BRAC Independence

The base-closing commission considering the Pentagon's recommendations has been surprisingly independent this week, keeping open two of the Pentagon's biggest targets in the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and Naval Submarine Base New London. Today they also voted to spare Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota, which has been the source of tremendous political fighting:

The surprise decision on Ellsworth was a setback for Pentagon leaders, a blessing for South Dakotans who feared losing about 4,000 jobs, and a victory for Sen. John Thune and the state's other politicians who lobbied vigorously to save the base. Thune, a freshman Republican, unseated then-Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle partly on the strength of his claim he could help save the base.

South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds called it "a great day for South Dakota."

Ellsworth is home to half the nation's fleet of B1-B bombers. The Pentagon had wanted to move all the bombers to their other location, Dyess Air Foce Base in Texas.

But the commission found that closing Ellsworth wouldn't save any money over 20 years, and that it actually would cost nearly $20 million to move the planes to the Texas base. The Pentagon had projected saving $1.8 billion over two decades with the closure.

I don't know the details, but it seems rather amazing that the Pentagon could project nearly $2 billion in savings, and have the commission find that there wouldn't have been any at all. That's some crazy math.

In my neck of the woods, former President Jimmy Carter is taking some heat for going to bat on behalf of Naval Submarine Base New London, where he served in his younger days as a submariner:

Former President Jimmy Carter was the target of scorn in his home state after he lobbied to save a Connecticut submarine base at the expense of thousands of jobs in Georgia.

One member of an independent panel said Carter was part of the reason it voted to reverse a Pentagon recommendation to close the Naval Submarine Base New London, which would have shifted six subs and 3,367 jobs to Georgia's Kings Bay base.

"What was he thinking?" Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue said Thursday.

The Pentagon estimated that shifting fast-attack submarines, a maintenance facility and the Naval Submarine School from Groton, Conn., to Georgia would grow the overall work force in St. Marys, a coastal town of 14,000, by 22 percent. That was the largest predicted percentage gain for any military community in the nation.

But Carter - a former Georgia governor and the only president ever to serve as a submariner - sent a letter to the Base Closure and Realignment Commission last week, pleading to keep open the Connecticut base where he had been stationed as a young engineer in the 1950s.

You have to love just how heated sectional politics can get when there are big bucks at stake. Representative government at its best? Worst? Who knows. Edmund Burke would probably be rather displeased with most of it, though Carter seems to have risen above the chains of his neighbor's (if no longer his constituent's) interests.

Besides, for those communities that do lose their military infrastructure, a new article from Time suggests that things will probably turn out just fine.