Esquire:
When Abraham Lincoln took actions based on military considerations, he gave himself the proper title, "commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States." That title is rarely—more like never—heard today. It is just "commander in chief," or even "commander in chief of the United States." This reflects the increasing militarization of our politics. The citizenry at large is now thought of as under military discipline. In wartime, it is true, people submit to the national leadership more than in peacetime. The executive branch takes actions in secret, unaccountable to the electorate, to hide its moves from the enemy and protect national secrets. Constitutional shortcuts are taken "for the duration." But those impositions are removed when normal life returns. But we have not seen normal life in 66 years. The wartime discipline imposed in 1941 has never been lifted, and "the duration" has become the norm. World War II melded into the cold war, with greater secrecy than ever—more classified information, tougher security clearances. And now the cold war has modulated into the war on terrorism. —Garry Wills, 2007.
I needed to put that on the record because its basic truth was completely lost in a dark land of fear and amid the waving poison ferns in Wolf Blitzer's amygdala. First of all, none of these people will be my commander in chief. None of these people will have the job of keeping me "safe." The first priority of a president is not keeping the country safe. The first priority of a president—indeed, the only priority of a president—is to preserve, protect and defend not me, but the Constitution of the United States. So sitting there, listening to a bunch of people who never served a day in combat talk about how they're going to turn the Middle East into obsidian glass and how they will keep me safe, it was hard not to fall off my chair. Frankly, I wouldn't hire any of these people to watch my car in a valet parking lot, let alone lead the country into what they never miss a chance to call, "the Third World War." Chris Christie? Ted Cruz? Marco Rubio?
All this hyper-macho blather gets us nowhere but deeper into the hole. I'm not saying we should never just kick ass and take names, but when that's our only approach, we've become predictable and the 'bad guys' can anticipate what our moves will be, which gives them the advantage. Obama knows all that.
Cruz and Trump and Bush et al - they all know that too; they just don't know what all Obama knows because - you know, POTUS knows shit that you and I just don't get to know.
So when they get up there and they start the basic Strut-n-Bluster routine, it's a lie. They do that to keep us distracted from the simple fact that they don't have one fucking clue about much of anything going on in The Situation Room. What they do have is mountains of feedback from polls and focus groups telling them the rubes are pissed off about having been mis-led and taken advantage of by the RINOs and others who fail the Purity Test du Jour, but also that there's no danger of them voting for the Dems because the 25-year project of demonizing Libruls plus True Conservatives Can Do No Wrong has been a spectacular success - so what it comes down to is this: Our favorite lies are no longer working for us; please give us a new set of lies.
We're jonesin', man - we're jonesin' real bad.
