A Diplomat's Progress--Book Review (reprise)

Last week the Summer 2011 class of Glenn Fellows read Samuel Huntington's famous Foreign Affairs article on "The Clash of Civilizations." As an introduction to the not-always-glamorous world of professional diplomacy, I have also assigned a book called A Diplomat's Progress, written by Henry Precht, a retired foreign service officer. Mr. Precht was born in Savannah, Georgia, and educated at Emory University. He joined the foreign service in 1961 and served in U.S. embassies in Italy, Mauritius, Iran, and Egypt. He was the Department of State’s Desk Officer for Iran during the revolution and hostage crisis when the Shah was overthrown, and he was deputy ambassador in Cairo when Anwar Sadat was assassinated. His nomination by President Jimmy Carter to the post of U.S. ambassador to Mauritania was blocked by Senator Jesse Helms.

After leaving the foreign service, Mr. Precht served as president of the World Affairs Council in Cleveland, Ohio, where he also taught at Case Western Reserve University. A few years ago, he published A Diplomat’s Progress, a work of fiction consisting of a series of vignettes about a State Department official named Harry Prentice. It is an engaging work that reveals, as one reviewer has put it, the “grittier side of embassy life with a wry sense of humor and a bit of an edge.” To the extent that the work is autobiographical, A Diplomat’s Progress is rather remarkable.

For one thing, the “grittier” aspects of diplomacy are portrayed warts and all. In one of the vignettes, the young Harry Prentice and his wife attend a dinner party at the home of the foreign minister of Mauritius, during which the lecherous host assaults the drunken daughter of the Japanese ambassador. In a vignette set in Egypt, the protagonist must tend to a dead body and a suitcase full of drug money. In “Caviar and Kurds,” Prentice unwittingly leads the Shah’s secret police to an underground freedom fighter named Hassan, whom Prentice finds hanging from a lamppost the next day. In this account of embassy life, no good deed goes unpunished.

Most remarkable as an autobiography—and surely it must be regarded as partly that, in spite of the veneer of fiction—is the book’s unflattering portrait of its protagonist. Throughout A Diplomat’s Progress, Harry Prentice’s diplomatic efforts are undone by either his naivete or his cynicism. Typically, the reader is given a glimpse of a career diplomat preoccupied, not with the national interest, as one might suppose, but rather, with his own career advancement. At one point, for instance, Prentice seems to have been the unwitting accomplice of a Palestinian terrorist. What does he do about it? He gets up in the middle of the night to compose a somewhat Bardachian “balance sheet of possible courses of action.” There appear to be two:

First, the natural inclination of every Foreign Service Officer: Do nothing. Wait on events and react as necessary and as seems prudent at the time. . . . Alternatively, I could report my suspicions to the police. Playing it straight and admitting wrong might be partially redeeming. The key word was “partially.” The embassy surely would be informed and handle my future as if it had no value. The same with the Israeli authorities. I had to face it: Only I really cared about my future, not any American or Israeli career-building bureaucrat.

During his posting to Cairo, Prentice is asked to interview a Sheikh who might have been in a position to influence the extremists holding a number of American hostages in Beirut. Prentice’s efforts fail. “But never mind,” seems to sum up his reaction. “I could only hope that someone—the ambassador or an unknown friend in the department—would make an excellent report of my performance for my file.” The adventure, he concludes, “just might be a turning point—upward—in my career.” On the basis of the evidence provided by the author, the judgment handed down by Prentice’s first wife seems just: He has “a pretty good soul, even though sometime it seems quite lost in the bureaucratic maze.”

Moment of the Summer: Witnessing Gabby Giffords' Return

Below is a post recently published on the WAIP blog by S.R., one of our summer Glenn Fellows.

I'm not a lucky guy, nor do I have a particularly good sense of timing (just ask the girls I asked to any of my high school dances). But in what is hopefully a sign of more good luck to come, I happened to witness what might be the defining moment of the 112th congress.

To give a little context, I've been following the debt ceiling debate pretty closely over the past two weeks. It's almost impossible not to living only two blocks away from the capitol building. Even so, I've gone a little overboard - listening to c-span for hours every day as I complete database work for my internship, reading the Washington Post on my phone during lunch breaks, and I’ve had this recurring dream where President Barack Obama and Speaker of the House John Boehner get married in New York.

As such, I was naturally quite excited to hear that a solution was on the horizon just before Tuesday's final deadline. Since I had invested so much time over the past month following the debate, I decided to call up my good friend and fellow Glenn Fellow Joe Flarida to see if he’d be interested in trying to catch the vote after work.


We met up at the Capitol Visitors Center around 6:30, checked our cell phones and bags with security, and headed into the gallery. The chamber of the House of Representatives is a beautiful room and absolutely buzzing with energy when full of frenzied congressmen. We arrived just as they announced that the bill was to be voted on, but we were only permitted to stay for 20 minutes. Luckily enough, this vote took 15 minutes, a pretty standard time allotment because of the limited number of voting devices. There was little to do other than sit back and people watch as the Representatives milled around. Some Congressmen were talking quickly in groups and trying to figure out if they’ll have enough votes, others were chatting amicably with friends.

Joe and I were pointing out various "celebrity" congressman. We took note of famous republicans Ron Paul and Paul Ryan, the Representatives who had been running the debates David Dreier and Louise Slaughter, as well as minority leader Pelosi and Speaker Boehner. Soon, it became very apparent that the house would succeed in passing the compromise. I thought that would be the piece of history I got to take with me back to Columbus in the fall.


That’s when Gabrielle Giffords showed up.


With two minutes left in the debate, Rep. Giffords tentatively walked into the chamber. Slowly, as people realized what was going on, thunderous applause filled the room. Everyone was stunned; only a few congressmen had been informed that she’d be coming to vote. It’s difficult to recall in the excitement, but the first standing ovation had to have lasted at least three minutes. There were several more to come after the congresswoman had voted and Speaker Boehner announced the bill had passed. Despite the bitter partisanship of recent months, both republicans and democrats united in honoring Giffords’ tenacity.


The vote was her first after six months of recovery from an assassination attempt. It signifies not only an incredible amount of personal strength and courage, but it also indicates the importance that the debt issue has for the short and long term future of our country.


I am honored to have borne witness to her return. It’s amazing how lucky we were – 15 minutes earlier or 15 minutes later and we would have missed the moment completely, a moment that will give me chills every time I think about it for years to come.


tl;dr: Rep. Gabby Giffords left me and everyone else in the House of Representatives totally stunned tonight.


Steven

Meeting History

Below is a post recently published on the WAIP blog by J.T., one of our summer Glenn Fellows.

Being in D.C. allows you to be around a group of people who play a major role in shaping policy that can affect your daily lives and even your future. However, there are only a couple of current politicans I can think of who really have made history. One of those is current Congressman John Lewis ( D- Georgia), who is considered one of the "Big Six" from the Civil Right Movement of the 1960s, one of the 10 speakers from the March of Washington, and one of the founders of the Nashville sit-ins that integrated the city's public facilities. Needless to say, he's a politician AND a historical figure who played a major role in ending Jim Crow segregation in our country.

I hadn't heard much of Congressman Lewis' story until this past Winter Quarter, where his autobiography was assigned for my Sixties history class. After reading his story, I was completely inspired and moved by the amount of dedication and faith Lewis carried throughout the movement. During the Freedom Rides, Lewis was almost beaten to death by a violent mob of bigots and had his skull fractured during the March to Selma now known as Bloody Sunday.

When I arrived here for the summer I thought it would be a fun idea to at least see if I could arrange a meeting with him. I knew it would be a difficult task given that it seems that most Reps and Senators have crazy schedules, but I thought it would be worth a try. I definitely wasn't expecting to actually make it happen but I was approved for an appointment with Congressman Lewis!

I was so nervous walking to his office knowing that I would be meeting someone that has been so important to the Civil Rights Movement. Barack Obama had signed a picture after his presidential inauguration with the phrase, "Because of you, John." YEAH THAT'S HOW IMPORTANT HE IS! Luckily, Congressman Lewis was as friendly and humble as I could have imagined. I was shocked that I was speaking to walking history, as he gave insight into his relationships with Martin Luther King to SNCC members to his violent encounters with the KKK.

I was so fortunate for Congressman Lewis to have given me an hour of his time and will always remember that meeting!

- JT

The Brief against Brandeis (reprise)

There is no denying that the long-lived Louis D. Brandeis (1856-1941) was an American treasure. The son of Eastern European Jewish immigrants, he graduated at age 20 with the highest GPA in the history of Harvard Law School. He made his reputation as a Progressive lawyer and as a leader of the worldwide Zionist movement. In 1916, he was nominated for a seat on the United States Supreme Court by President Woodrow Wilson.

The definitive biography of Justice Brandeis was published by Pantheon in 2009. The work of Melvin I. Urofsky of Virginia Commonwealth University, the 955-page tome has received rave reviews. One, written by Anthony Lewis, appeared in The New York Review of Books. Brandeis, according to Lewis,

was intensely interested in facts. His law clerks did research on facts as much as law. When the Court considered a case on presidential appointment power that involved the 1867 Tenure of Office Act, Brandeis had his law clerk, James M. Landis (who became the dean of Harvard Law School), go over the Senate journals of 1867 to see what the views of the times were. Landis spent months in the Library of Congress reading the journals page by page.

Brandeis even tried to get Justice Holmes, who read philosophy in the original Greek, to take more interest in facts. He urged Holmes to spend the summer break reading up on working conditions and visiting the textile mills in Lawrence, Massachusetts. A year later Holmes wrote Harold Laski that “in consideration of my age and moral infirmities, [Brandeis] absolved me from facts for the vacation and allowed me my customary sport with ideas.”

Brandeis’s obsession with facts continues to reverberate through American law and politics. Consider, for example, what Wikipedia has to say about the term “Brandeis brief,” which refers to

a pioneering legal brief that was the first in United States legal history to rely not on pure legal theory, but also on analysis of factual data. It is named after the litigator Louis Brandeis, who collected empirical data from hundreds of sources in the 1908 case Muller v. Oregon. The Brandeis Brief changed the direction of the Supreme Court and of U.S. law. The Brandeis Brief became the model for future Supreme Court presentations in cases affecting the health or welfare of classes of individuals. This model was later successfully used in Brown v. Board of Education to demonstrate the harmful psychological effects of segregated education on African-American children.

This week members of the Summer 2011 class of Glenn Fellows are reading essays and court cases organized around the theme of fact-finding and its jurisprudential consequences. As they read these materials, my hope is that they will perform a little thought experiment by asking themselves about the facts that the Court recognized in Muller, Brown, and Roe v. Wade, and whether it would have been wiser for the Court to base its rulings on strictly legal grounds, rather than conducting fact-finding expeditions.

In Brown, for example, the Supreme Court had the option of resurrecting Justice Harlan’s stirring dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson, which would have meant striking down school segregation on the grounds that “our constitution is color-blind,” rather than on the less substantial grounds that segregated schools inflict psychological damage upon African-American children. Likewise, in Roe v. Wade, there were a number of precedents that the Court, rather than wrestling with the question of fetal viability and formulating a national “right of privacy,” might have used to finesse the issue of abortion by declaring that public health is a matter that the Constitution, through the Tenth Amendment, reserves to the states. I hope the Fellows will ask themselves, in short, whether the Brandeis brief, so well intentioned, has inflicted a great deal of legal and political harm in the century since Muller v. Oregon.

John Marshall and Friends

I don't know when people started to refer to the President of the United States as POTUS, but whenever that occurred, I suppose it was inevitable that we would get FLOTUS (First Lady of the United States) and SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States). Anyway, the Glenn Fellows took a field trip to the Supreme Court last Friday to view a film about the Court and to hear a courtroom presentation (all Q and A this time) about Court procedures and the federal judiciary. The Fellows are shown clustered around the Great Chief Justice above.

The Mystery/Miracle of Economic Growth

The Summer 2011 class of Glenn Fellows visited the Ronald Reagan Building last Friday and enjoyed a presentation by Ohio State alumna Virginia Brown and her USAID colleague Wade Channell, who did a fantastic job of showing that the making of public policy is both an art and a science, and that analytical skills are crucial to the making of enlightened public policy.

The subject of nation building and international development reminded me of an article that appeared some time ago in The New York Review of Books. "The Anarchy of Success," by William Easterly, an economics professor at NYU, was a review of two then-new books, Leonard Mlodinow's The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives, and Ha-Joon Chang's Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism. Here's a link.

Here's the nub of Easterly's argument. He says that the phenomenal rates of economic growth enjoyed by Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore (see skyline photo above), and Taiwan in the period between 1960 and 2007 inspired a tsunami of research by economists eager "to find in the empirical data which factors reliably lead to growth. Yet hundreds of research articles later, we wound up at a surprising end point: we don't know."

Think of it. After the investment of billions and billions of dollars in the righteous cause of economic development, we actually don't know what accounts for rates of growth. According to Easterly, summarizing Mlodinow, economists have identified 145 factors associated with growth, but "most of the patterns were spurious, because they failed to hold up when other researchers tried to replicate them." As for Bad Samaritans, Easterly says that Chang criticizes "those who have made overly strong claims for free trade and orthodox capitalism, but then he turns around and makes equally strong claims for protectionism and what he calls 'heterodox' capitalism, which includes such features as government promotion of favored industries, state-owned enterprises, and heavy regulation of foreign direct investment."

Could it be that "the science of muddling through" is the best we can do?

On the miracle of economic growth, here (with a tip of the cap to Carmen Flores-Carrion) is a link to a YouTube mini-lecture by Hans Rosling.

Summer 2011 Glenn Fellows Meet with Senator and Mrs. Glenn

From left to right,

front row: Lauren Zacks, Jessica Tolbert, Dan Redmond, Senator John H. Glenn, Annie Glenn, J.P. Stevens, Kelsey Shoub, Katie Brown

middle row: Carmen Flores-Carrion, Carrie Charbonneau, Liu Jiang, Chelsea Pflum, Taozhen Huang, Sarah Fries, Belinda Cai, Rachel Coyle, Alexa Odom, Karine Aswad, Dennis Mawhirty

back row: Kenneth Kolson, Charles Bronder, Joe Flarida, Steven Redd, Patrick Manley

The event was held in the Hall of the States (photo above), new home of the Glenn School's Washington Office as of June 15, 2011.