Mike Pence and the Charm of Having it Both Ways

I see the Wall Street Journal is now marketing Indiana Republican Represantive Mike Pence as a "military and fiscal hawk."  One's first thought is that it's an oxymoron, on the order of "chaste debauchery."  There's nothing more tiresome than the public figure--there are swarms of them--who ladle out the goodies to the hogs at the military trough while trumpeting their own budgetary rectitude.

Indeed critics like to climb on Pence the selectivity of his hawkery, as he beats his breast for budget restraint, with a compassionate exception for pork in his own state. 

On the narrow issue of inconsistency, I'm almost willing to give him a bye: I can't think of any politician of either party who has ever survived while attacking a dominant economic interest on his home turf.  My notion is that Pence is one of those who have figured out how to talk the talk on defense cuts, knowing they will never have to walk the walk.  Oh, I voted against that.  You mean I lost?  Oh, what a shame.

I suspect we are in for a regular old  bacchanal of such hypocrisy from the incoming Republican House majority as they pick and choose their way through the cafeteria of spending mandates, trimming here, snipping there, slashing others with a Bowie knife, all the time knowing that the Senate (or if need be, the President) will save them from themselves.  And we will continue our established practice of maintaining a military budget bigger than just about all the others in the world combined.

So I think I was right the first time: military and fiscal hawk?  No such thing.  Or if there is, Pence ain't one.

One Right-on and One Huh?

Turcopilier who is in a position to know endorses Defense Secretary Gates' newly announced assault on the military industrial complex:-

Gates is right. The armed forces are loaded up with too many generals and admirals. There is feather bedding everywhere. The money taps were turned on in Republican days and have been opened even wider in the present administration. The armed forces are structured now to support a forward leaning aggressive foreign policy in which the expectation is clear that finesse counts for little and massive brute force and large troop commitments are the pattern. A COIN strategy in Afghanistan that relies on so many soldiers for what the generals would clearly like be an indefinite period is the very emblem of this kind of thinking.

Headquarters have multiplied remarkably in the last 20 years. Bush '41 once said that he lacked the "vision thing." Today's armed forces are burdened with far too many flag officers and SESs who are unable to even imagine "the vision thing." As a result the processes of equipment acquisition and creation of new doctrine have been relegated to huge committees, endless paper and expensive endless experimentation.

But then he drops a going-away zinger:

Gates' statements about multi-layered civilian contracts would be more impressive if he were not guilty of the same thing. He has a number of "pet rocks" for which this outrage does not seem to apply.

Ah--details, please? Or at least a hint?

What's The Story on the Virginia Eighth?

My friend Ivan takes me to task for calling the Virginia 8th Congressional district the "mother church of the military-industrial complex" (see previous post). The whole comment is worth hoisting:

i dont think arlington-alexandria, where i lived for several decades plus, is "home" to big military lobbying operations, although the pentagon is located there. arlington-alexandria is a very liberal voting area, and home to democratic party operations that really work at electing liberal democrats. virginia got its first black gov, doug wilder, years ago, because of the white turnout in arlington-alexandria.

Well, I don't think any district that is home to the Pentagon can count itself as free of military-industrial influence. But Ivan is obviously onto something here: A-A does have a record of support for liberals statewide, though their own Congressman, Jim Moran, counts rather more as Blue Dog. In some ways, if you are looking for a military-industrial distrct, perhaps a better case could be made for the much richer Virginia 10th, a bit further east, home of so many of the lawyers and lobbyists that keep the political machine oiled.

On the other hand, here's an argument that's hard to top: Finder analyzes Department of Defense spending by district nationwide. The winner, by a runaway margin the Virginia 8th, with half again more contractors, with almost twice as much spending as the runnerup (which is, as it happens, the Virginia 10th). If that ain't military spending, I don't know what is.

Maybe the clue here can be found at the micro level: A-A liberals are people who are comfortable with government. They work there, or their relatives work there, or they did work there and soon will again. When they think "military," they don't think of a skinhead 20-year-old waving an M16A2; they think of the guy sitting next to them on the orange line to Metro Center, wearing camouflage duds and combat boots, carrying a briefcase and penciling a pile of spreadsheets. In the end, maybe the military-industrial complex comes down to that.