Third Parties And Other Fantasies

Just got back from a couple of days' training by the State Board of Elections. I always learn something new.

This time, one of the new things is that Americans Elect, an innovative third party that qualified as an official party in North Carolina law, is dissolving. Their innovation: picking their nominees by an Internet primary. The problem: it didn't work.

About a year ago, I called attention to the push by prominent "moderates" like Thomas Friedman to support a third party movement. I have a lot of problems with the idea that third parties can ever make things well, especially through presidential elections.

You want third parties? Take a look at the 1948 presidential election. Plenty of third parties, including the Vegetarian Party. Two of them - the Progressive Party and the State's Rights Party- split off from the Democratic Party and seemed to be viable. Despite the odds and despite the Chicago Tribune's premature headline, Truman won.

It seems to me that third party movements would be better advised to start at the bottom rather than the top of the ticket. Apparently that just takes too long.

If that's too hard, think seriously about getting involved with an existing party.

Take a look at two interesting web sites: The Political Compass and The Pew Center. Take the surveys. You might learn something about yourself.

Names As Identifiers

Yesterday I posted the text of T.S. Eliot's somewhat whimsical poem, "The Naming of Cats." The poem was published in a collection of Eliot's poetry, "Old Possum's Book Of Practical Cats" eventually converted to the musical play, "Cats."

It touches on the issue of identity and names. Shakespeare tackled a similar theme in Romeo and Juliet when Juliet proclaims: "What's in a name? that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."

I have pondered questions of name and identity most of my life. Like Presidents Gerald R. Ford and William Jefferson Clinton, I do not use the name I was born with. So am I the same person I was when I was born and used a different name?

The IRS and Social Security seem not entirely sure. Some years ago my sister, whose given name is "Elizabeth," became the subject of an IRS and Social Security inquiry because her pay checks were written to "Betty." Indeed, many if not most grown women don't use the family name they were born with. After divorce, they face the dilemma of whether to keep their married name or their maiden name.

Some choose to use their maiden name as their middle name. That confuses bureaucrats and computer programs no end.

After 9/11 when no-fly lists began to control air travel, Senator Ted Kennedy had his travel impeded many times. Turns out there was a person using the name Ted Kennedy who may have been at least a suspicious person. Senator Kennedy tried to get himself removed from the no-fly lists repeatedly. He finally gave up and flew as "Edward M. Kennedy." The problem went away.

My mother had no birth certificate, and an unusual name. She would certainly have problems today. My wife has had problems renewing id's because she used her maiden name as her middle name.

This is not a trivial problem.

A Good Article By Bruce Bartlett

Here's a link to a good article by Bruce Bartlett, former staffer for Congressman Ron Paul, Congressman Jack Kemp, Senator Jepson of Iowa, and President George H. W. Bush, among others.

The Importance Of Names [The Naming Of Cats]

The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn't just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
First of all, there's the name that the family use daily,
Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo or James,
Such as Victor or Jonathan, George or Bill Bailey—
All of them sensible everyday names.
There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,
Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:
Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter—
But all of them sensible everyday names.
But I tell you, a cat needs a name that's particular,
A name that's peculiar, and more dignified,
Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular,
Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?
Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,
Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,
Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum-
Names that never belong to more than one cat.
But above and beyond there's still one name left over,
And that is the name that you never will guess;
The name that no human research can discover—
But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.
When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name.

T.S. Eliot

Seventy Years Ago: Wasted History?

Someone once observed that history is wasted on the young.

I was seventeen years old when I first learned something of the history of the Navy's fiasco at Savo Island. I was a Midshipman Fourth Class, United States Naval Reserve, taking my first course in Naval Science. It was called Naval Orientation and History.

The textbook showed neat diagrams of the action of August 9, 1942, like the chart below:



The lessons I took away from reading about Savo Island nearly six decades ago had to do with equipment and training. US Ships (some of them, at least) were equipped with radar, but they were defeated by Japanese ships with no radar - only superb optical systems and sailors well trained in night engagements.

Of course it wouldn't occur to a seventeen year old that the problem wasn't poor watch standing by  radar operators or lookouts, but problems at the highest levels of leadership in the navy.

President Roosevelt was furious and losing patience ten weeks after Pearl Harbor, when the navy had no triumphs to proclaim. He ordered Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox to give him the names of the forty "most competent" Admirals in the navy at the time. Knox appointed a board to do the job.  Last year the US Naval Institutes' Naval History magazine published the recently-discovered list of the forty names the board provided.

Even more surprising than the obscure names who appeared on the list was the omission of two admirals most responsible for success in the Pacific: Chester Nimitz and Raymond Spruance. Neither was a member of the most influential and powerful cabal in the navy. That cabal is often referred to by the shorthand designator: "battleship admirals." That's a misnomer, though battleships figured largely in their careers. They were admirals whose seagoing tours (mostly in battleships but also in cruisers and destroyers) alternated with tours in the Bureau of Ordinance (BUORD). They were often referred to in the rest of the navy as "the gun club."

Neither Nimitz nor Spruance belonged to the gun club. Neither was Halsey, for that matter. Nor were Admiral Leahy, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during World War II and Roosevelt's closest military advisor, or Admiral King, Commander in Chief of the US Fleet. But from the Chief of Naval Operations (Admiral Stark) on down, the navy in 1942 remained dominated by the gun club.

None of the "gun club" admirals was promoted to five-star fleet admiral rank.

More later.

London Rubble, 1955

The first time I saw London, in 1955, it hadn't been rebuilt. The rubble, though, had been arranged in ordered piles, set off by walls of damaged brick. I shot this from a double decker bus.

Lost In The Village?

As the rain began to fall this morning, I ran into a frequent visitor to Oriental with a puzzled look on his face. "I can't find my truck," he admitted. I was on my bike, so I didn't offer him a ride. A kind neighbor rode by and offered to take him on a search. I'm confident he found it.

Getting lost in Oriental? Who knew it could be done?

Seventy Years Ago: Higgins Boats And Beachmasters

The initial landing of marines on Guadalcanal was a fiasco. After three days of unloading, less than half of the planned equipment and supplies had reached the landing beaches, and much of that didn't reach the supply dumps for days.

What was the problem?

Lack of equipment and inadequate organization.

The most apparent equipment shortcoming was the wrong boats for the task.



The Amphibious Transports (APA) carried many boats, but most were the first generation of Higgins boats, the Landing Craft, Personnel (Large) or LCPL. When the boats grounded on the beach, marines had to clamber over the side into the water and then wade in to shore. Not too bad for the marines, but what about the equipment? Much of it had to be manhandled over the side of the boats as well.

The marines and the US Navy Bureau of Ships recognized early on that this was a problem. Tests were done in the late 30's of a modified landing craft with a bow ramp, the LCP(R). The photo below shows that this was an improvement, but the ramp proved to be something of a bottleneck for troops anxious to hit the beach. There were some LCP(R)'s at Guadalcanal, but not nearly enough.



Some LCP(R)'s remained in service after the war. Here is a photo of an LCP(R) carried on the helicopter platform of USS Cabildo (LSD-16) at Yokosuka, Japan in 1959. The fierce decoration on the bow indicates it belonged to an underwater demolition team (UDT). UDT later morphed into the SEALS.

The final design improvement was to fit a full-width bow ramp. This allowed the landing craft, now designated the Landing Craft, Vehicle, Personnel or LCVP, to deliver 36 combat-equipped troops to the beach, or one jeep and a crew of half a dozen.







 This became the work horse of ship to shore movements. But they weren't available at Guadalcanal.

Here is a fully-loaded LCVP on its way to the beach in 1959:

The other missing ingredient was organization for efficient management of the troops, equipment and supplies delivered to the beach.

The Guadalcanal landing was rehearsed at Fiji before the invasion, but for some reason the problem of moving stuff off the beach either wasn't identified or wasn't resolved. It is also possible the ships hadn't been "combat loaded." This was a technique to load equipment in reverse order of its planned need, rather than to make most efficient use of cargo space.

Later in the war, combat loading became routine, and a special organization called a Beachmaster was established to manage the cargo and equipment.

These techniques were yet to come.