Unity
is its own virtue. It does not matter whether it leads to good things or bad things, just having a Government of National Unity is itself a good thing. How do I know this? NPR just told me so.
I'm driving home and make the mistake of turning on the radio. NPR is interviewing a historian (Robert something or other) to discuss the issue of whether all the Clinton "retreads" are really the change Obama promised.* After all, when John F. Kennedy came in he brought a new generation of advisors and (mostly) did not rely on Truman appointees. The historian does a generally good job of pointing out that the Clinton people are still a change from Bush, but then goes off for a ride on the Unity Pony and rides straight into stupid.
Specifically, the historian said that where Obama is like Kennedy is in his decision to form a Government of National Unity (or as I like to call it GovNUn for its total emptiness as a governing philosophy). The historian noted that Kennedy brought in a number of Republicans, including Robert McNamara at Defense and McGeorge Bundy to be National Security Advisor. The clear implication from Mr. Historian was that this was a great thing Kennedy did and that Obama is mirroring it. Apparently the fact that McNamara and Bundy are the architects of arguably the greatest foreign policy failure of the U.S. in the 20th Century is irrelevant. Kennedy was brilliant for having selected them because he was above party and built his GovNUn. Obama=Kennedy and so Obama has shown the same level of brilliance.
That this level of brilliance previously left 58,000 Americans dead was irrelevant (and unmentioned).
* It's too early to tell whether this turn of the media, questioning whether Obama really is change (complete with the false comparison to Clinton instead of Bush) is merely a phase or part of a more sinister pattern.
Update: The historian was Robert Dallek and while I couldn't find a transcript, you can listen to the interview here. To be clear, the McNamara/Bundy discussion is not all that is discussed, but it stuck out because of how jarring it was to hear them held up as an example to be followed.
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They can repeat it until they're black and blue in the face.
No unity, no how, no way.
How utterly boring.
Great Gosh A'mighty
I just can't get over this stuff. (Probly bcz I'm a hated boomer. But WEV.)
I remember. And I knit! (if by "knit' you understand "crochet".)
We can't afford not to have single-payer!
really?
the decision to bring in Robert McNamara at Defense and McGeorge Bundy was PRAISED???
I don't know enough about Bundy,
but I do know that history has not been kind to McNamara. Heck, McNamara hasn't been kind to McNamara.
Yes, really!
I almost drove my car off the freeway. It was praised and by a historian. Vietnam wasn't mentioned at all. The word wasn't even said. The impression I got was that the historian thought it was good mostly because Kennedy had done it and to be like Kennedy is to be good. Stunning.
"Do what you feel in your heart to be right -- for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't. " - Eleanor Roosevelt
Stop listening to NPR before you wreck your car!
MacNamara and Bundy were Republicans and so the best and the brightest were... A precedent? A good precedent? A model to follow?
The mind reels.
O/T: What the hell has happened to NPR?
Was it part of the whole Bush politicizing public broadcasting (specifically PBS)? I mean, it's just a moderate version of the MSM now. Even five years ago, I don't remember it being this bad. I don't know where to get my news anymore. The Guardian reported their opinions as facts without any evidence (HRC is an avowed racist hellbent on making sure we know Obama is...black!), The Independent obsessively injected racist motive to everything HRC said (e.g., during the SC debate Clinton countered Obama's Walmart charge with Rezko and the paper honestly wrote that she had made him look like a "sleazy...black man"), and the BBC absurdly repeated the RFK smear (never mentioning McCain said something similar just days later). Hell even Democracy Now got on the Obama bandwagon (although not as bad as the others). And these were my fail-safes.
Anyway, I'm most pissed about NPR. I've loved it since I was a kid and now it's like some pod station.
Gates
and it seems that Obama is fixing to keep Gates. Sheesh. Versailles
lives.
Can you get the transcript for that?
I have the feeling a transcript will provide endless hours of amusement.
Link to Interview Added (Audio, Not T-Script)
Couldn't find a t-script, but I added a link to the audio for the interview. It's less than four minutes. A lot is covered in that four minutes and I realized in re-listening to it that the McNamara/Bundy discussion is very quick, but it's still striking that it's mentioned as being a good thing (and without the word Vietnam ever being uttered).
"Do what you feel in your heart to be right -- for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't. " - Eleanor Roosevelt
What Kennedy would have done is unknowable
IIRC at the time of Kennedy's death we had +/- 12,000 people in theater, about half of them actually in Vietnam. Johnson was the one who implemented the big escalation, to around 485,000 in-country at the peak in 1967. While the "Best and Brightest" were certainly culpable for their contribution, the responsibility for decisions was all Johnson's. LBJ chose to keep Kennedy's staff rather than bring his own people in; with the same staff, would Kennedy have made the same decisions?
I've read the histories, as well as having lived through those times as an adult. In my judgment while the Cabinet and advisers played substantial roles and each of those who supported escalation are in their own way at fault, by far the greatest responsibility rests with Johnson.
Every President thinks they've found people who are best suited to achieve their ends, including selection of people they can - should they choose - dominate and manipulate. Who Obama selects is, in my opinion, less important than what he intends to do with them. Our best clues to that will come from Omaba himself, and not so much from the history of the people he selects to work for him.