So. I’m not sure why I’m bothering to write about a column from last Tuesday, but it’s been niggling at me. The headline on top of the George Will column, at least on-line, was The Leaders We Have, which seems (if I am reading it right) to be a reference to a well-known line from Secretary Rumsfeld. That is, he seems to be saying that we go to war with the leaders we have, not the leaders we want.
It’s not clear to me what Mr. Will is saying in the column. He mostly seems to figure that he has to write about State of Denial, because, well, he’s a pundit, and that’s what pundits do. It’s totally different from being a blogger, because, um, sometimes he writes about baseball. No, that’s not it. Anyway. I’m sure there’s something.
He doesn’t like the book, and thinks that it “will take a toll on government collegiality and the candor of its deliberations.” Because it’s bad for people to know what’s going on in their government. Or something. He also thinks Mr. Woodward’s criticisms are inconsistent, which might be fair, but smacks to me of the cheap shot, since it’s pretty easy to find inconsistencies in a wide-ranging book. Still, he doesn’t have to like the book. He seems to agree with the main point, which is that our leadership is for crap, although Mr. Will doesn’t seem very concerned about it.
That’s what bothers me about the column. He seems to think that government is inherently dysfunctional, and that it most closely resembles “a teeming, disorderly maelstrom of sometimes rival life forms.” I agree. Most things do. But that doesn’t mean that all administrations are pretty much the same. Mr. Will calls Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell “canny Washington survivors”. He doesn’t bother to mention what they survived. The truth is that Our Only President surrounded himself with a secretive cabal of crooks and incompetents. Our Previous President surrounded himself with a motley gang of corporate shills, university idealists and issue activists. They weren’t saints. They weren’t all good at governing. Some of them weren’t terribly honest, and some of them weren’t terribly competent. On the whole, though, there isn’t anybody I’m embarrassed about. This administration is very different.
I know it’s not going to happen. But the next time we choose a President, I would like the country to ask who are your advisors? I would love a shadow cabinet, but I understand that in our system there are substantial drawbacks to naming one. Still, it should be possible for a candidate to give a sense of who he wants to work with. Because it does make a difference. Just as anybody who has played any war game knows that you don’t just go to war with the army you have. The army you have determines whether you can go to war, and how it will be fought. We get the leaders we choose, and when we choose them, we choose where and how we will be led.
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.