The View from Right Field

Instead of More Politicians Like George H.W. Bush, We Need More People Like George H.W. Bush

On Tuesday, the Chicago Tribune had an editorial entitled “Humility and civility: More pols, please, like George H.W. Bush.”  The editorial concluded:

“If enough politicians and others in the public sphere would take a lesson from the former president’s honorable conduct, Americans would have more respect for their governments – and for each other.”

While I agree that our politicians should take a decency lesson from George H.W. Bush, it would be even better if all of us took a lesson from former President Bush.  If we would act honorably.  If we would have more respect for those who disagree with us.  If we would post on social media, only things that we are willing to say to somebody in person.

If we want our politicians to be more decent and more honorable (which is something to keep in mind when we go to the polls), the first thing we need is to be more decent and more honorable ourselves.

George H.W. Bush, RIP

I have written a lot about George Herbert Walker Bush over the years, and while I am saddened by his passing, I am sure that he, and his family, are glad he is with Barbara once again.  Our longest presidential marriage is an example for us all.  As was his sense of duty, honor, and decency, something that is too often missing in politics today.

But George H.W. Bush was more than a good man.  He was a good president.  Many of the obituaries talk about how President Bush went back on his pledge at the 1988 Republican Convention: “Read my lips, no new taxes.”  What they didn’t mention is why President Bush felt he needed to agree to a tax increase in the fall of 1990.  In October of 1990, there was a short government shutdown over the Columbus Day weekend.  By then, however, and following on President Bush’s statement of August of 1990 that Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait “will not stand,” U.S. troops were already beginning to deploy to the Middle East.  President Bush explained his decision to agree to a tax increase in order to avoid a further government shutdown as follows: “When push came to shove and our troops were moving overseas, we needed a fully functioning government.  I simply had to hammer out a compromise to keep the government open ….”¹  This is obviously an approach to government, and responsibility, that not many people in Washington, at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue, seem to have today.

America’s Future Foreign Policy: “The Jungle Grows Back” – Do We Care?

Dr. Robert Kagan has written a fascinating book on the future of American foreign policy: The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled World.  His main points are laid out in this excerpt available at Amazon.com:

“The American-led liberal world order was never a natural phenomenon.  The past seven-plus decades of relatively free trade, growing respect for individual rights, and relatively peaceful cooperation among nations – the core elements of the liberal order – have been a great historical aberration. … Our own era has not lacked its horrors …. Yet by historical standards…, it has been a relative paradise. … The great Cold War confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union ended peacefully, a historical rarity. … Since the end of the Second World War the world has also enjoyed a period of prosperity unlike any other …. Since 1945, some four billion people around the world have climbed out of poverty. … But all this has been an anomaly in the history of human existence. The liberal world order is fragile and impermanent. Like a garden, it is ever under siege from the natural forces of history, the jungle whose vines and weeds constantly threaten to overwhelm it. …

Brett Kavanaugh and His Accuser

Several comments on the Brett Kavanaugh controversy:

1.  Almost regardless of what happens after this point, both Judge Kavanaugh and his accuser, whose name does not need to be repeated here, will, for the rest of their lives, be identified with this moment. One of them correctly and one of them, possibly, wrongly. 

2.  The Washington Post says that its article, etc., were not done “at the eleventh hour” because it was only last week that the accuser was willing to have her name mentioned publicly. I wonder whether that means the Post would not have published this accusation if the accuser had not been willing to identified by name.

Another August 8 Anniversary: Georgia, 2008

I am referring, of course, to the Georgia of Tbilisi, not Atlanta.  Ten years ago today, during the Olympics in Beijing, Russia invaded Georgia.  Robert Kagan recalls what happened: 

“Vladimir Putin struck one of the first major blows [against the liberal world order] when he sent Russian forces into South Ossetia in neighboring Georgia in support of Russian-backed separatists.  The Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, fearing a full-blown invasion, ordered his troops to attack [i.e., attack the Russians who were in Georgia], thus springing Putin’s trap.  Using the Georgian attack as a pretext, Putin launched that full-blown invasion, with tens of thousands of troops, fighter aircraft and elements of the Black Sea Fleet all pre-positioned and ready to move the instant Saakashvili acted.”

The West pretty much ignored the Russian attack.  Even though Georgia had contributed more troops to the war in Iraq than any other non-NATO country, George W. Bush refused to provide military equipment.  We only provided humanitarian aid (like the Obama administration did in Ukraine).

August 8 Anniversaries: 1968 and 1988

August 8 this year brings up two significant anniversaries.  The first, which I have commented on before (and here), is the 30th anniversary of the first scheduled night game at Wrigley Field.  I say “scheduled” because, while the game started, it never finished.  It starting raining in the fourth inning and didn’t stop.  (Well, it eventually stopped, but not soon enough.)  And so, instead of a baseball game, we got Greg Maddux, et al, sliding on a rain-slickened tarp.  (You can just barely see it here, along with a really young Paul Sullivan.)  The first official night game was the next night.

The other is the 50th anniversary of Richard Nixon’s nomination for president by the Republican Party in 1968.  As we said back then, “Nixon’s the One.”

What Can We Learn from the Financial Crisis – and Could It Have Been Handled Better?

As Harvard professor¹ Greg Mankiw says, the conventional wisdom is pretty clear on what caused the 2008 financial crisis:

“In the mid-2000s, the nation experienced a housing bubble.  A combination of stupidity, negligence and malfeasance led a bunch of Wall Street firms to make excessively risky bets that the bubble would go on forever. …

[W]hen the bubble burst, these new homeowners defaulted in record numbers, and the Wall Street firms headed toward insolvency. ...

Fortunately, policymakers came to the rescue.”

The Retirement of Anthony Kennedy – And What Might Have Been

It is interesting how things turn out.  With Justice Kennedy retiring, President Trump has a chance to nominate a replacement, assuming he can find one acceptable to all 50 Republican senators¹ and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell can get the nomination through the Senate this fall.  How much better it might have been for the Democrats if, back in 1986, Teddy Kennedy had not “borked” the nomination of Robert Bork to replace Justice Lewis Powell, who was then retiring.  Robert Bork died in December of 2012, and if he had been on the Court (and not Justice Kennedy), President Obama would have been able to nominate a replacement.  Instead, President Reagan nominated Anthony Kennedy.  And now President Trump has the opportunity to nominate his replacement.
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¹ With John McCain being ill, the number of Republicans is effectively down to 50.

70th Anniversary of the Berlin Airlift

I don’t have enough time to write a proper post on this subject, but I cannot ignore the 70th anniversary of the first flight of the Berlin Airlift, on June 26, 1948.  As I have said before, the story of the Airlift is amazing.  On June 24, 1948, the Soviet Union blocked the western land routes to Berlin.  Two days later, and just three years after the Allies had defeated the Germans in a war that lasted almost six years for the British, the U.S. and Britain started an around-the-clock airlift to supply West Berlin with everything it needed to survive, from food to coal.  The Airlift lasted fifteen months, and turned enemies into fast friends.  It may have been the biggest defeat the Soviets suffered in the Cold War until the Wall itself came down in 1989.

When Trump Meets Putin: Will He Agree NATO Should Not Have Expanded East?

It looks like Donald Trump may be meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Vienna before the NATO meeting in mid-July.  If they meet, I am sure President Putin will raise his complaint about Eastern European countries joining NATO.  Given that President Trump agreed with Kim Jong Un of North Korea that U.S.-South Korea military maneuvers constituted “war games” and were “very provocative,” the very terms that North Korea uses in its propaganda to criticize the maneuvers, it is entirely possible President Trump will agree with President Putin.  The fact President Trump thinks NATO members are ripping off the United States perhaps makes it even more likely he will agree with President Putin.

However, if President Trump does agree with Russia on this, then he will be wrong, very wrong.  The historical record is unclear as to what the United States and USSR agreed with respect to NATO expansion when Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to German unification and the right of a united Germany to stay in NATO.  While the official documents didn’t contain any promises about NATO expansion, it is possible the Soviets understood NATO wouldn’t expand as it did.  But regardless of what the Soviets, now Russians, understood back then, there is nothing wrong with the NATO expansion that occurred.