Yesterday I took a trip down memory lane and listened to some audio clips from the first presidential debate I participated in back in 2011. We also played the clips on the radio, and couldn't help but notice something.
Bret Baier of Fox News asked me a question about what my strategy would be in Afghanistan. I explained that I could not stand there on a debate stage and tell him exactly what my strategy for Afghanistan would be for a number of reasons. For one thing, I didn't have access to all the intelligence, nor did I have the opportunity to consult with our allies. Also, crucially, I was not in a position to meet with our military commanders to obtain their advice about how we should proceed.
Finally, I said, it wasn't clear to me at that point how we would even define victory. So rather than stand there and presume to know exactly what I would do, I explained the process by which I would arrive at those decisions.
Now I don't mean to pick on Bret because he is a good reporter, but all journalists do this - especially when they get to ask debate questions. As a followup, he expressed disbelief that as a presidential candidate I would not have formulated a plan for exactly what to do in Afghanistan. But I told him what I would do, and how I would do it, and why. This is what good executives always do. They gather the facts and assess their options before making a decision. What politicians do, by contrast, is stand there and presume to know exactly what the plan should be before they really understand the situation. Then, when they do learn more and they realize their publicly pronounced plan wasn't all that and a bag of chips, they feel they can't make any adjustments because they're terrified they'll be accused of "flip-flopping" or whatever.
The reason I went back and looked at this is that it occurred to me that nothing has changed in U.S. foreign policy during the past four years. Obama still makes decisions on the basis of political ideology without gathering the facts and without heeding advice his generals or Pentagon leaders. In a recent book, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates talked about how he thought he had come to an agreement with Obama on any number of issues, only to later find that Obama went against his advice because his political advisors told him something else.
Obama said the other day that his biggest mistake as president was not planning for the day after with respect to the Libya intervention. Yet the same guy who claimed to have drawn a red line (that being the use of chemical weapons), but couldn't bring himself to back up his own words with action, blamed British Prime Minister David Cameron and former French President Nicolas Sarkozy for "taking their eyes off the ball" in Libya.
That wasn't the problem. The problem was that Obama ran his mouth about Libya before he really looked at the facts and listened to his experts. Then when it came time for action, he couldn't back up his words, so he backed away and let Hillary Clinton completely mismanage the situation diplomatically.
The same is true in Afghanistan. Has Obama ever had an objective aside from getting out? Has he ever made it clear how victory would be defined? It's now been nearly 15 years since we went in there, and I know that wasn't Obama's decision, but he's been president for half the time we've been fighting that war and all he's really done is announce a pull-out date, kinda sorta back away from it, and dither behind the scenes. Have we won? Have we lost? Does anyone really know? Does Obama even know? Is it even important to him?
The media always try to draw out of candidates these very specific proposals. They complain to high heaven when candidates' answers are "short on specifics." But there's a reason a good candidate will defer on the specifics. He still doesn't know what he doesn't know, and it's irresponsible to commit to a very specific course of action when you might later find out that course doesn't make sense.
Donald Trump gets this same criticism, and it's unfair for many of the same reasons. He can tell you the outcomes he wants (and really, the outcomes sought by Trump and Ted Cruz are not very different from each other), but he defers on the details because he still has to go through the process.
The political class doesn't understand this and has no patience for it. But it's the right way to make decisions. It would help a lot if we could actually elect a president who understands that this -- rather than giving snappy debate answers -- is the right way to lead.
Yesterday I took a trip down memory lane and listened to some audio clips from the first presidential debate I participated in back in 2011. We also played the clips on the radio, and couldn't help but notice something.
Bret Baier of Fox News asked me a question about what my strategy would be in Afghanistan. I explained that I could not stand there on a debate stage and tell him exactly what my strategy for Afghanistan would be for a number of reasons. For one thing, I didn't have access to all the intelligence, nor did I have the opportunity to consult with our allies. Also, crucially, I was not in a position to meet with our military commanders to obtain their advice about how we should proceed.
