Gina M. Bennett, National Security Mom: Why "Going Soft" Will Make America Strong (Deadwood, OR: Wyatt-MacKenzie, 2008), 180 pp., $24.00.
Peggy Noonan, Patriotic Grace: What It Is and Why We Need It Now (New York: Collins, 2008), 208 pp., $19.95.
A long time from now people will probably look back upon our era as one of the few great turning points-and perhaps the greatest turning point-in history. They will perhaps look at it as the age when the human race rescued itself from collective madness and self-destruction by the skin of its teeth. How? By woman power, entering into all its affairs, its concerns, its ideas, in entirely new ways.
-Konrad Kellen, The Coming Age of Woman Power
KONRAD KELLEN got it right most of the time. He left Germany in 1933-immediately upon Hitler's appointment as chancellor and, by emigrating to the United States, avoided the terrible fate of European Jewry under Nazi rule. Three decades later as a counterinsurgency analyst at the Santa Monica, California, headquarters of the RAND Corporation, assessing Vietcong morale and motivation, he was among the first to conclude-in 1965-that the Vietnam War was unwinnable. Kellen went on to become among the most astute analysts of terrorism, and the reports that he wrote for RAND's U.S. government clients in the late 1970s and early 1980s identified trends that we see clearly manifested today. Yet, as the above quote suggests, his 1972 book heralding a new era of peace and prosperity, unparalleled human and scientific development, and the various other benefits that a world soon to be led and governed by women would surely entail, proved to be one of the few monumental trends of the twentieth century that he got completely, totally and utterly wrong.
Indeed, if Kellen were alive today he would be surprised how marginally the status of women in American society has changed. To be sure, there are far more women in the workplace today than there were thirty-seven years ago. The number of women who now adroitly, if not successfully, balance family and job responsibilities would have been unimaginable then. And, in the past year alone, a woman credibly ran for president and one less credibly for vice president. Finally, three women have been entrusted by President Obama with responsibility for America's foreign policy, homeland security and the conduct of U.S. diplomacy at the United Nations. Yet, it remains undeniable that with respect to both governance and the formulation and execution of policy, the United States remains, if no longer the exclusively male domain it once was, then at least still an overwhelmingly male one. Indeed, a report by the World Economic Forum recently concluded that: "Women still lag far behind men in top political and decision-making roles even though their access to education and health care is nearly equal. . . ." Thus, even in the aftermath of a presidential election where the need for change was the one thing that both candidates unambiguously agreed on and which, moreover, propelled the winner into the White House, the prospect of any significant near-term recalibration of gender governmental responsibilities over matters both big and small beyond these three senior-level nominees is nonexistent. Witness President Obama's first press conference three days after the election, where his much-heralded economic-advisory team was introduced. Three are women. Nearly five times as many, or fourteen, are men. In this respect, it is highly unlikely that the current gender imbalance in force at the State Department, Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Mission to the United Nations will change in any appreciable way soon, despite the formidable women heading each.
With the publication of both Peggy Noonan's Patriotic Grace and Gina M. Bennett's National Security Mom, one is reminded of Kellen's cri de coeur for the different approach that women-and particularly mothers-might bring to typically machismo-laden, muscle-flexing issues involving diplomacy, fiscal policy and especially national security beyond a handful of cabinet appointments. Even if Kellen's "age of woman power" has not yet come to pass, his conviction that women offer a unique and perhaps invaluable perspective on questions of national security and counterterrorism is the cornerstone of both the Noonan and Bennett books.
Noonan is of course widely known as one of the clearest and most perspicacious columnists around today. The most enthusiastic, genuine and compelling cipher of the Reagan Revolution-which she witnessed firsthand as presidential speechwriter-and author of several more books, Noonan now writes a weekly column for the Wall Street Journal, "Declarations." Its devoted readers are drawn to Noonan for the firmly gentle grip that she perceptively has on America's pulse. There is perhaps no one better able to illuminate and elucidate the spectrum of issues, both great and mundane, that concern Americans and define America today. Whether one agrees or disagrees with Noonan, no one can deny that her columns don't cut quickly to the chase: eschewing the snarkiness and self-righteousness that passes for commentary elsewhere and instead cogently identifying exactly where we are as a country and a people at a time when so many others are so completely lost.
