As Published On
→ The Out-Lawyer’s
Blog: http://www.jaygaskill.com/blog1
→ The Human conspiracy
Blog: http://www.jaygaskill.com/blog3
And
The Policy Think Site: http://www.jaygaskill.com
All
contents, unless otherwise indicated are
Copyright ©
2005, 2006 and 2007 by Jay B. Gaskill
Permission
to publish, distribute or print all or part of this article (except for
personal use) is needed. [Permission for use in group discussions is almost
always routinely given.]
Please
contact Jay B. Gaskill, attorney at law, via e mail at law@jaygaskill.com
THE PRESIDENCY GAMBLE
Part One
of Three
The Non-Ideological
Analysis
Every fresh presidential selection is a crapshoot. Every vote is a compromise in which a critical mass of voters selects a potential leader based on a prioritization of issues (pick your top three) against the high likelihood that unexpected events and circumstances will upend the whole list.
Our fleeting assessments of leadership are followed, inevitably, with disillusionment or pleasant surprise, but very, very rarely by “see, I told you so!”, at least as to the guy or gal we voted for. Think about it:
·
Who knew in advance that James Earl Carter
would turn out more preacher than doer?
·
That Bill Clinton, the old-boy liberal from
·
That Richard Milhous Nixon, with all his
warts, would lead a foreign policy opening to Maoist
·
That Gerald R. Ford, the solid centrist, would
successfully heal the Nixon era wounds then blow it all to pardon Nixon?
·
That Ronald R. Regan, the genial
·
That Harry S. Truman, with his under-eloquent
FDR campaigned to reduce federal spending and
balance the budget -- and we all know how that turned out. JFK, ever eloquent
and competent, who campaigned to close the “missile gap”, allowed Soviet
nuclear missiles to be sneaked into
Who knew? Go figure.
We can’t ignore policy, ideology and party all of the time. But a strong case can be made that it is even more perilous to ignore character and experience….
Executive
Competence: A Litmus Test?
The Government Executives
A vote for a president is a vote for about 1,000 people, mostly unknown to us, but absolutely essential to the creation a fresh executive footprint in real time. Bill Clinton, with all his wit and charm, found it difficult to overcome the limitations of experience: Coming from a tiny southern state (Arkansas, population about 2.5 million), I don’t think that he actually had 1,000 trusted, seasoned, competent and loyal aides who could then quickly fill out the key positions in the executive branch. [State troopers don’t count here.]
Deep into his first term, hundreds of appointments had not yet been made.
Executives acquire the necessary 1,000 trusted staffers and peers by virtue of the size and scope of their responsibilities. I submit that there is no substitute for experience, scope and scale, at this level.
Think of the
Among the top states in population, listed in alphabetical
order, consider the nature of the experience a governorship can confer on the
chief executive, particularly over more than a single term of office:
A two term governor of any one of these states may arguably be presumed to have the necessary “executive gravitas” for the oval office – all other things equal. [Yes, all other things are rarely equal.]
The population of
Let’s now look at the presidential contenders just from the “executive resume” framework.
On the state or municipal executive side, reasonable observers would concede that both Romney and Giuliani have earned sufficient “resume” status. We can also include Governor Richards, if his additional federal experience is taken into account.
The Legislator Candidates
& the “Mixed” Resumes
Members of the legislative branch acquire the needed executive resources much more slowly, as a result of accretion. This usually takes decades, service in key committee chair positions, think tank connections, and long term political alliances.
On the legislative side, we have four senators (Clinton, Obama, Edwards and Thompson) who have never chaired a major committee, nor authored any significant legislation; and two of them (Edwards and Obama) have not even served more than one complete term.
Senator John McCain stands out among the legislative
branch candidates who still might have a shot at the nomination as having
legislative tenure and gravitas. What
this really means will depend on two assessments: How strong are the alliances acquired by this
cranky, independent Senator from
Among the democrats, there are at least two legislative
old-timers whose experience and tenure place them in the upper tier as well:
Senators Christopher Dodd (
Governor Bill Richardson (
But – in the Darwinian world of practical politics, Senators
Dodd and Biden and Governor Richardson are too far back in the race to be a
threat to Mrs. Clinton.
Senator Obama still has a shot. No one else is even in remote contention.
Is
Mrs. Clinton the Exception to “Executive Resume Deficiency”?
If not Sui Generis, Senator Clinton is certainly hard to classify. What about the claims of executive experience? We can safely assume that Hillary Clinton was an astute political observer during her husband’s presidency, one with the interest, access and ambition to learn from his experience. But, with the politically disastrous exception of her health care initiative in 1994, Hillary’s experience in her husband’s administration amounted to observation without accountability – or with reference to her husband’s sexual misconduct, accountability without observation.
In her zealous protection of Bill Clinton’s tattered moral reputation and, in other political struggles, she has demonstrated the ruthlessness of a cunning political consultant. Executive leadership requires a more substantial test and – truth be told – the dynamics of electability may require a bit more authentic humanity. As an astute political operator, Mrs. Clinton seems to have one thing down pat: Avoid alienating your base and reach out to the middle even at the cost of policy clarity.
In the short term, the
Conservative democrats and moderate republicans, for example, can only hope that a President Clinton, Version 2009, would be a firmer national security hand than the earlier iterations (Clinton Version 1993 and Clinton Version 1997).
But there is slim evidence, indeed, for the notion that Senator
Clinton would be a tougher and more effective adversary for
Like so many other bright line issues, the picture of HC as a foreign policy hawk (willing for example to credibly deter a nuclear Iran) is hard to ground in anything stronger than a selective reading from the tea leaves of her campaign rhetoric.
Any bright line picture of where Mrs. Clinton “stands” a
leap of astigmatic faith -- much like those in the peace movement who took Mr.
Nixon seriously when he campaigned in a “secret plan” to get us out of
So the junior senator from
But, to most Americans, for better or worse, the picture of Senator Clinton’s character is well fixed.
The Greek philosopher Heraclitus said that “Character is destiny”. But for this election cycle, the aphorism will be about the character of the American people.
What do we American voters really care about in our next President?
In my next posting here, I will identify and discuss some looming issues; these limn the real policy choices that should tower over the current election cycle. They arise from the intractable realities that will inevitably preoccupy the next president (and at least one successor). Whether or not they fully surface in the current debate, or continue bubble just under the political radar, they will haunt the elections of 2012 and 2016.
Stay tuned…
JBG