Franklin and Winston

Journalist Jon Meacham has written a fascinating memoir in Franklin [Roosevelt]) and Winston [Churchill]: an Intimate Portrait of  an Epic Friendship (2003, Random House, New York). The book should be read by every president that manufactures alliances and manages international conflicts. That would be every one! If our current president had read this book he may not have as quickly characterized Churchill as a reactionary colonialist and removed the Churchill bust from the White House. Churchill was a defender of the British Empire and unwilling to let colonial people have self-determination, but he was also the last European hope against Hitler. His success in lining up American help against the Nazi's, not an easy task in isolationist America, not only saved Britain. Churchill was instrumental in getting the U.S. in the war before it was too late for the free world.

Meacham analyzes the contrasting management styles of Roosevelt and Churchill. Roosevelt was practical, devious, always withholding a part of himself. He controlled his emotions completely, met women he wasn't supposed to see, and could completely compartmentalize his personal and private life from his public duties. He was a fair weather friend--publicly embarrassing and ignoring Churchill when, acting in matters of state as he saw them, he cozied up to Stalin. Roosevelt had utmost faith in his ability to charm anyone, even the Soviet dictator, and had he lived until the end of 1945, he may have been able to convince Stalin to act less aggressively in Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe. Roosevelt may have reacted less vociferously than Truman to Soviet provocations, keeping tensions between America and the Russians below the boiling point. Right before his death, Roosevelt avoided confrontation and suggested a middle course with Stalin (P.341).

In contrast to FDR, Churchill was a straight shooter, courageous, honest, devoted, warmhearted, magnanimous, and an ornate, brilliant orator. He saw black and white, good and evil, when battling Naziism, and history shows his was the correct attitude, when many in his government wanted to make a negotiated peace with Hitler. He was also prescient in predicting and exposing the nefarious intentions of the Soviet empire after the war was over. Roosevelt was starting to come around to Churchill's view of Stalin when Roosevelt suffered the cerebral hemorrhage that ended his life.

Two themes run through the book that also resonate throughout the history of 20th and 21st century presidents. Should a president campaign as though he is healthy even though he is gravely ill, and how much time does a president need in order to recuperate from the weighty pressures of the office?
Roosevelt had congestive heart failure and  hypertension, which eventually killed him. At some level he knew he was dying but felt he had to lead the war to a successful conclusion, and no one else could have done it as well. The last point is debatable, but it was obvious to all who met him that FDR looked terrible by mid 1944. He looked haggard, had lost weight, and had energy for only four hours of hard work each day, when the war demanded much more time from the leader of the western world. Roosevelt campaigned like a champion in the 1944 election for a fourth term, slogging through a nasty storm in New York City in an open car. The press put the photographs in all the newspapers. He was fine the voters thought or, wanted to think.

John F. Kennedy was also much sicker than voters knew. Despite his chronic ill health he looked like Adonis (according to journalist and newscaster Walter Cronkite) in his critical televised debate with Nixon and governed with youthful vigor. (See my review of Kennedy here.) If voters knew the truth about Kennedy's health would they have voted for him over Nixon? Woodrow Wilson was cursed with chronic ill health before his debilitating stroke near the end of his second term. Running against the athletic and larger-than-life Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, Wilson could not afford to let the American people know he was a frail academic.

Do presidents need to be flying to Camp David, playing golf, attending lavish banquets, and just plain enjoying themselves as much as they do? Presidents are always "on" and Meacham's book gives the reader more respect for the formidable pressures of the office, especially in war time. Older, sicker men need time to recharge, whether it's collecting stamps (FDR) or collecting conquests  vacationing at Hyannis Point (JFK). The American people can rightly ask if a president is vacationing in order to work better or, like a Roman emperor, taking the job for what it's worth in order to enjoy frequent, free and lavish vacations.

You Must Purchase the History Book, "The Fifties"

David Halberstam's The Fifties was the most entertaining 700-page history book I have ever read. Much of the charm comes from  Halberstam's style. A trained journalist and experienced writer, he glued together the book by writing biographies of the most important political, economic, and cultural figures of the decade.

The book lacks a table of contents, so I will provide one, giving you a taste of the breadth and depth of the book.

One: Robert Taft, The Hiss Case, Dean Acheson, and the 1948 Election
Two: Harry Truman, J Robert Oppenheimer
Three: Joe McCarthy, Mike Hammer
Four: The Korean War
Five: Douglas MacArthur in Korea
Six: Edward Teller and The Hydrogen Bomb
Seven: MacArthur's Downfall, Matthew Ridgway
Eight: Alfred Sloan, Harley Earl, and General Motors
Nine: Bill Levitt
Ten: Eugene Ferkauf
Eleven:. McDonald's
Twelve: Holiday Inn
Thirteen: Radio to TV
Fourteen:. Kefauver
Fifteen: Television
Sixteen: 1952 Campaigns
Seventeen: 1952 Campaign and Advertising
Eighteen: Ike Biography
Nineteen: Brando, Kazan, Williams
Twenty: Alfred Kinsey
Twenty One: The Pill
Twenty Two: The Beats
Twenty Three: Nixon biography
Twenty Four: Oppenheimer and JE Hoover
Twenty Five: Coup in Iran
Twenty Six:  Dulles Brothers and Coup in Guatemala
Twenty Seven: New Look Foreign Policy
Twenty Eight: The Warren Court
Twenty Nine: Civil Rights in Mississippi
Thirty:  Blacks in the South and the Cotton Picker
Thirty One:  Elvis Presley
Thirty Two:  GM
Thirty Three: Advertising
Thirty Four: Television Shows
Thirty Five: C Wright Mills
Thirty Six: Rosa Parks and MLK
Thirty Seven: Marilyn Monroe
Thirty Eight: Paperbacks
Thirty Nine: Postwar Femininity
Forty: The Pill (2)
Forty One:  American Space Program
Forty Two:  Foreign Cars
Forty Three: Quiz Shows
Forty Four: Little Rock
Forty Five: U-2 Flights and Ike's Legacy
Forty Six:  Fidel Castro and 1960 Election

Buy it! You can get a used copy for a little over a dime plus shipping.

The Strange Death of American Liberalism

I recommend reading the political history, The Strange Death of American Liberalism, authored by professor H. W. Brands, especially now, ten years after the book was published. The author's prose sparkles. Brands' clarity of expression and wonderful use of metaphor makes for a most entertaining and rewarding read. Events in education over the past ten years give strong evidence that Brands' analysis was correct.




The author is a famous historian as well as a brilliant writer. Here is how Dr. Brands describes himself. See his website here.

Henry William Brands was born in Oregon, went to college in California, sold cutlery across the American West, and earned graduate degrees in mathematics and history in Oregon and Texas. He taught at Vanderbilt University and Texas A&M University before joining the faculty at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is the Dickson Allen Anderson Centennial Professor of History. He writes on American history and politics, with books including Traitor to His Class, Andrew Jackson, The Age of Gold, The First American, and TR. Several of his books have been bestsellers; two, Traitor to His Class and The First American, were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. He lectures frequently on historical and current events, and can be seen and heard on national and international television and radio programs. His writings have been translated into Spanish, French, German, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Ukrainian.

Based on his treatment of controversial presidents Nixon and Reagan (which I find to be a projective test of a scholar's political beliefs), Dr. Brands comes across as a political moderate.

What does the book say? In a nutshell, The Strange Death of American Liberalism describes how liberal action, defined here as expansionist federal government, rarely happens in American history. However, Americans will allow the federal government to work where it can solve a problem better than any other institution. Only government can protect us from foreign enemies,and we have seen most government expansion during wartime. Brands believes that the long-lasting Cold War encouraged liberalism in domestic policy as well. When the United States left Vietnam and President Nixon resigned, American support for the Cold War and trust in government eroded. The country reverted back to its natural distrust of government, and therefore, a distrust of liberal policies.

Brands summarizes his thesis:

For a quarter century Americans had grown used to looking to Washington for leadership, first in matters of national security and then, as the Cold War suffused nearly all areas of American life, in such previously domestic matters as education, transportation, civil rights, and health care. As long as the Cold War preceded successfully for the United States, popular confidence in government appeared justified. A people accustomed to depending on government to protect them from nuclear annihilation didn't find it much of a stretch to look to government to address such comparatively minor challenges as an anachronistic system of race relations and lingering economic inequality. Yet when the war in Vietnam turned sour...the skein of popular trust in government unraveled....It was the liberalism of the Cold War era that was the anomaly (pp. 172-173).

Ironically, the most effective liberal in American history, President Lyndon Johnson, planted the seeds of liberalism's destruction with his prosecution of the Cold War in far away Vietnam.

Liberals, like everyone else, do not want to hear about the unpopularity of their political views, and therefore it was no surprise when esteemed (and quite liberal) historian Eric Foner panned parts of the book. Foner's criticisms, that liberalism reached its modern form in the 1930s New Deal and that the New Deal, not the Cold War, was the defining moment of liberalism, were anticipated by Brands (P. 175). Foner also criticizes Brands' lack of analysis of liberal ideas, especially liberals' pursuit of civil liberties and the decidedly non-liberal response to the events of September 11th, 2001. Foner does enjoy the book's "laser-like" focus on this piece of political history, its usefulness as a survey of American political history, and agrees with the author's portrayal of the Revolutionary War times. (See Foner's review here.)

I am quite interested in how the Cold War resulted in a Federal power grab from the what used to be a state issue--the funding and management of public education. Brands describes (pp.78-79) how the Sputnik scare and the Cold War made education a national priority and the business of Washington and not just the state capitols. The National Defense Education Act authorized $1 billion in spending (in 1958 dollars) and initiated the Advanced Placement (AP) program ubiquitous in high schools today. Johnson's Great Society programs increased federal aid to K-12 education (P. 92).

Few people consider "compassionate conservative" president George W. Bush a liberal in any respect. Yet, in 2001 he crafted No Child Left Behind (NCLB), which further expanded federal power into each state's management of K-12 education, a fairly liberal idea. The law was supported by both conservatives and liberals but not for long. NCLB critics complain that NCLB mandates can never be satisfied, eventually making all schools "failing schools," and the law has become increasingly unpopular among education professionals. We may have seen the apex of federal support (or interference, you pick) in education. Cracks are forming under the enforcement of NCLB, and states are finding ways to get around pieces of the law and perhaps its enforcement entirely. See Montana's reaction here. If Brands is correct, we can expect, as part of liberalism's eclipse, less federal funding for education and less support for NCLB or a rewrite of the law. I will let the reader surmise what the death of liberalism means for the future direction of Congress and the executive branch.