Right wing, and anti-gay provocateur Bryan Fischer, Director of Issue Analysis for Government and Public Policy at the American Family Association, wrote in early 2011 that Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee were just carrying too much baggage to win the GOP nomination and run for the presidency in 2012.

So, he said a second tier of candidates would probably break through — listing “Tim Pawlenty, Mitch Daniels, Haley Barbour, John Thune, John Bolton, Mike Pence, and a possible “dark horse” (his term, not mine), Herman Cain.”

Ultimately, Fischer said that in the end it would be a hard choice between Herman Cain and Mike Pence. He never gave a thought to Rick Santorum. And as we now know, Mitt Romney is the presumptive nominee — though Newt Gingrich hasn’t tucked it in yet.

About John Bolton, Fischer wrote in January 2011:

John Bolton belongs in the next conservative administration, but not as president. He will be needed in the areas of national security and intelligence, and is a pretty smart fella when it comes to all that. But most of the American people have no idea who he is, and nobody knows where he stands on almost the entire range of domestic issues.

Perhaps Fischer just wasn’t tuned in when John Bolton made clear in September 2010 that he ‘could live with’ gay marriage — and said this on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell:

“I don’t think there is any good answer to the question why shouldn’t gays and lesbians who want to serve their country be allowed to do it.”

I have significant differences with John Bolton’s international affairs views but I give him great credit for not being the kind of bizarre cookie cutter hard right zealot that Bryan Fischer is. Bolton has not only supported the rights agenda of gay and lesbian Americans, he has been a great boss and mentor to a number of gay people — including the very capable and doggedly results-focused Richard “Ric” Grenell who served Bolton as spokesman during Bolton’s tenure as a recess-appointed Ambassador at the United Nations; his long-time aide in many incarnations Mark Groombridge; and others.

Bolton gets my respect for this — and I have little patience for those who disparage the competency or qualifications of anyone based on any other issue than merit.

Bryan Fischer’s anti-gay bigotry, coughed up of late on Romney for hiring Richard Grenell deserves widespread repudiation and scorn by sensible folks on the right and left. Fischer tweeted yesterday:

Romney picks out & loud gay as a spokesman. If personnel is policy, his message to the pro-family community: drop dead

Fischer didn’t say the same about John Bolton who was already quite “out” about his support of gay Americans — and if Fischer scooted through his roster of Republican possibilities, he’d see that nearly all of them had high level, plugged-in, highly competent gay and lesbian staff.

It’s Fischer who is the odd man out in American politics; probably irritated that Mitt Romney punched through Fischer’s incorrect political analysis of last year. One hopes that Romney stands strong — and stand by the competence and capacity of people like Grenell — and that we spend our time battling each other over issues that really matter to the nation.

There I have many differences with Romney, as well as Obama — but today, Romney gets a salute from me for hiring Grenell.

– Steve Clemons is Washington Editor at Large at The Atlantic. Clemons can be followed on Twitter at @SCClemons

Tanaka’s argument is mathematical at its core.  He argues that if Japan does not find a way to ‘turn on’ its now shuttered nuclear energy reactors, not only will Japan’s already sluggish economic condition be crushed with much larger oil and gas imports from Russia, Southeast Asia and the Middle East — but because of the costs and risk uncertainty — Japan’s powerful manufacturing base may begin pulling out of the world’s third largest economy.  In a morning meeting with me last week, Nobuo Tanaka said that if Japan didn’t get its domestic energy production back on line soon, Japan would experience serious ‘deindustrialization.’

Tanaka explained that at current levels, Japan consumes about 5 million barrels of oil a day.  Without domestically produced nuclear energy — for which Japan has stockpiled for decades the world’s largest non-weaponized highly processed plutonium reserves — Japan falls about 10% or half a million barrels of oil short of what it must have.

Japan has 54 nuclear energy reactors — only two of which are running at the moment and both of which are scheduled for regular check ups and will shut down either late this month or in early May 2012.  As regular maintenance has required shutting down plant after plant, none of Japan’s governors has allowed the nuclear energy plants to be returned to operation.

On top of the post-Fukushima nuclear plant disaster, global tensions with Iran are threatening Japan’s dependence on Iranian oil exports, which Japan’s share amounts to about 300,000 barrels a day.

This makes Japan’s current potential daily energy deficit about 800,000 barrels per day.

Tanaka, who after leaving the International Energy Agency is biding his time now as Global Associate for Energy Security and Sustainability at Japan’s Institute of Energy Economics, acknowledges that the Saudis have offered Japan, Europe and others who are jittery about the growing tensions with Iran more of its own domestic capacity, which most put at about 2 million barrels a day.  Tanaka says the problem is that that’s just not enough to manage global shortfalls if there is a strike on Iran and oil flows are interrupted — and he believes that the Saudis will favor European needs over Japan’s.

On top of the gloom about nuclear energy supply doldrums in Japan, the hard consequences of tensions with Iran, there is a third area of concern Tanaka has:  the weather.  He said that if Japan has a very hot summer — which some are projecting — Japan will run another 10% short of supplies on top of the shortages it already projects.

But even all this is not the end of the squeeze.

Japan’s other partial energy option is the importation of liquified natural gas (LNG) — which it imports from Malaysia, Brunei, Qatar, UAE, Indonesia and Australia. Japan needs to further boost imports if it can but prices for LNG are surging.  The combined energy deficit Japan is facing would require a net increase, according to Tanaka, of LNG and oil that would run about $40 billion a year — wiping out completely Japan’s trade surpluses and more.

In meetings hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies this past week, Nobuo Tanaka made an appeal for the US to export some of its cheap LNG supply to Japan.  The price of LNG in Japan is currently four times the price in the United States.

However, House of Representatives Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Edward Markey has over the last several months been agitating in speeches and correspondence with Energy Secretary for the US to restrict LNG exports — thus keeping prices low in the United States and leaving key strategic allies like Japan vulnerable to surging global LNG prices and to the geostrategic flirtations from Russia.  Tanaka said that with Russia, about which the US has increasing concerns about its mercantilist global energy behavior, Japan may be forced to build new grid and pipeline infrastructure with Russia given the cold shoulder the US is thus far showing Japan.

Tanaka told me that one high-ranking Chinese official recently approached him asking if and when Japan would turn its nuclear reactors back on — as Japan’s massive energy needs now were disrupting supply patterns and costs and could affect China’s energy investment picture if Japan’s needs were to become structurally permanent.

To some degree, without the Pulitzer and best-selling energy reality books to his name, Nobuo Tanaka is the Daniel Yergin of Japan and has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the patterns and vectors of energy production and consumption by all the major global energy actors.  His warnings matter — and yet Japan’s political leaders, he believes, have not honestly talked with the Japanese public about the hard choices it faces and a possible economic unraveling that comes with the status quo national nuclear energy allergy.

Tanaka thinks that the U.S. could play a constructive role in helping Japan weather its challenges — not just in exporting cheaper LNG but it helping bridge the ‘trust gap’ between Japanese citizens and their government.

The former senior Japan Ministry of Economy Trade & Industry official joked that the only place in the world where an elected legislature may be less popular with its citizens that the US Congress is Japan — where government incompetence and false statements made during and after the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear plant disasters have collapsed Japanese trust in their officials.  And trust wasn’t high before these incidents.

Tanaka realizes that there is a legitimate debate to be had about the safety and management of Japan’s nuclear energy facilities and that standards need to be improved and a national conversation has to take place — but that a total rejection of nuclear energy will send Japan over a cliff as deindustrialization is triggered by energy shocks.

One solution he thinks is for former US Nuclear Regulatory Commission commissioners and other US-based, respected nuclear energy experts form an ad hoc commission designed to consult with the Japanese nuclear energy industry and political authorities — and to create what would be a bilateral, or perhaps even an international, peer review structure.  This might allow Japanese citizens to possibly fasten their trust in the international Commission even if doubtful about the solvency of their own business, political, and energy leaders.

It’s an interesting proposal — one that gets to the core issue of trust and lurking uncertainties about nuclear energy in Japan.  Some critics could argue that creating such a US-Japan or international commission would allow Japan to push this needed debate under the rug and cover up dangers lurking in Japan’s energy system.

Maybe so — but it also seems that Nobuo Tanaka could be right that Japan’s economic future further unravels if it doesn’t figure out some way to get safe nuclear energy back online.

– Steve Clemons is Washington Editor at Large at The Atlantic, where this post first appeared. Clemons can be followed on Twitter at @SCClemons

Gordon Shaw of Lincoln, Nebraska writes to the editors of the Journal Star:

As I look over the leading candidates for president of the United States, I and many I have talked with have the common reaction: “none of the above.”

After a long look for a quality write-in candidate who can inspire engagement in the political process, Chuck Hagel came to mind.
With Chuck’s Republican roots yet independent bold character, an internationalist’s vision, solid financial discipline and experience, we have the man the nation can rally around and gather a winning write-in campaign. He is the sensible alternative to what the major political parties have presented as the best they have to offer.

I challenge this nation to do better — say none of the above and mount a winning national write-in campaign with Hagel as the sensible alternative.

I know that Senator Hagel who now co-chairs the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board won’t run for President — but while my powder is still dry in this next election, I like the idea of people writing him in.

Writing in Hagel’s name would be like a petition for a smart national security policy that doesn’t make false choices between Israel and the Arab Middle East, that understands that competition with China needs to be organized constructively around each other’s core strategic ambitions and interests, that Russia can’t be shrugged off, that the United States needs a coherent national energy policy, that engaging in numerous wars around the world without paying for them is not a recipe for national strength but rather for security disasters.

Hagel won’t run — but supporting his brand of politics is an important market signal for President Obama to see and hear.

– Steve Clemons

Read more at The Washington Note

While everyone knows that the defense budget is large — even in the numbers that the public sees as the formally admitted figures by the Department of Defense — the truth is that when one scratches beneath the bureaucratic veneer, national security spending is much larger, nearly double the amount US citizens are told.

A Republican, numbers-compulsive defense wonk at the Center for Defense Information, Winslow Wheeler, has published a great summary of what America’s defense budget ‘really’ is.

Wheeler offers a chart of the budget figures for both 2012 and 2013 — starting with what is called the “DOD Base Budget (Discretionary)”.  He then adds line items from different accounts throughout other parts of the budget that really should be part of what is considered defense and security — including the odd factoid that the Department of Defense and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issue different figures of what the DOD Base Budget really is — with the Pentagon shorting what it gives the media by about $6 billion.

Some may quibble with what Wheeler includes in his roster of the nearly $1 trillion the US government is spending to help Americans feel safe — but I find it a good guide to thinking around the corners of the defense and national security budget.

I also think it’s useful to look at the share of “net interest” that Americans are paying for this level of defense expenditure, $$63.7 billion in 2013.

Just like tax and tip noted on a receipt at a restaurant, perhaps we should require those spending US tax dollars to publicly acknowledge the ‘extra tax’ their spending entails in terms of interest payments on debt.

And to take this just one step further, I really would like to know how many cars and how much it costs to ferry US military personnel, generals, colonels, and the like back and forth between the Pentagon and the US Capitol.  The amount of money dedicated by the Pentagon to engage and penetrate the legislative branch of government must be impressive.

– Steve Clemons is Washington Editor at Large at The Atlantic, where this post first appeared. Clemons can be followed on Twitter at @SCClemons

While there have been a long slog of GOP debates, and people may be asking why any more encounters matter at this point — Hispanic Americans want their turn at bat and are working hard to pull off ‘the Hispanic issues conversation’ next Wednesday.

Only problem is that Mitt Romney won’t return calls and say yes or no to attending.

Scheduled for Wednesday, 25 January at the 140,000 student strong Miami-Dade College, the “meet up with candidates” organized by Univision, the US Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and the college has secured commitments from both Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum to attend. Ron Paul’s staff is still trying to work it out and has had discussions with the debate organizers.

But despite a full court press by numerous Romney advisers and donors and even senior members of the LDS Church, Romney and his campaign have been radio silent over whether he will appear or not. The campaign has not yet responded to this writer’s inquiries about its position on the event.

At this point, leading members of the Hispanic community say that they have had enough and are going public with their grumbling about the former Massachusetts governor. One senior Hispanic policy activist has said that Romney is not signalling that America’s Hispanic community is a priority for him.

The President and Chairman of the US Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Nina Vaca and Javier Palomarez respectively, have issued these statements “thanking” Santorum and Gingrich for their commitments — but also implying that Romney is dissing them.

Nina Vaca, Chairman of the Board of Directors

“As the premier voice for America’s Hispanic business community, the USHCC has organized this event to provide a forum for the Republican Presidential candidates to directly address the fastest-growing and most dynamic group of job creators – the nation’s Hispanic entrepreneurs.”

“64% of jobs in our country are created by small business, and Hispanic entrepreneurs are leading the growth in that segment. Our nation’s economic recovery will require continued growth in the Hispanic business community, and Speaker Gingrich and Senator Santorum’s willingness to speak at this event underscores their understanding of our contributions.

Javier Palomarez, President & CEO

“We have worked closely with two world class institutions — Univision and Miami-Dade College– to create an event that will allow the Republican candidates to begin a national conversation with America’s Hispanic community.

We are thankful for the participation of Speaker Gingrich and Senator Santorum, these gentlemen have shown they recognize the important role that Hispanic job creators play in the American economy. Our three organizations have a unique ability to reach the very voters who will decide the next Republican nominee, and I hope that Governor Romney and Rep. Paul will decide to join us.
In the fall of 2011, a strange dust-up took place between Florida’s leading Hispanic politico, US Senator Marco Rubio, who accused Univision of trying to shake him down by foregoing commentary about the criminal record of one of his family members if he’d do an interview for the network. Univision denies the allegations — and The New Yorker’s Ken Auletta wrote an extensive, thoughtful profile of this episode here. The consequence last October was that Rubio then got most of the potential GOP presidential contenders (who might want him on their ticket in the VP slot) to boycott this Univision debate.

So, Romney’s reluctance may still be tied to the Rubio-Univision sumo match, or may be that he’s just pretty busy and hasn’t gotten to his in-box.

But Hispanic leaders involved in trying to get Romney to talk with them and engage Hispanic issues are now issuing alerts that they are not at all happy being ignored.

More at The Washington Note

– Steve Clemons is Washington Editor at Large at The Atlantic, where this post first appeared. Clemons can be followed on Twitter at @SCClemons

A senior White House official has confirmed that Vice President Joe Biden will take the lead on the administration’s next phase China policy.

While the Departments of State and Treasury have held important functional roles in conducting the China-US Strategic and Economic Dialogue meetings, raising the bilateral status of US-China relations with ongoing meetings between two senior US Executive Branch officials with two of China’s most senior leaders, Vice Premier Li Keqiang and State Councillor Dai Bingguo, there has been a general sense that neither Timothy Geithner nor Hillary Clinton and her team were comprehensively driving US-China policy.

The White House official made clear that the coming shift in the locus of US-China policy management was not a critique of either Clinton or Geithner’s management of the China portfolio — but rather, the rise of Hu Jintao heir apparent and current Vice President Xi Jinping as the likely next President of China created certain practical challenges in dealing with him on a same-status level throughout much of 2012 until Xi’s accession to the presidency is formalized.

The view of some of the administration’s China-handlers is that management of US-China policy has become so central to a vast array of other policy challenges that the administration’s approach needs to be both broad and managed with “a deep and senior bench.”  The evolution of many functional offices at the Department of State and Treasury tasked with various line items in the China-US Strategic and Economic Dialogue has helped stabilize many aspects of the relationship and has helped to benchmark meeting to meeting progress on core concerns.

National Security Advisor Thomas Donilon has essentially been holding the China policy portfolio himself since September 2010 when in the early part of that month he and then Obama national economic advisor Lawrence Summers went to Beijing to attempt a reset in a quickly deteriorating US-China economic and military relationship.  For the most part, currency politics aside, Donilon’s mission has succeeded — and he has since preempted either Clinton’s China hands, particularly Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, or Geithner’s team from taking primacy over US-China policy.

The shift to a strategy of engagement with Biden at the top, orchestrated by Donilon, allows the US to deal with China’s likely next president from a Vice President to a Vice President/Next President status — and to continue both the Departments of State’s and Treasury’s ongoing engagement with other designated key Chinese leaders.

After President Obama’s 2008 presidential win, the original intention of the White House was to focus the Vice President primarily on domestic matters — telling this writer at the time to remember that Joe Biden had recently been featured in Working Mother magazine.  Part of the concern at the time was that with such personalities as Defense Secretary Bob Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, then National Security Advisor General Jim Jones, super-general-in-the-field David Petraeus, CIA Director Leon Panetta, Envoys Richard Holbrooke, former Senator George Mitchell, Stephen Bosworth, and Dennis Ross — Joe Biden as a roving foreign policy/national security hand wasn’t perceived to be stabilizing to a strong-on-divas Obama team.

However, Joe Biden quietly took on national security tasks that were key to President Obama and that needed more off the newspaper front page handling.  These included laying the groundwork for the major nuclear materials summit that the Obama administration hosted in April 2010 as well as lining up the continuity of thinking and policy deployment tying together this nuclear materials and WMD summit with President Obama’s Nuclear Posture Review and the Senate passage of the New START treaty.  Biden also played a leading role — along with Defense Secretary Bob Gates — in the “Russia reset.”

And whether Iraq’s democratic-appearing government survives or not, the person who did more than any other behind the scenes to broker the deals and to play communications envoy between factions of Iraq’s fractured political order was Joe Biden.  Biden has worked nearly every day — and definitely every week of his tenure in the vice-presidency trying to seduce former, bitter enemies to realize that they had more ultimately to gain for their constituents, their nation, and themselves personally if they held together the semblance of a constitutional arrangement rather than ripping it up and devolving into civil war once again.

Biden has checked off the boxes of Iraq, Russia, and nuclear materials — and his foreign policy slate is largely clear.

While this writer thinks he should be the person who does for US-Afghanistan policy what he did in the US-Iraq case, a topic for another day, Biden’s next big task will be the next phase evolution of US-China policy.

– Steve Clemons is Washington Editor at Large at The Atlantic, where this post first appeared. Clemons can be followed on Twitter at @SCClemons

Read more at TheWashingtonNote.com

Iraq surge architects Frederick and Kimberly Kagan have published an informed, provocative, yet thoughtful commentary, “Is Iraq Lost?“, in the latest Weekly Standard.

The authors open with a blast at what they characterize as a self-congratulating Obama administration.  They write:

With administration officials celebrating the “successful” withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, thanking antiwar groups for making that withdrawal possible, and proffering outrageous claims about Iraq’s “stability,” “sovereignty,” and the “demilitarization” of American foreign policy even as Iraq collapses, it is hard to stay focused on America’s interests and security requirements. Especially in an election year, the temptation will only grow to argue about who lost Iraq, whether it was doomed from the outset, whether the current disaster “proves” either that the success of the surge was inherently ephemeral or that the withdrawal of U.S. troops caused the collapse. The time will come for such an audit of Iraq policy over the last five years, but not yet. For the crisis in Iraq is still unfolding, and the United States continues to have a huge stake in the outcome. The question of the moment is not “Who lost Iraq?” but rather “Is Iraq definitely lost?”

The Kagans share their granual understanding of the conflict and deal-making between various factions in Iraq’s political ecosystem.

They suggest, and I agree, that the US troop withdrawal has impacted the previous equilibrium and changed the calculations of power players in the government — and that President Nouri al-Maliki is moving to consolidate his control over the state, working to move Sunni rivals out of their positions — and has used the pretext of an alleged plot against his life by Vice President Tariq al Hashimi to make his moves.

The Kagans write:

The withdrawal of all American military forces has greatly reduced America’s leverage in Iraq. U.S. military forces were a buffer to prevent political and ethno-sectarian friction from becoming violent by guaranteeing Maliki against a Sunni coup d’état and guaranteeing the Sunnis against a Shiite campaign of militarized repression. The withdrawal of that buffer precipitated this crisis and removed much of our leverage. The withdrawal is complete and unlikely to be reversed. Still, the United States maintains some leverage in Iraq and considerable leverage in the region. The Obama administration will have to use all of its skills to maximize the impact of what leverage it retains.

I agree with most of the observations by Kimberly and Frederick Kagan about the fragility and downward course of political trends inside Iraq.

That said, I believe that a combination of creative diplomacy and deal-making behind the scenes orchestrated and directed by Vice President Joe Biden and his national security adviser Antony Blinken — in addition to the good work done until his departure by UN Senior Iraq Representative Ad Melkert — held together a fractious political mess of rival groups that aren’t yet fully sure that a democratic order best serves their interests.  But Biden, Melkert, and others made something work that was a complete mess previously and helped many powerful Iraqis realize that there was the possibility of a stable democratic political order rather than a future of convulsive, sectarian civil war.

That said, US forces withdrawing have changed the equation.  One senior White House official recently said that the US “can’t midwife Iraq for 18 years; the baby is born and now we have to move back and see what comes of this country.”

The point of disagreement I have with the Kagans about the audit they suggest is coming about who has been responsible for success or failure in Iraq has to do with how they frame responsibility for key decisions.  They write:

We can relitigate the wisdom of the invasion, the course of the war, the success of the surge, and other important questions endlessly, but one thing should be perfectly plain. From the moment U.S. forces left Iraq, President Barack Obama owned the policy and its outcome.

From my perspective, President Obama and particularly Joe Biden took a miserable part of the US foreign policy portfolio — that had already greatly sapped American power and prestige and undermined US credibility — and improved matters in a way that would not have been achieved without their efforts.

The daily negotiations Biden engaged in between Barzani, Talabani, al-Maliki, al-Hashimi and others — who to this day have difficulty speaking directly to each other — allowed for an elemental level of trust-building in the Iraq national enterprise among these rival individuals and groups they represented.  Maybe this will hold and maybe not.  But it’s wrong-headed to think that Obama and his team “own” this mess because they have downsized US vulnerability to affairs inside Iraq.

The more significant accounting needed on Iraq is that which led the United States not only to invade — but then to double down on the surge, an attempt to obligate the US to an empire-building set of responsibilities that the US public never really debated or signed off on.  This is the conceit of many strategic elites who believe that the nation’s national security decisions should be made without regard to the public’s appetite for sacrificing blood and treasure abroad on questionable ventures.

Saddam Hussein was a monstrous leader — no doubt.  But the world has many.  Saddam did not contribute to the al Qaeda machine that attacked New York and Washington on September 11, 2001; was largely in a controlled box that the British and US were imposing with a no-fly zone over Iraq; and had not re-engineered stockpiles of WMDs.  The US invasion of Iraq was an enormous strategic mistake because it triggered a downgrade regarding US power in the world in the eyes of other important nations — and emboldened the aspirations of Iran which the US and its allies have a diminished stock of power to deal with today.

I think Biden and his team have done the best job that any outsider could have done in helping to calm sectarian distrust and to generate a commitment to a semi-democratic process as Iraq evolves.  That said, al-Maliki could turn out to be a successor strong man to Saddam Hussein; time will tell.

A fair accounting of this escapade, however, must start with those who wrongly obligated the US to an invasion and nation-building project that harmed American interests from the outset.  Blame or achievement starts there.

To presume that American citizens would go on paying the tab for the midwifing of Iraq for generations is very much out of touch with American aspirations and priorities today.

– Steve Clemons is Washington Editor at Large at The Atlantic, where this post first appeared. Clemons can be followed on Twitter at @SCClemons

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Share / Recommend – Comment – Permanent Link – Print – Friday, Dec 23 2011, 10:03AM

Inspired by The Atlantic‘s 2011 Holiday Gift Guide in which our food and culture senior editor Corby Kummer curated gift idea offerings from the great and the good, I have some ideas of my own.

But to remind, Arianna Huffington wants an old-fashioned analogue alarm clock; former Blogger and Twitter CEO Evan Williams wants a Nest learning thermostat; Nora Ephron wants an extra freezer; former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle a kayak; British Ambassador to the US Nigel Sheinwald Bose headphones; and Zeke Emanuel (yes, the other brother) wants a Yemenite mezuzah.

I’ve already suggested two Civil War related ideas given the 150th anniversary this year of that national, bloody tear — first The Atlantic‘s special commemorative issue titled The Civil War as well as Adam Goodheart’s brilliantly crafted 1861: The Civil War Awakening.

But one of the gifts I just received from one of my colleagues (but there is no bias in this recommendation) is an attractively labeled bottle of Bully Boy Massachusetts concocted organic vodka.  Here are the online retailers for Bully Boy.  Great stuff.  Mixes well.

When we asked Arianna, Ambassador Sheinwald, Senator Daschle, Evan Williams and others what they wanted for the holidays — we also asked them to let us know what their favorite charity was.

Zeke Emanuel told us he supports Mazon, a Jewish charity that distributes food.  Arianna focused her spotlight on the Acumen Fund which invests in start-ups from Karachi to Kenya.  Tom Daschle gives to Southwest Youth and Family Services of Seattle.

Awesome.

In that spirit, my significant other and I host a fairly large, DC-style holiday party each year, asking all who come to bring with them canned food and other non-perishables which we donate to Food and Friends, which helps foster a community of care for those living with HIV/AIDS, cancer and other life-challenging illnesses.

The folks at Food & Friends do a terrific job preparing and delivering meals — and some of these non-perishable items in packages — to those on their care rosters.

Last night, when Andrew and I were packing up the pick-up truck bed full of cans and boxes, we found a check for $1,000.00 from a friend made out to Food & Friends saying that this might be more help than then cans.

Thanks so much Walt.  Moving.

Giving and getting need to go together.

Ok, back to what I’d like to have on my holiday gift list — or what I might suggest for yours.

Among those interesting people who showed up at our holiday party was Marc Pachter, long time and former director of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington who is simultaneously brilliant and humble — and just knows so much.  I didn’t get to spend enough time with Marc at the party — so one of the gifts I want for the next year is a long dinner and night cap with this amazing intellectual.

He not only spent much of his life collecting and curating the images of our nation’s great and good — but interviewed J. William Fulbright, convinced Julia Child to allow her kitchen to appear as an avant-garde portrait en masse of her life and contributions, and engineered the hanging of Stephen Colbert’s picture of himself near the bathroom door of the Portrait Gallery.

I do a lot of interviewing of folks — sometimes on camera and some times just to learn.  Watch this TED interview with Marc Pachter who shares wonderful insights about the art of the intimate interview.  It’s been watched 150,000 times — three times by me.

This gift of quality time with Pachter is probably one I can arrange on my own — but what I need some help on and probably won’t get but would love is Cisco’s TelePresence System 3010.  I’m not sure what this costs rack rate, but have been told for friends and family, it’s around $30k.

I know, pricey — but it completely changes the way one interacts with others who are 7,000 miles away.  I do love video skype, but when one is sitting across from three screens that have life-sized images of the people sitting at the same height and level you are — and you can share data and drawings and smiles and photos in real time, almost as if in real life — you would always prefer that over getting on a plane and spending a day or two traveling no matter how much you loved the miles.

I went to see how the Cisco TelePresence system worked the other day and told them that they should start an affinity program of points given to people for miles they didn’t fly by using the system.

I’m sure that there are some downsides with this system that some informed tech writer might have pointed out — but I can’t find any.  I love this system and want one.  I wonder if President Obama has one.

If I did get a Cisco platform like this or was even able to borrow it now and then, I’d organize live chats with Matt Damon on his global work with Water.org; would chat about Brazil’s demands to play a larger role in global governance with the very impressive Brazilian Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota; and would talk with women active in the Nablus, Palestine-based Tomorrow’s Youth Organization that I think is doing amazing work in an area of the world too many are ignoring.

So that’s what I want.  Maybe Cisco will just let me visit one of these things now and then;  And maybe get Matt Damon on line on the other end.  I’ll even see the movie.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, Happy New Year!

– Steve Clemons is Washington Editor at Large at The Atlantic, where this post first appeared. Clemons can be followed on Twitter at @SCClemons

More at TheWashingtonNote.com