Monthly Archives: June 2014

The Bergdahl Dispute Is A Constitutional Issue More than A Partisan One

The ongoing dispute regarding the Taliban-Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl prisoner exchange is not only, or even primarily, a partisan fight. It is a constitutional argument, but one that will be decided (if at all!) not by a legal process, but by a political one – just as the Framers intended.

In this earlier post, I argued that the motivation for President Obama’s decision to swap the five Taliban prisoners for Bergdahl’s release was probably not dissimilar to the reason why President Ronald Reagan agreed to trade arms for hostages: both were driven by humanitarian concerns for the safety of those in captivity, and for their families. Consistent with my claim, in his public statements since initially announcing the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the President has continued to defend the decision in humanitarian terms, arguing that America does not leave its soldiers behind.  Some have questioned whether that credo is worth the cost, particularly when applied to a possible deserter. But even if one accepts the President’s explanation, critics maintain that the President was legally obligated to inform Congress before moving any Taliban out of Guantanamo Bay prison as part of the exchange. Many have dismissed this criticism, arguing that it is motivated purely by partisan politics. But even some Democratic legislators have argued that the President should have consulted with them before the prisoner swap took place. Indeed, members of his own administration, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and CIA director Leon Panetta were reportedly resisting the prisoner swap as discussed in an earlier incarnation. Clearly, the divide over the Bergdahl swap is not simply a partisan one.

Obama and his aides have responded to Congressional criticism by arguing that this was a time sensitive issue, and that they could not jeopardize Bergdahl’s safety by consulting with Congress – and presumably risk having the negotiations exposed through leaks – as the deal was imminent. In the words of national security adviser Susan Rice, “What we put the highest premium on was the safety of Sgt. Bergdahl. This was held closely within the administration. We could not take any risk with losing the opportunity to bring him back safely.” In another parallel to the Iran-contra affair,  Rice’s defense echoes the argument Lt. Colonel Oliver North made in his testimony before the joint congressional committee investigating the Iranian arms-for-hostage deal. When asked to defend the failure to consult with Congress regarding the Iranian arms swap and the funneling of residual funds to the Nicaraguan contras, North replied, “I think it is important… that we somehow arrive at some kind of understanding right here and now as to what a covert operation is. If we could [find] a way to … talk about covert operations to the American people without it getting into the hands of our adversaries, I’m sure we would do that. But we haven’t found the way to do it.” In further testimony North made it clear that he and his immediate supervisor, national security adviser Admiral John Poindexter, kept their dealings with Iran secret from Congress because they feared that once Congress was officially informed of the initiative, members would leak their knowledge to the public, thus undermining the effort to get hostages released.

Members of Congress did not react very favorably to North’s defense then, and they are not likely to buy Rice’s explanation today. As co-chair of the joint Congressional committee investigating the Iran affair, Representative Lee Hamilton pushed back against North’s defense of hiding covert operations from Congress, citing Congress’ need to exercise its constitutional oversight duties. In Hamilton’s words, directed to North: “You and I agree that covert actions pose very special problems for a democracy. It is, as you said, a dangerous world, and we must be able to conduct covert actions….But it is contrary to all that we know about democracy to have no checks and balances on them. We’ve established a lawful procedure to handle covert operations. It’s not perfect by any means, but it works reasonably well.” Hamilton went on to criticize North’s attitude toward Congress’ constitutional role: “I do not see how your attitude can be reconciled with the Constitution of the United States…The Constitution grants foreign policymaking powers to both the President and Congress and our foreign policy cannot succeed unless they work together.”

To be clear, as I said in my earlier post, the policy significance of the Bergdahl swap is likely not nearly as important as were the issues at the heart of the Iran-contra affair. But the current dispute centers on the very same constitutional debate regarding the relative roles of the President and Congress in foreign policy – a debate woven into the very fabric of the American political system of shared powers. How do we reconcile a president’s constitutional duty to act, as Alexander (not Lee) Hamilton put it in Federalist 70, with “secrecy, and dispatch” versus Congress’ right to hold the President accountable and to deliberate regarding his (someday her) actions?

At its heart, although the Bergdahl dispute is really an argument over the meaning of the Constitution, it cannot be resolved by efforts by constitutional scholars to parse the meaning of that document, or the meaning of laws based on it. Indeed, legal experts have already shown that they are hopelessly divided on the merits of the case. Rather, the dispute will play out in the court of public opinion, as mediated by partisans, pundits and the occasional political scientist. Already the early polling suggests that a strong plurality (43% to 34%) of the public believe the exchange was “the wrong thing to do”. Pointedly, however, more than 20% of those polled have no opinion on the affair, so opinions remain fluid.

My own view, as I expressed in my earlier post, is that Obama’s humanitarian concerns may have blinded him to the underlying constitutional and institutional objections regarding how the exchange was conducted, much as Reagan’s concern for the welfare of the hostages blinded him during the Iran-contra affair to the implications of negotiating with terrorists. But no matter how this latest brouhaha plays out, it will not resolve the fundamental Constitutional tension that lies at the root of these disputes. In the oft-quoted words of political scientist Edwin Corwin, the Constitution “is an invitation to struggle for the privilege of directing American foreign policy.” As we watch that struggle play out in the coming days and weeks, we should remind ourselves that this is precisely how the Framers expected these disputes to be resolved.

1:42 Update:  CBS released the results of a second poll on the Bergdahl controversy  and the results were similar to those of the USA poll I cited above: 45% disapproved of the transaction, compared to 37% who approved, but fully 18% of respondents expressed no opinion on the swap, suggesting that attitudes on the topic have not yet hardened.

The Boys of Pointe Du Hoc: What Obama Did Not Say In His D-Day Speech, and Why

As I watched President Obama’s very fine speech yesterday commemorating the 70th anniversary of the D-Day invasion, I couldn’t help but think back to what remains in my eyes the gold standard of D-Day remembrances: Ronald Reagan’s famous “Boys of Pointe Du Hoc” address. Reagan gave what is perhaps his best-known speech three decades ago on the 40th anniversary of D-Day, standing on a windswept point in front of the U.S. Ranger Monument at Pointe du Hoc on the Normandy beach, before an audience of D-Day veterans and dignitaries from the Allied nations. (You can read the entire address here.)  Reagan’s speech is perhaps best remembered for its description of the effort by 225 Rangers to scale 90-foot cliffs in order to secure a key promontory and knock out heavy guns that threatened the Allied landing. That portion of the speech culminates with these lines: “These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war.” The lines – indeed, the entire speech – were penned by Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan, and her description in her wonderful memoir What I Saw at the Revolution of trying to find the right words to capture the moment is well worth reading. (Not surprisingly, the best presidential memoirs are written by speechwriters – see, for example, Robert Sherwood’s Roosevelt and Hopkins, or Ted Sorensen’s Kennedy. But I digress.) Noonan struggled for days to capture the moment. She recalls that while pacing the halls looking for inspiration she ran into a Reagan advance man who told her they would like a speech “to be like the Gettysburg Address!” In describing the motivation for the “boys of Pointe du Hoc” lines, she writes, “This part was a little for the average viewer but mostly for kids watching TV at home in the kitchen for breakfast.” (Today, of course they would be watching their smartphone. But I digress.)

Beyond Noonan’s memorable lines, and Reagan’s superb delivery, however, what made the speech memorable was the context in which it was given. It is easy to forget that Reagan gave his speech at a time when the Cold War rivalry with the Soviet Union was in full throttle. Only a year earlier Reagan, in a speech to an evangelical group, had memorably described the U.S.S.R as the “evil empire”. Of course, Reagan had already committed the U.S. to a military buildup that would, in the end, contribute to the economic collapse of the Soviet empire, but would also set in place structural budget deficits that would dominate American politics for more than a decade. In writing the speech, Noonan sought to remind her audience what could be accomplished when the Allies worked together against a common foe. She did so at a time when there were deep fissures within our European allies regarding what many perceived to be Reagan’s uncompromising approach to dealing with the Soviet Union. The Pointe du Hoc speech resonated in part because it was Reagan’s effort to remind his audience of what was at stake in the Cold War struggle and the necessity of remaining unified in that struggle, just as they had done 40 years before. In Reagan’s (and Noonan’s) words: “We in America have learned bitter lessons from two World Wars: It is better to be here ready to protect the peace, than to take blind shelter across the sea, rushing to respond only after freedom is lost. We’ve learned that isolationism never was and never will be an acceptable response to tyrannical governments with an expansionist intent.

But we try always to be prepared for peace; prepared to deter aggression; prepared to negotiate the reduction of arms; and, yes, prepared to reach out again in the spirit of reconciliation. In truth, there is no reconciliation we would welcome more than a reconciliation with the Soviet Union, so, together, we can lessen the risks of war, now and forever…We look for some sign from the Soviet Union that they are willing to move forward, that they share our desire and love for peace, and that they will give up the ways of conquest. There must be a changing there that will allow us to turn our hope into action.

We will pray forever that some day that changing will come. But for now, particularly today, it is good and fitting to renew our commitment to each other, to our freedom, and to the alliance that protects it.”

Thirty years later, as President Obama delivered his own D-Day remembrance the Cold War is, thankfully, largely a distant memory. As a result, Obama’s speech is noteworthy almost as much for what he did not say as for what he did. In his speech the President repeatedly cited the valor of the men and women who served then, and who serve now, in our military, and urged us not to forget their sacrifices on our behalf. But beyond references to liberty in the abstract, there was no call to arms against a common foe, or mention of sacrifice for a specific purpose. It was instead a speech that honored individuals for their service, and urged us never to forget their sacrifice. It was a powerful speech, but one that served a different purpose, in a different time. And it is a reminder that what makes a speech memorable is not only what is said, and by whom – but when it is said.

 

The Primary Lesson From California: It’s Not an Open and Shut Case

A recent National Journal article (hat tip to Max Kagan) reprises a familiar journalistic lament: “[T]the existence of closed primaries in 12 states,” the article subheading proclaims, “keep[s] voters away from polls and polarize Congress.” (Full disclosure: the author, Kaveh Waddell, is a 2013 graduate of my home institution Middlebury College.) In this instance, Waddell’s immediate concern was with the nearly 241,000 voters in New Mexico who could not participate in that state’s primaries last Tuesday because they were independents and thus not affiliated with a political party. But his argument has broader implications. Indeed, the belief that closed primaries in House elections increase partisan polarization is widely shared among journalists and pundits. And, in fact, the logic underlying this claim is superficially appealing: by limiting voting during the nominating process to members of a single party, closed primaries exclude participation by the more ideologically moderate independent voters. As a consequence, nominations tend to be won by the more ideologically extreme candidate, which in turns produces a more polarized Congress.

Moreover, if this scenario is correct, the cure seems equally obvious: replace closed primaries with open ones, in which voters of any affiliation may vote in either party’s primary. Or, better yet, go one step further and eliminate party primaries altogether. This is the logic behind California’s Proposition 14, which as of June, 2012 established that state’s “top two” nominating system, in which all candidates, regardless of party, face off in a single nomination contest from which the two highest vote getters advance to the general election, regardless of party. (This differs from the so-called blanket primary in which all candidates are listed on a single ballot, but they only compete with other candidates from the same party.) The idea behind Proposition 14, consistent with the logic driving the National Journal article, is to give moderate voters a better opportunity to select more centrist candidates to run in the general election.

Despite the intuitive appeal of this line of reasoning, however, political scientists have not found conclusive evidence that closed primaries do in fact produce more ideologically extreme candidates than do open primaries which are used to varying degrees in most states in the U.S. Why might this be? One reason is that when we unpack the logic underlying the assumptions built into the National Journal and related articles, we find that our predictions regarding the relative impact of closed vs. open primaries depends in part on our expectations regarding how strategic voters are. For example, in an open system, what happens if partisan voters cross over to vote for the weakest candidate in the opposing party’s nominating election, as happened in Vermont’s 1998 Senate race? (See Fred Tuttle, Vermont’s “Man with a Plan”!) Depending on what assumptions we make, it is possible to argue that open primaries should produce more extreme candidates, not less extreme.

It also may be that many voters aren’t very good, in the absence of party cues, at discerning ideological differences between candidates. This may be particularly problematic for challengers who are generally far well less known by voters than are incumbents. Finally, partisan actors, such as campaign donors and other activists, who have a vested interest in seeing more ideologically-extreme candidates win elections may exert enough influence to trump institutional factors such as open primaries.

Whatever the reason, the empirical work with which I am familiar on this topic suggests that we probably shouldn’t be surprised that the initial results from California’s “top two” system have not seemed to produce more moderate candidates. As Jaime Fuller points out in her Washington Post story today, based on last Tuesday’s results only 7 of California’s 53 House races under the “top two” system feature races involving two members of the same party. Of course, whether that is a glass half-full or half-empty result depends in part on one’s perspective. Perhaps more importantly, however, as Fuller writes, “[T]here aren’t many congressional races you can point to where moderates made the final round — even in those seven races where two members of the same party made the runoff… .In most of the other congressional races, the same outcomes happened that would have occurred under the old primary system anyway. The ideologically pure Republican and the predictably lefty Democrats made the runoff, just as they would have if two separate primaries had been held.” (Full disclosure: Jaime is a political science graduate of my home institution Middlebury College where I served as her academic adviser.)

To be sure, as my former grad colleague Dan Stid cautions, the California system has only been in play for one and one-half election cycles, so it is early to draw definitive conclusions. It may take a while for voters, candidates and partisan activists to adjust to the new rules. But, for now, the early results are consistent with the expectations of political scientists as laid out in previous research. Moving toward open primaries, or more, such as California’s top two system, is not likely to moderate electoral outcomes in the absence of other changes.

(And, perhaps not incidentally, these two articles also suggest that Middlebury political science majors like Fuller have a better understanding of U.S. electoral dynamics than do international political economy majors like Waddell!)

 

Why Presidents Negotiate With Terrorists

Why do presidents negotiate with terrorists?

In January, 1984, President Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of State George Schulz designated Iran a sponsor of international terrorism and, under a program called “Operation Staunch”, the U.S. began actively pressuring allies to enforce an arms embargo against Iran, which was fighting a war of survival against Iraq. However, later that summer and fall, and continuing into 1985, U.S. diplomatic and intelligence specialists began to reevaluate U.S policy toward Iran. The internal reappraisal was prompted in part by the fear that the U.S. had little leverage to influence the power struggle in Iran that was likely to occur in the aftermath of the elderly Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini’s death, and that the post-Khomeini Iran might move closer to the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence. That reappraisal, moreover, was taking placing while the U.S. was debating how to secure the release of several kidnapped Americans, including the CIA station chief William Buckley, who were being held by shadowy extremist groups in the Mideast. (At least 17 Americans were kidnapped in Lebanon alone during the period 1982-1987.) Eventually Reagan officials’ concern over the fate of the hostages combined with their desire to increase their influence with “moderates” in the Iranian government led to the Iran-contra affair, a secret and ultimately politically disastrous effort authorized by Reagan to trade arms to the Iran government for the release of the American hostages. (The contra element refers to a related effort, masterminded by Reagan’s national security staff, but evidently without Reagan’s full knowledge, to use the proceeds from the sales of arms to Iran to fund the American-backed Nicaraguan contras who were battling the Soviet-supported Sandinista government in that nation.)

The on-going effort to trade arms for hostages, and the related diversion of residual funds to the contras, was ultimately ended by the public revelation of the secret negotiations and subsequent transactions in November 1986. In the firestorm that followed, Reagan’s public approval plummeted, Congress initiated a joint congressional investigation amid calls for Reagan’s impeachment, and an independent prosecutor was appointed to investigate the affair. Key members of his administration were forced to resign, and some were charged with criminal conduct. Ultimately, although Reagan regained his political footing, the Iran-contra affair permanently tarnished his presidency.

Why did Reagan undertake a policy that ran so manifestly contrary to his administration’s policy not to negotiate with terrorists – one that was opposed by many of his key advisers, including Secretary of State George Schulz and defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger? In the immediate fallout from the disclosure of the Iran arms trade, Reagan insisted he had not actually traded arms-for-hostages, since the U.S. only dealt indirectly with the terrorists through a third party (the Iranian government). Moreover, the initial overture to Iran had been couched in geopolitical concerns regarding the balance of power in the Mideast in the aftermath of Khomeini’s death. But as Reagan’s biographer Lou Cannon concludes in his brilliant President Reagan The Role of a Lifetime, the tipping point in Reagan’s decision likely took place when his aides allowed him in the summer of 1985 to meet with members’ of the hostages’ families, who pleaded for Reagan to do something to secure their release. Cannon concludes in an assessment supported by most of Reagan’s closest aides that “Reagan’s personal feelings about freeing the hostages was the principal cause, though not the only one, for his enthusiastic pursuit of the Iran initiative. “

One cannot help but see echoes of many elements of the Iran-contra affair in the fallout resulting from President Obama’s Rose Garden announcement on Saturday, flanked by Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s parents, that Bergdahl was being freed by his Taliban captors in exchange for the release of five Taliban fighters held prisoner at Guantanamo Bay. In initially defending the exchange, some administration officials framed it as one part of a broader effort to open up a dialogue with the Taliban forces. They note as well that they dealt only indirectly with those holding Bergdahl prisoner and that, strictly speaking, the Taliban may not be a terrorist organization – a distinction lost on Obama’s critics. However, as was the case with Iran-contra initiative, key members of Obama’s administration, including Secretary State Hillary Clinton, evidently opposed earlier efforts to negotiate a similar prisoner swap. Moreover, as did the Reagan administration, Obama’s officials are defending cutting Congress out of the loop because of the time sensitive nature of the hostage negotiations, even as questions are raised regarding whether in so doing Obama’s administration broke a law requiring him to give Congress 30 days’ notice before the release or transfer of Guantanamo prisoners. And, as was the case in 1986, the administration is walking back from initial statements justifying the trade, such as National Security adviser Susan Rice’s claim on Sunday that Bergdahl “served the United States with honor and distinction,” in order to sort out the facts surrounding Bergdahl’s capture more clearly.

To be sure, the Bergdahl swap differs in important ways from the Iran-contra affair, not least in the significance of the policy implications at stake. Nonetheless, the Obama administration is going to be dealing with the fallout from this exchange for days and months to come, particularly in light of the inevitable Congressional hearings which are already gearing up. Beyond the damage to Obama’s standing the fallout from the affair, which has drawn bipartisan criticism, is not likely to strengthen Democrats’ hands in the run up to the 2014 midterms.

Given the strength of the political backlash, it is worth asking: why did Obama agree to negotiate with elements of what many see as an organization that, if not a terrorist group, is at least affiliated with terrorism? In my view, particularly after watching an emotional Obama hugging Bergdahl’s parents after the Rose Garden announcement, Obama acted in large part on the same sentiments that motivated Reagan’s efforts to secure the release of the American hostages. Indeed, in his recent remarks at the end of the G-7 summit, Obama explicitly couched the prisoner exchange in humanitarian terms: “I make absolutely no apologies for making sure that we get back a young man to his parents and that the American people understand that this is somebody’s child–and we don’t condition whether or not we make the effort to try to get them back.”

On a personal level, we might find presidents’ willingness to subjugate political concerns to humanitarian ones a quite admirable trait. But when presidents are allowed to act on their “best” impulses, they often underestimate the political repercussions. This is particularly the case when presidents’, and their closest aides’, political sensitivity grows dull because they no longer worry about reelection. This does not mean humanitarian concerns are misplaced. Like it or not, however, the presidency is an inherently political office, one whose capabilities are determined by the willingness of those who share the president’s powers to support his (someday her) initiatives. This is not to say the presidents ought never to act on humanitarian impulses. But when they do so, they should be fully cognizant of what it will cost them in influence down the road. That is the very definition of how presidents gain and maintain power. At this point, based on what is known via media reports, it is not clear to me that Obama fully understood the price he would pay for negotiating a prisoner exchange with the Taliban.

Why the VA Scandal Really Occurred and What Can Be Done About It

The unfolding scandal at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) agency is a reminder about some enduring truths about government bureaucracies. The most important is that an agency’s operators – those responsible for carrying out its core task – respond most immediately to situational imperatives rather than the agency’s stated mission or purpose. This is particularly true when the agency’s stated goals are vague or open to interpretation. So it is with the VA. Its mission is to “fulfill President Lincoln’s promise ‘To care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan’ by serving and honoring the men and women who are America’s veterans.” This mission statement has little meaning, however, to those VA operators responsible for scheduling medical appointments for veterans. Instead, the operators quite understandably defined their task in response to the performance standards on which they were evaluated, which in the case of the VA meant minimizing the wait time between when a veteran requested a medical appointment and when she received one. When it became clear to schedulers that the performance standards on which they were evaluated were increasingly unrealistic, given the VA’s burgeoning case load and the failure to ramp up resources to match that increase, schedulers quite rationally responded by making it appear that they were meeting those standards by, in effect, falsifying records. They did so in large part because of the politically sensitive nature of their task, which was to help people who in many cases had compromised their health in service of their country. This created additional pressure to make it appear that these veterans were being treated well, and it encouraged VA supervisors to be less than vigilant in insuring that performance measures were actually being met.

My point is that we should not be surprised by the VA operators’ behavior. Nor should we expect that the solution to the problem lies in hiring more “honest” schedulers, or in replacing the recently fired VA Secretary Eric Shinseki with a more competent executive. Operators, such as the VA schedulers, define their tasks in response to situational imperatives, and not the well-meaning directives of reformers. Calls for “clearer standards” or “more transparency” are unlikely to have much impact as long as there remains a disjunction between what schedulers are asked to do – and how they are evaluated – and what it is possible to do, given limited time and resources. Like most bureaucratic scandals, the fault lies less with the failing of individuals than it does in systemic factors that govern how those individuals behave within a particular bureaucratic context.

Similarly, it is easy to blame Shinseki for his failure to “manage” the VA, but the truth is that Shinseki was not hired by President Obama because of his working knowledge of the situational imperatives that dictate how VA schedulers do their jobs. Instead, he was appointed for his symbolic value as a former military officer who served two tours of duty in Vietnam and earned a Purple Heart. And, in truth, most government executives are not chosen for being “good managers”. Moreover, they are often rewarded for being associated with a good policy outcome, or blamed for a bad policy outcome (see Clinton and Benghazi!), about which they often have little influence. That means they have little incentive to actually manage the bureaucracy, and every incentive to appear to be in charge by cultivating relationships with those who count – particularly the President, Congress and any external constituency – in this case our nation’s veterans – that wields particularly strong influence over an agency.

The response to the VA scandal has been both predictable and largely uninformative. President Obama, expressing outrage, has fired Shinseki, thus satisfying media and veterans’ calls that someone be held accountable for this mess. Congress, which arguably is more responsible for the scandal than is Shinseki, has sprung into action with promises of reform coupled with criminal investigations. On Thursday our own Bernie Sanders, chairman of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, which has oversight of the VA, will chair Senate hearings on a bipartisan reform bill that seeks to reduce veterans’ wait times, give the VA secretary power to fire “incompetent” senior VA officials, and modernize the VA’s scheduling system. This type of “fire alarm” reaction typifies how Congress conducts bureaucratic oversight. Conservatives, meanwhile, argue that the VA scandal is a reminder of the pitfalls of government-run health care.

The truth behind the VA scandal, of course, is more mundane and thus far less newsworthy. Rather than criminal malfeasance or corruption at the individual level, the scandal illustrates how the public’s contradictory impulses, as expressed through our elected representative and those they hire, often set public sector bureaucracies up for systemic failure. In this case, the VA developed a system to increase agency efficiency by monitoring how quickly our veterans received medical help. However, a measurement designed to make the VA operators more accountable for their performance, and thus to encourage efficiency, largely failed to achieve its objective because it meant operators were assessed on quantitative standards that did not truly measure how well schedulers were serving veterans’ needs. Alas, this is not the first time we have seen good intentions go awry in this way. As James Q. Wilson observed in his magisterial work on bureaucracy, “the American political system is biased toward solving bureaucratic problems through rules.” This is partly because agency managers in our system have a strong incentive to force rules on operators in order to prevent a politically controversial outcome – not servicing veterans in a timely manner – from happening on their watch. But if the rule does not alter the incentives that operators’ value – such as getting good performance reviews and associated bonuses – it is not likely to achieve its desired outcome. If the VA is to be reformed, then, it will occur only by understanding what operators do, and why they do it, and devising performance measures accordingly. In the absence of that understanding, firing departmental heads and leveling criminal charges on hapless schedulers, although perhaps beneficial at the ballot box, is unlikely to correct what really ails the VA. Nor will it help our veterans.