t: Danwei

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Given that President Bush won’t let The Condi pursue any serious policy initiatives, she seems to have a bit of time on her hands:

SECRETARY RICE: Good morning. I am very pleased to welcome all of you here this morning to announce our new American Public Diplomacy Envoy Ken Griffey, Jr. Ken joins Michelle Kwan, Fran Drescher, and Cal Ripken, Jr. as Americans who go out on behalf of the values of the United States – not the Government of the United States, but the values of the United States – to engage with people around the world from very special positions. And there’s nobody more special than Ken Griffey, Jr.

You know what I love about these public diplomacy envoys?  They make al Qaeda sooooo mad.  Fran Drescher’s laugh is enough to flush hardened, ruthless killers out of their caves.

What is it with the D-list celebrities?  Fran Drescher? Fran Drescher?  What, was Kathy Griffin unavailable?

The Condi still has plenty of time to go out and recruit some more retreads stars.  Hmmm.  Who should be next?  Oh, I know!  Dean Cain — the guy who played Superman on TV in the early 90s!  Isn’t he hosting the television adaptation of Joyce’s Ulysses Ripley’s Believe it or Not on the Back Shaving Network?  I mean, he did support McCain, right?

You’d think that she could have at the very least asked former A-list Republicans like Tom Selleck or Sylvester Stallone, for crying out loud.   You know your public diplomacy efforts aren’t going well when you can’t even get them Chuck Norris Approved.

So let me get this straight.  The United Nations gets Angelina Jolie, George Clooney and Charlize Theron.  The United States gets Fran Drescher, Ken Griffey, Jr., and Michelle Kwan.

And they say America’s capacity to project soft power is dead.

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It’s on climate change, delivered electronically to the Bipartisan Governors’ Global Climate Summit, which was hosted by Arnold Schwarzenegger today.  Even though there’s not much new here in terms of policy, it’s still worth watching:

The tone and message are consistent both with his acceptance speech and with his recent appointment of foreign policy veterans to key White House posts.  In case you can’t watch the Intertubes, a couple of pull quotes:

Few challenges facing America – and the world – are more urgent than combating climate change. The science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear. Sea levels are rising. Coastlines are shrinking. We’ve seen record drought, spreading famine, and storms that are growing stronger with each passing hurricane season. Climate change and our dependence on foreign oil, if left unaddressed, will continue to weaken our economy and threaten our national security.

Given everything else on the new Administration’s plate, it’s refreshing to see Obama take a stand on something that he easily could have pushed to the side in the name of expediency and/or putting out bigger fires.  I think it points to his vision of the interconnectedness of the various issues his Administration will have to confront.  For example, confronting climate change isn’t possible without  a greater commitment to green tech, which in turn will help reduce dependence on oil, which in turn will help address climate change.

The speech also reinforces what I’ve called his pragmatic internationalism:

And once I take office, you can be sure that the United States will once again engage vigorously in these negotiations, and help lead the world toward a new era of global cooperation on climate change.

Two phrases stand out:  “engage vigorously” and “new era of global cooperation.”  The former implies that under an Obama Administration, the United States will take the lead in addressing the fundamental challenges facing the world.  The latter makes it clear that when that happens, the Untied States no longer will go it alone.

All in all, not a bad first pronouncement on global issues.

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I’m really, really late to the Secretary of State Clinton speculation, and many others already have covered it  (props to Steve Clemons, btw, for breaking the story).  But tardiness has never stopped me before, so permit me to offer some (not-so-brief) observations on the notion of Hillary as Secretary of State.

1.  The “Secretaries of State don’t run for President” question. Although Nate Silver is correct when he notes that no Secretary of State since Buchanan has won the Presidency, that doesn’t, in itself, mean that a Secretary of State could not get elected President today.  After all, Powell would have remained a strong candidate to succeed Bush had his term as Secretary gone better, and a number of folks in the Republican Party (particularly neoconservatives) pushed for Condoleezza Rice to run.  Before that, some pundits pushed the notion that James Baker should run, and Alexander Haig liked to think he could be a candidate.

Furthermore, despite the fact that the Secretary of State’s influence and power have waned over the past few decades the position remains the most senior in the Cabinet.  It carries great prestige in its own right, and it also is fifth in the line of succession (until the 25th Amendment came into force, it was third, not fifth). Just because recent Secretaries have not had the desire to run doesn’t mean that the office lacks the prestige to permit a run.

2.  The “this will hurt Hillary’s chances to be President” theory. Hillary needs to ask is whether taking the job will help or hinder her desire to become President someday.  If Obama is not a success, a Republican running against Hillary in ‘16 could tar Secretary Clinton as too close to an unpopular President, much in the same way that Obama managed to connect McCain to Bush.  But that will be true even if Hillary doesn’t take the job — assuming she doesn’t start bucking Obama (and her party) in an effort to look like a (ahem) maverick.

There are four possible outcomes here:  she takes the job and he is successful, making her the leading candidate to secure the Democratic nomination in ‘16; she doesn’t take the job and he is successful, still leaving her the leading candidate in ‘16; she takes the job and he stumbles (or she does), damaging her prospects and perhaps ending her career; and she doesn’t take the job and he stumbles, which still leaves her the leading candidate in ‘16.

I think Hillary will look at those four scenarios and conclude that the position involves considerable risks with few rewards.  Not taking the job has few long-term downsides.

3. The political circus challenge vetting Bill challenge. If Hillary accepts the nomination, she still will have to go through a public vetting and a (hopefully successful) confirmation.  At first blush, that may not look like a major concern:  after all, as Hillary herself has noted, few people have been as thoroughly vetted as she has over the past sixteen years.  That said, her assertion does not mean that there are no skeletons.

To be clear, I’m not suggesting that there necessarily are, but there certainly are a number of rumors about Bill’s post-Presidential behavior, as well as questions about his business dealings and his unwillingness to release the names of those who donated to his Presidential library.  The Obama campaign chose not to raise these during the primaries, but had she won, McCain may have done so.  The reality is that we don’t know what opposition research the Republicans have, or whether they are willing to use it.

The Republicans could decide to turn her confirmation into a huge and potentially distracting sideshow, much as the Democrats did with G.H.W. Bush’s nomination of John Tower to serve as Secretary of Defense.  Given the significant majority the Democrats now hold in the Senate, Republicans are unlikely to succeed in derailing Hillary, but they could make both her and Obama miserable for a while.  Obama has run a tight ship up to now, so I presume that his senior staff already has vetted her (if the offer is serious) and has concluded that she can weather such a storm.

(UPDATE:  This is more than merely a question of Bill raking in the Benjamins.  His business ventures could conflict directly with an Obama Administration and even with Hillary’s own positions.  As the NYT story linked above notes, Clinton praised Kazakhstan’s dictator President, Nursultan Nazarbayev and promoted Kazakhstan’s efforts to chair the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.  He did it despite the fact that both the Bush Administration and Hillary opposed the bid.  Despite that, Bill told the NYT that he saw no contradiction between his and Hillary’s positions.  It’s one thing for that to happen during the primaries, but it’s an entirely different matter should it happen when his wife is Secretary of State.)

Once Hillary is confirmed, the challenges don’t end.  A lot of it centers on Bill’s role — particularly if he continues the informal diplomacy that has characterized his post-Presidential years.  There also are protocol and security issues.  Would Bill go on trips with Hillary?  And if he did, would his status as a former POTUS affect how she would be welcomed and how she would do her job?  To put it another way, how does she negotiate with Medvedev and Putin when a former President is down the hall? (For the record, I’m not being sexist here.  If the tables were turned, the same question would be relevant.)  And what about the conflicting priorities of Diplomatic Security (who would protect Hillary) and the Secret Service (who protect Bill)?  Normally the latter would take priority, but in this case it might have to defer, which in in turn could produce real conflict.  All these questions need to be worked out in advance.

4.  The appointments issue. During the primaries, the Clinton campaign asked foreign policy experts to remain “exclusive” to Hillary (meaning they could not also offer advice to other candidates).  That’s not an unreasonable position, even if the other leading candidates (including Obama) chose not to follow suit.  I know many people in the foreign policy community who volunteered for the Clinton campaign because they thought she was the best candidate.  But I also know a few who, because of ambition, felt that they had to work for her even though they preferred another candidate.  When Obama ultimately won, all of them were welcomed by his campaign and integrated into Obama’s existing campaign apparatus.

If Hillary were to become Secretary of State, I presume that she, like most Secretaries, would be given significant leeway in picking most (if not all) of her senior advisors (meaning in the case of State the two Deputy Secretaries, the Under Secretaries, and those Assistant Secretary postions not assigned to career foreign service officers).  It would be logical (and not unreasonable) to conclude that she probably would favor those who served her during the primaries.

But doing so could create two problems.  First, the team of rivals could turn into rival fiefdoms, with Obama supporters dominating the NSC (and Defense) and Clinton supporters dominating State.  Given the fact that the next Administration urgently needs to reintegrate State into existing foreign policy structures (and give it the resources both to achieve its mission and play a more robust role in intra-agency negotiations), Obama needs to end existing inter-agency rivalries, not create new ones.

Second, there was no love lost among the two camps’ advisors during the primaries.  The Clintons attacked those it viewed as disloyal (such as Bill Richardson and Gregory Craig), which angered many in the Obama campaign.  In addition, I heard from more than one friend that they were warned that they could forget about a role in a Clinton administration should they not support Hillary during the primaries.  Given those realities, Obama risks angering those who did support him, and some of his supporters may regard Hillary’s likely selection of her loyalists to senior posts as a betrayal.

5.  The “team of rivals” meme. I’m a big fan of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals; if you have not yet read it, I strongly encourage you to do so — but not because Hillary might be Secretary of State.  It’s a marvelous portrayal of Lincoln and his Cabinet, particularly William H. Seward (State) and Edwin M. Stanton (War), both of whom had little or no respect for Lincoln before joining the Cabinet.  Both later became among his closest friends and advisors.

But just because it worked back then doesn’t mean it will work now.  In Lincoln’s (and Seward’s) day, the President and Secretary of State had few deputies, and met virtually daily  As time went on and Seward’s respect for Lincoln grew, he became a trusted advisor and a close friend.  Seward’s office was very close to Lincoln, as was his home.  Both Seward and Lincoln would walk over to the other’s home/office to talk, and they often were guests at each other’s homes.

Today, it’s a long seven blocks from Foggy Bottom to the White House, and even regular phone calls are unlikely to replicate the proximity that bred intimacy in Lincoln’s time.  Hillary simply won’t have the opportunity to watch (and advise) Obama the way that Seward did with Lincoln.  Seward ultimately gave up his ambitions to be President in favor of loyally serving his President.  I doubt that Hillary would (or necessarily should) do the same.

In addition, modern Presidents (and Secretaries of State) can’t operate without vast numbers of advisors and support staff — they require far more personnel than in Lincoln’s time.  Even most small-government conservatives (witht the possible exception of Grover Norquist) do not favor reducing the size of the federal government to what it was in the mid-19th Century.  To put it another way, the inter-agency process would inhibit both proximity and intimacy.

So if I were Hillary, I would not to take the job.  There’s just too much that could go wrong — and too much risk to her own future.  Although she would make an excellent Secretary of State, she can still strongly support Obama’s agenda from the Senate — and do so without sacrificing her legitimate desire to succeed him one day.

UPDATE:  Both the NYT and WaPo have stories this morning raising some of the same questions I have.  First and foremost is the Bill issue.  First, the NYT:

President-elect Barack Obama’s advisers have begun reviewing former President Bill Clinton’s finances and activities to see whether they would preclude the appointment of his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, as secretary of state, Democrats close to the situation said Sunday. The examination of the former president suggests how seriously Mr. Obama is considering bringing his onetime rival for the Democratic presidential nomination into his cabinet. . . .

A team of lawyers trying to facilitate the potential nomination spent the weekend looking into Mr. Clinton’s philanthropic organization, interactions with foreign governments and ties to pharmaceutical companies, a Democrat close to both camps said. While Mr. Clinton has used his foundation to champion efforts to fight AIDS, poverty and climate change around the world, he has also taken millions in speaking fees and contributions from foreign officials and businesses with interests in American governmental policies.

Now here’s WaPo on the same issue:

Since leaving the White House, Bill Clinton has used his connections with world leaders to position himself as something akin to the world’s philanthropist in chief — and become rich in the process by collecting huge sums from foreign companies eager to hear him speak.  That arrangement could be complicated, though, by his wife joining the Obama administration, with the prospect of questions about any conflict of interest or attempts to curry influence. . . .

The choice of Clinton would present other potential problems for Obama. He would be investing his fortunes not only with his former rival for the presidency but also in an outsize figure on the global scene who has been conducting a kind of privately financed foreign policy all his own since leaving office. Obama and the former president have also continued to share a somewhat strained relationship since the end of the Democratic nominating contest.

Bill Clinton’s web of personal financial ties and public policy pronouncements about the world’s challenges would instantly become a source of possible discord with a new Obama administration as his wife travels the same world circuit as America’s official emissary.

“He’s a former president of the United States. He’s been traveling around the world, and he’s got his foundation and a lot of foreign policy efforts going on,” said Leon Panetta, Clinton’s former chief of staff and now a professor of public policy. “What they will have to obviously be careful of are the potential conflicts that might appear.”. . .

By taking the Cabinet post, Hillary Clinton would also force new scrutiny of her husband’s charitable activities and his private financial dealings. Bill Clinton has raised millions of dollars for his foundation but has declined to publicly disclose its benefactors. Likewise, most of the donors who helped bankroll his presidential library in Little Rock have never been disclosed.

The Times story goes a bit further, noting the challenge of bringing together the Obama and Clinton foreign policy camps:

One sign that many said pointed to Mrs. Clinton’s possible selection was the news that Gregory B. Craig would be White House counsel instead of national security adviser or deputy secretary of state, as some had expected. A law school friend of the Clintons who represented Mr. Clinton during impeachment, Mr. Craig backed Mr. Obama from the start of the campaign and was a scathing critic of Mrs. Clinton’s claims to foreign policy experience. Although some advisers saw no connection, others said putting him in a foreign policy job would be untenable if Mrs. Clinton were secretary of state.

If Craig was named White House Consul in order to assuage the Clintons, that’s not a good sign.  After all, if Obama can appoint a rival to a key post, why can’t Hillary?  Were Hillary to get the nod, her choice of Craig as Deputy Secretary would have demonstrated her own willingness to bury the hatchet and build a coherent team.  That’s not to say that she still could not appoint an Obama loyalist (say Susan Rice) as Deputy, but Craig would have represented an especially powerful effort to promote unity.

When I wrote the original piece, I forgot to note one other factor that points to Hillary getting the job:  the people leading the State Department component of the transition (h/t The Agonist):

Tom Donilon is a partner at the law firm of O’Melveny & Myers and serves on the firm’s global governing committee. Tom served as Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs and Chief of Staff at the U.S. Department of State during the Clinton Administration. Since leaving the Department he has remained deeply involved in the national security arena. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Aspen Strategy Group, the National Security Advisory Group to the Congressional Leadership, the Brookings Institution Board of Trustees, the Miller Center of Public Affairs Governing Council, and the Trilateral Commission.

Wendy R. Sherman is a Principal of The Albright Group LLC and of Albright Capital Management LLC. Ambassador Sherman served as Counselor and chief troubleshooter for the State Department, as well as Special Advisor to President Clinton and Policy Coordinator on North Korea. Sherman is a recognized expert on national security issues and serves as a frequent analyst in major news outlets. She was recently appointed by Congressional Leadership to serve on the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism.

Both are Clinton Administration veterans — Donilon during Warren Christopher’s time, Sherman during Albright’s — although I could not find anything pointing to their loyalties during the primary season.  Given Sherman’s tenure at Albright’s consulting group, I’d be surprised if she did not support Clinton.

Donilon and Sherman are excellent choices to lead the transition at State — they’re both smart, thoughtful, and able to look at both the big picture and get in the weeds.  Their appointments could have everything to do with the capabilities and nothing at all to do with their loyalties.  As others have noted, most of Democrats in their 30s, 40s, and 50s who have experience in government had to have worked in the Clinton Administration, given the fact that it was the only game in town for the past three decades.  (Full disclosure:  that is true of me as well.)

But given the fact that we’ve already seen questions around Craig’s appointment, it would be interesting to know whether they both did, in fact, support Hillary before joining the Obama team.  As I noted above, the last thing either Obama or Hillary need is for the team of rivals to turn into competing fiefdoms.

UPDATE #2:  What do you think?  Vote in our new poll, located in the left-hand column.

UPDATE #3:  It appears that most of the buzz around the Hillary boomlet is being generated by — surprise! — the Clinton camp.  Via Mike Allen at Politico:

Team Obama, after all but offering SecState to Senator Clinton, is expressing EXASPERATION with the Clinton camp for the difficulty in getting a clean vet on President Bill Clinton’s many entanglements. “The ball is very much in her court, but the president’s finances have been a major point of sensitivity from day one,” a Democratic official said. (“Day One!”) “Given that everyone’s mystified by how deliberately public the Clintons have made this once secret process, the assumption is either that the Clintons are trying to use the public buzz to steamroll their way in, create a sense of inevitability that overcomes those concerns, or that it’s just a matter of time before they … satisfy vetting somehow, some way. Otherwise, after all this speculation, there’ll be a permanent dark cloud hanging over her finances. … But generally the sense among the no-drama Obama world is: This is well on its way to winning best Oscar for drama.” . . .A neutral Democrat tells Playbook: “I doubt that they are looking for an excuse to pick someone else but rather are genuinely concerned that Bill Clinton’s work, while worthy, would be greatly complicating if she were SecState.”

UPDATE #4:  Ambinder says that the vetting is ongoing, and that SecState was not the only position discussed:

Sources close to the process have said that Obama and Clinton discussed a variety of possible roles she could play in a new administration, including Secretary of State. If Clinton is offered a cabinet spot and decides to accept it, it’s not unreasonable to expect her to want to think about her options and spend time discussing the offer with her close friends and advisers.

As it happens, three of her top advisers — former campaign manager Maggie Williams, chief legal adviser Cheryl Mills, and President Clinton — were out of the country late last week.  Mills, who was Abu Dhabi, has always played a central role on any matters related to the Clinton’s joint finances or the presidents’ foundation work.  Any vet of Clinton’s finances would run through Mills.

Bill and Hillary would be called upon to make decisions about transparency together, and since the former president was in Europe and Kuwait through Sunday, it’s not unreasonable to expect Hillary Clinton to want to cogitate with her husband in person.

People close to the Obama transition say they understand all this — they understood all this last week — and that there’s been no delaying, there’s been no acrimony, and that Clinton and her team have acted professionally and appropriately.

I’ve also heard from some sources close to Richardson that he is being vetted as well.  It looks like Obama is not placing all his bets on one horse.

UPDATE #5:  The Guardian is reporting that Clinton is planning to accept the offer.  That said, the report is pretty thinly sourced and mainly focuses on the fact that the Obama team is vetting Bill.

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• Why Hillary Still Might Say No
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First shock:  Axl Rose finally got around to releasing “Chinese Democracy,” the new Guns-n-Roses album.  For those unaware of the saga, just know that it took something like twenty years and evry other member of the band quit in frustration over a decage ago — it was, until now, the most famous failed rock album since the Beach Boys’ “Pet Sounds.”

Second shock:  “Chinese Democracy,” the first single, is surprisingly not-half-bad.  Trust me — I hated GN’R.  This is tantamount to me saying I spend my evenings listening to “Tammy Faye Baker Sings PTL Club Favorites.”

Granted, the guitar solo on the bridge is so old-school awful that it sounds like the dude-that-replaced-Slash is consciously channeling David St. Hubbins, but other than that, there’s not much to complain about.  For me it sounded more like Blue Oyster Cült’s “Godzilla” or The Move’s “Brontosaurus”  than “Welcome to the Jungle” or any other GN’R late 80s metal cliché.

Third shock:  Axl doesn’t scream.  Not once. Well, sorta at the beginning, but it’s not part of the lyrics.

Fourth shock:  the song is about. . .wait for it. . .the future of democracy in China.  That’s right — Axl Rose is really, really pissed at the ChiComs.

Really.

Granted, the lyrics aren’t that sophisticated.  Okay, they’re lame.  He rhymes Falun Gong with, uh, now.

CHINESE DEMOCRACY
It don’t really matter
You’ll find out for yourself
No, it don’t really matter
I’m gonna leave this thing to somebody else

If they were missionaries
Real time visionaries
Sitting in a chinese stew
To view my disinfatuation

I know that I’m a classic case
Watch my disenchanted face
Blame it on the Falun Gong
They see the hand and you can’t hold on now

Cause it would take a lot more hate than you
To stop the fascination
Even with an iron fist
All they’ve got to rule the nation
But all I got is precious time

It don’t really matter
Guess I’ll keep it to myself
No, it don’t really matter
I guess you’ll leave this thing to somebody else

Cause it would take a lot more time than you
Have got for masturbation
Even with your iron fist
All they’ve got to rule the nation
But all I got is precious time
All they’ve got to rule the nation
But all I got is precious time

It don’t really matter
I guess you’ll find out for yourself
No, it don’t really matter
So you can hear it now from somebody else

You think you’ve got it all locked up inside
And if you beat ‘em enough they’ll die
It’s like a walk in a park from a cell
And now you’re keeping your own kind in hell
And if you’re Great Wall rocks blame your self
While they all reach out for you hand/help?
And we’re out of time…

But hey — who’da thunk Axl Rose could be political?  Now we know why he wasn’t invited to perform during the Olympics Opening Ceremony.

But dude — masturbation with an iron fist?   Ouch.  And ewwww.

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Given all the anger and hatred of the crowds at the McCain-Palin campaign events, some thoughts from two great Americans that have particular relevance to what’s going on right now.

First, James Baldwin, from The Fire Next TIme:

If we — and. . .I mean the relatively conscious whites and the relatively conscious blacks, who must, like lovers, insist on, or create the consciousness of the others — do not falter in our duty now, we may be able, handful that we are, to end the racial nightmare, and achieve our country and change the history of the world

Second, Martin Luther King, from Letter from a Birmingham Jail:

I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states.  I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham.  Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.  We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.  Whatever affects one direcly affects all indirectly.  Never again can we afford to live with the narrow provincial “outside agitator” idea.  Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.

Both quotes from the first volume of Reporting Civil Rights, the Library of America’s fine collection.  If you have never read Baldwin, do so — he is an American Orwell.

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Tony Karon doesn’t blog much, but when he does, it’s always interesting.  Earlier today, he posted an excerpt from the 1980 film Rude Boy, featuring Joe Strummer and Ray Gange discussing left- and right-wing politics.

When Gange says he wants to be “one of the [rich] people riding around in cars,” Strummer says, “There’s nothing there.  You can get all the [wealth] you want, [but] there’s nothing at the end of that road, no humor, life, nothing. . . .It’s all of us or none.”  It’s like the punk rock version of What’s the Matter with Kansas?

Once the conversation ends, the movie cuts to The Clash performing “London’s Burning” and “White Riot.”  Depending on where you work, the video may be NSFW — it actually has bad words in it.

Watching this made me wish I had seen the Clash in their prime.  But it also got me thinking about the similarities between Britain of the late 70s and John McCain and Sarah Palin’s America:

White riot - I wanna riot
White riot - a riot of my own
White riot - I wanna riot
White riot - a riot of my own

Strummer meant this ironically — later in the song he says that most Brits are sheep who “go to school where they teach you how to be thick.”  But if you’ve seen the videos of Palin rallies, you know that the chorus represents a pretty good description of what’s happening in the United States today.

Increasingly, McCain-Palin supporters — or at least the Palinistas among them — rant incoherently against forces that they are not even trying to understand.  The United States they idealize ceased to exist a long time ago, but it is only with this election that they are beginning to come to terms with the fact that they no longer represent a majority view.

As a result, they have denounced Obama as a terrorist, Muslim, “baby-killer” and racist, even as they use racist symbols (Curious George, watermelon, ribs, fried chicken) in their depictions of him.  They are hostile towards anyone they perceive as the enemy — including the media.  Some have even threatened violence.

It’s the distillation of white anger into its most virulent form.

In other words, it’s a white riot.

I am not an expert on late 20th Century British history, but it strikes me that there are more similarities between England of the late 70s and contemporary America than just the anger and alienation of a fading culture.

Thatcherism was in large part a response to an exhausted ideology — social democracy — that had managed to disillusion those who had supported it for two generations.  Most voters thought that the Labour Party was outdated and out of touch with the average voter’s concerns.  The economy was in shambles, and most voters blamed the current government for their own problems.  Dozens of past Labourites publicly endorsed Thatcher, portrayed Labour as having moved outside the mainstream of British politics.  She also skillfully used the economic crisis to highlight the failures of the Callaghan government.

Today, it is conservatism and Republicanism that is the exhausted ideology and party.  It’s not yet clear whether Obama will prove to be the kind of realigning force that Thatcher was in England.  But certainly the conditions exist for it to happen.

Britain got over its white anxiety, culture wars, and economic doldrums (and, for that matter, Thatcherism) to become the “Cool Britannia” of the early Blair years.  It is possible that an Obama Administration may help bring about a similar transition in the United States.

Of course, just as is the case in England today, a few die hards will continue to hate.

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Further proof that the Chinese are integrating the best parts of Western culture into their system.

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Well, actually, yesterday:

World to U.S.: You suck

Read the article — it’s a summary of world reaction to the fail of the bailout plan.  It’s not pretty.  Here’s a taste, from Brazilian President Luiz Inacio da Silva (a.k.a. Lula):

We can’t be turned into victims of the casino erected by the American economy. . . . It’s not fair for Latin American, African and Asian countries to pay for the irresponsibility of sectors of the American financial system. . .  It is time for the U.S. Congress to take on the responsibility that corresponds to it. They created the problem, and that is why it is they who have to solve it.

Oooh boy, that’s not good.  And that was one of the nicer ones.

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Apparently, the worst is yet to come for Sarah Palin.  According to a number of sources, CBS will air the last part of its interview with her tonight.  It’s not good news for the McCain campaign

Of concern to McCain’s campaign, however, is a remaining and still-undisclosed clip from Palin’s interview with Couric last week that has the political world buzzing.  The Palin aide, after first noting how “infuriating” it was for CBS to purportedly leak word about the gaffe, revealed that it came in response to a question about Supreme Court decisions.

After noting Roe vs. Wade, Palin was apparently unable to discuss any major court cases.  There was no verbal fumbling with this particular question as there was with some others, the aide said, but rather silence.

Every school kid learns a few Supreme Court cases.  Roe v. Wade is one, but so are Marbury v. Madison, Dredd Scott, Plessy v. Ferguson,  Brown v. Board of Education, even Bush v. Gore.

She. Didn’t. Freaking. Know.

But just for a moment, let’s give the Sarahnator the benefit of the doubt.  Maybe she was sick the week her high school civics class covered the Supreme Court.  Maybe the Alaska Independence Party got a law passed prohibiting any mention of Supreme Court cases in Alaska’s school curriculum.  Maybe none of the six colleges she attended offered an American History class (or maybe she didn’t take any).

Even then, there’s a small problem:  Exxon v. Baker, from June of this year:

The Supreme Court on Wednesday reduced what had once been a $5 billion punitive damages award against Exxon Mobil to about $500 million. The ruling essentially concluded a legal saga that started when the Exxon Valdez, a supertanker, struck a reef and spilled 11 million gallons of crude oil into the Prince William Sound in Alaska in 1989.

And it’s not like Sunshine Sarah didn’t know about it:

Public officials in Alaska are reacting strongly to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision Wednesday to slash the $2.5 billion damage award to Alaska fishermen to $508 million, nearly 20 years after the Exxon Valdez disaster. . . .

Gov. Sarah Palin [said,]  “I am extremely disappointed with today’s decision by the U.S. Supreme Court,” Palin said. “While the decision brings some degree of closure to Alaskans suffering from 19 years of litigation and delay, the court gutted the jury’s decision on punitive damages.”

Palin added, “It is tragic that so many Alaska fishermen and their families have had their lives put on hold waiting for this decision. My heart goes out to those affected, especially the families of the thousands of Alaskans who passed away while waiting for justice.”

Palin said the decision today undercut one of the principal legs of deterrence for those engaged in maritime shipping in Alaska waters. She called on state and federal agencies to be vigilant and firm in regulating such activities.

This was a huge deal in Alaska, generating bipartisan outrage.  Palin was right in the middle of it.  According to a friend who does public relations for progressive organizations, Palin appeared at several events to express her outrage over the decision.

Clearly she’s panicking.  She is so discombobulated, so completely freaked out that she can’t even remember the biggest Supreme Court case to hit Alaska in many years.  She isn’t stupid.  She’s cratering.

Either that, or Katie Couric scares the living crap out of her.  That doesn’t exactly reassure me that a President Palin could stare down Hu Jintao or Vladimir Putin.

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Last week when I posted twenty questions for the debate, number two on my list concerned the sorry state of our foreign policy apparatus:

Numerous reports have indicated that the State Department is woefully underfunded and understaffed.  Secretary Gates, among others, has urged Congress and the President to take steps to address these concerns.  Congress has largely been unsympathetic.  What would you do, as President to make the State Department more effective, and to give it the resources it needs to succeed?

For far too many years, successive Administrations have ignored the State Department, allowing its capabilities to erode at the same time that its workload has increased exponentially.  I don’t have the numbers to prove it, but I would bet good money that in the past twenty years, the number of bureaus and offices in the Department has doubled at the same time that the number of personnel has declined by at least ten percent.

This is one crisis that cannot be blamed solely on the Bush Administration — although it certainly has done its part.  The decline of State really began in the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, when those Presidents came to rely more on National Security Advisors and Secretaries of Defense than Secretaries of State — a pattern that has continued to this day (with the possible exceptions of George Schultz, James Baker and Condi Rice).  It declined further under Nixon-Kissinger, in large part because of the duo’s disdain for the so-called east coast liberal elites that they thought dominated Foggy Bottom.

Congress also must share the blame.  Year after year, the House and the Senate do little to grow the budget of State.  When I was helping to run strategic planning for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, we were constantly struggling to manage a budget that the building’s finance people would not allow to grow even at the rate of inflation.  One year, when Congress mandated that our budget be greater than it had been in the past, they required the Department to carve it out of existing funding rather than adding new money.  You can imagine how popular that made us with other bureaus facing cutbacks.

At the same time that Congress refuses to spend more, they keep piling on the responsibilities. My favorite example of this is Congress’s mania for reports.  Each year, by Congressional fiat, the State Department must produce lengthy, multi-volume reports on the state of human rights, religious freedom, trafficking, and terrorism (and those are only the ones I know about).  Each runs into the thousands of pages and requires the work of innumerable foreign service officers who must spend their time at desks writing the damn things rather than getting out and finding out what is going on.

To be clear, I am not advocating for the elimination of all reports.  But I see no reason why it is necessary to have three separate reports on human rights issues.

Even reforms, no matter how well-intentioned, have created problems:

In 2006, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice vowed to move diplomats “out from behind their desks into the field”—away from places like Western Europe and into developing nations where they would play a more hands-on development role. But her plan, however laudable, was put forth without the money and smart management needed to make it work. Now seasoned diplomats are fleeing Foggy Bottom in droves, leaving America critically short on diplomatic expertise just when it is needed most.

The State Department, by its own projections, will lose 14 percent of its veteran diplomats every year from 2007 to 2011—an entire generation in a few years’ time. The talent pool is shrinking, too; the number of people taking the foreign-service exam fell more than 40 percent between 2002 and 2006. Under Colin Powell, State had hoped to hire more than 1,000 officers, but the department’s latest budget sought fewer than 300. And because Rice didn’t push hard enough for that funding, the department may actually lose jobs this year. The dire situation has officials counting paper clips. “Everyone must reduce expenses whenever and wherever possible,” warned a March memo instructing supervisors to cut positions and defer staff training requests. State employees, it further admonished, would have to “reduce their use of supplies.”

The Bush administration was hard on State from the start. The number of overseas postings where diplomats cannot bring their families has more than quadrupled, from 200 in 2001 to 905 today. . . . [Diplomats] are entering war zones unprepared, with just a few weeks of training for a Baghdad posting; four decades ago, Vietnam-bound diplomats got six months of preparation, which included combat training. . . . “They are shifting bodies,” says one congressional staffer, “but they aren’t backing that up with more money.”

Further straining the capacity of State are two more recent developments — the war in Iraq, which has caused an exponential growth in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs and thus an extraordinarily lopsided level of funding for its operations; and the rapid growth of Diplomatic Security operations as a result of  the 1998 Embassy bombings, 9/11, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.  These two challenges have conspired to place greater strain on other parts of the building, making it harder for essential bureaus to do their jobs.

This toxic combination of increased responsibilities, declining resources, and shortages in qualified foreign service officers are beginning to take their toll, and not merely in terms of declining numbers:

John Naland, president of the American Foreign Service Association, said the statistics painted a disturbing picture. He said 12 percent of overseas Foreign Service positions are currently vacant, and 19 percent of positions that are filled are held by employees who do not have the qualifications required for their jobs. That experience gap is pronounced particularly in language-designated positions: Naland cited a 2006 Government Accountability Office study that found that 29 percent of diplomats in those positions did not meet the language requirements of their jobs. He said AFSA’s research suggested that less than 20 percent of Foreign Service officers had negotiation training. “Imagine if only 20 percent of Army officers had been trained to fire a weapon,” he said.

The state of State is a hidden crisis, one that the next President must address urgently.

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Can’t write more haikus
Suspending my poetry
Except ones below

;

Surrogates appear
Campaign is not suspended!
Boy I sure fooled you

;

Had to speak today
Don’t want to let Clinton down
Since he endorsed me.

;

No debate! No! Please!
McCain’s freaking out again.
He’s a maverick!

;

Bailout deal is done!
Protected Wall Street.
Screwed Main Street again.

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Who knew Henry Paulson had a band?

And the reviews are pretty good:

“Paulson is doing some crazy neo-prog-dance-indie[-bailout]-punk stuff that no one else is even close to [understanding]. Four [trillion] stars!” - Alternative Press

“Unforgettably melodious…[Bail Them Out] All At Once is one of those [bailouts] that’s so good it’ll make you want to keep [the money] all to yourself. But you’ll crack. And before you know what you’re doing you’ll be [giving money to anyone who asks].” - [Ben Bernanke]

“The songs the band creates are too good to be limited to the [pockets] of thousands [of bankers]–they seek the company of [tr]illions [of dollars]. There aren’t many times where I’ll sing the praises of [a bailout] and declare that it is readily consumable by [all my fat cat buddies on Wall Street], so take note: Paulson is the real deal.” - [George W. Bush]

“A beautiful blend of wonderfully dark melodies and [massive amounts of cash]… Do yourself a favor and pick up the first (and probably last) undiscovered [economic hit job] of this year. 8/10″ - [Goldman Sachs]

“Whiny indie crap, [but I'm still gonna vote for it.]” - [John McCain]

Okay, I might have, um, enhanced the reviews a bit.

It’s amazing ol’ Hank finds time to tour between all the panicking testifying he’s been doing lately.  Come to think about it, if you squint, he kinda sorta almost looks like former Midnight Oil lead singer (and current Australian Environment Minister) Peter Garrett.

With profound apologies to the real band — they’re actually pretty great.  Go buy their albums.

Images:  Band: Their MySpace page.  Their, ahem, lead singer: via Wikipedia, using a GNU Free Documentation License.  Peter Garrett:  Official Midnight Oil website.

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Three observations about the current mess.

1.  Last night, Bush looked scared, lost, and out of place.  As my wife Molly put it, he was reading words put into his mouth rather than expressing his own thought.  For all our mocking of Al Gore as Mr. Roboto eight years ago, no President has ever looked as wooden as Bush did last night.

But it was not merely a question of performance.  Bush looked small — a sad little man out of his depth, more Willy Loman than Atticus Finch.  It was a pathetic exercise in ass-covering and special pleading.  Where others have risen to an occasion, Bush sank into the depths of his own failure.

2.  It is easy to regard our current mess as a question of insufficient liquidity.  Although the past two weeks’ event are clearly the product of the current Administration’s disastrous economic policies, what we’re really facing is a crisis in confidence.  That’s why the Paulson-Bernanke decision to turn this into one of the biggest crises in American history was so devastating:  it created the conditions for a collapse of confidence in the American economy.

If bankers continued to believe the economy was sound, they would lend.   If foreign investors still thought the United States as a good place to put their money, the failure of a few large firms would do no more harm to our economic prospects than the Chrysler bailout, the collapse of the savings and loan industry, or the Enron meltdown did.

Credit isn’t drying up because there’s no money; it’s disappearing because people are afraid — scared to lend, scared to buy, scared to do much of anything at all.  In the end, the Paulson plan (or the Dodd plan or any other proposal for that matter) will succeed or fail not because it pumps money into the system, but because it restores confidence.

What is required of leaders in times like this is not merely policy prescriptions, but also reassurance.  Think about 9/11.  For all we may despise him now, Rudy Giuliani — not Bush, I would note — demonstrated that kind of leadership.  For about a week, Giuliani became almost a second President, offering Americans the comforting words they so longed to hear — words that Bush, whether unwilling or unable, never himself got around to saying.

In the current crisis, we have yet to see anyone play a similar role.  Bush has been a disaster.  McCain’s abrupt decision to “suspend” his campaign looked more like political panic than economic stewardship.  Obama has been so cool, calm and collected that he looks detached.  Paulson and Bernanke have turned into the Panic Twins, and no one in Congress has stepped to the plate.

3.  I could not help contrasting Bush’s speech last night with one delivered during  an even greater crisis.  On March 4, 1932 (the official date of Inauguration Day had not yet been moved to January), Franklin D. Roosevelt gave his First Inaugural Address, three years after the Great Crash of 1929 had plunged the United States into the Great Depression.  It was a desperate time, far worse than what we face now (at least as of now), the country teetering on the edge of chaos, despair, and the collapse of democratic government.

In response, Roosevelt gave what is one of the greatest inaugural speeches in American history (surpassed, perhaps, only by Lincoln’s Second), helping to calm American fears and start the long hard road back to prosperity — a process that lasted until the end of  the Second World War, nearly sixteen years after the Great Crash.

Despite the fact that it would take over a decade for the United States to recover fully, Roosevelt’s speech that day was a turning point, if not in terms of economic growth, then in terms of Americans’ willingness to bear down and try to fix what was ailing the country — and in terms of saving our democratic form of government.

In this environment of fear and political posturing, I think it would be useful to recall what real leadership looks like.  The following are excerpts; you can read the entire speech here.

I am certain that my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our people impel. This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper.

So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.

In such a spirit on my part and on yours we face our common difficulties. They concern, thank God, only material things. . . . Yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it.

Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.

True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. . . .The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.

Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.

Recognition of the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position are to be valued only by the standards of pride of place and personal profit; and there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing. Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, on unselfish performance; without them it cannot live. . . .

If I read the temper of our people correctly, we now realize as we have never realized before our interdependence on each other; that we can not merely take but we must give as well; that if we are to go forward, we must move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline, because without such discipline no progress is made, no leadership becomes effective. We are, I know, ready and willing to submit our lives and property to such discipline, because it makes possible a leadership which aims at a larger good. This I propose to offer, pledging that the larger purposes will bind upon us all as a sacred obligation with a unity of duty hitherto evoked only in time of armed strife.

With this pledge taken, I assume unhesitatingly the leadership of this great army of our people dedicated to a disciplined attack upon our common problems.

Action in this image and to this end is feasible under the form of government which we have inherited from our ancestors. Our Constitution is so simple and practical that it is possible always to meet extraordinary needs by changes in emphasis and arrangement without loss of essential form. That is why our constitutional system has proved itself the most superbly enduring political mechanism the modern world has produced. It has met every stress of vast expansion of territory, of foreign wars, of bitter internal strife, of world relations. . . .

For the trust reposed in me I will return the courage and the devotion that befit the time. I can do no less.

We face the arduous days that lie before us in the warm courage of the national unity; with the clear consciousness of seeking old and precious moral values; with the clean satisfaction that comes from the stern performance of duty by old and young alike. We aim at the assurance of a rounded and permanent national life.

We do not distrust the future of essential democracy. The people of the United States have not failed. In their need they have registered a mandate that they want direct, vigorous action. They have asked for discipline and direction under leadership. They have made me the present instrument of their wishes. In the spirit of the gift I take it.

So how about it Senator Obama?  If John McCain does not show up tomorrow night, it’s your chance to give a speech that could reassure the nation, one that would match if not surpasses the best you’ve given in the past.  It might do more to restore confidence than anything that’s happening in Washington.

And if that isn’t enough incentive, it also just might win the election for you.

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