Inactive: POTUS
Entries by Melvin Small
Welcome to POTUS. This group blog is devoted to politics, history and presidents.
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Friday, August 28, 2009
Covering Dissenters
I have heard a lot of criticism of late, primarily from liberals, about the way television news has been lavishing disproportionate attention on the most uncivil attendees at the town-hall meetings whose only apparent goal is to block reasoned debate. This is what happened during the Vietnam era when the media, looking for telegenic stories, focused their attention on the most bizarre-looking participants and the most violent rhetoric (and sometimes actions), when, in fact, most of the time most of those at the meetings and demonstrations were non-violent and civil. Indeed, virtually all opponents of the war abhorred the relative handful of such radicals whom, they felt, damaged their cause. Journalists knew, however, that coverage of those antiwarriors who comprised the decorous majority at the events did not make for compelling television.
What is disturbing to me these days is that while the media’s focus on the violent actions and rhetoric of a few during the Vietnam era led many undecided Americans to support the presidents because they did not like the looks of those they saw on television opposing administration policy, the undemocratic neo-Marcusian rowdies at the health-care sessions have not received much criticism from conservatives, have been cheered on by elected officials and radio talkers, and, apparently, have produced more and not less support for their opposition. At the least, that is what the public opinion polls suggest. And this is one reason why I reject the facile comparisons between the undemocratic tactics of some on the left in the sixties and comparable tactics employed by some on the right today.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
A footnote on the death of Robert McNamara
Robert McNamara, as we have seen in Errol Morris’s “The Fog of War” (2003) and in his own reflections on the Vietnam War, was tormented by his central role in the escalation of that disastrous conflict. He finally began talking about that role in 1995 in In Retrospect after remaining silent for a quarter century. Few major figures in American politics had maintained their silence for so long on an issue with which they were so intimately involved.
When I asked him for an interview for Johnson, Nixon, and the Doves (1988) in April 1983, I received my original letter back with a tiny handwritten note scribbled in pencil along the top border—“I would be happy to talk to you but it is unlikely we will be able to find a convenient time during the next several months—e.g. I will have made 5 round trips to Europe within 10 weeks.” Over the next year, and well after those ten weeks, on the four occasions when I called his office to tell his secretary that I would be in town for the interview, he was always unavailable. When I later informed McGeorge Bundy, another interviewee, that I was planning on talking to McNamara, he asked, “Didn’t you know that Mac never talks about the Vietnam War?” I had not been aware of that fact until that point and never did find out why he responded positively to my initial inquiry.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
The media and the teabaggers
Today, as expected, right-wing pundits fumed at the coverage the teabag rallies received in the mainstream media. Television cameras allegedly focused on the fringes of those rallies, singling out the most extreme placards and garb. So what else is new? The camera shots of people on the two-minute-or-less segments on the rallies wearing Maobama tee shirts reminded me of the many Mao tees I used to see on television during the sixties and seventies when the “liberal” media covered antiwar rallies. Che and Ho tee shirts, Viet Cong flags, long-haired hippies, Dikes on Bikes and, especially, the violent activities at the fringes is what drew media attention during those heady days, as I pointed out in Covering Dissent (1994). This distortion was not necessarily a product of political bias—the reporters and camera people sought out the most telegenic colorful and exciting footage in order to sell their product.
And by the way, the most generous right-wing analyses today suggest a total crowd count as large as 200,000 in 800 cities. Lest we forget, without free advertising from Fox, the Moratorium on another Wednesday forty years ago, October 15, 1969, drew at least 2 million in 200 cities.
Friday, March 13, 2009
Report from Talk-Radio Land
I am returning from holidays in La Jolla and the Sarasota area where I listened periodically to talk radio to see how Obama was doing in that medium as I walked the glorious beaches. (I know I should be communing with nature, listening to the Pacific and Gulf tides and seabirds but I am a political junkie.) San Diego County went for Obama in November and McCain just eked out a victory in Sarasota. But in both locales I was unable to pick up NPR or Air America on my headphones. It was a steady diet of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Medved, Bill Bennett, Monica Crowley, Hugh Hewitt, Michael Savage, Mike Gallagher and others. And they all generally agreed that:
Obama was a socialist or communist (Barack Brezhnev); a puppet of evil forces (Axelrod, Emanuel) since he cannot leave his teleprompter; his administration is made up of incompetents and tax cheats; he is an appeaser abroad; he will soon take our guns away; he is a Chicago hack or thug; he lies and dissembles, he wants to kill babies; he is abetted by radical diva Nancy Pelosi; he wants to raise everyone’s taxes, but especially those entrepreneurs who will lead us out of the recession; the pork-laden stimulus package has failed; and the drive-by or mainstream media is in love with him. More generally, FDR’s New Deal did not help end the Depression, the Great Society was a total failure, the current economic crisis was brought about by Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, and Fanny and Freddy, Ronald Reagan’s presidency was a complete success, and above all, using the Fairness Doctrine, the Democrats will soon take all the microphones away from conservative talkers.
We may not need the Fairness Doctrine but there should be some way to encourage or compel stations, in the public interest as per federal regulations, to present an occasional dissenting view, even if polls currently show majority support for Obama. It’s a wonder that any talk-radio listeners in my two locales voted Democratic in November.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Mass Transit
The recent story concerning poor Donald Rumsfeld having to wait for a bus in the cold in Washington called to mind an another sad story about an out-of-power bureaucrat having to deal with mass transit. In the late winter of 1983, I had scheduled an interview with McGeorge Bundy in New York City as part of a project that became Johnson, Nixon, and the Doves (1988). Bundy was then a member of the history department at NYU. His office suite, which was spacious, was situated in an older, undistinguished building on campus. He did, however, have his own personal secretary who complained, after telling me she was with Mr. Bundy at the White House and at the Ford Foundation, “Isn’t this the pits?” It really wasn’t bad for history department digs, but it obviously was not what they had been used to. When Bundy arrived a bit late for the interview, somewhat out of breath and in a mildly disheveled state with his galoshes flopping open, he explained that there was a problem with the subway that he had taken from uptown. It gave me some pleasure to see the “pits” into which Bundy had descended. But I have to admit that he was most gracious and helpful with my research.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Presidential Sports Fantasies
Barack Obama took time off from his hectic schedule in October to sit down with sports columnist Rick Reilly of ESPN to try his hand at Fantasy Football for week 6 of the NFL. Our hoopster president-elect is clearly into sports both as an observer and a participant. This is not the first time a president or president-elect has taken time off from his schedule to play around with sports. On the weekend of June 24-25, 1972, just after the Watergate break-in, President Richard Nixon and his son-in-law David Eisenhower devoted a good deal of time at Camp David working on his all-star baseball teams. In the mid-sixties, Nixon had toyed with the idea of becoming commissioner of baseball or even head of the players’ association. David was one of the most prominent addicts of APBA, a complicated baseball board game based on each player’s statistics from the previous season.
Friday, July 4, 2008
The Left Should Chill Out
Over the past two weeks, left-wing Democrats have expressed concern, even outrage, over Obama’s apparent move towards the center on issues such as a speedy withdrawal from Iraq, campaign financing, the FISA bill, and the Supreme Court’s decision on gun control. What did they expect as we enter the general election period? There is no national mandate for a left-of-center political agenda or even such a mandate within the Democratic Party.
In the primaries, although many left liberals and social democrats opted for Kucinich’s radicalism or Edwards’ populism, both candidates came up short. Moreover, Edwards and Richardson did not achieve much traction when they promised immediate withdrawal from Iraq.
Suppose during the first four years of an Obama presidency we achieve a national health-care program, withdrawal from Iraq, progressive Supreme Court appointments, reinvigoration of the government’s regulatory agencies, a serious energy program, and the weakening of the power of corporate lobbyists—all of which appear to be quite possible. By 2013, we would be comparing his program to the New Deal and the Great Society (By the way, does he have a catchy name for that program yet?), neither of which completely satisfied the party’s left- wing supporters then--and now.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Nobody Asked Me About the Election But...
When will William Safire notice the ubiquity of the phrase “Republican brand” and the word “pivot” in this year’s election coverage?
What would the national polls look like now had the Democrats nominated John Edwards and the Republicans Mitt Romney?
Would sexism in the media have been a campaign issue had Diane Feinstein or Nancy Pelosi been Obama’s chief competition?
This November, the Bradley factor may be less important than the Palmer factor, referring to the two especially admirable African-American presidents on “24,” the tv series that conservatives like Rush Limbaugh admire because it proves, week after week, that torture works. (Yeah, I know I posted this some time ago but no one seemed to notice.)
Were Democrats so happy to regain the White House in the nineties that they ignored the occasional legitimate muck raked up by the “Great Right Wing Conspiracy” as well as some of the Clintons’ lame excuses and obfuscations?
Democrats are always threatening to move to Canada if the Republicans win the presidency. Where will Republicans, who despise socialized medicine, threaten to go?
Will it ever be possible to figure out a way, acceptable to the major parties, the Supreme Court, and the electronic media that live off the advertising, to shorten the primary season?
How does McCain get away with comparing U.S. troops stationed in Germany, Japan, and Korea with the prospect of a long-term occupation of Iraq?
If I were the Democrats, I would saturate the airwaves with brief ads showing clips of McCain and Bush glad-handing with the simple phrases “Had Enough” or "Four More Years” the only text.
If I were the Republicans, I would------Hey, wait a moment, why should I give them any ideas?
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
A Case for Hillary as Obama's Choice for Veep
The thought of Hillary for veep is difficult for many Obama loyalists, and perhaps even their candidate himself, to stomach. She has run a less-than-honorable campaign and represents the old politics against which their man has railed. But if she is the key to victory, especially if many of her disgruntled supporters buy the glass-ceiling argument that she is currently promoting, Obama must offer her the opportunity to be the first woman vice president in U.S. history. And--I never thought I would say it--I hope she would accept the offer.
When John F. Kennedy offered the job to Lyndon Johnson, whom liberals perceived as a corrupt (Landslide Lyndon), conservative, closet segregationist beholden to Texas oil and utility interests, the Michigan delegates came close to walking out of the convention, but they reluctantly stayed on and helped win their state for Kennedy while Johnson did the same in Texas.
More important, aside from the Bush-empowered Dick Cheney, recent vice presidents generally accepted their meager assignments like good team players—think of, Johnson, Humphrey, Agnew, Ford, Rockefeller, Mondale, Bush I, Quayle, and Gore . They may not have been happy about their lot but they understood the relationship of the vice presidency to a warm bucket of piss. And sometimes, of course, presidents have given their vice presidents important special tasks such as, for Hillary, gulp, health care.
But what about Obama’s promise of a new political era? How could he share a ticket with one of the most skilled and cynical practioners of the old politics? Yet, among those most prominently mentioned as plausible vice-presidential candidates, Hagel, Nunn, Rendell, Strickland, and Webb are quite traditional politicos.
It is true that no vice-presidents ever brought along a potentially meddlesome presidential spouse. That’s a no brainer. When John Paul Stevens retires from the Supreme Court, Obama could nominate Bill to replace him guaranteeing that he would be kept busy and out of the way. It may sound like an unusual career move but we do have the William Howard Taft precedent.
Given what Obama will soon face from the Republicans and their lethal 527’s—the Islamic radical, American-flag hating, Farrakhan admiring, Israel bashing, misogynistic appeasing elitest who did not serve in the military and who will not be ready at 3 in the morning—he will need all the votes he can muster from traditional Democratic constituencies. And that is where Hillary comes in, in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, even Florida, as Obama sprints to the finish line. What’s the down side?
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Nobody Asked Me But...(with a genuflection to Jimmy Cannon)
Why don’t Democrats return the GOP’s swipe by referring to the Republic Party?
Is it my imagination or is the Republic Party’s threat to filibuster most every bill it opposes a dramatic change in the way the Senate has done its business? And why not permit Republic senators to really filibuster a popular bill, perhaps the current recession stimulus package? That would be fun for the nation to watch on C-Span and cable news as the economic indicators continue to plummet.
Who would be dumber in November, Republics who refuse to vote for McCain or Democrats who refuse to vote for Clinton? And what about super delegates who might push Clinton over the top knowing that Obama had the better chance of beating McCain?
Would Obama take one for the team and accept the vice presidency if he fails to gain the nomination, knowing that any influence he might have would be eclipsed by that of the apparent co-president, Bill Clinton?
Where did Hillary get the $5 million to loan her campaign? I thought she and her husband left the White House deeply in debt because of legal expenses.
If I were Osama Bin Laden, I would plan a major attack against the West for early November to assist McCain and thus guarantee that American forces would remain in Iraq for one hundred years.
Was Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., accurate in his recently published diaries when he reported that McCain joked at a dinner in 1998 that Chelsea Clinton was ugly because she was the illegitimate child of Hillary and Janet Reno? What a sweet guy! And didn’t his mortal enemy Rush make a comparable comment on his defunct tv show?
How can Hillary with a straight face ask the DNC to register her votes in the Michigan primary when neither Obama nor Edwards were on the ballot because they, and not Hillary, adhered to the DNC edict? And Hillary is breaking ranks again by agreeing to appear on a debate sponsored by Fox.
Romney won’t become president this election cycle, but he sure could play one on tv.
Everyone suggests that Huckabee looks and talks like Jim Nabors but I think he is a dead ringer for Kevin Spacey.
When the price of oil fell the other day I assumed it was a good thing for our economy but then the stock market nosedived because, according to the experts, it was an indicator of future declining demand and thus of recession. Does that mean the value of equities will rise when oil hits $100 a barrel?
How can a banana that made its way from a tree in Central America to my supermarket in Michigan cost only 20 cents?
Saturday, September 22, 2007
What ever happened to the filibuster?
The Democratic led Congress trails even George Bush in the polls. Apparently, much of the public expected some action on Iraq after the last election. Only wonks and subscribers to this website know that the new majority in the Senate is now 60. All a Republican has to do is to announce an intention to launch a filibuster and the legislation, even if it has 51 votes, is defeated. How about Harry Reid calling the opposition’s bluff and permitting a real filibuster to take place? He could reintroduce the Webb amendment that previously received 56 votes, and then let the Republicans begin filibustering on C-Span and even on cable news. At the least, the public, more interested in Britney and OJ, might finally understand that although a majority of senators has responded to its demands for a change in Iraq policy, the Republicans are not only blocking a vote on the issue but they are making it impossible for the Senate to go on about its other duties—aside from voting to condemn MoveOn.org.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Obama and the Palmer Brothers
As Obama continues to rise in the polls, Democrats continue to worry about Harold Ford Jr.,’s recent experience in the Tennessee senatorial election. Apparently, some voters who told pollsters they would vote for him because they thought it was politically correct to say so, could not bring themselves to pull the lever for an African American once they entered the booth.
But maybe it won’t be an issue in 2008 because of the high ratings earned by television’s “24,” paradoxically Rush Limbaugh’s favorite action series. (I say paradoxically because Limbaugh continues to air his odious anti-Obama “Magic Negro” song.)
From its inception, the only honest and admirable presidents in “24” have been two African Americans, the Palmer brothers. It is true, of course, that they occasionally and grudgingly give their official approval to Jack Bauer’s use of torture in the name of national security. But for more than five years, a large national audience has grown accustomed to rooting for the those two African American pillars of integrity in the Oval Office. Will that exposure make it easier for some skeptical voters to pull the lever for Obama in 2008?
Thursday, December 7, 2006
A Vietnam Commission and What Might Have Been
Aside from criticism from some on the left who desire immediate withdrawal and some on the right who want to stay the course, the Iraq Commission's report apparently has won the approval of most Americans. They see it as offering not only a series of useful suggestions but, more importantly perhaps, providing political cover for the administration to withdraw from Iraq short of "victory."
How come there was no such commission during the Vietnam War, especially when it appeared after the Tet Offensive in February 1968 that the light at the end of the tunnel had grown dim?
There almost was one! In March, just before Robert Kennedy entered the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, his people told President Johnson that if he would appoint an independent commission to study war policy, the New York senator would not toss his hat into the ring. Johnson thought about it for a day or two and then rejected the proposal--and the rest, of course, is history.
Wednesday, December 6, 2006
Still Another Vietnam Analogy
After he came back from the lunch break yesterday, Robert Gates amended his comment to Senator Carl Levin that the United States was not winning in Iraq. He assured the Armed Services Committee that while he stood by the original comment, he wanted members to know that the U.S. military had not lost a single battle during the entire conflict.
In 1975, when an American officer told a North Vietnamese officer in Saigon "You know, you never defeated us on the battlefield," his Vietnamese counterpart responded, "That may be so, but it is also irrelevant."
Monday, November 27, 2006
Homage to Jimmy Cannon
(Legendary sportswriter Jimmy Cannon used to write an occasional column headed “Nobody Asked Me But,” in which he included a host of unrelated short items.)
There has to something wrong with a system of higher education when at least three local Detroit AM stations covered live the Michigan State University press conference introducing the new football coach. The university president made a statement about her new employee who, at one million plus, makes considerably more than she does.
Did all of Bob Woodward’s informants tape their conversations with Bush, Rumsfeld, and Powell? How else was he able to use the quotation marks that dominate his narrative?
I can’t remember a year during the Vietnam War that witnessed the publication of as many reputable journalistic histories as has been the case with Iraq during 2006.
How did Arnold Schwarzenegger win by such an impressive margin in California? Couldn’t the Democrats find a more attractive challenger than Angelides among the politicos in the state with the largest population? After all, the party did recruit Jon Tester, a most attractive candidate, in a state which ranks 44th in population.
I never thought I would be glad to see Robert Gates back in Washington.
If there were no Christmas, we would have to invent one for the sake of our economy.
How come blondes…..oops I must be channeling Jimmy Cannon.
Friday, November 3, 2006
Is There an Anti-Iraq War Movement?
According to the polls, opposition to the war in Iraq is the most important issue in this election. I recently gave an interview to a journalist who wanted me to compare the current antiwar “movement” to that of the Vietnam era. As I fielded his questions, it occurred to me that although we have reached the point where 60 percent of the population now opposes the president’s policies in Iraq, this shift in opinion has apparently occurred without much prodding from an identifiable antiwar movement. To be sure, a variety of organizations have sponsored national and regional rallies, marches, and other antiwar activities, but if that constitutes an antiwar “movement,” it does not look very much like the anti-Vietnam War movement in terms of size, breadth, depth, and, especially, media attention. As someone who has written about the earlier movement, I wouldn’t know where to begin were I to try to characterize the current organized opposition to the Bush Administration’s policies in Iraq. Am I missing something in the world of blogs and other internet innovations and their relationships to twenty-first century protest movements?
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Talking to Kim
In 1913, after a bloody coup in Mexico, Woodrow Wilson announced the he would not recognize a “government of butchers,” and established a new principle of international relations that led to the U.S. refusal to recognize the Soviet Union for sixteen years, “Red China” for almost thirty years, Castro’s Cuba for forty-five years and counting, and breaking our own record, North Korea for over a half-century. Forget for the moment that Wilson and his successors were quite selective in deciding which butchers deserved non-recognition. Has this policy ever contributed to our national security?
The Bush administration, some of whose members draw inspiration from Wilson, has refused to engage in direct talks with North Korea, a nation that is apparently interested in normalizing relations with us. At the least, Pyongyang has insisted on direct talks and a non-aggression pledge as the first steps in moving away from confrontation over its nuclear program.
What’s the big deal about meeting them one-on-one, except, I guess, that Bush drew a line in the sand and does not want to lose face or have to admit that he has mishandled North Korean policy? That policy, in contrast to the allegedly wimpy but successful containment policy of Bill Clinton, has led to this weekend’s nuclear test and little else, save the comforting knowledge that everyone in the region agrees with us that Kim is a rogue. And this gang is still asking us to elect them because they can be trusted better than Democrats to defend national security?
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Is the fix in?
In class and occasionally in print, I’ve tried to debunk conspiracy theories ranging from Pearl Harbor, to the Kennedy Assassination, to the CIA and Watergate. I have no evidence for what follows but isn’t it curious that the price of gasoline has dropped by over 30 percent in most locales, and continues to drop the closer we get to the election. A decline in demand is the reason the experts give us but what do we really know about production in places like Saudi Arabia? In the United States, the summer driving season is over but has demand declined so precipitously in China and India, for example?
Over the last month, as gas prices have plummeted, consumer confidence has risen along with the stock market, while potential voters have told pollsters that the state of the economy is becoming less of a problem for them. Did the administration warn its pals in Riyadh that a Democratic Congress could bring renewed investigations into 9/11, a serious program for alternate energy, and a cut and run in Iraq that would leave the Iranians triumphant? Or did the Saudis figure all that out by themselves?
In 1960, Nikita Khrushchev boasted that he elected Kennedy by withholding the release of captured American fliers until Nixon had been deposited in the dustbin of history. Eight years later, the Soviets offered cash-strapped Hubert Humphrey money under the table (which he refused) to help his campaign in the same election where Saigon was “voting” for Nixon. Is our latest October surprise the astounding fall in the price of gasoline?
Sunday, July 16, 2006
Perpetual "War" and American Democracy
Although the recent Hamdan case seems to have curbed the president’s claim to extraordinary war powers a bit, the case and others like it on the horizon raise issues fundamental to our democracy. The administration asserts that it has received from Congress, in the wake of 9/11 legislation and the Iraq enabling vote, the equivalent of war powers. By all accounts, the undeclared Global “War” on Terror, until it is reduced to John Kerry’s “nuisance,” will be the longest war in our history. Does this mean that this administration and administrations far into the future will be able to operate as if they were in a congressionally declared war, suspending civil liberties and other constitutional rights when they choose? Are we in for a fundamental and permanent reshaping of our checks-and-balances system? And remember, the Hamdan case majority of 5-3 would have been 5-4 except for the fact that Roberts recused himself.
Tuesday, May 9, 2006
The CIA and the Military
Leaving aside General Michael V. Hayden's professional qualifications for the position of DCI and whether he would be too close to the Pentagon to operate independently, those who question whether a military man should head the "civilian" agency have not done their history homework. World War I hero "Wild Bill" Donovan was recommissioned as a brigadier general when he ran the OSS during WWII. The first four heads of post-war intelligence, Sidney Souers, Hoyt Vandenberg, Roscoe Hillenkoetter, and Walter Bedell Smith, were military officers. Later, admirals William Raborn and Stansfield Turner headed the agency.
I'd take any of those uniformed DCI's over civilian Allen Dulles anyday.
Hayden's critics should center their attention on his role in the warrantless-wiretap issue, not the fact that he is in uniform.
Sunday, April 2, 2006
Hostages and POW's
Within 24 hours of her return from captivity, Jill Carroll denounced the propaganda videotapes her captors compelled her to deliver.
Looking back at the Vietnam War and the torture of US POW's primarily to compel them to make comparable statements, why doesn't the Pentagon change its policies and announce that it has instructed future POW's to sign all propaganda statements while in captivity? Such an announcement would decrease the likelihood of torture and make such statements worthless to captors. Almost all of the POW's in North Vietnam who initially resisted making such statements suffered unbearable pain for many hours and often days before they ultimately broke under torture. Virtually everyone had his breaking point. I understand the need to keep military secrets but propaganda confessions are not in the same ballpark.
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
Blame the Media: Here We Go Again--Again
It was disturbing for me today to watch President Bush at his press conference, and his supporting talking heads on cable and on the “Today” show, launch an offensive against the media—or in William Safire through Spiro T. Agnew’s famous alliterative phrase those “nattering nabobs of negativism”-- for assisting the enemy by portraying only the unpleasant aspects of the American project in Iraq. The administration claims that American citizens are losing faith in the war because they see only bombings, assassinations, and kidnappings on television and in the newspapers.
Blame the messenger. It worked for a while during Nixon’s first administration. One reason why there are not more uplifting social-work type stories is because the journalists in Iraq are not free to cover our latest attempt to win the hearts and minds of the people. This is not because of government censorship or the embedding process. It is because, as veteran journalist Orville Schell tells us in the NYRB (April 6), it has become almost impossible to venture out beyond the Green Zone because Iraq has become a shooting gallery where, so far, more than 50 reporters have been killed. The allegedly feel-good stories waiting to be covered go unreported because of the breakdown of civil society and the mortal dangers posed by the insurgency and the jihadists. It is the apparent military failure to date and not the media that is to blame for this situation.
Sunday, March 5, 2006
Reagan, Bush, and the Polls
As liberals revel in George Bush’s nosediving poll numbers, conservative loyalists on radio and cable television have been contending that when Ronald Reagan confronted almost as depressing poll numbers in 1982 and 1983, he stuck firm to his principles and policies and, in the end, regained popular support. As late as February 1984, as the presidential campaign was beginning, Americans expressed disapproval of his handling of foreign policy by a 49-38 percent margin. That was just about the time, urged on by his wife among others, that he dropped his “evil-empire” rhetoric and started talking about developing peaceful relations with the Soviet Union. Reagan was responding to popular fears that he had gone too far during his first three years in dangerously heating up the Cold War. How far? Neither he nor most Americans suspected that Moscow had been seriously preparing for what it feared would be a first strike by the United States in 1983. Whatever one may think of Reagan’s foreign policies, he was not as inflexible as Bush’s cheerleaders suggest when they urge him to hang tough in Iraq and ignore the polls. (And, of course, Reagan did not hang tough in Lebanon).
Monday, February 20, 2006
Great Presidents?
The newspapers, airwaves, and internet (see especially, Tournament of Presidents at www.allpresidents.org) are naturally full of presidents today, with many commentaries revolving around presidential greatness. Tomorrow I will inform my diplomatic history class that we will leave the activities of the Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, the first Cleveland, and Harrison administrations to the textbook. None appear on any list of great presidents or even, except for the second Cleveland, consequential presidents. Are we giving them a bum rap? If you read their campaign broadsides and resumes you could believe they were potentially as great as Lincoln or Washington. Was it their misfortune to be president when we were not involved in major wars or major depressions? Or did their subtle leadership contribute to their relatively quiescent tenures in office? In 1945, that obscure party hack, Harry Truman, struck most observers as likely to become as ungreat as Hayes or Arthur. But he was around when everything hit the fan and he rose to the occasion. So, on Presidents’ Day, perhaps we should give some thought to the also-rans in the presidential greatness sweepstakes, maybe throwing in Van Buren and Coolidge as well.
Thursday, February 2, 2006
The Worst President?
I have been a professional historian for more than forty years and have spent a good deal of that time writing and teaching about contemporary U.S. history. Although I consider myself a liberal, I have been gratified over the years to receive praise from students and reviewers alike for being fair and balanced. I have lived through periods when many liberals thought the sky was falling, from the McCarthy era, to the Democrats’ escalation in Vietnam, to Nixon’s illegal and extralegal assaults on the Constitution, to Ronald Reagan and his off-the-shelf foreign adventures. I don’t know if I am being unduly alarmist, but this time it appears to me that the sky is really falling. I would love to be convinced otherwise.
Although as a scholar without access to most of the relevant documents and memoirs and obviously without the historical perspective that enables us to make intelligent judgments about, for example, the Eisenhower presidency, I have come to believe that the Bush administration has been the most incompetent, corrupt, and deceitful administration since the end of WWII. Moreover, despite the fact that a majority of Americans have not been enthusiastic about most of President Bush’s programs, he has been able to promote disastrous economic, environmental, and social policies and to avoid responsibility for even more disastrous national security and military policies through smoke and mirrors.
I don’t recall another administration in my lifetime that has consistently shaded the truth, and more important, made it almost impossible, without a subpoena, for Congress, the media, and the voters to obtain the documentary evidence that would enable them to effectively challenge their leaders. Cover-ups! I once thought Nixon’s and Clinton’s were the worst. Not anymore. Watch what we do, not what we say was the sage advice from former Attorney General John Mitchell.
Most everything the Bush people say is not what they do, from the way drug and oil companies apparently write their own legislation from the White House, to the way the administration has been able to skirt its responsibility for intelligence failures on 9/11, to the flimsy evidence supporting the need to go to war with Iraq, to the savaging of heroic veterans like McCain, Cleland, Kerry, and Murtha, to the unprecedented deficits boosted by irresponsible tax cuts, to the corruption and incompetence of Bush appointees in Baghdad, to the Top-Gun photo-op in which the president declared mission accomplished, to the lack of vehicular and personal armor protection for the undermanned troops in Iraq, to torture and renditions, to the botched Katrina response, “Brownie,” and the continuing failure to respond to the needs of New Orleans,to the arrest or expulsion of citizens from meetings for wearing t-shirts with political slogans, to the incredibly complex and expensive drug plan, and to the recent outrage, the president’s refusal to use the FISA court for wiretaps. As an example of the all-too-common duplicity of this administration, on April 20, 2004, the president said in Buffalo, “A wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed by the way. When we’re talking about chasing down terrorists, we’re talking about getting a court order before we do so.” EGAD! While we are on it, why didn’t that left-wing newspaper, the New York Times, release its information on warrantless wiretaps before the 2004 election?
And what about the DeLay and Libby indictments, Frist’s legal problems, and the crimes of congressmen Ney and Cunningham—with more to come?
I fear for my country. With gerrymandering making all but a handful of House districts contested, with a brilliant propaganda and instant-response machine led by Karl Rove, talk radio, Fox News, Drudge, and round-the-clock bloggers, with an intimidated and emasculated mainstream media, many Americans believe that critics of administration foreign policies are unpatriotic and even subversive, Jack Abramoff is a bipartisan crook, the most important issue facing the nation when the election rolls around is gay marriage and maybe, this time, Christmas, only Republicans can protect us from Bin Laden (who is still at large, of course), and the war in Iraq is the War on Terror, a “war” that will be with us well into the future, thereby justifying perpetual special war powers for the president.
I ask conservative readers, especially, am I off the wall?
Friday, January 27, 2006
Politics and Warrentless Wiretaps
Today’s polls on the president’s use of warrantless wiretaps suggest that depending on how the questions are worded, the president enjoys the support of a majority of Americans for his electronic surveillance of potential terrorists without FISA. That support has a lot to do with the way the administration and its supporters have framed the issue. It will probably be a winning issue for Republicans this election year.
On several occasions in the late seventies, I invited a local FBI agent to talk to my Vietnam class about surveillance of radicals during the sixties and early seventies. He asked them the hypothetical question: If the FBI suspected that one of the 100 odd students in the class was planning to bomb a federal installation in Detroit, would the other 99 mind if he trampled a bit on their constitutional rights and opened their mail and listened in to their phone conversations? (This was a simpler time in terms of the way we communicated with one another.) Slightly fewer than half of the students said it was ok with them, they had nothing to hide, and that stopping the alleged mad bomber was more important than their privacy.
Each year since then I have asked the same question whenever we come to the section on antiwar activists and intelligence agencies, and, over the years, the percentage of those accepting such practices has increased. And this support is bipartisan since, according to a political inventory I often conduct at the start of the class, generally two-thirds of the students claim to be supportive of or leaning towards the Democratic Party.
These results should not be surprising considering the fact that many Americans today consider the ACLU, which is taking the lead in the FISA issue, to be a subversive organization whose activities weaken the nation’s defenses. We have heard Republicans repeatedly claim during the Alito hearings that Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s work for the ACLU made her further out of the mainstream on the Left than Judge Alito is on the Right. And remember what happened to Michael Dukakis when he proudly proclaimed his membership in the ACLU.
I’m afraid national security always trumps the Constitution as a political issue, especially when the United States is at “war.”
Monday, December 12, 2005
Keepers of the Flame
In a December 4, New York Times op-ed piece, former Kennedy aides Ted Sorensen and Arthur Schlesinger Jr. explained what JFK would do in Iraq by finally revealing what he planned to do in Vietnam--announce an intention to withdraw, ask Saigon to ask us to leave, and gradually bring the boys home. The problem is that several generations of historians have failed to discover any documents or memoir material that would permit them to conclude with such certainty that Kennedy had an endgame strategy for Vietnam. Moreover, Sorensen and Schlesinger fail to mention that we do know that the president explicitly noted on several occasions that no withdrawal could take place,or even be announced, until after the 1964 election. The current case is quite different since President Bush must appear to begin a withdrawal from Iraq before the 2006 congressional elections or face the loss of Congress to the Democrats.
Monday, November 7, 2005
Now that's a presidential debate
Maybe I am easily amused but I thought that the mostly scripted , live “presidential” debate between Jimmy Smits, a liberal democrat, and Alan Alda, a moderate Republican, on West Wing Sunday night was better in terms of content and substance than any real presidential debate I have ever seen. If you were a real undecided voter or perhaps just someone who never watched West Wing this season, you learned more about each candidate’s personal leadership style and economic and social policies in around 40 minutes of telefiction than you could have learned from the series of spontaneous but just-as-scripted real debates in 2000 or 2004. This was probably a function of Alan Alda’s character calling for a change in his opening statement that did away with formal procedures and permitted a real give and take with the candidates probing each other’s positions without having to worry about the timer’s bell. In this situation, the moderator did ask questions and occasionally had to serve as a referee, but he generally let the candidates dictate the pace and subject matter. Why not in the real world?
Thursday, October 6, 2005
The more things change...
1) In 1956, The National Defense Interstate Highway Act was sold to Americans, in part, as way to facilitate citizens' escape from cities under nuclear threat or attack with President Eisenhower referring to the system as it then existed as a "breeder of deadly congestion." Flash forward to Houston and Hurricane Rita.
2) Sharon Olds, a poet, refused to attend the National Book Festival on September 24, hosted by Laura Bush, because of her opposition to the war in Iraq. In June 1965, poet Robert Lowell created even more headlines when he refused to attend the White House Festival of the Arts, hosted by Lady Bird Johnson, because of his opposition to the war in Vietnam.
3)Today's story of alleged espionage in the White House committed by an FBI analyst may not be the worst such case in recent history. During Nixon's first administration, a yeoman in the Navy stole thousands of documents from the National Security Council for the Joint Chiefs who wanted to learn something about the foreign policies of their ultra-secretive commander and his ultra-secretive national security advisor.
Monday, September 19, 2005
Where's Jimmy?
Our local newscast tonight carried a story on Habitat for Humanity's rebuilding projects in the hurricane area. It reminded me that Jimmy Carter, Habitat's most famous home builder, was conspicuous by his absence from the Bush(41)-Clinton relief effort organized by George W. Bush. Why is it that President Bush has ignored our most useful ex-president since John Quincy Adams?( To be fair, Clinton before him also found ways to ignore fellow Democrat Carter.) It brings to mind Woodrow Wilson's mean-sprited refusal to enlist another patriotic, decent, and relatively honest ex-president, Theodore Roosevelt, to help the nation during World War I.
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
Here We Go Again
On September 24, A.N.S.W.E.R is sponsoring what it hopes will be mass demonstrations in Washington and on the West Coast. Its agenda includes not just a call for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq but a host of what will be perceived by most Americans as radical demands that assail U.S. imperialist policies in Haiti, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Venezuela, Cuba, Palestine, and North Korea. During the Vietnam War, such demonstrations, while thrilling to the participants, turned off many potentially sympathetic Americans who were concerned about practical ways to bring the boys home from Southeast Asia--and nothing more. When elements of the antiwar movement raised ancillary and not especially popular issues, the Johnson and Nixon administrations were able to marginalize them. More important, the media's concentration on the most radical protestors and placards led many of those skeptical about U.S. policy in Vietnam to conclude, "If those are the sorts of people against the war, then I must be for the war." Karl Rove must be licking his chops. When will they ever learn?
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
Size Doesn't Matter
Of all the activities of the nascent anti-Iraq War movement, Cindy Sheehan’s protest seems to have attracted the most serious (Summer) White House concern. How could one mother’s request to see the president have produced so many front-page newspaper stories and so much time on network and cable newscasts when marches, demonstrations and other antiwar events have attracted relatively little media, and consequently, public and administration attention?
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