July 5, 2007
White Knights Posted by Alexander Burns at 08:15 PM EST During the last month, this blog has hosted several exchanges concerning the American Presidency and the proper limits of its power. Over the course of these exchanges, a string of Presidents have been criticized for exercising their authority inappropriately. Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Reagan were among this group. Fred Smoler has remarked in the past on the tendency, among some writers, to tear down the reputations of public figures after they have died. There’s probably a little of that impulse in play here, with “imperial” Presidencies being discussed and disapproved of on the basis of their most shameful hours alone. One can go too far in disparaging the accomplishments of past leaders, and it can be problematic to let a handful of reprehensible actions define a whole Presidency. One can also go too far in praising old Presidents, though, especially if one praises them imprecisely. I noticed a recent cover of Time magazine featuring the story “What We Can Learn From J.F.K.” This caught my attention because it reminded me of an April cover story in National Journal, “Learning from Ike.” These two articles consider the foreign policies of the thirty-fourth and thirty-fifth Presidents. Both are capably written and both contain some solid historical information. Despite the differences between the leaders they consider, both draw similar conclusions. According to the authors of these articles, these Presidents were laudable for advancing American interests while recognizing the boundaries of American power. National Journal praises Eisenhower’s “cold-blooded” realism in foreign policy, which led him to make what biologists call “threat gestures” against China, even as he was forcing the British and French to jettison the Suez. The key to such divergent policies was Eisenhower’s conviction that immediate circumstances, rather than ideology, should drive a nation’s actions. In a realist foreign policy program, says this piece, “we manage evil. We minimize, mitigate, and manipulate evil. But efforts to pre-emptively eliminate evil are prone to end in overreaction and destabilization, with consequences that are often worse than the original problem.” Of the lessons Eisenhower might teach us, this is not necessarily a bad one to learn, that sometimes an imperfect status quo is better than a chaotic policy shift. Time emphasizes similar aspects of the Kennedy Presidency. “The United States is neither omnipotent nor omniscient,” the authors quote Kennedy saying in 1961, “We cannot impose our will on the other 94 percent of mankind [and] we cannot right every wrong or reverse each adversity. . . . There cannot be an American solution to every world problem.” The attitude expressed by these words, says Ted Sorensen, would have produced a policy of détente with the Soviet Union a decade early, if Kennedy had not been killed. Because of Kennedy’s nuanced outlook on foreign affairs, and his refusal to treat the Soviets as irreconcilable and unambiguous foes, this article speculates that he and Khrushchev might have partnered to maintain an acceptable, peaceful global situation. Kennedy’s public positions on Communism were expressed in very tough language—but his uncompromising toughness did not extend too far beyond word choice. Instead, his comfort with complexity and distrust of military force guided him down an altogether more moderate course as President. Or so we’re told. These two articles draw some interesting conclusions about Kennedy and Eisenhower, but I’d suggest that they actually tell us more about the times we’re living in than about the Presidencies they consider. There appears to be a concerted search afoot these days to find historical models for the productive use of American power. In the midst of Iraq’s unending frustrations, and, I think it’s worth adding, little more than a decade after our disastrous inaction in Rwanda and unconscionable shilly-shallying over the Balkans, writers are looking toward the beginning of the Cold War for examples of successful, forceful, and temperate Presidents. On the left, there’s been a rediscovery of Harry Truman by writers like Peter Beinart. In some sectors of the right, there’s been a resurgence of Churchill worship, as well as a newfound interest in once-damned figures like Joseph McCarthy It’s in the context of this larger review of history that this pair of articles has emerged, and it’s in the spirit of a search for foreign policy heroes that they’ve chosen to consider Eisenhower and Kennedy. The trouble is, some important questions go unasked in order to find good historical lessons. On Eisenhower, one might question just how successful his “reptilian” realism was. Did we really get the best possible settlement in Korea? Was the government that emerged in the South truly the most effective one American influence could produce? Was it a good idea to topple Third World leaders like Mossadegh and Lumumba, or to creep furtively around Southeast Asia, unsure whether we had more to fear from angering Indonesia’s Sukarno or from leaving him unsupervised? On Kennedy’s administration: Was Kennedy clever or careless to make big promises (“bear any burden”) that he had no intention of keeping, but that his successor would treat with extreme gravity? Was JFK really so temperate, or did he have a more ruthless, unrestrained side, evidenced in his use of covert assassinations in South Vietnam? And furthermore, is it really honest to say he would have ended our involvement in Vietnam and manufactured détente, or is this a fiction of enduringly loyal former aides? These are only a few of the complications one hits in the process of beatifying either Kennedy or his predecessor. There are accomplishments to admire in the foreign policies of the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations. But the actions both men took abroad resist easy simplification under the label of “realism” or “keeping the peace.” It’s too easy to find a President from the past and, as the blogger Matthew Yglesias has alleged of Truman-boosters, use him as an icon for “a foreign policy that’s not too hot and also not too cold.” The trouble with this approach is that no modern President has been hot at all the right times and cold at all the right times, and the search for a prudential middle course on foreign policy can’t be quickly resolved by the leaders of the past. To pretend that it can leaves Americans waiting for a white knight who won’t come.
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