by Peter Wehner
There are, of course, countless examples of the good that government at every level (local, state, and federal) has done in people’s lives—mandating vaccinations for preventable childhood diseases, allowing people to walk city streets in safety, ensuring the air we breathe and water we drink is safe, paving roads that allow us to travel and engage in commerce, overseeing civil aviation that allows us to fly safely from one coast to the other, defending us from foreign enemies, and much more—and most of us take for granted the ways government, however imperfect, works and has allowed us to go about our lives.
Even if one looks objectively at the noted political failures mentioned earlier, one could argue that this perspective reflects a glass-half-empty perspective by ignoring what government has accomplished:
America lost the Vietnam War—but it also won the Cold War.
Watergate was an example of widespread political corruption—but our institutions held up, the rule of law prevailed, and Richard Nixon resigned.
The financial system did collapse in 2008—but those in power acted in a way that averted a second Great Depression. What followed is one of the longest economic expansions on record.
College tuition is exorbitant—but America also has the finest system of higher education in the world.
Our world is getting hotter and the oceans are rising—but in the United States our water and air are much cleaner than they were several decades ago.
There are still far too many mass killings in America—but violent crime is dramatically lower today than it was a quarter century ago.
Our entitlement system hasn’t been modernized and is far too costly—but providing financial security to and virtually eliminating poverty among the elderly is a great achievement.
Not enough has been done to contain the opioid epidemic—but among the most important successes over the last half century has been a substantial reduction in smoking rates in the general population.
Let’s stipulate, then, that there have been more failures than there should have been and certainly many more failures than the public had been conditioned to expect. But let’s remember, too, that we cannot make perfection the price of confidence in government. We need to have higher standards, and we need to have reasonable expectations. Right now we’re both aiming too low and expecting too much. And we need to recognize that when government functions well, people tend not to give it a second thought.
LESSONS FROM THE TRENCHES
Because politics is designed to solve our problems and has done so throughout our history, we can’t afford to let despair drive our choices in politicians. Instead, we should be spurred to put a higher premium on politicians who demonstrate competence and creativity, experience and artistry, wisdom and sound judgment. We need more people with those qualities, not fewer of them.
We need such individuals because it turns out it isn’t all that easy to govern well. Doing so is a good deal harder task than most people might appreciate, and it’s certainly harder than giving speeches and issuing ten-point plans; than writing op-eds, hosting a radio talk show, or sitting around the kitchen table dispensing advice on curbing gun violence, reversing global warming, reducing out-of-wedlock births, ending the Syrian civil war, or brokering peace between Israel and the Palestinians. It’s also much easier to criticize those in government than it is to sympathize with the challenges they face.
Having spent around a dozen years in three administrations, having served in two federal agencies (the Department of Education and the Office of National Drug Control Policy) and as a senior advisor in the White House, there are certain impressions and lessons I’ve come away with, some of which have been learned the hard way, through trial and error.
They are impressions and lessons consistent with the experience of others, Democrats and Republicans, who have served in high public office. And they hopefully provide a more detailed and accurate picture of what life in politics and the White House is like, what some of the challenges are, and what might be done to improve the chances of success. Responsible citizenship entails doing certain things as individuals, but it also involves showing some empathy for the challenges faced by those who hold positions of power. “For half a century,” Raymond Aron wrote, “I have limited my freedom of criticism by asking the question: In his place, what would I do?”23
This begins by recognizing that, particularly when it comes to life in the White House, some days will be better than others, but no days are uncomplicated or effortless. As President Eisenhower told his successor, John F. Kennedy, the day before Kennedy was sworn in, “There are no easy matters that will ever come to you as president. If they are easy, they will be settled at a lower level.”
When people run for public office, they tend to present the choices facing America in Manichean terms. Politics is often framed as a zero-sum game, with all the arguments lining up on your (and your supporters’) side and none on the other, and once you arrive at the right solution—once you check the right policy box—the hard work is done. All you need after that is for Congress to pass legislation, that it be quickly and efficiently implemented, and all will be right with the world.
It turns out that governing is a good deal more complicated. “There are few things wholly evil or wholly good,” Lincoln said. “Almost everything, especially of government policy, is an inseparable compound of the two, so that our best judgment of the preponderance between them is continually demanded.”
In my experience, when debating the merits of certain public policies, you’ll often hear competing arguments made by knowledgeable, articulate individuals that sound convincing. Both sides usually make valid points—and usually have weaknesses. One policy may improve things in a certain area; another policy may improve things in a different area.
For example, tax cuts may increase economic growth while increasing the deficit and widening income inequality. Imposing steel quotas may protect the steel industry, but as a result steel is more expensive for automakers, a cost that is passed on to consumers and places the US automotive industry at a competitive disadvantage. So steps that may help one sector may hurt another. Mandatory minimum sentencing laws may decrease crime by keeping some very bad people in prison for a very long time—but their effects may not be as great as many people think, and they might also put too many people behind bars who shouldn’t be there, which can have a devastating impact on communities and families.
In 1994 Bill Clinton decided against intervening in the Rwandan civil war, in part because the United States had just pulled American troops out of a disastrous peacekeeping mission in Somalia. The Clinton administration vowed it would never again intervene in a conflict involving clan and tribal conflicts it didn’t fully understand in a nation where the United States had no obvious national interests. That was an understandable reaction, but it came at a huge humanitarian cost. Bill Clinton has since called his failure to intervene in Rwanda one of his biggest regrets, saying that he believes had the US intervened, even marginally, at the beginning of the genocide, at least 300,000 people might have been saved.24
Case Study: The Iraq War
It would be impossible for me to speak of such difficult judgments in our recent past without taking up the Iraq War, which began in 2003 under the leadership of the Bush administration, in which I served as a senior official.
It can be difficult to recall now, but the decision to launch the war in Iraq won overwhelming support in Congress (the vote was 296–133 in the House and 77–23 in the Senate) and had the overwhelming backing of the American people (72 percent).
It is important to remember, too, that the administration’s determination to act was rooted in the view, shared by the governments of virtually the entire world, including intelligence agencies of nations that opposed the war, that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Not only did the intelligence community (IC) believe this, but their findings were reinforced by the fact that Saddam had used them in the past, had admitted
to possessing WMD in the mid-1990s, and was impeding UN inspections. We were also aware that US intelligence had underestimated how close Saddam was to acquiring WMD prior to the 1991 Gulf War.
In addition, the official policy of the US government was regime change—a policy put into place not by George W. Bush but by Bill Clinton. The reason was that Saddam’s regime was genocidal, destabilizing, and aggressive (Saddam had started a war with Iran, invaded Kuwait, and attacked Israel with ballistic missiles). The sanctions regimen against Iraq was crumbling. And President Bush won support for a UN Security Council resolution demanding full Iraqi compliance with inspections, a final chance to come clean before war commenced. (Resolution 1441 found Iraq in “material breach” of its obligations to disarm and warned of “severe consequences” if it did not comply. Saddam refused.)
All of this was, of course, taking place in the shadow of the attacks on September 11, 2001. It wasn’t simply that those attacks shifted the risk assessment calculus of President Bush, convincing him that Saddam with WMD was a threat we could not tolerate in a post-9/11 world; the president also believed there was a moral case to liberate Iraq and the region from a genocidal dictator. (Prior to the war, Elie Wiesel, the author, Holocaust survivor, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient, told President Bush, “Mr. President, you have a moral obligation to act against evil.”) If Saddam was removed from power, the immediate question would become this: What kind of government should Iraq have instead? President Bush decided the best option would be to support a new regime that was democratic and respected human rights and the rule of law.
We believed, then, that a toxic confluence of factors converged on Saddam and his regime: malevolence, aggression, a fondness for terrorists, hatred for America, an insatiable appetite for weapons of mass murder, and a willingness to use them, on his own people and on other people.
And so at 10:16 p.m. eastern time on March 19, 2003, after repeated efforts to persuade Saddam to open up his regime to international inspections had failed, President Bush announced, “My fellow citizens, at this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people, and to defend the world from grave danger.”
We all know the rest of the story: The president and those of us who worked in his administration believed Saddam Hussein had WMD, but it turned out he did not. As the bipartisan Silberman-Robb Commission report stated, “We conclude that the Intelligence Community was dead wrong in almost all of its pre-war judgments about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. This was a major intelligence failure.”25 And it was a failure on our part in not probing the evidence more deeply.
Making matters worse, the occupation strategy following Saddam’s overthrow was badly flawed. We opted for a “light footprint” approach to avoid being seen as an occupying power, when in fact what was needed was a far larger American military presence to keep Iraq from descending into chaos and even civil war, which eventually became the case. The goal was to quickly hand over responsibility to the Iraqis and an international stabilizing force; instead, an insurgency arose, and for three-and-a-half years Iraq was beset by violence, instability, terrorism, and murderous sectarian strife.
In 2007—with a weary public wanting to give up on the war effort and facing threats of defections in his own party—President Bush jettisoned the failing “light footprint” approach and embraced the so-called surge strategy that turned the war around. Even President Obama admitted as much in 2011, when he said, “We’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was elected by its people.” This was, he said, a “moment of success.”26 The surge was one of the most impressive and politically courageous decisions I’ve witnessed in politics. Yet that success was undone when President Obama, against the advice of his military commanders and the pleas of many Iraqi leaders, withdrew all US forces from Iraq, allowing terrorist groups there to reconstitute themselves.
My point in raising the Iraq War isn’t to justify it; in retrospect the war was clearly a mistake, and if I knew then what I came to know later, I would have opposed it. Nor am I offering excuses for the administration in which I served. The errors in judgment and execution we made were grave.
Rather, I want to remind people who may have forgotten that it was by no means an easy call. At the time there seemed to be a plausible rationale for going to war, which is why it had the widespread support it did. Nor was it the case that we didn’t consider the arguments against the war. In fact, I laid out—in a September 17, 2002, White House document—the strongest case against our policy on Iraq, consisting of thirteen specific arguments. For example:
“Going to war with Iraq will almost by definition divert attention and resources from the pursuit of al Qaeda. And it was al Qaeda, not Iraq, that killed more than 3,000 of our countrymen.”
“What will a post-Saddam Iraq look like? How long will we stay? How much are we willing to spend?”
“Saddam may be malevolent—but he’s not suicidal. Everyone knows he’s not going to attack America because everyone knows that if he does, it will lead to the incineration of his nation. Nor is he stupid enough to use terrorist networks to do his dirty deeds. His aim is arguably to control the gulf region; it’s not to send nuclear bombs to Manhattan. By the way, what is the evidence that Iraq is preparing to launch an attack on the United States? You can’t show me any, because there is none. We know three relevant facts, all of which work against your case: first, Saddam does not have a nuclear weapon; second, if he gets them, he doesn’t have the means to deliver them to America; and third, there’s no proof whatsoever that he intends to attack America. It’s based purely on speculation, which is a thin reed on which to base a war decision.”
To be clear, I supported our policy at the time, I believed the war was justified, and I publicly defended it. We believed the arguments for war outweighed the arguments against it. Yet it wasn’t as if we didn’t consider the downsides of the war. We did. But we made wrong judgments, which came at a terrible price.
FINDING HOPE IN THE DARK
The eighteenth-century British statesman Edmund Burke wrote to a friend and fellow member of Parliament acknowledging, “Every political question I have ever known has had so much of the pro and con in it that nothing but the success could decide which proposition was to have been adopted.”27
Burke was right. It’s impossible to know the exact consequences once abstract ideas are (imperfectly) put into effect in the real world, which is untidy and unpredictable. Building highways is one thing; changing human behavior is quite another.
The pioneering computer engineer and systems scientist Jay Forrester explained that we learn to think in simple loop systems, while social problems arise out of complex systems. What makes sense for one doesn’t work for the other. “With a high degree of confidence we can say that the intuitive solution to the problems of complex social systems will be wrong most of the time,” according to Forrester.28
It doesn’t help, of course, that there is very little time to step back, to reflect and ruminate, for those in positions of power. The crush of events is simply too much, with deadlines sometimes forcing decisions that have not been fully thought through.
In the early years of the Reagan presidency, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, David Stockman, was the point person of the so-called Reagan Revolution, an effort to frontally assault the American welfare state. (Stockman failed in his attempt.) Stockman—young, bright, highly knowledgeable, and highly ambitious—was the central figure for the administration on domestic and economic policy. In interviews with a journalist at The Atlantic, Stockman allowed the public to peek behind the curtain and see how chaotic policy making can be.
“I just wish that there were more hours in the day or that we didn’t have to do this so fast,” Stockman told William Greider in 1981. “I have these stacks of briefing books and I’ve got to make decisions about specific options. . . . I
don’t have time, trying to put this whole package together in three weeks, so you just start making snap judgments.”29
He added, “I’m sort of into a permanent mobilization. I just go home and sleep for a few hours and come back and start pushing. I’ll philosophize about it afterwards. I can’t do it now. I’ve just got to keep moving.” 30
The result? “None of us really understands what’s going on with all these numbers,” confessed Stockman, the one person who should have understood what was going on with all those numbers. “You’ve got so many different budgets out and so many different baselines and such complexity now in the interactive parts of the budget between policy action and the economic environment and all the internal mysteries of the budget, and there are a lot of them. People are getting from A to B and it’s not clear how they are getting there.”31
Those in decision-making positions, then, are often forced to make consequential decisions on incomplete information in a compressed period of time in order to solve difficult and enduring problems. And the outcome of those decisions may well be determined by contingencies you cannot anticipate.
Politicians are like everyone else; they want to control events rather than to be at their mercy. But sometimes “life is a theater of vicissitudes,” as John Adams put it. Presidents have a set of expectations on how their tenure will unfold, but events may well intervene.
John F. Kennedy faced unanticipated crises in Cuba and Berlin. George W. Bush’s presidency was transformed by the attacks on September 11, 2001. Barack Obama inherited a titanic financial crisis that occurred just before the 2008 election. None of these men could have known what lay ahead, and events forced them to adjust their priorities, to immerse themselves in matters they might have preferred to ignore. But sometimes that’s not an option.
