Some analogies are perhaps best avoided.
Take, for example, Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper’s appearance last week before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D- Mich.) told Clapper he was “concerned by recent news reports that the latest National Intelligence Estimate, or NIE, reflects a difference of views between the intelligence community and our military commanders over the security situation in Afghanistan.”
The dissenting views were signed by Gen. John R. Allen , head of U.S. forces there; Ambassador Ryan Crocker ; Gen. James Mattis , head of the Central Command; and Adm. James G. Stavridis , the supreme allied commander in Europe — not exactly a group you want to trifle with.
Are the news reports accurate? Levin asked.
Well, yes, Clapper said, those officials “took issue with the NIE on three counts having to do with the force structure, didn’t feel that we gave sufficient weight to Pakistan and its impact as a safe haven and generally felt that the NIE was pessimistic” about the situation in Afghanistan and “the prospects for post-2014,” when troops are to withdraw.
Clapper tried to ease Levin’s concerns. “If you’ll forgive a little history, sir,” he began. “I served as an analyst briefer for General Westmoreland in Vietnam in 1966.” Clapper said he learned there that it’s typical that the “operational commanders sometimes don’t agree” with the intelligence team’s assessment of their efforts.
Gen. William Westmoreland, we recall, was notorious for predicting victory in Vietnam, telling an enthusiastic Congress in 1967 that, with time, “we will prevail in Vietnam over the Communist aggressor.”
Maybe might want to leave comparisons to Westmoreland out of it? Not a confidence-booster, after all.
The best defense . . .
Press-bashing is an important staple of any candidate’s repertoire, in part because it’s so easy and always useful.
Former House speaker Newt Gingrich made excellent use of it when, in a televised debate, he went after CNN’s John King for daring to ask about his second wife. Some say it may have given Gingrich the boost to win the South Carolina primary.
More recently, former senator Rick Santorum used the “double standard” feint to excellent effect to deflect criticism of a backer’s now-infamous “aspirin between her legs” observation on women and contraception.
“Look, this is what you guys do,” he told CBS News’s Charlie Rose . “You don’t do this with President Obama. In fact, with President Obama, you . . . defended him” after the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s pyrotechnic sermons were revealed, he said.
“It’s a double standard, this is what you’re pulling off,” he said, “and I’m going to call you on it.” Seemed to work well.
We recall the Rev. Wright controversy was huge news at the time, and the constant media pounding forced Obama to make a big speech on the issue, but whatever.
Pols would do well to be guided by the master on handling the media, President Richard M. Nixon .
Our colleague Karen Tumulty reminds us of a June 2, 1971, memorandum Nixon wrote to his chief of staff Bob Haldeman, before Haldeman’s Watergate resignation.
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