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A quick ‘think” post.

It is generally a bad sign for a SECSTATE so early in an administration to have to come out and deny that they have been marginalized by the White House, as Secretary Clinton felt compelld to do the other day. The denial itself serves as confirmation of the fact.

It is tempting to write this off as another example of traditional, politically-motivated, battles between White House staffers, determined to protect the authority of the POTUS over foreign policy and the bureaucracy at State.  We have seen this struggle in the past with Al Haig, Cyrus Vance, William Rogers, Cordell Hull, Robert Lansing and other SECSTATEs who sooner or later found themselves sidelined and excluded from key foreign policy decisions by the president. However, this is not just a case of Obama insiders distrusting and attempting to “box in” the Clintons as political rivals, by using other high profile players ( though that has been done to Clinton).

Nor is it just that State is grossly underfunded relative to its responsibilities by the U.S. Congress, which it most certainly is. I’m pretty critical of State but to do everything they *should* be doing, and to do the job right, requires a sizable budget increase, perhaps upwards of 50 %. This cut off the nose to spite our foreign policy face niggardliness by the legislature is not new. Go back and read the memoirs of diplomats of a century ago. They wrestled with the same budgetary penury as State has to deal with today; even during WWII when you’d have thought money would be no object, Congress stiffed diplomats in hazardous, war-zone, postings on their food allowances. The foreign service was long the preserve of wealthy, well-connected, white men because back in the day, only they could afford to live on a State Department salary.

No, the hidden problem for the State Department is that in an age of failing, failed and fake states, diplomacy means less than it once did and accomplishes less in a greater number of places. You could replace Hillary Clinton with Talleyrand as SECSTATE and give him $ 100 billion to play with and he’d still be stuck with a collection of chaotic Gap states without effective internal governance, eroding sovereignty and multiplying non-state actors freebooting across international borders. The problem for State is the global evironment and their disinclination to adapt effectively to it as an institution. It’s foreign interlocutors frequently cannot deliver on any deals, even if they wanted to do so. When that is the reality, what role does diplomacy have in policy or strategy?

State needs to overhaul its personnel system and FSO culture to embrace the reality that interagency teamwork at the inception of policy planning is the only way the USG will be able to effectively advance its interests and nurture stability. The age of ambassadors or even mano-a-mano superpower summitry is over, even among great powers because State cannot execute policy across the DIME bureaucratic spectrum much less bring in the private sector on its own. It has neither the imagination nor the power to go it alone. For that matter, State is having enough  trouble just managing its core functions plus public diplomacy and development aid ( the last two so poorly they should be hived off immediately).

SECSTATE Clinton would like to be the Mario Andretti of Obama ‘s foreign policy but what she’s driving amounts to an Edsel. State needs an engineer to re-design it, and an advocate who can pull in the funding, not an operator or manager of the status quo. If State does not change its culture and its structures in the next decade, it is just marking time until some catastrophe results in it being retired to the historical graveyard and replaced with a new agency better suited to the conditions of the 21st century.

Some politics of foreign policy and war… 

An implicit theme of the “no drama” Obama administration is “You can trust Democrats with National Security“.

Until, of course, there is a roll call. Funding the Obama administration’s strategic policies in Afghanistan and Iraq are going to have to pass with Republican and Blue Dog Democrat votes as the graying, liberal,  Boomer Democrats in Congress relive ( for the 1000th vote) the one time they waved an anti-war sign on the quad back in ’69 after toking up a doobie in the dorm hall, and vote in a bloc against the leader of their party. Good. I hope they make an enormous media production out of it featuring the most extreme crazies in their caucus making abrasive, tone-deaf, comments on national television.

In 2010, the GOP ( if they have any political sense – a long shot at this juncture) may be running campaign commercials on how their Republican members stood solidly with the president against al Qaida when their Democratic counterparts did not.

LOL!  Evidently, the Nobel Committee fears the GOP will do well in the mid term elections. Or something.

Jimmy Carter called it a “bold statement“. Carter was probably thinking “Jesus, it took me twenty five years of building houses for the poor, monitoring elections, freeing prisoners and a Mideast peace treaty to get this kind of respect. WTF?”.

The Audacity of Help: Obama’s Economic Plan and the Remaking of America by John F. Wasik

Initially, I was reluctant to accept a review copy of The Audacity of Help because I blog primarily on military and national security issues and straight domestic politics posts tends to attract tiresome, angry, commenters who type in caps ( I do not want traffic, I want influential readers). Nor am I an expert on business or finance issues, Wasik’s forte as a journalist and an area best judged from a position of extensive personal experience, which I do not have. John Wasik though, after I checked him out, impressed me as an evenhanded and experienced reporter, so I accepted.

If you are a “political blogger”, Left or Right, order a copy of The Audacity of Help today, it’s an invaluable, factual “scorecard” on the domestic agenda of the administration of President Barack Obama, especially the outcome stimulus package and the positions of all the players, executive vs. legislative, promises vs. reality and Democrat vs. Republican.  The appendix and bibliographic resources alone will be fodder for many a blog post. Wasik offers a theme of “cui bono” from policy status quo or change that is refreshing and informative (and I say this as someone who would much rather write about Bernard Fall, the Haqqani Network or Herodotus than how Obamacare will impact senior citizens or the elections in 2010) accompanied by various textual, factoid, “asides” that extend each chapter.

Here are the chapters of The Audacity of Help, which runs 202 pages:

1. First Aid and Income Boosters

2. Rebuilding Infrastructure, Creating Jobs,

3. Bottom Up Economics: Small-Business Benefits

4. Job Creators and the Green Collar Bonus

5. Get Smarter

6. Borrowing Wisely

7. Restoring Home Ownership: Keeping the Dream Alive

8. Health Care Reform

9. Unifinished Business: Long Range Goals in Entitlement Reform

10. The Road Ahead

I don’t agree with everything Wasik has to say in terms of policy but Wasik is measured in his praise and criticism on all parties and is ultimately, a fiscal realist (“How will all this money be paid back?”). He gives a fair hearing before offering his own opinions and policy recommendations toward the conclusion of the chapters which allows me to give Wasik the ultimate compliment to a writer of non-fiction:

The Audacty of Help is useful.

 Creeping Chavezismo in the MSM in regard to President Obama. From Drudge:

On the night of June 24, the media and government become one, when ABC turns its programming over to President Obama and White House officials to push government run health care — a move that has ignited an ethical firestorm! Highlights on the agenda:

ABCNEWS anchor Charlie Gibson will deliver WORLD NEWS from the Blue Room of the White House.

The network plans a primetime special — ‘Prescription for America’ — originating from the East Room, exclude opposing voices on the debate.

Imagine if ABC news delivered a report on religion from the Vatican and excluded non-Catholics. What message would that send? This is an amazing level of sycophancy toward a president by a major media outlet, even a Democratic president.Let us hear no more whining about bias on FOX or talk radio, this stunt by ABC amounts to unpaid advertisng and a de facto government TV program. Why is this happening? Simple Obama-worship at ABC? Unlikely.

 John Podesta, is the lead strategist of the effort to coordinate the media with Liberal-Left  Democratic political needs, published his think tank’s strategy in regard to censoring talk radio.  We can only imagine what advice Podesta gives to Obama administration officials in private, but the report was a strong signal to all broadcasters to toe the political line or face increasingly onerous FCC regulation, escalating fees, fines and denial of licenses over the next four years.

Republicans and conservatives need to wake up that the Obama administration is not playing the traditional “issues” game beloved of partisan interest groups bent on fighting over microscopic technical changes in abortion laws or .5 % of the capital gains tax rate. They could care less about that minutia for now, seeing it as distracting crap; the aim of the Obama administration is creating long-term, strategic advantages for Democrats and progressive leftists by changing the rules of the game for the long haul. So the Obamaites are focusing on controlling the media discourse, turning the Census Bureau into a political tool of the Democratic Party, redrawing the congressional map and raising the barriers to entry to participate in the political process for independent or conservative demographic groups.

Either the GOP gets it together in the next two election cycles or it is finished for a generation.

UPDATE:

ABC refuses to accept paid advertising critical of Obama’s health plan