Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power by Rachel Maddow Read Free Book Online Page A

treasure. Frank Church voted to give it away.” Birch Bayh of Indiana lost to a callow, lightweight Republican named Dan Quayle, and the 1972 presidential nominee George McGovern lost his South Dakota seat in an embarrassing 58–39 landslide.
    But the Reagan assault didn’t stop at the party line. A slew of moderate Republicans who had supported the treaty were swept aside for being weak-kneed, such as Kansan James B. Pearson, who retired amid catcalls that he was not “Republican enough,” and old lions like Clifford Case and Jacob Javits, who lost ignominiously in the primary to a county supervisor from Long Island named Alfonse D’Amato. In November 1980, when Republicans gained control of the Senate for the first time since the end of 1954, this was not your father’s Republican Party. The Senate newbies were amped up, doctrinaire, undistracted by facts on the ground, and primed for a fight in which America could prove itself mighty once again. And at the head of the parade was the new president-elect, Ronald Wilson Reagan.
• • •
    Just a few months before Ronald Reagan became America’s fortieth president, a former director of the White House Military Office wrote a book revealing the contents held within the world’s most terrifying valise, America’s “nuclear football.” They included an eight-to-ten-page list of secure and comfortable accommodations available to the president in the event of nuclear war; a black book full of cartoonish illustrations, with a constantly updated menu of retaliation possibilities (“Rare,” “Medium,” and “Well-Done”) thoughtfully highlighted in red; and a simple three-by-five-inch recipe card with the authentication codes the president needed to unleash our nation’s full lethal fury.
    Protocol regarding the nuclear football was well established by the time Reagan entered the White House. The military aide carrying the Zero Halliburton briefcase for the day was tasked to stick close to the president. The first reason was operational. Our commander in chief had to have that case at the ready at all hours, with the authentication codes easy to find, just in case. At a moment’s notice, the president could dial up anything from “firing a tactical nuclear weapon, one of them,” remembered a later nuclear-football-toting aide, “to full-bore Armageddon.” The second reason for full-time proximity was more in the realm of public relations. Photojournalists were always snapping pictures of the president, so the Soviets were certain to get constant pictorial reminders that our nuclear button was never beyond reach. Consequently, White House military aides saw a lot of the president, which perhaps bred a certain amount of familiarity, which could be why one aide, John Kline, wondered aloud if maybe Ronald Reagan was doing something out of line. Kline noticed that his boss was
saluting
members of the armed forces. Soldiers were supposed to salute their president; the president was not supposed to salute the soldiers. No modern president, not even old General Eisenhower, had saluted military personnel.It might even be, well, sort of, improper. Reagan seemed disappointed at this news. Kline suggested he talk to the commandant of the United States Marine Corps and get his advice, and the commandant’s advice ran something like this:
You’re the goddamn president. You can salute whoever you goddamn well please
. So Ronald Reagan continued saluting his soldiers, and he encouraged his own vice president and successor, George H. W. Bush, to do the same. And every president since has followed.
    Ronald Reagan loved the military; even long after he left the presidency he was still extolling the virtues of martial efficiency as compared to the federal government’s bloated, bureaucrat-driven civil service system. When he saluted the military, Reagan really meant it. He’d been a soldier himself, he’d sometimes remind people, a captain in fact, with a pretty high