ShareThisFrom Day One, President Obama has been making commander-in-chief decisions on the multiple, overlapping and overwhelming national security crises he found in his inbox.
Yet through the first 100 Days of national security crises, you almost never read or heard these three words in the mainstream news:
"General James Jones."
Don't worry, this isn't a test. He is President Obama's national security adviser.
Yes, the same job the news media bathed with celebrity-glitterati coverage when Henry Kissinger was starring in the Nixon years. The job Zbigniew Brzezinski masterminded with ample media attention during the Carter presidency.
But Gen. Jones -- who came to the job with the highest of recommendations, as a former Marine commandant, commander of NATO forces, and one who advised both John McCain and Barack Obama -- set out to keep a low profile on his high perch.
There is fine precedent: Air Force Gen. Brent Scowcroft, widely admired as perhaps the best national security adviser (under Presidents Ford and G.H.W. Bush), always maintained that national security advisers are best when seen seldom and heard less. Scowcroft saw his role as making sure the president got the full range of views, especially from advisers cautioning against an action about to be taken.
That hasn't always happened. Condoleezza Rice gets low marks from most experts on national security advisers. Indeed, she once offered this excuse for why she didn't always insure that President George W. Bush got ample advice to counterbalance Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld and buttress Secretary of State Colin Powell:
Rice, a 46-year-old academic when she got the job, demurred to an interviewer that she was merely "the baby" of the group.
Time Out: Kissinger was also a 46-year-old academic when he began as national security adviser for the geopolitically formidable Nixon. Yet the ears boggle at the notion of Kissinger calling himself "the baby" of any group, anywhere, any time.
Jones clearly opted for the Scowcroft model. But we have yet to discover whether he is succeeding, because the Obama press corps hasn't done due diligence in reporting whether Obama gets the full range of advice he needs. Jones' name has only appeared in Washington Post news articles only a handful of times since Inauguration Day. Mostly just saying he was one of several in a meeting.
So too for the New York Times' coverage -- until the other day. A May 2 piece about Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's job performance asserted she had good rapport with Obama and is now influential in policymaking. Then this:
"But State Department officials, and others in the administration, say less-than-generous things about Mr. Obama's national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, suggesting there is some jockeying among the top officials around the president. General Jones, these people say, has struggled with his transition from Marine commander to senior staff person, speaking up less in debates than Mrs. Clinton and not pushing as hard for decisions."
Incoming, General! Never mind that the piece later dished an obligatory demurral that Clinton had "highest esteem" for Jones. And anyone saying otherwise wasn't speaking for her. Also, never mind that Scowcroft rarely gave his views in meetings, saving them mainly for the president in private.
This back-channel backbiting is just how intramural skirmishes started in presidencies past -- and escalated into major battles that hampered policymaking. As in the classic State-Defense-CIA-NSC conflagrations I wrote about in the Reagan years.
Suddenly the low-keyed Jones was an out-front warbler, showcasing his prominence. On Tuesday a New York Times front page article, headlined "Advances by the Taliban Sharpen U.S. Concerns," quoted Jones in the second paragraph: "Recent militant gains in Pakistan have so alarmed the White House that the national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, described the situation as 'one of the very most serious problems we face.' Pakistan, he said Monday, 'has to survive as a democratic nation.'"
Especially in national security, intramural feuds can escalate quickly -- and brake, if not break, the policymaking machinery. That's the last thing President Obama needs.
So look for a Harmony-R-Us photo-op, appearing any day now on your iPod or television screen.
(Martin Schram writes political analysis for Scripps Howard News Service. E-mail him at martin.schram(at)gmail.com.)
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