"Bush's Veep Is Skilled in the War of Politics"
James P. Pinkerton. James P. Pinkerton's e-mail address is
pinkerto@ix.netcom.com.
'ALL WARFARE is based on deception." So said the ancient Chinese military
theorist Sun Tzu. Maybe all politics, too.
Consider, for example, the deception, or at least the concealment,
in George
W. Bush's vice presidential selection process. The Texas governor recalled,
as he introduced Dick Cheney on Tuesday, that he had asked the oil
company
executive if he wanted to be a candidate for running mate even as he
was
overseeing the veep-vetting. That was in April. According to Bush,
Cheney
declined. But then, according to Cheney, as he got to know Bush better-"as
I
saw his sincerity"-the new No. 2 warmed toward the idea.
News reports suggest that this warming process began at least a month
ago;
in other words, many of the names floating over Bush's Texas ranch
these
past 12 weeks have been decoys. Of course, maybe the whole process
was a
decoy, because Bush wanted Cheney all along.
The final truth will await the million-dollar memoirs, but for Bush,
the
exercise was a success. He built drama, kept a secret and came up with
a
credible choice.
But was it based on deception? "Critics will say the process was deceptive,
supporters will say it was deliberative," says John J. Pitney Jr.,
associate
professor of government at California's Claremont McKenna College,
in an
interview. "In politics, as in war, on your own side you see cleverness,
on
the other side trickery." Pitney has written a new book, "The Art of
Political Warfare," in which he posits a war-to-politics continuum.
"Politics is about conflict," Pitney says. "If there were no conflict,
there
would be no politics. And the ultimate form of conflict, of course,
is
warfare." For thousands of years, generals and strategists have thought
hard
about war; now this peaceable political scientist has sought to draw
lessons
from warfare and apply them with equal rigor to nonviolent conflict
resolution.
Of course, it's hard to open up a newspaper and not see casual references
to
"armies" and "crusades" and "war chests" in politics.
Just last week, CNN's website offered this headline: "Gore parachutes
behind
enemy lines to challenge Bush on budgeting." But in fairness to reporters
and their word choices, that's the way politics is often described.
Here's a passage from George Stephanopoulos' 1999 memoir, "All Too
Human: A
Political Education": "We had to be battle-ready just to be in the
game -to
break down the bureaucracy and replace campaigning by conference call
with a
single strategic center for attacks and counter-attacks." As Stephanopoulos
reports, one who got it immediately was Hillary Rodham Clinton: "'What
you're describing is a war room,' she remarked." On June 29, The New
York
Times reported that Rep. Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.), the House Democratic
leader,
showed clips from the movie "Gladiator" to "rouse his troops to fight"
against the Republicans.
Does this martial-metaphor mania speak to some testosterone-al illness
that
needs to be overcome? "Wars can be fought for good or bad purposes,"
Pitney
observes. Even Martin Luther King Jr., advocate of peaceful protest,
appreciated the value of mobilization: "Nonviolent soldiers," he wrote
in
1964, "are called upon to burnish their greatest weapons-their heart,
their
conscience, their courage and their sense of justice." And so conflict
needn't be about bloodshed. It can also be about courage and leadership.
Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of allied forces in the Persian
Gulf
during Operation Desert Storm, worked closely with Cheney, and came
away
impressed: "He's very, very intelligent and very tough, but I never
felt he
had any self-interest," Schwarzkopf said on the "Today" show. "He'd
be
terrific." The liberation of Kuwait was accomplished quickly because
the
United States achieved an even higher degree of deception; the Iraqis,
for
example, were lured into thinking that the attack would come straight
up the
middle, when in fact U.S. forces undertook a lightning flanking maneuver.
But now, much of Cheney's appeal is that he's a straight-talking nice
guy.
As he said on Tuesday, it's time "to restore a spirit of civility and
respect and cooperation" to American politics.
No doubt that's Plan A for the Bush-Cheney team. But if the going gets
rough, no doubt there's also a Plan B, which will stay secret until
it's
needed.