James Jones as National Security Advisor?

James Joyner | Friday, November 21, 2008

CNN and Politico are both reporting that General James Jones, chairman of the Atlantic Council, is the leading candidate for National Security Advisor in the Obama cabinet.

Two sources close to the Obama transition team tell CNN retired Marine Gen. Jim Jones has emerged as President-elect’s leading choice to become national security adviser in the White House.

The sources said Jones has been given the impression by the President-elect that the job is his if he wants it. But the officials said there are still private discussions underway and no final decision has been made. The discussions are focused on precisely how much power Jones will have in the staff job since he is used to being in a command role. Among his many posts, Jones served for several years as the operational commander for NATO.

In the third and final presidential debate, Obama noted that he deeply values advice from Jones, who has four decades of military service.

One person close to the transition noted Jones is a bipartisan figure who has warm relationships with both current Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who may stay on the job for at least a brief period, as well as Sen. Hillary Clinton, who is now on track to be nominated as Secretary of State after Thanksgiving.

I’ll demur on commenting on the merits of my boss’ boss for the job.   I will, however, note that the chatter thus far on Memeorandum is quite positive.

Joe Klein (TIME): “General Jones is universally respected. He refused a series of major positions offered by the Bush Administration, presumably because he opposed the policies he would have been expected to implement. He did agree to study the security situations in Iraq and Afghanistan for the Bush Administration, and came back with reports that were embarrassingly candid. If appointed, he–not David Petraeus–will be the most important (former) general in the Obama Administration, which will help tilt power back toward the President.”

Spencer Ackerman (Washington Independent): “If so, it would be a good choice. [...] Also, Jones would be reflective of two huge Obama priorities. First, Afghanistan. As NATO Commander, Jones ceaselessly lobbied the European allies for greater assistance in the Afghanistan war. Second, energy security. Jones is widely known to be an advocate of alternative energy sources, and, as Politico notes, chairs an energy task force for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. And of course there’s the good optics of such a well-respected general being Obama’s closest White House aide on foreign policy.”

Steve Benen (Washington Monthly) and Adam Serwer (American Prospect) seem favorably disposed as well.

I’ll be interested to see the reaction from the Right; thus far, there’s been none.

As an aside, I’m always amused by the use of obviously outdated file photos.  Jones retired from the Marine Corps two years ago and Michael Hayden retired from the Air Force over the summer.  Yet virtually every story about them shows them in uniform.

Aside #2:  So long as I can recall, the informal title of the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs has been National Security Advisor.  Over the last couple of days, however, I’ve mostly seeing it spelled Adviser.   Odd.

Tags | James Joyner, National Security, US Politics Adam Serwer, Afghanistan, David Petraeus, foreign policy, Joe Klein, Michael Hayden, Robert Gates, Steve Benen

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Mark Cuban vs. SEC

James Joyner | Friday, November 21, 2008

UCLA corporate lawprof Stephen Bainbridge has gone from thinking that the SEC probably had a case against Mark Cuban to thinking they probably don’t, largely on the strength of Cuban’s presenting his case publicly on his “Blog Maverick” site.

But that raises another question: Should Cuban be conducting his defense in public on his blog?

If Cuban’s point is to clear his name with the public, the answer would seem to be an unequivocal Yes.  If, however, his goal is to avoid alienating the goons at the SEC, causing them to spend tax dollars ginning up a case — any case — against him as payback for making them look bad, not so much.   We’ve seen time and again that armies of government lawyers with unlimited resources pretty much always find something to charge high profile targets with, even if it’s seldom the thing they started out investigating.

Tags | James Joyner, Law and the Courts Mark Cuban, Steve Bainbridge

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Spider Drawing in Lieu of Money

James Joyner | Friday, November 21, 2008

Not sure whether this exchange is actual or contrived, but it’s amusing regardless.

via MichaelW

Tags | Economics and Business, Humor, James Joyner

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Goolsbee Victim of Reverse Discrimination?

James Joyner | Friday, November 21, 2008

Economic advisor Austan Goolsbee, right, listens as Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama answeres questions at a campaign stop in Albuquerque on Feb. 1. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)

One would think that a biracial president named “Barack Obama” who grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia would feel a certain freedom from the need to demonstrate his bonafides on the diversity front. Not so much, it seems.

Chicago economist Austan Goolsbee — once the chief economic adviser to candidate Barack Obama — may be less of a shoo-in to chair Obama’s White House Council of Economic Advisers than his admirers once imagined.

The Obama transition team is interviewing to find a woman, perhaps a minority woman, to fill the CEA chair — a Senate-confirmed position. Informed sources suggest the candidates on the CEA list now include Princeton University economics and public affairs professor Cecilia Elena Rouse, whose specialty is labor economics. The hunt for a woman, explained several sources close to the transition deliberations, is aimed at broadening the white-male cast of the White House team assembled to date (the current tally of announced picks is 3 women, 9 men).

Megan McArdle is bummed.

[T]he worst financial crisis in seventy years is really not the time to see if you can brighten up the CEA offices with a nice, decorative matched set of X chromosomes.  [...] Needless to say, given that Obama’s sterling choice of highest-caliber economic advisors was one of my main reason for supporting him, my regret is mounting faster than ever.

Her first commenter retorts:

Elect a Democrat, get a Democrat. We aren’t even past Thanksgving yet, let alone the Innaugural Ball; a bit early for buyer’s remorse, don’t ya think?

I’m again reminded of  Jeff Medcalf’s comment posted on Dave Schuler’s Other Blog recently:  “[M]any of the people voting for Obama seem to be doing so on the hope that he doesn’t mean what he says, and most of the people voting for McCain are doing so on the fear that Obama means exactly what he says.”

Obama ran on an overt platform of “CHANGE!” but on a more understated platform of competence and a covert platform of conciliation.  He has thus far emphasized the last two, necessarily at the expense of the first.

Much to the consternation of the Netroots, he’s filling his administration with people who served in Bill Clinton’s administration.  But where else was he going to find Democrats competent in the ways of Washington?  It’s well and good to want “CHANGE!” but people who don’t know what they’re doing are hard pressed to deliver it. Unfortunately, this means pragmatic compromise.

Similarly, party building means outreach to Hillary Clinton, including apparently naming her Secretary of State, and making sure that the usual constituencies are placated.  That means a share of the spoils in a highly visible way.

Goolsbee will be a prominent economic voice in Obama’s administration.  But, alas, there are only so many jobs for balding, 40-something white dudes with PhDs.

Tags | Gender Issues, James Joyner, Race and Politics, US Politics Austan Goolsbee, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Dave Schuler, Hillary Clinton, Megan McArdle, Netroots

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Talk Radio Killed Conservativism?

James Joyner | Friday, November 21, 2008

In my youth, video killed the radio star.  Now, Nate Silver suggests, conservative talk radio has killed conservatism.   John Ziegler, of whom I’ve never heard, is apparently an imbecile. QED.

This might be the key passage of my interview with John Ziegler on Tuesday, for it is, in a nutshell, why conservatives don’t win elections anymore. It is not that conservatism generally permits less nuance than liberalism (in terms of political messaging, that is probably one of conservatism’s strengths). Rather, the key lies in the second passage that I highlighted. There are a certain segment of conservatives who literally cannot believe that anybody would see the world differently than the way they do. They have not just forgotten how to persuade; they have forgotten about the necessity of persuasion.

Talk radio is about entertainment and drama, not persuasion.  Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage aren’t running latter-day Firing Lines; rather, they’re Howard Stern and Don Imus with a political bent.

For a variety of reasons, liberals have not done well in the talk radio genre.  But they’ve got every bit the talent for single mindedness as their counterparts on the right — as seen in a large chunk of the blogosphere.  It’s easier to build an audience by serving up healthy chunks of red meat, generating faux outrage, and flaming the passions of a single minded audience than to persuade people towards your point of view.  And the Netroots are much better at that than their conservative counterparts.  (It’s also true, I think, that most of the best analytical blogs are on the center-left; that’s a subject for another post, possibly later today.)

It’s worth mentioning, as an aside, that conservatism is far from dead.  It’s main electoral instrument, the Republican Party, has seen better days.   But that’s a cyclical thing in American politics.  Many had written the Democrats off for dead in 1991 and again in 2000.  There’s nothing like losing to motivate reform.

UPDATE: Stacy McCain thinks Silver is unfair to Ziegler.   The problem, though, is that Ziegler goes into attack mode when challenged rather than adducing evidence.  It’s an entertaining way to deal with a hostile caller to a radio show but an odd tactic for an interviewee.

Tags | James Joyner, US Politics conservatives, Don Imus, liberals, Michael Savage, Netroots, Rush Limbaugh

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E=mc2

James Joyner | Friday, November 21, 2008

Albert Einstein’s famous equation E=mc² has been proven.

It’s taken more than a century, but Einstein’s celebrated formula e=mc2 has finally been corroborated, thanks to a heroic computational effort by French, German and Hungarian physicists.

A brainpower consortium led by Laurent Lellouch of France’s Centre for Theoretical Physics, using some of the world’s mightiest supercomputers, have set down the calculations for estimating the mass of protons and neutrons, the particles at the nucleus of atoms.

According to the conventional model of particle physics, protons and neutrons comprise smaller particles known as quarks, which in turn are bound by gluons. The odd thing is this: the mass of gluons is zero and the mass of quarks is only five percent. Where, therefore, is the missing 95 percent?

Beats me.

This is one of those pop-science thing that all of us are supposed to understand but few really do.  I “get” the science fiction applications but my understanding of subatomic particles is next to nil.   Of course, gluons were cutting edge science when I was learning that stuff.

Tags | James Joyner, Science & Technology

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The World of 2025

James Joyner | Friday, November 21, 2008

Thomas Fingar, the chair of the National Intelligence Council, spoke to the Atlantic Council last night on the release of “Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World.” He and his team project nearly two decades into the future in order to “stimulate strategic thinking” among U.S. policymakers during this period of transition between presidential administrations.  This undertaking is useful, as Council president Fred Kempe noted, “in a town that doesn’t tend to look past the current news cycle.”

The intelligence community, think tanks, and others have a notoriously poor track record when trying to project even a few years ahead, so this is, in one sense, an exercise in futility. As I argue in my New Atlanticist piece “Predicting the Future is Hard - And Necessary,” though, we don’t have much choice but to try.

In the first of many follow-up pieces, “U.S. Dominance Ending,” I take a look at the NIC’s forecast that the era of United States unipolarity will end, replaced by a multipolar world in which China, India, and Russia have much more influence.

Tags | Intelligence, James Joyner China, India, United States

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What Type of Blog is This?

James Joyner | Thursday, November 20, 2008

According to Typealyzer, OTB’s posts (over what span of time, I don’t know) comport with INTP personality type on the Meyers-Briggs scale.

The logical and analytical type. They are especialy attuned to difficult creative and intellectual challenges and always look for something more complex to dig into. They are great at finding subtle connections between things and imagine far-reaching implications.

They enjoy working with complex things using a lot of concepts and imaginative models of reality. Since they are not very good at seeing and understanding the needs of other people, they might come across as arrogant, impatient and insensitive to people that need some time to understand what they are talking about.

I’m usually an INTJ on these things, although sometimes an ENTJ.  Considering that this is a multi-author blog, it’s pretty close.  How we came out as Perceiving rather than Judging, though, is a mystery given that we’re in the business of rendering opinions.

Megan McArdle is bemused to find out she’s an ISTP.

This is hilariously wrong, about me–I’m an ENTP, and anyone who knows me would be fairly shocked at the idea of me sitting home alone, quietly cultivating my orderly, detail-oriented project execution.  On the other hand, the person who sent me the link got a pretty good read off their blog.

One wonders, though, if the act of blogging isn’t inherently introspective?  Since the thing is only scanning one’s writing, it’s necessarily getting a limited perspective on the author’s personality.

Interestingly, Alex Massie and Andrew Sullivan are both ISTPs.   Sully’s especially pleased with the thing, having run numerous A-list bloggers through the thing and judged it quite accurate.

UPDATE: Kevin Drum is an INTJ.

Tags | James Joyner

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Das Global Bankensystem Wankt

James Joyner | Thursday, November 20, 2008

The following headline appeared in Berliner Zeitung a while back and was captured by Idle:

Global Banking System Staggers

Megan McArdle and Alex Massie both found it slightly more amusing that I do but I thought it worth sharing, if a bit too risky for New Atlanticist.

Tags | James Joyner, Media Alex Massie, Berlin, financial crisis, Megan McArdle

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