Nagl, Russert, and crises of institutional culture

Two very important articles:

1) Tom Ricks's story in the Washington Post revealing that Lt.Col John Nagl is leaving the Army to join a new DC think tank.

I am partial to Nagl, whom I know somewhat and like very much, and whom I interviewed, along with Lewis Sorley and Conrad Crane, two years ago on the Charlie Rose show. Indeed many reporters know and like him, and he has been a kind of media darling: subject of a (very good) cover-story profile by Peter Maass in the New York Times Magazine four years ago; author of a well-received book about the timeliest of military topics, counter-insurgency strategy; and one of the driving forces behind the new Army/Marine Corps "Counterinsurgency Field Manual," the same document whose existence is so often cited as one of general David Petraeus's great accomplishments. (Petraeus and Marine Corps general James Mattis sponsored the overall effort.) Nagl had been a Rhodes scholar and, like Petraeus (Princeton PhD) before him, has been a very prominent example of the media-savvy scholar-warrior.

Petraeus, as is obvious, has been greeted as a savior by politicians of both parties. The striking thing that Nagl's resignation illustrates is that younger officers in the Petraeus model and, like Nagl, around Petraeus himself are faring nowhere near as well. The other most famous case, too resonant and complicated to do more than mention at the moment, involves Col. H.R. McMaster: author of Dereliction of Duty, a book that has had tremendous influence within the military. (More on McMaster here.) He has been a successful combat leader in Iraq but, as every serving officer knows, he has twice been "passed over" for promotion to general. Unfortunately there are a lot of other examples, involving not just Petraeus's own coterie but promising-yet-stifled officers more generally.

Iraq is not "another Vietnam," but the pressures and distortions on U.S. military culture resulting from open-ended occupation of Iraq are reaching a Vietnam-like scale. This very good article by former Stars & Stripes reporter Andrew Tilghman, in the new Washington Monthly, says a lot more about the problem.

2) Matthew Yglesias's article, also in the Washington Monthly*, about the pressures and distortions created by Tim Russert. This is a fearless and dead-on critique that I wish every political reporter would read.

I mean, they probably will read it, for the titillation effect of a young buck taking on an established chieftain. But I hope they also notice the article's point, which is truly important.

As Russert's influence has risen, so has imitation of two of his least helpful operating assumptions. First, that a journalist does his job best when he sounds most like a prosecuting attorney -- ie, that to be "tough" and responsible a journalist should be hostile-sounding and borderline rude. And second, that the paramount question about any politician is whether, in his or her life, the politician has ever said anything that differs in any way from what he or she says now. Taken together these lead to a third assumption: that an encounter with the press should be a kind of torture-test, and how the politician "does" under this pressure is a good proxy for how successful a leader he or she would be. In this model the journalist's highest is to find the question that might trip the politician up, whether or not that reveals anything about the politician's views.

All these tendencies have been around for a long time. Through his prominence, Russert has become a symbol of them. The default assumption of many Meet the Press sessions -- which has spilled over to the be default assumption in this election-cycle's unfortunate debates -- is that if you say something (about taxes, Iraq, global warming, what have you) in 2008 that represents any shift from what you said in 1996 or 2001, you're presumptively a liar or fraud. Thus the dramatic on-screen graphics comparing your words from then with your words from now, and thus the closeups to see whether the politician is stammering or losing his cool under this scrutiny. The problem is (as Yglesias devastatingly lays out): sometimes a changing position means you're craven. And sometimes it does not. The world changes. New information emerges. Life goes on. Whether -- and why -- a politician has ever changed position is part of what we need to know. But it's not the only thing that matters -- or in most cases, the main thing. To quote one of the Atlantic's founders,

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines."

It's also become adored by the political press corps, which compounds the already-considerable challenge of explaining politics in ways useful to voters and citizens. Check out Yglesias's article for more.

----
* Disclosure time: Yglesias is a colleague at the Atlantic; the Washington Monthly is edited by my friend Paul Glastris and is where I first held a magazine job. And, to the slight extent I know Russert, I like him. It's his example and influence that create the problem.