Alice M.
Ply pets Rivlin, in Journal of Policy Analysis and
Management (Fall 1984), John Wiley and
Are Not Enough Sons. 605 Third Ave., New York. N.Y.
Making public policy was once part politics, part eenie, meenie, minie, mo.
During the last 20 years, however, computer-equipped policy analysts
have inundated elected officials with data intended to take the guesswork
out of the process. Have they improved the quality of legislation?
Not much, says Rivlin, founder and for eight years...
specialists, many written in maddeningly arcane jargon, simply overload legislators. Moreover, such analyses often reveal just how complicated a problem really is. And analysts' prescriptions are always subject to error. It all adds up to frustration for the recipients. Too often, Rivlin says, they either succumb to paralysis or, going to the opposite extreme, plump for unrealistically simple solutions.
In her view, that is how Congress and the White House got the nation into today's budgetary...
Sey-
mour Weiss, in Commentary (Nov. 1984),
165 East 65th St., New York, N.Y. 10022.
Most Americans believe that accords with the Soviets on nuclear arms control are, in general, good and necessary. Weiss, a retired U.S. diplo- mat, emphatically disagrees.
"Just what evidence exists," he asks, "that recent nuclear arms limi- tations agreements with the USSR have actually contributed to U.S. se- curity?" In his view, none. The United States enjoyed clear nuclear superiority...
1,500 US.-backed anti- Castro Cuban exiles was a fiasco that looms large in recent American history. Within days, every invader was either killed or captured.
In an editorial, the New York Times set the tone of future interpreta- tions when it wrote that "basic and inexcusable miscalculations were made the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) [which] presumably
Coming only three months after his inauguration, the Bay of Pigs failure was partic- ularly embarrassing to President John F. Kennedy.
The...
doubting Thomases." Moreover, the President steadily "whittled away" at the CIA'S plan, fearful of unfavorable public reaction to a large-scale inva- sion, especially if its U.S. sponsorship were revealed.
To minimize publicity, Kennedy shifted the landing site from the coastal town of Trinidad to the more remote Bay of Pigs. What he did not seem to realize was that a quiet landing would cut the chances of sparking a popular uprising and that the Bay of Pigs, surrounded swamps, offered...
enemy fire; another 100 were temporarily knocked out of action.
The Syrian forces did most of the damage, effectively employing in- fantry and antitank missiles against the outmaneuvered Israelis. The IDF, Gabriel says, should have responded sending its foot soldiers ahead to clear the way for the tank forces. The PLO's guerrilla tactics seemed to stymie the IDF: The Israelis resorted to artillery barrages and air strikes to counter guerrilla harassment.
The outcome of the conflict was never much...
Sidney D. Drell, Philip J. Parley,
'Star Wars' and David Holloway, in International Se-
curity (Fall 1984), MIT Press (Journals),
28 Carleton St., Cambridge, Mass. 02142.
In 1972, the United States and the Soviet Union signed the Antiballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty sharply limiting their defenses against nuclear missiles. Both sides judged such defenses "to be futile, destabilizing, and costly," recall Stanford researchers Drell, Farley, and Holloway.
That logic still holds, they...
Peter F.
After Ma Bell Drucker, in ThePublic Interest (Fall 1984), 20th & Northampton Sts., Easton, Pa. 18042.
When Ma Bell passed away in January 1984, with the breakup of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T), hardly anybody grieved. Drucker, a noted management expert who teaches at the Clare- mont Graduate School, believes that Americans may yet sorely regret the demise of the giant telecommunications monopoly.
Its splintering was the result of a federal antitrust suit...
Peter L. Bernstein and
Theodore H. Silbert, in Harvard Business To Oracles? Review (Sept.-Oct. 1984), P.O. Box 3010,
Woburn, Mass. 01888-9975.
If you like having egg on your face, economic forecasting may be the profession for you.
Despite its many spectacular failures, write Bernstein and Silbert, New York financial consultant and banker, respectively, the art of read- ing tea leaves is indispensable to business. An executive who makes no effort to anticipate the future will find himself out...
Stephen McNees and John Ries, both economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, showed that the most accurate forecaster in any one year had little hope of repeating his success the next. But, based on a study of 44 "blue-chip" forecasters' performances from 1977 through 1983, Bern- stein and Silbert argue that an average of many auguries may be useful.
The group went wrong more than once. In 1978, for example, the "consensus" forecasts for both inflation and change in...