Blasts from the Past

Just finished the book on National Security advisers by Ivo Daalder and I.M. Destler.  Having lived through the era (from McGeorge Bundy in JFK's administration through Stephen Hadley in Bush's), there wasn't that much new for me.  But their judgments were interesting: Bundy/JFK and Scowcroft/Bush come out the best, with the latter combo no. 1).

The book moves quickly, and I'd recommend it if your taste runs to bureaucratic politics.  A few notes:

• all honor to Bromley Smith, who was an unsung bureaucrat at the beginning who established many of the essentials of the national security system
• when the right wing faults people for not reading the 1,000+ pages of various legislation, they would do well to remember that Bush's NSC adviser failed to read the 90 odd pages of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq before the Iraq War
• when the right wing faults Obama for dithering, they might reread the narrative of how Bush took us into two wars
• when the right wing faults the "czars", they might remember the national security adviser is neither statutory nor confirmed by the Senate
  

The authors' major point is that the President and his adviser are a unit, the one should compensate for the weaknesses of the other.