The presidential debates have come and gone, and they have left us with what the public’s attention span believes to be policy worthy of the president of the United States. “Binders full of women” went quickly from a progressive utterance to a feminist quip during the second presidential debate. And laughing during a discussion on nuclear war became acceptable during the vice presidential debate. As they constitute the entirety of the open discussions between the president, vice president and those campaigning to replace them, those moments which became humorous deserve a bit of attention before being left behind.
On the morning after the Oct. 11 vice presidential debate in which Vice President Joe Biden laughed throughout the event, Tom Brokaw appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” and said, “I just don’t think you should be laughing during a discussion about thermonuclear war with Iran. It’s a very serious issue.”
During the second presidential debate, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney explained that during the first days of his administration, he went out of his way to ensure qualified women were part of his administration. He said “binders full of women” were considered for positions.
When Romney came into office as governor of Massachusetts in January 2003, with a female lieutenant governor, LinkedIn had yet to launch. According to LinkedIn’s website, it launched in May 2003, and 4,500 professionals had registered with the site by the end the month. There was no practical manner for Romney to search the Internet for qualified candidates, as we are able to in today’s world. Romney had to be proactive. Romney wished to hire women, and to do so, he needed to gather information that was not widely available. That compiled information, like most data of the age, was stored in binders for review.
During the third presidential debate, Obama noted that an increased naval fleet was similar to increasing horses and bayonets. China purchased its first aircraft carrier, from our 1980s foe, Russia, as reported by The Guardian in 2011. In June, The Economist pointed out, “the demands of industrial-scale counter-insurgency campaigns have determined America’s spending priorities,” leaving the need, for what Defense Secretary Leon Panetta called a “rebalance” at the June Shangri-La Dialogue, an Asian defense summit.
Henry Crumpton, lead CIA officer in our Afghanistan response to 9/11, stated within his autobiography, “The Art of Intelligence,” that CIA officers rode into battle against al-Qaida on horseback in Afghanistan. Crumpton also stated during a May “60 Minutes” interview with Lara Logan, that former President Bill Clinton refused to give the attack order in 1999 when the administration identified Osama bin Laden with the precursors to today’s Predator drones. Placed in context of the current Libya debacle, we have two Democrat administrations failing us in national security, leading to the suboptimal deaths of thousands of Americans since 1999.