The Bernoulli Effect

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January 12, 2007

Baldfaced Insults And Mental Sloth

Robert A. George on the condescending insult Senator Boxer hurled in Secretary Rice's face (via Andrew Stuttaford at the Corner):

[...P]erhaps it might be good to remind the public about why a wealthy white Democratic woman of privilege has no problem supporting public schools that leave poor black kids uneducated and prepped for a lives of low wages and likely incarceration.

The staggering hypocrisy of the usual Democratic talking points has gone way past the numb stage: "Republicans are minority-oppressing racists." But which party had a stranglehold on the south during the entire Jim Crow era? The Democratic party. "Republicans are responsible for our bad education system because they're heartless and stingy." But which party has dominated education--both in the teachers' colleges and in the schools--for the past 100 years? The Democratic party.

I'm afraid there's a critical mass of ignorance in this country that will be very difficult to overcome.

January 11, 2007

Department of State: Effective Only At Backbiting Political Infighting?

Our Department of State continues to frustrate, aggravate and disappoint. Michael Rubin over at The Corner:

The Washington Post reports that Condoleezza Rice has appointed Timothy Carney, a former U.S. ambassador to Sudan, to be reconstruction coordinator for Iraq. This is a curious choice. Carney left Iraq after just an eight week tenure marked by a number of press leaks from his office. Following his departure, he made several scathing comments to media outlets like the BBC and wrote op-eds very critical of U.S. military involvement in reconstruction and emphasis on security. This may not bode well now for his ability to coordinate with the U.S. military.

Rubin follows up on Carney with an excerpt from the Weekly Standard:

Carney played a role in appointing former deputy minister Ahmed Rashid Gailini to lead the Ministry of Industry, until Iraqi colleagues raised such a clamor about the man's Baath connections that Carney removed him and put Gailini's leadership to a vote of subordinate managers. Gailini lost in a landslide to another man, Mohammed Abdul Mujib, a finance expert from another ministry and a less offensive Baathist.

And Robert Novak over at Townhall.com has this:

Republicans in Congress, who do not want to be quoted, tell me the State Department under Secretary Condoleezza Rice is a mess. That comes at a time when the U.S. global position is precarious. While attention focuses on Iraq, American diplomacy is being tested worldwide -- in Afghanistan, Iran, Israel, Korea and Sudan. The judgment by thoughtful Republicans is that Rice has failed to manage that endeavor.

Novak's entire column details the political, self-centered, power-hungry character of the State Department--and the ineffective attempts of the Bush administration to bend State to its will.

Everyone likes to note how being a senator is detrimental to one's presidential chances. Given how damaged Colin Powell and Condi Rice are now, politically, it looks like the position of Secretary of State is even more dangerous to one's political future. Just remember last year this time: a lot of people (including myself) were gaga over the possibility of Condi running for president. Not anymore.

January 08, 2007

Bush's Strategy Change

Michael Barone foresees a bitter battle over Iraq in the coming session of Congress. Looking at the Democratic side, he confirms the obvious: there is a significant portion of the party who want nothing more than to mimic the actions of their congressional predecessors from 1975, and pull the funding of the Iraq forces. As far as the Republicans go, Barone says that George W. Bush does not consider the election results a mandate to withdraw, but rather an expression of voters' dissatisfaction with the results of the Republicans' war strategy. And Barone notes that Bush is considering changes:

Since the success of the major military operations in May 2003, he has delegated power to appointees he trusts and has mostly ratified their plans. Far from micromanaging the military, he and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld seem to have approved pretty much everything that Centcom head Gen. John Abizaid and the rotating military commanders in Iraq have proposed. They seem not to have taken the advice of military historian Eliot Cohen in his book "Supreme Command" that wartime commanders in chief should constantly question, probe, prod and, yes, even overrule their generals, as Lincoln, Clemenceau, Churchill and Ben Gurion did.

Emphasis mine. Cohen is right: Delegation is fine and necessary trait in a leader, but one thing you cannot delegate is responsibility. The commander-in-chief must still do just that--command.