Monthly Archives: March 2019

Six Who Served

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On President’s Day, let’s take a moment to remember the six American presidents who also served in the U. S. Navy.

Of the 45 men who have been president of the United States, six had previously served as officers in the Navy: John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, George H. W. Bush, and Jimmy Carter. All served during World War II, although Carter did not graduate from the Naval Academy until June of 1946, ten months after the war ended.

As naval officers, they had a variety of experiences. All except Carter served in the Pacific theater during the war. Kennedy and Bush won medals for their actions in combat. Johnson did too, but he was recognized for his actions as an observer. Kennedy, Nixon and Ford all volunteered to leave stateside assignments where they could have remained. As a prospective pilot, Bush was headed for combat the day he enlisted. Johnson’s time overseas was brief, as he was a member of Congress before entering active duty in 1941 and in July 1942 President Roosevelt barred members of Congress from serving in the military. Carter entered the Naval Academy in 1943, when there was no reason to think that the fighting would end before he would graduate.

As presidents, they were something of a mixed bag.  Three were democrats, three were republicans. Although Kennedy generally gets good marks, none of the naval veterans are typically included in the top tier of U. S. presidents. Johnson and Nixon achieved significant successes, but those successes were overshadowed by catastrophic failures later on. All six left office prematurely. Kennedy, of course, was assassinated. Johnson declined to run for a second term. Nixon resigned, and Ford, Bush, and Carter all lost bids for re-election.

Though unable to win second terms, Ford, Bush, and Carter are generally remembered as dedicated and honorable public servants who damaged their own re-election chances by taking politically unpopular actions that they believed were in the best interests of the United States.

Gerald Ford was a well-respected and well-liked Congressman from Michigan when he became vice-president under Richard Nixon.  When Nixon resigned to avoid impeachment for obstructing justice, Ford became president. But Ford fatally damaged his re-election prospects when he pardoned Nixon.

Ford knew that the pardon would be unpopular, but he hoped to avoid a long, divisive trial that would compound the damage that the Watergate scandal had inflicted on the country.  But while Ford expected to be criticized for the pardon, even he must have been shocked when his approval rating dropped from 71 percent to 50 percent overnight.  While not the only reason for his defeat in 1976, Ford’s pardon of Nixon is always considered one of the key contributors.

George H. W. Bush served in Congress and was U. S. Ambassador to the United Nations and Director of the CIA before becoming vice-president during the Reagan administration. Upon his election as president in 1988, he quickly realized that the U.S. economy was slowing, causing the federal deficit to rise alarmingly. Although he had famously promised not to raise taxes, he believed a compromise on taxes was necessary to avert economic disaster. Although supported by many moderate republicans, Bush knew that conservative republicans would oppose any tax hikes and that he would pay a political price. But the pushback from conservatives was fiercer than Bush expected, and his popularity fell by more than 20 points. Most historians believe that the tax hike was a major reason that Bush was not re-elected.

Although Bush’s action crippled his later re-election campaign, his budget bill was instrumental in reducing federal deficits and making possible federal budget surpluses during the Clinton administration. 

Jimmy Carter is the only Naval Academy graduate to have served as president. After commissioning in 1946, he remained on active duty in the Navy until 1953, when he resigned to take over his family’s business following the death of his father.  At the time, Carter was slated to become the engineering officer for the nuclear power plant to be placed in USS Seawolf (SSN 575), the U.S. Navy’s second nuclear submarine.

Having served in the Georgia state legislature and as governor of Georgia before becoming president, Carter had no federal government experience beyond the Navy when he took office. His election campaign was built around his status as a political outsider, not beholden to Washington’s entrenched elite.

Many politicians have campaigned as political outsiders, but Carter wasn’t kidding. He detested the deal-making and horse-trading that modern politics seems to demand and for most of his term he refused to do it. Even when he tried, he was terrible at it. In Carter’s case, there was no single, defining incident where he placed the good of the nation above his own political fortunes. Instead, he made a conscious effort to ignore political considerations in virtually every action of his presidency.

Stuart Eizenstat, one of Carter’s key advisors, wrote, “… in Carter’s view of the presidency, what mattered was ‘doing the right thing,’ and believing in a just reward upon returning to face the electorate.”

Carter’s aides greatly respected his determination to ‘do the right thing,’ regardless of political consequences, but they also recognized how his reluctance to consider the politics of a policy crippled his presidency and obscured his very real accomplishments. For Carter, there was no ‘just reward.’

Gerald Ford, George H. W. Bush, and Jimmy Carter have all seen their reputations rise in the years after they left office. Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon, Bush’s commitment to reducing the federal deficit, and Carter’s steadfast refusal to participate in politics as usual demonstrated a commendable willingness to place the nation’s interests above their own.

Did service in the US Navy reinforce their sense of duty and their willingness to risk their political future for the sake of an unpopular action? Perhaps.  It is worth noting, though, that many presidents have taken politically unpopular positions for the greater good without having served in the military.

But each of these presidents considered their naval service to be a defining event in their lives, and it is not unreasonable to assume that their experiences in the Navy shaped the way they perceived their role as presidents. 

“I can imagine no more rewarding a career. And any man who may be asked in this century what he did to make his life worthwhile, I think can respond with a good deal of pride and satisfaction: ‘I served in the United States Navy.’

  • President John F. Kennedy, 1 August 1963, in Bancroft Hall at the U.S. Naval Academy.
    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, Containing the Public Messages, Speeches, and Statements of the President, January 1 to November 22, 1963 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1964), 620]

February 18, 2019

See also:

http://navylive.dodlive.mil/2019/02/18/the-naval-careers-of-americas-six-sailor-presidents/?

Eizenstat quote from President Carter: The White House Years; Thomas Dunne Books,St. Martin’s Press, New York: 2018

photo: WhiteHouseMuseum.org

It’s Always Something…

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Martens are small, weasel-like mammals that are common in Europe.  Too common, for some car owners.

For reasons that are not exactly clear, it seems that martens enjoy eating the rubber insulation from automobile engines in Germany.  That’s tough.  Here we don’t have to worry too much about forest creatures eating our cars.  Of course, in Germany they don’t have to worry about the guy standing next to them at McDonalds pulling out a pistol and shooting the place up because his fries are cold.

Don’t take my word for it. Check it out.

http://www.living-in-germany.net/your-car-vs-the-marten/

Marten image: Tony Braithwaite, BBC

February 10, 2019

That Ought to Take Care of it…

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Of all the nonsensical, wrong-headed, asinine, and ignorant justifications for a massive wall along the southern border of the United States, the crackpot idea that a wall can stop the flow of illegal drugs is the most absurd.

Beyond the fact that the vast majority of drugs that enter the United States through the southern border come through ports of entry which presumably will remain open, here are a couple of other things to consider:

1. Drug trafficking is a multi-billion-dollar global industry with astonishing profit margins. Drug smugglers are not mom-and-pop criminals, trying to scratch out a meager living by running a kilo or two of marijuana across an undefended border. They are international conglomerates, with research and development departments, logistics departments, finance departments, and virtually unlimited resources.  Thinking you will halt drug trafficking by building a wall is like thinking you will put General Motors out of business by closing a dealership on Main Street.

2. Economics tells us that if there is a demand for a product, someone will find a way to supply that product.  Right now, the market for illegal drugs in the United States is the largest in the world, exceeding $100 billion annually.  That’s $100 billion going to drug smuggling organizations every year. That will buy a lot of ladders.

3. Think they can’t afford countermeasures? According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, a kilogram of fentanyl that cost $2,600 can make more than 666,000 individual pills (with 1.5 mg of active ingredient) which can be sold for $15 each, generating $10 million in revenue.

4. They’ve already defeated the wall.  Here are some of the ways drug cartels smuggle narcotics into the United States today:

  • Privately-owned motor vehicles
  • Tunnels
  • Ships and boats
  • Commercial aircraft
  • Private airplanes
  • Submersible watercraft
  • Commercial vehicles
  • Shipping containers
  • Mail
  • Private courier services

5. The history of drug interdiction efforts – as well as the history of prohibition in the United States – makes clear that drug traffickers will adapt to any interdiction efforts that the government may attempt. As Theresa Cardinal Brown, Director of Immigration and Cross-Border Policy for the Bipartisan Policy Center explained, “The profit incentives to find ways over, under, around, or through any border infrastructure are high, and the cartels have more than enough money to spend on R&D.”

For more information, see:

https://reason.com/blog/2019/01/09/why-drug-traffickers-laugh-at-trump

https://www.usatoday.com/border-wall/story/drug-trafficking-smuggling-cartels-tunnels/559814001/

February 8, 2019

Good Leadership is Super

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His victory yesterday was the sixth Super Bowl championship won by Patriot’s head coach Bill Belichick, the most by any NFL coach. The extraordinary run of success during Belichick’s career with New England includes 16 first place finishes in 19 seasons, a regular season record of 225-79, and a postseason record of 30-10.

In an era when NFL rules are designed expressly to prevent sustained periods of winning or losing, Belichick’s record is nearly as remarkable as the downtrodden Cleveland Browns’ 20-year record of 95-225.   

Of course, as head coach of the Browns in the 1990’s, even Belichick had a losing record, so the otherworldly forces that keep the Browns down are apparently stronger than the forces that ensure Belichick’s success.

But it is possible that no supernatural forces are involved at all, at least not concerning Belichick and the Patriots. Former Patriots player Mathew Slater credited Belichick’s leadership for New England’s success in a 2017 interview.

“There’s no substitute for character,” Slater said, and Belichick, “plays a big role in it. He understands how to motivate this team, how to draw this team closer together, how to get us to believe, how to get us to trust, and to have faith not only in our process but in one another. When we need it most, we know it’s there.”

That’s a pretty good description of effective and successful leadership that can be applied almost anywhere.

February 5, 2019

Four Leadership Roles for Emergency Managers

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There are thousands of books, articles, white papers, power point presentations and webinars about leadership. They all provide helpful information. But few address the exceptional leadership challenges faced by emergency managers.

It’s not that the basic principles of leadership don’t apply to emergency managers. They do. But the field of emergency management has some special characteristics that leaders must be aware of.

One of the distinctive features of emergency management organizations is that they are nearly always small. FEMA has thousands of employees and some state EMA’s have hundreds, but county and city EMAs typically have just a handful of employees, often fewer than five. One result of the small size of emergency management agencies is that the heads of these organizations do not always feel like leaders.

In larger organizations, leaders add value by maximizing the productivity of their employees. But in a shop with only three or four workers, local EMA directors must spend their time writing plans, conducting public outreach, developing exercises, and performing other emergency management tasks. Thinking about leadership can seem like a luxury that a growing workload won’t allow.

But leadership is not defined by the boxes on an organization chart. In truth, emergency managers have four critical leadership roles and their performance as leaders in all of these roles will determine how prepared their communities ultimately are.

Two leadership roles for emergency managers are described on agency organization charts, but two others are not.  The four leadership roles for emergency managers are:

  1. Designated leader of your emergency management organization.
  2. Leader of preparedness and emergency management activities within your larger organization.
  3. Leader of your community’s formal emergency management enterprise.
  4. Leader of your community’s overall preparedness and emergency management program.

Emergency Management Organization Leader

As leader of your organization’s emergency management program staff you are filling a traditional leadership role, and all of the familiar rules of leadership apply. You have positional authority and your responsibility is explicit. You are responsible for managing and directing whatever employees are assigned to your unit. As a leader of an identified work unit your primary job is to ensure that your people have everything that they need in order to do their jobs. You set priorities, distribute resources, enforce standards, provide guidance, remove obstacles, and monitor performance. Your leadership role is clear and you have the support of your organization’s HR department and your own supervisors.

Your priority in this role is to ensure that your staff members have the resources to do their jobs to the best of their ability.

Leadership Tips: Take care of your people, train effectively, remove obstacles to performance, motivate, delegate, lead by example.

Organization Preparedness and Continuity Leader

Your leadership role within your organization extends beyond your particular work group. Whether you work for a city or county government, or for a non-governmental organization, regional organization, or a private business, you are your organization’s subject matter expert for preparedness and emergency management. As such, you play a key role in ensuring that workers are prepared for emergencies and disasters and that the organization is fully prepared to resume operations as quickly as possible following a disaster or disruptive emergency.

In this role your authority is less clear, although you are unlikely to be openly challenged.  Some organizations will give you formal responsibility for employee preparedness and continuity planning, but some won’t.  Even if you have formal authority for the organization’s program, you can expect some level of resistance from other departments when you propose preparedness activities that will consume time or other resources. Your ability to implement effective preparedness or continuity programs will hinge largely upon your professional expertise and your ability to persuade others that preparedness is cost-effective and will benefit the organization. To succeed in this role, you must be fully supported by your organization’s top executives. The good news is that most people want to be prepared for disaster, especially if they receive appropriate guidance and sufficient resources.

Your priority in this role is to ensure that your organization’s personnel are fully prepared for emergencies or disasters and that your organization is able to resume operations as quickly as possible following disaster.

Leadership Tips: Communicate effectively, assess risk, prioritize, identify benefits, exert influence upward and laterally, get your leadership on board.

Emergency Management Community Leader

Your third leadership role is widely acknowledged throughout the community, but you will have to work hard to achieve your objective. As the leader of your community’s emergency management establishment, you will coordinate the emergency management efforts of all the organizations, agencies, groups, and individuals who have a role in your community’s emergency management program.

There are dozens, if not hundreds of organizations that will participate in your community’s mitigation, response, and recovery efforts. Some will have a seat in your EOC, but most won’t. Together, these organizations will provide the actual emergency management services that you will coordinate, including search and rescue, first aid, evacuation, sheltering, provision of emergency food and water, debris clearance, and so many others. Their roles and responsibilities should be described in writing in your operational plans and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs).

As the senior emergency manager in your community, your job is to coordinate the efforts of these organizations to ensure that your community is as prepared as possible to manage the consequences of disasters or large-scale emergencies. Consider all of these organizations and groups as members of a very large team, and you are the team leader. Your job is to build the team, prepare it, direct it, monitor its progress, and keep it on track. While all of your team members will accept their roles, you need to remember that emergency management is not the primary mission of these organizations. Their day-to-day priorities are going to be very different from yours, and they may struggle to find the time or resources to fully support your program.

Your priority is to build and shape an effective team that works together to efficiently and effectively implement your community’s emergency management program.

Leadership tips: Plan diligently, identify capability gaps, share information freely, train effectively, exercise frequently, build relationships, encourage collaboration, manage conflict, create and maintain a sense of urgency.

Community Preparedness Leader

Your final leadership role is to spearhead community-wide efforts to increase preparedness of individuals and businesses and to build community resilience. The better prepared residents and businesses are, the more resilient your community will be and the quicker your community will be able to bounce back from disaster.

Your position as the senior emergency management official in your community, your professional knowledge, your relationships with other community leaders, and your experience in preparing and disseminating public messaging make you a highly credible and trusted advocate for preparedness.

Your priority is increase disaster preparedness of your community by providing accurate information and motivating community members to act.

Leadership tips: Develop positive messaging, ensure messaging reaches all members of the community, build trust, use multiple communication channels, be persistent.

And finally

As an emergency manager, your actual work unit might be quite small. But your position as the senior emergency management professional in your community gives you important leadership responsibilities that affect every resident and organization in your jurisdiction. Your willingness and ability to perform as a community leader will make a significant difference in your community’s ability to mitigate, prepare for, respond to, and recover from disaster.

January 22, 2019