White House Chronicle

News Analysis With a Sense of Humor

  • Home
  • King’s Commentaries
  • Random Features
  • Photos
  • Public Speaker
  • WHC Episodes
  • About WHC
  • Carrying Stations
  • ME/CFS Alert
  • Contact Us

Rattled by the Ghosts of Presidents Past

October 1, 2016 by Llewellyn King 1 Comment

The ghosts of presidents past are haunting me.

I look at Hillary Clinton and she morphs into Jimmy Carter: all facts and figures and no direction.

I look at Donald Trump and he morphs into George W. Bush: all intention without knowing how things work.

Carter was earnest to a fault. He loved to bore into the details even when he should have been thinking about big, directional issues. Former Energy Secretary James Schlesinger told me how Carter had gotten lost in the intricate scientific issues of catalytic converters at a White House meeting. Knowing how many great issues were awaiting Carter’s attention, Schlesinger was appalled.

Bush’s weakness was what could easily become Trump’s weakness: Bush simply didn’t know enough about, well, anything. He was not a stupid man; actually, he was very quick. But he did not come to the office with a well-stocked mind. That left him vulnerable to all kinds of agenda-driven experts, especially his vice president, Dick Cheney.

Bush simply had never been curious. Cheney, with a lot of knowledge and a hard edge, took foreign policy upon himself. Bush did not wrest it from him until it was too late.

Carter’s passion for detail worked well in forming the Camp David Accords, but was disastrous in leading the country forward. As the result of a dinner party conversation with the journalist Rod MacLeish, Carter became fascinated with France’s constitution, known as the Constitution of the Fifth Republic. It combines presidential and parliamentary concepts.

MacLeish told me that the interest persisted until the very day of the announcement of the Camp David Accords, when Carter called him with more questions, ahead of CIA briefing on France’s constitution. MacLeish blurted out his surprise that the president would find time for this exercise on a day so critical to his presidency. Carter allowed that as he had scheduled a briefing on the constitution from the CIA later that day, he intended to be prepared for it. “That’s how I work, Rod,” he told MacLeish, as reported to me. Wow!

I doubt that Clinton would be that detail-compulsive, but she is a policy wonk and policy wonks get lost in policy, usually forgetting the ultimate purpose. Like Carter, Clinton seems to have no idea about how all the policy bits will fit into a grand scheme for the country in the years ahead.

Two other concerns about Clinton are her penchant for secrecy and her tendency to pettiness, demonstrated in her e-mails with Sidney Blumenthal. But overshadowing those are her inability to synthesize information into a course of action: Carter redux.

A Trump presidency would appear to be hugely vulnerable to having large parts of it taken over by surrogates simply because they knew more. The secretaries of state, defense and treasury could easily become fiefs, where the president was left out of major decisions.

More worrying ought to be who Trump would put into these positions. He has made much of his potential Supreme Court nominees, but has given nary a hint about who would staff his administration.

The job hopefuls are all over Washington, burnishing their resumes and hoping that they will get on the short lists. The fear is that the very obvious players who surround Trump will make the decisions, led by ideologue Steve Bannon, assisted by those whose stars have dimmed: Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani and Chris Christie.

Trump, like Bush, appears to lack curiosity and without curiosity, there cannot be a well-stocked mind. Nothing, but nothing, we have heard from Trump suggests wide knowledge or a thirst for it.

By contrast, Clinton clearly has a mind jammed with facts. But do they line up as a way forward or are they like Carter’s catalytic converter, a distraction? Is it to be a blind date with Trump or a reprise of a kind of factual gridlock, which we saw in Clinton’s failed healthcare plan?

The ghosts rattle me.

For InsideSources

Photo credit: Giant President Heads by artist David Adicke, photograph by WayTru 2007. Used under the Creative Commons 2.0 license.

Filed Under: King's Commentaries Tagged With: Camp David Accords, Donald Trump, George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, Jimmy Carter, US Election 2016

Perry Peddling the Mythological Texas

August 22, 2012 by White House Chronicle Leave a Comment

The manner of a man's arriving is not without consequence. Tom Enders, the
German-born and American-educated head of Airbus, the European aircraft
giant, likes to do it by parachute, if it is an open-air event. People
don't always remember what he says, but they sure remember how he got
there.

Of Texas Gov. Rick Perry, it could be said that he parachuted into the
race for the Republican presidential nomination. The manner of his entry
will be remembered, as it was meant to be.

Perry orchestrated a drum roll of media speculation, leading up to his
announcement. He assessed, contemplated, debated, discussed, examined,
explored and weighed entry. The media followed: might he, should he, would
he?

The drum roll, fed by leaks, grew louder as the declared candidates
traveled to Iowa for a debate and straw poll. Then Perry, with an
announcement in South Carolina, jumped and precision-landed on the parade
in Iowa.

Poor Michele Bachmann, left like a performing dolphin that has had its
fish snatched away. She had won the straw poll, deserved a few hours of
party adulation and had her joy cut by this man, who dropped in from the
West, all swagger and handshakes.

Perry hit the ground campaigning, when she was hoping to savor a victory
moment or two. Those famed southern manners don't extend into Texas
politics. Ask fellow Texan, Kay Bailey Hutchison. He crushed her in a
Republican primary in Texas.

In Perry's political lexicon Texas, and things Texan, are at once policy,
ideology and creed. But Perry's Texas is not all of Texas, with its
alluring geographical and social diversity. It is the Texas of the
caricature — of barbecue, boots, swagger and can-do. It is not the Texas
of artists in Austin, of the symphony in Houston, ballet in Dallas or jazz
in San Antonio.

It is an inauthentic Texas, minted not on the ranches and the oil rigs,
nor the ugly, sprawling, low-income housing that surrounds the bustling
cities – a testament to an increasing chasm between rich and poor. It is
not the place where schools are failing, the prisons are overflowing, and
the execution rate is the highest in the advanced world.

Perry's projection of Texas, which he sees as a template for the rest of
the United States, is as inauthentic as tumbleweed — an invasive species
from Russia. Perry's Texas was created in novels, honed in Hollywood and is
part of the myth that Texas and Texans are imbued with qualities denied to
lesser breeds beyond the Lone Star State.

The problem with believing in myth, and elevating it to the the standing
of principle, is that myth is flexible and can be adjusted to reality.
Ergo the early revelation that Perry is happy to disavow difficult things,
like global warming. He says that there is a list of scientists, growing
almost daily, that say global warming is not the result of human activity.
This is cunning. It disavows responsibility without having to deny the
evidence. While the heads of most advanced governments worry about the
impact of greenhouse gases, a President Perry will not have to.

Perry has also laid down his marker as a man of faith, or at least a man
of public piety. He might want to note that the two most publicly
religious presidents of recent times, Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush,
left office in low esteem and are not faring well in the first books of
history. He may want to ponder why the Founding Fathers were so anxious to
separate church and state.

Perry's political barbecue sauce, such as berating the Federal Reserve,
may be the precursor to a string of tired, old political nonsenses, like
returning to the gold standard; quitting the United Nations; and
abrogating treaties, in the belief that every commitment abroad is an
infringement of sovereignty.

Perry has made a dramatic entry. Now we wait in trepidation; even George
W. Bush's people are alarmed. Are we to be shown the real Texas, at the
same time proud and flawed, or the synthetic one, doctored for political
effect? — For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate

Filed Under: King's Commentaries Tagged With: George W. Bush, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Texas

Republican Graybeards: ‘Let Romney Be Romney’

July 31, 2012 by White House Chronicle Leave a Comment

 

The scene is the Veterans of Foreign Wars National Convention in Reno, Nev. Enter Mitt Romney stage right, dressed as Rambo.

This typecasting goes with the territory for Republican presidential aspirants. None going back to Richard Nixon has been able to resist it because that is what the base wants. The base wants to believe that their man will bound on the world stage with a dagger between his teeth, swathedin belts of ammo, an assault weapon at the ready and a brace of grenades on his belt,  ready to toss at anyone who does not toe the line

The most dangerous part of this metaphorical macho get-up for Romney is the one that is not seen. It is the script by the likes of John Bolton, George W. Bush’s U.N. ambassador, with editing by an assortment of Bush-era neo-cons, and some old-time Cold War warriors from the Bush and even Reagan era.

One of these men, a former secretary of defense, told me at the time of the Iraq invasion: “At least the Arabs will respect us now.”

In truth, the Arabs got quite a different lesson. It is one that all empires learn eventually: When you invade, you reveal yourself in ways you would rather not have.

One of the many sad lessons of the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions is how after brilliant military performances, we fell apart in both countries with inter-agency squabbling, a lack of planning and terrible naivety in the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, and the Agency forInternational  Development. Worse, the CIA either did not know or was not heeded about conditions on the ground in either country. Is it possible that no one told George W. Bush about the Sunni dominance of the Shia majority in Iraq? But that is true. Money, lives and respect have been lost.

Conservative foreign-policy thinking is, it seems to me after decades of talking with conservatives about foreign policy, unduly influenced by two aspects of history, both British.

The first is the British Empire. I was born into it and spent the first 20 years of my life in one of its last embers, Rhodesia. Conservatives are right to admire much of the British Empire. It was a great system of trade, education and, much of the time, impartial justice.

It rested on two planks: military superiority and huge confidence in British superiority. Call it British exceptionalism. Its unwinding in Asia and Africa had different causes that led to the same result.

In Asia, and particularly in India, which then included what are now Pakistan and Bangladesh, the end came when the idea of the British as a kind of super-race with their “show” of ceremonies, from tea to parades, plus military and civil skills died. Indians started traveling to Britain, particularly in Victorian times, and were appalled at the squalor they found in British slums. These people were not that super.

In Africa, the end came because of a general sense after World War II that self-determination was the way of the future.

What hastened everything was not only a change in moral perception but also the proliferation of small arms.

Churchill famously said: “I did not become the King’s first minister to preside over the dissolution of the British Empire.” But it was dissolving. Britain’s main loss, looking back, was to its pride.

The other British history lesson that is misread by conservative foreign-policy analysts in the United States is Munich.

Certainly when British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain waved his piece of paper on Sept. 30, 1938 and declared, “peace for our time,” he was a hero. He was a hero because just two decades earlier, the British Empire had suffered 3.1 million casualties in World War I.

Churchill knew that this wound was open. He did not refer to the courage and sacrifice of that war when seeking courage and sacrifice in a new war. Also, Britain was not ready for war; rearmament, urged by Churchill, was still in its infancy.

Many old-line Republicans tell me that Romney is not a man who will be marched around by those who brought us Vietnam, Iran Contra and Iraq. He is smarter than that.

They believe that when the time comes, if it comes, President Romney will be Romney. Not Rambo. — For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate

Filed Under: King's Commentaries Tagged With: British Empire, George W. Bush, Great Britain, Mitt romney, Neville Chamberlain, Rambo, Republicans, Veterans of Foreign Wars National Convention, Winston Churchill

Perry Peddling the Mythological Texas

August 22, 2011 by Llewellyn King 3 Comments

The manner of a man’s arriving is not without consequence. Tom Enders, the
German-born and American-educated head of Airbus, the European aircraft
giant, likes to do it by parachute, if it is an open-air event. People
don’t always remember what he says, but they sure remember how he got
there.

Of Texas Gov. Rick Perry, it could be said that he parachuted into the
race for the Republican presidential nomination. The manner of his entry
will be remembered, as it was meant to be.

Perry orchestrated a drum roll of media speculation, leading up to his
announcement. He assessed, contemplated, debated, discussed, examined,
explored and weighed entry. The media followed: might he, should he, would
he?

The drum roll, fed by leaks, grew louder as the declared candidates
traveled to Iowa for a debate and straw poll. Then Perry, with an
announcement in South Carolina, jumped and precision-landed on the parade
in Iowa.

Poor Michele Bachmann, left like a performing dolphin that has had its
fish snatched away. She had won the straw poll, deserved a few hours of
party adulation and had her joy cut by this man, who dropped in from the
West, all swagger and handshakes.

Perry hit the ground campaigning, when she was hoping to savor a victory
moment or two. Those famed southern manners don’t extend into Texas
politics. Ask fellow Texan, Kay Bailey Hutchison. He crushed her in a
Republican primary in Texas.

In Perry’s political lexicon Texas, and things Texan, are at once policy,
ideology and creed. But Perry’s Texas is not all of Texas, with its
alluring geographical and social diversity. It is the Texas of the
caricature — of barbecue, boots, swagger and can-do. It is not the Texas
of artists in Austin, of the symphony in Houston, ballet in Dallas or jazz
in San Antonio.

It is an inauthentic Texas, minted not on the ranches and the oil rigs,
nor the ugly, sprawling, low-income housing that surrounds the bustling
cities – a testament to an increasing chasm between rich and poor. It is
not the place where schools are failing, the prisons are overflowing, and
the execution rate is the highest in the advanced world.

Perry’s projection of Texas, which he sees as a template for the rest of
the United States, is as inauthentic as tumbleweed — an invasive species
from Russia. Perry’s Texas was created in novels, honed in Hollywood and is
part of the myth that Texas and Texans are imbued with qualities denied to
lesser breeds beyond the Lone Star State.

The problem with believing in myth, and elevating it to the the standing
of principle, is that myth is flexible and can be adjusted to reality.
Ergo the early revelation that Perry is happy to disavow difficult things,
like global warming. He says that there is a list of scientists, growing
almost daily, that say global warming is not the result of human activity.
This is cunning. It disavows responsibility without having to deny the
evidence. While the heads of most advanced governments worry about the
impact of greenhouse gases, a President Perry will not have to.

Perry has also laid down his marker as a man of faith, or at least a man
of public piety. He might want to note that the two most publicly
religious presidents of recent times, Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush,
left office in low esteem and are not faring well in the first books of
history. He may want to ponder why the Founding Fathers were so anxious to
separate church and state.

Perry’s political barbecue sauce, such as berating the Federal Reserve,
may be the precursor to a string of tired, old political nonsenses, like
returning to the gold standard; quitting the United Nations; and
abrogating treaties, in the belief that every commitment abroad is an
infringement of sovereignty.

Perry has made a dramatic entry. Now we wait in trepidation; even George
W. Bush’s people are alarmed. Are we to be shown the real Texas, at the
same time proud and flawed, or the synthetic one, doctored for political
effect? — For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate

Filed Under: King's Commentaries Tagged With: George W. Bush, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Texas

It Won’t Be the End of the World, but $5 Gas Is Coming

January 10, 2011 by Llewellyn King 6 Comments

May 21, 2011, according to a loosely-organized apocalyptic Christian movement, will be the “end of days.”

On or about that same date, the price of oil in the United States will begin to climb to $4 a gallon, according to two savants of the oil industry.

The former is highly unlikely but the latter is very probable.

The escalation in the price of oil is predicted by the legendary oil man T. Boone Pickens, known for his financial acuity as well as his oil expertise, and John Hofmeister, who retired as president of Shell Oil Company, to sound the alarm about the rate of U.S. consumption of oil.

In an interview with a trade publication, Hofmeister predicted that oil would rise to $4 a gallon this year and to $5 a gallon in the election year 2012. Separately, Pickens—who has been leaning on Congress to enact an energy policy that would switch large trucks and other commercial vehicles from imported oil to domestic natural gas—predicts that oil currently selling for just over $90 a barrel will go to $120 a barrel, with a concomitant price per gallon of $4 or more.

The Obama administration appears to have been slow to grasp the political implications of an escalation in the price of oil. When asked about it, outgoing White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs referred the questioner to the Department of Energy.

Not everyone is alarmed by the incipient rise in the price oil. Republicans, who are especially close to the oil industry and its Washington lobby, orchestrated by the American Petroleum Institute, think that a great deal of hay can be made while this particular sun shines. They plan to attack the administration for spending too many resources on alternative fuels, over-regulating the industry, and keeping too many federal lands away from oil prospecting. They also accuse the administration of being too frugal with its release of drilling areas in the Gulf of Mexico and on the two coasts, as well as Alaska.

The Republicans have unlikely bedfellows in their quest to politicize the price of oil. They are joined by environmentalists who have long believed that only high prices will break America’s passion for the automobile.

Environmentalists have long advocated European-style taxation to drive motorists out of their cars and onto buses and trains.

A third interest group that will take some pleasure in rising oil prices are those who are invested in alternatives such as ethanol, oil from algae and electric vehicles.

Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund is keeping an eye on the price of oil, according to Caroline Atkinson, director of external relations at the IMF. She told a Washington press briefing that the IMF is particularly concerned with food and other commodities that are directly affected by the price of oil.

Hofmeister, who now heads the non-profit Citizens for Affordable Energy that advocates energy development in all forms, believes that the United States could increase oil production from the current 7 million barrels per day to 10 million, half of its consumption. He told an interviewer from Platt’s, an energy publisher and broadcaster, that we were “essentially frittering at the edges of renewable energy, stifling production in hydrocarbon energy,” which he said could lead to blackouts, brownouts, gas lines and rationing.

There are already signs that the Republican-controlled House of Representatives is planning a big push for hydrocarbon energy. An indication of this comes from Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), a one-time global-warming believer who has dropped that issue from his agenda. He is the new chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

In periods of high gasoline prices in the past, presidents have found there is very little that they can do. Their options are to reduce the tax on gasoline, sell oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve or the Naval Petroleum Reserve. President George W. Bush went a step further: He went to Saudi Arabia twice to ask the Saudis to increase their rate of production. Twice he came back empty-handed.

All of this would be good news for the oil producers and especially those troublesome players, Russia and Venezuela.

Of course, if you believe the human endeavor ends on May 21, better fuel the SUV and hit the road.

Filed Under: King's Commentaries Tagged With: Barack Obama, Citizens for Affordable Energy, gasoline, George W. Bush, John Hofmeister, oil, Rep. Fred Upton, T. Boone Pickens

White House Chronicle on Social

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Vimeo
  • YouTube
Make Public Broadcasting Great Again by Shaking It Up

Make Public Broadcasting Great Again by Shaking It Up

Llewellyn King

The animus that has led President Trump to order an end to federal funding of PBS and NPR isn’t new. Public broadcasting has been an irritant to conservatives for a long time. Conservatives say public broadcasters are biased against them, especially PBS; they are a kind of ground zero for all things “woke”; and they […]

California Doctor Opens a New Front in Cancer War

California Doctor Opens a New Front in Cancer War

Llewellyn King

In the world of medicine, immunotherapy is a hot topic. It has uses in the treatment of many fatal diseases, even of aging. Simply, immunotherapy is enhancing and exploiting the body’s natural immune system to fight disease. Think of it as being like a martial art, where you use an opponent’s strength against him. Call it medical Judo. Dr. […]

How Trump and Technology Have Turned the Press Corps From Lions to Hyenas

How Trump and Technology Have Turned the Press Corps From Lions to Hyenas

Llewellyn King

Political messaging isn’t what it used to be. Far from it. It used to be that the front pages of The Washington Post and The New York Times were an agenda for action. This power was feared and used by successive presidents in my time, from Lyndon Johnson to Joe Biden, but not by Donald Trump. […]

Rare Earths Are a Crisis of Government Neglect

Rare Earths Are a Crisis of Government Neglect

Llewellyn King

An old adage says “a stitch in time saves nine.” Indeed. But it is a lesson seldom learned by governments. As you struggle through TSA screening at the airport, just consider this: It didn’t have to be this way. If the government had acted after the first wave of airplane hijackings in the early 1960s, we […]

Copyright © 2025 · White House Chronicle Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in