Palin and the 'Experience' Canard
If nothing else, the media meltdown over Sarah Palin's candidacy for the vice presidency has exposed the not-unsuspected truth that, when it comes to historical ignorance and political amnesia, our cultural panjandrums are in a class by themselves.
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Ismael RoldanABC's Charlie Gibson is only the latest to offer himself upon the altar of self-parody with his pop-quizzing of the Alaska governor during their interview last week.
Gibson: "Do you agree with the Bush doctrine?"
Palin: "In what respect, Charlie?"
Which was a sensible answer, given that no higher authority than Jacob Weisberg of Slate has counted six versions of the thing (including "absence of any functioning doctrine at all"). Further pressed on the subject, Gov. Palin explained that "what President Bush has attempted to do is rid this world of Islamic extremism," which better sums up the gist of Bush policy than Mr. Gibson's cramped definition of the doctrine as "anticipatory self-defense."
And so the candidate, without so much as the benefit of a junior year abroad, managed (maybe luckily, though luck is often a function of wit) to get the better of the anchorman, Princeton '65.
Still, Mr. Gibson's high-toned condescension pales next to that of former Dick Gephardt speechwriter Matthew Dallek, who managed a loud guffaw over Mrs. Palin's supposed inexperience in an interview with Politico.com. "It would be one thing if she had only been governor a year and a half, but prior to that she had not had major experience."
Mr. Dallek is also a presidential historian, so he must have some acquaintance with the career of Calvin Coolidge. When Coolidge was named to Warren Harding's ticket in 1920, he had been governor of Massachusetts for less than two years. Aside from a largely powerless stint as lieutenant governor and other smaller legislative posts, his chief previous government experience was as mayor of Northampton, to which he was first elected in 1910 by a Wasilla-like margin of 1,597 to 1,409.
Another year-and-a-half governor to be nominated for the vice presidency: Teddy Roosevelt. It's true that TR, as a former assistant secretary of the Navy, had more foreign policy experience than Mrs. Palin, though one wonders what today we would make of a candidate whose proud boast was that he had killed an enemy soldier "like a jackrabbit."
Then there is Harry Truman, to whom Mrs. Palin compared herself at the Republican convention. "He had only to open his mouth and his origins were plain," wrote David McCullough in his biography of the 33rd president, in lines that might also have been written about Mrs. Palin. "It wasn't just that he came from a particular part of the country, geographically, but from a specific part of the American experience, an authentic pioneer background, and a specific place in the American imagination."
The Truman comparison seems especially to rankle Mrs. Palin's critics, perhaps because in many respects it rings true. Take vetting. John McCain may have met Mrs. Palin only once before he offered her the job, but Franklin Roosevelt admitted "I hardly know Truman" in July 1944, the same month the "Senator from Pendergast" was put on the Democratic ticket.
Or take foreign policy experience. It's fair to say that Mrs. Palin has none, and the McCain campaign should drop the transparent pretense that Alaska's proximity to Russia, or her nominal responsibility for the state's National Guard, gives her some.
Then again, what did Truman know? "Truman had no experience in relations with Britain or Russia, no firsthand knowledge of Churchill or Stalin," writes Mr. McCullough. "He didn't know his own Secretary of State, more than to say hello. . . . Roosevelt, Truman would tell [daughter] Margaret privately, 'never did talk to me confidentially about the war, or about foreign affairs or what he had in mind for peace after the war.' He was unprepared, bewildered."
Truman, it's true, had served bravely as an army captain in World War I; he knew the nature of war. But his chief recommendation as a U.S. senator was as a good-government type who bucked his home state's machine politics (though not so frontally as Mrs. Palin bucked hers) and fought waste, fraud and corruption in military spending.
This is closer to Mrs. Palin's turf. But why should her critics even care about her qualifications? Vice presidential candidates are always chosen with a view toward strengthening and broadening a ticket. The job is political; the office is mainly ceremonial. Recently, the vice presidency has developed some of the functions of a shadow presidency, which seemed to disturb liberals in the days when Dick Cheney was suspected of pulling George Bush's strings. Shouldn't they be vastly relieved that no such scenario will likely play out in a McCain administration?
Of course there is the issue of being a proverbial heartbeat away from the presidency, and of Mr. McCain's now having a fairly old heart. Doesn't that weigh against Mrs. Palin's candidacy?
Maybe. But as a man who knows whereof he speaks recently observed, "You can argue that nobody is ready to be president. You can argue that even if you've been vice president for eight years, that no one can be fully ready for the pressures of the office."
Wise words, and historically true. If even Bill Clinton can offer such a benediction to an inexperienced candidate, surely Mrs. Palin's critics can do so as well.
Secretary Paulson
Makes the Right Call
By VINCENT REINHART
The resources of the U.S. government are vast, but not unlimited. Thus far this year, officials have put federal funds at risk to facilitate the takeover of an investment bank, Bear Stearns, and to provide unconditional support to two government-sponsored enterprises, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
At some point, the government had to say enough. That point came this weekend.
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APTreasury and Federal Reserve officials gathered the reigning titans of Wall Street and told them that the solution to the problems some had with insufficient capital had to come from within the private sector. No such solution was forthcoming. And now there are two fewer independent investment banks. Lehman Brothers, a 158-year-old firm that started by trading cotton, is bankrupt, and the thundering herd of Merrill Lynch brokers will now answer to bosses at Bank of America.
These two giants will be missed. Even so, this was the right time for the government to draw the line.
Authorities typically ask three questions when considering intervention. How long have the firm's problems been common knowledge in the market? How sophisticated are the firm's investors? And how interconnected are the firm's transactions with those of other firms? Authorities evidently made the determination that Bear Stearns was too interconnected to fail and that some of the investors of Fannie and Freddie, notably foreign official entities, were unsophisticated and skittish.
Those judgments can be second-guessed. But one thing is clear: Lehman did not cast a long enough shadow over markets to warrant support. And Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and his colleagues are to be congratulated for the courage to make that determination.
When the safety net was pulled this weekend, bankers looked at their balance sheets with considerably more suspicion than before this weekend. The result was that Lehman was left at the altar, and Merrill Lynch had to reach out for a suitor.
The critical message for all of us to understand is this: There are still major losses in securities portfolios on the balance sheets of major U.S. financial firms. Until these firms get more capital to cover the losses, they will be unwilling to support market activity and will likely take active steps to shed assets.
The other thing to understand is that, in coming days and weeks, the resolve of officials at the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve will be tested again. Some will counsel that there are insurance companies that are too interconnected to fail. Or that depositors at some large regional banks should be protected beyond the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation's limit of $100,000 per account.
Backbone is necessary. And the orderliness with which financial markets have thus far absorbed this weekend's shocks should stiffen these officials' spines.
And yet the situation has been clouded by the adventurism of some local governments, as witnessed by the state of New York's actions to allow the insurance firm AIG to borrow money from its own subsidiaries. If the federal government seems reluctant to finance more bailouts, enough shopping will find a state willing to bend the rules. This is not the time for a piecemeal approach.
Government officials at all levels have to stand back and watch as the market matches those who have capital with those who need it. And they have to be aware that there may not be enough capital in the near term to put at risk relative to the losses on financial institutions' balance sheets. In other words, some government aid might ultimately have to be directed toward financial firms whose failure would otherwise threaten the financial system.
The politicians now running for office should also appreciate that their grand ambitions for new spending programs or tax cuts may have to be tempered by the need to rescue financial firms. They should be thinking now how to engineer that help at the least cost, to limit the odds of setting bad precedents, and to make lasting reforms to prevent a repetition.
Those currently in power need to remember that modern markets move quickly. They may not be able to pass the problem to their successors. U.S. history and the international experience teach a hard lesson: Delaying the resolution of financial crisis only makes it more costly.
Mr. Reinhart, the former director of monetary affairs at the Federal Reserve Board, is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
The Times They Are A-Changing
By WILLIAM MCGURN
If the editors of the New York Times changed the paper's line on Iraq and no one called them on it, would it make a noise? Like the proverbial tree falling in an empty forest?
Something of the kind seems to have happened to the Times use of "civil war" to describe the conflict in Iraq. In the fall of 2006, the Times began insisting Iraq was in a civil war. And in the year that followed, the paper's editorials routinely castigated George W. Bush for refusing to acknowledge it.
Here's a small sample:
Nov. 29, 2006: "At this point, it's hard to tell who is more out of touch: President Bush, who continues to insist that Iraq has not descended into civil war, or Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki . . ."
Jan. 11, 2007 (the day after the president announced the surge): "The nation needs an eyes-wide-open recognition that the only goal left is to get the U.S. military out of this civil war in a way that could minimize the slaughter of Iraqis and reduce the chances that the chaos Mr. Bush unleashed will engulf Iraq's neighbors."
March 27, 2007: "As disjointed as the Democrats have been, their approach makes far more sense than Mr. Bush's denial of Iraq's civil war . . ."
July 8, 2007: "One of Mr. Bush's arguments against withdrawal is that it would lead to civil war. The war is raging, right now, and it may take years to burn out."
Oct. 23, 2007: "If [the Bush administration] doesn't now move quickly [on Turkey's threat to cross the border to attack Kurdish rebels], Iraq's disastrous civil war could spiral into an even bigger disaster -- a regional war."
And these are only a smattering of what by my count are at least 16 editorials from November 2006 to November 2007 all unequivocally asserting an Iraqi civil war.
As someone who was in Mr. Bush's speechwriting shop at the time, I remember the horrible stories coming out of Iraq -- Sunni men kidnapped and killed by Shia death squads; Shia innocents murdered by Sunnis; Kurds being driven from their homes, and so on. The violence was real, it reflected religious divisions, and on the face of it, civil war was a reasonable description.
So why did the president resist the characterization? The answer is that he resisted using "civil war" for the same reason the Times likely embraced it: It was a loaded term.
If the conflict in Iraq was really a civil war, the implication was, first, that the United States had no place being there; second, that it was hopeless. That's one reason at least five of the editorials that used the words "civil war" also used the word "unending" or "unwinnable." If you find yourself in the middle of a civil war that is unwinnable, logic allows for only one conclusion: Pull out.
This, in fact, is the same logic that MoveOn.org invoked in the ad the Times infamously ran the day Gen. David Petraeus testified before Congress. Remove the inflammatory "General Betray Us" language, and the MoveOn argument was pretty much what the Times had been saying: The U.S. was in the middle of an "unwinnable religious civil war," and our leaders were in denial.
MoveOn.org and the Times, of course, weren't alone. In what Keith Olbermann described as a "Walter Cronkite moment," NBC News in November 2006 also branded Iraq a civil war. On air later that same evening, NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell cited experts who were saying that calling the conflict a civil war "could further erode public support for keeping U.S. troops in Iraq."
Yet now NBC too has stopped using civil war. Which earlier this year prompted Ed Gillespie, a senior White House staffer, to send a letter to NBC News President Steve Capus. "Is it still NBC News's carefully deliberated opinion that Iraq is in the midst of a civil war?" Mr. Gillespie asked. "If not, will the network publicly declare that the civil war has ended, or that it was wrong to declare it in the first place?"
Good question, and one worth asking the Times. The fact is, though some of its columnists call Iraq a civil war, the Times hasn't run an editorial saying so since last November. Could that editorial silence be the Gray Lady's way of admitting a mistake? If I were the president, I think I'd take that as a "yes."
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