Not a good day!

By David A. Fairbanks

By any standard, Sen. John McCain is a decent, at times generous man. He has lived a tough life and never lost his decency or honest kindness. He is not evil or even remotely so. Nevertheless he is running an amazingly clumsy and at times laughable campaign. I am saddened that his staff lack the skill in protecting their guy from humiliation. This photograph with President George HW Bush and Senator McCain is a good example of the law of unintended consequences. Bush looks great. Nevermind he is 87. McCain looks like he needs to pee. John McCain must get some savvy and realize nuance counts. This is the time for Steve Schmidt to show his talent and save his guy from certain defeat. I am a Obama partisan; no doubt, but I want Sen. Obama to win on merit, not because John McCain ended up as a joke.

The United States in 1960
By Vaughn Davis Bornet
The author of this contemporary appraisal of the nature of the year 1960 in the United States, Vaughn Davis Bornet, is familiar to HNN readers for (among other things) his reminiscence published in our September 3, 2007 issue, “How Race Relations Touched Me During a Long Lifetime” and in the April 28, 2008 issue, “Letter to my Granddaughter: How to Decide Whom to Vote For.” At the close of his formal education (at Emory, Georgia, and Stanford) and Navy service in World War II enroute, he engaged in full time research at four nonprofit organizations and wrote books on two year long grants. Readers will want to keep in mind that this narrative description, published here for the first time, was written as 1960 was about to fade into 1961. The text has not been modified in facts, wording, or indeed anything except a few commas and several paragraph modifications. Retyping was by the author; both the mss. written in Bornet’s RAND office (after hours) and the one typed recently by the author were sent to HNN.
Author’s Afterword (written in 2008)
The wording of the following essay is precisely that placed in the mail on December 30, 1960. It was written for the New International Year Book for 1961. Although I was duly paid for this after working hours effort, the manuscript was returned to me, for there was a dispute between the publishers and the writer over the paragraphs dealing with Fidel Castro’s degree of attachment to Communism, for example, “…the Castro regime…turned to the Communist Bloc for military and economic aid and for ideological comfort.” That sentiment may have been regarded by the encyclopedia’s final review persons as conjectural, or too pessimistic, as unsuitable for their audience, likely to provoke overseas readers or, perhaps they thought me downright wrong. As for me, then a confident administrative editor who read Cold War material almost daily as a RAND Corporation staff member, my assessment of Castro’s movement toward the Third International seemed fully warranted and not to be edited out. In addition, after looking at the unsigned and much shorter version ultimately run by the yearbook, I think there may have been editorial decisions of which I was not made aware at the time.
I was left with a manuscript probably publishable “somewhere,” but I was very busy with daily writing and editing. I quietly routed a few copies of my text to friends and several superiors. (It was not eligible to be issued within the D, RM, or R system of publication, for it was in reality a scholarly hobby, just like a book and various articles I published during three and a half years with RAND.)
Summary assessments of calendar years have been commonly prepared and published by encyclopedias from that day to this and long before. I apprenticed for this effort by twice writing the long articles “United States” in 1956 and 1957 for the Encyclopaedia Britannica yearbooks--of 1957 and 1958 respectively). The methodology was not unique: clipping and saving from the better periodicals of the day—in my case especially the sober New York Times that then came days late in the mail. I outlined repeatedly, wrote rapidly toward year’s end, and made sure to meet the troublesome deadlines that made publication possible in February. Payment was by the word.
Anyway, here is a contemporary appraisal of what the year 1960 seemed like to one who was living and observing it. Readers will see instantly that there is no awareness of the future Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, advisors building up toward a Vietnam War, JFK assassination, a War on Poverty and new laws on civil rights, two more assassinations, a Moon Landing, and the birth of environmentalism. The Nixon mentioned here is not yet the one who will run for California governor, beat Hubert Humphrey for President, be reelected in a landslide, and leave the office after abusing the public trust. Isn’t it sobering to think that at the very moment one is living, that is, now, there are momentous events in the offing that could change our appraisal of reality and modify our lives profoundly?
Original Text: The United States in 1960
Introduction. The Year 1960 was for the people of the United States a time of expectant hopes—and developing apprehensions; of accomplishments in science and productivity—and weaknesses in humanity; of triumphant self-government—and unsolved economic problems.
It was a Presidential election year and a census year; the beginning of a new decade: “the Sixties;” and for the national image a period of unusual distortion. The red, white, and blue emblem came to boast fifty stars on July 5 and the population topped 180 million (April 1: 179,323,175). Yet the year saw a powerful President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, in his last year of eight in office, forced to endure the ignominy of having invitations extended by two major powers to visit their lands withdrawn in the glare of world publicity.
The year began with professional business forecasters proclaiming a forthcoming economy that would warrant the term “Soaring Sixties.” Year’s end, however, saw steel production at a dismal low, unemployment climbing slowly, and uncertainty in federal government finance.
The national, state, and local elections received more attention from the mass public and mass media, perhaps, than any in ready memory. The drama in the persons and conduct of the youthful Presidential candidates, tensions born from a religious element last raised in 1928, the central role of television in the quick magnification of particular issues, and the uneasy realization that the world was watching every move with intense self-interest—all served to make the election of 1960 memorable. The startling closeness of the final result provided a fitting climax to the spectacle of a free people choosing those they wished to lead them in peace or, if need be, in war.
Better housed, clothed, and fed than ever before, Americans were reminded repeatedly of the plight of migrants, slum dwellers, the unemployed, and the handicapped in their midst. The health status and financial status of aging citizens was debated, and facts and figures were assembled in many patterns to prove various legislative cases. As the nation prepared to commemorate the coming centennial of a Civil War born in large part of issues deriving from the enslavement of the black man, the problems faced by America’s largest minority race were still headline news.
Soviet-U.S. relations were often given top billing in 1960 by journalists who knew the uneasiness with which the man-in-the-street was gradually coming to view Khrushchev’s technologically accelerating and obviously imperialist nation. While specialists followed the news of disarmament negotiations in Geneva, every taxi driver could and did pontificate on the U-2 debacle. And even school children by year’s end had been indoctrinated on the whereabouts of Quemoy and Matsu, the continuing existence of a darkest Africa, and the reality of a satellite (Echo I) that all could see as it ignored the existence of national boundaries. Events in Cuba and Laos disturbed policymakers in Washington; and looking to the South it was considered expedient by the President (but not the Congress) to permit the flying of the Panamanian flag side by side with the stars and stripes in one place in the Canal Zone.
All mankind in 1960 knew that the United States was a power in the world; more than at any time since it had risen to first rank among the nations; however, the leaders of foreign governments felt it necessary to listen—not only to the latest word from Washington—but to that from Moscow. The year was one in a rapidly changing period when thermonuclear or biochemical catastrophe might accompany a breakdown in one’s relations with the outwardly volatile Communists. Thus high posts in national capitals and in the United Nations contained many leaders disturbed that even competent leadership might not be able to guarantee the future of mankind.
The Election. Victorious in the congressional election of 1958 with 56.5 percent of the vote, and free of the necessity for running against Eisenhower, the Democratic Party had looked forward with optimism to the Presidential race of 1960. But a noticeable rise in the popularity of Vice President Richard M. Nixon in 1959 and the abrupt withdrawal of Governor Nelson Rockefeller on December 26 disturbed many who favored the fortunes of Senators Stuart Symington Hubert H. Humphrey, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson. Backers of Adlai Stevenson hoped that their favorite might be selected in 1960 to do battle with a political figure rather than a war hero. Close observers in January thought the election might possibly turn on peace, prosperity, and personality (but not necessarily in that order).
Kennedy announced his candidacy on January 3; Nixon did likewise on the 9th, with President Eisenhower coming to his support on March 16. Humphrey had long been a candidate. Not until March 24 did Symington announce, while Johnson held off until summer (July 5). Victorious in the New Hampshire, Wisconsin, West Virginia, and Oregon primaries, Kennedy was a Democratic frontrunner on the eve of the Los Angeles convention of his party—although former President Truman called him “immature.” Stalwarts such as Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt expressed sharp misgivings, and reaction to his Catholic religion was adverse in the South (but not among Northern city politicians).
The first ballot Kennedy victory in the convention was decisive. He partially disarmed disgruntled Southerners by the designation of Senator Johnson of Texas as his running mate, and somewhat cheered uneasy or dismayed Americans for Democratic Action and Adlai Stevenson elements by a forceful acceptance speech pledging national movement toward New Frontiers. Senator Henry Jackson of Washington replaced Paul M. Butler as national chairman.
The Democratic platform was more of an issue in 1960 than in recent elections. Entitled “The Rights of Man,” it made clear an intention to use federal machinery to do a multitude of things that were thought to need doing. There should be a restoration of national military, political, economic, and moral strength, it stated, pledging reaction against job discrimination and the inability to pay for medical care, and the institution of many new services and controls. The platform was exceedingly popular with liberal elements in the party, unpopular in the South, and a prime Republican target.
The expected nomination of Vice President Nixon was quickly made by the Republicans in their Chicago convention, and his last minute choice of photogenic U.N. ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge for a running mate quickly met with gratifying approval. Since the Democrats had charged declines in American power and prestige in Republican years, party speakers tended to evoke images of American greatness and called on their opponents to exhibit increased patriotism. The Republican platform “Building a Better America,” tried to avoid unduly complacent pointing with pride at the Eisenhower years. A dramatic convention-eve conference between Nixon and Governor Rockefeller had helped to shape its planks to minimize committee and floor fights. Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, recognized spokesman for classic conservatism, was not entirely appeased, however. Indeed, the platform was a far cry from those of only a few campaigns back. Compared to the Democratic document, it was less inclined to rely on federal as against state power, more concerned with the concept of freedom from government intervention in private matters, less alarmist in assessing national strength, and did not offer as many promises of benefits that would flow from a party victory.
Both Democratic and Republican platforms showed the concern of their framers for foreign affairs in general and national defense in particular. Both platforms opposed admission of Communist China to the U.N., but the Democrats added that they would “welcome any evidence that the Chinese Government is genuinely prepared to create a new relationship based on respect for international obligations….” Both parties spoke well of the United Nations. As for the “captive nations” behind the Iron Curtain, both parties displayed sympathy and a willingness to use peaceful means to hasten their day of freedom. Indeed, in foreign affairs, despite numerous references by the Democratic platform to 7 l/2 years of ineptitude in Republican performance, the platforms were basically similar.
In the defense area, the Republicans saw U. S. military might as “second to none,” while the Democrats called for the recasting of military capacity to provide “diversity, balance, and mobility sufficient in quantity and quality to deter both limited and general aggressions.” The Republicans pointed to the maintenance of peace since Korea; while the Democrats referred to a “missile gap, space gap, limited war gap.” The length and strength of language in the planks of both parties in this area showed the underlying concern of responsible political leaders for the national safety.
Planks on labor, agriculture, and social welfare reflected partisan divisions in Congressional voting during the Eisenhower years, although in the civil rights area in particular there was promise of greater federal regulation than legislators of either party had been willing to legislate thus far. No extensive floor fight on civil rights developed in either convention, but it was widely understood that the strong language of the Democratic platform was unlikely to be reiterated in the national campaigning to come.
Republicans accused the Democrats of having promised, in the welfare area, federal action so extensive as to amount to the “buying” of votes; yet there was nothing new in Democratic Party platform calls for federal action, control, or financing in areas such as housing, health, and aid to depressed areas. The memory of New Deal and Fair Deal was frequently evoked by Democratic speakers as the campaign progressed. Eleanor Roosevelt came to Kennedy’s support, and Harry Truman (although absenting himself from his party’s convention) did likewise. Governor Rockefeller campaigned long hours for the Nixon-Lodge ticket, and Senator Goldwater did so in Southern states.
In the long and intensive campaigning that began virtually as soon as the conventions adjourned, the four candidates labored daily and nightly with an intensity seldom equaled. To experts who had once predicted that TV would sound a death knell to barnstorming, this exhibition must have come as a shock. Nixon traveled over 60,000 miles and visited every state, even going to Alaska the Sunday before election day, and Kennedy covered 75,000 miles while going to 44 states. Republicans made much of the fact that Senator Johnson largely limited his efforts to his native South, and charged that the Kennedy-Johnson ticket did not see eye-to-eye on civil rights and other matters. Slips by Lodge (such as a later modified assertion that the Republicans would appoint a Negro to the cabinet), and his indication that he thought parochial schools should receive certain benefits from government, indicated that neither ticket was free of individualism in viewpoint. Republican handled unimaginatively an argument over American overseas “prestige.”
While there was much talk of Kennedy’s religion in the press, in pulpits, and in private, the big news of the election of 1960 was made in four television debates between Kennedy and Nixon. These were unprecedented. They brought millions to TV screens—especially for the first of the discussions. Many newspapers carried full texts of what was said, and citizens of a serious bent in many instances continued to debate the issues at length. Persons whose voting had long been determined by the quality of “the man,” disregarding issues, felt in 1960 that the debating device gave them a new window for peering at a future President fit to govern the nation.
It was generally asserted, and widely believed, that for reasons of lighting or makeup—or because of physical or personality factors—the first TV debate fatally damaged the then existing Nixon image. Although the heavy-browed, perspiring, overly severe Nixon in the TV screens of the first debate faded in those that followed (and was completely eliminated for many of the housewives who ironed or sat through his four-hour TV “telethon” from Detroit the Monday before election day), the damage endured.
Kennedy, not widely and certainly not universally known before his nomination, presented to the public a dynamic and personable young figure, articulate and upright. Some thought they saw a new “FDR.” While both candidates drew vast crowds as they moved through New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and many lesser cities and towns (often speaking briefly at suburban shopping centers), it was probably true that Kenney’s demonstrative and more youthful audiences surpassed Nixon’s measurably in overt enthusiasm. The belated participation of President Eisenhower in partisan campaigning did much to raise Republican hopes in the closing weeks. Yet it was hard to overcome damage done by an ambiguous press conference remark the President had made months before to the effect that it would be hard for him to think of areas where the Vice President’s counsel had been influential on decisions….
An AFL-CIO endorsement of Kennedy-Johnson (and all that went with it) was helpful to that ticket, and many business executives and physicians worked openly for the Republicans for the first time. Polls showed, even before the counting of the votes, that the war hero’s image had not been transferable to the intelligent, articulate, dedicated, and capable—but not quite electric—Vice President. Considering carefully the persons of Nixon and Kennedy, veteran Socialist observer Norman Thomas, approaching 76, judged, “They are exceedingly similar men as far as I see it, and I think they are very able.”
The counting of the votes proved an exciting and long-drawn-out process, as the result in some states proved indecisive for a week or even more. Absentee ballots swung California from Kennedy to Nixon (Hawaii vice versa), and recounts threatened for a time to reverse the result in Illinois. Accustomed to quick and definitive announcement of election results, citizens were disconcerted by the possibility that the apparent Kennedy victory might be overturned—even in mid-December. With charges of corruption in Chicago and elsewhere and intimations that certain Southern electors might switch allegiance from the apparent victors, relief greeted the not unexpected announcement that the Electoral College had certified John Fitzgerald Kennedy as the next President of the United States. The final electoral vote was 303 to 219, with 15 for Senator Harry F. Byrd. The popular vote, 68,832,788, was divided: Kennedy 35,221,531, Nixon 35,180,474, others 502,773. Nixon carried 26 states, Kennedy 23. Clamor for Electoral College system revision, not unusual, was especially strident.
Minor parties amounted to little in 1960, either as salesmen for ideas or ideologies, or as recipients of concentrated votes. Yet enough votes were gained by the Socialist Labor, Socialist Workers, Prohibition, Constitution, Conservative, National States’ Rights, and other parties to keep the victors margin from being a true majority of votes cast. For the first time in the century the Socialists did not offer a candidate. The new Senate would be divided 65 D, 35 R; the House would be 262 D, 173 R (for a noticeable Republican gain).
Following the election, both Kennedy and Nixon dragged themselves to Florida—the vanquished Nixon and his hard-campaigning wife, Pat, to think through the problem of how best to spend the next four years. The winner would take counsel on distributing the spoils of victory that accompanied capture of the executive branch of the government. Relations between the outgoing administration and the Kennedy forces were outwardly cordial, and a visit to the White House was proclaimed “unusually informative in nature.” The hearts of voters of both persuasions were particularly taken during this interregnum by the highly newsworthy caesarian birth of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Jr.
The Kennedy cabinet was announced with unusual deliberateness. The cabinet consisted of: Secretary of State: Dean Rusk, 51; Treasury: Douglas Dillon, 51; Defense: Robert S. McNamara, 44; Attorney General: Robert F. Kennedy, 35, brother of the President-elect; Postmaster General, J. Edward Day, 46; Interior, Stewart L. Udall, 40; Agriculture: Orville L. Freeman, 42; Commerce: Luther Hodges, 62; Labor: Arthur J. Goldberg, 52; HEW: Abraham A. Ribicoff, 50. There were six Protestants, two Jews, a Catholic and a Mormon; two (Defense, Treasury) were Republicans. Rusk and young Kennedy were quickly singled out for attack by partisans.
When President Eisenhower referred after the election to narrowly defeated candidate Nixon as “the head of the Republican Party for the next four years” the designation was unacceptable to Governor Rockefeller (who endorsed “collective leadership”), while Senator Goldwater indicated that party ideology would have to move to the right by 1964, so far as he was concerned. Representative Charles A. Halleck, House Minority Leader, said the consensus he sensed was that the initial and primary responsibility for Republican policy formulation would rest on “Republicans in Congress.” (These had sponsored during the campaign a policy document on “America’s Strategy and Strength.”) Nixon soon signified the intention of providing leadership in preparation for 1962; at year’s end his personal plans were not yet ready to be revealed.
Foreign Affairs. On August 9, at a time when the election was beginning to occupy the minds of Americans, Secretary of State Christian Herter told a press conference that there should be no illusions that U.S. foreign policy was going to be immobilized by the campaign. The nation could still move “with speed, force and unity.” Americans take pride, he said, that their mass media are preoccupied with the determination of who is to guide their destinies for the next four years. “The world would be a safer and a better place in which to live,” he reflected, “if the countries of the Sino-Soviet bloc enjoyed the same freedoms of expression, of thought and of choice.” Unimpressed by the concept of electoral choice made without fear of defeat, and attuned to a single party, the Soviet press and public were reported to see the American election as no more than a useless choice between Tweedledum or Tweedledee—between “political twins.”
There was little doubt in 1960 that the United States was in and of the world. News of the Congo, of Laos, Cuba, Korea, Algeria, Turkey, and Ethiopia vied with accounts of major power activities in the mass media. The meeting of the U.N. General Assembly brought Khrushchev and a full house of Communist dignitaries from Iron Curtain countries as well as rulers of new African nations. De Gaulle and Macmillan were other visitors to the U.S.
The long awaited signing of the treaty with Japan took place in the White House on January 19, replacing that of September 18, 1951. Full sovereignty was restored to Japan in defense matters; U.S. land, air, and naval forces were granted use of facilities and areas in Japan; and “international peace and security in the Far East” seemed to have been advanced. Attacks on Japanese territory would be resisted by joint action of both nations. Ratification by Congress came on June 22. Crown Prince Akihito and his wife visited the nation in late September, tending to offset slightly the embarrassment created by the leftist riot-caused cancellation in June of Japan’s invitation to be the nation’s guest.
The U.S. in April rebuked the Rhee regime on the death of 125 youths in Korea; the aging Rhee soon resigned and fled his country, coming to Hawaii. The riots in Japan and Korea were followed by similar disturbances in Turkey, Italy, and elsewhere, all of them watched closely by Washington officials apprehensive of Communist expansion through riot techniques.
Anglo-American relations were unmarred by major disputation in 1960, although an agreement to lend a harbor in Scotland for a Polaris submarine base, and a Ford Motor Company plan to purchase control of its British subsidiary, both irritated residents of our leading ally. British decision to abandon construction of her IRBM, Blue Streak, and to purchase Sky Bolt, a future Douglas Aircraft Company missile, seemed to seal Anglo-American interdependence for some years to come.
Senate ratification of a 12-nation Antarctic treaty as a means of keeping that frigid part of the globe peaceful was hailed by some as a sign that the U.S. and U.S.S.R. could reach agreement on some matters. An Eisenhower visit to Latin America in the spring, though marred by a tragic plane crash involving a substantial part of the U.S. Navy Band, was a successful good-will tour, as was a later visit to Manila. French explosion of a nuclear device in the Sahara, accounts of Israeli construction of a reactor, and continuing speculation on the date in the 1960’s when the Red Chinese might possess one or more atomic weapons, disturbed persons concerned with the apparent problems that might come with the spread of nuclear weapon capabilities.
On July 8 some of the native army in the new Republic of Congo mutinied, and the situation there quickly became chaotic and (in the view of whites on the scene) virtually barbaric. As the Security Council urged evacuation of Belgian troops and a U.N. force was flown in, a veritable comedy of jungle-style overturns of local government brought strange names like Kasavubu and Lumumba into American living rooms. The U.S. soon charged the Soviets with trying to make political hay in central Africa, and on September 19 the U.N. General Assembly told the Russians by a vote of 70 to 0 to keep hands off.
U.S. aid to foreign countries for civil and military purposes continued in 1960, as it was revealed that total military aid to 12 Western European countries, 1950-1959, had come to $13,704,990,000. There were signs in 1960 that the nation was increasingly anxious that prosperous European powers increase their aid to underdeveloped countries to ease the burden on the U.S. Senator Goldwater urged that aid be stopped entirely, and there were misgivings as the civil war in Laos in autumn, fought in large part with U.S.-supplied weapons, brought realization that the supplying of aid was no cure-all; yet the situation there was very complex—and by December 31 dangerous. The campaigning of the election year had revealed no evidence that highly placed leaders intended to cut back the giving and lending of foreign aid in many forms as part of our routine foreign policy.
U.S., British, and Soviet negotiations in Geneva, aimed at a treaty to discontinue nuclear weapons tests as a first step toward some degree of disarmament, continued in early 1960. The 14-month old conference boiled down to Soviet desire to sign a test-ban treaty first and to study problems of detecting small underground explosions later. The U.S. continued to insist on enforceability and safeguards. Full East-West disarmament talks resumed, after a two and a half year gap, on March 15, but the Soviets walked out late in June. U.S. offers then (and later) before the U.N. Disarmament Commission, were rejected by the Soviets. There was little meeting of the minds in this area in 1960. Although it was revealed that arms costs in the world came to some $320,000,000 per day, the U.S., at least, was decidedly unwilling to pay the possibly catastrophic costs in unilateral or uninspectable disarmament in a world half Communist.
U.S.-Cuban relations hit an all time low in 1960 as the Castro regime seized virtually all American property on the island, treated civil rights cavalierly, and turned to the Communist Bloc for military and economic aid and for ideological comfort. The U.S. eschewed military action and relied chiefly on an embargo on exports and on mobilization of Latin-American opinion. Reliance lay on the hope that the Cuban populace would come to its senses before an attack by the ever more heavily armed Castro army on our Guantanamo naval base, or some equivalent event, might start a tragic shooting war.
Represented at the U.N. by Henry Cabot Lodge until his resignation to campaign actively, the United States showed once again in 1960 that in the 15th year since the founding of the U.N. it was prepared to meet more than its share of financial obligations and to participate fully at almost all levels of service. The nation was glad to see the Soviet candidate for Assembly president beaten, to see Red China again kept from membership (though by a narrowing margin), and to have Dag Hammarskjold beat off Soviet attempts to have him ousted from office. It was hoped that the non-parliamentary conduct of the Soviet premier before the Assembly had clarified for some neutralist delegates among those of the 99 member nations the traditional Communist contempt for the daily procedures of representative government. Eloquent Adlai Stevenson would be the new U.S. ambassador to the U.N., beginning in 1961.
U.S.-Soviet Relations. The Soviets made headlines as 1960 began with an announcement of a 1,200,000 man reduction on their armed forces (2,423,000 would remain under arms). Firepower was by no means being reduced, however, and rocket equipment would be relied on heavily. President Eisenhower prepared during the winter months for a scheduled Summit Conference with Khrushchev in Paris and for a later visit, by the Premier’s invitation, to Russia.
The meaning to the U.S. of extended Soviet-Chinese autumn negotiations on the inevitability of international war, and on the proper Communist line to take in an age of thermonuclear threats, remained unclear in 1960, although the agreement’s ultimate importance to peace, war, and coexistence was unquestioned.
The nation was electrified on May 5 by a Khrushchev announcement that an American aircraft, something called a U-2, had been shot down deep within Soviet territory. This was probably the year’s most dramatic single event. After high Administration officials charged with press relations operated at cross-purposes, it was formally admitted on May 7 that the captured and unharmed pilot, Francis Gary Powers, had been on what was almost unprecedentedly defended by President Eisenhower as an entirely justifiable photographic reconnaissance (i.e., spy) mission. The world watched apprehensively as the Soviet Premier, professing extremes of surprise and indignation (although the flights had been known to the Soviets for a long period), walked out of the Paris meeting with open rudeness and cancelled his invitation for an Eisenhower visit.
The U.N. Security Council subsequently refused, 7-2, to censure the U.S. on the U-2 incident, perhaps persuaded on the validity of the American position that the flights had long been a real protection for the Free World against surprise (“Pearl Harbor”) attacks. Refusing to give in on the principle involved, the U.S. announced abandonment of further flights of the U-2 type. The decision seemed to stem in part from the fact that the world-wide publicity given the flights had compromised them, and it was also related to the extreme threats made by the Soviets against any of our allies who would in the future facilitate take-offs for unauthorized flights over Soviet borders. The heavily publicized trial of civilian pilot Powers in the Soviet Union took place under a code of justice new and strange to Americans, who read about the proceedings with some bewilderment.
On July 11 the Soviets admitted shooting down a U.S. RB-47 reconnaissance plane over the Barents Sea ten days earlier; the U.S. said it had been 30 miles from the U.S.S.R. A U.N. vote of 9-2 went in favor of the U.S. Refusal to release two captains who survived, and Soviet firing on a U.S. observation plane over Laos in December, were other unpleasant aspects of Soviet-U.S. relations, as the “spirit of Camp David” seemed forgotten. Still, some cultural exchanges continued—even though American tourists within Soviet borders were occasionally accused of spying. Two National Security Agency employees were revealed in September to have defected to Moscow. The FBI soon revealed in a 63-page document that Soviet spying in the U.S. made the U-2 incident “pale into insignificance.” Aerial photographs of the U.S. had been standard items of conspiratorial purchase. Two Soviet spies were arrested October 27. A Soviet threat on July 9 to use rockets if the U.S. intervened in Cuba brought a prompt Presidential reply that the Soviet Union was to keep its hands off the Western Hemisphere. Khrushchev later took an occasion to dilute the earlier threat, as the Castro government displayed an extreme degree of belligerency and the U.S. chose to display unusual naval activity in the Caribbean for a time.
Premier Khrushchev ended a 25-day stay in the New York City area on October 13. During his visit he made daily headlines. He appeared as an interviewee on a long regularly scheduled and (normally) commercially sponsored TV broad-cast, delivered belligerently outspoken addresses at the U.N.—and interrupted speeches by others—and purchased vast quantities of American-made consumer luxury goods to take home.
FBI Chief J. Edgar Hoover stated in December that internal Communist activity in the U.S.—far from abating—was being stepped up, especially among youths. The House Un-American Activities Committee continued to hold hearings despite a bloodless riot at its legally constituted San Francisco meeting in the public courthouse. Federal agencies enforced a variety of security measures in a continuing effort to protect technological know-how from foreign agents.
The Military and Space. Satellites of many kinds made Jules Verne-style news in 1960; it could be said that the year brought to the public a greater realization of the potentialities of space activities in communication, weather observation, navigation, and increased knowledge of the universe. Military uses of rockets were brought home in public discussion of ICBM’s and IRBM’s. There was serious controversy on matters of national strategy. Soviet accomplishments, particularly in elevation of objects of large weight and constant professions of their enormous destructive capability made even casual Americans assume a growing concern for the national safety and “prestige” (a subject much debated).
An Eisenhower declaration made in some heat during his Press Conference of January 13 set the stage for partisan political debate on weapons and strategy throughout the year. “I’ve spent my life in this [Defense],” he said, “and I know more about it than almost anybody I think that is in the country….” Secretary of Defense Thomas S. Gates revealed quantities of facts and figures at various times on weapons in the national arsenal, but critics took the view that in the coming Sixties some new weapons, and certain types of problems, would vastly outweigh traditional ones in significance—especially for survival. At year’s end the whole discussion had become more sophisticated.
The successful debut of Polaris heartened the nation. Discussion of such subjects as civil defense, “hardening” of aircraft storage and missile launching sites, problems in maintaining full command, mobility of weapons, capacity to fight “limited wars,” threats from radiation, and the degree (and possibility) of possible survival in the event of full-scale attack were becoming more common at year’s end among serious observers. The degree of safety the U.S. could offer NATO and particularly West Germany through various means began to be discussed at home---as it had long been abroad. A new Chief of Staff, General Lyman L. Lemnitzer, was named in August, and a Symington Committee plan for armed forces reorganization was debated at year’s end. The Triton, a nuclear submarine, circled the globe under water (41,519 miles in 84 days).
Space news was made by Echo I, a balloon-shaped communications satellite; Explorer VIII, heavily instrumented; Transit I-B, forerunner of a space navigation system; the manned X-15 experiments; Pioneer V, an artificial planetoid; Midas, a surveillance satellite; the Discoverer series—which provided airborne recovery of capsules from space; and Trios, a meteorological (“weather-eye”) package of camera equipment. In mid-November, the U.S. had 17 satellites still in space, while the Soviets had only two—but they still exceeded the nation in capacity to orbit great weights (4 ½ tons on May 15). Werner Von Braun foresaw a U.S. man-in-space effort late in 1961. All in all, 1960 would go down in history as a time of much advance by mankind in the penetration of outer space. The U.S. batting average on launchings, .470 in 1958 and .580 in 1959, was .500 by May 11, 1960.
The Domestic Scene. While no single dramatic incident highlighted “the economic situation” in 1960, the outwardly prosperous year was marked by quiet misgivings, uneasy appraisals, and routine politically inspired extremes in prediction. In December, 1959 the Director of the Bureau of the Budget foresaw possible ultimate disaster in a U.S. “public debt and future commitments” total of some $750,000,000,000 (not including annual operating expenses). But public demand for additional government services was shown in many ways in the year; much of the talk of somehow increasing the rate of annual growth in the economy was designed in part to facilitate passage of legislation to enlarge government operations (as well as to finance national survival).
The nation’s employed reached 67,767,000 in early autumn, while unemployment had reached 3,400,000 in August (about 800,000 of these were persons out of work for more than 15 weeks—a figure well under the 1,700,000 of a year earlier). Un-employment was very spotty and was severe in certain communities. Three million citizens for various reasons had one or more jobs in addition to their regular employment.
National income in 1959 had reached the $400 billion level for the first time, despite the long steel strike, and in 1960 the GNP passed $500 billion. The Consumer Price Index in mid-year stood at 126.5 (1947-49 =100), little changed in a year (June, 1959 = 125.3), but by October, 1960 it had climbed another 0.8.
A “gold outflow” was the big economic news of late 1960, and the government made a variety of efforts to stop it. High interest rates in Europe, a sluggish U.S. economy, heavy U.S. public and private expenditures overseas, foreign competition in the American market, and distrust of the dollar were factors in the steady transfer of gold out of the country; their individual importance as causes, and the particular remedies to be pursued, were debated at year’s end. Government spending abroad was to be sharply reduced. American companies were scheduled to invest $3,852,000,000 in facilities abroad during the year. Although annual exports exceeded imports by more than $4 billion, hope was expressed that the differential could be broadened. U.S. investment abroad reached a total of $65.8 billion, as opposed to foreign investment here of $40.7 billion.
Auto output in 1960 reached 6,700,000 units, the second highest on record. Some optimism for the future could be seen in ATT plans to spend $2.5 billion for expansion in 1961, and General Motors plans to spend $1.2 billion, an increase of fifty million over 1960.
The federal debt exceeded $290 billion in 1960, but the revenue surplus came to $1.2 billion even though expenditures reached $76,539,412,799.
It was by no means a year for important legislation by the Congress. Appro-priations for welfare items climbed, and a civil rights bill achieved passage despite the longest filibuster on record (82 hours, 3 minutes). It was the second such measure since 1875 and the first since 1957. That the law would one day be important was unquestioned, but it did not fully satisfy liberal and Negro groups. Legislators clashed, as usual, on expenditures for defense, foreign aid ($3.7 billion) and on aid to “depressed areas” at home. There was much jockeying for political advantage in an election year as a “postscript session” of Congress in August achieved no more than had been predicted. Decision on Forand-type legislation for medical care for the aging on social security rolls was only postponed by passage of a bill that would plug major loopholes in states inclined to participate, but not in the others.
Supreme Court decisions in 1960 appeared to be routine. The session saw disposal of 1,822 cases out of 2,178. Off-shore oil rights were awarded to the states. Decisions on individual rights remained the area of effort most closely observed by the public; the year saw rulings on both sides of this controversial matter. Overall, the divisions in the highest court of the land seemed once again to be on methods of change rather than fundamentals. Charges that the Court was overworked and not able to study cases sufficiently brought stinging rejoinder from world traveler and author Justice William O. Douglas, who asserted there was, more than ever, ample time for “research, deliberation, debate, and meditation.”
As in 1959, the year brought ample evidence that differences over racial equality as concept and reality ran deep in the national culture. In Alabama, Tennessee, South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, and in New Orleans, clashes over Negro rights evoked national attention. “Sit-ins” were born of Negro resistance to traditional chain store restaurant efforts to exclude Negroes. Clashes over school integration scheduling under the Supreme Court ruling of 1954 (particularly in New Orleans) were not unusual in Southern states; meanwhile, surveys showed continuing discrimination in housing in the North and West. Still, 12 Negroes quietly began the new school year at Central and Hall High Schools in Little Rock, Arkansas, and integration victories were achieved elsewhere. Vice President Nixon’s federal committee in December brought in a hard-hitting report against job discrimination, fully endorsed by the recently defeated candidate for President. Senator Lyndon Johnson would inherit this political whirlwind on assuming the Vice Presidency.
As he prepared to leave office, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, at 70, had become the oldest man ever to sit in the White House. Dean of the nation’s aging citizens (average life expectancy for Americans in 1959: 69.7); he planned to retire to his Gettysburg farm after January 20, 1961.
College enrollment hit 3,610,007 in 1960-61, an increase of 6 percent. Local taxpayers approved $387 million in school bond issues on November 8 in an effort to keep classroom space abreast of needs. Voters approved 137 such issues, defeating 34.
The increasingly urbanized nation came to have about fifty cities with populations over 258,000 (1787: 24 towns with more than 2,500). There was an 11 percent rise in serious crime, most of the increase in cities. California’s execution of Caryl Chessman on May 2 after long years of litigation aroused renewed interest in eliminating the death penalty. A White House Conference on Children and Youth called for federal action in various fields to meet defined needs.
The United States was still experiencing a cultural boom (mixed with evidence of bad taste in some motion pictures and a rise in “pornographic” literature on newsstands). Over 3.9 millions visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a figure over twice the number who watched the Yankees in home baseball games and more than twice the number who attended the Louvre overseas. The Detroit Art Museum had more visitors than the British Museum, and Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts had more than the museum of The Hague. Some 1,142 symphony orchestras and 35 million concert goers also showed the national interest in culture. The deaths of musical greats Leonard Warren, Laurence Tibbett, John Charles Thomas, Oscar Hammerstein, 2, Lucretius Bori, and Dmitri Mitropoulos reminded the musically inclined of past American contributions, while the passing of philanthropist John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Walter Yust (editor of Encyclopaedia Britannica) comedy’s Mack Sennett, and society’s respected Emily Post were evidences of America’s accomplishments in fields of diverse interest. Clark Gable would be difficult for the motion picture industry to replace (or for the public to forget). Youngsters—and many not so young—would miss Ward Bond of the wholesome and vastly popular Wagon Train TV show.
A ten-man study group, The President’s Commission on National Goals, brought in a report on November 16 which attempted to paint horizons for the growing nation. The final report with its additional statements and essays made a 372-page book entitled Goals for Americans. While it was clear that the panel had been unable to agree in certain areas (labor, welfare, civil rights, federal action in general, and the Connelly amendment), the net result was important. The paramount goal of the nation, it was agreed in a summary, is “to guard the rights of the individual, to ensure his development, and to enlarge his opportunity.” A call was made for a new sense of responsibility, for an increase in personal effort, and for enlargement of attitudes beyond “the materialistic ethic.”
Challenged by the imponderability of daily events in an awesome missile age; concerned over burgeoning population and frustrating economic stresses; and clinging to ever-increasing leisure in which to enjoy consumer goods, the American people lived their respective lives in 1960.
For them it had been another year without war. They were glad. Immersed in the routine of daily living, they looked toward 1961 with fingers crossed—hopeful that it would miraculously bring some degree of freedom from the tensions of modern life on a troubled planet.

From History News Network July 21 2008

McCain turns to Karl Rove for Help

Steve Schmidt, New McCain Advisor (LA Times)

The political veteran Steve Schmidt was named last week to run the stuttering presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain and save it from itself, has moved quickly to install another veteran of previous Republican campaigns that opposed the Arizona senator.
The new style first emerges at lunch hour today in Denver with a trademark town hall meeting and a series of local media interviews focused on, of all things, the economy, which pretty much everyone but the McCain operation has long believed was campaign issue No. 1 in 2008.
On Sunday, as first reported by ABC News, Schmidt named as McCain's new political director Mike DuHaime, whose job will be to provide just such nonstop relevant focus.
DuHaime's most recent political feat was to lead the one-time frontrunning GOP presidential campaign of ex-New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani to crash in flames somewhere in the Florida swamps.
But don't be fooled. The tough-talking, aggressive Schmidt and the milder but equally methodical DuHaime, both in their 30s and both New Jerseyans, are part of a new generation of professional Republican operatives getting their first chances to direct the unruly multimillion-dollar monsters that massive national campaigns can become.
Many like Schmidt were schooled in the successful style of....
...Karl Rove, who learned his methodical political management skills through the daily minutiae of state races during the 80s and 90s before jumping into national politics.
Schmidt worked in the losing campaigns of would-be senator Matt Fong of California and would-be president Lamar Alexander, now a GOP senator from Tennessee.
In 2004 Schmidt ran the rapid-response team for Bush-Cheney, a job once held by ex-White House counselor Dan Bartlett, before working with Rove and Vice President Dick Cheney.
In 2006, Schmidt went west to head the ultimately successful reelection campaign for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who had lost several important ballot initiatives, was sagging in popularity and had a campaign team pulling in several different directions.
Sound familiar?
The grumbling grew louder among grass-roots Republicans across the country in recent weeks as the feeling mounted that while few work harder than McCain himself, his campaign had squandered its 90-day general election headstart with spinning wheels taking the candidate in too many directions with muddled messages, sloppy staging and clumsy speech deliveries.
In recent days McCain has worked with Brett O'Donnell, a speech coach, to smooth his chronically awkward Teleprompter speech deliveries, which sound particularly clumsy in comparison to his Democratic opponent's well-timed and rhythmic oratory.
Can the veteran and, yes, stubborn Arizona senator, the former free-spirited fighter pilot who prefers the fly-by-the-seat-of-your pants style evidenced in his favorite unrehearsed town hall gatherings, adapt to the more disciplined mode of pro managers? And stick to the polished message without inadvertently inserting some distracting comment?
The McCain campaign has also just hired Greg Jenkins, an experienced political advance team captain and Fox News producer. His job is to spiff up the often-dreary settings and stagings of McCain's campaign appearances that can silently add or detract so much from delivery of the day's political message not to the immediate audience, which are merely living props, but to the thousands more witnessing the event through the prism of TV.
And, according to Bill Kristol, the other shoe will soon drop when McCain hires Mike Murphy, the campaign strategist who helped him nearly upset the Bush family in 2000, as his traveling advisor and strategist while Schmidt drives the campaign from Alexandria.
Does anyone remember Giuliani's relentless 9/11 message of last fall? While ultimately unsuccessful in Republican primaries due to a variety of reasons, there was no doubt what Giuliani's message was. And DuHaime ran that effort. Likewise, under Rove's direction, George W. Bush ran two successful Texas gubernatorial races with but three or four easily identifiable goals.
DuHaime began his political career as campaign manager for Anthony Bucco’s successful New Jersey State Senate race in 1997. He was deputy campaign manager for Bob Franks’ 2000 U.S. Senate race, and, oh, look, regional political director of Bush's 2004 reelection bid.
In 2005 and 2006 DuHaime was the political director of the Republican National Committee, which under several chairmen including former Montana Gov. Marc Racicot, Ken Mehlman, Ed Gillespie and Florida Sen. Mel Martinez has since 2000 closely coordinated its efforts with the White House (meaning Rove).
DuHaime's appointment, which also made him deputy campaign manager, is an early sign of the firm, more centralized and pragmatic approach the blunt Schmidt has quickly imposed on the GOP candidate's campaign headquarters in Arlington, Va.
Anyone who's sat in on a national campaign's daily message meeting, which sets and meticulously choreographs the candidate's travels and messages up to two to three weeks out, will recognize the difference between one that's a chorus of possibly good ideas and one that has a presiding officer who listens and then decisively drives a single theme.
Hard to believe, fully 18 months into this presidential campaign and less than four months out from the November election, but DuHaime actually replaces no one on the McCain staff.
That's because, amazingly, until Sunday the Republican presidential nominee's national team did not employ either a political director or a field director.
-- Andrew Malcolm (LA Times)

From The Times of London
The social psychology revolution is reaching its tipping point
Go and look in your bookshop: new thinking is seeping into politics
Daniel Finkelstein
It took a long time. Longer than it should have. But in the end, the penny dropped.
Back in the 1980s, Tony Blair, a junior Shadow minister, was sitting quietly with his constituency agent, John Burton, when he suddenly exclaimed: “You know, John, I understand it all. Finally, I've got it.” When Burton asked him what he was talking about, Blair triumphantly replied: “Microeconomics!”
Twenty years later the remark seems charmingly naive. Could a Labour spokesman with an economic portfolio really have been so pleased to understand the basic ideas of supply and demand, pricing and competition? But at the time it was a considerable intellectual achievement for a politician of the Left, and it was to prove an important political moment too.
I wonder whether in a couple of decades' time, our own fumbling first acquaintance with new thinking will appear similarly amusing. For an intellectual revolution is under way that will change the way we think about public policy just as the free market economists did in the 1980s. I wonder whether one day soon a future party leader will turn round to his agent and say: “Finally, I've got it! Human behaviour.”
Those who doubt that there is something going on in the world of ideas should get themselves a publisher's catalogue. One month there is a book called Nudge, the next a book called Sway. A volume called Predictably Irrational follows another called Irrationality. Since the success of Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point, books on tipping points have reached a tipping point.
Behind this publishing explosion, with its PR hoopla, is real and solid intellectual progress. It comes from two streams of thought, developing alongside each other. The first is the idea of evolutionary psychology.
The breakthrough came with E.O. Wilson's controversial work Sociobiology, first published in 1975. Since then a number of academics, including familiar names such as Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker, have illuminated aspects of human behaviour by explaining how they arise from our Darwinian struggle. For example, we reciprocate favours because we are the genetic descendants of those who survived to breed because they reciprocated favours.
Why was this work controversial? Because it argued that behaviour is partly inherited, offending against those who believe that we are born completely free of such influence. As Pinker explains in his unmissable book The Blank Slate, the critics have really lost the battle, even if they haven't given up.
The second stream of thought is behavioural economics. For twenty years now, some economists have been looking at the psychology of economic decision-making. Instead of seeing humans as rational calculating machines, behavioural economists have been conducting experiments to assess how real choices are made. On paper, two alternatives may look economically identical. But the way that they are framed and the context will, in the real world, determine the choice. Human beings are, for instance, highly loss-averse. They will take risks to avoid a loss, while behaving conservatively when a possible gain is in the offing.
This work has revolutionised economic thinking and helped to win Daniel Kahneman the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2002. This was the prize that Milton Friedman won in 1976, just before monetarism swept all before it.
All this does not overturn classical economics. It enriches our understanding of it. It suggests that there is such a thing as society and you can't understand the impact of policy on individuals unless you realise that. We are not just individuals. We abide by social norms, reciprocate favours, stick by our commitments, are desperate to remain consistent and are tribal.
And you can see already this work seeping into the political mainstream. There's been a flutter of interest in Nudge and in Robert Cialdini's seminal book Influence. George Osborne has written this week of social psychology, and his Tory frontbench colleague Greg Clark takes a close interest. On the Labour side James Purnell shows some familiarity and the former Blair aide Matthew Taylor is turning the Royal Society of Arts into one of the leading think-tanks in this area.
The most important step forward has come with David Cameron's correct insistence that social change is as likely, or more likely, to come through influencing behaviour as it is through regulation.
Yet the integration of the academic work on human behaviour into politics is still very much in its infancy. It is roughly now where economic understanding was in about 1978, before the Thatcher revolution. It is possible, indeed usual, to have entire policy debates in which the science of human behaviour doesn't figure at all.
For instance, in the past two weeks we have had discussion of obesity and of knife crime. Social norms have hardly figured. If everybody thinks that everybody else is getting fat, then more people will put on weight. The campaigns designed to reduce obesity may be spreading it. Similarly the very idea that every young person is carrying a knife increases knife crime. The obvious route of making such behaviour seem odd and isolated appears not to have occurred to any major politician.
Similarly, the work of social psychologists on the power of public commitments is entirely absent from the debate on marriage and on reducing delinquency; and our struggle to overcome our tribal instincts doesn't figure in the discussion of immigration.
It now seems hard to imagine political debate without rudimentary economic understanding. But we haven't always had it. It's quite a recent thing. The time will come when we feel the same about social psychology.
daniel.finkelstein@thetimes.co.uk

fighting words
The War Between the Wars
Who says we can only face our enemies in one place at a time?

By Christopher Hitchens (Slate)
If there is one element of moral and political certainty that cements the liberal consensus more than any other, it is the complacent view that while Iraq is "a war of choice," it is really and only Afghanistan that is a war of necessity. The ritualistic solidity of this view is impressive. It survives all arguments and all evidence. Just in the last month, as the Iraqi-based jihadists began to beat a retreat and even (according to some reports) to attempt to relocate to Afghanistan and Pakistan, it still seemed to many commentators that this proved that no U.S. forces should have been wasted on Iraq in the first place. This simplistic view ignores, at a minimum, the following points:
Many of the al-Qaida forces—most notably the horrific but now deceased Abu Musab al-Zarqawi—made their way to Iraq in the first place only after being forcibly evicted from Afghanistan. Thus, if one did not want to be confronting Bin Laden fans in Mesopotamia, it was surely a mistake to invade Afghanistan rather than Iraq.
The American presence in Afghanistan is not at all "unilateral"; it meets every liberal criterion of being formally underwritten and endorsed and armed and reinforced by our NATO and U.N. allies. Indeed, the commander of the anti-Taliban forces is usually not even an American. Yet it is in these circumstances that more American casualties—and not just American ones—are being experienced than are being suffered in Iraq. If this is so, the reason cannot simply be that our resources are being deployed elsewhere.
Many of the most successful drives against the Taliban have been conducted by American forces redeployed from Iraq, in particular from Anbar province. But these military victories are the result of counterinsurgent tactics and strategies that were learned in Iraq and that have been applied triumphantly in Afghanistan.
In other words, any attempt to play off the two wars against each other is little more than a small-minded and zero-sum exercise. And consider the implications. Most people appear now to believe that it is quite wrong to mention Saddam Hussein even in the same breath as either a) weapons of mass destruction or b) state-sponsored terrorism. I happen to disagree, but just for an experiment, let us imagine that some regime did exist or did arise that posed such a combination of threats. (Actually, so feverish is my imagination that I can even think of one whose name also begins with I.) Would we be bound to say, in public and in advance, that the Western alliance couldn't get around to confronting such a threat until it had Afghanistan well under control? This would be rather like the equivalent fallacy that nothing can be done in the region until there is a settlement of the Israel-Palestine dispute. Not only does this mean that every rogue in the region can reset his timeline until one of the world's oldest and most intractable quarrels is settled, it also means that every rogue has an incentive to make certain that no such settlement can ever occur. (Which is, of course, why Saddam threw, and now the Iranians throw, their support to the suicide-murderers.)
It would also be very nice to accept another soft-centered corollary of the Iraq vs. Afghanistan trade-off and to believe that the problem of Afghanistan is a problem only of the shortage of troops. Strangely, this is not the view of the Afghan government or of any of the NATO forces on the ground. The continued and, indeed, increasing insolence of the Taliban and its al-Qaida allies is the consequence of one thing and one thing only. These theocratic terrorists know that they have a reliable backer in the higher echelons of the Pakistani state and of its military-intelligence complex and that while this relationship persists, they are assured of a hinterland across the border and a regular supply of arms and recruits.
So, the question for Sen. Barack Obama and his glib supporters is this: Would they solve this problem by removing the American forces from Iraq and putting the thereby-enhanced contingent there to patrol a frontier where one of our main "allies" is continually engaged in stabbing them in the back? (At one point last year, Obama himself appeared to accept the illogic of his own position and spoke hotly of the possibility of following the Taliban onto Pakistani soil. We haven't heard much of that lately. Did he mean to say that, come to think of it, we had enough troops to occupy three countries instead of the stipulated and solitary one? Or would he just exchange Iraq for Pakistan? At least we do know for sure that Pakistan has nuclear weapons acquired mainly by piracy and is the host and patron of the Taliban and al-Qaida.)
Another consideration obtrudes itself. If it is true, as yesterday's three-decker front-page headline in the New York Times had it, that "U.S. Considering Stepping Up Pace of Iraq Pullout/ Fall in Violence Cited/ More Troops Could Be Freed for Operations in Afghanistan," then this can only be because al-Qaida in Iraq has been subjected to a battlefield defeat at our hands—a military defeat accompanied by a political humiliation in which its fanatics have been angrily repudiated by the very people they falsely claimed to be fighting for. If we had left Iraq according to the timetable of the anti-war movement, the situation would be the precise reverse: The Iraqi people would now be excruciatingly tyrannized by the gloating sadists of al-Qaida, who could further boast of having inflicted a battlefield defeat on the United States. I dare say the word of that would have spread to Afghanistan fast enough and, indeed, to other places where the enemy operates. Bear this in mind next time you hear any easy talk about "the hunt for the real enemy" or any loose babble that suggests that we can only confront our foes in one place at a time.Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair.
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2195288/

My Plan for Iraq
By BARACK OBAMA
CHICAGO — The call by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki for a timetable for the removal of American troops from Iraq presents an enormous opportunity. We should seize this moment to begin the phased redeployment of combat troops that I have long advocated, and that is needed for long-term success in Iraq and the security interests of the United States.
The differences on Iraq in this campaign are deep. Unlike Senator John McCain, I opposed the war in Iraq before it began, and would end it as president. I believed it was a grave mistake to allow ourselves to be distracted from the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban by invading a country that posed no imminent threat and had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. Since then, more than 4,000 Americans have died and we have spent nearly $1 trillion. Our military is overstretched. Nearly every threat we face — from Afghanistan to Al Qaeda to Iran — has grown.
In the 18 months since President Bush announced the surge, our troops have performed heroically in bringing down the level of violence. New tactics have protected the Iraqi population, and the Sunni tribes have rejected Al Qaeda — greatly weakening its effectiveness.
But the same factors that led me to oppose the surge still hold true. The strain on our military has grown, the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated and we’ve spent nearly $200 billion more in Iraq than we had budgeted. Iraq’s leaders have failed to invest tens of billions of dollars in oil revenues in rebuilding their own country, and they have not reached the political accommodation that was the stated purpose of the surge.
The good news is that Iraq’s leaders want to take responsibility for their country by negotiating a timetable for the removal of American troops. Meanwhile, Lt. Gen. James Dubik, the American officer in charge of training Iraq’s security forces, estimates that the Iraqi Army and police will be ready to assume responsibility for security in 2009.
Only by redeploying our troops can we press the Iraqis to reach comprehensive political accommodation and achieve a successful transition to Iraqis’ taking responsibility for the security and stability of their country. Instead of seizing the moment and encouraging Iraqis to step up, the Bush administration and Senator McCain are refusing to embrace this transition — despite their previous commitments to respect the will of Iraq’s sovereign government. They call any timetable for the removal of American troops “surrender,” even though we would be turning Iraq over to a sovereign Iraqi government.
But this is not a strategy for success — it is a strategy for staying that runs contrary to the will of the Iraqi people, the American people and the security interests of the United States. That is why, on my first day in office, I would give the military a new mission: ending this war.
As I’ve said many times, we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. We can safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 — two years from now, and more than seven years after the war began. After this redeployment, a residual force in Iraq would perform limited missions: going after any remnants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, protecting American service members and, so long as the Iraqis make political progress, training Iraqi security forces. That would not be a precipitous withdrawal.
In carrying out this strategy, we would inevitably need to make tactical adjustments. As I have often said, I would consult with commanders on the ground and the Iraqi government to ensure that our troops were redeployed safely, and our interests protected. We would move them from secure areas first and volatile areas later. We would pursue a diplomatic offensive with every nation in the region on behalf of Iraq’s stability, and commit $2 billion to a new international effort to support Iraq’s refugees.
Ending the war is essential to meeting our broader strategic goals, starting in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the Taliban is resurgent and Al Qaeda has a safe haven. Iraq is not the central front in the war on terrorism, and it never has been. As Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently pointed out, we won’t have sufficient resources to finish the job in Afghanistan until we reduce our commitment to Iraq.
As president, I would pursue a new strategy, and begin by providing at least two additional combat brigades to support our effort in Afghanistan. We need more troops, more helicopters, better intelligence-gathering and more nonmilitary assistance to accomplish the mission there. I would not hold our military, our resources and our foreign policy hostage to a misguided desire to maintain permanent bases in Iraq.
In this campaign, there are honest differences over Iraq, and we should discuss them with the thoroughness they deserve. Unlike Senator McCain, I would make it absolutely clear that we seek no presence in Iraq similar to our permanent bases in South Korea, and would redeploy our troops out of Iraq and focus on the broader security challenges that we face. But for far too long, those responsible for the greatest strategic blunder in the recent history of American foreign policy have ignored useful debate in favor of making false charges about flip-flops and surrender.
It’s not going to work this time. It’s time to end this war.
Barack Obama, a United States senator from Illinois, is the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.

Conservative icon Jesse Helms dead at 86
Jesse Helms, the firebrand United States senator whose outspoken, conservative views polarized North Carolina and U.S. voters for decades, died at 1:15 a.m. Friday in Raleigh, according to John Dodd, president of the Jesse Helms Center.
He joins the second, third and fifth presidents of the United States – John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe – who also died on Independence Day.
He was 86. His cause of death was not released. Helms will lie in repose on Monday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. at Hayes-Barton Baptist Church in Raleigh. His funeral is at 2 p.m. Tuesday also at the church. A private burial will follow.
Helms served five terms in the U.S. Senate, retiring in 2003 because of his faltering health. During his 30 years in Capitol Hill, the North Carolina Republican became a powerful voice for a conservative movement that was growing both in Congress and across the country, and he used his position to speak out against issues like gay rights, federal funding for the arts and U.S. foreign aid.
"I had sought election in 1972 to try to derail the freight train of liberalism that was gaining speed toward its destination of government-run everything, paid for with big tax bills and record debt," Helms wrote in his 2005 memoir, "Here's Where I Stand."
"My goal, when my wife, Dot, and I decided I would run, was to stick to my principles and stand up for conservative ideals."
Helms' ideals were forged in the Union County town of Monroe, where his father served as police chief. "Big Jesse" Helms raised his son in a strict family base on the Baptist faith and law-and-order principles. "When he said 'smile,' I smiled," the younger Helms later recalled.
A state champion tuba player in high school, Helms briefly attending both Wingate Junior College and Wake Forest College before dropping out to begin a career in journalism. He met his future wife, Dorothy Coble, while working at The News & Observer in Raleigh. During World War II, he enlisted in the Navy and served as a recruiter before returning to the newspaper business after the war.
Building a base
Helms got his first taste of life in Washington, D.C., in 1950, when he worked on the U.S. Senate campaign of segregationist Democratic candidate Willis Smith against the more moderate Frank Porter Graham and served as Smith's assistant after the election. But when Smith died three years later, Helms returned to Raleigh and became executive director of the North Carolina Bankers Association. He won his first public office in 1957, serving one term on the Raleigh City Council, where he became known as a feisty and tight-fisted budget guardian.
In 1960, he moved to the executive offices of Capitol Broadcasting Co., the parent of WRAL, and he developed a strong following across eastern North Carolina over the next decade by appearing in editorials that ran at the end of each night's evening newscast. The editorials blended folksy anecdotes with conservative viewpoints that blasted the federal government, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and other entities he viewed as too liberal. In one noted editorial, he suggested building a wall around the UNC campus, which he called the "University of Negroes and Communists," so that its liberal sentiments could be contained.
Using the name recognition and conservative base he built through the on-air editorials, Helms ran for the U.S. Senate in 1972. He had switched to the Republican Party two years earlier out of frustration with the Democratic Party's stance on civil rights, and President Richard Nixon's landslide win helped propel him to a victory over Congressman Nick Galifianakis of Durham, making Helms the first Republican senator from North Carolina in the 20th century.
In the following three decades, Helms beat back campaigns of former Gov. Jim Hunt and former Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt, among others, to hold onto his Senate seat. But he was accused of using racial politics to secure narrow victories. In the 1990 campaign against Gantt, for example, a Helms television ad showed a white man's hands crumpling a rejection notice from a company that had used an affirmative action program to hire a black job candidate.
Divisive politics
His views on race relations – he opposed a national holiday honoring slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., led a filibuster against the extension of the Voting Rights Act and called some young blacks "Negro hoodlums" – and social issues sharply divided the public into those who viewed him as a champion of the common man and those who thought of him as a narrow-minded bigot.
David Broder, a widely respected political columnist for The Washington Post, called Helms "the last prominent unabashed white racist politician in this country."
"What is unique about Helms – and from my viewpoint, unforgivable – is his willingness to pick at the scab of the great wound of American history, the legacy of slavery and segregation, and to inflame racial resentment against African Americans," Broder wrote shortly after Helms announced that he wouldn't seek re-election in 2002.
Helms acknowledged his polarizing character, saying famed ventriloquist dummy Mortimer Snerd could run as the Democratic candidate for Senate against him and garner 45 percent of the vote.
"I wasn't interested in a popularity contest and surely didn't care about anything the big newspapers called me," he said. "I saw how they constantly ridiculed conservative ideas and conservative people."
In his early years in office, Helms chaired the Senate Agriculture Committee, providing critical support for North Carolina's tobacco industry. When the Republicans gained control of Congress after the 1994 elections, he gained control of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where he became a vocal critic of the former Soviet Union, China and Cuba and a strong advocate of anti-communist – and sometimes repressive – regimes in Latin America and Asia.
He also used his clout on the committee to push for reform of the United Nations, block payment of UN dues by the United States and oppose Democratic-sponsored foreign aid packages and trade deals. The recalcitrant stance he took on many issues garnered him the nickname "Senator No," which only delighted him. "The Raleigh News & Observer dubbed me 'Senator No.' It wasn't meant as a compliment, but I certainly took it as one. There was plenty to stand up and say no to during my first of five terms representing the people of North Carolina," he said.
Other senators weren't as appreciative of his legislative style, and they often returned the favor by opposing bills he sponsored. Hedrick Smith, the Washington correspondent for The New York Times, called Helms' strategy "porcupine power," noting he tried to accomplish as much as possible by being prickly. Others noted he could use Southern manners to disarm opponents.
"Jesse Helms was the kindest, most infuriating, politest, most aggravating and nicest politician I had to deal with in the United States Senate," former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said in a 2001 interview.
Move to the right
Helms' role as standard bearer for the conservative movement is his most lasting legacy in state and national politics. His switch to the Republican Party in 1970 paved the way for many politicians across North Carolina to follow suit, eventually ending decades of one-party control in state and local government.
After the Watergate scandal, he jumped into the GOP vacuum in Washington and began to reshape the Republican Party in his conservative image. With a cadre of young, bright activists at his side, he formed a the National Congressional Club and other committees across the country, soliciting small donations through direct-mail pitches to thousands of people and creating a fundraising machine for the conservative cause and GOP candidates.
The machine helped oust North Carolina Democrats Robert Morgan and Terry Sanford from the U.S. Senate, replacing them with conservative Republicans John East and Lauch Faircloth, respectively.
"We'll never forget how he battled, especially during those first lonely years, to protect our liberties, preserve our family values and keep America strong. There he was, standing day after day to a government Goliath, crying out like a voice in the wilderness," former President Ronald Reagan said in a 1983 speech. "Bit by bit, he became more than a lonely crusader. He grew into a lionhearted leader of a great and growing army."
Many political observers credit Helms' support for catapulting Reagan to the presidency in 1980 and accelerating the conservative agenda – cutting taxes at home, fighting communism abroad and opposing many government social programs – at the national level. He also served as Reagan's right flank for years, allowing the president to make political compromises as needed. "(I decided to) stay to the right of the president's right and make it easier for Reagan to be Reagan," Helms wrote in his memoir.
Holding down the far right of U.S. politics made Helms a foil for the media and liberal activists in a growing culture war as the conservative movement expanded. He was so outspoken in his opposition to art he considered offensive, federal funding for AIDS research and women's issues like legalized abortion that he helped Democrats raise millions of dollars to support candidates who backed those causes.
"Most North Carolinians are not as conservative as Jesse Helms," state Sen. Paul Luebke, D-Durham, said in a 1995 interview. "But by presenting himself as a man of courage, willing to stand up against 'tax-and-spend liberals,' homosexuality and so forth, Helms commands respect."
End of an era
In August 2001, Helms announced he wouldn't seek a sixth term in the Senate. A series of health problems, from knee replacement surgery to prostate cancer to a heart bypass, had worn him down to the point where he needed a motorized scooter to navigate the halls of Congress.
He had earlier designated Wingate University, which allowed him to pursue higher education, as the recipient of his official papers. But he rejected the notion of a "dusty museum" and instead supported the university's creation of the Jesse Helms Center. The nonprofit foundation continues to espouse the political principles of its namesake, educating students, teachers and others on subjects like foreign policy, free enterprise and the Bill of Rights.
Helms and his wife spent his final years quietly in Raleigh, although he continued to follow politics and endorsed several candidates, including his granddaughter, Jennifer Knox, who won a District Court judgeship in Wake County in 2004.
"It has always been my contention," he wrote in his memoir, "that there is no sense in being in office if you don't have the courage to do what is right, even if it is the most unpopular position in the world."
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