Dear CCI Friends,
Andrew Bacevich, President of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, has hit a political home run with this piece below! All of us have been deeply concerned about … What next, if Joe Biden wins the 2020 Presidential Election? And what next if Donald Trump wins the election? Both have innumerable flaws not to be mentioned here.
Bacevich, a West Pointer, left the U.S. Army early as a Colonel and went back to school. Collecting a MA and PhD from Princeton, he is a professor with numerous positions and accolades to his credit. He humbly shares (on YouTubes) that he’s just an American historian specializing in international relations. I found the following on Google: he also studied U.S. diplomatic and military history, American foreign policy and U.S.security studies. Thankfully, it’s clear from his numerous YouTubes that Bacevich is a military man of considerable honor and truth as expressed in our American spiritual traditions.
He brings political “know-how” to those of us who read him and are watching as his star rises. How thoughtful that he would give the proposed President wise counsel from week one if he is elected.
Sharon Tennison
Center for Citizen Initiatives
Biden Wins, Then What?
August 13, 2020
By Andrew Bacevich
Assume Joe Biden wins the presidency. Assume as well that he genuinely intends to repair the damage our country has sustained since we declared ourselves history’s “Indispensable Nation,” compounded by the traumatic events of 2020 that demolished whatever remnants of that claim survived. Assume, that is, that this aging career politician and creature of the Washington establishment really intends to salvage something of value from all that has been lost.
If he seriously intends to be more than a relic of pre-Trump liberal centrism, how exactly should President Biden go about making his mark?
Here, free of charge, Joe, is an action plan that will get you from Election Night through your first two weeks in office. Follow this plan and by your 100th day in the White House observers will be comparing you to at least one President Roosevelt, if not both.
On Election Night (or whatever date you are declared the winner): Close down your Twitter account. Part of your job, Joe, is to restore some semblance of dignity to the office of the presidency. Twitter and similar social media platforms are a principal source of the coarseness and malice that today permeate American politics. Remove yourself from that ugliness. Your predecessor transformed a presidency that had acquired imperial pretensions into an office best described as a cesspool of grotesque demagoguery. One of your central tasks will be to model a genuine alternative: a presidency appropriate for a constitutional republic, where reason, candor, and a commitment to the common good really do prevail over partisan name-calling. That’s a lot to ask for, but returning to a more traditional conception of the Bully Pulpit would certainly be a place to start.