Hopeful Signs

The holiday season always renews my optimism. Its spontaneous fellowship—catching up with more distant friends and family—just creates a warm glow.

So, I don't really want to spoil it for you or me by mentioning the Bush administration… much. But in looking over 2005, it is striking how this was the year that George W. made his strongest bid for being one of the worst presidents of the last century. The 2000 election made him an accidental president like Ford. September 11th gave him a chance to be Roosevelt or Wilson. This year saw him slip from Wilson to Hoover (Katrina) to Nixon (the NSA scandal). Whether you like him or not, let's hope he has a better 2006. My colleagues in history are always reminding me that US history is more than the chronicles of the White House. I agree, but the activities of the person in the Oval Office matter a lot.

In the spirit of season, however, there are some hopeful signs (in no particular order) that next year may be an improvement over this one on the national and international scene.

Congressional mavericks, led by John McCain, forced a change in the US policy on treating detainees. Many of the detainees are nasty people, but as McCain understood better than almost anybody else (having been tortured himself as a POW in Hanoi), it is corrosive to our national identity and harmful to our international image if we even flirt with becoming like the people we are fighting. McCain's efforts in Congress were mirrored by a courageous push within the armed services and among some Pentagon civilians (over the objections of the Office of the Vice President) to restore US adherence to the 1949 Geneva accords on the treatment of prisoners. Meanwhile another maverick John Murtha came forward and strengthened the national debate about the war in Iraq, causing the President to be more forthcoming about the administration's strategy. Although much of what President Bush said in response to Murtha was not new, the speeches drew distinctions among jihadists, saddamists and rejectionists hinting that some of the people fighting us in Iraq are fighting us because we are in Iraq, as Murtha had argued.

Judge James Robertson of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court resigned, apparently in protest over the Bush administration's authorization of a program of warrantless surveillance. The entire Court will finally be briefed on the program in January and perhaps other resignations and an even stronger national debate will follow. Meanwhile the conservative United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Va., slapped the Justice Department on the wrists for trying to do an end run around judicial review by revoking Jose Padilla's status as an enemy combatant and indicting him as a common criminal.

In the wake of Katrina, President Bush gave the dramatic Jackson Square speech in which he linked racial discrimination to urban poverty and spoke of the beneficial effects of government action. Republican presidents haven't spoken this way since Gerald Ford. Congressional democrats remained largely inarticulate, but the Department of Homeland Security's foul-ups were a wake-up call for many others. After a quarter century of hearing that "government is not part of the solution, it is part of the problem," the American people saw live at the Convention in New Orleans why the effectiveness of the federal government matters a lot, and costs money. Weeks later the Bush administration, perhaps running scared after Katrina, gave the appearance at least of beginning serious planning to deal with a Bird flu crisis.

Brokeback Mountain is poised to be a mainstream hit in January and a federal district judge in Pennsylvania ruled that intelligent design, whatever its other merits, is not science.

The second bombing attack failed in London in late July and the British government rounded up the cell. There is no way of knowing how many young, disaffected Britons have answered the angry calls of Islamic extremists, but the failure of the second attack and the silence in Britain since is a reminder that there are still limits on terrorist capabilities and good counterterrorism pays off.

The signs of court and congressional activity are reasons for hope because we desperately need a return to some checks and balances on the executive branch. After 9/11 the Bush administration was handed a blank check and we are now way overdrawn. Frederick L. Holborn understood better than almost anyone the importance of the separation of powers for our liberty. As a young man, he wrote speeches for Senator John F. Kennedy, then worked in the White House for Kennedy and Johnson. After stints at Justice and State, he devoted the remainder of his life to teaching graduate students about US foreign policy at the Johns Hopkins' School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C. Having worked as a congressional staffer, Fred also had a passion for training congressional fellows and left his mark on two generations of them. Fred, who was a mentor of mine at SAIS, died this summer and missed seeing the rousing of Congress in the fall. He would have been proud. Perhaps there are some students of his on the Hill who made a difference in his honor. I hope so.

Happy New Year.