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Craig Pirrong shares comments on the new National Security Advisor from the Obami, and sharply criticizes Obama’s judgment.
We will soon have a bona fide political hack as National SecurityAdvisor. One whom SecDef Gates slammed in Woodward’s book:
In the book “Obama’s Wars,” Woodward writes that, “Gates felt that Donilon did not understand the military or treat its senior leadership with sufficient respect.”
“The secretary later told Jones that Donilon would be a ‘disaster’ as Obama’s national security adviser,” Woodward wrote.
The man he is replacing, Jim Jones, was even more scathing:
…“He had never gone to Afghanistan or Iraq, ‘or really left the office for a serious field trip,’ ” Jones said of Donilon in Woodward’s book. “As a result, he said, ‘you have no direct understanding of these places. You have no credibility with the military. You should go overseas.’ ” …
…“You frequently pop off with absolute declarations about places you’ve never been, leaders you’ve never met, or colleagues you work with,” Woodward quoted Jones as saying about Donilon.
…Jones was no prize as NSA, but he had spent his life in, you know, national security. In contrast, just what do you learn about national security while serving as a lobbyist for Fannie Mae? Or as a consultant for Goldman and Citi?
…His appointment is proof of the abject politicization of national defense under Obama. National security as the continuation of domestic politics by other means. Yes, Bryan, there is inevitably a political component to defense policy. But in his subordination of security to domestic political considerations, Obama has gone beyond the pale. …
Toby Harnden lists ten reasons why we should be concerned about Tom Donilon’s appointment.
8. Donilon is close to Joe Biden. Biden has got it wrong on just about every major foreign policy issue in modern times. Enough said.
9. Donilon is a former lobbyist. Remember how Obama was going to change how Washington worked and rid the city of lobbyists? Well now his top foreign policy adviser is a former lobbyist for Fannie Mae who consulted for Goldman Sachs.
10. The Obama administration is unravelling. Republicans can gloat about this but it is bad news for Americans and the world that Obama has lost several top economic aides, his chief of staff and now his top foreign policy adviser BEFORE the mid-term elections. It shows a degree of crisis and disarray that cannot be good in policy terms.
We’ll see how Donilon works out but, to put it mildly, this is not an appointment that inspires much confidence.
John Steele Gordon responds to criticisms of NJ Governor Chris Christie for just saying no.
Both Paul Krugman and Bob Herbert last week bemoaned the decision by Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey to put the kibosh on a multi-billion-dollar project to build a second railroad tunnel under the Hudson River. The project, which was originally budgeted at $8.7 billion had crept up — in the time-honored way of government projects — to over $11 billion, and many thought it would reach $14 billion before all was said and done. New Jersey would have been responsible for much of the cost overruns, and Governor Christie thought the state, deeply mired in debt already, could not afford it. And so he killed the project.
…When we began the Interstate Highway System, the national debt was about 60 percent of GDP and falling. We had run budget surpluses in seven of the previous 10 years. When we went to the moon, the national debt was 39 percent of GDP and falling. It is now over 90 percent and rising rapidly. And the move from 40 percent of GDP to 90 percent was not because of moon shots or Manhattan Projects. It was so no one in Washington (and many state capitals) ever had to say no to anyone, especially public-service unions. …
…The people of New Jersey had processed that information, and that’s why they elected Governor Christie. I suspect that people in the rest of the country have also processed it, and that’s why the political establishment is going to get clobbered in three weeks.
George Will opines that whether or not the Dems keep majorities in Congress, Obama loses.
…Since 1966, liberal overreaching has been difficult. After November, it will be impossible, for many years. For Obama, the worst result next month might be for Democrats to retain control of both houses of Congress. If they do, their majorities will be paralyzingly small. And their remaining moderates will be more resistant to the liberal leadership: The moderates will have survived not because of, but in spite of, those leaders.
Today, if you see Obama in a political ad, you are almost certainly watching a Republican ad. And a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows that more than twice as many people view House Speaker Nancy Pelosi negatively (50 percent) than positively (22 percent).
If Democrats retain control of Congress, Obama will seek reelection while being perceived as responsible for everything in Washington, where everything is perceived to be dysfunctional. And anti-Washington fever may be worse than it is today, because the 2010 elections will not seem to have changed very much. …
Schumpeter’s Blog at The Economist highlights a National Affairs article on government unions from Daniel Disalvo.
NATIONAL AFFAIRS is shaping up to be a worthy successor to “The Public Interest”, one of the great periodicals of the post-war era.
The current issue contains a superb essay, by Daniel Disalvo, on America’s public-sector unions, which have an extraordinary power to force the state to dance to their tune, squashing innovation, reducing productivity and undermining competitiveness. Given that America needs to reinvent much of its antiquated state apparatus, particularly its schools, if it is to remain competitive with the emerging world, I suspect that the country’s future depends on its ability to master, or sideline, these ever-mightier institutions. Some choice extracts:
…Yet as skilled as unions may be in drawing on taxpayer dollars, many observers argue that their greater influence is felt in the quality of the government services taxpayers receive in return. In his book “The Warping of Government Work”, Harvard public-policy scholar John Donahue explains how public-employee unions have reduced government efficiency and responsiveness. With poor prospects in the ultra-competitive private sector, government work is increasingly desirable for those with limited skills; at the opposite end of the spectrum, the wage compression imposed by unions and civil-service rules makes government employment less attractive to those whose abilities are in high demand. Consequently, there is a “brain drain” at the top end of the government work force, as many of the country’s most talented people opt for jobs in the private sector where they can be richly rewarded for their skills (and avoid the intricate work rules, and glacial advancement through big bureaucracies, that are part and parcel of government work)….
Thus, as New York University professor Paul Light argues, government employment “caters more to the security-craver than the risk-taker.” And because government employs more of the former and fewer of the latter, it is less flexible, less responsive, and less innovative. It is also more expensive: Northeastern University economist Barry Bluestone has shown that, between 2000 and 2008, the price of state and local public services has increased by 41% nationally, compared with 27% for private services….
In the National Review, Kathryn Jean Lopez interviews Daniel Hannan about his new book on the dangerous path America is taking.
Daniel Hannan could be the ultimate tea-party candidate, waving his pocket Constitution, citing the Founders, and warning that we are in danger of losing America itself. Hannan even holds public office. Just not in America. He’s a Brit — and a member of the European Parliament — with a love for the Red, White, and Blue. It’s out of that love that he’s written The New Road to Serfdom: A Letter of Warning to America. He talks about it with National Review Online’s Kathryn Jean Lopez.
KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: “The United States is becoming just another country.” How far along are we?
DANIEL HANNAN: The abandonment of American particularism started with the first Roosevelt but really took off with the second. Like most bad things, it happened from good intentions. FDR saw himself as the champion of the masses against the lobbies. Convinced of his moral rectitude, he tolerated no constraints on his power. He sidelined the legislature, ignored the conventional two-term limit, ruled by executive order, tried to pack the Supreme Court and constructed a massive federal bureaucracy, much of which is still in place.
You don’t need to look far to see parallels with the past two years. A Democratic president assumes office, bringing a massive majority with him to both Houses. He takes over during a financial crisis that has been blamed on a failure of capitalism. He’s determined to “do something” — and that something involves extending government and spending a great deal of money. The economic ill effects are already becoming clear; but the political consequences, as power is shifted from the 50 states to Washington, from the legislature to the executive, from the elected representative to the federal czar, from the individual to the government, are far more deleterious. …
Kirk Johnson, in the NY Times, has a fascinating article unraveling the mystery of the dying bees.
…Dr. Bromenshenk’s team at the University of Montana and Montana State University in Bozeman, working with the Army’s Edgewood Chemical Biological Center northeast of Baltimore, said in their jointly written paper that the virus-fungus one-two punch was found in every killed colony the group studied. Neither agent alone seems able to devastate; together, the research suggests, they are 100 percent fatal.
…Research at the University of California, San Francisco, had already identified the fungus as part of the problem. … But the Army/Montana team, using a new software system developed by the military for analyzing proteins, uncovered a new DNA-based virus, and established a linkage to the fungus, called N. ceranae.
“Our mission is to have detection capability to protect the people in the field from anything biological,” said Charles H. Wick, a microbiologist at Edgewood. Bees, Dr. Wick said, proved to be a perfect opportunity to see what the Army’s analytic software tool could do. “We brought it to bear on this bee question, which is how we field-tested it,” he said.
The Army software system — an advance itself in the growing field of protein research, or proteomics — is designed to test and identify biological agents in circumstances where commanders might have no idea what sort of threat they face. The system searches out the unique proteins in a sample, then identifies a virus or other microscopic life form based on the proteins it is known to contain. The power of that idea in military or bee defense is immense, researchers say, in that it allows them to use what they already know to find something they did not even know they were looking for. …