John McQuaid

Perhaps I’ve been in Washington too long, but I thought that David Barstow’s Sunday New York Times investigation of Barry McCaffrey’s one-man “military-industrial-media complex” didn’t offer much in the way of scandal. Oh, it’s a fascinating read, an exploration of an influential subculture of retired military men who leverage their Pentagon connections with media exposure and lucrative defense consulting. It’s a follow-up to the excellent investigation earlier this year that showed how the Pentagon had incorporated these guys into a sophisticated messaging effort on the Iraq war. The earlier piece had some problems, but it laid out the TV networks’ complicity in – and willful blindness toward – an egregious government propaganda program.

When the New York Times pulls the trigger on something like this, we expect journalistic shock and awe, and the piece promises to take us through “a deeply opaque world, a place of privileged access to senior government officials, where war commentary can fit hand in glove with undisclosed commercial interests and network executives are sometimes oblivious to possible conflicts of interest.”

But the reality is mundane: McCaffrey appears frequently on TV as a supposedly unbiased commentator on military affairs; he has close ties to various Defense Department officials, who seek to influence what he says on TV; he makes a lot of money from military contractors, who prize his influence with DOD. These kinds of relationships are unsurprising; this is the way Washington works. People have experience, expertise and connections, and if they can, they turn themselves into consultants and TV “analysts” or “strategists” and use the exposure to sell their experience, expertise and connections. Moreover, the piece offers no smoking gun, no clear ethical transgression. It notes McCaffrey sometimes followed the Pentagon line. Except when he didn’t. It says he advocated policies on TV that benefited his clients – but policies that benefit a few contractors no doubt benefited hundreds of others too.

It all sounds a bit unsavory. But the Times is unable to put its finger on exactly why, or what should be done about it, if anything.

The piece seems to want to hang its outrage factor on NBC’s failure to disclose McCaffrey’s corporate connections to viewers. NBC should do so, and its blithe denials are laughable. But this is pretty weak tea: some of the statements of a blustery TV talking head should not be taken at face value. Network news is not the pristine redoubt of journalistic values it pretends to be. Great Caesar’s Ghost!

It’s almost impossible to write intelligibly about what’s happening now in government because, well, it’s all so big that the consequences cannot be predicted. It’s scary, exciting, and a bit frustrating. But that’s what happens when the nation blunders its way to a historical pivot point.

One example: the debate about whether Obama will govern from the “left” or the “center.” His appointments thus far – almost all Washington insiders from Hillary Clinton on down – seem to point to “center” as the answer, and that’s what we hear with approval from the MSM, with complaints from some liberal blogs.

But in both foreign and domestic policy, “left” and “center” as we’ve understood them for the past eight years – and really, for the past generation – are now meaningless terms.

Obama’s foreign policy could go in several different ideological directions. We don’t know yet. But compared with Bush’s foreign policy (at least, before it drifted toward semi-realism over the past couple of years) there will obviously be a world of difference: the difference between having/using what remains of America’s considerable influence and … sitting still, insisting the world come to us. The United States will engage with other governments and with international organizations. It will move forward on climate change, on nuclear non-proliferation, on an Iraq withdrawal, on (perhaps) a Middle East peace plan. Will we succeed at these things? I don’t know. But this is what happens when paralyzed limbs suddenly become mobile again. What the thumb and index fingers are doing is, for the moment, secondary to the amazing fact of those big muscles being flexed at all.

Obama’s domestic appointments are all smart, mainstream types. But they will be responding to a dire national/global emergency, trying things that have never been tried before on such a grand scale. Remember the “kitchen sink strategy”? That’s what we’ve got for the economy now, and it’s hard to believe that it will generate much serious opposition given the speed of the unfolding crisis and the consequences of failure. Obama clearly intends to use the huge political leverage he has right now to reshape the basic relationships between government and the economy, particularly in energy and health care, along more progressive lines.

From the perspective of the past generation, this sounds – is – radical. But sitting where we are today, it’s obvious a radical course is needed to guide us out of the humongous mess we’re in. Obama’s choice of smart, mainstream appointees to carry it out – and of realists to implement his foreign policy – will redefine the center of American politics and change the way we all think of government. Republicans probably won’t like it. But they will have to find a way to engage with it if they want to be in on the debate.

It appears we’re going to spend upwards of $500 billion on a stimulus package focused heavily on rebuilding the crumbling U.S. infrastructure. That’s all to the good. The broader economy desperately needs a large cash infusion, and our infrastructure is in notoriously bad shape for a developed nation. But both the writing of the stimulus bill itself and the actual disbursement will, and must, happen very, very fast. So you have to wonder, do we know how to spend that money effectively? Or will a not-trivial percentage of it be wasted?

One legacy of the past generation, accelerated greatly under the Bush administration, is a breakdown of accountability in both government spending and contracting. More government work of all stripes is done by private firms. This has in turn weakened the structural clout and morale of the civil service. Obama, to his credit, has pledged to address these problems. But that’s a long-term project. It won’t happen in the next eight weeks. It’s a perverse joke I suspect we’ll be seeing more of as the transition moves forward: if “you go to war with the army you have,” Obama will be doing battle on the faltering economy with an “army” whose ranks were assembled by the Bush administration.

So, how will this massive pile of cash be spent? How will we determine who gets say, the money spent rebuilding bridges and highways, or building wifi or broadband networks? And then, how will we keep track to see if it’s well-spent? I’m sure we’ll be hearing more about this – it will be of course be Obama’s first big test. And sadly, the stakes are so high that if if “works” or fails, these operational questions may not matter anyway.

Barack Obama’s early moves to co-opt former adversaries Hillary Clinton and Joe Lieberman are, at least potentially, very smart. They also signal a different way of doing business than we’ve seen in the over the past 20 years. The Bush, Clinton, and Bush presidencies weren’t just four- or eight-year stints running the government but also clannish, dynastic enterprises with aspirations for potential future presidencies, legacy maintenance, et al. They put a heavy emphasis on personal loyalty and were quick to punish even perceived slights. They had – and still have – countless retainers, hangers-on, enforcers, and supplicants willing to say or do or say anything for the team, no matter how ridiculous. Think: Lanny Davis. Or recall how Bush 41 functionary Lawrence Eagleburger’s honest appraisal of Sarah Palin was immediately followed by a humiliatingly abject and unbelievable recantation.

There’s no way to separate the dynasty factor from the pervasive, culture war-driven toxicity of presidential-level politics over the past generation. But it obviously played a role in the atmosphere of more or less constant pettiness and recrimination we’ve all been living with.

Now, of course there are Obama loyalists too, an “Obamaworld” with its own rules. But Obama has no dynastic project going. Michelle Obama is by all accounts very smart and capable, but there’s been no “two for the price of one” talk. At least for now, it’s just him. And he seems determined to move away from the politics of backbiting – something that may just work, given the gravity of the problems the nation faces.

I think/hope these conditions will create a more open, flexible political operation. Neither Hillary Clinton nor Joe Lieberman will ever be an Obama loyalist in the way you have Bush loyalists and Clinton loyalists. But, assuming Clinton takes the Secretary of State job, they will both owe him. And because the obligation is a professional one, graciously offered, to turn around and start undermining him would appear particularly graceless. (Of course, if anyone is capable of that, it’s Lieberman – we’ll see.)

The Obama approach also puts White House politics, with its usual emphasis on high drama and personalities, into perspective. It says: we’re all grownups here. We have a lot of work to do, and we need all hands on deck. If you do well, I do well, and we all come out ahead. This sounds like management 101, something you might hear on “The Office.” But sometimes cliches ring true: there really is a lot of work to do, and the stakes are higher than most of us have seen in our lifetimes. Now let’s see if the “grownup” approach really works.

As political disputes go, the question of whether the United States is now a “center-left” or a “center-right” nation approaches a near perfect degree of meaninglessness. The answer accords not with any objective standard but entirely to the political and cultural biases of the person responding to the question. To answer, you need to choose where you think the “center” is, and where you are in relation to it.

For conservatives, the center can be located in the political endurance of the New Deal-Great Society 20th century state, and the long midcentury run of liberal cultural hegemony that lingers still. Laboring underneath it all, supposedly, was a center-right majority yearning to be liberated. And from Reagan through George W. Bush, the nation did shift to the right. Republicans won elections by systematically attacking the federal government as the principal obstacle to individual achievement and to the nation’s progress. (But for conservatives to hopefully claim the “center-right” mantle is itself on some level self-contradictory; it suggests continuity with, and affirmation of, the 20th century state that Republican policies repudiate.)

Today’s liberals, meanwhile identify the center with the past generation of Republican electoral dominance, in which a majority of the public seemed at least OK with the abstract ideas of smaller government, lower taxes, deregulation, et al (even as those policies were erratically implemented). Obama’s unambiguous victory and expanded Congressional majorities mark an obvious swing left.

In both cases, it’s interesting to note that the center is something identified with your political enemies: a kind of bright star to be navigated away from as quickly as possible, yet still claimed as your own.

We’re facing two enormous problems, one short-term, one long-term – and both demanding quick, ambitious, expensive responses. I refer of course to the precarious state of the U.S. and global economies, and to climate change. The biggest question that Barack Obama will face over the next few years is how to responsibly balance these priorities – and it’s not immediately clear they can be balanced.

The working consensus right now among the developed world’s governments is to battle global warming by raising the cost of carbon emissions. Obama has proposed a cap-and-trade system with a permit auction that will oblige power companies and other industries to pay for the privilege of pumping CO2 into the air. This will raise costs for the affected industries (though they can lower them by finding ways to cut emissions). A good portion of those costs will be passed on to the consumer.

If raising energy costs in fair economic weather is considered political suicide, what happens if you raise them – even prospectively – in the middle of a global downturn?

That will certainly be the argument marshaled by opponents, who certainly know how to lobby. It has some validity as a matter of both substance and politics. However, I’m wondering if we haven’t reached the point where those normal rules don’t – and shouldn’t – apply anymore. Cap-and-trade would raise energy costs, but not immediately; and when the program gets fully underway, the revenue it generates could be quite useful plugging holes in a federal budget running massive post-bailout deficits:

If a cap-and-trade plan were passed in 2009, it would probably take effect in 2012 or so, and the revenue stream would start small the next year and then grow every year after that. That’s perfect timing. We don’t want to raise taxes right now, but a program that guaranteed a growing revenue stream starting a few years from now would help convince investors that the current budget deficit won’t last forever.

I’m also not convinced that boosting energy costs is political poison always and everywhere. Climate is a serious global crisis and it’s time to take it seriously. Real, consequential leadership (the kind Obama aspires to) does sometimes involve calling for sacrifices, and when leaders call for it people have been known to respond.

My first reaction upon reading today’s old-vs.-new media tussle between Ron Rosenbaum and Jeff Jarvis was to wonder “can’t we all get along?” A tiresome sentiment, I know. But is it any more so than replaying the arguments that these two heavy-hitters bring to the endless circular discussion about 21st century journalism?

Shorter Rosenbaum: Jarvis is cruel to those traditional journalists and old media outlets getting hammered by job and budget cuts. Jarvis ignores what they bring to the table -  reporting on real life events – while focusing on the new forms journalism should take. And his self-regard has become unbearable.

Shorter Jarvis: I’m just telling it like it is: if traditional journalists don’t stop whining and adapt to a rapidly changing environment, they’re doomed. And I’m not unbearable; the truth hurts. Nyah.

Rosenbaum is his typically entertaining self: Jarvis’s oracular pronouncements and descriptions of his jet-setting do sometimes verge on self-parody. But I think Jarvis is, on the whole, correct: radical innovation is the only way forward for journalism, and is incredibly promising. Whining about the bygone days (five years ago!) of newspapers and magazines may provide a necessary emotional outlet, but it’s a huge waste of energy and a distraction from the challenges at hand.

But Rosenbaum does identify a weakness that runs through the pronouncements of many a new media guru: the obsession with, and fetishization of, technology and new forms. That’s good as far as it goes, but it’s still not clear what truly great post-dead tree journalism looks like. Oh, there are more and more examples out there – TPM, Spot.us, Grist.org – that combine reporting with technology, Internet, and social networks in compelling ways. And examples of the big media outlets adapting, such as the Washington Post’s decision to include blogger Chris Cillizza as part of its incoming White House team.

However, there’s a certain chicken-or-the-egg factor here. Do emerging technology and the social changes that follow from it naturally beget quality journalism (if you build it, they – journalists and readers – will come)? Or is there a risk that if you focus on technology and the changing relationship between the journalist and the news consumer, the fundamentals get lost in the shuffle? This is a problem at many newspapers, which in their relentless race to cut back and innovate simultaneously are literally trading journalism talent and experience for technical expertise.

The focus on technology, form, and social networking is a big part of the puzzle. But content should be given its due. What are the problems – in communities, the nation, the world – that deserve investigation and exposure with these wondrous new tools?

In my previous post on the bureaucratic inflighting over Louisiana’s coastal restoration efforts, I took a “the system’s broken” point of view. Chris Macaluso, a spokesman for the state’s coastal restoration efforts, sent me an email that elaborates on some of the ways the system is broken. The state government – which ought to have strong voice in how billions of dollars is spent to rebuild, well, a large area of the state – is effectively marginalized by the Corps of Engineers, which is jealously guarding its own turf and funding.

In a nutshell: A federal task force in which the Corps plays a major role says a marsh-rebuilding project that diverts silt-laden water from the Mississippi into the wetlands must be shut down because it’s piling up silt in a ship anchorage. That requires dredging, and there’s no money for dredging. So, no marsh rebuilding. Macaluso:

I assure you, there is no one more upset and disgusted with this decision to shut down this diversion than the state of Louisiana and we will do all we can to keep it from being closed. We feel there was no definitive evidence shown that this diversion was the cause of the situation. The Corps said repeatedly that the river is a dynamic system, which means the sediment could have come from any number of sources, especially considering the multiple flood events in the Mississippi River this year.

The state has offered $10.9 billion for dredging, but it also wants a scientific study to determine the source of the silting.

But to put things in perspective: the Corps has been building levees and dredging channels in the Louisiana marshes for 150 years – something that has greatly accelerated the erosion of those marshes. Now that those huge errors are being addressed – with state and federal money – the Corps wants the state to pony up the dredging money, a price tag that could run into the billions. Among the arguments: the Corps has no authority to dredge anchorages – only waterways. That leaves it up to local harbors. And so on down the bureaucratic rabbit hole.

Rebuilding Louisiana’s marshes is a difficult enough task on its own – one that will likely fail if it isn’t done right, and done fast. If the agencies involved – particularly the Corps – can’t exercise a little leadership and avoid this kind of endless, mind-numbing brinksmanship, it’s just not going to happen.

This is an ominous sign for another reason. If the signals are right, the Obama administration is likely to spend a lot of money on infrastructure as part of its economic stimulus package. The Corps of Engineers is one of the nation’s biggest infrastructure agencies, and it has repeatedly shown it doesn’t have its priorities straight.

From 11/7/08:

THIS IS THE FINAL REPORT OF NEWHOUSE NEWS SERVICE

THE MISSION OF THE NEWS SERVICE HAS BEEN TO PUT THE FINEST JOURNALISM IN FRONT OF AS MANY EYES AS POSSIBLE. FOR NEARLY HALF A CENTURY, WE HAVE DONE OUR BEST TO PROVIDE YOU WITH ARTICLES THAT INFORM, EDIFY, EXCITE AND AMUSE YOUR READERS. WE BID FAREWELL WITH THE WISH THAT THE NEWS BUSINESS WILL BE KIND TO YOUR PUBLICATION AND ITS HARD-STRIVING EMPLOYEES.

It seems that in the fraying marshes of southern Louisiana, we can’t afford to maintain shipping and coastal restoration at the same time. Louisiana’s biggest freshwater diversion project – essentially, a set of gates in the Mississippi River levees that let river water to flow over marshlands, depositing much-needed silt – must be closed because it’s affecting ship anchorages nearby. That requires dredging, which would cost $140 million over the next 15 years, and there’s no money available for that:

The West Bay diversion allows 20,000 cubic feet per second of sediment-laced water to flow into the bay, with a goal of creating 10,000 acres of wetlands during its first 20 years of operation. The original plan was to expand it to 50,000 cubic feet per second in a few years to speed the filling process.

A Plaquemines Parish official warned the state board that threatening the diversion sends the wrong message to Congress at a time when Louisiana needs billions of federal dollars for coastal restoration projects.

“If you send out this message that you are considering closing the largest diversion in Louisiana, what you’re looking at is a political disaster in Congress, ” said P. J. Hahn, the parish director of coastal zone management.

Obviously, something must be worked out here – and probably will be. The coastline is disappearing at an alarming clip, and there’s no room for error on coastal restoration. If New Orleans and surrounding towns are to remain viable places to live, ambitious projects must get underway immediately. And the ones already in place must stay open. This snag, however, is huge; if marsh-rebuilding projects must pay their own freight on dredging, their price tags increase sevenfold, from $700 million to $4.9 billion.

The real problem here is not deciding who will pay that extra $4 billion, however. It’s the dearth of leadership on this pressing national issue. Currently, these decisions are in the hands of … no one, really. They’re shared between the Army Corps of Engineers and various local, state and federal agencies and commissions. The Corps, which does the actual work of coastal restoration and dredging, is notorious for its logy decision-making and its deference to shipping interests. The other agencies wrangle amongst themselves and with the Corps over funding and priorities. But there’s no strategic political vision of how all this works, no one who can line everybody up and say “jump.” It’s an example of a much bigger challenge: the sorry mismatch of our current government institutions to looming, giant environmental problems. Paging President Obama.

Note: The above quote from the Times-Picayune story incorrectly describes the task force that voted to shut the marsh project as a “state board.” The task force is composed of representatives of various federal agencies. The state has non-voting participation.