Personal Aside: How the Triumvirate Could Work in 2008.

Triumvirate.

I am not endowed with a crystal ball but here is how the triumvirate might work on one selected issue.

Remember now that Hillary Clinton is campaigning modestly for Barack Obama, using mostly domestic issues as pretext.

Then it happens. Iran. . “It’s not going to happen on my watch,” said George W. Bush about Iran’s proclivity to manufacture nuclear weaponry. There ensues a long attempt to try to settle it diplomatically. Obama will counsel that approach since his electoral constituency passionately is anti-war. They will cite the National Intelligence Estimate of 2008 which in some particulars downgraded the possibility of Iranian possession of nuclear weapons gives all indications of another ploy the CIA has used so well in the past against the administration: an ambush.

It is useless to run through all the options. I will simplify it. Suppose Iran increases the trouble it is already creating for us in Iraq by attacking Israel with missiles armed with non-nuclear warheads but which could possibly contain biological and/or chemical weapons. There would be yet again a vast increase in the price of oil with catastrophic consequences for every economy in the world including ours. The option would have to be considered.

There would be immediately a huge outcry from Obama’s constituency on the awful consequences of a nuclear exchange. There would be a temptation for George W. Bush to sit back and outsource the retaliation-giving to Israel…but no. The entire world would recognize Israel as an agent of the United States with the result that we would become as likely a target as if we did the job ourselves. The act should be done here.

I see the issue being raised in October and the United States doing the preventing with Obama paralyzed with indecision vis-à-vis his constituency, Hillary quiet but McCain taking the lead for the action before Bush does it. Once again the test will come to the West, a test which I daresay Obama will be asked to face up to and found wanting…because the mainstream media and his peace constituency would reject it.

What would be the roles of those in the triumvirate? That is for them to determine. Let me say a former president of the United States has the influence to be enormously influential in information-gathering. The entire effort must be made to play into McCain’s hands. Hillary stays out of it until late, then comes down on the issue that great governmental leaders must resolve to save millions of lives by acting responsibly. Then there is the dreadful question: What happens if the mullahs strike first?

The decision is made by Bush which McCain ratifies and to which Hillary, coming in later, assents. If handled right, Obama becomes the agonizing intellectual in the Harvard faculty lounge…on one hand and then the other hand…

Do I say invent this pretext? No, not at all. In fact, it exists and does not need to be invented. I have merely structured a hypothesis. But it all starts with the triumvirate and the recognition that everyone has a stake in the action of keeping the presidency in the hands of men who can act versus one who makes a pretty speech and is irresolute.