THE FALLACIES OF CRISIS MANAGEMENT
Most of the punditry are on about refusing the politics of fear, in the wake of a Clinton replay of a Mondale 1984 advert (same ad guy on the job).
Better: What specifically are we afraid of?
Seriously.
There is no bear in the woods any longer. With the cold war over and no serious military challenge on the horizon, the U.S. has no obvious existential threats.
What is Hillary afraid of? Bird flu? I'd guess that Barack voted the "emergency" money to cope with serious threats of viral and microbial demise.
Terrorism? Well, the job of a CIC is to calm fears, in the event of a terrorist attack, for which there will certainly be no phone call. Tony Blair is the model. Barack seems cooler under pressure - or more precisely, admirably even-keeled - than Hillary, so far as we can tell, although she may be more formidable, once she has command of the facts.
True leadership should be preparing people to deal with the possibility of another attack, how to meet the challenge resolutely, rather than trying to pass out tacit guarantees of "safety" under one administration or another.
None of the candidates have an obvious edge or obvious experience diffusing such situations.
AFRAID OF WHAT BUSH-CHENEY HAVE LEFT US AT HOMELAND SECURITY
What's more, the leadership that we need is in working initiatives designed to prevent crisis, such as the IAEA's bits on global nuclear power. We need leadership who can conclude treaties, not just opt out of them. Someone attuned to the drip-drip-drip of current American finances, that has accelerated under the GOP.
If we should be afraid of something, it may be the abysmally slow growth in civil preparedness under Bush-Cheney, starting with the failure to implement the 9/11 commission recommendations. Who among us feels that the government is prepared to handle a man-made, full-scale catastrophe on U.S. soil? We don't even have inter-operable communications, yet, right?
