{"id":1403,"date":"2008-11-13T16:03:39","date_gmt":"2008-11-13T21:03:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/2parse.com\/?p=1403"},"modified":"2008-11-12T20:39:11","modified_gmt":"2008-11-13T01:39:11","slug":"the-scowcroft-conspiracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/?p=1403","title":{"rendered":"The Scowcroft Conspiracy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Not quite a conspiracy &#8211; but Joshua Micah Marshall just reported on the final piece of the puzzle I seem to have been missing\u00a0 that helps explain:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>the endorsement of Obama by Colin Powell;<\/li>\n<li>the constant chatter about keeping Bob Gates on as Defense Secretary since at least September; and<\/li>\n<li>the tacit support of Obama by Chuck Hagel &#8211; from his criticisms of McCain during the election to his accompanying Obama on his European tour during the campaign.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The final piece being &#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.talkingpointsmemo.com\/archives\/244060.php\">Brent Scowcroft<\/a> (h\/t <a href=\"http:\/\/andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com\/\">Andrew Sullivan<\/a>), the former National Security Advisor under Presidents Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush and a former Lieutenant General in the Air Force, and a guy so personally close to George H. W. Bush that he co-wrote Bush&#8217;s memoirs with him.<\/p>\n<p>Hagel, Powell, and Gates all have been close allies of Scowcroft, especially in fighting against neo-conservatives in the George W. Bush administration. And he has apparently been working behind-the-scenes with Obama and his foreign policy team since the summer at latest.<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, the roots of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/04\/10\/us\/politics\/10mccain.html?_r=2&amp;hp=&amp;adxnnl=1&amp;oref=slogin&amp;pagewanted=print&amp;adxnnlx=1212066380-s5eCiWDoytTgAb3CCPMS3Q\">this defection of foreign policy realist Republicans to the Obama camp<\/a> can probably be seen in this April 2008 article in the <em>New York Times<\/em> in which Lawrence Eagleburger, of the realist camp himself, describes a battle going on for McCain&#8217;s &#8220;soul&#8221; between the realist and neoconservative Republican foreign policy camps. By the summer, it became pretty clear which side had won that battle &#8211; as McCain embraced one neoconservative position after another and surrogates claimed he wanted to &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/2parse.com\/\/?p=428\">kill the United Nations<\/a>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>By the summer, Scowcroft had begun to unofficially advise the Obama campaign; there was talk of Bob Gates staying on at Defense; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2008\/05\/20\/chuck-hagel-takes-on-mcca_n_102775.html\">Senator Hagel<\/a> began to criticize McCain while praising Obama; and Powell decided to endorse Obama publicly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Not quite a conspiracy &#8211; but Joshua Micah Marshall just reported on the final piece of the puzzle I seem to have been missing\u00a0 that helps explain: the endorsement of Obama by Colin Powell; the constant chatter about keeping Bob Gates on as Defense Secretary since at least September; and the tacit support of Obama [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[143,22,3,45,367,6,4],"tags":[975,976,431,909,315,883,977,316],"class_list":["post-1403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama","category-election-2008","category-foreign-policy","category-mccain","category-national-security","category-obama","category-politics","tag-bob-gates","tag-brent-scowcroft","tag-chuck-hagel","tag-colin-powell","tag-joshua-micah-marshall","tag-neoconservative","tag-realist","tag-talking-points-memo"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8qcx-mD","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1403"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1403\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1404,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1403\/revisions\/1404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}