Todd Purdum & Vanity Fair Discover McCain the Gluehorse
Todd Purdum has a pretty extensive and in depth article on John Sidney McCain III just up at Vanity Fair. Here are the take away quotes and ethos of the article:
The prevailing question about John McCain this year is: What happened? What happened to that other John McCain, the refreshingly unpredictable figure who stood apart from his colleagues and seemed to promise something better than politics as usual? The question may miss the point. It’s quite possible that nothing at all has changed about John McCain, a ruthless and self-centered survivor who endured five and a half years in captivity in North Vietnam, and who once told Torie Clarke that his favorite animal was the rat, because it is cunning and eats well. It’s possible to see McCain’s entire career as the story of a man who has lived in the moment, who has never stood for any overriding philosophy in any consistent way, and who has been willing to do all that it takes to get whatever it is he wants. He himself said, in the thick of his battle with Hayworth, “I’ve always done whatever’s necessary to win.” Maybe the rest of us just misunderstood.
Yes, no kidding, you certainly did misunderstand. Or were willfully blind because the bloated national media depiction of McCain has always been as fraudulent as he has always been.
There is a difference between facing a changed and shrunken external reality (which McCain surely now does) and changing one’s essential nature (which McCain almost certainly has not). He has always had a reckless streak, and he has repeatedly skated by after conduct that would have doomed others less resourceful, resilient, or privileged. As a navy pilot, he crashed three planes before being shot down by a surface-to-air missile over Hanoi. He spent harrowing years in captivity in North Vietnam, and parlayed that fame into a high-profile job as the navy’s liaison to the Senate, and then parlayed that—with the help of his second wife’s family fortune—into a political career in his adopted state of Arizona, first winning a seat in the House of Representatives in 1982, and then taking Barry Goldwater’s Senate seat upon his retirement, in 1986.
Yes, indeed. Put more simply, McCain is a dilettante who has always relied on his blue blood and family history, and then his POW status and wife and family’s largesse, to get everywhere he has gone; he has never been a man of accomplishment of his own accord. Nice of you to finally catch on.
After surviving his brush with shame during the Keating Five influence-peddling scandal in 1989, McCain embraced the cause of campaign-finance reform, which endeared him to good-government types and the press but to almost no one else in either party. Like other senators, McCain had taken campaign contributions and favors from savings-and-loan entrepreneur Charles Keating, and had then intervened with government regulators on Keating’s behalf. McCain’s zeal for campaign reform was an act of public atonement—ballsy, yes, but driven as much by Realpolitik as by principle.
“[D]riven as much by Realpolitik as by principle”?? What Todd, couldn’t you think of a softer sell? Jeebus, it was a freaking hollow fraud by McCain; have the guts to call it what it was, and still is.
McCain and his wife, Cindy, have been living essentially separate lives for years. She has spent most of her time in Arizona while he has spent the workweek in a Virginia condominium where, he once told me, he sometimes went months at a time without ever entering the living room, simply coming home to the kitchen and bedroom late at night and leaving again early the next morning. In 2008, McCain was deeply stung by a long New York Times article about his working relationship with a lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, and its assertion that certain McCain aides feared the relationship had some years earlier morphed into an affair. To this day, McCain declines to give interviews to the paper, which was once one of his favorite outlets. While associates say the McCains are companionable, one former aide allows, “I’m not going to tell you that they have a conventionally close marriage, but I’m just not going to get into it.”
Again, a pretty soft sell of the bitter truth. But, no complaints here on this part, Cindy is actually a very decent human and very good mother and, if you were her, would you want to live anywhere near John McCain on much more than a show basis? No.
All in all, considering the mainline media hacktacular vein Todd Purdum travels, this is a pretty brutal and pleasingly mainstream takedown of the horse’s ass John Sidney McCain III is and, more importantly ALWAYS has been. This may be shocking news to a lot of people who will read Vanity Fair and Purdum’s article in it. But it is not news to me, or the readers of Emptywheel and Firedoglake; because you have all, over the years, seen the following articles that make every single point Purdum does; well, with the exception that the work found here at Emptywheel and Firedoglake is much more forthright, and far better supported by links and foundational support for its conclusions. So, there is a bit of a difference I guess:
Tired McCain a Foundering Gluehorse Without Weaver
McCain Is A Clunker, Can I Trade Him In?
The Iseman Cometh, The Iseman Goeth
McCain Was The Most Reprehensible Of The Keating Five And He Hasn’t Changed
Ronald Reagan Endorses Obama, McCain Still Fraudulently Glomming Off Of Goldwater
John McCain The Narcissistic Carpetbagger
John McCain Still Living The Keating Five Lush Highlife
McCain Proves Cactus Is Not The Biggest Prick In The Desert
McCain: Is He Addled And Confused Or A Dishonorable Man?
For anybody that read those posts right here, there would not be a single word that would be either new or shocking in Purdum’s article on McCain. Especially the five core posts during the heat of the election: McCain Was The Most Reprehensible Of The Keating Five And He Hasn’t Changed, Ronald Reagan Endorses Obama, McCain Still Fraudulently Glomming Off Of Goldwater, John McCain The Narcissistic Carpetbagger, John McCain Still Living The Keating Five Lush Highlife and McCain Proves Cactus Is Not The Biggest Prick In The Desert.
In fact, the entire tenor of Purdum’s article seems eerily familiar; I wonder why that is? Since Purdum and Vanity Fair did not have the courtesy or journalistic chivalry to provide links, footnotes and attributions, I guess we will never know where Purdum formed his thoughts for the McCain article.
Whatever; my hat is actually off to Todd Purdum and Vanity Fair for getting the truth about The Old Gluehorse, John Sidney McCain III, out. Now, if only the rest of the national media would cop to the fact they have been played by this carpetbagging fraud from the outset, the record would finally be straight. The press owes the public that truth, and its explanation of how the malignant cancer that is Sarah Palin was planted in the mainline of the American body politic. Narcissism, fraud and Palin; that is the legacy of John Sidney McCain III.
Awww, someone’s got a crush!
Yay, the McCain party hat and the prickly Dick in the same post! It just doesn’t get any better than this.
Oh, and it’s nice to see a “journalist” catching up with you, bmaz, even if it is years late…
Yay, the McCain party hat and the prickly Dick in the same post! It just doesn’t get any better than this…..JW
Absolutely LMAO-Now there’s a REAL doubleheader!
BTW,Bmaz, Bernstein WOULD have stayed and answered more questions.FWIW, please relegate me to the “underwhelmed by Woodward” queue.
Beat me to it ; ) What a waste of a book salon.
What a waste of a book salon.
And how!!
“FWIW, please relegate me to the “underwhelmed by Woodward” queue.”
I want to more than JOIN — Yesterday’s opportunity to ask Woodward questions about his book just made me sick. Very sick.
Some folk may think it fashionable to ask trash questions, about a book they have not read, don’t plan to read, largely because they have some sort of ancient hatred for the Author, or whatever. Silly stuff such as how long it will take to read, what’s in it, or some sort of discussion of Oil Pipelines, when as far as I can tell, such is not mentioned in the book.
Woodward’s book is a review of every meeting Obama, and some of his White House Staff had on Pakistan and Afghanistan from during the Campaign, till Woodward’s Obama interview in July, 2010.
It is about the policy building process for new strategy TO MINIMIZE THE US FOOTPRINT IN AFGHANISTAN, TO MOVE COMBAT TROOPS OUT OF AFGHANISTAN, tO REDUCE COMMITMENTS TO AFGHANISTAN DEEPLY WITHIN A YEAR.
The book tells the story of how networks within Obama’s leadership formed around some of the alternatives, but it is also about how the Pentagon types tried to capture Obama, jam him into commitments he was not prepared to make — in otherwords take away his Commander in Chief powers, and they tried to do it via Bush related Generals and Intelligence Types, and they also tried to capture his own staff.
I think it the best book Woodward has done in years. Yes, it is a first cut of History, and in later years, this will be reviewed and layered into a better history.
But why in the hell do people think it smart to show off their total lack of knowledge as to what a book is about, and mess it up for those of us who actually were reading or had read the book? If people want to ruin the possibility of Liberal/Progressive Bloggers getting access to authors, that little game yesterday was really on point.
Do people here realize that Obama could not get real numbers for planning out of the Pentagon? You know what that means — that building is full of number crunchers, and they denied him. He ended up dictating his own orders in the Oval Office, more as a legal contract with his Staff and Generals, and not as an operational set of orders prepared in the normal way, because he had to. He wants no add-on’s or mission creep. He had to pretty much swear everyone to caps on troops and other assets.
He pretty much had to do it this way because that is how the Pentagon has always captured the commander in Chief, at least probably since the days of Eisenhower, who knew a thing or two about the Military, and from whom Obama seems to draw, at times through Colin Powell, an understanding of the situation. We get scenes when he has to remind Lindsey Graham, McCain, and Joe Lieberman that they did not win the election, insight into how they tried to undercut the process through dropping OP/ED’s all over the place. We have Obama making the case as to not destroying the Democratic Party with yet another hot war. We have his recital of how he sees US National Interests as NOT served by the Pentagon’s notion of war, occupations, bases, and all the rest.
Is Woodward always right? Probably not, but he dug up the sources on all these meetings, got the documents, told the story. That is what the book is about. Simply a decision process that lasted over many many meetings.
One scene I love is when Obama is presented with a Tribal Map for Southern Afghanistan, as if the name of the game is to somehow “fix it.” He holds it up, looks at it in various ways, and says it reminds him of a map of the lines of influence or discord in a map of the Ward Bosses and Democratic Political Operatives on the South Side of Chicago. Sociograms do not impress him. He is not all that interested in re-jiggering maps of political influence, Chicago or Afghanistan.
Anyhow, yesterday’s mess was most offputting, and I hope someone figures out soon how to appreciate assets that come to a Blog, and use them wisely so Authors are not just turned off and away.
Sara,
Thank you for your extensive comments on this thread. As a new President, Obama got to work (as every president does) with a Pentagon populated by an upper command structure appointed by the previous president and his appointees. I sure as heck hope that Obama pursues a more aggressive policy of appointing his own folks to the Pentagon than he has wrt appointments on the civilian side. Sometime in the next year or so, if Obama pursues an aggressive policy of appointments and promotions, he should get a more copacetic command structure to work with. He needs to appoint a successor to Gates who will help him with that. Only then will he start getting better command options.
Bob in AZ
Another difference is the . . . how to put this delicately? . . . flair for language.
From the “McCain Proves Cactus . . .” post comes this immortal opening paragraph:
Compare that with Purdum’s opening paragraph:
Honestly, with just a little tweaking, Purdum could enter this in the Bulwer-Lytton bad writing contest.
I like your style bmaz : ) I’ll take direct and to the point over the Village narrative that Woodward peddles any day ; )
McCain is the ONLY reason I don’t regret my vote for Obama in the general election.
Boxturtle (If I knew where to apologize to Hillary for my primary vote, I would do so)
As someone who did vote for Hillary in the primary, I can say you needn’t apologize. Hillary would have been different but not, I think, better. Especially economically, in thrall to and enthralled with the same econs as Obama. Hillary’s even more of a militarist. On the civil rights and constitutional eviscerations, I’m not sure.
My thought exactly. I was sick of the DLClintons is why I voted Obama. Little did I realize that he was gonna import all the worst neocons from that admin into his – except for the Bush holdovers.
Primary.
Gotta disagree with you, BMAz, when you say:
They haven’t been played. Anyone with eyes could and would have seen McSame for what he is and always was. The national media played along with him, probably b/c they thought it might benefit them in the future. In other words, as a bit of their own realpolitik.
So, what this seems to be is the national media’s first shot at casting off like a used condom the shriveled husk of John Sidney McCain III, the public recognition and announcement that his star has finally, blessedly burnt out being clearly and unequivocally telegraphed to all. I also think this is of a piece with the news reported today over at TPM that shows Sanctimonious Joe Lieberman’s re-elect poll numbers in CT have descended to the level of Bush/Cheney’s approve/disapprove circa 2008. As far as the Establishment is concerned, the Day of the Centrist is Over (and the Day of The Wingnut is dawning, red).
Look for Vicki Iseman to be turning up in the society pages (or the DC equivalent) with someone other than Mr. Party Hat within the next 6 months.
Aye, Truer words were never spoken.
Boxturtle (And you thought real estate was a bum investment!)
Yeah, but what about his daughter Megan? It might actually be possible to have an interesting conversation with her.
Bob in AZ
Megan runs exactly the same “Mavricky” scam as her dad and must have the same advisers.
Conservative as hell, but willing to espouse a socially liberal viewpoint on occasion.
Consider daddy’s “principled” stand on torture, for example. He got months of fawning coverage from all media for his “war hero” status and “principled opposition” to his president. But in the end, he did what he always does – vote the party line. And if you didn’t read leftie sites, you wouldn’t have a clue that he specifically voted against banning torture. I could name a dozen similar examples.
That’s why his own party hates him. He makes them look bad to the public and then – after the cameras have gone – votes the same way they do.
When he cosponsors progressive sounding legislation like McCain Feingold, he does so so he can gut it – which he does.
short stuff McNasty wears the party hat to be Cindis height
Roberta John-Johns mommy is an oil heiress
Tip o’ the hat to those who figgered it out before.
Next subject….
how is ya? bummed out tonite,somebody outbid me for the farm…..sigh,sad
Oh dear, so sorry to hear that. Happened to me once on a NYC apt so have some clue as to how you feel.
it was perfect 10 acres old farm house,beautifl trees and big barn….teh cheap too…got a last minute bidder
Sounded great. So sorry it didn’t work out.
the perfect storm is on….reminds me of a Miami Newport excursion,by way of hurricane Bob……eek
Gee sounds like the John McCain I have witnessed these 40 years… Still an Asshole!@
Ooops, I thought you were describing George W. Bush for a moment there.
gonna go cry in my bier,later all
McCain is going to be around long enough to do a lot more mischief and he’ll enjoy it.
Outside McCain’s family, who cares?
Gotta give a belated stand-on-my-chair-clapping to bmaz for his McCain The Fraud coverage. Been reading FDL from the beginning down here in Baja Arizona. He’s disgusting, and thank you for the obvious, but neglected by mainstream, conclusion about how he’s unleashed the indescribable horror of Sarah Palin to prey upon the body politic…
Well, so the msm is finally catching up to the “foul-mouthed fem blog?”
Hunh. As I read your 1st excerpt, I kept thinking, “so? yeah? You got anything new?”
Too bad Purdum and VF can’t acknowledge the mere bloggers who had the story long before, but I guess you’re right, if this leads to the end of the rest of usual suspects giving up their love affair with McCain, that can’t be a bad thing.
Watch for the little man to implode when he realizes he’s not the center of attention any longer.
Look, McCain always presented his move toward the ‘center’ on select issues as a come-to-Jesus moment from when he got caught red-handed in a highly publicized campaign finance scandal.
There were always only two possibilities there: 1) he was genuinely shocked at himself and wanted to correct the system that had corrupted him, or 2) it was a big crock of bullshit to save his political career.
Personally, I was paying attention to a Presidential election for the first time in 2000, and one thing was obvious to my crazy left-wing ass: John McCain was farther to the aggressive New Right on foreign policy than any candidate on stage. This guy was really in favor of projected power in a way that went far beyond being a proud veteran.
When 9/11 happened, I took a few seconds to thank God that McCain was not the President. Consider that very possible counterfactual for a while. Try not to drink heavily afterwards; it’s tough but you can do it.
I didn’t see any of those earlier posts but the article in Vanity Fair confirmed my own feelings about this guy. Bout time.
As an ardent “outside” observer of American politic, I just have to tell you how refreshing this conversation is .. it has always irked me that McCain was referred to as a “War-Hero” .. to me, he has always been a “prisoner-of-war-hero”, who fed off his martyrdom like a leech on a blood-blister .. thank you all for being so honest .. it gives others like me the confidence to speak out ..
Welcome to Emptywheel; please join us often.
Hey, bmaz, terrific post, thank you.
Someday all these fucking non-linker journos are goin’ down.
Agree with review of Todd Purdum’s article — great job bmaz
Now where in Arizona will we find the dynamics for generating better taste in National Political Figures you send to DC among Arizona voters? Among those who select and promote the younger politically interested up into the process so they can potentially move into significant positions?
We got nuthin. It is really bleak here on the leadership front in both parties. Really bleak. The Udalls, Haydens, Babbitts, Rhodes and Goldwaters are all gone.
There are some good Udalls in your neighborhood, but few are the giants today as compared to those from the years gone by. . .I do have to say that I am not so thrilled with the gluehorse element. Looking at the neglected and starved horse at the bottom of the post, I feel it is unjust to the horse, who after all was likely given no choice in his/her sad state. McNasty, OTOH, well, I guess my point was made.
Thank you so much bmaz and FDL for giving us all the opportunity to read here and for the community. We must create a new future, an alternative to bleak-onomics and bleak-ology.
“We got nuthin. It is really bleak here on the leadership front in both parties. Really bleak. The Udalls, Haydens, Babbitts, Rhodes and Goldwaters are all gone.”
OK — How does it get fixed? I speak of both sides, both the universe of potential candidates, and the much larger universe of “Voters with Taste” who ultimately are responsible for promotion of the party and ultimately the candidacies.
We don’t necessarily need the sons and daughters of the old set, but we need those who appreciate what they were about, and carry something of the older culture into a future.
The Babbitts? All gone? Impossible! Off the radar screen, maybe, but not “gone.”
But hey, we now got a Quayle! {retch}
Bob in AZ
Well gone from politics. I see Charlie every now and then; he tried to run for something a while back, but got killed. There are no more Bruce or Hattie Babbitts exerting their will here.
My plea for new Candidates is to get beyond some of the Legacy figures, How do we develop the next generation? We need two things, obviously a group interested in serious public service who could be elected — but we also need the organizations that develop them and help move the best forward.
Where in the hell did our creative thinking bug go???
So many of the liberal/progressive type of putative candidates you describe came out of things like the Peace Corps and other service types of things that seem, while not gone totally, marginalized and not as large a foundation as they once were. I think creating space and some allure for young people to get involved significantly in public service early on would help instill more people with the bug and background for public leadership maybe. I dunno, we need something though; because right now it seems most of the people wanting to get into politics are the very people we don’t want or need. And that is not limited to the “other party”, Dems have plenty of em too.
Yes, Peace Corps was a great source, particularly if you wanted to return, use the savings for grad school, do International Relations, International Commerce, all sorts of intercultural relations and the like. But then we have Chris Dodd and Chris Mathews with the credential, but hardly the work product equal to what the credential seems to say.
We have all too many former Nadarites, who developed some good skills particularly in developing environmental and safety cases, but who somehow got too much engaged in the personalities, and not in some understanding of the broader missions over time.
I actually believe you dig in at a much more basic level, without calling a lot of attention to what you are about. Right now in Minnesota, the current Majority Leader of the State Senate, the guy who goes toe to toe with Tim Pawlenty on all his miserable ideas day by day, is a former student of mine. I had him in a little “internship” project I developed and team taught in the 1970’s. He wanted a Political Career, so we found him a Junior Year internship working on crunching numbers on Tax Policy. One day he would do some crunching for a little advocacy group that needed them for advocacy before the Legislature, another day he would help out a then member with a piece of analysis, other days he would haunt some of the offices of State Government, just gathering up reports and the like.
Then he had to focus on getting elected, first to the House, then to the Senate, getting his Degrees, and finally moving up in the leadership of the party in the Legislature. He had to learn how to present information and himself (He had a pigtail when he first started), so public could understand his arguments, so the Party Leadership trusted, so he could build upon what he had carefully built. And yes, then he became chair of the Tax Writing Committee — and he has a host of like minded Staff and fellow Legislators who share much of the same paradigm. And they also share a deep political culture. I hope they understand the importance of developing the next generation, and helping them move carefully through the business of learning the nuts and bolts of this stuff, so they have replacements when the time comes.
We need to have something like this in every state of the Union — and not just for developing the next generation of Candidates. I keep pushing people to look at the Wellstone Action Memorial thing — the group that does Camp Wellstone’s all over the country. Their thing is yes, developing candidates for basic level offices (school boards, library boards, Commissions and the like — some city council and state legislative races,) but also campaign management, fund raising, Public Relations, Rightly run Voter Registration Campaigns, and the like. Their form is the Camp Wellstone, a three or four day intensive course, divided by interests, and then followed up with later meetings and lots of on-line support. Do you know where Mark Richie came from? — the Secretary of State who led the Coleman/Franken Recount? He is out of Camp Wellstone. His real expertise is in sustainable Agriculture.
There are lots of people and groups in the country that probably understand all this, but they are too busy building their own programs within their organizations, (obviously with the notion of attracting funders), and they don’t seem to be able to comprehend how much more broadly based it needs to be, and how essentially simple it needs to be, and in the end how interconnected it needs to become.
I think this is a function of people not reading Political Biography. For instance, what could most people on this list tell us about Francis Perkins? Who was she, where did she come from? What kind of crazy net of arrangements did she have that essentially provided her education? Well, Hull House in Chicago, The political machines in Chicago and particularly the Tammany Hall Crowd in New York, The Consumer Federation of America. The Episcopal Church, and all the commissions for it she worked with. And much much more. What did she produce — Well Modern Labor Law and Social Security. Not bad. But why can’t just a few people know what she did, and not fall back on “Well she was a hero” or perhaps a Celeb? Ooooh, the First Woman Cabinet Member. Yea, OK, but you know, Maybe she was a little gender bent? What the Fuck. Why is it necessary to fog the story for another current agenda, with which I agree? To get educated you have to read, and you have to work in the trenches on the small bore stuff first, and then as your skills and knowledge expand, you move out and up to the larger matters.
As you can see, I am on a pretty mad funk at this juncture about something I think very very serious. I think Blogs give us a fantastic opportunity to discuss lots of this stoff openly, up front, and with the goal of maybe saveing our American Democracy, which is under real threat — but I am so mad at the folk who just want to style. I think there are lots of folk out there who have fallen into the trap, and very soon will destroy what might be here.
By the way, some folk around here may know that in my young life as a Historian, I got fascinated with George C. Marshall, did a lot of reading, and then first time in an Archive, went to the Marshall Papers and read a very limited set of files related to a couple of topics relevant to the shift to “Cold War” from late WWII. I can be a critic of Marshall at times, but in the end, I think he was the most astounding General, Executive, Diplomat, and in the end valuable guide to a President (FDR) of any figure in American History. It is a shame people know so little of him.
Marshall sits in a line of Generals who understood the danger of failure to exercise Civilian Control over the Military, something he said over and over again would destroy our Democracy. Line begins with John Pershing, whom Marshall served during World War One, and who remained a friend for life. It follows through Fox Connor, who taught Marshall Strategy while stationed in Panama, and who guided his reading. It involved learning how to pick leadership for all kinds of contingencies. What was Patton good for, and what could you learn, and must you unlearn from MacArthur? How do you work with Congress? How do you work with FDR and after 1941, with Churchill? How do you craft Unified Command? And I suppose how do you find your Eisenhower who can execute the plans?
Marshall believed if a war lasted more than two years without likely success, in any Democracy, particularly the American Democracy, it would begin to destroy the Political Culture. It was a hard rule with him. You could make a legitimate mistake, and he would bring you back, but forget that rule, and you were OUT. And then there was his idea of Honor. No one was really Marshall’s “friend” there was not back scratching around him, no special networks that went to Congress or special Generals.
Marshall respected FDR because he built a Navy from not much of anything during WWI, and then sold off or broke up much of it afterwards, knowing that if another were needed, it would need to be redesigned. He could brief FDR in an hour or less, and he could manage the paper flow on a daily basis, plus inclusion in the right meetings, and feel certain he was never ahead of decisions FDR had actually finalized. He served him.
And yes, he helped Truman Fire MacArthur, realizing it should have been done years earlier.
Reading Woodward — I was screaming that the only person who seems to mention Marshall to Obama is Colin Powell, who is just a retired friend of Obama’s. The rest of the nutheads in the string of meetings Obama must chair and work in order to get to a Strategy that was not the Bush Strategy, probably have never read about that masterpiece, George Marshall. So I want to ask Woodward, Why doesn’t our System produce such types today?
As to Hillary — on some things she does well. But she fell for the Bear Hugs from General Keane, so close, so ever close to Bush and Cheney, and quickly fell into just give the military the strategy and assets they want. Likewise she falls for Bob Gates, though I sense this relationship is much more balanced. The Obama – Petraeus relationship — that one needs much discussion. My guess is Lyndon Johnson’s description, Rather have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in.
On Gates — I admire what he committed to when Bush appointed him. Try to get a few assets out of the Pentagon to fight these wars, instead of letting the whole officer class fashion on to planning future wars, and buying the hardware. That is essentially why he stayed with Obama. But he is still a little caught between the interests of the Uniforms, and the Civilian Class to which he actually belongs, and it presents problems.
But make no bones about it, Obama wrote a Strategy for fairly quickly bending down the curve in Afghanistan, getting the costs down, moving troops home, while not making some of the same mistakes George HW Bush did in 1989 when we just walked away. Then we got Blowback. Oh did we get Blowback.