Hen’s Teeth and Presidential Strategists
Dr. Bernard Finel, after a hiatus, has returned to blogging:
….Now, I am not really making an original argument here, but there is some truth here. In a very significant sense, a president (and, by the way, I hate the way he uses “Commander-in-Chief” rather than “President” in describing his role as a foreign policy decision-maker), any president, is not really a “strategist.” When Libya began to blow up, no
one went to Obama and said, “Mr. President, what should we do?” Instead, ultimately, Obama was presented with a series of courses of action developed and proposed by his staff and various other agencies and departments, and the president was asked to select from a relatively constrained set of choices.
Now, obviously, a president is not wholly constrained. He or she could strike out in a new direction, or demand more options, or whatever. But there is, ultimately, a lot of truth to the notion that the president is ultimately more of a traffic cop than a “policy maker” per se.
….And look, this is not a Cain/Perry problem alone. I mean, Obama was tremendously thoughtful and eloquent on the campaign trail, and in the end allowed himself to be borne along with the tide on the Afghanistan surge decision. The only case I can think of where this was not the case was Nixon who, essentially, spent much of his administration waging war on his own executive departments. I’m not sure that is a better model.
Richard Nixon was a genuinely gifted geopolitical strategist, albeit one who came with serious psychological baggage, the effects of which H.R. Haldeman and Dr. Arnold A. Hutschnecker, Nixon’s sometime psychotherapist, strove to mitigate. Henry Kissinger, so valuable to Nixon as a diplomatic tactician, aggravated Nixon’s darker instincts as frequently as he calmed them (and in turn, Nixon deliberately stoked Kissinger’s anxieties to the point where Kissinger having a nervous breakdown seemed a possibility to WH staffers). I agree with Finel that presidential strategists are quite rare, but while there are more than just Nixon, they too had their share of problems.
Abraham Lincoln, who evolved into America’s greatest strategic leader by dint of circumstance, intelligence and latent talent suffered from bouts of major depression. Dwight Eisenhower, whose discernment recognized the value of strategic restraint in statecraft, had an explosively bad temper that spared neither aides nor grandchildren nor himself, contributing to Ike’s heart attacks. Even by the standards of politics, Franklin Roosevelt was unusually manipulative, deceptive and egocentric, lying with such frequency to his closest advisers that it is sometimes difficult to understand what FDR had really intended on certain issues, particularly in his last years when the weight of the war led FDR to procrastinate on making decisions.
Does strategic thinking come easier to those with psychological flaws?
November 18th, 2011 at 6:02 am
Does strategic thinking come easier to those with psychological flaws?
Only if strategic thinking also comes easier to those doing drugs.
November 18th, 2011 at 6:21 am
The gold standard, Bismarck, was a high-strung hypochondriac prone to irrational hatred, self-pity, and binge eating. His power was based on his ability to hysterically threaten to resign and retire to his estate and William I’s doggedness in believing that Bismarck actually would resign and retire to his estate.
FDR’s techniques gave him leverage over the executive branch that Nixon could only dream of: He would appoint two able men to the 1 and 2 positions and inspire them to give their all while making sure they loathed each other. This allowed FDR to be the arbiter in all major departmental decisions since 1 and 2 were going to disagree.
FDR (big gubmint, UN), Bismarck (Reich II), and Stalin (USSR) built governmental instruments optimized around their personal mix of great strengths and monumental pathologies. The flaw in these instruments was their implicit assumption that their creator would live forever. When dismissal or death removed the original guiding hand and left the instruments in the hands of lesser men, they quickly decayed into institutions with the pathologies of their creators without any of the strengths.
November 18th, 2011 at 10:46 am
It may be that strategic thinking is not natural for human beings and that we need a reason (like an overdeveloped drive or a significant mental difference) to focus on strategy and build our strategic skills.
November 18th, 2011 at 1:15 pm
"When dismissal or death removed the original guiding hand and left the instruments in the hands of lesser men, they quickly decayed into institutions with the pathologies of their creators without any of the strengths."
lets all watch Apple…
November 18th, 2011 at 2:04 pm
Our Constitution limits the strategic influence of any president—flaws or not. FDR was an outlier, the rest have had 8 years max to make a mark. Obama inherited W’s policies and by and large, kept them in place. The traits demanded of a candidate for president isn’t promising—among the GOP, Newt seems the only one who has thought deeply about the world. Candidates are coached to speak in safe sound-bites, and I wonder what affect has on their thinking. Cain was tripped-up with a foreign policy question—a bright guy, no doubt, but one who hasn’t given the world much thought. We’re not likely to get a strategic thinker until we desperately need one—and then it might be too late.
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Churchill (a personal favorite) suffered from depression most of his life.
November 18th, 2011 at 3:55 pm
lets all watch Apple…
We already did, from 1985-1997. We’ll see if round two is different.
November 18th, 2011 at 4:40 pm
first time as a comedy, second time as a farce…
Seriously though, command is incredibly stressful for people, and most people suffer from some kind of mental ticks or personal foibles, in stressful positions I’m sure they become magnified. Discounting obvious sociopaths like Stalin and co. Also to attain such a position in life, you need to be incredibly driven, and in some cases ruthless, so what may seem to be paranoid or manipulative behavior, may be a learned response to a trying environment.In short it may not be strategic thinking which causes mental problems, but rather the stresses of command and its attendant insecurities.
November 18th, 2011 at 5:04 pm
I haven’t read this yet, but I hear good things about it.From the publisher:
In A First-Rate Madness, Nassir Ghaemi, who runs the Mood Disorders Program at Tufts Medical Center, draws from the careers and personal plights of such notable leaders as Lincoln, Churchill, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., JFK, and others from the past two centuries to build an argument at once controversial and compelling: the very qualities that mark those with mood disorders- realism, empathy, resilience, and creativity-also make for the best leaders in times of crisis. By combining astute analysis of the historical evidence with the latest psychiatric research, Ghaemi demonstrates how these qualities have produced brilliant leadership under the toughest circumstances.
I’m sure with all your "free time" you can read it and give the rest of us a review. 🙂
November 19th, 2011 at 1:11 pm
Well, since strategy ("statecraft is a tough business") is just a high-falutin’ way of scr*wing over the other guy, it makes sense that the best strategists might be manipulative jerks.
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Aww, come on! You know I have a point. On the other hand, I might need more coffee.
November 19th, 2011 at 1:14 pm
You all know how I feel about Nixon but I thought I would remind you, once again. Nicely this time so that’s all I am writing for now 🙂
November 20th, 2011 at 3:24 am
Hi Madhu, A little hostility on the subject of Nixon isn’t a bad thing:))
November 20th, 2011 at 6:21 pm
Hi Duncan,
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"Only if strategic thinking also comes easier to those doing drugs."
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Heh. Good point, except there seems to be a decided shortage of happy, well-adjusted, top-tier strategists
November 20th, 2011 at 6:22 pm
Hi Daniel McIntosh,
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"I’m sure with all your "free time" you can read it and give the rest of us a review. :-"
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Sure, circa 2013. 🙂