(January 1, 2015 at 8:49 pm)vorlon13 Wrote: I'm calling the following the Watkins Effect.
Back in the late 80s, President Reagan appointed a commission to look into the nation's AIDS crisis (finally) and to craft a response/policy to follow into the future to combat the epidemic.
A long time navy admiral, Watkins, wound up in charge of the commission. The commission was very controversial, just having a gay member or gay friendly members put the conservative and religious fundies into orbit. Gay activists feared (rightly in my view) draconian (if not worse) and ineffective measures to combat the disease would result, and in that political climate, result in a terrible civil rights debacle for the entire community and a needless continuation and worsening of an ongoing catastrophic medical crisis.
To his credit, Watkins, and the committee kept open minds about the AIDS problem, got in the trenches, had good experts testify, and they produced sensible policies that were pretty much ignored by the Reagan administration (but gained traction nevertheless in Congress and other places).
In my view, the results of the commission were not expected by the administration since they viewed the problem through conservative political prisms. Reagan didn't feel the need to directly lead Watkins to any preferred conclusion, the selection process that lit on Watkins was viewed as a sufficient guarantee to get the desired outcome, one that conformed to conservative political and Moral Majority dogma.
This 'effect' if you will, of sending forth presumed allies, unknowingly flawed with open minds and reasonable attitudes that result in findings contrary to expectations, I call the Watkins Effect.
I think some of Obama's perceived fuck ups, like failing to close Gitmo in a timely fashion might be indicative of something akin to the Watkins Effect. Now that the decision is in his lap, and with access to FAR more information than he had on the campaign trail, the correct course of action doesn't jibe with the preconceived notions very well.
And note, while the Watkins Effect occurred under a conservative president, that is irrelevant. Ideologues of any stripe can get their comeuppance from those damn pesky inconvenient facts.
And then, in view of this, criticism of Obama on the failure to timely close Gitmo from HIS BASE is really crass. Any of the critics, if placed in Obama's position, are going to find reality leading them to the same place it led Obama on the timing of that decision.
I appreciate your reasoning and get what you're saying about the Watkins Effect -- but aren't you assuming that Obama has sound reasons for keeping it open?
