Critics Turn Lori Gaver into NASA’s Alexander Hamilton

Alexander Hamilton, First Treasury Secretary of the United States

I’ve been rereading Joseph J. Ellis’ book, “Founding Brothers”. The Pulitzer Prize winning tome looks back at the early days of the American Republic in the 1790s. I was struck by some of the parallels between that crucial period and the current struggle over the future of NASA.

During those early years, the founding generation broke into two main political parties. The Federalists who dominated the government under Presidents George Washington and John Adams believed a strong central authority was necessary to bind together the former British colonies into a lasting union. The Republicans under Thomas Jefferson believed in a weaker national government with more power to the states and individuals. After all, hadn’t the Revolution been fought against the centralized power of King George III and Parliament?

The political arguments grew quite bitter, with each side accusing the other of betraying the principles of the American Revolution. Ellis explains Jefferson’s view:

The chief villain and core counterrevolutionary character in the Jeffersonian drama was [Secretary of the Treasury] Alexander Hamilton, and the most worrisome feature on the political landscape was Hamilton’s financial scheme, with its presumption of a consolidated federal government possessing many of the powers over the states that Parliament had exercised over the colonies. Under Hamilton’s diabolical leadership, the United States seem to be re-creating the very political and economic institutions – the national bank became the most visible symbol of the accumulating corruption – that the Revolution was designed to destroy. Jefferson developed a full-blooded conspiracy theory in which bankers, speculators, federal officeholders, and a small but powerful congregation of closet Tories permanently alienated from the agrarian majority (“They all live in cities,” he wrote) had captured the meaning of the Revolution and were now preceding to strangle it to death behind the closed doors of investment houses and within the faraway corridors of the Federalist government in New York and Philadelphia.

In launching his attack on the ruling Federalists, Jefferson faced a formidable obstacle: George Washington. Although the general-turned-president tried to remain above party politics and never became a Federalist, he favored many of the party’s policies. That made him the leader of the opposing party in all but name.

The problem was that Washington was a towering figure in America, revered for his command of the Continental Army through eight years of bitter struggle and his role in winning the peace that followed. Thus, frontal assaults were difficult:

Exactly where Washington fit in this horrific picture is difficult to determine. After all, he presumably knew something about the meaning and purpose of the Revolution, having done more than any man to assure its success. (As Jefferson’s critics were quick to observe, the man ensconced at Monticello had never fired a shot in anger throughout the war.) Initially, Jefferson simply refused to assign Washington any culpability for the Federalists conspiracy, somehow suggesting that the person at the very center of the government was wholly oblivious to the schemes swirling around him. At some unspoken level of understanding Jefferson recognized that Washington was the American untouchable, and that any effort to include him in the indictment immediately placed his entire case against the Federalists on the permanent defensive.

Ellis doesn’t find much truth in these arguments. He concludes that whatever the effects of advancing age upon Washington’s mind and body, he remained in command of his faculties and his government through his retirement in 1797.

Some two centuries later, critics of Barack Obama’s plan for NASA have run up against a similar problem in the form of NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. The Marine veteran flew more than 100 combat missions over Vietnam and served in high-level leadership positions in the Corps. He is a former NASA astronaut with four space shuttle missions under his belt, including two stints as flight commander. He watched 14 colleagues die in space shuttle accidents.

In short, Charles Bolden is not an easy man to dismiss. He presumably knows something about the meaning and purpose of NASA, and the risks inherent in its work. His willingness to embrace an approach that goes against NASA’s traditional grain gives the proposed policy gravitas it would not have coming from a less experienced figure.

So, some critics have spent a lot of time aiming at other targets. Former NASA employee Homer Hickam, author of the memoir “Rocket Boys” that the film October Sky was based on, named not one but two villains in a recent letter to the House Committee on Science and Technology:

Yesterday, I wrote Lori Garver, Deputy Administrator of NASA, and John Holdren, chief of OSTP, asking them to resign. They are the principal architects of the decision to cancel the American lunar spaceflight program known as Constellation. The manner in which the end of Constellation was announced represents a failure of basic Management 101 principles. A good manager never shuts down a large program without having a sound plan on what to do next. Instead, what we got from Mrs. Garver and Dr. Holdren was whimsical, airy drivel without any worthy NASA goal. This decision is essentially a body blow to the American economy since spaceflight is one of the primary drivers of our technological prowess. Garver and Holdren are political activists and gadflys who have no business making serious space policy. They should leave.

Curiously, Hickam does not mention Bolden at all in the letter. It was as if as administrator he had no role in the policy. The implication came off to some observers as insulting to the general.

Louisiana Sen. David Vitter followed this same line of reasoning while questioning Bolden at a Congressional hearing last week. Vitter repeatedly implied that Garver – who was not at the hearing – is the Hamilton-like villain behind a new policy that endangers jobs in his state:

Vitter accused Garver — who was not present at the hearing — of orchestrating the cancellation of Constellation. He also seemed to suggest that Garver was running the agency, and not Administrator Charlie Bolden. Bolden later called Vitter’s comment “unfair.”

The attacks don’t seem to be much more credible than Jefferson’s theory about Washington. They also seem to have done more harm than good, outraging officials at the White House as well as Garver’s supporters in the aerospace community.

Meanwhile, Hickam has followed up on his earlier blast with an open letter to Bolden in which he criticizes NASA’s leader directly but seems to blame his superiors at the White House for the key flaw in the policy:

It was my pleasure to introduce you as NASA’s new administrator at the National Space Club’s 2009 von Braun dinner. We had a nice conversation and I was impressed by your obviously sincere love of our country and spaceflight.

It was for that reason, I guess, that I was so surprised at how you’ve treated a lot of the people who work for you, all of whom also love our country and spaceflight. Maybe you weren’t aware that many of those people were pulling 80+hour weeks doing everything they could do move the Constellation moon program forward. The impersonal manner in which you informed them that their work was no longer needed was not good, Charlie. Nor was the fact you allowed the program that defined NASA’s future to be closed down with nothing concrete to take its place. I mean, a good manager would never allow a thing like that to happen. That’s why I think you were as surprised as everybody else when you got your orders from the White House. At least, I hope you were.

It’s not clear whether such orders originated from the White House. However, it does seem to be a way for Hickam to exonerate Bolden from the most serious charge in the letter: managerial ineptitude. Under this formulation, the blame lies with Holdren and presumably President Obama.

The larger question is, given the policy being pursued and financial realities, what alternatives existed. Whether Bolden and the Administration had the time to better define the proposed policies prior to release the 2011 budget is highly debatable. Shutting down Constellation could take a year. Organizing a COTS-style competition for the space shuttle’s successor will take a considerable period of time. Given the constrained budget, these actions are contingent upon each other. What would have been the alternative? Fund Constellation full bore for another year while secretly working on a commercial option? How would that have worked?

As for Hickam’s point about how the policy was rolled out, he’s right there. Bolden and the Administration could have done a much better job of preparing the workforce and explaining the plan. Bolden, to his credit, has admitted as much and has taken full responsibility for the failure, saying he failed to heed wiser advice from his staff. There’s not much else to say about it at this point. Learn from the experience, and next time listen to your advisers.

Bolden has publicly asked observers to hold him responsible for what NASA does under his leadership. That is something people will undoubtedly do. The administrator may, from time to time, privately regret having made that challenge to critics. Which will put him in the good company of just about every public official who has ever lived.

As the 1790s wore on, Republican criticism of George Washington became more direct and personal. The Revolutionary War hero was a bit thin skinned about the attacks. But, he bore up under them, understanding that was the price he paid for the public duties with which he had been entrusted. Despite the criticism, Washington retired as a revered figure – a stature that has dimmed little over the preceding two centuries. Many of his decisions and policies have stood the test of time.

Bolden will need a similar mettle to navigate the shoals that lie ahead. But, if he can execute on the policies that he has proposed, he could turn out to be the best NASA administrator since the legendary Jim Webb guided the agency to the moon forty years ago. As always, time will tell.