Tag Archives: Dwight Eisenhower

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Yes, GOP needs to ‘change’

Rand Paul says the Republican Party needs a radical makeover if it hopes to win the presidency in his lifetime.

Interesting, coming from a Kentucky senator whose philosophies have played a part in the GOP’s losing strategy the past two presidential election cycles.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/rand-paul-without-change-gop-will-not-win-again-in-my-lifetime/

Paul says the party cannot “tinker around the edges.” It needs radical change, he said.

Here’s an idea: Why not return to the ways of the Republican old guard, you know, the guys who won while running behind the likes of George H.W. Bush, Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush?

They’re all different, to be sure. Ike was a war hero who was destined to win the presidency in 1952. He governed from the middle and helped oversee a period of unprecedented prosperity during the bulk of the 1950s. Richard Nixon he turned out to be a disgrace and doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same breath with Ike, Reagan or the Bushes.

Ronald Reagan was a true-blue conservative. However, he didn’t demonize his foes. He befriended them after hours and worked with Democrats whenever opportunities presented themselves.

George H.W. Bush — in my mind — was arguably the most qualified man to serve as president. War hero, ambassador to the U.N., congressman, special envoy to China, party chairman, CIA director and vice president. He also was a mainstream politician who also could work with the other guys.

W. campaigned as a “compassionate conservative” and while he made some mistakes — the Iraq War and his hands-off financial policies that contributed to the economic collapse at the end of his presidency — also sought to govern reasonably.

The change Paul has called for cannot take his party down the do-nothing road. Government has to play a role in helping people. Republicans and Democrats need to look proactively common ground instead of looking for reasons to oppose one another.

Paul is calling for a “more diverse party.” How he’ll seek that diversity remains a mystery, given the GOP’s insistence on laws that make voting more difficult, seeking to block efforts to improve the immigration system, continuing to meddle in people’s personal lives and putting the interests of wealthy Americans above those of the rest of us.

I want the Republican Party to reshape itself. Honest. It’s got to emerge in the manner that Rand Paul says he envisions, and not in the form of some crazy cabal of kooks — many of whom have taken the Grand Old Party hostage.

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President vs. Military: Nothing new in Gates book

My friends on the right are having a good time these days dissecting former Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s assessment of Barack Obama’s presidency, particularly the part about the president’s strained relations with the military. He writes about it in his memoir, “Duty.”

I have been wondering about that. Is it really unique to this president, or to the office, that the commander in chief would have difficulty with the brass?

I tend to think not.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2014/01/15/gates_obama_was_suspicious_of_militarys_motives.html

The link attached here contains part of an interview that Sean Hannity had with Gates in which Hannity seems to seek to lure Gates into acknowledging some kind of special animus between this White House and the Pentagon.

Again, is that really new and unique to this administration?

I am going to share a brief personal recollection on that very subject.

My late uncle, Tom Kanelis, was a career Army officer. He enlisted in 1943 and then received his commission some time after that. He then served during the Korean War, where he saw all kinds of hell as an infantry officer with the 2nd Infantry Division. He would serve a total of 27 years in the Army before retiring in 1970 with rank of colonel.

His last post was at the Pentagon, where he served as a staff officer for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He attended many high-level briefings with the Joint Chiefs and their civilian bosses, namely the defense secretary and his staff.

I asked Tom about the brass’s view of civilian authority. He was pretty unequivocal. The brass resented all civilian authority, period, he said. I was shocked to hear that. “What about Ike?” I asked of President Dwight Eisenhower, the former general of the Army who — as you will recall — played a huge role in defeating Hitler’s forces during World War II. Didn’t matter, Tom said. Once Ike took off his uniform and and then entered politics, he added, he became one of “them.”

Yes, this is just one example. Other officers have different views of different presidents. Ronald Reagan is held up as the recent example of a commander in chief who had huge respect among the ranks of the brass.

I also know that the brass at the highest levels won’t say directly whether they disagree with a civilian edict. They take an oath to follow lawful orders without questioning them.

Gates’s revelations about Barack Obama and his top military commanders doesn’t surprise me in the least. They’ve existed at some level throughout the history of the Republic and will exist for as long as the nation exists.

That means forever.

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Handshake should be an ice breaker

The Obama-Castro handshake at the memorial service for Nelson Mandela has drawn plenty of chattering from the left and the right.

I’ve long thought the time had come for the United States to thaw its frozen relationship with a tiny island nation that no longer poses any serious threat to this country.

President Barack Obama shook the hand of Cuba’s President Raul Castro. It was a brief, spontaneous moment at the start of ceremonies honoring the life of South Africa’s Nelson Mandela. That’s all it was.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/12/11/the_obama-castro_handshake_dont_stop_there_120920.html

Republican pols bristled at the moment. Democratic pols loved it.

For more than five decades, American presidents starting with Dwight Eisenhower have ignored Cuba, a country taken over in a revolution led by communist despot Fidel Castro, Raul’s older brother. The Castros overthrew an equally despicable tyrant and U.S. officials thought initially life would get better for Cubans. It didn’t.

Fidel Castro cozied up to the Soviet Union, allowing the Big Bear to introduce intercontinental ballistic missiles to the island. U.S. spy planes discovered them, President John Kennedy quarantined the island and threatened to blow the place to smithereens if the Cubans and Soviets didn’t take the missiles down; the other side blinked and the crisis was over.

Then the Soviet Union disintegrated. Cuban remains a communist dictatorship. But what precisely is the threat that Cuba presents to this country? None as far as I can see.

The United States maintains diplomatic relations with nations with equally dismal human rights records as Cuba. The People’s Republic of China comes to mind; Vietnam’s human rights record is pretty abysmal. We still have relations with Zimbabwe, yes?

A fleeting handshake between two leaders doesn’t amount to anything in the context of where the greeting occurred. Nelson Mandela fostered a feeling of forgiveness and compassion when he came out of prison in 1990. He had been held captive for 27 years because he fought for the rights of the black majority in his country.

I think it’s time for the United States — which has left some travel restrictions to Cuba — to finally open the door to full relations with a country that poses no threat to the world’s greatest military and economic power.