We Need a President, Not Just a Commander in Chief
By Joe Brewer and George Lakoff
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Thursday 20 March 2008
In this primary season, the question of what makes a good presidential candidate
has taken many forms. Is it how to negotiate with leaders of other nations?
What kind of experience qualifies one to be a leader? Yet, the question that
should make progressives ripple with discomfort is "Will the president
be a strong commander in chief?"
Emphasis on "commander in chief" activates a right-wing frame and
progressives should be very circumspect in referring to the presidency in this
manner.
Though the words themselves are neutral, they have been used within a right-wing
frame that is not obvious. The frame includes the following:
- The overriding challenge facing our country is military in nature.
- The military role of the president is, therefore, far more important than
all of the other jobs he or she performs.
- Military experience, or direct experience with military affairs (e.g., the
Armed Services Committee), is the single most important experience needed for
the presidency.
- The country should be governed on a military basis. The state should first
and foremost be a security state.
- The temperament needed for a president is martial; the president should be
a fighter and should be engaged in fighting.
- The governing style for a president should be giving orders and making sure
they are carried out. Others in public service should be obedient to the president's
orders.
That is what it means to make the "commander-in-chief" question the
main issue in a campaign. The commander-in-chief frame shifts the role of the
president away from governing our nation and into the more limited scope of
managing military affairs. It takes us away from domestic questions, including
other questions of protection and leadership.
That frame is not what America is about. It does not embody fundamental American
values. Nor does it portray what the role of the government is in our democracy.
The dual roles of government are protection and empowerment, as we have written
elsewhere.
Protection is not just military or police protection, but a wide range: consumer
protection, worker protection, environmental protection, social security, protection
from natural disasters and disease and protection from economic devastation.
That is the major protective mission of the government. The protective job
of the president is leadership, primarily in these areas, and also in military
matters when our country is in serious danger of attack by a military force.
Leadership in all of these areas places different requirements on a president:
- The ability to articulate those needs for protection so that the nation will
comprehend them as overriding needs.
- The ability to get the country united behind plans for protecting Americans
in all of those ways.
- The ability to inspire a generation of Americans to devote their lives and
careers to these tasks.
Protection and leadership are vital issues in a presidential campaign. But
the commander-in-chief frame hides them, and replaces them with a right-wing
model of government and of the presidency. Conservatives have a long history
of dominating the landscape of ideas by trumpeting security issues. So long
as the public generally thinks about military affairs as overwhelming, they
will be susceptible to conservative frames. Associations between the presidency
and commander in chief will tend to promote a conservative view of the world
where use of force is not merely encouraged but made mandatory.
This unfortunate distortion of constitutional law, as well as the real problems
of Americans, has a major strategic impact in today's political climate. Throughout
recent years, the theory of the "unitary executive" has taken hold
in the practices of the Bush administration. This theory places the president
in the role of decider at the helm of government, thus denigrating the roles
of Congress (the real decider in
matters of both foreign and domestic policy) as well as the courts.
The imposition of the commander-in-chief frame imposes the top-down hierarchy
of commands within the military on the decision-making authority of the president
- reinforcing the "unitary executive" mindset. It conceals the fact
the president is only granted power to direct military activities during times
of war. There can only be a commander if there is an army fighting another army.
The term only makes sense within the military frame - typically enmeshed in
the more general war frame.
The kind of military chain of command and absolute authority in wartime does
not apply to most functions of the president. The president is not supposed
to be commander in chief of Congress, nor commander in chief of the FBI or the
Justice Department, nor commander in chief of the American people. Right now,
he isn't even commander in chief of Blackwater, a private army.
As we have just seen, the commander-in-chief role does not extend to most protections
that a president should be concerned with - natural disaster (FEMA), health
(FDA, health care agencies), environmental protection (EPA) etc. A president
must address these domestic issues through leadership skills outside the realm
of military action.
As we've noted before at
Rockridge, such issues of framing are central to our democracy:
"Congress may argue against the president's Iraq policy, but when they
do so using his words, and thus his fundamental moral frame, they put themselves
at a distinct disadvantage. It is nearly impossible to persuasively present
a progressive policy using conservative language and frames."
Framing the role of the president in conservative terms suppresses progressive
leadership frames. The conservative view of the world as a dangerous place where
military threats always lurk nearby is not conducive to the tasks that make
our world safer: communicating effectively with leaders of other nations, building
trust and forging lasting alliances across the globe, promoting peace through
diplomacy and engaging in efforts to ease suffering through initiatives that
build secure communities at home and abroad.
Instead, we are reminded of vague threats that evoke fear and encourage division
among the peoples of the world. War and militarism activate fear circuits in
our brains, altering the processing of information toward absolutist concepts
of "good versus evil," "us versus them" and the acceptability
of violence.
Progressives need to understand the politics of fear if we are to build upon
the basic human capacity underlying our view of the world - empathy with responsibility.
Feelings of fear and anxiety reduce the expression of empathy and lead us to
place responsibility elsewhere. The antidote is to pay attention to the common
bonds we all share. As Shakespeare once wrote, "If you prick us, do we
not bleed?" It is this recognition that pain in others is like our own
that motivates the desire for healing and peace.
Progressive leaders need to promote progressive leadership frames. This means
dropping the commander-in-chief term in general debates about the nature of
the presidency and shifting instead to the overall role of government, protection
in general, empowerment of both individuals and business and overall presidential
leadership need to accomplish them.
We need a president, not just a commander in chief.
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Joe Brewer brings a diverse educational background to Rockridge. He
received three B.S. degrees from Southeast Missouri State University - in physics,
applied mathematics, and interdisciplinary studies. He received an M.S. in atmospheric
sciences from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Since receiving
his masters, Mr. Brewer has focused on the study of cognitive science and linguistics,
including studying with Mark Johnson - a co-author with George Lakoff on two
books. Mr. Brewer has a special interest and expertise in the framing of global
warming issues.
George Lakoff is the co-founder and senior fellow of the Rockridge Institute.
A professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, he previously
taught at Harvard University and the University of Michigan. He has been a fellow
at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, and
a visiting professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences
Sociales, Paris (1995) and at the Linguistics Society of America Summer Institute
at the University of New Mexico (Summer, 1995).
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