zenpundit.com

IN THE VANGUARD OF REFORM: I am doing a late night perusal of the Sunday edition of the Chicago Tribune and in their Books section accompanying an article on the new Taubman biography of Nikita Khrushchev was a recommended reading list on Russia compiled by Jonathan Brent, the editorial director of Yale University Press. I cannot quarrel with any of the books he included on his list which contains authors such as Maxim Gorky, Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, Arthur Koestler and Robert Tucker but I was saddened to see nothing included by the late historian W. Bruce Lincoln whose book, _The Romanov’s_ is a standard text in courses on Russian history. An unusually prolific scholar who wrote with a verve and power that rivaled the prose of David McCullough or Stephen Ambrose, Professor Lincoln was a rarity – an academic specialist who cultivated a popular audience without sacrificing accuracy or analysis. Interested laymen would be able to grasp much of the impact that modern history has left on Russia by reading Lincoln’s _Passage Through Armageddon_ and _Red Victory_ which chronicled the suffering of war, Revolution and finally civil war and the accompanying political terror that marked the Soviet Union until 1953.

I cannot claim to have known Professor Lincoln well, having only spoken to him on a couple of occasions and sat through a few of his lectures but he left a mark upon his field that merits recollection

CALIFORNIA DREAMING

If he decides to run, Schwarzenegger may face a challenge from national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, who has spoken to senior Republicans about running for California’s top job, according to a Bush adviser. Rice’s candidacy is a “real possibility,” this adviser said, adding that Rice wants to take on an executive role.

This opens up some interesting possibilities for the GOP in a major electoral college state that is firmly in the hands of the Democrats but beleaguered by multiple problems and the highly unpopular Democratic Governor Gray Davis. While the idea of a Schwarzeneger candidacy might cause chuckles in some quarters, Arnold would be a major headache for Democrats if he ran for Senator or Governor in California as would a Condoleeza Rice candidacy though for very different reasons.

Merely running for governor of California would make Rice a heavyweight contender for the GOP presidential nomination in 2008. Armed with a Ph.d, experience in foreign affairs in two Bush administrations, attractive and personable on television Rice’s candidacy would send a powerful symbolic message to the nation about Republican commitment to minority inclusion in the American dream. California Democrats do not have a candidate of similar stature unless they can persuade Diane Feinstein to abandon the Senate to battle Rice for the governorship ( Barbara Boxer, something of a liberal lightweight in the Senate, is no match for Rice intellectually ).

By contrast, Schwarzenegger would bring his fame, fortune and an outsized steamroller personality in the same way that he engineered a successful ballot initiative for after school programs. Neither money nor media would be a problem in a state that once elected Ronald Reagan. Aside from being free of any fundraising worries – Schwarnegger ranks thirtieth on the Forbes’ celebrity 100 list – he would appeal to the conservative base of the GOP while bringing to the ballot box the same apolitical, alienated, young, white male voters who showed up in Minnesota unexpectedly to hand Jesse ” the Body ” Ventura an upset victory.

California is a ” must have ” state for Democrats in presidential contests – a loss in 2006 or even a tough race that electrifies a moribund state GOP, bodes poorly for their chances of dominating national politics.

THE STATE DEPARTMENT AND IRAQ

“Our view of an Iraqi interim authority,” State Department deputy spokesman Philip Reeker said, “is something that is run and chosen by Iraqis; that it should be representative of all the groups in Iraq; it should include members of the exile community who have worked very hard over a number of decades for the liberation of Iraq, for the freedom of the Iraqi people. It should also include people inside Iraq.”

This is more than a battle over the status of Ahmed Chalabi and the INC in post-Saddam Iraq. State and the CIA have reason to be wary of Chalabi, who while reliably pro-Western and secular, has minimal support within Iraq itself. However, the State Department’s basic concept of relying heavily on established power brokers such as tribal leaders, the lower echelon Iraqi civil service and the UN bureaucracy, caters to regional Arab preferences to go slow with any genuine democratic reforms. Reforms that could only be implemented by a tough, military-run occupation unfettered by UN obstructionism. State Department officials, who have been openly skeptical of attempting to democratize Iraq, would prefer an Arab version of Loya Jirga where a council of Iraqi leaders are transformed into a provisional government of the usual paternal characteristics of the region. Opposition to Chalabi at State stems not from fears that he would be a puppet- strongman, but because out of weakness Chalabi and the INC would need to institute genuine democracy and win a free election to acquire legitimacy. This causes great anxiety to the Saudis, the Egyptians and even the Jordainians who would find even a limited Arab democracy in Iraq destabilizing and attractive to their own restive populations. All the more reason to press forward and let the DoD run the show.

QUOTE OF THE DAY:

” Bad laws are the worst form of tyranny “

– Edmund Burke