The Swamp, John McCain and President Carter

Sen. McCain is attracting favorable articles now, for pure and understandable reasons.  After his death, whenever it comes, more commendations will come and slight criticism will be unbecoming.

So let me offer a bit of criticism and context now.

There's been much discussion of "the swamp" in DC and the need to drain it.  Very laudable I'm sure. But I've a vague memory, I think based on Timberg's book, that McCain was a denizen of that swamp for a while.  After his release from the POW camp, and recuperation from his injuries, and before he retired from the Navy and entered electoral politics, he was assigned to the Pentagon as a liaison to the Senate.

Now the Ford and Carter administrations had a project for medium-sized aircraft carriers, conventionally powered and cheaper than the nuclear carriers the Navy and Rickover had been building.   As a naval officer McCain's ultimate commander was President Carter, but his real allegiance was to his bureaucracy, the Navy.  And the Navy, or at least many of the big shots, wanted the biggest and best of everything (pardon my cynicism).  McCain was an effective lobbyist with the Senate for the nuclear carriers, operating against the official policy of the administration.  It was a little reminiscent of the "revolt of the admirals" of 1949, except that McCain and the others were able to achieve their goal with less publicity.

That's how the swamp works, and Sen. McCain was once a swamp dweller.

The Wooing of the Powerful: Swamp Creatures Attack

Too lazy for links today but two comments on the wooing of the Trump administration:

• the Pentagon is wooing Jared Kushner by one of the best tricks in the book: take him on a trip to Iraq.  The academics say the way to create friendship is for people to engage together in an effort towards a common objective.  Nothing better than a trip to create togetherness, which is one reason why teleconferencing can never fully replace the real thing.  Remember that Clinton and McCain bonded together when as senators they went on trips and drank vodka together?
• the Chinese are wooing both Kushner and Trump, partly through the vehicle of Henry Kissinger.  A comment in the Post story this morning was to the effect that Chinese knew about dynastic politics, since President Xi is himself the son of a founder.