Warcraft and Governance

Posted on February 20, 2017 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, February 20, 2017

On February 7th of this year, the lead article in James Hohmann’s The Daily 202 (a daily news capsule put out by The Washington Post) was Five books to Understand Stephen K. Bannon. The week before, a long-time associate of Bannon had told a cable news channel that his “bible” was The Art of War, by Sun Tzu.  Written in the fifth century A.D., that tract is still considered a classic work of military strategy.

Why was this important? Because President Trump appointed Bannon as his chief strategist. One can never say for certain who is whispering what in the President’s ear, but it’s safe to say that the advice of his chief strategist matters. So I obtained a copy of The Art of War and devoured it, looking for correlations with the first month of the President’s actions. Fortunately, I didn’t have to look very hard.

Trump had often stated himself that he intended to be unpredictable because that kept his opposition off guard and strengthened his position. And regardless of who you believed, it was clear that Trump’s version of what was true and what was not usually differed from the establishment’s. For whatever reason, his bombastic campaign of attacking everything he didn’t like, calling every differing opinion a vicious lie, and labeling every media outlet that criticized him a failed enterprise spreading fake news, succeeded.

Trump was masterful at misdirection, diverting attention, and creating chaos among all those who opposed him. Feint here, attack there, strike quickly, and show no mercy in battle − exactly what Sun Tzu prescribed as the formula for victory in war.  Whether or not he was a devotee of Sun Tzu, you have to give Trump credit for recognizing that his political campaign was a perfect allegory for war.  In many ways, of course, his business career displayed the same qualities.  One never lays his cards on the table when negotiating a business deal. It’s all about deception, creating false expectations, and knowing when to strike.

As unpleasant as the election campaign was, unless Congress finds collusion with Russia, Trump didn’t violate any laws. Political campaigns really have no rules.  The assumption is that the voters will punish any candidate who behaves really badly. All is fair in politics and war.

But is the same true for governing? We’ve now seen Trump (and presumably Bannon) apply the art of warcraft in two scenarios.  As I see it, he’s in an entirely different arena now. In addition to adversaries, he must deal effectively with allies, the loyal opposition at home, the courts, and the press. And my question is this: should the President treat all of those entities in the same manner as he would an enemy on the battle field?

If his intention in demonizing the news media and the courts is to diminish their influence, he is acting in direct contravention of our Constitution. If he is attempting to reduce his political opposition to impotence, we are on our way to autocracy. If he uses his populism to intimidate Congress, he will do great harm to our republic.  And if he creates chaos among our allies, he will only strengthen our potential enemies.

History has repeatedly demonstrated that a charismatic leader who has no self-imposed boundaries will invariably do more harm than good, and most often will bring his country to ruin.  That’s what being presidential is all about. Our greatest presidents have risen above the personal once they were in office.  It’s not about them any more. It’s about what best for the country.

Another lesson history has often repeated is what happens when people sit back and do nothing when things appear to be going off the rails. Is all the talk of confusing our NATO allies with mixed signals just more of Trump’s unpredictability? Does he believe that makes his administration stronger?

The events of the last couple of days seem almost comical, except for their deadly serious overtone. When it was reported that the Iraqi terrorists who didn’t commit the Bowling Green Massacre also didn’t commit one in Sweden, we all chuckled. But the Swedish government didn’t find the situation amusing.

It turns out that Trump isn’t the only one who knows how to use Twitter. A former prime minister tweeted, wondering what Trump had been smoking. And the Swedish Ambassador was pointedly sarcastic in his response.

Maybe all this will amount to nothing, and a year from now we’ll be laughing about it. But maybe it’s just the tip of that Manhattan-sized iceberg that broke off the antarctic icecap last week (unless NASA’s Landsat 8 satellite, which recorded the event, was co-opted by anti-administration environmentalists planting fake news).

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

What Would Lincoln Do?

Posted on February 12, 2017 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, February 12. 2017

Today is Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. Perhaps in some alternate universe, he’s still there. Silly? Sure, but it makes me wonder what a man of his intellect and temperament might think and do today, with the benefit of 208 years of history under his belt. Since I’m not a historian, I turned to the work of some well-regarded people who are. This article draws heavily on materials posted elsewhere by Patrick Young, Bruce Levine, and Jason Silverman.

While today’s reality is different from that of the Civil War era, there are many similarities. The country then had been torn apart over the issue of slavery, and the tragedy of that terrible war sometimes masks other divisions that separated Americans. High on the list was immigration policy.

Like today’s Republicans, Lincoln’s were a coalition of diverse elements that included the Know Nothing Party, which was vehemently anti-immigration and anti-Catholic. Lincoln himself was accused of being a nativist and a Know Nothing, which he equated with being pro-slavery. He not only denied those charges, he asserted there was no way he could possibly be either. Yet, he needed the Know Nothings’ support.

The parallels with the issues Donald Trump faced in 2016 are clear. Trump’s own words caused many to label him a racist. Many others, myself included believed he was guilty of something far worse – pandering to some of the darkest elements in our society to gain their votes, a charge that was also leveled at Lincoln. So the question I posed to myself was – what’s the difference between the way Lincoln behaved while campaigning and in office and what we’ve seen of Trump?

While the 2016 campaign has been described as one of the most negative and disgraceful in our history, make no mistake. The political campaigns of the mid-nineteenth century were vitriolic and angry affairs, in which no punches were pulled. The same was true during Lincoln’s years as President, and I contend that the problems and challenges he faced were orders of magnitude more serious than what Trump has to deal with. Lincoln’s America was literally tearing itself apart. While Trump’s concerns about our borders are legitimate, there is no clear evidence that our country can only survive by isolating itself. Lincoln’s concern was an imaginary border that split the nation in two, with thousands of Americans on each side killing each other, causing far more havoc than all of the terrorist attacks in the last twenty-five years.

We can’t say for sure how Lincoln would have acted in today’s world. All we have to go by is the record of what he did in his own time.  As Jason Silverman wrote in August of 2016,

… while Lincoln himself like many nineteenth-century western Americans occasionally spoke in derogatory terms about some ethnic groups, his actions often belied those harsh words with kind actions. Pandering political rhetoric and humane action need not always be inconsistent and Lincoln demonstrated that.

Lincoln as President never denigrated, demonized, or belittled any racial, ethnic, or religious group. His public pronouncements were always dignified. He valued truth and he chose his words carefully. I think it’s safe to say that if he were President today he would behave the same way. He made excruciatingly difficult decisions that impacted the life of every American, but he always respected the central idea on which our nation was founded.

In 2012, Patrick Young wrote:

Lincoln viewed the willingness of Americans to degrade immigrants as the opposite side of the same coin that allowed them to enslave blacks. Both impulses were contrary to the plain meaning of the Declaration of Independence, a document he would establish as the well-spring of emancipation…in his Gettysburg Address.

We don’t know exactly what Lincoln would have said about preventing immigrants and refugees from certain countries from entering the United States, but we do know that he insisted that the following be inserted into his party’s platform for his 1864 re-election campaign (quoted from Silverman’s article):

…foreign immigration, which in the past has added so much to the wealth, development of resources and increase of power to this nation, the asylum of the oppressed of all nations, should be fostered and encouraged…

I’m confident that nothing occurring in our country today would cause Lincoln to change a single word of that.

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Welcome to America the Beautiful

Posted on February 10, 2017 by alanpzendell

I’ll approach this initial Posting by answering some questions no one has yet asked but might.

Q. Why are you creating this blog? Aren’t there enough of them already?

A. My guess is that there are probably too many blogs out there. But I’m creating this one anyway, because I think it’s necessary.  I’ve gathered a group of excellent writers together who all feel an urgent need to express themselves about the future of the United States of America.

Q. Why the urgency and why now?

A. I grew up in the aftermath of World War 2, the Korean War, and the Communist hysteria of the fifties. On October 26, 1962, I stood on the quad of the Columbia University Campus along with hundreds (maybe thousands, I was too dazed to count) of other students waiting to see if we were going to be nuked along with the rest of New York City as a result of our standoff with the Soviets over Cuba. I experienced the horrors of the civil rights movement, Vietnam, Watergate, the Iran hostage crisis and the Israeli-Arab wars of the sixties and seventies. More recently were the financial crashes of 1987 and 2007, nine-eleven, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the nuclear brinksmanship of North Korea, the threat of Iran, and the fight against ISIS, all of which have exposed an underbelly of isolationism and bigotry not seen in the United States since the 1930s.

Why now? Because the divisions in our country that were revealed and exacerbated by the 2016 election have left me more fearful about our future than at any time in my seventy-three years.

Q. What difference will this blog make?

A. Maybe none. But the lessons of history are clear: when people who are concerned about the future sit back and do nothing, things invariably get worse. And the lessons of my own life have taught me that standing up for what I believe is right usually produces results beyond anything I imagined.

I’ll let the diverse group of people who agreed to join in this venture introduce and speak for themselves, but here’s what I’m certain we all share in common. If we tell the truth, engage in meaningful, rational dialogue, and relentlessly address everything we perceive as a threat to the principles and values were raised with, we will at least make people think and at most affect their ideas and behavior in positive ways. We will not engage in name-calling or political rhetoric, we will not mock or belittle anyone, and we will respect any opinion presented in that spirit. Maybe we can help identify a meaningful way forward out of the chaos we currently find ourselves in.

Alan Zendell spent 50 years as a physicist, aerospace engineer, software developer,  program manager and project officer. He worked for large and small companies and the federal government, and has been a private consultant to a variety of businesses. He has published seven books.

Posted in Introductions | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments