"It's nutty to turn an urgent issue of war and peace over to a commission."

Bake me a cake, Baker man
It's nutty to turn an urgent issue of war and peace over to a commission.
Michael Kinsley
November 13, 2006 09:00 PM | Printable version

If I told most people in Washington that there was something called the Baker Commission, they could probably guess many of its members without even knowing what it was about. Oh, there might be some quibbles: now that Sandra Day O'Connor is available, is Madeleine Albright out of luck? And is there really no one under the age of 60 who has attained a sufficient level of self-importance to qualify for membership? This is one torch that has not been passed to a new generation.

The Baker Commission - that's James Baker, of course - was appointed by Congress to look into the situation in Iraq. It is expected to report early next month, and is duly bouncing around and staffing up and holding hearings and all the things that prestigious commissions do. They're hearing from Tony Blair this week.

Ordinarily, a commission like this has two possible purposes: action or inaction. Sometimes a problem is referred to a prestigious commission so that the commission can recommend what everybody knows must be done but nobody who must run for election has the nerve to propose. The commission can ram this policy down the politicians' allegedly unwilling throats. If it is bipartisan - and what fun is a commission that isn't bipartisan? - the commission also protects both parties against a stab in the back by the other. This is how the American retirement system was reformed and saved the last time, when the chairman of the commission was Alan Greenspan, who recently retired as head of the Federal Reserve Board and thus is available once more for commission duty.

On the other hand, sometimes a problem is referred to a commission simply to get it off the table. Action is widely perceived as necessary, and the creation of a commission can be made to look like action.

So which is the Baker commission? It's got elements of both. Part of the idea, certainly, was to get the politicians over the hump of the election, and give them something to say in the meanwhile. ("We desperately need new ideas and fresh thinking about Iraq, and indeed the entire Middle East. I look forward to the recommendations of the Baker Commission and urge them to interpret their mandate widely and boldly.") And part of the idea is to legitimise some currently unpalatable solution. But the Baker commission may be near-unique in that there is no obvious solution waiting to be imposed. People actually hope that the greybeards will come up with something that no one has previously thought of.

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http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/michael_kinsley/2006/11/kinsleys_column.html