Top Advisers Research Articles

A War Without End

contend. Even if some officials believed they were waging war to stop Iraq from arming itself with nuclear weapons or to defeat the terrorists abroad before they attack us at home, a close reading of prewar intelligence on Iraq and what is now known about the administration's internal deliberations cast doubt on those aims. Iraq was no war for oil either. Nor was it undertaken to acquire bases, contain Iran, impose democracy on the Middle East, or dash hopes for Israeli-Palestinian peace, however much some war hawks may have wished it would. To the president and his top advisers, the September 1 1 attack underscored U.S. weakness and vulnerability at home and abroad. Warned that al Qaeda could be planning further attacks and that the United States was not well prepared to stop them, they opted to display power for domestic and foreign audiences. If that was their purpose, the war in Iraq is now pointless. Now Washington is preoccupied with how to end that war, and the domestic debate is just as muddled and self-absorbed as was the debate to start it. Much of the current discussion misunderstands the nature of

The defining moment: FDR's hundred days and the triumph of hope

This is the story of a political miracle -- the perfect match of man and moment. Franklin Delano took office in March of 1933 as America touched bottom. Banks were closing everywhere. Millions of people lost everything. Great Depression had caused a national breakdown. With the craft of a master storyteller, Jonathan Alter brings us closer than ever before to the magic. Facing the gravest crisis since the Civil War, FDR used his cagey political instincts and ebullient temperament in the storied first Hundred Days of his presidency to pull off an astonishing conjuring act that lifted the country and saved both democracy and capitalism. Who was this man? To revive the nation when it felt so hopeless took an extraordinary display of optimism and self-confidence. Alter shows us how a snobbish and apparently lightweight young aristocrat was forged into an incandescent leader by his domineering mother; his independent wife; his eccentric top adviser, Louis Howe; and his ally-turned-bitter-rival, Al Smith, the Tammany Hall street fighter FDR had to vanquish to complete his preparation for the presidency. Old Doc Roosevelt had learned at Warm Springs, Georgia, how to lift others who suffered from polio, even if he could not cure their paralysis, or his own. He brought the same talents to a larger stage. Derided as weak and unprincipled by pundits, Governor was barely nominated for president in 1932. As president-elect, he escaped assassination in Miami by inches, then stiffed President Herbert Hoover's efforts to pull him into cooperating with him to deal with a terrifying crisis. In the most tumultuous and dramatic presidential transition in history, the entire banking structure came tumbling down just hours before FDR's legendary only thing we have to fear is fear itself Inaugural Address. In a major historical find, Alter unearths the draft of a radio speech in which considered enlisting a private army of American Legion veterans on his first day in office. He did not. Instead of circumventing Congress and becoming the dictator so many thought they needed, FDR used his stunning debut to experiment. He rescued banks, put men to work immediately, and revolutionized mass communications with pioneering press conferences and the first Fireside Chat. As he moved both right and left, Roosevelt's insistence on action now did little to cure the Depression, but he began to rewrite the nation's social contract and lay the groundwork for his most ambitious achievements, including Social Security. From one of America's most respected journalists, rich in insights and with fresh documentation and colorful detail, this thrilling story of presidential leadership -- of what government is for -- resonates through the events of today. It deepens our understanding of how Franklin Delano restored hope and transformed America. The Defining Moment will take its place among our most compelling works of political history.

Pessoa's "O Encoberto" in Mensagem : The Sebastianist Facet of his Occultism

IN 1914, at the age of twenty six, Fernando Pessoa became very attracted by Sebastianism, an interest that would endure throughout his lifetime and one that very much complemented his apparent occult interests (Kotowicz 27). (1) Sebastianism is the messianic myth about Portugal's King Sebastian (1557-78)--O Desejado (The Desired One), as he was known at the time of his birth--whose return would establish a utopian, universal commonwealth under the Portuguese flag. The foretold realm, the Quinto Imperio (Fifth Empire), would be the last of the great empires, subsequent to those of Assyria, Persia, Greece, and Rome. This expectation derives from the prophet Daniel's interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar's dream in the Old Testament (Book of Daniel, II). Slow-witted and vain, King Sebastian openly proclaimed his desire to reinstate to power the Sultan of Morocco, Muley Muhammed, who had been deposed by his Turkish-backed uncle, Muley Abd al-Malik. (Sebastian's real aspiration was to lead a crusade that would crush the infidel.) 1578, ignoring the counsel of his top advisors, he crossed into Morocco with his entire army and much of the country's wealth. a desolate spot known as Alcazarquivir, on August 4, Muslim hordes under al-Malik decimated the outnumbered Portuguese. Sebastian's fate went unknown and much of the country's nobility perished. The debacle was such that, as rumored, the captured booty made possible the founding of the city of Marrakech. Two years later, the kingdom of Portugal was annexed by Spain. Strong Sebastianist content abounds in Pessoa's 1920 poem, In Memory of the President-King Sidonio Pais, where the assassinated dictator is portrayed as a probable incarnation of the lost king. Yet, it is in his 1934 poem collection Mensagem that his Sebastianism culminates. (2) The collection won second prize in a contest organized by the Secretariat for National Propaganda, an agency of Antonio Oliveira de Salazar's fascist government. It was the only book published by Pessoa in his lifetime and his sole composition with Portugal as its poetic topic. Divided into three parts, Mensagem recounts Portugal's proud past in its first two sections. Its third, entitled and divided into three subparts, is where Pessoa reveals his strong Sebastianist bent. O Encoberto stems from a revelation ascribed to St. Isidore of Seville (560?-636), who had envisioned the coming of a Messiah referred to as Encoberto (Hidden One). This prophecy became popular in sixteenthcentury Portugal thanks to Goncalo Anes, known as Bandarra, a cobbler from the village of Trancoso. His prophetic verses (Trovas), based on the Isidorian prophecies and the Old Testament, described the coming of O Encoberto, who would establish the Fifth Empire. However, once these trovas began to appear in written form, a copy reached the hands of the Inquisition. 1541, the Holy Office prohibited Bandarra from circulating his works, an action that served only to enhance the seer's reputation and lend credence to his prophecies. Such were the circumstances at the time of Sebastian's birth in 1554. As mentioned, Pessoa devotes the poems of the first two subparts of (Os Simbolos and Os Avisos; the third is entitled Os Tempos) to King Sebastian and all that his messianic myth entails. D. Sebastiao, the first poem of Os Simbolos, Sebastian himself speaks out, asking readers to await his return as the mythical Hidden One: (3) Sperai! Cai no areal e na hora adversa Que Deus concede aos seus Para o intervalo em que esteja a alma imersa Em sonhos que sao Deus. Que importa o areal e a morte e a desventura Se com Deus me guardei? E O que me sonhei que eterno dura, E Esse que regressarei. (Mensagem 81) The second poem, Quinto Imperio, begins by admonishing those who are happy with their everyday lives, because complacency leads to inaction, to a living death. …

President Bush’s Enthymeme of Evil

Ted Windt’s description of presidential crisis rhetoric helps explain the successes and the difficulties of President Bush’s war on terror. Immediately after the attacks, the president moved rhetorically to provide reassurance and to delegate policy direction. But President Bush’s rhetorical transformation of a faceless coward’s attack on our country into evil’s attack on everything good and proper in the world prepared us to respond against enemies beyond “those responsible for these attacks” even as his top advisors warned against doing so. The devil-angel melodrama provided the dramatistic proof Windt described, and when the president cast it in the form of a jeremiad, it reconciled contradictions and complicated counterargument and deliberation.

An analysis of advisor choice, fees, and effort in mergers and acquisitions

AbstractThis paper investigates the choice of financial advisors in mergers and acquisitions, the fees that the targets and the acquiring firms pay to these advisors, and the speed with which advisors complete transactions. Our sample includes 5337 merger deals announced during the period January 1995 to June 2000, that involved publicly traded targets and acquirers. We find that top‐tier advisors are more likely to complete deals and to complete them in less time than lower tier advisors. However, the synergistic gains realized by the acquirers declined when top advisors were used. We also find that contingent fees play a significant role in expediting the deal completion. Surprisingly, we find that deals that are initiated by the advisors do not seem to take less time to complete. Our results suggest that the payment of larger advisory fees do not play an important role in determining the likelihood of completing the deal, but they are associated with greater acquisition gains realized by the acquirer. In addition, these synergistic gains are also associated with the switching by acquirers of their financial advisors within the same tier.

Commentary ‐ Image‐manufacturing in the USA: recent US Presidential Elections and beyond

Now that we have entered the new millennium in politics, it is clear that the machinery of the “old politics” that was centered on a party‐orientation is being replaced by computers of the “new politics” that is centered on an image manufacturing‐orientation. Along with this movement comes a highly integrated marketing strategy that is driven by a candidate’s inner circle of advisors who now control the money and message of both the party and candidate organization. This makes for a very easy transition from election to governing, as the top advisors during the campaign become top advisors to the leader and the key architects of the party administration. All of the advanced marketing techniques and tools that have been used in politics over the past several years are becoming more sharply focused on one central theme, and that is to manufacture a winning image for the leader and his/her party. The 2000 US Presidential Election will be used as a case in point to examine how this process works and what impact it will have on politics in the future.

The Establishment Strikes Back

What is one to make of a book penned by a high-ranking official from one presidential administration that examines at great length – and in highly critical tones – the foreign policies of the administration that immediately followed? The foreign relations memoir literature has proliferated of late. Bookshelves sag under the weight of ponderous tomes from diplomats who seek to explain and justify decisions they made while in office. But former policymakers have not, until now, turned themselves into chroniclers of administrations in which they did not serve. William Bundy’s searing indictment of the foreign policies of Richard M. Nixon and Henry Kissinger hence stands as a most unusual volume. Can we now expect a senior member of the Jimmy Carter administration to weigh in sometime soon with an account of Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy? And anticipate that one of George Bush’s top advisers will devote a decade (à la Bundy) to the preparation of a detailed assessment of Bill Clinton’s foreign policy? I think not. The sheer implausibility of such comparable undertakings serves simply to underscore A Tangled Web’s status as virtually sui generis in the annals of modern American diplomatic history. A reviewer cannot help but call attention from the outset, accordingly, to the peculiar conjunction here between message and messenger. This important book deserves, of course, to be assessed as the serious work of history that it is, the identity of its author aside. And yet, that identity forms so central a part of the total package that separating message from messenger constitutes a well nigh impossible task.

The Friends of Bill and Hillary

If the Clinton administration “looks like America,” then we have become a nation of lawyers and lobbyists.Perhaps it should come as no surprise that almost all of the top jobs in the Clinton administration are filled by lawyers, lobbyists, politicians, and bureaucrats. Unlike his predecessors in the White House, Bill Clinton never had any experience outside of politics and government. Among Clinton's top advisors only his Chief of Staff, home-town friend Thomas McLarty, was recruited from the business world. (Secretary of Energy, Hazel O'Leary, was a power company executive at the time of her appointment but most of her career was spent as a Washington-based lobbyist for the power industry.) Nor is there any significant military experience represented on Clinton's top team, although several members are veterans.Clinton's pledge to bring to Washington an administration that “looks like America” presumably meant more minorities and women appointed to cabinet-level positions. Clinton's initial cabinet team includes three women—Attorney General Janet Reno, HHS Secretary Donna Shalala, and Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary. Three African Americans serve in the Clinton cabinet—Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, Agricultural Secretary Mike Espy, and Veterans Affairs Secretary Jesse Brown; and two Hispanics head departments—HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros and Transportation Secretary Frederico Pena. Comparisons across administrations depend in part on the definition given to “cabinet-level” post in each administration. It appears that the Clinton administration is slightly more “diverse” than that of his immediate predecessor.

The Devil Stole His Mind: The Tsar and the 1648 Moscow Uprising

ON THE FIRST OF JUNE 1648, IN THE CITY OF Moscow, a peaceful crowd of townspeople attempted to hand petitions of grievances to Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich Romanov. When their efforts to communicate with their tsar were rebuffed, the supplicants turned into a violent and bloodthirsty mob. Twelve days later, the uprising subsided. Half the city lay in charred ruins, hundreds or even thousands of people had burned to death in the fire, three top advisers to the tsar had been killed by popular demand, and the reigning clique of boyars at court had been temporarily toppled. This toll does not begin to take into account the large number of people who suffered in the repressions that followed. Through a seemingly insignificant gesture, the refusal of a petition, the tsar and his governing circle exposed their departure, and that of the growing tsarist state, from traditional Muscovite ways. By rejecting the petition, Aleksei Mikhailovich took a dangerous step toward undermining his own authority. From at least the mid-sixteenth century on, Muscovite tsars had based their legitimacy on a carefully developed political-religious ideology that bound tsar and people together in a divinely sanctioned covenant. Aleksei Mikhailovich relied on this traditional foundation for his rule, and yet the demands of state building and contacts with the Western states increasingly overwhelmed the traditional patterns and mores of a political culture based on personal connections and divine mercy.' The rebellion of 1648 erupted at a critical moment in Muscovite history, when traditional and bureaucratizing discourses clashed and remade themselves

Nixon's Administrative Presidency Revisited: Aberration or Watershed?

On 5 January 1973, one month after his reelection to a second term, Richard Nixon described for Congress a major restructuring of his cabinet and White House staff. Nixon began by emphasizing his determination to “revitalize and streamline the Federal Government in preparation for America's third century,” a reference to his effort of the preceding two years to replace seven domestic executive departments and several agencies with four “superdepartments”: a Department of Natural Resources, a Department of Community Development, a Department of Economic Affairs, and a Department of Human Resources. The failure of Congress to report out of committee any of the four bills Nixon submitted in March 1971 to create these superdepartments was now prompting the president to act unilaterally to “reorder … the timeworn and in many cases obsolete relationships among top staff and line officials” in an effort to realize “the broadening of policy perspectives on the part of top managers and advisers” and improvements in “managerial effectiveness” he had hoped to achieve through comprehensive reorganization of the executive branch.

Unholy Babylon: The Secret History of Saddam's War

This book aims to demonstrate that the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on 2nd August 1990 was the logical conclusion to 20 years of diplomatic duplicity, greed and corruption, particularly on the part of Britain, France and the USA. While world leaders greeted Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait with astonished outrage, displaying a spirit of unity seldom seen in international politics, only a few days earlier top advisers in London, Cairo and Jerusalem had played down intelligence reports of just such an attack, it is claimed. The pursuit of short-sighted and relentlessly self-interested foreign policies led the West to arm Iraq with an arsenal of weapons capable of destruction, while Iraq's appalling record on human rights and the implications for the security of neighbouring states was ignored. Further, it is claimed that a powerful lobby of arms manufacturers, politicians and journalists were behind a deliberate campaign of misinformation which hid the truth about the Iraqi regime and misrepresented the nature of its ambitions. The book also reveals details of: the links between the pro-Iraq lobby of MPs at Westminster and the international arms trade; the rivalry between the CIA and MI6 which led to a crucial breakdown in communications over the spread of missile technology in the Middle East; the British and European companies which illegally supplied arms to Iraq with the knowledge of the government and the intelligence services; and the secret deal between London and Iraq over terrorist attacks in Britain.

Discrepant Responses to Falling Dictators: Presidential Belief Systems and the Mediating Effects of the Senior Advisory Process

Cognitive and advisory process theories usually are cast as competing explanations of decision-making in U.S. foreign policy. They are more appropriately approached as complementary components of a single explanation, in which the independent variable of the President's belief system is mediated by the intervening variable of the senior advisory process. The extent of the mediating effect is afunction of the degree and nature of senior advisor unity: weakest when there is senior advisor disunity, and strongest when there is dissenting unity. The cases of the Carter administration policy toward the Shah of Iran and the Reagan administration policy toward President Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines bear out these hypotheses. In the CarterIran case the initial dissenting unity of Carter's top advisors caused support for the Shah to be much greater than predicted by the president's belief system propensities. The senior advisor disunity which emerged as the crisis worsened had much less of a mediating effect, and thus decisions came to more closely reflect the non-interventionist strategic view at the core of Carter's belief system. In the Reagan-Philippines case, initially the president's propensities to support Marcos were reinforced by the unanimity of his top advisors. The key decisions in 1985-86 which culminated in abandoning Marcos were the result of the transformation of the advisory process to dissenting unity and the consequent strong mediating effect. In thus demonstrating the interactive relationship between beliefs and process, these cases help establish the need for integrative theory.

THE ARMY RESERVE AND VIETNAM

Abstract : The 1968 decision to mobilize units of the Army Reserve came three years after Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara first raised the idea with President Lyndon Johnson. In May and June of 1965, South Vietnamese forces suffered a string of defeats, and in July the Defense Secretary went to Vietnam on a fact-finding mission. McNamara returned with a recommendation that the number of US personnel in Vietnam be raised immediately from 75,000 to 175,000 with an increase to 275,000 early in 1966. A large part of this increased strength in Vietnam would come from the Army's reserve components, from which McNamara wanted to call up 125,000 men. The question of calling up the reserves was only a part of the much broader debate that went on within the Johnson Administration. Indeed, the critical decision in July 1965 was whether to pull out of Vietnam entirely, to maintain the current level of involvement, or to give our commanders in the field the men and supplies they say they need. In examining the various options, wrote Lyndon Johnson in the autobiographical account of his presidency, I realized what a major undertaking it [McNamara's proposal] would be. The call-up of a large number of reserves was part of the package. This would require a great deal of money and a huge sacrifice for the American people. Johnson thereupon summoned a group of what he called his top advisors to the White House on 21 July 1965, the day after McNamara's return from Vietnam. After a series of meetings which included General Earle G. Wheeler, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, President Johnson made his decision.

Egypt Breaks the Deadlock

The recent drama of President Sadat's pilgrimage to Jerusalem, followed in quick succession by his call for a Cairo Conference of all Geneva parties to include the Palestinians and subsequently his open break with four Arab countries and the PLO, has seriously unsettled Washington's efforts to promote an overall Arab-Israeli settlement through a Geneva Conference. It is to be feared that Sadat's initiatives will further fragment the Arab world, lead to a separate Egyptian-Israeli peace agreement, and consequently destabilize the area to the detriment of fundamental US interests. For some thirty years and through seven administrations, American Presidents and their top advisers have agreed that only through a negotiated settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict could the ever-increasing US interests in the Middle East be assured. These interests have clearly involved the security and economic welfare of a Jewish state, to which the US has been committed since 1921, access to oil and the trade and financial ties which have ensued, free air and sea passage through the area, and political stability based on moderate, non-communist governments and minimal Soviet influence and presence. Washington has learned that whenever large-scale hostilities erupt as in 1956, 1967, 1970 and 1973 access to oil and to air and sea transit have been compromised and Soviet influence has increased. The events preceding the 1956 war introduced Soviet arms for the first time; the 1970 War of Attrition brought into Egypt a Soviet air defence system and 20,000 Russians, and the Western world knows the consequences of the 1973 war in so far as fuel supplies were curtailed. Today, American economic dependence on, and ties with the Middle East are far greater than ever before, as are its commitments in the area. About 2025 percent of American oil consumption 4 million barrels per day comes from the Mid-East at a cost of some $20 billion annually. These imports are paid for by providing goods and services, and through investment of $12 billion annually in the US by the oil producers-largely in US Treasury