Keith Olbermann : It ( Presidential Election) Aint Over Yet

George, John, and Warren (Keith Olbermann)


NEW YORK— Here’s an interesting little sidebar of our system of government confirmed recently by the crack Countdown research staff: no Presidential candidate’s concession speech is legally binding. The only determinants of the outcome of election are the reports of the state returns boards and the vote of the Electoral College.

That’s right. Richard Nixon may have phoned John Kennedy in November, 1960, and congratulated him through clenched teeth. But if the FBI had burst into Kennedy headquarters in Chicago a week later and walked out with all the file cabinets and a bunch of employees with their raincoats drawn up over their heads, nothing Nixon had said would’ve prevented him, and not JFK, from taking the oath of office the following January.

This is mentioned because there is a small but blood-curdling set of news stories that right now exists somewhere between the world of investigative journalism, and the world of the Reynolds Wrap Hat. And while the group’s ultimate home remains unclear - so might our election of just a week ago.

Stories like these have filled the web since the tide turned against John Kerry late Tuesday night. But not until Friday did they begin to spill into the more conventional news media. That’s when the Cincinnati Enquirer reported that officials in Warren County, Ohio, had “locked down” its administration building to prevent anybody from observing the vote count there.

Suspicious enough on the face of it, the decision got more dubious still when County Commissioners confirmed that they were acting on the advice of their Emergency Services Director, Frank Young. Mr. Young had explained that he had been advised by the federal government to implement the measures for the sake of Homeland Security.

Gotcha. Tom Ridge thought Osama Bin Laden was planning to hit Caesar Creek State Park in Waynesville. During the vote count in Lebanon. Or maybe it was Kings Island Amusement Park that had gone Code-Orange without telling anybody. Al-Qaeda had selected Turtlecreek Township for its first foray into a Red State.

The State of Ohio confirms that of all of its 88 Counties, Warren alone decided such Homeland Security measures were necessary. Even in Butler County, reports the Enquirer, the media and others were permitted to watch through a window as ballot-checkers performed their duties. In Warren, the media was finally admitted to the lobby of the administration building, which may have been slightly less incommodious for the reporters, but which still managed to keep them two floors away from the venue of the actual count.

Nobody in Warren County seems to think they’ve done anything wrong. The newspaper quotes County Prosecutor Rachel Hurtzel as saying the Commissioners “were within their rights” to lock the building down, because having photographers or reporters present could have interfered with the count.

You bet, Rachel.

As I suggested, this is the first time one of the Fix stories has moved fully into the mainstream media. In so saying, I’m not dismissing the blogosphere. Hell, I’m in the blogosphere now, and there have been nights when I’ve gotten far more web hits than television viewers (thank you, Debate Scorecard readers). Even the overt partisanship of blogs don’t bother me - Tom Paine was a pretty partisan guy, and ultimately that served truth a lot better than a ship full of neutral reporters would have. I was just reading last night of the struggles Edward R. Murrow and William L. Shirer had during their early reporting from Europe in ’38 and ’39, because CBS thought them too anti-Nazi.

The only reason I differentiate between the blogs and the newspapers is that in the latter, a certain bar of ascertainable, reasonably neutral, fact has to be passed, and has to be approved by a consensus of reporters and editors. The process isn’t flawless (ask Dan Rather) but the next time you read a blog where bald-faced lies are accepted as fact, ask yourself whether we here in cyberspace have yet achieved the reliability of even the mainstream media. In short, a lot gets left out of newspapers, radio, and tv - but what’s left in tends to be, in the words of my old CNN Sports colleague NickCharles, a lead-pipe cinch.

Thus the majority of the media has yet to touch the other stories of Ohio (the amazing Bush Times Ten voting machine in Gahanna) or the sagas of Ohio South: huge margins for Bush in Florida counties in which registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans 2-1, places where the optical scanning of precinct totals seems to have turned results from perfect matches for the pro-Kerry exit poll data, to Bush sweeps.

We will be endeavoring to pull those stories, along with the Warren County farce, into the mainstream Monday and/or Tuesday nights on Countdown. That is, if we can wedge them in there among the news media’s main concerns since last Tuesday:

Who fixed the Exit Polls? Yes - you could deliberately skew a national series of post-vote questionnaires in favor of Kerry to discourage people from voting out west, where everything but New Mexico had been ceded to Kerry anyway, but you couldn’t alter key precinct votes in Ohio and/or Florida; and,
What will Bush do with his Mandate and his Political Capital? He got the highest vote total for a presidential candidate, you know. Did anybody notice who’s second on the list? A Mr. Kerry. Since when was the term “mandate” applied when 56 million people voted against a guy? And by the way, how about that Karl Rove and his Freudian slip on “Fox News Sunday”? Rove was asked if the electoral triumph would be as impactful on the balance of power between the parties as William McKinley’s in 1896 and he forgot his own talking points. The victories were “similarly narrow,” Rove began, and then, seemingly aghast at his forthrightness, corrected himself. “Not narrow; similarly structured.”
Gotta dash now. Some of us have to get to work on the Warren and Florida stories.

In the interim, Senator Kerry, kindly don’t leave the country.

Thoughts? Let me know at KOlbermann@msnbc.com


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6210240/

 

When I've seen his shows he seems sort of like Jon Stewart, willing to attack both sides but with a tinge more "animous" when going after Bush, but he's not like Joe Scarborough (on the right) or anything.

Oh, and with Eisenhower, I never actually looked into what he did as President until Wesley Clark decided to run. He was getting compairsons to Ike, so I went back to see exactly what type of record he really had. From what I've read, and I guess tried to post here, is that , ironically, Eisenhower did less for the military than most who served as President and never wore the uniform. But maybe it isnt ironic though, maybe he felt he had to concentrate so vigorously on domestic policy to compensate for his lack of experience there, that he totally neglected what got him elected in the process.

 

Eisenhower was a military man through and through and I can't really believe that he would do anything to make our country less safer from whomever. I do believe that he saw no point to a constant arms build up. The question is, now that we have enough nuclear power to wipe out everyone several times over, why would the U.S. want to? [/B][/QUOTE]

A Military man "through and through" wouldnt weaken the power of the JCS, and strengthen that of the Secretary of Defense, knowing full well that could mean a civilian (well below commander in chief) would have much greater authority in matters of war than men who have actually seen and led in combat. I.E. Robert McNamara, Donald Rumsfeld, etc.

THE NATIONAL SECURITY ACT AND ITS AMENDMENTS
Late in the Second World War, Congress became concerned that it had abdicated some of its responsibility in granting the President near total control of the Armed Forces and moved to correct the imbalance. The solution Congress began to consider in the spring of 1944 would, in its estimation, address two issues that loomed on the horizon. The first arose with the advent of the airplane and the understanding that the air had become a third environment in which war could be conducted. Prodded by President Truman, Congress recognized a need to unify the War and Navy Departments and to provide a separate department for the air forces. Underlying that ostensible motivation for unifying the departments was the second issue: Congress' concern with the immense power the President wielded as Commander in Chief, and its determination to check and balance that power by establishing a separate, civilian department head confirmed by and dually responsible to the Congress.

The most visible and easily understood issue, of course, was that of unifying the War and Navy Departments. Presaging by 40 years and with almost eerie accuracy the issues that would ultimately lead to the Goldwater-Nichols Act, Truman argued in his 19 December 1945 Message to the Congress that the defense establishment should:

1. Have integrated strategic plans and a unified military program and budget
2. Realize the economies that can be achieved through unified control of supply and service functions
3. Adopt the organizational structure best suited to fostering coordination between the military and the remainder of the Government
4. Provide the strongest means for civilian control of the military
5. Organize to provide parity for air power
6. Establish the most advantageous framework for a unified system of training for combined operations of land, sea and air
7. Allocate systematically our limited resources for scientific research
8. Have unity of command in outlying bases
9. Have consistent and equitable personnel policies.

Truman's primary dissatisfaction with the existing structure was that it forced upon the President the "whole job of reconciling the divergent claims of the Departments"(Note 5) with regard to strategic plans and budgeting. With the ascendance of the Air Force as a separate arm, Truman felt that he could not and should not personally coordinate the services. He had little desire to be the Nation's "first general and admiral" in the manner of his predecessor.

The National Security Act of 1947 interposed a relatively weak Secretary of Defense between the President and the armed forces, diluting executive authority. Truman incorrectly thought that interposing a civilian Secretary subject to the President and Congress would increase civilian control. In fact, the establishment of a Secretary of Defense neither added to nor detracted from civilian control overall. In keeping with the principle of separation of powers, it merely divided the power that had formerly reposed in one politically accountable civilian official between two, and thereby tipped the relative balance of civilian control in favor of the Congress.

The Secretary of Defense was designated the principal assistant to the President in all matters relating to national security, but could only establish "general" policies and programs and exercise "general" direction, authority, and control of the separately administered services.(Note 6) The Act established the Department of the Air Force and preserved the executive level status of the service Secretaries, and formalized the previously ad hoc Joint Chiefs of Staff, designating it, as a corporate body, the principal military advisor to the President. Though unrecognized at the time, by formalizing the Joint Chiefs of Staff the Act established a potential third locus of power and influence in the civilian control arena.

On the recommendation of the sitting Secretaries, in 1949 and again in 1953 the President proposed and the Congress agreed to strengthen the office of the Secretary of Defense by granting the office more autonomy and by subordinating the military departments to the Department of Defense. The 1949 amendments also began the process of unifying the uniformed leadership of the military by establishing the Chairman as "first among equals" within the corporate Joint Chiefs of Staff. Additionally, increasing the power of the Secretary of Defense while simultaneously reducing the service Secretaries from Executive Department status to military department status caused the powers formerly dispersed among three cabinet level officials to coalesce into a single office.

So, whereas Executive Branch authority over the defense establishment had formerly been exercised with more widely separated powers (conforming to the constitutional principle), coalescing those powers into one office increased the coherence of Executive Branch authority, and hence increased the power of the Executive Branch relative to the more dispersed power and authority of the Legislative Branch. In the interim between the 1949 amendments and the 1953 amendments, the United States again went to war, and during the course of that conflict experienced what is widely perceived as a serious challenge to civilian control.

Most historians have tended to view President Truman's relief of General MacArthur in rather simplistic terms: the General would not submit to civilian authority, so the President relieved him. On the surface, that is what happened. However, on closer examination a subplot emerges, on which rested the credibility of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as the key interface between the nation's civilian leadership and its commanders in the field. Throughout the war, MacArthur routinely challenged or ignored the authority of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He was senior to each of the members in rank (except that after the Inchon landing General Bradley was promoted to five stars), his personality and experience predisposed him to expect more autonomy and direct contact with the Commander in Chief, and he was leery of a committee of his juniors giving him orders. As a newly formalized entity within the national command structure, the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (hereafter referred to as the JCS), on the other hand, sought to assert its authority and practically define its limits.

The corporate Joint Chiefs of Staff (hereafter referred to as the Joint Chiefs) were responsible for translating President Truman's strategic direction into operational orders for the combatant command in Korea. The crucial limitation was Truman's desire to avoid war with China. For his part, MacArthur understood the Joint Chiefs' role as the translator and transmitter of the President's direction, but he habitually tried to circumvent the orders they conveyed. Finally, after MacArthur made public statements contrary to United States policy, the White House instructed the Joint Chiefs to issue a warning. The Joint Chiefs cautioned MacArthur against making public statements and ordered him to clear future statements through them. The cable was a direct order, and MacArthur disobeyed it. He openly criticized administration policy in a letter to a member of Congress, and on 6 April 1951, the Joint Chiefs met to review MacArthur's actions. After deliberating for 2 hours, they agreed to recommend to the President that MacArthur be dismissed.(Note 7)

The role of the Joint Chiefs in MacArthur's dismissal is often ignored. It marked a turning point in the evolution of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from an ad hoc committee to a formal element of the national military command structure that stood between the Commander in Chief and the combatant commanders. The issue in question in early 1951 was not whether the Joint Chiefs would act to assure civilian control of the military (which was never in much doubt), but whether subject to the President's direction they would assert their own authority. The JCS had been formed in 1947, but on 6 April 1951 it began to realize the full potential of its power and established itself in the chain of command, its members exercising an informal form of command authority related to and derived from the statutory authority of the President.

Shortly after he took office, Eisenhower submitted his "Reorganization Plan No. 6 of 1953" to the Congress. It further unified the civilian leadership of the defense establishment by consolidating the functions of three separate agencies (the Munitions Board, the Research and Development Board, and the Defense Supply Management Agency) under the Secretary of Defense, and provided six additional assistant secretaries (raising the total to ten). The Plan also strengthened the authority of the Secretary of Defense over the service Secretaries. Finally, the Plan authorized the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to approve officers selected to serve on the Joint Staff and transferred the "functions of the Joint Chiefs of Staff with respect to managing the Joint Staff and the Director thereof"(Note 8) to the Chairman. The plan went into effect on 30 June 1953. On 3 April 1958, President Eisenhower submitted further recommendations for the reform of the Department of Defense, telling Congress:

1. We must organize our fighting forces into operational commands that are truly unified, each assigned a mission in full accord with our over-all military objectives.
2. We must clear command channels so that orders will proceed directly to the unified commands from the Commander in Chief and Secretary of Defense.
3. We must strengthen the military staff in the Office of the Secretary of Defense in order to provide the Commander in Chief and the Secretary of Defense with the professional assistance they need for strategic planning and for operational direction of the unified commands.
4. We must continue the three military departments as agencies within the Department of Defense to administer a wide range of functions.
5. We must reorganize the research and development functions of the Department in order to make the best use of our scientific and technological resources.
6. We must remove all doubts as to the full authority of the Secretary of Defense.(Note 9)

Two weeks later, he submitted draft legislation to carry out his recommendations, and through the summer Congress conducted hearings on the issue. Failing to comprehend the synergistic effect that would result when this latest legislation combined with the earlier reforms, Congress passed it with only slight modification, and Eisenhower signed the Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1958 into law on 6 August.

So, in little over a decade, the Department of Defense had been formed and subsequently reformed three times. For an organization that large and complex, the tempo of change was dizzying. The effects of one reform could barely be measured before the next round of reform began. Taken together, the reforms completely upended the delicate balance the National Security Act had achieved between the unified command of the armed forces required for military success, the unified direction of the Department necessary for budgetary efficiency, and the separation of powers demanded by the Constitution.

Through it all though, Congress had been wary of "the man on horseback"Cthe powerful military leader who might take over the government. It had ensured that the uniformed side of the Department of Defense did not become strong enough to present a threat to civilian control. For that reason, it had specifically disallowed the formation of a national general staff and ensured that the Chairman remained weak relative to the Secretary of Defense. However, it failed to recognize that, should he appear, the man on horseback might wear a suit rather than a uniform. The rapid-fire succession of short-tenure Secretaries during the period ensured that none of them could begin to grasp fullythe significance of what they and Congress had wrought. It would take a man with a genius for organization and process and a contempt for the judgment of senior military officers to wield fully the awesome power that had accrued to the Office of the Secretary of Defense. It did not take long for that man to step forward.


THE AMENDED NATIONAL SECURITY ACT: UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES
By the time Robert Strange McNamara was sworn in as Secretary of Defense, the power of that office had grown immensely. In contrast to his predecessors, McNamara was responsible by law for the nation's strategic planning and the operational direction of its forces in the field. Soon after taking office, President Kennedy had assured the Joint Chiefs that he desired their advice to reach him "direct and undiluted," but in practical terms, under the amended National Security Act the Joint Chiefs of Staff became an advisory body for the Secretary of Defense. As amended, the National Security Act provided few checks against the possibility that a strong-willed Secretary might ignore or suppress advice from the Nation's senior military leadership.

The first consequence of the amended National Security Act occurred almost immediately after Kennedy's inauguration. The Bay of Pigs operation had been conceived during the last year of the Eisenhower administration, and Eisenhower had approved the plan in March 1960. The CIA conducted its initial preparations throughout that year in complete isolation, but by late 1960 the operation came to the attention of General Lyman Lemnitzer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Lemnitzer immediately ordered an investigation of the proposed operation, which concluded in January 1961 that without the full support of the Cuban people and the promise of American military intervention, the likelihood of the operation's success was very slim.

Lemnitzer presented the report and his pessimistic opinion to President Kennedy and the National Security Council on 22 January 1961. The President directed Lemnitzer to reevaluate the plan, but this time the CIA was supposed to cooperate with the Joint Chiefs of Staff in its analysis. The CIA refused to provide more than a broad outline of its plan, however, and based on the incomplete analysis that resulted, the Chairman issued the Joint Chiefs' findings that the operation might succeed if it had air and naval gunfire support, and then only if it was accompanied by an internal uprising against Castro. Kennedy clung to the advice of the more "can-do" members of the NSC, including Secretary McNamara, who discredited the Joint Chiefs' opinion. The NSC asserted that the United States could maintain the appearance of noninvolvement only if the military did not participate, and that the operation would succeed as the CIA had planned it.

As a complex amphibious operation planned and conducted by civilians, the Bay of Pigs invasion was doomed to fail from the start, but the Joint Chiefs had been prevented from participating in the planning process and effectively precluded from providing constructive advice. In the words of Admiral Arleigh Burke,

At every meeting of the National Security Council and every meeting the President had with the Joint Chiefs, he emphasized that the Cuban affair was not a military operation and the Chiefs were not permitted to do anything other than give their personal advice as to its feasibility, and this without the benefit of ever having the details.(Note 10)

Afterward, the Joint Chiefs received more than their share of blame for the failure, and President Kennedy became convinced that he could not get useful advice from the Joint Chiefs. He then further marginalized the Joint Chiefs by recalling General Maxwell Taylor from retirement and installing him in the White House, first to head the investigation of the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and subsequently to provide advice as the President's Military Representative.

The Cuban Missile Crisis occurred 6 months after the Bay of Pigs operation. By then, President Kennedy had appointed General Taylor as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Secretary McNamara continued to exercise his authority under the revised National Security Act to provide operational direction. On one occasion he entered the Navy Operations Center, and after a cursory look at the situation, gave detailed instructions to reposition a particular picket ship. On another occasion he gave commands to a single destroyer and demanded to speak to its commander by telephone.(Note 11) Early on, McNamara developed in himself and his civilian subordinates the habit of providing detailed operational instructions while ignoring or overriding the advice of uniformed officers. The trend was to continue with tragic results during the Vietnam War.

Secretary McNamara's disregard for military advice and excessively close direction of U.S. efforts in Southeast Asia are now well known. The Joint Chiefs of Staff disagreed vehemently with McNamara's operational direction of the war. However, the amended National Security Act made it possible for a Secretary of McNamara's ilk to prevent JCS advice from reaching the President. On those occasions when JCS advice did reach President Johnson, McNamara took pains to align enough senior civilian opinion on his side to ensure that Johnson, who had a penchant for ignoring the Joint Chiefs anyway, discounted the military advice.

Nevertheless, in 1967, Congress became aware of the divergent civilian and military opinion on the conduct of the air offensive, and held hearings that August. The Joint Chiefs finally had an opportunity to present their views. Their testimony led the Preparedness Subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee to conclude that

the civilian authority consistently overruled the unanimous recommendations of military commanders and the Joint Chiefs of Staff for a systematic, timely, and hard-hitting integrated air campaign against the vital North Vietnam targets. Instead, for policy reasons, we have employed military aviation in a carefully controlled, restricted and graduated buildup of bombing pressure which discounted the professional judgment of our best military experts, and substituted civilian judgment in the details of target selection and the timing of strikes.

As between these diametrically opposed views of the The Secretary of Defense and the military experts and in view of the unsatisfactory progress of the war, logic and prudence require that the decision be with the unanimous weight of professional military judgment.

It is high time, we believe, to allow the military voice to be heard in connection with the tactical details of military operations.(Note 12)

The committee failed to note that the 1958 amendments to the National Security Act had granted the Secretary of Defense the authority to substitute "civilian judgment" for the "professional judgment of our best military experts" in the "tactical details of military operations." It failed therefore to take meaningful action on its findings or to recommend a systemic solution, but it had at least identified the problem.

President Johnson and Secretary McNamara failed in their duties as the National Command Authorities by confusing "their ultimate responsibility for our military direction with who should be doing it."(Note 13) They ignored the advice of the institution responsible for translating their political decisions into military objectives. Under the amended National Security Act, however, the Secretary of Defense was authorized to provide operational direction for the armed forces. McNamara was acting in full accordance with the law when he substituted his own judgment for the expertise of the nation's senior military leadership. His willfulness, combined with President Johnson's lack of strategic vision, led to our worst military failure.

Despite the findings of the 1967 hearings, the tendency for civilian policy makers to substitute their judgment for that of military officers persisted throughout the Vietnam War and for many years afterward. During the abortive attempt to rescue the Americans held hostage in Tehran, for example, operational decisions down to the detail of the number of helicopters to be employed were made in the White House. Likewise in Beirut, over the objections of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Marines were assigned the ambiguous mission of "presence" and placed in a militarily untenable location with unrealistic rules of engagement established by the President and members of the National Security Council and acquiesced in by Congress.

So, the result of the whirlwind reorganization of the Department of Defense from 1947 to 1958 was a command structure that marginalized the professional judgment of senior military officers and contributed to the string of military failures from the Bay of Pigs Invasion to the Vietnam War and on to Beirut. Presidents Truman and Eisenhower thought that their amendments to the National Security Act would improve civilian control by granting vast powers to their appointed Secretaries of Defense. That is how it appeared in the legislation and the resultant organizational charts, but the unintended consequence of the amendments was a grossly distorted civilian control. To return to Huntington, after 1958 the amended National Security Act resulted in near total subjective control by the executive branch (figure 1). In that light, it is easy to understand Senator Goldwater's question, Acan we, as a country, any longer afford a 207-year-old concept that in military matters the civilian is supreme?"


http://www.ndu.edu/inss/books/Books...a/essaucgn.html