Tag Archives: Ike

national news, political news

Can the candidates keep a secret?

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Hillary Rodham Clinton and Donald J. Trump — the Democratic and Republican candidates for president, respectively — are set to receive briefings from President Obama’s national security team.

The question keeps bugging me: Will they both receive identical briefings and will they get information that is at matching levels of security clearance?

Trump’s penchant for shooting off his mouth has become somewhat legendary as he campaigns for president. Clinton, too, has problems — allegedly — with protecting national security information.

Of the two, my sense is that Clinton — given her troubles over her use of personal e-mail servers while she was secretary of state — is going to be extra careful with any information she gets from Obama’s national security team.

Trump? I’m not so sure.

This has been a custom dating back to the 1952 when President Truman’s team decided to share this information with Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson, the candidates who sought to succeed Give ‘Em Hell Harry.

The intent is to avoid the new president from getting too much of a surprise when he or she takes office. Harry Truman took office in April 1945 and wasn’t told until 12 days after being sworn in after President Roosevelt’s death that, um, we had been doing research on a secret weapon in New Mexico that might end World War II in a hurry.

It was the atomic bomb!

I’m going to assume — yes, I know that’s a dangerous thing to do — that the information given to Clinton and Trump will be given in the strictest confidence. That means the people giving it will be sworn to secrecy, as well as the people receiving it.

Are they bound by any rule that requires them to give Trump the same intelligence briefing they give to Clinton?

More to the point, can the intelligence briefers and the candidates keep it all of it a secret?

national news, political news

Take this veep job and shove it

Vice-Presidents-of-the-United-States-picture-gallery

It’s been said of vice presidents of the United States that their main responsibility is to keep a bag packed in case they have to attend some foreign dignitary’s funeral.

Sure, they’re next in line to the presidency, but until the past quarter-century or so they’ve been treated with far less respect than they deserve.

As the crusty Texan, the late Vice President John Nance “Cactus Jack” Garner once observed of the office — and this is the sanitized version of what he said — “It ain’t worth a bucket of warm spit.”

CNN commentator Jeff Greenfield has written an excellent essay that suggests that the vice presidency well might be relegated to its former inglorious status when the next president takes office in January 2017,

Here’s his essay: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/2016-election-vice-presidency-donald-trump-hillary-clinton-213886

His premise is a simple one?

The Republican Party’s presumed nominee, Donald J. Trump, possesses an ego so y-u-u-u-g-e that he isn’t likely to take seriously a single word of advice given to him by whomever he selects as vice president. And the Democrats’ probable nominee? Hillary Rodham Clinton would share the White House with a man — her husband, former President Bill Clinton — who would serve as her “Economy Czar” and who would provide all the political and strategic advice she’ll need.

What does that mean for the vice president?

Well, I doubt we’ll see anything like the way, for example, President Lyndon Baines Johnson treated Vice President Hubert Humphrey when he reportedly summoned HHH to his office and lectured him about something while sitting on a commode.

Someone once asked President Dwight Eisenhower about the duties he’d assigned Vice President Richard Nixon. Ike responded, “If you give me a week, I’ll think of something.”

The vice presidency, as Greenfield notes, has become a very important office.

The past three VPs have assumed vital roles in their respective administrations, according to Greenfield. Al Gore became a valuable advisor to President Clinton; Dick Cheney, many have argued, grabbed too much power while serving as No. 2 to President Bush; and Joe Biden has become President Obama’s senior advisor/father confessor.

As Greenfield writes: “None of this means the there’ll be a shortage of veep wannabees. A number of Republicans, especially those without (or soon to be without) an official public role, have already signaled their availability: Rick Perry, Chris Christie, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin. And it’s not hard to imagine that any number of Democrats would readily sign up, however challenging the job might be with Bill Clinton shuttling between East and West Wings.”

Well, at least the next VP will get to live in a nice house.

 

national news, political news

‘Failed presidency’? Hardly

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Ed Rogers’s bias is crystal clear.

The Republican operative, writing in the Washington Post, calls Barack Obama a “failed president.” The president’s alleged “failures,” Rogers asserted, has led to the rise of Donald J. Trump and the crippling of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Read the essay here.

I am acutely aware that there are those who side with Rogers’s assessment of Barack Obama’s two terms in the White House. I also am aware that others disagree with him, who believe that the president’s tenure has been anything but a failure.

I happen to one of the latter.

I’m enjoying, however, listening to the field of Republican presidential candidates harp on the same thing. They decry American “weakness.” They blame the president for it. They say we’re weak militarily, economically, diplomatically, morally . . . have I left anything out?

I shake my head in wonderment at those assertions. Then I realize that they’re all politicians — yes, even Donald J. Trump, Carly Fiorina and Ben Carson — seeking to score points.

That’s what politicians do, even those who say they aren’t politicians.

Democrats do it as well as Republicans.

However, I am going to let history be the judge about whether this presidency has failed.

So far, I’d say “no.”

The economy is stronger than it was when Barack Obama took office; we’ve continued to wage war against terrorists; our military remains the most powerful in the world; we’ve scored diplomatic victories, such as securing a deal that prevents Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons — irrespective of what the critics allege; we’ve kept our adversaries in check; we’ve avoided a second major terrorist attack on U.S. soil.

Has this been a perfect seven years? No. Has any presidency skated to completion with a perfect score? Again, no. Not Ronald Reagan, FDR or Ike. All the great men who’ve held the office have endured missteps and tragedy.

However, this “failed presidency” talk comes in the heat of a most unconventional election year.

I will continue to keep that in mind as the rhetoric gets even hotter as the year progresses.

 

national news, political news

Clinton ‘inevitability’ has vanished

Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton reacts as she is introduced to speak at the Massachusetts Conference for Women in Boston, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2014. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)

There once was a time when Hillary Rodham Clinton was considered a shoo-in to become the second consecutive history-making president in U.S. history.

You’ll recall the narrative.

She would succeed the first African-American president, Barack Obama, by becoming the first female president. She would win in a historic landslide. No one since, say, 1952, when Republican Dwight Eisenhower — who commanded our troops to victory over Hitler during World War II — was considered as destined to become president.

Then a funny thing happened.

Her critics began making points that stuck. They drew blood. The email tempest. Benghazi. Her occasional waffling. Is she trustworthy?

Then along came Bernie Sanders, the independent U.S. senator from Vermont running as a Democrat. He started drawing those huge crowds. He’s blasting the daylights out of big banks, Wall Street and demanding wage equality. He’s a socialist — and let’s cut the crap about “democratic socialist,” which is meant to soften the “s-word.”

Now the once-inevitable president is less so.

Fellow Democrats are now flocking to New Hampshire to say things like “a loss here won’t doom” the candidate. Former Texas Democratic gubernatorial nominee Wendy Davis is among the latest to recite that mantra.

Maybe it won’t. Then gain, maybe it’ll signal a dramatic replay of 2008, when the then-U.S. senator from New York, Clinton, was supposed to be the nominee — only she ran into that young upstart from Illinois, U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, the self-proclaimed “skinny guy with the funny name.”

Does history repeat itself? Are we witnessing a sort of 2.0 version of what occurred eight years ago?

A lot of political analysts still believe Hillary Clinton is the candidate to beat. She has the so-called “ground game” in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. She’s got the party machine lubed and ready to roll for her in other key primary states.

Let’s remember, though, this truth about the 2016 campaign. All the “conventional wisdom” has been tossed into the Dumpster. I’m one of those who believed Clinton was marching straight to the Oval Office. I didn’t foresee what would transpire . . . any more than I foresaw would be happening on the Republican Party side of this contest.

You want unpredictability in a presidential campaign?

I believe we’ve gotten it.

 

national news, political news

How would Ike fare in today’s GOP?

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ike

EISENHOWER STATE PARK, Texas — Sitting here amid the trees that are rustling in a light breeze, my mind tends to wander.

I’m thinking at this moment about the man after whom this beautiful park is named: General of the Army Dwight David Eisenhower, 34th president of the United States of America.

I am thinking especially of how he might react to what has become of his beloved Republican Party. My hunch? He’d be furious at what has happened to it.

Think of any contemporary Republican today who’d have the courage, as Ike did in 1960 — as he was preparing to leave after two terms in the White House — to warn the nation of the perils of the “military-industrial complex.”

Ike knew all about that. He retired from the Army with five — not just four — stars on his uniform. He earned general of the Army status merely for leading Allied forces in their successful fight against Nazi/Fascist tyranny in Europe.

When he ordered the D-Day invasion at Normandy, France, he wrote two statements, one in the event our forces succeeded — and one in the event they failed. He obviously never delivered the second set of remarks.

We’ve heard much this election cycle about “anointment” of presidential nominees, namely Hillary Rodham Clinton. In 1952, just seven years after returning home from World War II, Ike was anointed by the Republican Party to be its nominee. He won in a landslide and was re-elected four years later in similarly impressive fashion.

He wouldn’t like the rancor that has developed today. He wouldn’t condone efforts to shut down the government to suit the tastes of a minority wing of his party. He wouldn’t tolerate the intense partisanship that stalls important projects that need to be done for all Americans.

Ike’s signature achievement as president arguably was the development of the massive interstate highway system that connected a nation along its three coasts. These days, members of his GOP are fighting efforts just to maintain the system that President Eisenhower pushed through Congress.

Ike’s birthplace in Denison is just a few miles south of the park that carries his name. We visited it once years ago, so we likely won’t return on this visit. We’re going to enjoy the park named in this great man’s honor.

And I’ll keep wishing his once-great party eventually returns to its senses.

 

 

political news

JFK would be a Republican … and Ike would be a Democrat

Ted Cruz says John F. Kennedy would be a Republican.

The U.S. senator from Texas, and a GOP candidate for president, said there’s “no room” in today’s Democratic Party for a tax-cutter like JFK.

Really? And in my view Dwight Eisenhower would be laughed out of the Republican Party today. It was Ike, you’ll recall, who warned us during his farewell message as president in 1960 of the “military-industrial complex” and the danger of making it too powerful.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/ted-cruz-believes-jfk-would-be-republican-today?cid=sm_tw_msnbc

How would that fly today in the world of the neocons who relish the idea of going to war rather than solving problem through diplomacy?

Cruz, though, I believe offers an incorrect attribution to a famous political quote from the 1960s — which was before Cruz was born.

According to Cruz: “I would point out that in the 1960s, one of the most powerful, eloquent defenders of tax cuts was John F. Kennedy. As JFK said, ‘Some men see things as they are and ask why; I see things that never were and ask why not.’”

Actually, senator, that observation came from another famous Democrat, U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, who recited that mantra as he campaigned for the presidency in 1968.

Yes, the parties have changed since those days.

Let’s not single out one politician and one political party. If you look at the bigger picture, you’ll also find that today’s Republican Party isn’t very welcoming either to those who saw the world differently than many see it today.