President Obama is a politician. He is a Constitutional expert but, by and large, he is a generalist.
Being a Constitutional scholar comes in handy in the Congress and on the Supreme Court. It’s not necessarily a bad thing in the Oval Office but being a generalist can be a positive. It can also bring disaster.
A generalist needs to know his limitations. He needs to know when to call on the experts. But, he also needs to recognize the limitations of the experts.
I recently wrote a post about the “financial experts.” The gist was that establishment truth gets a place at the table. The iconoclast is blackballed. The President is getting only the opinions of those who have forsaken thinking in order to claim the rewards of fame, fortune and influence.
In the realm of healthcare reform, the in-house experts Obama wants and listens to are such as Nancy DeParle and Tom Daschle, each of whom has made millions from the industry. Also at the table are the leaders of that industry. The same forces that form the advice that the financiers give work to the same effect among the “healthcare experts.”
I attended a military prep school. I was enrolled in ROTC. I served in the army. Those probably don’t substantiate a claim to expertise on military matters. They did, however, provide some understanding of the military mission and the mindset of careerists, particularly the most successful of those careerists.
Military leadership wants victory. They are not satisfied with any outcome that is less than conclusive. Their expertise is necessary and has its place. There is a limitation though. Military force is but one aspect of the larger field of diplomacy. It is the final resort, when all other means have failed. It also must serve the political needs of the country.
The President is getting advice from the military that claims we need more troops in Afghanistan. That is true if the country needs a military victory. The problem is that what we need is far different.
Even if we were to attain a military victory, would that mean we are safer? Would it mean that country’s major export would be something other than opium? Would that mean our money to modernize that relic of the 14th Century would be well-spent? Would girls be allowed to dream? Would Jeffersonian democracy flourish? Would it mean that our forces would occupy the country for several more generations?
The President needs different advice. He needs to clean house in at least those three areas. He recognizes his need for advice on these issues. He just has put his dependence in those whom the establishment tell him are the experts.
Elizabeth Warren, appointed to oversee the TARP mess, seems to be the only one in an area of responsibility for finance that makes any sense. She chairs the Congressional Oversight Committee. She is the one that proposed the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. While the President has signed on to the idea of a CFPA, his economic team does everything it can to bar her from influence on all other financial issues.
Ms. Warren is a professor of law at Harvard. She doesn’t have the appropriate credentials to satisfy the denizens of Wall Street. All she has is intelligence, understanding and a devotion to the needs of the country and its people. They are pushing for her to run for Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat. Why? To lose her in a crowd of 99 others, to dilute her influence and drown out her voice.
Why are she and Robert Reich not being considered for chairmanship of the Federal Reserve. Why are they not being considered to replace Tim Geithner at Treasury? There are plenty of intelligent and talented people out there who will not be considered because they don’t fit the mold.
Obama needs to toss his entire coterie of “healthcare experts.” There must be someone among the 59% of physicians who support a single-payer plan worth his attention. It may sound outrageous or even astounding but there are experts out there not owned by the drug pushers and insurance leeches.
In matters of how to employ our military, or not, there are people of wider experience, such as Colin Powell, or retired flag officers whose career prospects don’t color their advice.
These three areas are critical. There is little margin for error. Those the President is presently giving his ear all have an ax to grind, pockets to line, images and careers to protect. None can or will give priority to what is best for our people and our country.
The economic bind that the states find themselves in has led some to reduce their prison populations. Perhaps a few million from the federal government could be dedicated to subsidizing some of those empty beds. Most of those at the tables deciding our financial and health futures would be filling those beds in a just society.
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“That is true if the country needs a military victory.”
that is my favorite line in your whole article. to me it says it all. GOOD JOB, Crawford!
[A deep bow]
Thank you. I’ll take what I can get but I thought everything I write is deserving of being carved in stone.
On the issue of Afghanistan, and as you said, a military victory is not what we need in Afghanistan, even if one were in the realm of possibility. What we need is to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people. We can’t seem to make that our mission, however. Here is an interesting quote from one British official: “Our problem with Bush was that for seven years he never really examined a badly flawed strategy in Afghanistan,” a senior British official said, declining to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue in Britain. “Our problem with Obama is that he keeps questioning what we’re trying to accomplish.”
Never questioning what you’re doing is a wrong headed way to proceed, but always questioning what you’re doing isn’t any better.
As long as we can keep al-Queda from re-establishing a base there, even with sea-based weapons, we are accomplishing what should be our real goals.
We have discovered that we haven’t been able to win the hearts and minds even our “friends” in Afghanistan. I consider that a lost cause. Almost everyone in the country is so fundamentalist Muslim that there is no chance for reaching an understanding with them.
You’re probably right about winning their hearts and minds. Its isn’t as obviously impossible as a military victory, though.
Winning hearts and minds would be nice but we’ve tried it without success in more than one place. Maybe we’re just not good at it.
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