LEGENDARY INTELLECTUAL GIANTS
The many post-election analyses included a lamentation that the 2004 Presidential campaign lacked in intellectual discourse.
Given that Borders, B. Dalton and other major booksellers had special arrays of books about not just the candidates but the issues as perceived by any number of Theodore White wannabes, from all points on the political spectrum, there was no lack of advocacy. And, many of these books sold in thousands of copies, most probably to advocates of particular points of view, so there was a measure of acceptance.
What was really missing was intellectual influence, a too-rare ingredient in campaigning today. The modern era change agents clog the airwaves, but it’s not just the sheer volume of their opinions which dilutes debate, it is the immediacy.
The most learned of writers can spend weeks crafting a raison d’etat which will be reduced by campaign staffs to sound bites – I have a plan for … -- while the pundits will give quick off-the-top-of-the-head analyses agreeing or disagreeing depending on how closely the intellectual hews to their own line of thought. While newspapers will devote more of the daily “news hole” to the analysis of issues, reporters are notorious for scanning rather than reading position papers, and producing reams rather than reason.
The way campaigns are constructed, issues papers are written – wrongly – for mass consumption and redistillation by PR staffs.
The hard objective should be to influence decision makers – and in a campaign, the pollster may have more influence on what the candidate chooses to say than the expert.
This type of communication – in the quest for influence – occurs less quietly but more frequently in day-to-day decision making. Often to our regret, the person or group who have the final say – or chop – on intelligence and other analyses which reaches the final decision maker – will be influenced by what they think a President or other decision-maker wants to hear. Eg, Iraq.
Being last past the gate usually determines influence; so does timing.
I spent an entire day in front of a typewriter at the United Nations, continually scaling down the length of a briefing paper for Secretary of State George Schultz, who was to address issues related to the financial networks of terrorists and traffickers. Schultz was in meetings throughout the day, and my briefing memo went from one hour, to 30 minutes, to 10 minutes. Finally, I was told to meet Schultz as he emerged from an extended meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, and brief the Secretary as he walked from one meeting to the next. The man, obviously exhausted from the labors of the day, took the briefing paper without looking at it, and asked me to tell him the principal points he should make. “There are three critical points, Mr. Secretary”. I took a seat along the side, and wanted to applaud Schultz, who was the opening speaker but had not read the paper, when he began, very vigorously, “Mr. Chairman, there are three critical points on which the United States must have agreement.” Suddenly, an issue which was in some doubt a few moments before was unanimously agreed to by the G-8 foreign ministers. His very strong espousal pre-empted further debate – which Schultz would have been too tired to continue.
More commonly, an expert prays that any vestige of his work reaches the decision-maker, and even more fervently hopes that it has influence.
The well-turned phrase is the goal of every Presidential speech writer, but their expertise may have little bearing on the public reaction. A great many people can cite passages from the Inaugural address of President John F. Kennedy – ask not what your country can do for you – and every historian knows the impact of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s advice to a Depression-burdened America – we have nothing to fear but fear itself. Ironically, the ashes of Watergate obscure one of the better inaugural addresses by Richard M Nixon – we are caught in war, wanting peace, we are torn by division, wanting unity… Abraham Lincoln extolled the moral weight of the battle against slavery.
Now, the world awaits the theme which George W. Bush will sound on the Capitol steps.
That brings me to another part of the problem in fashioning intellectual discourse. We are in many ways back to the days of Ahkenaton and other pharaohs. Not only must every ranking official be on message, no one else can share the pedestal. True, the President takes the blame for every malady, not just war and peace, but the price of eggs in Duluth. So, advisers argue, he should be on point for every positive development.
Takes a strong man to not only hear that solitary voice of reason, but to let people take credit for their labors. We owe Harry Truman for many things, not least his ability to recognize genius and give it full warrant.
Lyndon Johnston took much deserved credit fore the war on poverty, but he and every other knowledgable Washington knows the seeds were sown by Daniel Patrick Moynihan when he was a White House aide.
Henry Kissinger argued for an open door to China, very risky politically, and for the cease fire with North Viet Nam, and led both initiatives. Condi Rice, unfortunately, does not have the intellectual credentials or acknowledged international savvy of Kissinger, Schultz, Colin Powell and others. Israeli PM Abba Eban wrote what I still consider to be the most reasoned analysis of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
But, all of them stand below a very small group of intellectual giants who became legends in their own time.
George C Marshall was a great general, but the post-war battle he waged for the economic and political recovery of Europe – the Marshall Plan – is his legacy to a world which continues to prosper from his foresight. Marshall understood that the 1919 decision to punish Germany financially had paved the way for World War II, and understood instinctively that the path to world peace passed through Berlin.
American diplomat George F Kennan, based in Moscow in 1944-45, sounded the strongest alarms about the true long-term intentions of the Soviet Union, then a major ally, indeed sounding much Like Churchill. Kennan’s so-called Long Telegram, and his “X” paper laid the foundation for a policy of containment against a supposed friendly force, which became the basis of US foreign policy. But, he suffered many “slings and arrows” in an America which resolutely did not want to hear about more world conflict.
Equally influential, and perhaps more so in both positive and negative ways, was Paul Nitze, who died at age 97 in late October, Nitze helped implement the Marshall Plan, and became a principal architect of post-war policies toward the Soviets, also urging a policy of containment. Nitze later achieved reknown as an arms control negotiator, eg, his famous walk-in-the-woods with his Soviet counterpart to break an arms deadlock. The powers that presided rejected that agreement, but Nitze retained his first-among-equals status among the heavyweights of foreign policy thinkers. His image tarnished at the end of the Fifties when his analyses prompted the belief of a serious US missile gap, which Kennedy exploited – and learned later that it was not true. Still, Nitze rebounded and continued to advise Presidents up through the Reagan Administration. A conservative, he nevertheless was critical of policy on both Afghanistan and Iraq.
Why was this man without portfolio (formal position) heard on so many issues? Because he was a great thinker, a man of incredible insight and acumen. Like Marshall and Kennan.
Nitze’s ability to grasp a problem in all of its dimensions prompted an invitation for him to participate in a series of round-table discussions on terrorism in the mid-Nineties. I was fortunate enough to be assigned to his group and to join him for lunch (I was chief of financial intelligence, focused on terrorism, but the Georgetown Center for International and Strategic Studies also seemed to have based their invitation an some papers I wrote, which I now find absurdly arrogant: Anthrobiology as The New Political Synthesis; Changing Values in International Strategies; The Future of Liberal Democracy, etc.) Fortunately, I had enough common sense to listen to Nitze and was profoundly proud that he thought I had something worth saying.
They were intellectual giants – and their papers are worth reading today.
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