Sunday Question for Liberals

I'm curious: are there liberals out there who want to see sequestration continue because it's the best shot at cutting military spending, even though it also cuts spending on things they like? (Or to put it in the form of a proper Sunday question: is that your position?)

Read Stuff, You Should

Happy Birthday to Pauline Collins, 73. We just finished the second season of Upstairs Downstairs with the youngest daughter...Collins is so, so, good in it.

Good stuff for a very short week:

1. Jack Goldsmith on what an authorization for use of force can look like.

2. Andrew Rudalevige on what this all means for war powers, and for the War Powers Act.

3. And Who Writes for the NYT?

What Mattered This Week?

I'll go with what looks to be the beginning of an open fight within the GOP about foreign policy and civil liberties -- we had the House vote on the NSA, and then Christie's smackdown of Rand Paul. There's disagreement among Democrats, too, but I don't think it's reached "open fight" stage yet.

Didn't matter this week? Maybe Obama's economic speech, but even more so the reaction to Obama's economic speech.

Read Stuff, You Should

Happy Birthday to Ron Glass, 68. As I've said, I was never really a big Barney Miller fan; of course, I am a huge fan of Shepherd Book.

The good stuff:

1. Will Wilkinson on the security state and democracy. Several good points here. On the final question he asks -- what happened to Barack Obama? -- I suspect he has the answer mostly wrong, or maybe it's the question that he gets wrong. I strongly suspect it's not so much about what Obama "really" thinks; my guess is that what we've seen is a president getting rolled by a combination of the bureaucracy and, to a lesser extent, a combination of the out party and the president's political advisers. Yes, I'm guessing here, and we probably won't know the answer for a long time, but that's my fairly strong guess.

2. Abby Rapoport on the likely next governor of Texas, Greg Abbott.

3. Even more from Scott Lemieux on Shelby County.

4. Dan Drezner on Rand Paul and foreign policy.

5. What Jennifer Victor learned at the Political Networks Conference.

6. Seth Masket on this summer's movies and higher education.

7. And the best thing of all: Vital Statistics on Congress is now on line and available.

Sunday Question for Liberals

At this point: how much, if any, do you trust Barack Obama on national security issues? I'm talking here about trust, not about whether you support or oppose his stated policies...in other words, if there's incomplete information, do you give him the benefit of the doubt, or not?

Read Stuff, You Should

Happy Birthday to Dule Hill, 38.

And some good stuff:


1. Scott Monje on the NRA and the UN Arms Trade Treaty.

2. James Fearon on the question of how many wars the United States is currently fighting -- and what's at stake in answering that question.

3. Kevin Drum on what George Washington couldn't do.

4. Got behind on this, but David S. Bernstein on how the parties decide -- and enforce their decision -- in the Massachusetts Senate special.

5. And Sarah Posner on the National Day of Prayer (and the post-policy GOP).

Sunday Question for Conservatives

In which direction, if any, is the GOP moving on foreign policy and national security? In the next presidential nomination fight, what kinds of rhetoric and what kinds of promises will candidates likely need to make to win support?

What Mattered This Week?

I'll go with the end of the ban on women in combat. As with the demise of DADT, this is one that isn't ever going to be reversed, and will make a big difference for the people involved.

For didn't matter...the whole Hillary goes to the Hill thing is too obvious, right? (Not that I'm against oversight hearings). If you don't like that, I will say that Inaugural Addresses are invariably overhyped.

So that's what I have. What did you notice? What am I missing? What do you think mattered this week?

Is War Too Easy?

I haven't read Rachel Maddow's book -- a book by a TV talk host? Seemed unlikely to be worth anyone's time. After all, while I think Maddow is smart enough, I can't manage to watch her show...it's all repetition and partisanship. Don't get me wrong; I like partisanship in principle, and in practice. It just usually doesn't make for very entertaining TV, and seems even less likely to make for a worthwhile book.

But apparently I was totally wrong. Kevin Drum makes the case for the book today, and it sounds like Maddow really has done something impressive. The book is about how easy it's become for the US to go to war and stay at war, and Maddow suggests reforms -- dial back on contractors, raise taxes when a war starts -- to do something about it.

Before I start: is it actually true that "war" has become too easy? I'm not sure about that. US-sponsored interventions of one form or another are hardly unusual, even before Maddow's apparent jumping off point in the Reagan Administration. Perhaps the idea is that there was a golden age of sorts after Vietnam, but if so it lasted less than a decade. I'm not really sure it's become easier to deploy troops for controversial missions or to begin interventions in other nations. Maybe, but I'm not sure.

Taking it as a problem, however (which it might be even if it hasn't increased), I think there are a few bits to this. For example, I'm not one who believes that formal declarations of war are important. The kinds of resolutions that George H.W. Bush got for the Gulf War and George W. Bush got for Afghanistan and Iraq were perfectly fine in my book.

Then there are things which strike me as very difficult to solve indeed. Drones, for example. Wars become unpopular because people really don't like their lives disrupted and casualties; if military technology makes it a lot easier to conduct war without those problems, it certainly could change the long-term balance of public opinion, removing the main domestic check against war. I suspect there's also some of this that has to do with the US being very large and very rich; even if it weren't for economic and cultural stratification, it strikes me as likely that the nation can support long-term small wars with little or no effect on most people. Again, take that away, and jingoism is likely to be the most likely effect on public opinion.

However: I definitely agree with Drum that the big institutional problem is very simple: Congress. Instead of aggressively competing for influence, Congress too often just ducks. That happens when they duck an initial resolution (blame Congress, and not Barack Obama, for the lack of a Libya resolution). It happens when they don't do real investigations into executive branch, presidential, and contractor actions. It certainly happens when they allow the CIA and other executive branch agencies free rein.

Unfortunately, I'm not really sure what the solution is. In general, I'm in favor of finding more incentives for Members of Congress to take meaningful action. There's plenty of room in a healthy Congress for party hacks who do little but vote the "right" way and deliver boilerplate rhetoric, but the real strength of Congress is that at it's best it empowers any of the 535 Members, and especially all 100 Senators and all House Committee and Subcommittee Chairs. For example, when Drum says that "The CIA and JSOC have become largely unaccountable branches of the military," that's not quite right. They are accountable -- if Congress would just bother to hold them accountable. Of course bureaucracies are going to try to insulate themselves from control; it's up to elected officials to prevent that from happening.

(Granted, it's not only Congress. Presidents, too, have to fight to influence executive branch agencies, certainly including those on the security side. I don't know enough to be able to say how Obama is doing at this, but neither George W. Bush nor Bill Clinton, in my view, were very effective at it).

Actually, let me end with that point before this gets too long: I'd worry a whole lot more about how to get Congress and the president to be more active participants than I would about an overly powerful presidency.

Pro-Truth

Spencer Ackerman was right on the money yesterday, calling for a revival of the 9/11 Commission to document the hunt for bin Laden. Marcy Wheeler agrees. So does Andrew Sullivan. And Adam Serwer. Each of them adds interesting recommendations about the scope of what the commission should look at.

My contribution is to remind everyone what nonpartisan, specially appointed commissions are good for. Two things: they're good at giving cover to something that politicians want to do (or not do) but don't want the credit or blame for; and, they can be good at fact-finding.

So don't expect much in the way of policy breakthroughs, unfortunately. Right now, I'm not aware of any policy that everyone (meaning, basically, majorities large enough to pass something and sign in into law) wants to enact but is scared of doing. That may have been the case during the 111th Congress, but as of now I highly doubt that 60 Senators and 218 Members of the House would vote for sensible detention and counterterrorism measures even if they had full political cover to do so.

No, right now what's needed is establishing the truth. The target audience? Washingtonians, including many in the working press and some key players in both parties, who like to think of themselves as tough-minded and sophisticated, and are tempted to believe that the anti-torture crowd is simply naive about the Way the World Works. That, in my opinion at least, isn't a terrible instinct -- but I'm fairly confident that it just leads in the wrong direction with regard to torture, the capacity of the regular courts, and several other Cheneyite activities.

Or maybe not. We need to know that, too.

One thing, though. Ackerman's suggestion to get the facts on the table is spreading rapidly among those who believe that torture was unlikely to have been helpful in the hunt for bin Laden. Anyone from the pro-torture side looking to document the truth?

I didn't think so.

For my earlier thoughts on this, see here and here.

The President's Partisan Job

I have a new post up over at Greg's place agreeing with Fred Kaplan that Barack Obama made good choices in his national security reshuffle.

Two additional points. Kevin Drum highlighted one of the more interesting bits of Kaplan's article: the apparent lack of a strong "bench" in national security. It's worth mentioning that developing the party's farm team -- in both governing and electioneering -- is actually one of a president's most important partisan tasks. Not only is it important for future same-party presidents (I've talked many times about Bill Clinton's problem with finding experienced White House personnel), but it's presumably quite important for a president's second term, as well. Of course, an inattentive attitude towards executive branch staffing is not going to produce good results, there.

The second point is about Ezra Klein's question about why it's so hard to get budget cuts through the Pentagon:

This seems both perfectly plausible to me and completely insane. No one asks whether the Department of Health and Human Services will accept budget cuts, or whether the Labor Department is willing to downsize. But the Pentagon gets treated differently.

Well, yes and no. All departments and agencies, HHS included, resist budget cuts and changes to standard operating procedures; the Pentagon is just (perhaps) better at it than others. We know, certainly by reputation at least, some of why this is: contracts carefully arranged for maximum political benefit; the high esteem in which the military is held by the public, especially in wartime; the advantages of legitimate (and plausibly legitimate) secrecy. Add to that, for a Democratic president, fear of an issue "owned" by the other party, and you can see why it's hard to effect change. But the truth is that it's always hard to get the bureaucracy to go along with what the president wants.

And to tie these points together: it's presumably easier to get the bureaucracy to bend to the intent of the White House when political appointees are enthusiastic about carrying out the president's policies. Not certain, by any means; there are plenty of stories of bureaucratic capture of even the most gung-ho appointees. But easier. And for a Democratic president, it's not hard at all to find lots of enthusiastic nominees for Interior, or EPA, or Justice's Civil Rights Division. It's an important part of the president's job to develop an equally strong group in national security and other areas that might not spark quite as much natural passion.

Sunday Question for Conservatives

How do you feel about having John McCain as your main voice on foreign policy and national security? This is primarily addressed to mainstream conservatives (in other words, people who were more or less okay with the main thrust of George W. Bush's foreign policy, regardless of the particulars. Feel free to say Ron Paul or someone else outside of the GOP mainstream on these issues if you want, but I'm more interested for this one in what mainstream conservatives think). Most liberals believe that McCain is not only wild and impulsive, but not particularly well-informed on these issues. Do you agree?

If not McCain, who would you rather have speak for Republicans on these issues?

Military Spending Follow-Up

Yesterday's question for liberals around these parts was why Democrats haven't pushed as hard for spending cuts in national security as they did during the Reagan, GHWB, and early Clinton years. Robert Farley has some ideas, including a suggestion that the distribution of military spending has changed in a way that makes more Democratic districts dependent on such programs. Could be! I'm definitely not familiar with any literature there is on this (beyond knowing that, in fact, military contractors appear to locate jobs strategically in order to build support in Congress).

I'll also point people interested in the topic to Andrew Sprung's typically fascinating reading of Barack Obama's Saturday radio message from this weekend.

Which reminds me that it's always worthwhile to remember that even those of us who pay very close attention to politics and government miss lots of what's being said. I can't remember how many times I've heard someone complain that "Democrats should be saying..." only to launch into something that I've heard coming from more than one Democrat, sometimes even including the President of the United States. So I should add: I see there was at least one relevant amendment proposed during the CR debate a couple of weeks ago, offered by Barbara Lee, that would have cut military spending; it received 6 GOP votes and 70 votes from Democrats, with 114 Democrats opposed.

Sunday Question for Liberals

It seems to me that one of the biggest differences between the current budget battle and the budget wars of the past (specifically the 1980s through Bill Clinton's first term) is the extent to which that Democrats have accepted current levels of military spending. Yet my impression is that the underlying public opinion hasn't changed much: Democratic voters would support deep cuts in defense spending, while overall defense spending cuts are relatively a lot more popular than cuts to most domestic spending.

Why do you think Democrats are not demanding lower military spending? Is it, in your view, because Democratic policy elites have shifted their (honestly held) views? Is it because Democratic politicians are more afraid now (perhaps as a consequence of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) of the political dangers of being "weak" on defense? Is it because of changes in the Democratic coalition? Changes in the relationship of Democratic politicians to military contracters? (Note on the latter two -- it has to be about changes, if it's producing a changed result). Some other reason?

Seriously

Steve Benen argues:

I continue to believe in a simple litmus test -- if you claim to believe in fiscal responsibility and want to cut the deficit, you can't insist that the Pentagon budget is untouchable. It's an immediate credibility killer, reflecting a fundamental lack of seriousness about the subject.

I understand his point, and it's a good post, but I'm going to disagree with it.  Put Peter Orszag, Mitch Daniels, Stan Collender, Keith Hennessey, and Robert Greenstein in a room, tell them each to produce three honest proposals for a balanced budget over 2020-2030 without touching the Pentagon, and hand them a sufficient supply of envelope backs, and in a couple of hours at most you'll be looking at fifteen balanced budget proposals, ranging from conservative to liberal.  Yes, national security is a huge chunk of discretionary spending, but raise taxes, slash Medicare, eliminate federal involvement in education and the environment...there are lots of ways to get there.

No, I understand what Benen is saying, but I'd go in a different direction.  If you declare the Pentagon budget off limits but don't support either higher taxes or draconian cuts in major programs, then you are not serious about national security.  The United States is a fabulously wealthy nation; there are very few things that this country cannot afford.  But if you're not willing to pay for it, if you're saying -- as George W. Bush and Dick Cheney said for eight years, with the approval of almost every Republican in Congress and most conservative pundits -- that taxes should be lower and the other major functions of the government should be preserved -- then whatever you say, it's just lip service.

And of course that goes double for anyone trying to whip up the country into a frenzy about budget deficits without proposing a real budget that reduces the deficit without touching the Pentagon.

Wanting it, in any serious way, means wanting to pay for it.  For once, the household budget analogies do hold here.  Claiming to want some level of national defense but that you're not willing to pay for it is exactly the same as my "wanting" to fly to Philadelphia to attend NLCS Game Six -- if I'm not willing to open my wallet, it's a nice thought, but it has nothing to do with reality.  And on national security, there are a whole lot of people, including some of the most blustery neocons, who are living in Fantasyland.

Read Stuff, You Should

I haven't read anything over the weekend that annoyed me, but there's so much good stuff that I can't wait any longer.  So, here goes:

1. Defense and National Security: Mark Ambinder looks at the Wikileaks data; Fred Kaplan on the Post's Top Secret America; Matthew Dickinson on the Post series and the presidency; Andrew Sprung on Obama, Gates, and the defense budget.

2. Bigotry stories.  DiA's M.S. on the Ground Zero Mosque silliness, Jamelle Bouie adds historical perspective; Cynic on Sherrod; and Cynic on, well, the future.  (TNC? Not only the Best Blogger ever, but as far as I know the best comments section, and apparently the best guest-bloggers.  As Bill McNeal would say....Damn.).  Gotta quote the first line...Cynic: "Why did anyone ever believe that Shirley Sherrod might have stood before a couple hundred people and given a speech in which she publicly proclaimed herself a racist?"

3. Barry Pump on magic presidency dust (and Tom Friedman).

4,  Other policy areas...Jonathan Cohn with a Massachusetts health care update; Elizabeth McNichol on the states and their budgets; and Ezra Klein suggests everyone take a deep breath when it comes to Elizabeth Warren.

5. Michael Cohen on substance vs. symbolism.

6. Noah Millman takes down David Frum's Cold War Case for Israel.

7. Sprung again, on one of my favorite topics: the Big Dog  (I have the Taylor Branch book within reach of where I'm sitting...really want to get to it.  Haven't.).

8. And Alex Massie takes up my question about West Virginia. 

That should keep everyone busy.  Get to it!  And enjoy.

Presidential Power, National Security, and "Top Secret America"

I'm far behind in reading the big Dana Priest/William Arkin Washington Post series on what they call "Top Secret America."  I am finished with the first article, and I can definitely recommend it.  As Julian Sanchez says in a good post responding to it, a lot of what they found has been reported before, but having it all in one (very visible) place has a lot of value added, even beyond whatever new items they've dug up.

OK, now...not to be a jerk about this, but...last time I wrote about the limits of presidential powers, a whole bunch of people responded by asserting that, of course presidents can do whatever they want in the realm of national security.  I think any fair reading of the Post series will show that much of the bureaucracy Priest and Arkin write about is beyond the immediate control of anyone -- the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), the Secretary of Defense, whoever.  Any bureaucracy that size is too large and too sprawling to make direct control easy; add secrecy, and it becomes all the more difficult.  Here's Glenn Greenwald (last seen in these parts chiding me for saying that Barack Obama had no magic wand that could change policy at his whim):

We chirp endlessly about the Congress, the White House, the Supreme Court, the Democrats and Republicans, but this is the Real U.S. Government:  functioning in total darkness, beyond elections and parties, so secret, vast and powerful that it evades the control or knowledge of any one person or even any organization.

As much as I'd like to see Greenwald reconcile that with his penchant for ridiculing anyone who believes that presidents have limited powers, I think instead I'll just point to this excellent post by presidency and bureaucracy scholar Matthew Dickinson, and then go on to make a few points.

First, I suspect that a lot of the waste, inefficiency, incompetence and other problems that Priest and Arkin are detailing is yet another example of what a lousy president George W. Bush was.  It will be years, maybe decades, before historians will be able to really sort through the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, and come to solid conclusions about what was done well, what was done badly, and what the president's role in all of it was, but from what we do know of Bush so far it would be consistent for him to have been passive, uninvolved, and far too easily manipulated by various players in the White House and the bureaucracy because he entered the White House with shockingly little knowledge or interest in government or public affairs, and then failed to realize or try to make up for that poor preparation.  (And, yes, that's only based on what we know so far, and I'm open to any new evidence to the contrary.  By the way, Dickinson disagrees on Bush's background.  I think he's wrong, but we'll see what the evidence winds up showing). 

Second, it's not just Bush who made things worse than they had to be.  It was the Democrats who pushed for the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, and the 9/11 Commission that wanted the DNI.  In my view, both were probably unnecessary additional layers of bureaucracy that made both the substantive problem (that is, actually keeping Americans safe from terrorism) and the procedural or democratic problem (allowing the political branches to control the bureaucracy) worse.  And it's probably worth singling out the secrecy mania that most reports have attributed to Vice President Dick Cheney: secrecy is both a necessity and a problem for government coordination in national security matters, but what's been reported to be a very large bias in favor of secrecy almost certainly hurt, not helped. 

Third, it's important to distinguish between things that are difficult for the president to control from things that are impossible for him to affect.  In fact, all that Priest and Arkin document is the former.  Presidents cannot wave magic wands and expect executive branch bureaucracies to jump when they say jump; that's not how things work.  However, neither is anything in the executive branch completely beyond their ability to influence.  But exercising that influence is often costly (at least in terms of presidential energy, a limited resource, and possibly in other ways).  This is also why Richard Neustadt thought that presidents should try to become powerful, because only a president who maximizes his opportunities can tackle such difficult problems with any hope of success. 

Fourth thing -- it's likely that outsiders don't always see much of the battle between the president and the bureaucracy in any area, and it's even more likely in national security.  Thus, as I've said before, what we do see may not reflect Barack Obama's original position; it may be that on whatever issue we're talking about his original position may have been defeated by executive branch bureaucracies, and so blaming him for betraying a promise on some issue may turn out, once we know more, to be incorrect -- he may have fought for the other side, and lost.  Once again -- for advocates, it still may be a good idea to focus on pressuring the president, for a variety of reasons. 

Before leaving the subject for now, I do want to stress that what we see in national security probably isn't really any different from what we see in, say, the Department of Agriculture.  Bureaucrats resist outside influence; they find allies in Congress or among interest groups; presidents can influence policy in the executive branch, but it's often difficult and almost never automatic.  It takes what Neustadt called "persuasion", which is not so much making strong arguments as it is effective bargaining and maneuvering, finding ways to make use of the (limited but not inconsequential) resources of the presidency.  I think it's wrong to perceive this as a conspiratorial "real" government, unique to national security, that is completely beyond the reach of the elected branches.  What Priest and Arkin are talking about falls well within the realm of normal bureaucratic and interest group behavior.  It can be fought by presidents who have incentives to do so, and by Congresses who have incentives to do so.  The trick for reformers and advocates is to think of ways they can bend the interests of elected officials to make that happen.