Category Archives: Eight Decades of Insights
EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS #22
What does President Obama bring to the table? Given a teleprompter and a prepared speech he will deliver a magnificent piece of oratory. A performance that few in our history could match. But what else? He may project likeability but he is not. He is quick to anger. Carries grudges even those of his family. His treatment of the Supreme Court Judges in one of his State of The Union speeches was unprecedented. Remember his treatment of Representative Ryan. Not the work of a kind or gentle man. He cannot think on his feet. You have seen how he does without the prepared speech on a teleprompter. He is very thin skinned and cannot take criticism. He would prefer to do nothing if he can’t have his way. He does not even meet with his
I can’t stand to close this piece without debunking President Obama’s bragging rights. I know something about preparing operations for Presidential approval. I did that for President Reagan for the last two years of his administration. Take drones. They were developed and flying operations long before Obama’s tenure. All he did was approve the increase in their use. I agree with their use for it saves lives of our men and women in uniform. The only hard part for the President to decide is what is the political and foreign affairs fallout. The same is true of the Usama bin Laden affair. There is political risk in both approving or disapproving the staff recommendation to go. If it fails, ala Carter’s attempt to rescue hostages in Teheran, there will be negative fallout from the opposition. If the staff recommendation to go is disapproved there will be, sometime later, attacks from the opposition. Being President is a very hard role to fill. Sitting around the Situation Room with anxious looks for photo ops is not necessary. The credit goes solely to those who execute and face the real risks. Nor is leaking classified intelligence successes necessary to campaigning for re-election. Last night you saw the real President Obama who is not used to people talking back. Most supreme leaders and emperors are like that. Last night was no surprise.
EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 21
Meeting with President Reagan, Vice President Bush, Deputy National Security Adviser Frank Carlucci and General Colin Powell in the Oval Office.
MY PERSONAL VIEW OF PRESIDENT REAGAN
In December of 1986, Frank Carlucci pulled me aside in the coffee hour following a worship service and told me President Reagan had asked him to be his National Security Adviser. He was putting together an entirely new Security Council Staff and wanted me to do all the intelligence, covert action, counter terrorism and counter narcotics staff work on his staff. I greatly admired Frank Carlucci and would have followed him anywhere. I reported for duty just after the first of the year. What follows is my personal view of President Reagan whom I would soon meet for the first time.
My motivation for writing this after decades of silence is the similarity between where President Carter and President Obama have led this nation. Neither one of them could ever have led us out of where we were then and now. But I have nothing but praise for President Reagan. I have several unflattering comments I could make about people in his Cabinet but silence is the better choice. I will say that Cabinet government cannot work without a strong, committed presidential staff. In my time, that was the National Security Council Staff. Cabinet members are soon captured by the organization they lead and soon are presenting the organizational viewpoint rather than that of the president. Please don’t believe I was an important person in the White House or that I was close to the president. In this case, admiration flowed one way. I was in his presence several times in the Situation Room and the Oval Office, but less so in the latter. My role was to provide the staff preparation for National Security Council meetings that fell within my area of responsibility. Okay, enough of the establishing of credentials.
In my first meeting with President Reagan in the Oval Office, he immediately made me feel at home and that he wanted to hear what I had to say. After his opening humorous story or joke, he said, “Frank, unless you tell me what is happening, I have no way of finding out.” He wanted us to know we could say what we thought without holding back. Bad news as well as good news is all relevant to the president. He was always gracious and sincerely interested in the well-being of his staff. I never saw him treat anyone with anger or sarcasm. He was extremely loyal to Cabinet members and Pentagon officials even when they deserved being sent to the wood shed. Keeping government organizations on the course the president wants, not what they want, is more than a full-time job.
Foreign officials couldn’t understand that the Reagan Revolution was first and foremost for Americans. His vision of the ‘Shining City on a Hill’ was not for nice-sounding rhetoric read from a teleprompter. It was call to all of us to throw off the cloak of doom and gloom and to remember our heritage, remembering also that government growth diminishes individual freedom. This is the president who destroyed Communism, rebuilt our military power, restored faith in capitalism and the free market, spoke truthfully, practiced transparency, and was respected by both parties. The most powerful man in the world never thought of himself in those terms. He understood those of us from blue collar backgrounds. The last quote I remember from him was, “Barry, I want Americans to be able to walk down any street in the world and be safe.” He cared about all of us. I’m glad he is not here to see Americans slaughtered in Libya while Carter, sorry, I mean Obama, dithers.
http://www.factsandfictions.com The author of the Jack Brandon Thriller Series.
EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 20
POINT OF NO RETURN
When your candidate loses the election, there is a period when you hope the guy you didn’t vote for surprises you and is successful. Each of us has our own POINT OF NO RETURN when you realize this isn’t going to work and you try to get the ship of state turned around or at least reduce the speed. I had several indicators the voyage was not going well. They were more than bumps in the road. OBAMACARE was the first. It wasn’t the attempt to fix health care. I realized the system was broken and needed fixed but not the way it ended up being done. No debate, discussion, openness to amendments, and total obscurity when we were promised transparency. The third person in the succession list for the Presidency said, “You have to pass it to see what’s in it.” That was the beginning.
Then we had the world apology tour to put our past uniqueness and power for the good into perspective for the world. Followed by the unwarranted snubbing of old allies like the United Kingdom and Israel and new ones like Poland. What kind of a President would make it one of his first acts in office to send back the bust of Churchill, a revered hero of the West?
The foreign tour was followed by the unprecedented growth and use of the power of the Executive Office, the attempt to close Gitmo, put previously cleared CIA officers under investigation for the use of torture, i.e. water boarding and other harsh interrogation techniques that saved hundreds maybe thousands of American lives. With the worst Attorney General in my lifetime turned loose to impose his unique style of law and order we had Fast and Furious, the de facto granting of citizenship rights to the underpants bomber, the push to try the moslem thugs responsible for 9/11 in New York City. Finally THE ATTORNEY GENERAL was held IN CONTEMPT OF CONGRESS for the first time in our history. THE ATTACK ON CAPITALISM AND THE FREE MARKET SYSTEM were followed with the loading of the previously non-partisan National Labor Relations Board with Union supporters that tried to stop Boeing from building planes in Charleston, South Carolina, because the state was a Right to Work state.
This President does not like meetings where records are kept and many people witness the proceedings. As a senator, he was the chairman of the Afghanistan Committee that never held a meeting. To get around his own Cabinet he appointed thirty plus czars who do not need Senate confirmation and cannot be summoned to Congress to reply to questions or give testimony. They also do not meet as group. Written records of the President’s inter action with his secret “cabinet” will not be available to historians. Perhaps the most notorious of the czars was Van Jones, the Green Czar and a self-avowed Communist and a signer of the Truther Petition (a document that claims the U.S. Government was involved in a 9/11 cover-up and complicit in the attack in order to establish an excuse for the Iraq and Afghan wars). Valerie Jarrett was probably responsible for putting Jones in the President’s inner circle. After quietly leaving the White House, Van Jones showed up as one of the leaders of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
There were other strong indicators such as: Failure to get even one Democrat to vote for his budget submissions; announcement for troop withdrawal dates in Iraq and Afghanistan; the total lack of a plan to reduce the deficit; and the new mission for NASA (help Muslim states to feel proud of their contributions to science and math). But the big one for me was the President’s open mike mistake when he was talking in low confidential tones to Dmitry Medvedev. President Obama asked Medvedev to tell Putin that he (Obama) would have more flexibility after his re-election. Medvedev answered he would pass on the message. That an American President would pass such a message to a man that is no friend of the United States is the worst transgression I have ever personally heard of in my life in government. That was my Point of No Return. Do you have one?
http://www.factsandfictions.com author of the Jack Brandon thriller novels
INSIGHTS FROM EIGHT DECADES #6
CENTRALIZATION
President George W. Bush signs the Homeland Security Appropriations Act of 2004 on October 1, 2003. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Does every civilization contain the seeds of its destruction? Maybe the historians are right when they publish learned tomes describing trends and signals of certain decline in highly organized cultures. Conservatives sometimes claim when the ‘takers’ out number and out vote the ‘givers’ the end is coming. Maybe, maybe not. Another signal I’ve recently heard is fascination or obsession with spectator sports or games is a sure sign we’re sledding downhill. Again, maybe. I don’t find either of those or a number of others, persuasive.
My own worry is the embedded drive in humans to continue the process of centralization. Defined as combining segments of government, business or religion into fewer and fewer segments where fewer and fewer people make decisions. This process expands the scope of control beyond the ability of anyone to be an effective manager and steward of public funds. It is all part of the desire to make things better. Watch, when things go ‘wrong’ the cry is, put someone in charge. Make someone responsible. 9/11 gave us that opportunity. Something was wrong. How else could such blow strike our homeland? A conservative government, under President Bush, moved to fix the problem. By, of course, putting pieces of government together under a central control. To start with the pieces of government in their separateness, were not well managed. Many of them were already too large.
Today Homeland Security, is an example of centralizing management until you reach numbing inefficiency. Another example is the DNI organization. The Director of National Intelligence is about the worst fix anyone could have made to improve the collection, analysis and dissemination of intelligence. I defy anyone to prove money is being saved or that the product produced has been improved. Top managers of such over centralized organizations don’t have a clue to what is happening in the trenches. Their main concern is often getting enough reporting from the far reaches of their commands to make them look credible, especially when briefing the President or appearing before an aggressive group of journalists or legislators.
Unfortunately both our main political parties are vulnerable to the drive to fix things by centralization. National Health Care or Obamacare, Dodd Frank, over reaches of OPA and the Department of Energy are examples of good intentions leading to disastrous unforeseen consequences.
While some centralization is necessary, decentralization is the sure path to renewed growth and vitality in both business and government. Good people in charge of manageable organizations can fix problems. Over centralization cannot.
by the author of the Jack Brandon thriller series http://www.factsandfictions.com
Related articles
- Eight Decades of Insights 32 (factsandfictions.com)
- The High Cost Of Maintaining ‘Homeland Security’ (warnewsupdates.blogspot.com)
Barry Kelly | Facts and Fictions 