Dafmeister wrote:The 'large light cruiser' designation was an Admiralty cheat to get past a Treasury ban on building anything larger than a light cruiser - much like the RMN's Admiralty called their latest heavy cruiser the Edward Saganami-C to fool Janacek, Houseman et al into thinking that it was just an upgrade to an existing design rather than the completely new class it actually was.
I wonder how much fooling Janacek himself needed. Gutting the Navy spending was something he realized was necessary for the political coalition of which his CA was a part, and something he figured they could afford given cousin Sonja Hemphill's incomparable technology. But I don't think he really
liked gutting the RMN, and a Saganami-C was still an awesome cruiser (and he loved cruisers) and an embodiment of Manticoran technological superiority. Heck, with DDM's, and with his confidence no one else would possibly build MDM podlayers, those Saganami-C's could possibly stand up to (with some numerical advantage) the crude, traditional wallers he figured anyone else could build.
I don't mean to suggest he wasn't corrupt, criminal, and prone to thinking that didn't take into account unpleasant truths. I just suggest his list of intellectual and moral vices and delusions wasn't identical to Houseman's or High Ridge's.