Back to Baker-Hamilton

By David Ignatius
The Washington Post
Wednesday, April 4, 2007; Page A13

Lee Hamilton, the former Indiana congressman who is a one-man bipartisan commission, recently suggested a simple test for evaluating political leaders. The best choice, he told a Washington gathering, is the person who can build consensus around difficult policy issues.

By that measure, we are seeing a long list of would-be dividers but not many leaders. The United States is losing a war in Iraq, yet instead of uniting around a policy that could reduce the damage and create a sustainable strategy for the future, Congress and the White House are on a collision course over funding for the troops.

A glimmer of hope that U.S. politicians haven’t all lost their minds was a statement this week by Barack Obama challenging his party’s extreme wing. “I think that nobody wants to play chicken with our troops on the ground,” he said in an interview with the Associated Press. “I don’t think that we will see a majority of the Senate vote to cut off funding at this stage.”

Obama has the political maneuvering room to be sensible now because he was skeptical about the war from the start. But that didn’t stop a blast from the left-wing blogger Kos, who wrote Monday that Obama “just surrendered to Bush.” If Obama is in fact ready to challenge his party’s most partisan activists, perhaps he is a man who can meet Hamilton’s test.

The Democrats’ problem is that they seem determined to join the Bush administration in doubling down bad bets on Iraq. In the Democrats’ case, the mistaken gamble is that by imposing a Washington timetable for troop withdrawal, America will compel good behavior from the fratricidal Iraqis. That idea is naive. But then, so is the Bush administration’s politically divisive strategy for an open-ended troop surge in Baghdad. No matter how clever Gen. David Petraeus’s battle plan, it won’t work unless it can be sustained politically, in Baghdad and Washington. The crucial asset for Petraeus is time, which in turn is a function of political consensus at home. And that asset is wasting, even as the number of U.S. troops goes up.

Here we return to Hamilton, co-chairman of the Iraq Study Group, and his partner on the other side of the bipartisan hyphen, former secretary of state James A. Baker III. Four months after its release, the Baker-Hamilton report still looks like the best way to unite Democrats and Republicans before there is a dangerous collision over funding for the war. The report has something for everyone: It shares the Democrats’ goal of withdrawing most U.S. troops by March 2008 and stresses the need for milestones in Iraq. But it endorses the Bush administration’s view that milestones should be jointly negotiated with the Iraqi government, rather than imposed by Washington. And it recognizes that troop withdrawals must be contingent on political and military conditions on the ground.

The Baker-Hamilton report focused on the need for a sustainable policy — one that would make Iraq an American project rather than George W. Bush’s war. That requires a shift in military strategy from U.S. combat operations to a counterinsurgency approach centered on training and advising the Iraqi military. But the study group, composed of five Democrats and five Republicans, also said it could “support a short-term redeployment or surge of American combat forces to stabilize Baghdad, or to speed up the training and equipping mission.”

The most controversial aspect of the Baker-Hamilton report was its call for greater American diplomatic engagement in the region, including talks with Iran and Syria and a new push on the Israeli-Palestinian problem. Four months later, Bush administration officials have sat around a table in Baghdad with Syrians and Iranians, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is beginning a serious effort to midwife the birth of a Palestinian state, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is visiting Damascus. We’re all Baker-Hamiltonians now.

The Baker-Hamilton report offered a way out of the partisan wilderness when it was released in December. It still does. It provides an Iraq platform on which responsible Republicans and Democrats can gather. Neither side will get everything it wants, but both can claim a measure of support for their positions. That’s the essence of building consensus.

A train-wreck debate on Iraq will be destructive for both parties, not to mention the people in the Middle East. The Baker-Hamilton report is the best framework for building a policy that is sustainable, in Washington and in Baghdad. Leading Republicans and Democrats say that, in principle, they still support Baker-Hamilton. So do something about it.

The writer co-hosts, with Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria, PostGlobal, an online discussion of international issues athttp://blog.washingtonpost.com/postglobal. His e-mail address isdavidignatius@washpost.com.

Restore Civility in Debate, Politics and Government

By John E. Carey
Peace and Freedom
March 11, 2007

There seems a lack of civility, good manners, decorum and protocol in Washington these days.

And it has spread beyond Washington to the internet and to email onscenities.One side frequently calls the other side names; instead of making organized, logical arguments.

We entered the world of the “blogosphere” on July 4, 2006. In this internet land of people discussing world events, the language we found often is particularly harsh, polarizing and nasty.

Former President Bill Clinton entered (or re-entered depending upon your point of view) the fray on Sunday, September 24, 2006, during an interview with Chris Wallace on the Fox News Sunday show. Associated Press writer Karen Matthews, reporting on the exchange, called it “combative.”

That’s not a word usually associated with a president during a media interview. I can’t think of that word ever applied to an ex-president during a media exchange — especially with a president.

This may just qualify Mr. Clinton for another description: “not presidential.”

Clinton accused host Chris Wallace of a “conservative hit job.” Not presidential at all. He seemed to be just venting rage. Who needs that?

Did president Clinton miss a memo about letting others mix it up in public with the opposition and their media? Even my Vietnamese-born wife observed: “Good thing Clinton didn’t interview with Bill O’Reilly on Fox. It might have ended up with Bill and Bill on the floor slugging each other.”
Not presidential.

It is bad enough we have to hear the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad “talking smack” as they say, at the United Nations; now we have to hear it from a former President of the United States? Makes one wonder what side is Bill Clinton on? And why does he see a need to lower himself to the level ofHugo Chavez and Iran’s Ahmadinejad?

On President Bush’s trip this week to South America, not only has he refrained from talking about Mr. Chavez: he has refused to mention him by name.

Thoughtful, courteous national discourse has managed to get us through a revolution against the most powerful nation on the Earth, a War Between the States, two World Wars and other tragedies and trying times.

If we can get along, maybe we can discuss the problems and get the best answers. Maybe a more civil and etiquette-driven discussion of the issues can help us get through the War on Terror.

Instead, we have become a nation led by name-callers, insult-slingers and generally rude, angry and impolite representatives.

And sometimes, the media, maybe unintentionally, magnify the animosity.

My friend, retired Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters at The New York Post, wonders about “the unscrupulous nature of those in the media who always discover a dark cloud in the brightest silver lining. They are terror’s cheerleaders.”

What does this teach our children? And does it do us any good?

Candidate for president John Edwards recently defend his own bloggers for their use of “the most hate-filled, blasphemous and obscene remarks—all of which were brought to the attention of Edwards—that have ever been written by any employee of a presidential candidate,” according to the Catholic League of the United States.

In other words: a new low.

Opposite Mr. Edwards, we were delighted to see Governor Bill Richardson call for civility among the national candidates.

Senator James Webb, a former Marine and Secretary of the Navy, met the President of the United States in November. Maybe Mr. Webb was a little too taken with himself after beating Senator Allen in the election. Whatever the reason, news papers reported that Mr. Webb, while a guest at the White House, ”tried to avoid President Bush,” refusing to pass through the reception line or have his picture taken with the president. The president had to seek out the illusive Mr. Webb, a guest inside the Executive Mansion.

“How’s your boy?” President Bush asked the Senator then elect, referring to Webb’s son, a Marine serving in Iraq.

“I’d like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President,” Webb responded, echoing a campaign theme.

“That’s not what I asked you,” Bush said. “How’s your boy?”

“That’s between me and my boy, Mr. President,” Webb said coldly, ending the conversation on the State Floor of the East Wing of the White House.

When Webb was asked about the apparently rude response to a question from the President of the United States, he responded by saying, “So I know the drill. I’m looking forward to working with people in this administration.”

The language and smart remark to the President of the United States, and the host of the event in his own residence, seems an insult to me and not an indicator of someone eager to work with the opposition. It is not the language of a gentleman.

“I’ve got good friends on the Republican side,” added Webb, a former Republican.

I would say, apparently, that Senator Webb does not know the drill: at least the drill taught to the leaders of Communist Vietnam, where the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Vietnam held a cordial discussion in November or at the United States Naval Academy, Webb’s alma mater, where many of America’s finest young men and women are taught to behave in a certain matter and make the case cogently and without obscene language or smart remarks.

We can assure readers that at the Naval Academy, midshipmen are instructed to conduct themselves as gentlemen and gentlewomen.

Our American history is full of great men who teach us the importance of good conduct for the common good. Some say George Washington actually authored “The Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour [sic] in Company and Conversation.”

Though not the author, Washington embraced good manners so famously that the “Rules” could easily have been his own creation. The good manners of John Adams also echo to us through history.

With Thomas Paine, Adams watched a young American officer conduct himself less than diplomatically and courteously before the King of France.

Adams wrote to his wife, describing the “Man of Choleric Temper.” Adams said the man “like so many Gentlemen from his State, is abrupt and undiplomatic. Last evening, at a Royal Reception, he confronted His Most Christian Majesty Louis XVI with Words both ardent and impatient, whilst Mr. Paine wrung his Hands at the other man’s lack of Tact. Never did I think that I would see our impetuous Paine so pain’d by another’s want of Courtesy and Civility. To our amazement, however, the King took [the man’s] Enthusiasm in good Part.”

When told one of his generals, John C. Fremont, had been nominated by a group of 400 anti-Lincoln loyalists to run for president, Lincoln opened a Bible and read aloud from I Samuel:22, “And everyone that was in distress, and everyone that was in debt, and everyone that was discontented gathered themselves unto him; and he became a captain over them; and there were with him about four hundred men.”

Modern statesmen pulled the country together, not by tearing others apart or barking at the media, but more often by thoughtful discourse and conduct.

“Both Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt operated beautifully on the reporters who surrounded them,” wrote David Keirsey and Ray Choiniere in “Presidential Temperament.”

“Both used the press as if it were their own publicity machine.”

This was largely achieved in a civil, diplomatic style.

A modern day solon of wisdom and truth might be former Indiana Congressman and Democrat Lee Hamilton. Hamilton volunteered some stern remarks about the importance of truth. “Facts are not Republican and they’re not Democrat,” he said.

“They’re not ideological. Facts are facts,” said Mr. Hamilton.

I cannot ever recall seeing Gerald Ford, out late president whom we honored last December, look mean, uncivil, rude or terribly angry.

Neither can I remember John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan (”The Great Communicator”), George H.W. Bush, or George W. Bush look petulant, angry or rude. I also cannot recall any of them knowingly distort the facts.

Other great national leaders also reflect respect, even admiration, for the importance of good protocol and decorum.

Winston Churchill described a 1941 university ceremony this way: “The blitz was running hard at that time, and the night before, the raid … had been heavy. Several hundreds had been killed and wounded. Many houses were destroyed. Buildings next to the university were still burning, and many of the university authorities who conducted the ceremony had pulled on their robes over uniforms begrimed and drenched; but all was presented with faultless ritual and appropriate decorum, and I sustained a very strong and invigorating impression of the superiority of man over the forces that can destroy him.”

Let’s hope leaders become enlightened enough to avoid the forces that can destroy them. For our sake and the sake of our children. Especially as we in the United States near an important national election.

I regret the times that bad conduct, anger and a disregard for etiquette got the best of me. I hope our present day political leaders see the light too.

To get though the war against terror and to achieve victory, a united, clear-thinking leadership just might be important.

Angry rhetoric and arson with clever words serves no good purpose.

I am be wrong but that’s how we see it.

Visit us at:
http://peace-and-freedom.blogspot.com/

Joe Biden We Hardly Knew Ye (And Already You’ve Demolished Your Own Candidacy, Again!)

By John E. Carey
February 1, 2006

Senator Joseph Biden, Jr., the Democratic Senator from Delaware and Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has announced his intention to pursue the Democratic Party’s nomination for President of the United States.

Well; now I have seen everything. One of the most self-important in a room of 100 potential egomaniacs steps forward again to become his party’s standard bearer. Joe Biden is going to take another shot at the piñata.

Didn’t he whack himself with the bat the last time?

Here is how Big Joe Biden’s biography, which he undoubtedly wrote himself, begins on his web site:“Joseph R. Biden, Jr. was first elected to the United States Senate in 1972 at the age of twenty-nine and is recognized as one of the nation’s most powerful and influential voices on foreign relations, terrorism, drug policy, and crime prevention.”

Well, I was working on Capitol Hill the year Senator Biden first arrived in the Senate. He jabbered so much even as a freshman Senator that Senate staffers routinely lampooned him behind his back.

All these years later, sadly, they still do.

Senator Biden has been in Washington D.C. ever sine 1972 because he pretty much has never had another job. But after watching him in limited action during the Senate Foreign Relations Committee meeting with ISG co-chairmen James Baker and Lee Hamilton this week, one had the feeling that two mental giants were facing….something less.

And the staffers in the passageways of Senate Office Buildings still tell tales of Biden’s endless stream of verbiage.

Fred Barnes said on the Fox News Channel last night, “Biden’s problem, as everybody knows, is, he talks too much.”

Dan Balz of the Washington Post wrote for February 1, 2007 editions: “A gifted orator, Biden has been plagued by a reputation for being windy and verbose, whether while chairing a Senate hearing or speaking at political gatherings around the country.”

But if this reputation was not enough; Senator Biden is now insisting, almost daring, the media to resurrect all his real and sometimes meaningful self inflicted wounds.

But before we get to his old wounds, lets review what happened on the day that Biden entered this latest race, yesterday.

The New York Observer published a remarkable story in which Senator Biden shares his off the cuff remarks about his Democratic opponents.

Biden is quoted evaluating presidential rivals Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-New York, former Sen. John Edwards, D-North Carolina, and Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois.

But with everything Biden said, you might find it hard to believe that he managed to insult Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Shirley Chisholm and other prominent African-Americans on the eve of the start of African-American History Month.

The good Senator Biden opined about Senator Barack Obama, the only African-American serving in the U.S. Senate, “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” Biden said. “I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”

So this really is storybook, man! On the day he announced his candidacy for president, Senator Biden had to issue this apologia:”I deeply regret any offense my remark in the New York Observer might have caused anyone. That was not my intent and I expressed that to Sen. Obama.”

And then Biden urged reporters to believe one of the oldest excuses of all: the remark was taken out of context.

Actually, the remark was taken out of Senator Biden’s mouth as he was, apparently, inserting a foot.

The conference call confession with reportes sounded like this:

“Barack Obama is probably the most exciting candidate that the Democratic or Republican Party has produced at least since I’ve been around,” Biden said on the call.

“And he’s fresh. He’s new. He’s smart. He’s insightful. And I really regret that some have taken totally out of context my use of the world ‘clean.’”

Well, there is a sound bite that Mr. Obama should have framed just in case he faces off with Mr. Biden for just about anything in the future.

For his part, Senator Obama issued this statement: “I didn’t take Sen. Biden’s comments personally, but obviously they were historically inaccurate. African-American presidential candidates like Jesse Jackson, Shirley Chisholm, Carol Moseley Braun and Al Sharpton gave a voice to many important issues through their campaigns, and no one would call them inarticulate.”

What a memorable opening day in this baseball season! A U.S. Senator throws out the first pitch and hits himself with it.  Or he throws his hat into the ring (to reveal his neatly and surgically replanted hair),  only to harm his own cause just as he elevates another candidate and embarrasses himself.

Just the day before this circus, on Tuesday this week, the sage Senator Biden chaired his own Senate Foreign Relations Committee. His witnesses, there to testify for more than two and one half hours? Former Presidential Chief of Staff and Secretary of State James Baker and a real foreign policy expert, former Representative Lee Hamilton.

The topic? Nothing much. Just the war in Iraq, the “surge,” and the Iraq Study Group (IRG) which the two witnesses co-chaired.

After just a few minutes into this hearing one had the feeling that “one of the nation’s most powerful and influential voices on foreign relations” was facing some real mental muscle. You know what Senator Biden did? He excused himself: as if there was something really important going on elsewhere. I was riveted to the testimony of Mr. Baker and Mr. Hamilton. Joe Biden missed a huge chunk of it. I only hope he had it on TiVo.

The witless-one apparently didn’t want to spend too much time with the witness duo.

And didn’t Senator Biden run for president years ago?

Sure. Joe Biden made himself a candidate in 1988, nearly 20 years ago. So you would think that in that amount of time a man would mellow past the age of ridiculous gaffes.

His last campaign for president tanked when it was revealed that he plagiarized a speech by the leader of the British Socialist Party and palmed it off as his own.

Just last July Senator Biden said before C-SPAN video cameras in his home state of Delaware: “In Delaware, the largest growth of population is Indian Americans, moving from India. You cannot go to a 7/11 or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I’m not joking.”

Have you no shame, man? Or have you no brain? If we skip past those questions, then apparently you have no competent staff members that can keep you on the leash.

Joe Biden is still an amateur after all these years of grooming himself.  Get a new mirror Senator; you are not presidential material.

Is this the first candidate in history to have to apologize on day one of the campaign for something he didn’t have to say…and a year before he had to say anything? We’d have to ask the History Channel.

Two things are for sure: Senator Joe Biden is a walking Macaca remark factory!

And I, for one, sure hope he stays in the race a while!

Visit more serious news at:
http://peace-and-freedom.blogspot.com/
**********
TIME Magazine said: “

It used to be, there was truth and there was falsehood. Now, there is spin and there are gaffes. Spin is often thought to be synonymous with falsehood or lying, but more accurately it is indifference to the truth. A politician engaged in spin is saying what he or she wishes were true, and sometimes, by coincidence, it is. Meanwhile a gaffe, it’s been said, is when a politician tells the truth — or, more precisely, when he or she accidentally reveals something truthful about what is going on in his or her head. A gaffe is what happens when the spin breaks down.”

See:
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1585476,00.html