Tilting at Windmills

The view from the ground In our last issue, as a part of the effort to educate the new president on the culture of the executive branch of government, I emphasized the need for a president to reach down the chain of command and outside it to learn what is really going on beneath him. Toward that end, I have encountered no better advice than that given to Barack Obama by Senator Jack Reed during Obama's visit to Iraq in July. According to the Wall Street Journal's Gerald Seib, Reed told Obama that "a good way to get some unfiltered information about what is happening on the ground is to talk to junior officers and journalists on the scene"