[First published in AM New York]
SO HE’S BEING inaugurated again. And the nation’s fighting a war.
Media pundits are dusting off their historical reference works to pronounce on the vexed question of “tone” – for when an elite whoops it up at the reported cost of $40 million, while the lower orders in uniform serve at the cost of their lives.
Commentators have variously recalled that Martha Washington decorously delayed her appearance until after husband George’s oath, and wore plain cloth rather than her favored silks (while Laura Bush will, it appears, be wearing Oscar de la Renta tonight) . . . or that in World War Two Franklin D Roosevelt served guests only a cold cuts luncheon – though that maybe signified his own poor health as much as wartime restraint.
But more important than appearances, be they tacky or dignified, is the substance. What essential priority will President Bush emphasize for his next four years?
The only two previous presidents to hold a second inaugural bash during a war – James Madison and Abraham Lincoln were extremely clear about their agendas. Madison, speaking soon after the War of 1812 began against Britain, made a resounding call for “animated and systematic exertions” to accomplish the country’s main aim, namely “to render the war short and its success sure.”
Half a century later Lincoln proclaimed: “Fervently do we pray that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away.”
Today’s presidential message is being crafted by ‘born-again’ speechwriter Michael Gerson, formerly of of US News & World Report, with input from his successor William McGurn, who’s ex-Wall Street Journal. We’ll know by lunchtime if Mr. Bush wants the nation’s attention focused as clearly as his predecessors did on a speedy and successful conclusion to war.
OUT IN THE FIELD, some of the Commander-in-Chief’s lower commanders are giving up on their leaders. It’s a truism of war that old generals are always fighting their last campaign, and it’s up to a new generation to discover fresh tactics. For Iraq, new ideas are flourishing through new media.
The Army’s current crop of captains and lieutenants were born in the 1960s or later, as New Yorker staff writer Dan Baum pointed out last week. These Gen X “slackers” are something new to the Army’s culture, ruled as it is by baby-boomers.
The younger generation is notoriously unfazed by authority (clear from a Tennessee soldier’s sharp quizzing of Donald Rwnsfeld about inadequate armor – maybe aided by a Chattanooga reporter, maybe not). When promoted, its members also bring to their junior officer positions a slick facility with internet communication and its democratizing impulses.
So now there are websites like CompanyCommand.army.mil, and PlatoonLeader.army.mil, where young chiefs share their real-life field experience. They teach themselves online how to fight, with new techniques developed in the Iraqi street, more than at West Point.
“Cultural awareness is incredibly important,” says Major Peter Kilner, one of the sites’ co-founders. “It’s not something we had a great knowledge-base for in the Army before, about Arabic culture.”
Company Command’s homepage asserts: “Amazing things happen when committed leaders in a profession connect, share what they are learning, and spur each other on to become better and better.”
Now … that sounds to me like leadership for speedy and successful conclusions.
