Strategic Vision Then and Now

Barack Obama is quoted in this morning’s Washington Post describing the how the campaign, and specifically the GOP’s message, has changed in the past two weeks. "What’s changed is that the Republican Party, which had been trying to make an argument about experience, basically got off that and came to our field." This put me in mind of a passage from Winston Churchill’s war memoirs. In May and June of 1940, Britain did what it could to save the French Army from destruction, but to no avail. Churchill recognized that every day, his government faced the horrific choice of aiding its ally in what was clearly a lost cause or saving sufficient resources for the Battle of Britain that was sure to follow. When France finally collapsed, Churchill writes, "It was with an actual sense of relief that some of our high commanders addressed themselves to our new and grimly simplified problem. As the commissionaire at one of the Service clubs in London said to a rather downcast member, ’Anyhow, sir, we’re in the Final, and it’s to be played on the Home Ground.’" (Volume II, "Their Finest Hour," p. 258.) Michael Sean Winters