16 December 2003

Engine Charlie

The Wright Brothers flew this week a century ago, and we can forgive the Brazilians and the New Zelanders who phlegratically say that their native sons were actually the first to right a heavier-than-air machine into the heavens. Or a couple feet above the sands at Kitty Hawk, in the case of the Wrights.

"Wind assisted" sniff the Brazilians. "It was Santos-Dumont who did it in calm air three years later." The Europeans being the way they are, they even granted him the world's absolute speed record: a breathtaking 25.5 miles per hour.

One thing the Wright's did have perfect was the picture of their moment. The camera doesn't lie, after all, though of course we know better these days. I doubt if there is a more important historical picture, and it stands up pretty well as art, too. Think of it: Orville's coat blowing in the stiff wind. If you look even closer at the print you may see something else. The glass negative was broken in 1927, and most reproductions have the tell-tale crack running across the frame. If you have a pristine print, you have a real find, maybe even worthy of an evaluation on The Antiques Road Show.

Information and control of it is central to our age. We said it in relation to aviation years later, in days of much heavier and more lethal machines, that "the first one back on the ground and to the blackboard wins the dogfight." It is a universal principal of speed and information influencing operations. Mickey Mantle applied it to sport. He said that "He with the fastest golf cart gets the best lie."

In exactly that sprit I listened to options on what to do with Saddam. The mills of justice grind exceedingly slow, and crush exceedingly fine. Justice is not compatible with the information cycle. They are still trying the Washington Snipers, and I think I speak for most of the rest of the residents here that they should have just given them the same cance they gave their victims, which is to say none. Saddam is in the same boat, though the draft of his guilt is much deeper. It is going to have to be Iraqis who do whatever it is that will be done, or it will simply be more blood on our hands. We have won the opening gambit in the information war, he surrendered meekly, and our Doctors defiled him on live video. That is all we require. In the south of Iraq, in the Shia areas, sentiment favors extended torture. I suppose there is a middle ground somewhere and we will stumble into it.

We do that stumbling institutionally. People listen to what we say. I met a senior official in New Delhi one time who was still listening to the Nixon Tapes to try to figure us out. An offhand remark by Secretary of State Dean Acheson to the effect that "our defensive perimeter in Asia was Japan" may have emboldened the future Great Leader of the North Koreans, Kim Il Song.

In late June of 1950 he sent an army group south of the line of demarcation between the American and Soviet zones of influence, and kept going south through rag-tag Task Force Smith toward Pusan. Like a knife through butter.

The American-led coalition was in danger of being thrown right off the Peninsula and into the Sea of Japan. The situation was so dire that Washington finally had to do something dramatic. That is what President Truman did when he signed some sweeping legislation just before Christmas in 1950, the year before I was born. The nation was still licking the wounds of WWII. The car companies had announced big price increases. The military and political situation was desperate. The President decided to recognize the Red Menace, and according to the headlines written by Anthony Leviero in the Times, he briskly signed a Proclamation of Emergency at 10:20am on 16 December and departed the White House for the Presidential yacht Williamsburg to play poker and drink whiskey with some pals.

In the proclamation he delegated many of his own war powers to one of the Charlies, this one Charles E. Wilson, appointing him the new national Mobilization Director, Czar of the Economy.

My folks used to speak of the Charlie Wilsons as if they were furnishings in the house. They were not related, unless distantly back in England. But they shared the astonishing drive and energy of the generation that were adults in the Depression. We speak today of the Greatest Generation, our parents who fought the war. But our Grandparents ran it. The Wilsons were part of that generation. The press used to call them "Electric Charlie" and "Engine Charlie."

Charlie was President of General Electric, hence "Electric Charlie," and the other was President of General Motors, and became "Engine Charlie." Electric Charlie sacrificed his $175,000 salary at GE to accept a senior government check of $22,500. Electric Charlie was a managerial and technical whiz kid. He ran the mobilization with the crisp efficiency that the latter part of the war years had produced. The car price increases were canceled, railroad workers got back to work, and the Cold War component of the little Hot War in Korea began as an institution.

"Engine Charlie" was a different breed of cat. He was a marketing expert, which explained his rise at General Motors. You need to remember that General Motors was about finances, not cars. It's greatest innovation was the convoluted process by which no one would ever understand how much the car cost, and that General Motors never lost a dime on a car that it sold. That was Engine Charlie's forte. He sneered at Research and Development, saying, "Research is what you're doing when you don't know what you're doing."

Engine Charlie had his price increases cancelled by Electric Charlie, but he too was drawn to the seductive power of the Potomac. He was later chosen by President Eisenhower ("I'll go to Korea!") to become Secretary of Defense.

You can imagine how necessary these nicknames were. It helped the people in Washington keep it all straight. People here thought that Engine Charlie should divest himself of his considerable holdings of GM stock when he came down to run the Department of Defense, arguing that a clear conflict of interest would result. It was a different time then. Engine Charlie refused to sell his stock, or even put it in escrow,.

"What's good for General Motors is good for the country!" he said simply,

The Wright Brothers would have agreed with that. They decided to patent the entire notion of heavier-than-air-flight, and stifle every other shade-tree mechanic in America. They got the patent, and it stifled American Research and Development for decades. The nimble little airplanes that flew in World War One just eleven years later were all built elsewhere, because the Wrights had the American patent and their Flyers couldn't compete.

It took years to sort that one out.