Get Ready for the Draft

Get ready, folks. Reagan used to say, "You ain't seen nothing yet," when he was campaigning for his second term. The audience cheered because they were so happy with him. You're about to hear Bush say the equivalent in his second term, as he tries so desperately to save himself. This time you won't hear people cheer.

Do you remember the unity we had during those months after 9/11? It's hard to remember, isn't it, after almost four years of a catastrophic war. We've had so much disunity, when we need to fight as one. Bush said he wants to be a uniter, not a divider. He showed no more honesty or abiity there than he has with anything else. We still need the unity and patriotism we all felt so naturally five years ago. We can have it with different leadership. But we are about to become more divided than ever.

I'm talking about the draft, of course. Bush announced this week that he has asked Defense Secretary Gates to develop a plan to expand our ground forces. Gates' first task is to fly to Baghdad and come back with recommendations to help Bush pull his irons out of the fire. His second task is to expand the size of our armed forces. Stand aside, James Baker. Stand aside, Sandra Day O'Connor, Leon Panetta, Lee Hamilton, and Robert Gates himself. We have some new policies to make here. We're going to make ourselves a new plan.

I don't want to mock these fellows too much. You know they keep trying. A drowning man keeps trying, too. With these gentleman, you can't tell if they're flailing, failing, or just falling. I had some respect for Gates, and I still do. But he has just joined a losing team, and no one, not even Gates, can save this season. Not in two years. It's a big deal now that Bush admits the war is not going well. He's quick, my man. We need some perceptions and reactions a little more nimble than that, though.

So let's go back to the draft, here. It's easy to start ridiculing and mocking: it might be therapeutic to an extent, but I'm not sure it helps beyond that. I don't want to take up the arguments for and against the draft in the abstract. Compulsory national service is something a lot of people have argued for. A voluntary armed force is something others have favored, and I'm with them. Service in the military, or more broadly, service to one's country, brings out a lot of interesting problems. It may be time to take those up now, but not at the moment. At the moment we have to look at the particulars of Bush's order to Gates.

No one wants to serve in this war. Well, that's not exactly true. People who have served in Iraq want to go back and serve with their buddies. A shared experience like that is a powerful force, and it's great that unit cohesiveness has remained so strong. Those guys over there are fighting a hard war, and their morale as they go through this thing is amazing. As we disagree here about what to do next, we have to remember to support those soldiers over there, especially now at Christmas time.

We have other people who would like to serve. But for the most part, people don't want to join. What a sad outcome, after pouring out our desire to help after 9/11. Everyone wanted to join in and contribute then. I wanted to see if I could join our intelligence services that fall: I could use my training in my country's service there. Now, young people won't join, and their parents don't want them to. They recognize that this conflict wastes our young people's lives.

The rationale behind Bush's request is reasonable enough. He says we need a larger force for the long term war on terror. What he leaves out is why our force is so small. Why has the Iraq war almost broken it. If Bush had not started the war in Iraq, if he had maintained and nurtured the unity that so clearly held people together during those difficult months five years ago, we would have long lines at recruiting centers across the land. The recruiters would be turning young people away, unable to process and train so many, so fast. Not so, now. Recruiters have had such a hard time in every respect, trying to persuade qualified young people that they ought to join. Why should that be, in the middle of a war? Why should people turn away from the armed services after 9/11? The answer to that one is simple. Bush started a bad war, and people don't want to fight it. Our all-volunteer force is formed to fight necessary wars, and the war in Iraq is certainly not necessary.

So now our president says he wants to expand our armed forces. It's another admission failure, but he would never state it that way. What's he going to do? He started a war he can't win, and the only option he sees is to clear and protect more neighborhoods in Baghdad. For that he needs more troops, he says. Gates, get me more troops! Let's see what Gates does. He could ignore the request. That's not so likely for a guy who just took office. He'll want to impress the boss with a prompt response. He could weasel around the question, and avoid the tough nut at the center of it. That's hardly more impressive than not responding at all, I should think.

The tough nut is that if we want to send more troops to Iraq, or anywhere, for that matter, we need more troops in our standing force. We need more troops in our standing force right now because we haven't been able to recruit enough volunteers to meet our country's needs. The only way to make up that shortfall is to restart the draft. Do you think our young people will be more meek about this matter than their parents and grandparents were two generations ago. Do you think the people who fought Vietnam, both over there in the jungles and here on the college campuses, are going to let their sons and daughters be slaughtered by homemade bombs in Baghdad? I sure hope they don't.

The interesting thing is, we already have a so-called backdoor draft. That means a draft that's not visible, and that exploits people who can't resist it very well. It preys on national guardsmen and reservists who, with a more than a foot in the military's door, can't escape its demands. If I were governor of one of our states, the first thing I would do is say to my constituents and to the federal government: you're not going to get one more national guardsmen from this state. Not one. No, not one. Our units are going to stay here, where they belong. I know that the legal grounds for a stand like that are shakey. I know it places a lot of people in an awkward situation, and it invites more calumny than any governor appears prepared to handle. But someone should do it. If a lot of other states joined in, the federal government would have to listen.

The backdoor draft forces guardsmen and reservists out into war for tour after tour, when they should be home with their families. These aren't volunteers. They aren't doing what they volunteered to do. I know what I'm talking about here. I volunteered for the United States Naval Reserve in the late 1970s. I became a young naval officer not long after the Vietnam war ended. I thought quite a lot about what I would do, after I joined, if I had to fight in a bad war. More precisely, I asked myself if that possibility should make me not join in the first place. I knew that if we went to war and I had to fight, I'd do it. But I had to think about whether I should put myself in a position where I had to fight in a war that shouldn't be fought. It was easy to ask questions like that in the 1970s, when the memory of Vietnam was so fresh.

The people subject to the backdoor draft now don't have an opportunity to ask questions like that. They joined the armed services under one set of circumstances. Now the country asks them to fight in a war that is beyond stupid. They know that dying in Baghdad won't serve a purpose that American citizens recognize or sanction. The Iraqi people sure don't want their help. That's the best Bush can come up with at the end of this pointless trek: we have to help the Iraq people achieve stability and democracy. We have to help them with their security. But they sure don't want our help. When people who are in the middle of a civil war don't want your help, get out of the way. When you are fighting an insurgency and your current methods don't work, think again. Regroup, and rethink what you're doing. That's all the Baker report asked for.

It's time to sign off, I believe. I don't even know if Gates and the generals will recommend a draft. We're all proud of our all-volunteer force. It that too becomes a casualty of this war, that'll be another major loss we can attribute to Bush's leadership. How many bad things can happen? How many ideals will this leader smash. Our all-volunteer force was the pride of the nation before 9/11. It doubled in prestige after the attack, as did our admiration for it. Now we can't even get enough people to volunteer, while our enemies in Iraq wear us down. How did we come to this pass? How did we descend into such trouble? Bush reminds us what harm an irresponsible, incompetent leader can do.

If Gates and the generals do recommend a draft, it's hard to know what will follow. How rapidly and systematically would a draft be put in place? How would people react to it? The machinery takes a bit to assemble, and we would have some discussion about how to make the draft fair. We might well resume the lottery system that existed before the all-volunteer force went into effect. Whatever policies we pursue to expand our armed forces, we shouldn't expect such a transition to be smooth. Our citizens have been so meek after 9/11, I almost wonder whether we have the heart now to resist a draft. People say that the reason we don't have big war protests now, by comparison with the 60s, is that we have no draft. We may find out soon enough if that theory is correct. Will Bush manage to stir up a hornet's nest here, too. Or will our response look like flies around a cowpie in the summertime?

One factor may be whether the president can keep the draft off the college campuses. That was such an important factor in the sixties. Non-college students couldn't get a deferment, they couldn't congregate, they couldn't organize, they couldn't make plans together. Now we have the internet for communication and organization, but how effective will those tools be for people who want to mount resistance? It's just not clear whether people have the heart. There's such discouragement in connection with the war: so much discouragement that it seems to displace anger. Ineffective anger just leaves you worn out and depressed. You might as well go straight for discouragement and conserve some energy.

What could a good leader do? A good leader would break us out of this discouraged frame of mind. A good leader would energize people and give them a reasonable outlet for their optimism. A good leader would give people hope. We're not going to see that from this White House. This White House has failed, and the people in it must be starting to realize it. You won't see hope or direction or anything but self-serving ploys and progaganda from that quarter. If the White House wants to start the war at home, they've picked up the one issue that might start it. Get ready. The draft isn't here yet, but get ready.

When Will Presidential Authority Collapse?

I'd like to know why anyone is still paying attention to this guy. Yes, he has a lot of authority according to the Constitution, and we can't take that away from him so long as he holds the office. But we also know that authority, unlike responsibility, is taken, not delegated. Bush took a lot of authority in 2001, after September 11, and we need to take it back. We pay so much attention to what he's thinking, what he wants to do, what his plans are. Stop it! Let his authority collapse because it's illegitimate. Let his authority collapse he's incompetent. Let his authority collapse because everyone ignores him. Ostracism is the most powerful social tool available to any group. It is also a political tool. We need to use it now to remove our president's authority.

That's a radical idea, you say? It is. Even if he doesn't deserve the authority he has, even if he misuses it, we can't imagine a political structure without the president at its center. Well, let's start imagining it, and see where the vision leads. When I say, "Find new leadership," I mean it. I don't mean that we should find some new people to help the president, to supplement the president, or to balance the president. I mean that we should replace the president. The office is strong enough that it would survive that. The office would remain robust enough that when a competent occupant arrives to resume its duties, it would be healthy again. Now though we're acting as though the presidency must remain strong to bring us through difficult times. In fact, though, the presidency itself is the main difficulty, because the person who occupies the office is so bad.

More later, my friends.

Three Learning Methods for Statesmen vs. a Wilderness of Failure and Discouragement

That's a good one. Two or three years ago, a number of officers said that we need more troops in Iraq. Rumsfeld said sorry, you can't have them. Now Bush says he wants to put deploy tens of thousands more troops in Baghdad. A number of officers have said they don't think that's such a good idea. Bush replies, you're going to get them anyway.

A qualifier is helpful here. I don't know if Rumsfeld actually turned down a formal request for troops. He didn't have to. He was known to brush people off. He was known to bite people's heads off. Everyone knew what he did to Shinseki. No high-ranking officer saw the point of early retirement from a certain-to-fail campaign to persuade Rumsfeld to give up on his pet project. Rumsfeld was going to have his high-tech victory in Iraq, but he never recognized how utterly he failed. No military officer was going to change his mind, so no military officer tried.

So what can explain the current belief that 20,000 more ground troops in Baghdad can save the day? A caller to a radio program said this is lunacy. Yes, sometimes you have to state what's obvious, or perhaps overstate what's obvious. One thing that's obvious is that Bush doesn't know what he's doing. I said to a colleague that trial and error is the most efficient way to learn something. That presumes, though, that the learner can learn from mistakes. Bush hasn't learned from his mistakes or from anything else. He seems incapable of any learning at all, no matter what the method.

Another learning method in foreign policy is to talk to lots of people. Gather lots of information. Some of the people you talk to are friendly voices. They're on your side, or they have similar goals. Others are more neutral. They don't have direct interests at play, and they're trained to see both sides of issues. Still others are your rivals, or even your enemies. You try to gather a lot of information about them, too, and when conditions are right, you try to negotiate with them. Direct negotiations are an outstanding way to gather information about people who aren't friendly to your interests.

Bush doesn't talk to anybody except his close circle of advisors, who, during his first term anyway, were afflicted with the worst case of groupthink anyone has seen in government for a long time. He doesn't negotiate. He sets up a commission that studies the issues for nine months, then ignores almost all of their recommendations. What was his motive in having the commission do all that work in the first place? We can't trust anything he does. He has no grounds to ask for it.

A third learning method for a leader engaged in foreign policy is to simply to think problems through. Reflect. You might reflect on mistakes and their implications. You might reflect on the information you've gathered and how it fits together. You talk with others, this time not so much to gather information but to see how your ideas sound when you get them outside of your head. You write a lot of notes, and you turn your notes into speeches and memos and more notes. These thinking processes usually go in fits and starts. Like the other two learning methods, it's a method that's not so methodical. It involves both synthesis and analysis. Your mind has to be ready for it, and it doesn't happen all at once. The result of such thinking is understanding, even if it's only partial understanding. The purpose of understanding is to form a strategy, even if the strategy is a type of trial and error.

Bush can't do this kind of thinking. We know from his speeches and his actions that he can't. He doesn't know what he doesn't know, and if you don't know that, you don't know anything. Confucious said that the beginning of wisdom is to know what you don't know. Bush can't seem to grasp this starting point, so the rest of his thinking is ungrounded. It's not connected to reality. So he can't make plans that achieve what he wants to achieve.

Successful statesmanship isn't easy. Even people who are good at it fail frequently. Failure has the usual positive outcome, though, when someone is competent. Most of us know when we have failed, and we don't like it. We try to act in such a way that when we fail again, it's for different reasons. That way we can keep learning. Bush doesn't have these qualities. Bush goes from failure to failure without knowing the damage he has caused. That doesn't mean he's an idiot. It does mean he doesn't have the qualities or the skills required for statesmanship or leadership in a war.

Once again: Bush is not stupid. A lot of people who don't like him still think he is. At the same time, he's not intelligent. Intelligence means being curious, and exercising the basic analytical skills we've been talking about. Bush is callow and he's shrewd. Because he's callow he's immature, and because he's shrewd he has a great deal of political intelligence. He also has a lot of discipline, and a lot of energy. Marry discipline and energy to shrewdness about people and politics, and you have a combination that can win elections. Shrewdness can help you be a good statesman, too, but it's pretty far down the ladder of essential qualities for statesmen. So we have an incompetent president, and a country led to ruin through eight years of the worst governance we have ever had.

It's time to sign off now, don't you think. But I have to make my last point one more time. We have to find new leadership. Ghandi and King had great impact as leaders, and they weren't elected to any political offices. We have an election coming upin 2008, and we may find the leaders we need through that process. But we shouldn't rely only on that process. We have to find any leader who is courageous, and who has the skills and qualities needed to bring us of this wilderness of failure and discouragement.

Welcome to the New Middle East

Welcome to the New Middle East. They used to say "warmly welcome" in China. Now we have a new Middle East, and we say warmly welcome to it. It seems all my thoughts fly away when I sit down to write. Well, that's not true. I do think of good things to say when I'm at the keyboard. I just seem to convince myself that I'm too tired, or too uncreative, or too something or other.

What if you were to write about the current war without being bitter about it? What subject do you want to write on? It had better be politics tonight. I'll write a few thoughts about the new Middle East, and about the soldiers who wondered when the government in Iraq was going to kick in and do its part.

I googled World War III during the recent war between Israel and Hezbollah. I found an article about some remarks that Prince Hassan of Jordan made two and a half years ago. Already, that long ago, he looked around him and saw the beginnings of World War III.

Well, not long after I ran across those comments by Prince Hassan, I heard the king of Jordan on the radio. Is his name King Abdullah? He's the gentleman who succeeded King Hussein when he died a few years ago.

Well I heard him on the radio when I was driving to work the other day. He said, "I look around me. I see war in Afghanistan. I see war in Iraq. I see bombing and people being killed everywhere. Now we have war in Lebanon. This is the new Middle East?"

No one should put any faith at all in our government.

Let's summarize the government's arguments in favor of their actions. By removing Hussein from power, they intended to start a chain of events in the region that would lead to democratic governments for the countries there. When democracy is the order of the day in the Middle East, they reason, we will have transformed the Middle East from a region of enemies to a region of friends. But how can that be? I can't go any further. The argument is too unsupportable on the face of it. I just can't go any further.

These are all unconnected fires now: Somalia and the Sudan, Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Like our fires during late summer in the west, though, they can grow together. When they do grow together, you can't control them anymore. The conflagration becomes too hot. Do you know what's going to make them all grow together? When we wind up in a war with Iran. Then we'll have a war of the United States and Israel against everyone else. Not one country in the region will join us. We won't even have help from any of our allies in Europe at that point. We'll be on our own, and there's no way we can win.

We don't even have a name for the war we are in. We call it the Iraq war, but what do we name the war that started on September 11? We can't even distinguish the two any more. The White House calls it the war on terror, and it intentionally does not distinguish between the two. It says that Iraq is the central front in the war on terror. And the war on terror is the one that began on 9/11. Well come on, it's not a war on terror to begin with. What kind of a concept is that? We have to make war on an identifiable enemy, not on a method. That's what terror is, a method. We have to make war on Al Qaeda, or on Al Qaeda and its allies - some identifiable people who intend to do us harm. If we want to make war on terror, we might as well make war on bombing, or make war on shooting, or make war on some other vague idea.

I can't even get motivated to argue against these guys anymore. Did Bill Homan shut you up? Did he make you afraid to speak out? Did he make you lose confidence in your own point of view? Don't let it happen! Write with conviction, passion, seriousness, and hope! Write as Churchill did, and don't give up. You can't second guess yourself because Bill Homan kept bugging you. You can't keep yourself quiet because you had a correspondent who would not shut up. You can't shut up because he wouldn't let you alone, because he kept pestering you.

Our soldiers wondered almost plaintively, when is the Iraqi government going to do its part? We've helped them with all these elections, and with writing a constitution, and with forming a government. Isn't it time that the government help with the security situation now?

The problem is, the government that we said we were nurturing has been a fiction all along. It is not capable of restoring order because it is not a government. It is a bunch of puppets in the Green Zone. It's a bunch of wannabes who want to get their hands on the contract money from the United States, and who want to get their hands on oil revenues, and who want to get their hands on the other advantages to be had if you hang around the Green Zone. Yes, there are some Iraqi patriots among the people in the government. I'm sure many people ran for parliament in good faith. But the people who bickered for five months in 2006 as they decided about how to assemble a coalition government? That's not how a real government behaves. That's how a bunch of toadies behave when they can't do anything else.

Hitler sent his troops to Stalingrad, and when the Russians surrounded them, the troops still trusted that the Fuehrer would get them out. Our troops in Iraq still trust that Washington knows what it's doing, that things will turn out if only the Iraqis will do their part. But I keep thinking of what van Creveld said: "He sent his legions across the mountains into the barbarian north and lost them all." Bush sent his legions into Iraq in 2003, and now the country is not willing to fight. We've lost this war not because our enemies have defeated us in battle, but because our enemies have so clearly prevented us from succeeding. Hezbollah's fighters did not defeat the Israeli Defense Forces in battle, but they prevented the IDF from succeeding. That means they won the war. A scorekeeper would call that major skirmish a draw, but the whole region is calling it a victory for Hezbollah. They did better than expected, and prevented Israel from forcing them out.

The same thing is happening over a longer period of time in Iraq. Our enemies have not defeated us in battle, but they have prevented us from establishing a client state, friendly to our interests, in Baghdad. The whole region and the whole world can see that we are too weak to force our way in Iraq. No amount of air power can force a victory for us there, and we don't have enough combat soldiers to occupy a country of that size. By now, the war has proceeded a long way. I don't believe we can force it back into a direction that's in our favor. But no one is willing to say that. "Stay the course" versus "cut and run" still outline the debate. Where will a sophisticated analysis of this conflict come from? Who will initiate it? By now, any analysis that is realistic is sophisticated!

Talking to Ahmadinejad

This war - call it the Islamic crusade - started with the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979. We are in such a bad state now, twenty-seven years later, that we need to think about negotiating with one of the people who helped to plan the attack on our embassy: President Ahmadinejad. That's one true measure of how far we've come, how far we've fallen.

Perhaps we should negotiate. It's not a good sign that we have to, though.

President Reagan's 93rd Birthday

(First published February 6, 2004)

Happy birthday, President Reagan! February 6, 2004, is number 93, which makes you not only the oldest living president, but the oldest president ever. Fox News online has a short article on Reagan's birthday. The end of the article reminds readers that Reagan has lived longer than any other president. (Here's an interesting historical note that comes to mind as we think of presidents who lived a long time. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died on the same day: July 4, 1826. Adams was 90 years old, Jefferson was 83.)

Reagan talked about his own birthday on page one of his memoir, Where's the Rest of Me? "The story begins with the closeup of a bottom in a small town called Tampico in Illinois, on February 6, 1911." To read the rest of Reagan's account, scroll to the bottom of TLJ's quotations page.

We should remember Nancy's difficult situation on the anniversary of her husband's birth. She turns 83 on July 6 of this year. A tabloid or a magazine occasionally carries a story about how she's getting along. Caring for her husband hasn't been so easy. She has some help, of course, but it's difficult for Nancy to get out and stay in touch with people. If you'd like to send the Reagan's a birthday message, the Reagan Foundation has posted a form that makes it easy. (It's also easy to get on the foundation's mailing list, if that's what you'd like.) Click the link above to open the message form in your browser.

That's enough for today. Stand by for more thoughts on Reagan and his politics. Do visit the TLJ website when you have a chance. It's much expanded since the fall. Also, please forward this newsletter to people you know who might be interested in it.

Remarks Before Christmas 2003

(First published December 17, 2003)

Welcome to all of you who are receiving The Last Jeffersonian for the first time! Thanks too for your interest in Reagan and the country he loved.

The news when I started writing this issue last week dwelt on the storm that dropped three feet of snow on Boston. This week Hussein's apprehension draws our attention. And next weekend I'll be worried that I haven't finished (or started) my shopping yet. I'm happy to be reminded of a few things. It's good to have a warm house when it snows, the war in Iraq might not continue for ever and ever, and the holidays can be fun in the midst of so much to do. Even shopping becomes fun if you have a good attitude about it.

I tend to be pretty reserved about selling my book, but Christmas is coming and books make good gifts. When you order The Last Jeffersonian from Amazon, Amazon e-mails the order to my office. I can write a personal message on the title page, gift wrap the book, and send it wherever you like. Send your instructions to me via e-mail, and I'll ship the package right away. Please place your order soon, though: you know how quickly the holiday mailing deadline arrives.

Who among your family and friends would like to receive The Last Jeffersonian? Well, the individual doesn't need to be a Rush Limbaugh conservative or a rock-ribbed Republican, as we used to call them in North Dakota. In fact, the book is probably most appealing to people who haven't entirely made up their minds about Reagan, or to people who know their own mind but want to know what others think. Anyone who likes to read about America's political traditions would like it. Add an interest in how Reagan reformulated those traditions in the late twentieth century, and you have a perfect match.

In the November 25 issue of the newsletter, I made some remarks about the Showtime film called The Reagans. A friend kindly recorded the program, but I've only had time to watch the first hundred minutes or so. The film has strengths and weaknesses, but I don't want to try an "On balance,..." summary until I've seen the whole thing. I still think it's unfortunate that more people couldn't view it. Please write to me with comments if you were one of the people who did see it.

With the holidays coming soon, I wanted to end with this passage from Reagan's first memoir, Where's the Rest of Me? He wrote these words shortly before he entered politics:

This peculiar word "freedom" - with hundreds of definitions - has been debased in the coinage of communications. It might be helpful to go back to the original derivation of the word - a dozen language roots with a common ancestry: always it springs from words that mean "peace" and "love." Strangely enough, the word "liberty" traced back to its roots means "growing up" or "taking responsibility." And therein lies the whole story - we can have peace and brotherly love by accepting our responsibility to preserve freedom here where it has known its longest run in six thousand years of recorded history.

General Remarks on TLJ and Reagan

(First published November 25, 2003)

I realized tonight that one reason you don't receive this newsletter more often is that I take myself too seriously. Remember, for example, the article I wrote over the summer that had to do with racial prejudice? It ended with a reference to Jack Reagan's response when a hotel owner told him, "You'll be happy with this place - we don't allow Jews or any other people like that to stay here." Reagan's dad turned around, walked out into a brutal midwestern snowstorm, and spent the night in his car.

Three people unsubscribed after that article! I thought: great, those subscribers are hard to get, and I've just written an article that offends people. Never mind that their reason for unsubscribing may have had nothing to do with the article. I was still ready to think there was a connection because of the timing.

Or take the issue of editorial policy. Often I've thought, what are all of you most interested in reading about: articles about Reagan or articles on other subjects of the sort Reagan was interested in? The answer is likely both, but pondering that question can keep one from writing anything at all, and does start to take the fun out of publishing the newsletter. It's easy to think about something too much, but that's what happens when you take yourself too seriously.

By the way, I am geniuinely curious about where your interests lie as a reader of this newsletter. A few days ago I wrote a list of all the different kinds of things we might publish here, and I'd like to hear what you have to say on the subject. Please write to me at steveng@TheLastJeffersonian.com to let me know what you're most eager to see when you open this publication.

Peggy Noonan wrote that every generation has its president. My parents were just 36 when Kennedy was elected in 1960; I was 26 when Reagan was elected twenty years later. Every generation has its president. Who will be the president for the young people starting families and raising children now? Who will be the one to lead us through this difficult conflict with Al Qaeda, as Kennedy and Reagan led us through the Cold War?

On November 30, Showtime plans to air a film about Ron and Nancy Reagan. You've likely heard about the dustup that occurred when Reagan supporters forced CBS not to air the show. An article I read said that the film depicts Reagan as a good politician, but somewhat detached and out of touch. Nancy is characterized as determined, intensely loyal to her husband and his interests, and as a mother who doesn't have a great relationship with her children. When I read that I thought, those characterizations are about as uncontroversial as you can get! Apparently critics of the show wanted to see hagiography . . . nothing negative, even if it's true.

We don't have Showtime in our household, so I've been wondering if it'll be possible to see the show. I wrote to Showtime to ask if they plan to sell the tape, and they responded in the negative. Does anyone out there want to make a bootleg tape? I'm not talking about a profit-making venture here: just an opportunity to preserve this show after CBS canned it. On CBS, anyone could have recorded it. On Showtime, many fewer people will see it, and it won't be so easy to tape.

That's enough for now. Please think of people who might like to receive The Last Jeffersonian as a Christmas present. You receive gift wrap and shipment to your friend or relative for the usual shipping rate.

Remarks by Bob Felton

(First published November 18, 2003)

Kiron Skinner, Annelise Anderson, and Martin Anderson have edited and published their second collection of Reagan's work, Reagan: A Life in Letters. (Their first book brought together transcripts of Reagan's radio addresses from the 1970s.) The community of people who appreciate Reagan's contributions to American life owe them some thanks for their work. The collection of Reagan's letters provoked the usual discussion about whether the products of Reagan's pen are worth paying attention to. This issue's commentary by Bob Felton is an intelligent response to Reagan's critics.

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Remarks by Bob Felton
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It's almost eerie, at times, how criticism of George Bush is so often a reprise of the things the Left once said about Ronald Reagan. "He's stupid," "He's a dangerous, belligerent cowboy," and "He's a tool of his advisors." Let us hope that the supposed likeness to The Gipper doesn't end there, for the Reagan revealed in Reagan: A Life in Letters is a great man.

Biographies of Reagan tend to insist he's impossible to know, but it turns out that the difficulty is a reflection of the odd world and values of mainstream literary types, not any defect in Reagan. The letters reveal a man at once recognizable as any of us regular folk.

This is from a letter he wrote to his son Ron, in 1972, while governor of California and dismayed that he wasn't working so hard at school as he should have:

Six months ago in the graduating class of the California Highway Patrol Academy there was a young man who led the class. He really wanted a career in the patrol and being top man in that class took a lot of doing, both in the brain and the muscle departments.

A couple of weeks ago on the San Bernardino Freeway a drunk driver hit him and sheared his right leg off below the knee. Can you imagine what life looked like to him and his young wife? Oh sure, he'd get a pension, he wouldn't starve, but what would he do with his life besides sit on the front porch?

Well, it won't be that way. He bought more than that with his willingness to put out at the academy. We are going to break the old rules and when he's up and on an artificial leg we are putting him back on duty as a patrolman. Now he has a double job - he has a chance if he makes it to open the door for others who suffer disabling injuries so they won't wind up in a rocker on the front porch. Think of the price he might be paying now if he'd decided to be just another kid "getting by" when he was in the academy.

There's a lot in that letter: compassion, a foreshadowing of Reagan's willingness to bang on the bureaucracy to get the result he wanted, and the long-view with which every father drives his children nuts.

Here, in a 1971 letter to Samuel Hayakawa, then President of San Francisco State, a campus struck particularly hard by student violence, Reagan displays once again his indifference to the near-term and the iron that would be on display when he was ready for the last epic showdown with the Soviet Union.

I know I shouldn't do this but can't resist being an "I told you so." Do you remember our phone conversation one morning during those dark days of battle? You were tired and understandably so and you asked, "When will it end?" I said, "It is ending, and you are winning and while you can't see it now, one of these days it will be gone. It will just fade away." Well it has. But it faded away because you faced them down. Do you know where we can get another dozen like you?

As able and willing as Reagan was to be firm when the times demanded it, he was always acutely aware of human cost. In 1981 he received a letter from a woman whose son had just enlisted. She wrote asking "Please, will you be especially careful with the country just now?" His reply was a masterpiece of decency and public relations:

I can't tell you how much your letter of August 6 has meant to me. Let me apologize for being so late in answering, but it does take some time for mail to reach my desk through all the wheels of the bureaucracy.

I shared your letter with Nancy. She cried, and I had quite a lump in my throat. We're parents, too, and we understand what you expressed so eloquently.

You must have done a fine job of raising that young man, and I agree with you - the government is getting a good deal.

That's not where the story ends, though. Two years later, he wrote again:

I've often thought about him and you and wondered how he's getting along and if he's happy with the choice he made. I hope he is. I don't know which branch he chose. ...I don't mean to impose but if you could find the time to write and let me know about your son I'd be most grateful.

The President of the United States, a man who doesn't even have to tie his own shoelaces if he doesn't want to, finds time two years later to hand-write a note asking for an update? If it's not too much of an imposition?

And on it goes, page after page after revealing page of correspondence, all of it originally hand-written, all of it rich with keen observation, humanity, and a vision of America as, literally, God's gift to the world - the fulfillment of what He set in motion with Abraham.

There's plenty of wit, too, an air of joy at confounding his enemies with the very stereotype they so relentlessly flayed him with. When William F. Buckley wrote to tweak him about a photograph, Reagan wrote back:

Dear Bill:

Don't worry about the photographer, I've had him shot.

Now that's a self-confident man who's having a good time.

The New York Times recently published a brief commentary about this book which complained that it revealed Reagan is ordinary, and left no mistake that ordinary-ness is, well, just so ... so ... disappointing. (It doesn't hurt, when reading the Times' faint-praise take, to remember that they thought of Jayson Blair as an exceptional, going-places young man.) Why, they complained, there's no angst! No tortured instrospection!

No, there's not. Ronald Reagan was just a genuine-article man (hardly ordinary in over-feminized America), and in being unembarassedly himself he re-shaped the world - for the better. Not a bad act at all, and as another election bears down on us, with its promise of ugliness, a book that stands to repay the reading many times over.

Remarks by Lou Cannon

(First published September 11, 2003)

When I went out to the Reagan Library in April 2002 to give a talk there, I didn't expect to meet anyone outside of the library. At the suggestion of the library's public relations director, though, I called Lou Cannon, who lives north of Simi Valley near Santa Barbara. He said to come on up for a visit. He kindly offered his time, and offered me a chance to meet someone who has written more about Ronald Reagan than anyone else. I rented a car the day after my talk and set out.

A diligent researcher and writer, Mr. Cannon had interviewed Edwin Meese that morning for a book on Reagan's governorship. He had committed to a publication date only eighteen months away, so the writing process was going to be intense. The notes from the Meese interview would soon be part of the book's research file.

Well, eighteen months have passed already, and the book, Governor Reagan, will come out on September 16. I asked Mr. Cannon by e-mail if he'd like to make some remarks about why he wrote the book. I also asked, as a what-if question, what he thought Reagan might say about the current recall election in California if he were still active in politics. Here's what Mr. Cannon wrote in his response:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Remarks by Lou Cannon
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In the acknowledgments to my new book, I briefly tell the story of how I came to write Governor Reagan: His Rise to Power. Essentially, it rounds out my earlier work. Reagan, all his people agree, would not have become president unless he had first been governor of California. And as you'll see in reading the book, it was a valuable and relevant training ground for him.

Being governor of a big state, with partisan divisions and a bureaucracy that resembles the federal government's, is a useful experience. FDR and Reagan are the best examples of big-state governors who became successful presidents. Serving as governor of Georgia or Arkansas is less relevant. Texas is somewhere in between; it's a big state but one in
which the governor's constitutional authority is severely limited.

As to the recall, we don't know what Reagan would have done. But he was a conservative in the old-fashioned (and best) use of the term; the recall is a radical measure. We do know that Reagan opposed the attempted recall of Los Angeles reform mayor Fletcher Bowron. Reagan was a Democrat at the time but the mayoralty in Los Angeles is non-partisan, and I think Reagan would have taken the same tack on this issue after he became a Republican.

Reagan opposed a whole batch of initiatives when he was governor; he did support Proposition 13 in 1978 when he was out of office but belatedly and (as he told me) somewhat reluctantly. He thought his own spending limitation measure, Proposition 1 in 1973, was better. I think he was right. Prop. 1 would have given government and the people more flexibility than Prop. 13; unfortunately, as I write in the book it was poorly written and so highly technical that most people didn't understand it. When voters don't understand something, they tend to vote no, as they did in this case.

The book's formal publication date is September 16, when I'm scheduled to be on the Today show.

Race and Bigotry

(First published July 29, 2003)

When I was as teacher, race was on my list of topics to stay
away from in class. Too touchy, too easy to be misunderstood,
too risky for a junior faculty member who wanted to get tenure!
I figured only black men and women could talk honestly
about race and not get into trouble. Now that I'm out
of academics, I can actually think freely. So in a book
I wrote after I didn't have to worry about tenure any more,
I wrote a chapter on race and states' rights. It turned out
to be a good piece, and no one has attacked me for it yet.

Yesterday I picked up a black gentleman I've been working
with at the railway station. He has family in both the United States
and St. Thomas. He just graduated this spring with a degree
in computer science and electrical engineering. He had just taken
his seat in the passenger side of the station wagon when
I saw a big, kind of mean looking guy with a frown on his face
striding toward the car. He came from the station house,
where my friend had just been. I could tell he didn't intend to be polite.
I thought he was going to tell me to get out of the parking
space I was in. Instead, he looked hard at my friend and said:

"Next time I'll be happy if you flush the toilet."

"I did flush the toilet," my friend replied.

"No you didn't. I can tell because when the toilet flushes
the water in the sink goes down."

With that he turned around and walked back to the station house.

Now, my first reaction to this exchange was to think about who
might be right in this short exchange. The fellow from the station
certainly seemed sure of himself. Later on that day I reflected
that who was right didn't matter. I asked, "Would someone
have followed me all the way out to the parking lot to say
something like that to me?" I've had people be rude to me before,
but about flushing the toilet?

Nope, I had to see that this enforcement effort was part
of the treatment blacks get when they travel to the
white suburbs. I've heard so many stories about the
small indignities black people experience when they
deal with whites who regard them as intruders.
Bad experiences with the police get publicized, but this instance
reminds me that these uncomfortable encounters
unfold in many settings. "If I have to let you use my facilities,"
the fellow thinks, "I'm going to find some way to let you know
that I don't like it." Nope, I don't think I would have received
a warning about flushing the toilet from someone who didn't
see the water in the sink go down. Who even watches
for something like that unless he wants to find a reason
to get the guy? He might as well have added, "I didn't even check
the toilet itself, because what I really wanted to do was
let you know you're not welcome here."

Once Reagan's dad was on the road, and he stopped at
a hotel during an Illinois snowstorm. After Jack Reagan had
signed the hotel register, the manager noted the name and
commented, "Well, that's a good Irish Catholic name.
You'll be happy to know we don't take Jews here."

Jack replied, "If you won't take Jews, you won't take me,
either." Then he walked out and went back to his car.
He spent the night there, trying to keep warm in the
middle of the bad weather. Shortly afterward, he contracted
pneumonia and became very ill. He never fully regained his health.

Fourth of July

(First published July 4, 2003)

I'm writing this note at the end of a long Fourth of July. I worked outside during the day, then had dinner with friends at a cabin they've rented for two weeks. After that we went to see fireworks at the local high school. My daughter Emily was much more interested in the rides at the brightly lit carnival set up on the school's baseball diamond. She had her first ride on a Ferris wheel.

Mark Burson reminded me a while back that the Fourth of July was Ronald Reagan's favorite holiday. He did see the connection between our nation's independence and our growth as a free people. He celebrated freedom in so many speeches, and Independence Day celebrates our freedom as a nation. As Jefferson put it, we broke away from Britain so that all people in the New World would have an equal chance to pursue life, liberty, and happiness.

To people who followed this newsletter during the spring, my opposition to the Iraqi war is well known. It's a bad legacy of Vietnam, though, that opponents of a war open themselves to charges that they don't support the brave men and women who serve in our military. What poor logic! Criticism of Bush and his advisors who have advocated war isn't the same as criticism of our soldiers. If it were, no one could ever dissent from a policy of war.

So, we should remember our young people who had to be far from home during this holiday. They all need to know that we're thinking of them. They all need to know that we want them to come home safely. And they all need to know that we appreciate the good job they're doing.

Reagan's First Race

(First published April 22, 2003)

The first book on Reagan that I read was by Lou Cannon. It's title: Reagan. I picked it up one summer back in the 1980s while serving my annual two weeks of active duty for the naval reserve. It was the first balanced account of the man I had read, and I remember telling people that.

Cannon's 1991 book on Reagan, The Role of a Lifetime, begins with an interesting story. He recalls the first time he met Reagan in 1965. Reagan was in Sacramento in the fall, touring the state to see how much interest he could generate in a run for the governor's office the next fall. He gave a short speech, answered questions, then chatted with Cannon and other reporters afterwards. The session went well, and everyone there seemed to like Reagan.

The Democrats, meanwhile, thought that Reagan was the weakest of all the candidates they might face in 1966. They hoped he would be the Republican nominee, because that would give Pat Brown, the incumbent governor, the best shot at winning a third term. They figured there was no way an inexperienced former actor would get voted in.

When Lou Cannon's editor at the San Jose Mercury-News asked him what he thought of Reagan, Cannon said that he "couldn't understand why anyone would want to run against such a self-assured and friendly man." It turned out Cannon had good judgment: Reagan won the election in 1966 by more than a million votes. And we know now that Pat Brown was only the first of many to underestimate Ronald Reagan's political abilities.

Iraq and the United Nations

(First published April 8, 2003)

President Bush makes a good case for action, given that he is only interested in the enforcement of the United Nations resolution forcing Iraq to disarm. How will the UN have any creditability if they do not enforce the resolutions they enact? Mr. Bush also has a valid point regarding Iraq’s twelve year history of defying the requirement to disarm. If the UN is going to be a creditable organization, it must act. Talking about action is not in the best interest of the UN or the USA.

I pray we do not go to war, but given Iraq’s disregard for the requirement to disarm, I can see no other solution. President Kennedy once said, referring to the Cuban missile crisis, that the “US cannot allow evil men the means to wage nuclear war." I think we can expand his meaning to, “We cannot allow evil men the means to wage war with weapons of mass destruction.” No one hates the idea of American service men and women risking their lives more than me, but left unanswered Iraq will be an even larger problem for the world in the future.

It is disheartening that some of our allies do not support us in this task. No one wants war. We do not want war, but can we afford to let the United Nations simply be an organization that makes idle threats? Will that not nullify the entire point of having the UN in the first place? Does anyone doubt that the USA possesses the primary teeth that the UN has at its disposal? How can our country continue to be a beacon of hope for oppressed peoples everywhere if we turn a blind eye to the problems of the world?

If Saddam Hussein will not cooperate with the UN -- and he has not for twelve years -- do we just sit back and allow him to build ICBMs? He clearly does not possess the wisdom and stability that is required of governments with nuclear capability. How do you suggest we stop his form of aggression?

Al Qaeda and Iraq, from a Reader in Palo Alto

(First published April 8, 2003)

I really enjoyed reading The Last Jeffersonian -- the book. What a breath of fresh air! The only thing I wish you would have tackled are the issue of the S & L meltdown and the Iran-Contra affair. I think it would have made your book stronger, as these two issues inevitably come up in any conversation I have with people trying to discredit Reagan. I would have liked to read what your thoughts are on that.

Now to the newsletter -- I have to say that I disagree with your assessment that A War in Iraq Is a Bad Idea. First of all, it's not that the generals are bored and lazily looking around to see where exactly it would be a good idea right now to have a war. Second, I think Rwanda, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia and certainly Somalia would have yielded a better standard to measure Iraq against, than Cuba or Libya.

You ask, "How will the war help us defeat Al Qaeda?" If you read Bin Laden's interviews and writings, you will find that Clinton's half-hearted and timid military interventions, and his fears to follow through on Iraq's expulsion of the inspectors, created the image of a paper tiger. That is what emboldened Al Qaeda to pull off the unimaginable attacks of 9/11.

Consistent with the reasoning in your book, Reagan's full-hearted and absolute sincerity, his unwavering positions on issues of what he considered right or wrong brought about the liberation of much of the world. Similarly, Bush's full-hearted, absolute sincerity and unwavering position will be required to follow through with Iraq. After all, the current showdown is simply a twelve year old condition of surrender after Iraq's aggressive action in Kuwait. The surrender includes conditions of disarmament that Iraq has agreed to but never fullfilled. So the question is not, "How will a war in Iraq help us defeat Al Qaeda?" but, "Will our wavering and backing down in Iraq help Al Qaeda to defeat us?"

I think that many of us, including President Bush, finally recognized on September 11 the fatal danger that we have put ourselves in by trying to please everybody, appeasing dictators and fanatics, and letting our guards down for so long.

Why a War in Iraq Is a Bad Idea

(First published in March 2003)

The Security Council meets today to decide whether or not the United Nations will sanction a war against Iraq. Advocates say the war is defensive – necessary to prevent Saddam Hussein from harming us later. Opponents say the war is aggressive, unnecessary, and wrong. They say the arguments for this war fail to meet the moral and pragmatic tests that justifications for war must pass.

Part of me wants to review the reasons for and against conflict, but I’d like to look instead at some historical arguments I encountered in the online edition of the New York Times. The article reviewed Eisenhower’s opposition to war against Egypt in the mid-1950s, Kennedy’s decision not to attack Cuba during the Cuban missile crisis, and Reagan’s limited military response to Qaddafi’s regime in Libya during the mid-1980s.

In each case, people excoriated the leader of the troublesome country. Many saw Egypt’s Nasser at the madman on the Nile, and Britain wanted to take him out to protect the Suez Canal. The U.S. dearly wanted to overthrow Castro, and Qaddafi headed Washington’s list of most hateful characters twenty years later. In each case, presidents figured that war did not serve America’s interests as well as other kinds of pressure. In each case, the threat passed: the U.S. became Egypt's friend the moment Sadat visited Jerusalem; Castro and Qaddafi, if not entirely benign, have aged and quieted down.

Bush will launch this war, no matter how much opposition he encounters here and in the rest of the world. If the United States and Britain win the war quickly, as seems likely, people may judge the attack a success. I’ll offer another criterion for judgment: Does this war help us to defeat Al Qaeda? War with Iraq makes victory over Al Qaeda super-problematic. Set aside, for now, the moral arguments against this aggressive action. The pragmatic view argues that we have another war to win. The war first started on September 11, 2001. Whatever Bush and his advisors say, the campaign against Baghdad makes Al Qaeda’s eradication unimaginably more difficult.

Introduction to The Last Jeffersonian

(First published February 2, 2003)

Welcome, and thanks to all of you for your interest in The Last Jeffersonian: A Newsletter of Thoughtful Discourse. Some of you have waited quite a while for this issue; others have subscribed more recently. Either way, I hope you’ll enjoy what you read here.

Let me introduce myself briefly. Eleven years ago, I decided to write a book about Ronald Reagan. I wanted to write an essay, not much more than a hundred pages, that would explain why we should pay attention to what Reagan said. The book turned out longer than that, and while I wrote the book more people began to see what an important figure Reagan was. The original question didn’t go away, though: Why was he important?

I won’t try to answer that question here, but I’ll say this: after I finished the book, my interest in Reagan didn’t end. His life and his thought connect to so many other great events, institutions, and ideas. I don’t expect that every article in this publication will be about Reagan only, but the themes of his life can guide the exchange of ideas that occurs here.

Ronald Reagan turned 92 on February 6. We all wish he were well enough to have celebrated the occasion with Nancy. As it is, we don’t know how the day went for him. The most we can hope is that he rested well.

Let me close with an invitation. My hope is that The Last Jeffersonian can include your contributions. (I know, the newsletter and the book have the same title, but I’ll always be clear about which one I’m referring to.) Please write to me with article ideas, commentary, letters, interesting links, and so forth. We’ll see what evolves.

That’s enough for now. Thanks again to all of you for your interest.

Common Sense from Thucydides

(First published October 2, 2002)

During the current discussion about war in Iraq, I remembered another debate about war in ancient Greece. In that case the Athenian leader Nicias argued courageously and wisely against sending an expedition to Sicily. Among his political virtues, Ronald Reagan possessed courage and wisdom. Here are some thoughts, adapted from Thucydides, that a leader like Reagan might express today about why the United States should not invade Iraq:

"People everywhere respect what is most remote and least liable to have its reputation put to the test. At the least reverse, many would look down on us, and would join our enemies against us. We have ourselves experienced this with regard to Al Qaeda and their allies. Our unexpected success, as compared with what we feared at first, has made us suddenly despise our enemies, tempting us further to aspire to the conquest of Iraq.

Instead of being elated by the misfortunes of our adversaries, we ought to think of breaking their spirit before giving ourselves up to confidence. We must understand that the one thought awakened in Al Qaeda by their disgrace is how they may even now, if possible, overthrow us and repair their dishonor; for military reputation is their oldest and chiefest study.

Our struggle, therefore, if we are wise, will not be for the removal of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, but how to defend ourselves most effectively against the diabolical machinations of Al Qaeda."