Lame-duck SecDef

Upon confirmation, Ash Carter will bring significant experience to the position of United States Secretary of Defense. He served as an assistant secretary of defense for three years, an undersecretary for defense for two year, and as deputy secretary of defense under both Leon Panetta and Chuck Hagel. Carter has also become rather popular within the military and among congressional leadership.

Regardless of his experience and popularity, it will remain to be seen whether or not Carter is able to significantly influence White House policy during the last years of the Obama administration.

Unless the president and the rest of the executive branch have taken Gates's, Panetta's, and Hagel's well-documented frustrations to heart, it is highly unlikely that Carter will have much more leeway than his predecessors. Obama's presidency is coming to an end in 2017 and Carter's proficiency in nuclear weapons and arms control is unlikely to transfer towards the threat of ISIL. Due to those limiting factors, Carter will most likely manage Obama's policies until the conclusion of his presidency, rather than developing unique strategies before the next administration takes over. The same limiting factors could also have had an impact on Michele Flournoy's decision to remove herself from contention.

The State of the Union Will Go On

The speaker is eager to have President Obama deliver the State of the Union, but the welcome mat is not what is seems:

Vision, Strategy, Project, and Tactics

Reagan tapes

" [W]ar is not a mere act of policy but a true political instrument, a continuation of political activity by other means." -- Clausewitz, On War

From Doctrine for the Armed Forces of the United States:

World War II:

• It is not true that the mainland US escaped harm from World War II.
• Europe First
• Island-hopping in the Pacific

The Cold War

• Kennan and the X Article
• Deterrence
• Vietnam

Will Israel Attack a Nuclear Iran?

This is something that came up last class. It's unlikely that Israel will bomb a nuclear Iran, but such an attack is not unprecedented. An interesting (but slightly lengthy) documentary explaining why:

Foreign Policy and National Security

Federalist 70

That unity is conducive to energy will not be disputed. Decision, activity, secrecy, and despatch will generally characterize the proceedings of one man in a much more eminent degree than the proceedings of any greater number; and in proportion as the number is increased, these qualities will be diminished...In the conduct of war, in which the energy of the Executive is the bulwark of the national security, every thing would be to be apprehended from its plurality.

US v. Curtiss-Wright:

Not only, as we have shown, is the federal power over external affairs in origin and essential character different from that over internal affairs, but participation in the exercise of the power is significantly limited. In this vast external realm, with its important, complicated, delicate and manifold problems, the President alone has the power to speak or listen as a representative of the nation. He makes treaties with the advice and consent of the Senate; but he alone negotiates. Into the field of negotiation the Senate cannot intrude, and Congress itself is powerless to invade it. As Marshall said in his great argument of March 7, 1800, in the House of Representatives, "The President is the sole organ of the nation in its external relations, and its sole representative with foreign nations." Annals, 6th Cong., col. 613.

A very young John Spencer and a nuke:


The Football

Recognition

• Truman and Israel
• China  -- and Goldwater v. Carter
• Cuba

Treaties and Executive Agreements -- a very recent example of the latter.

Use of Armed Force

Organization

• National Security Council
• Intelligence Community
• The Military
• Foreign Service

Hollywood and the White House

Actors have endorsed presidential candidates. Harry Belafonte backed JFK. Ronald Reagan made a famous speech on behalf of Barry Goldwater.Actors have run for president. Ronald Reagan usually played good guys, but in his last role, he played a villain.

Movies and TV shows portray real and fictional presidents, presidential candidates, and officials:

• Gabriel Over the White House (1933)
• The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
• The Best Man (1964)
• Frost/Nixon (2008)
• Nixon (1995)  -- the fictional last press conference.  Compare to the real one.
• All the President's Men (1976) -- an iconic but made-up line.
• W (2008)
• J. Edgar (2011)

Movies supply insights into attitudes of their time. Did Americans think about military matters and nuclear war in the years after the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis? See scenes from three 1964 movies:

• Seven Days in May (military coup)
• Fail-Safe (scary accidental attack)
• Dr. Strangelove (funny accidental attack)
  

Did a conspiracy kill JFK? Most Americans think so. And so Oliver Stone's JFK (1991) found an audience despite its lack of relationship to reality. A famous scene included Wayne Knight. Though a few years later, he was in a sendup on Seinfeld.

Domestic and Economic Policy

Executive orders and executive actions:  the president's executive order actually is not an executive order but an executive action.

The president's address on immigration: "Are we a nation that kicks out a striving, hopeful immigrant like Astrid, or are we a nation that finds a way to welcome her in? Scripture tells us that we shall not oppress a stranger, for we know the heart of a stranger; we were strangers once too."  The line is Deuteronomy 10:19.

Here is what he said in 2006:

Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is ok and that eating shellfish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount - a passage that is so radical that it's doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application? So before we get carried away, let's read our bibles. Folks haven't been reading their bibles.

 Stages of the Policy Process

1. Initiation/Streams: Problems, Solutions, Politics
2. Estimation
3. Selection
4. Implementation and immigration
5. Evaluation
6. Termination

The centrality of economic policy in public opinion

(The tax system is more progressive than you may think.)