Ben Smith notes that national security advisor Jim Jones, speaking at the J Street conference last week, called the Middle East conflict "the epicenter" of U.S. foreign policy problems around the world.
John Hannah, who served as Dick Cheney's national security advisor, takes to NRO to express his anger that Hillary Clinton was bashing the Bush legacy in Pakistan this week. First, what Hillary said:
I'm not familiar with Clarus Research Group, but they did poll 1,000 people and 68 percent of them said they think Afghanistan is "a conflict that will go on and on without a clear resolution." If you believe the research of political scientist and former Bush White House advisor Peter Feaver, the most important variable in determining whether the public will support an ongoing war is not how it is perceived to be going today, but Continue reading "An Afghanistan Poll That Should Worry Obama"
Liberal pundits, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and National Security Advisor James Jones are in agreement: General Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, was wrong to give public voice to his views about the best way forward in that beleaguered country. Yale law professor Bruce Ackerman accused McChrystal of “a plain violation of the principle of civilian control.” Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson put it most bluntly: "The men with the stars on their shoulders … need to shut up and salute." Some are even drawing parallels between McChrystal and Douglas MacArthur. All these critics are wrong.
Mark Lippert
What is Robert "Bud" McFarlane doing meddling in Sudan? Twenty-three years ago, as Ronald Reagan's National Security Advisor, he embarked on a secret mission to Tehran--which he and his future successor, John Poindexter, had promoted in the White House--bearing a chocolate cake topped with a brass key (meant to symbolize a "new opening"), a crate of missile parts, and a Bible signed by the president.
With the Iraq war spinning out of control in mid-2005, retired Marine General James L. Jones spoke with his old friend Peter Pace, the incoming chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Jones, who is now Barack Obama's national security advisor, had been sounded out for the Joint Chiefs job but demurred. One reason: He felt that civilian leaders in Washington were warping the military planning process. "Military advice is being influenced on a political level," Jones warned Pace, according to Bob Woodward's book State of Denial. Jones's warning squared with other reports at the time that U.S. commanders in Iraq felt pressure to keep troop levels low. Faced with a growing Democratic onslaught, the Bush White House was all too determined to pretend that the war was under control.
With speeches by White House economic advisor Larry Summers on Friday and President Obama today on Wall Street, the Obama administration is moving from triage as the chief aim of economic policy to recovery.
Which is good: The job picture remains dismal, and many economists now assume any recovery will feature weak hiring and strong productivity growth as it did from 2001 to 2003. No wonder a lot of people are asking: From where will the next round of high-quality growth come?
Which brings me to my answer: The next round of high-wage growth will come from metropolitan areas. In good times and bad, metros are where the action is. Because they are where the nation’s productive assets concentrate, they are the hubs from which the growth will flow. And now, as the economy regains stability, the fundamental drivers of medium- and longer-term renewal come even more into play, with none mattering more than the nation’s innovation inputs--things like R&D flows, the presence of dense clusters of interlinked firms, the availability of venture capital and highly-trained people.
These inputs, it turns out, are especially concentrated in metropolitan areas, the largest 100 of which pack in 70 percent of the nation’s research universities, 77 percent of U.S. knowledge jobs, 78 percent of all patents, 82 percent of federal health and science research funding, and 96 percent of venture capital investment.
But what is really important is that commercial innovation drives productivity growth, which in turn--as my colleagues Rob Atkinson and Howard Wial have argued along with many other economists—tends eventually to improve wages, national competitiveness, and the standard of living. Which is why we will spend quite a bit of time here on The Avenue on the nation’s other economic crisis--its innovation crisis--and ways to break out of it. On innovation, these are the critical questions:
Edward Jay Epstein has become the de facto historian of the Madoff scandal. Every time he and I speak, he has found another key to the master Ponzi schemer's evil genius.
There was a time when the Securities and Exchange Commission trusted Madoff absolutely. So he was able to clear two other stock markets by saying that the documents they used in their defense were kosher. Ah, but the rub was that those documents were actually treyf (not kosher) and they had been cooked up by Madoff himself.
So read here.
A somewhat unexpected tribute from the NSC chief:
Conservative columnist Thomas Sowell has written yet another column attacking the Obama administration--and advisor Ezekiel Emanuel in particular--for trying to impose harsh rationing the sick and elderly. I normally wouldn’t take Sowell’s columns on this seriously. But Sarah Palin, who quoted him in one of her now-infamous Facebook posts, does.
Governor Palin issued the following statement on her Facebook page yesterday. I quote it in its entirety so you can judge for yourself.
More than any demographic group, American 50 and over are skeptical of health care reform. While those aged 18-49 are equally likely to believe that health care reform will improve or worsen their own medical care, according to a recent Gallup poll those 50-64 are more likely to believe it will worsen their care, 37% to 26%, with the margin even wider (39% to 20%) among those 65 and older.
Arthur Laffer, Reagan economic advisor, co-author of Proposition 13, and creator of the Laffer Curve:
Ed Kilgore is managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute, and a frequent contributor to a variety of political journals.
The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression By Amity Shlaes (HarperCollins, 464 pp., $26.95)
Herbert Hoover By William E. Leuchtenburg (Times Books, 208 pp., $22)
Nothing to Fear: FDR's Inner Circle and the Hundred Days that Created Modern America By Adam Cohen (Penguin Press, 372 pp., $29.95)
Over on The Treatment, Jonathan Cohn offers important background on the White House's new health care advisor.
As you probably know, Barack Obama is running a 30 minute spot on national television tonight. 30 minutes! What in the world could or should Obama talk about for 30 minutes, and is it even fair that he's doing it? We asked Joe Trippi, former advisor to Senator Edwards and campaign manager for Howard Dean, what he would do if he were running the show.
McCain advisor Douglas Holtz-Eakin slammed Obama's tax plan today, saying, "Obama has proposed a ‘tax cut' for 95 percent of people when, literally, almost 40 percent pay no federal income taxes at all." He cited a recent New York Post editorial labeling Obama's tax cuts "welfare."
Reading through Bob Woodward's The War Within, one thing that jumps out is the devastating portrait of National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, who's often considered something of a dud and enabler in his position, on the model of first-term (2001-2005) Condoleezza Rice. Here he is on pages 8 and 27-28:
Hadley believed he had developed as close a relationship with his president as any national security advisor in history. He was ever present. ... Hadley said of their relationship, "If I feel it, he feels it. If he feels it, I feel it."
The idea of a Barack Obama-Hillary Clinton "unity ticket" has been floated quite a bit the last few days. But, seriously, is the idea any good? We asked a few friends of the magazine to weigh in. Here's Mark Schmitt, senior fellow at the New America Foundation.
Yesterday, Steven Spielberg announced that he is withdrawing from his role as artistic advisor to the Beijing Olympics in order to protest China's link to the Darfur genocide. Spielberg is certainly correct that Beijing has supplied Khartoum with weapons, money, and diplomatic cover. And anything that embarrasses Beijing over this morally indefensible support for Sudan is a positive development. In that respect, good for Spielberg.
