he was indeed reading “The Best and the Brightest.”
Read the whole article, by Marc Tracy in the NYT. No, there is no indication that I had anything to do with Bannon’s choice of reading. Tracy makes this point:
If “The Best and the Brightest” is a brief against the East Coast meritocracy, though, its proposed alternative is not pure ideology. It is expertise.
Time and again, in Mr. Halberstam’s telling, lower-level government officials who understood Vietnamese politics, sentiments and even geography assessed reality accurately and offered correct policy recommendations to the major characters — who shunted them aside.
Well, in hindsight, the lower-level officials who raised doubts about the Vietnam commitment were experts. But there were other lower-level officials who argued the other way, and in hindsight they look like fools, or like toadies saying what they thought the senior policy makers wanted to hear.
I did not come away from the book thinking that the main conflict is between ideology and expertise, although I think that is a plausible reading. Instead, I came away from it thinking that the major conflict was between “can-do” overconfidence and sensible skepticism. The political process prefers the overconfident individual promising to solve problems, and so power accrues to people with “solutions,” even if those turn out to have dreadful consequences.
It did not take an expert to sense that there was something wrong with getting involved in Vietnam. On p. 181, Halberstam writes,
Thruston Morton was assigned to inform Senator [Richard] Russell of the Armed Services Committee that the President would be sending an estimated 200 men to South Vietnam as well as funding the country. Russell answered that it was a mistake, it would not stay at 200, it would eventually go to 20,000 and perhaps one day even as high as 200,000. . .
“I think this is the greatest mistake this country’s ever made,” Russell said.
That was during the Eisenhower Administration. A few years later, Russell and others advised President Kennedy against expanding the commitment, but at the same time other powerful figures argued for an even stronger U.S. buildup. This was to be the case throughout the war, and neither Kennedy nor Johnson were decisive enough to either limit the commitment on the one hand or to undertake the most aggressive military actions on the other.
As I pointed out in a previous post, Eisenhower deserves credit for staying out of a war in Vietnam. Halberstam writes (p. 178-179),
Eisenhower was in no mood for unilateral action, and in 1954 his manner of decision making contrasted sharply with that of Lyndon Johnson some eleven years later. Whereas Eisenhower genuinely consulted the Congress, Johnson paid lip service to real consultation and manipulated the Congress. Eisenhower’s chief of staff had made a tough-minded, detailed estimate of what the cost of the war would be; eleven years later an all-out effort was made by almost everyone concerned to avoid determining and forecasting what the reality of intervention meant. In 1954 the advice of allies was genuinely sought; in 1965 the United States felt itself so powerful that it did not need allies, except as a means of showing more flags and gaining moral legitimacy for the U.S. cause. Eisenhower took the projected costs of a land war to his budget people with startling results; Johnson and McNamara would carefully shield accurate troop projections not only from the press and the Congress but from their own budgetary experts. The illusion. . .that bombing could be separated from combat troops, which was allowed to exist in 1965, was demolished in 1954 by both Ridgway and Eisenhower.
The lessons that Mr. Bannon might take away from this are to consult widely on decisions, pay attention to pessimistic estimates of potential costs and adverse consequences, and above all encourage honesty from subordinates. Beware of those who tell you what they think you want to hear, and instead encourage those who give you their honest analysis.
If you have not, you really should read H.R. McMaster’s Dereliction of Duty on how Vietnam policy evolved over the course of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, up to late 1965. Would add grist to your mill. McNamara’s fantasy of “flexible response” combined with Kennedy’s decision to turn the JCS into essentially a factotum for Maxwell Taylor built the groundwork for Johnson’s self-serving mendacity.
The JCS didn’t want to fight that war the way it was fought. So it wasn’t merely that people at the top didn’t want to hear certain facts from their more knowledgeable underlings, per Halberstam. It was one set of elite actors, supposedly reliant on the best “scientific” techniques, freezing out another set of elite actors because of their allegedly ossified and conventional wisdom.
It probably wasn’t worth the cost, but in fact we won the Vietnam War, before the Democrats in Congress, who wanted desperately for the war to have been lost, broke our obligation to provide military aid to South Vietnam while the Russians stepped up military aid to the North. The famous picture of a tank emblazoned with a red star breaking through the gate of the US embassy in Saigon was a picture of a Russian tank. At that time we were refusing to supply spare parts to keep the South’s American tanks operational.
True, and Lewis Sorley’s book, A Better War, lays this out in detail. Instead of the Best and the Brightest being the whole story, A Better War describes the turnaround under Nixon and the final perfidy of the Democrats that cut off support of the South.
I read the NYT article and it was an opportunity for fantasizing about Bannon’s motives after a chance encounter during which the book was not discussed at all. Virtually all of the reporting by the NYT and the WaPo (especially) is designed to discredit Trump no matter how thin or false the evidence.
Then maybe convince Steve Bannon that his decision to bar legal card holders from Iran, etc. was a major screw up.
Also, Several Points:
1) The biggest failure of a successful Private sector executive moving to the government was Robert McNamara as Defense Secretary in the 1960s during Vietnam. Why was he such a historical failure? And how can other executives learn from the experience? (Maybe having George Schultz start at a secondary cabinet position is smarter?)
2) Can you convince Steve Bannon that the Trump administration is the heaviest Private sector administration ever? If he fails the US could go back to Obama like expert administration real quick.
3) Do you consider Steve Bannon/Trump a risk to immigration and free trade? Lots of businesses are starting to alarmed the literal reality of Trump’s campaign and his actions. Trump did not win because he promised to cut Medicare but he won the rust belt WWC promising better trade deals.
4) What type of executive would you like to see run for office? (To be honest, this should have been Romney not Trump here.) I know there are plenty on the local governments that have had successful executives but not so much on the national level.
It may have been a political miss, although it is popular, but there is the theory put there that Trump & Co. are trying to contrast a pretty reasonable move on vetting people from countries in turmoil compared to bombing those exact same country and fomenting the turmoil. I’m not convinced Trump is that smart, but I got it even if the point was unintended.
I agree, but it was still stupid to write the EO to bar people who already have permanent residency rights in the US. This is the problem with having an entertainer like Trump as president, he is more interested in sending messages to his fans than in effecting a sustainable policy change.
I’m not convinced Trump is that smart, but I got it even if the point was unintended.
Isn’t one of Arnold points on government policy is the unintended consequences even if popular? So it really doesn’t matter who screwed up here but now the EO has hurt Trump’s political capital and it appears he going to fight this tooth and nail. (This is in great contrast to 2nd term Obama who was a master of underplaying his EO and working the refs afterwards.) Anyway, I found the EO ineffective for the same reasons why conservative argue against gun control with liberals after a mass shooting. Mostly, there is not a terrorist attack the last 16 years in which the EO would have stopped. Wouldn’t adding Saudia Arabai have more effect? Or Egypt or Pakistan (much larger population)? The EO appears to be doing ‘Something’ even if something really does not do anything.
“Then maybe convince Steve Bannon that his decision to bar legal card holders from Iran, etc. was a major screw up.”
Almost nothing that can be undone in a few days with some paperwork is a major screwup in government.
No way. Trump is setting a dangerous precedent as being the first President ever to issue constitutionally questionable end-arounds of Congress! We must extrapolate directly from that to the end of the world. ;p
The problem with the Trump administration is there is a Poe’s Law aspect to it. We can’t tell if it’s satire yet. But when Obama sought to normalize millions of illegals unconstitutionally, it was ho hum. When Trump inconveniences a few hundred people the sky is falling.
Notice how bombing these countries for their own good under Obama is okay, because it shows we care. Pausing immigration is an unforgivable sin.
My charitable take is that he is trying to shock people out of these silly paradigms we’ve built up and this was just a flub. But who knows. Maybe he’s just an orange clown.
Note how the media is misinterpreting what Trump said about Putin.
He is basically saying he wants to get along with everyone until he can’t. We can’t regime change every nad guy who happens ro be running a dangerous adversary. The media is using that opportunity to claim he is saying the US is equally as bad as Putin.
Except Trump actually said something very close to that. O’Reilly (in his typical yahoo fashion) said Putin was a “killer” and Trump said that the US kills a lot of people, too. Of course, the US doesn’t deliberately bomb hospitals, or have critics of the government rubbed out, but I suppose that’s too fine a distinction for our new president.
You really think Trump’s point is that the US of A that he is President of is as bad as Putin?
Or is his point that Putin is bad, but that doesn’t mean we have to re-ignite a semi-cold war?
It’s obviously the latter, but the media has been going ape claiming it’s the former.
Oh, and yes, Trump says things provocatively. But the question is why does he do that. I think it is because it is effective. Sometimes he takes a cut and misses and this may be one of those times. But I think he banks on a batting average that “the folks” will get his underlying point and punish the media for overblowing the criticism.
Andrew’, if Trump just had a rational interest in working with Putin, why does he put so much emphasis on saying the US is no better than Russia? If he merely had realpolitik in mind, it would make more sense to say that we can’t choose other countries’ forms of government for them and sometimes have to work with governments we find distasteful. Instead, the man seems to enjoy gratuitously trashing America, in the crudest Nation/Zinn/Chomsky fashion, as long as it concerns a period of time before he was president.
Trump deserves to be castigated for his disgusting crush on Putin, including by those of us who generally, if half-heartedly, support him. One hopes that the pro-Putin garbage coming out of Trump’s big mouth does not get translated into policy.
BTW, Russia has been doing little to fight ISIS. It’s main concern is propping up Assad, and the main threat to him came from other groups.
I’ve seen it reported that Trump hopes to detach Russia from Iran. If so, groveling is not the way to go about it. However, this is consistent with Trump’s pattern of overpaying for assets after minimal negotiation (e.g. the ill-fated Trump shuttle).
Here are several points and I still consider Trump a poor man Putin/Nixon who not lead to Constitutional Crisis:
1) It does seem the biggest difference between Obama and Trump in terms of bombing is Obama is a lot quieter about it. If he learned anything about the Middle East Wars, avoid the Mission Accomplish signs. (I know he went a little loud during his reelection.) Besides, the ‘war’ with ISIS is popular but people don’t want to see the results and Congress does not want to vote on it.
2) The other problem is Trump has not tried to act like a ‘quiet’ President. I bet if he gave up Twitter and made modest changes, his approvals go to 55% – 60% by summer.
3) In terms of amnesty, the right went crazy on Obama EO not deport long time illegal aliens. (He did not propose amnesty.) Realize amnesty polls 45% -50% so a lot of the population agrees with 2013 Bill. (Which is almost reprint of Reagan’s 1986 bill!) Additionally, the number of illegal aliens, especially Hispanic ones, has decreased since 2008. (I live in SoCal and that is true.)
Collin,
Is Trump deporting large numbers of illegals?
In terms of illegal aliens, what stopped the increase was 2008 housing bubble bursting not anything different Bush or Obama. (His high deportations was accounting gimmick but again the Mexican flow was a net decrease 08 – 12.) So by December 2008, the day workers suddenly disappeared around here and we have seen a slight increase the last couple years. To early to tell about changes during Trump but there are a bunch of of Help Wanted signs so we will see around here. I have to visit the Temecula Hills at the Avocado Farms. (Note his push against NAFTA WILL increase immigration.)
The major hidden problem with most analysis of, well, everything is that there are few true opposites in the world. “don’t attack city X, it will be a disaster” doesn’t imply that the policy decision that they prefer would have worked out better. Iirc when it came to Vietnam there were people opposing the slow build up because they wanted not troops involved, and there were those who opposed it because they wanted a fast buildup and a real campaign. Both end up getting treated like experts that really knew what was what militarily, but it is pretty hard for both of them to be correct (that is isolationism and full out interventionism having roughly the same effects).
Just being not wrong once shouldn’t qualify someone as an expert, but far to often it does.
From my reading of the book, Halberstam always seemed to side with the “brilliant” lower level bureaucrats who often tended to be former missionaries who didn’t see the world as pro/anti communist. Well, I wouldn’t say the more communist-friendly side was vindicated, but the anti-communists weren’t either. One striking thing that I learned from Halberstam was how ridiculous the idea of “losing China” was, how many American Protestants were foolishly committed to evangelizing China and how much that fed into the Vietnam war.
China is/has
1) Become a major strategic competitor to the U.S. in the strategic basin in much the same way Japan was in the 1930s.
2) A thriving, underground and primarily evangelical Christian church that prevents a major challenge to its Leninist autocracy.
Tell me again why “losing China” was so benign, and the Protestant missionaries were so foolish.
In 2), do you mean “prevents” or “presents”?
Just because the PRC persecutes the underground Chinese evangelicals does not necessarily mean that the evangelicals are much of a threat to the PRC autocracy.
There was no China to lose, we never had China. The Chinese are 1.3 billion, they are not gong to be controlled by a few missionaries and State dept officers.