2016 Election Game: Campaign Thread

[Donerail]

McRaven 2016: October 1-7

When I was training to become a Navy SEAL, all the students were broken down into boat crews. Seven students in a crew - three on each side, and one coxswain to help guide. Every day, you and your crew would form up on the beach and have to get through the surfzone and paddle several miles down the coast. The surf off San Diego can get to be 8 to 10 feet high - it's exceedingly difficult to paddle through unless everyone digs in. Every paddle must be synchronized to the stroke count of the coxswain.  Everyone must exert equal effort or the boat will turn against the wave and be unceremoniously back on the beach. For the boat to make it to its destination, everyone must paddle.

That's the approach I plan to take when making decisions as President. To get from where we are now to where we want to be will take help. Nobody got to where they are now without the help of a friend, a colleague, or even the kindness of a total stranger. Everyone successful in this country had someone in their life - a teacher, a parent, a priest, someone - serve as a good coxswain to guide them. As President, I want to make it so everyone has that opportunity, because a lot of kids in this country don't get the opportunity to find those crewmates and find that coxswain. I plan to invest heavily in education, working to strengthen our schools, so that everyone has a shot at success. Making community college free for all students is something the President originally proposed, and is something that would ensure all students have that opportunity - and it's still fiscally responsible! The cost of making community college free for the next ten years is only around 1% of what we spent on the Iraq War; and ultimately, because those students go on to higher-earning jobs and help encourage businesses to come to America instead of locating somewhere else, it could be a money-maker in the long run. Ensuring everyone has a chance at success - a fair playing field, not forcing everyone to end up the same but at least making sure everyone has an equal shot - is something I learned the importance of while serving in the military, and it's something I aim to promote as President.

During this week, Admiral McRaven will be knocking on doors, speaking to community groups, attending religious services, and dining at local restaurants throughout the Manchester area.

(OOC: Gonna be putting a lot more detail into speeches than schedules - that's both personal preference (speechwriting is fun & detailed lists of towns in podunk Iowa aren't) and a game thing (more of a focus on developing a real campaign through speeches and discussion of issues rather than just traveling to events)).

[Donerail]

Campaign Statement

Admiral McRaven expressed his condolences to the Mondale family upon hearing of the death of former Vice President Walter Mondale. "As a Senator, Vice President, and Ambassador, Walter Mondale's legacy of service to this great nation is unparalleled. He was a leader of both this party and this nation, and I thank him for all that he contributed."

[Donerail]

McRaven for President: October 8-14

Interview on The Rachel Maddow Show



Admiral McRaven, recently Hillary Clinton made headlines by talking about the need to shift away from fossil fuels. Do you support such a move?

Secretary Clinton says that we need to be off all fossil fuels. I agree in principle that that’s a noble long-term goal, but where I disagree is where she focuses on getting it done now. Now isn’t when we need to get off of fossil fuels - now is when we need to be developing our own domestic fossil fuel industries. This is a matter of national security, making sure that we have our own domestic sources of energy developed in the short-term while also developing our long-term energy options. She seems to be setting up this dichotomy in the campaign between people who support renewable energy and people who support fossil fuels, and my question is: why not both?

Governor Brown wants more high-speed rail across the nation. Do you believe this is something we should be spending on?

I do, absolutely - my favorite President, throughout history, probably has to be Dwight D. Eisenhower. And sure, he was a Republican, but he knew what he was doing; he was moderate and did what was in the best interest of the nation. General Eisenhower was expecting to have a long slog ahead of him to get from the border with France to Berlin, that it would take months, if not years, to get there, but then he encountered the autobahns. Seeing that highway system, built with the purpose of efficiency and enabling movement across the whole nation, is supposed to be what inspired the creation of the Interstate Highway System - something nobody has a problem with. Now, we see other nations in Europe and Asia innovating and developing systems of high-speed rail, which I’ve gotten a chance to use when at our bases in Germany and Japan, and the benefit of that kind of rail system to mobility in this country, in terms of increasing economic growth, is something I’d like to see duplicated.

Do you believe you have the experience necessary to deal with Congress, should you be elected?

Absolutely - I’ve dealt with Congress a lot before. When you work your way up in the military, eventually you wind up spending a lot of time fighting for your men, not in Iraq or Afghanistan, but on Capitol Hill, trying to get more resources, more facilities, all the stuff your men need. While I may not have the experience of a Senator or Representative in working within Congress, I think I’ve probably done it more often than a Governor or other official, and hey, that didn’t stop Eisenhower, did it?

Speech on the Trans-Pacific Partnership - Portsmouth, NH



Governor Jerry Brown’s out on the campaign trail criticizing the passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership - characterizing it as a kind of ‘crony capitalism’. That’s not what the TPP is about. I, personally, am glad that we managed to pass that agreement - not because of how it’ll affect the economy, though I do believe it’ll support long-term economic growth, but because it’s a decision about our national security. Do we want to take an active role in the world stage? Or do we want to cede that control to other nations - a decision that will ultimately have longer-term implications for the US economy and the American worker than this trade agreement?

We are not the only nation in the world. We’re not even the only economic superpower in the world. No region will affect our prosperity and security like Asia will in the coming decades. America is a nation founded on innovation, the best technology, the best education, and a diverse population. But that doesn’t mean other nations aren’t catching up to where we are. If we want to maintain our position as the leading nation of the world, we need to strengthen our security ties. During my time in Iraq and Afghanistan, what I saw is that, fundamentally, commerce helps build peace. It brings people together, unites them around a common interests, and allows us to form deeper partnerships. Our military alliances are at their strongest when they’re founded on shared economic interests. Those nations we bring into this alliance - Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam - will now be more interested in devoting their resources to a whole host of causes, be it counterterrorism or maritime security or humanitarian assistance.

Now, I’d like to respond specifically to Governor Brown’s statement that the TPP involves harmful trade practices. He says that we need to make sure that people have the freedom to work for better wages - and I agree with him there. The problem in his argument is that the TPP does that. It contains strong labor and environmental protections, and actually reduces subsidies given by foreign governments to allow our businesses to compete more fairly. Does it make everything equal? Of course not. But let’s not make the perfect the enemy of the good. Trying to revise the deal, after years of careful negotiations, would likely mean no new deal at all. What happens if we scrap the deal? Well, there’s other regional powers that are quite willing to fill the vacuum that would leave, and I don’t think China has any qualms about setting lax labor standards. Do we really want to engage in a race to the bottom?

As President, I will champion increasing trade ties overseas. There is a bipartisan consensus that we should engage with other nations economically, and I plan to act so that we may reap the economic and national security benefits of those agreements. Whether you care about economics or about national security, the TPP benefits us all, and I will seek to further agreements like it.


New ad: Bio



”Hi, I’m Admiral Bill McRaven. Most of you probably haven’t heard of me, but I’m running for President. I got my start in the Navy, serving as a SEAL, and worked my way up the chain of command over the next 37 years before eventually becoming Commander of US Special Operations Command. Over that time, I served in Desert Shield, Desert Storm, and in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the operation I’m proudest of planning and overseeing was Operation Neptune Spear, when we killed Osama bin Laden. Now, I’m running for President, to take the lessons of leadership I learned while commanding our military, to lead and change America. It’d be an honor if I could count on your vote in the primaries.”

Admiral McRaven spent this week in coastal New Hampshire, with major rallies in the towns of Hampton Beach, Rye, and Portsmouth.

[Donerail]

Speech in Beaufort, SC on military readiness



Now, I know that, in the Democratic primary, what you most want to hear is which one of us is the best leader of the Democratic Party - who among us has the message and leadership to lead us in Virginia. And I’ll be talking about that too, but before I do, I’d like to address an ad that Governor Bush, on the Republican side, has been running in several early states. I know you’ve seen it - he’s talking about the ‘promises of America’. Specifically, in that ad, he claims that President Obama has jeopardized this nation’s security by being a weak commander-in-chief. And, folks, that’s a load of bull.

That’s the advantage I have over anyone on the Democratic side of the aisle - when a Republican candidate says something so ludicrous as claiming that Obama has jeopardized national security, I can stand there on the debate stage and say, “As an Admiral of the United States Navy, I know a fair bit more about our military readiness than someone who hasn’t been in any sort of elected office for a decade, and I know that Obama has been a perfectly fine leader for our military - because I was there.” I was honored this week to be endorsed by Governor Mike Beebe of Arkansas, Governor Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania, and Senator Jim Webb of Virginia - all three served in the armed forces, Senator Webb serving as Ronald Reagan’s Navy Secretary, and they’re standing with me because they know what Jeb’s saying just isn’t true, that the Democratic Party stands for a strong national defense. And it’s true, isn’t it? Ask yourself: is the United States safer than it was eight years ago? Well, there’s a whole host of foreign policy achievements of this administration - normalizing relations with Cuba, reforms in Myanmar - and obviously Secretary Kerry and Secretary Clinton had a hand in both of them. But the one I was involved in, and the one I think is the biggest accomplishment of this administration, is that we finally killed Osama bin Laden. This administration is the one that resulted in the death of the man responsible for 9/11. It’s difficult to think of a more impactful military success.

But back to the bigger point, the US military is not weak. Obama has not endangered American national security. We spend more than the next dozen or so countries combined. In terms of military equipment, we have around ten times what the Chinese have. There’s actually no historical precedent for a nation with the size of our nation being allied with so many of the world’s largest economies. Over 40% of the world’s economy is controlled by just five nations - us, Japan, Germany, France, and the UK. That’s us and four of our closest allies, coming close to controlling half the world’s GDP. That’s pretty damn impressive. Our navy, in terms of fleet tonnage, is larger than the next thirteen largest navies combined - and also controls the second-largest air force in the world, second only to the United States Air Force. The fifth-most-powerful air force, incidentally, would be a single American aircraft carrier. And we’ve got eleven. The M1 Abrams tank has seen more combat than just about any other tank on the battlefield, and has never - ever! - been completely disabled by enemy fire. China has around 500 of their tanks - sounds scary, right? But theirs aren’t as good as ours, and they have 500? We’ve got over 8,000. There’s 8,400 attack helicopters in the world, and we own 6,400 of them. Any nation attempting to fight us in a conventional war would be like a toddler trying to fight Muhammad Ali - they’re just not going to win. And, speaking as a retired Admiral, that’s just the stuff they tell you about.

So, then, what will I do to the military budget? Well, I’m no Bernie Sanders or anything - I’m not going to cut it to the bone. As President, I will maintain a US military capable of addressing any possible threat. But it’s true that our military budget is outdated, and personally, I blame a lot of that on Congress. They regularly give the military more money than we actually request, to pay for pet projects in their districts. Fact is, we can safely reduce the military budget, actually increasing it in some areas, and save billions while still maintaining our status in the world. A destroyer with an Aegis missile defense system can fight just as well as a Littoral Combat Ship or an old cruiser, for example, but it’s a hell of a lot cheaper. We don’t need as many F-35s as we’re buying, either, since that money could be spent investing in new UAVs or improving FA-18s. We can reduce our end strengths too, since we don’t need as many ground forces anymore with Afghanistan over - that’s money that can be redirected to invest in more special forces, as well as investing in breakthrough technologies. There’s a report out by David Barno, he’s a Lt. Gen., that explains how we can do this and save hundreds of billions without really impacting how our forces are performing at all.

We face a new reality in the 21st century, and we need to adapt to that reality. We’re not going to be fighting a tank battle in Europe, and we’re not going to have any major air superiority battles either. No American soldier has been killed on the ground by an enemy aircraft since 1953. What we need to do in terms of our military spending is shrink the things we don’t need and won’t use anyway, the stuff that’s just being kept around to help Congressmen get re-elected. We can reduce that, save some money, and reinvest the rest in the stuff that we really do need, which is more special forces and new technologies. We need a strong national defense, but the way we do that isn’t just by throwing money at anything that moves - it’s through making smart choices, that preserve both our national and our financial security.


Speech in Des Moines, Iowa on energy security



Energy is an issue near and dear to my heart, because when you get down to it, it’s a national security issue too. Secretary Clinton and I have been talking about this recently, whether we need to pursue fossil fuels or renewable energies right now. In light of that, I’d like to speak more on my plan for our nation’s energy supply and what we’ll do.

In the long term, it’s necessary to pursue renewable energies, and as President I plan to support efforts to increase our renewable power usage. My inspiration for this sort of plan is Japan - Japan used to be totally dependent on imported oil, and some historians actually speculate that a big pressure that forced Japan into World War II was a need for more oil sources. But they started using more gas, more nuclear power, and invested really heavily into mass transit, and they’re now incredibly energy secure. Not only does having diverse energy sources reduce the impact of the loss of any single one on our nation, but using energy sources like geothermal and ethanol and wind and solar also means that power is coming from multiple diverse sources, essentially reducing to zero the risk any attack on our energy grid would pose. Energy gets more diverse in its points of generation, which means that even if one gets knocked out in a natural disaster then you can more easily get power. And hey - I didn’t even mention global warming in that! Renewable energy is the right thing to do for the climate, but more importantly, it’s the right choice for a secure energy supply.

But what we also need is an all of the above energy supply, and that necessitates exploring our own domestic fossil fuel resources. Oil, as we’ve all experienced, is vulnerable to price shifts based on a number of factors, most of which aren’t under our control. That sort of economic uncertainty isn’t good - but increasing global supply by pumping up our domestic production not just means we’ll be less vulnerable to a total end of supply like we saw in 1973, but also means prices will be more stable. It’s simple supply and demand - with more diverse suppliers, the impact of any one supplier is reduced. So when we develop our oil supplies, what we’re saying to the American people is that your gas will not just be cheaper, it’ll be more likely to stay that way. Natural gas is the same way, with the additional bonus that it can be exported to nations in Europe to help reduce their dependence on Russian gas.

My energy policy is ultimately a pretty fair solution, in that it’s fair to all the options. We should invest heavily in renewables, absolutely. We should also consider developing our fossil fuel resources, because they’re a valuable resource as well. We have several options - and pursuing all of them is what we need to do if we want to see the benefits that all of those options can provide.


This week, Admiral McRaven campaigned in coastal South Carolina and the Des Moines metro area, opening campaign offices in Des Moines and Charleston as part of an initial push into those two early states.

[Donerail]

McRaven Debate Answers

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There is no one answer for 'stopping terror' - Lord knows we've been fighting a war on it for a decade and a half now. What Obama's been doing is giving some support to the Kurds, pressing for political reforms in Baghdad, and launching some airstrikes - and he's right, those are necessary things to do to stop ISIS - but it's not enough. They've got support of Sunni tribal leaders and the Sunni people who have been treated brutally by the Shi'a government of Iraq, and we need a way to counteract that. Some candidates have called for 'boots on the ground', and I think they're correct, just not our boots. We need strong leadership in Iraq, bolstered by the political and financial leadership of nations like Egypt and Saudi Arabia - maybe even Iran and Turkey - to defeat ISIS. We can't go in and beat them ourselves, we need local and regional partners to do that. We should offer our financial and political backing to those nations that will help rebuild Iraq and Syria, organize a diplomatic partnership to engage with all regional powers. We have highly skilled special operations forces who are capable of targeting high-level ISIS organizers - once we take out their leadership and heavy equipment, then we can turn to Turkey or the Free Syrian Army or Sunni tribes, but above all we should prepare now for nation-building. When candidates are up here talking about how they'll fight ISIS, that's great - then what? For my part, possibly something modeled off of the reconstruction of the former Yugoslavia in Iraq and Syria would be a functional plan, working with all our partners - the UN, the Arab League, the EU, NATO - to create a new order in the region, in order to prevent any new ISISes from emerging.

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Israel and the United States have a long, deep friendship. But at this point, we seem to be reaching a point where the values on which we built that friendship have diverged. The goal of the United States in the region is to enable the creation of the sovereign state to which the Palestinian Arabs are entitled, just as the Jewish people are. Some basic values of the United States are tolerance and private property, and yet Israel continues to build settlements on Palestinian land, and Netanyahu himself attempted to scare voters to the polls by suggesting that members of a minority group would be voting. That's not something we can accept here in America, and we need to stop enabling this kind of behavior. I'm shocked and disturbed that Secretary Clinton - someone we put in charge of our diplomacy! - thinks that the Palestinians want to destroy the State of Israel. You'd think that somebody with her level of experience would know enough not to repeat statements that are blatantly false. A redoubled commitment to American negotiations with the explicit end goal of establishing some sort of (demilitarized) Palestinian state - working with Israeli and Palestinian moderates - should get that message across.

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Yes, absolutely. Empirical work from - I think it was David Card - showed that it doesn't reduce employment, and some other studies have actually show that job creation was faster in states that raised their minimum wage, and obviously it'll help reduce poverty and income inequality. I'm sure Congress will have their own opinions on the matter, but a raise to $10 or $11 per hour isn't something I'd object to - do that, and then index it to inflation.

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I do - estimates show that the majority of undocumented immigrants in this country right now are working, and I think the White House estimates that letting them do so legally and openly, and so collecting tax revenues from them and allowing them to take better jobs they may have the skill sets for, will increase GDP by almost a full percentage point over the next decade. These people are making more money, which then creates more demand and so more jobs. Having more immigrants come to the United States creates new possibility for production, more demand for goods and services, and some reports suggest it actually raises wages across the economy. I support Congressional action to make that more official - if people see a Congressional law that'll be very hard to change, those immigrants here now who know they're going to be able to stay here will work harder to integrate into our society. There's no point in, for example, learning English if you're just going to be deported and stuck with that useless skill. Giving these people - not full naturalization, but at least work permits - and the ability to be secure in their positions gives them an incentive to invest in themselves, which yields economic benefits for us all.

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John Kerry's doing a pretty decent job right now as Secretary of State. I don't know how much he enjoys the job, given that he's actively job-hunting right now, but hey, if he wants the job...

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Well, before I was named commander of the US Special Ops Command, Osama bin Laden was alive. And by the time I retired, as a result of an operation I organized and executed, he was not. I have lengthy experience in leading our military and helped establish the low-intensity conflict curriculum at the Naval Postgraduate School. I wrote the book on the sorts of conflicts our nation faces. Additionally, as director of the NATO Special Operations Forces Coordination Centre, I developed good working relationships with our major allies, while as director for Strategic Planning for the Office of Combating Terrorism I worked on coordinating the operations of several different parts of our government. I have extensive experience in government, in cooperating with foreign nations, and in leadership, and I hope to use that leadership to guide this nation to a better future.


Admiral McRaven will spend the week in the Columbia and Des Moines areas.

[Donerail]

McRaven Campaign Statement:

Though we sit on different sides of the aisle, I have nothing but respect for Senator Cruz personally. All of us here, myself included, offer our deepest condolences to Rafael Cruz on his diagnosis, and wish Senator Cruz and his family nothing but the best as they work through these undoubtably trying times.