Schlesinger, Arthur M. The Imperial Presidency. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004.
Argument
The Constitution granted the President extraordinary power and authority in leading America in foreign affairs. As a consequence, the modern President has been able to expand his powers to enormous levels out of times of foreign crises. The Cold War, in particular, led the executive branch to increase its power in making war without a declaration by Congress, to expand its secrecy protections, and to expand the use of Executive privilege.
Schlesinger also provides another concept: The Revolutionary Presidency, which seeks to stretch the power acquired through the Imperial Presidency into domestic affairs.
Nitty Gritty
The founders granted the President extraordinary leeway in foreign policy because it was expected that neither Congress nor the public would be experts in foreign affairs. Indeed this has more or less proven to be the case.
Schlesinger uses Lincoln as a model for how Presidents might reasonably exceed their explicit constitutional powers in an emergency; critically, Lincoln insisted that his broad claims of power were specific to the setting, and thus should not be taken as a permanent expansion of the office.
Schlesinger also notes the tendency of Congress to move to reclaim its power after periods of strong executive power. (After the Civil War, after WWI, and momentarily after WWII).
The Cold War looms over the Imperial Presidency. WWII led to a resurgence of the Presendancy, with Korea pushing it to a new level. But Vietnam is the key war. Both LBJ and especially Nixon expanded the powers of the President immensely, particularly in its secrecy system (which Schlesinger intriguingly suggests is based on the false assumption of national security, but actually exists largely to protect the government from embarassment).
Nixon's creation of a large professional army also gives the Presidency extraordinary leeway in sending an army on peacekeeping missions and other foreign ventures quickly with limited oversight.
After Watergate, Schlesinger wondered if the Imperial Presidency was in jeopardy. But Reagan and, more so, Bush II led to a resurgence. Bush II relied on the secrecy system to an even greater extant than even Nixon.
Review
JAH - Sydney Warren
"Richard M. Nixon, the author says, "for all his conventionality of utter- ance and mind was a genuine revolutionary." By his style and actions he defied tradition and made unprecedented assaults on the Constitution: his usurpation of the war-making power, his interpretation of the appointing power, his unilateral termination of statutory programs, his enlargement of executive privilege, his theory of impoundment, his deliberate disparage- ment of his cabinet, his discrediting of the press." [Warren points out that it is unclear whether Nixon's personality caused this or the national security state inevitably led to this.]
Showing posts with label Vietnam. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vietnam. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Dallex - Flawed Giant
Dallek, Robert. Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961-1973. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Argument
Dallek proposes that the best explanation for both the remarkable successes and devastating defeats of the LBJ presidency lie in his personality. He believed he was and strove to be the greatest President ever. At the same time, he suffered a constant crisis of confidence that led him to paranoia and indecision.
Domestic
How did he get so much done? p.236
1. The Johnson treatment - unparalleled relationship with a Congress that was, until 1966 midterm, incredibly favorable. 2/3 of both houses is a rarity
2. The legacy of Kennedy's death
3. The "national receptivity to righting historic wrongs and using federal power to improve people's lives." p.236
"Johnson had at least one indisputable triumph in domestic affairs for which he deserves credit. He played a large part in bringing the South into the mainstream of the country's economic and political life." p.625
"One observer of the mourners...overheard one black woman say to her little girl: 'People don't know it, but he did more for us than anybody, and President, ever did.'" p.623
Civil Rights Act 1964, Voting Rights Act of 1965
Medicare for the elderly
Medicaid for the impoverished
War on Poverty
Environmental Protection
Education - teachers, high school, college
Tranportation
Urban development - response to urban riots
Vietnam
Dallek portrays LBJ as constantly searching and hoping for an avenue to negotiate with Hanoi, a sign that part of him knew he had not quite grasped a winning strategy for Vietnam. By 1966, he felt he had to see the episode through though he knew his previous estimate of reaching an end to the conflict by 1967 would not come to pass.
Given America's aerial supremacy, LBJ long believed that bombing North Vietnam would tip the tide. But it didn't.
Dallek also frequently notes public opinion polls that show the American public generally agreed with LBJ's assessment of how the war should be fought, up until Tet.
The mounting American death toll led LBJ to personalize the war, drawing the conclusion that he had better not lose the war (not that he had better end the war).
Connection
While Halberstam blames the Vietnam quagmire largely on the flow of information created by a willful desire by those close to the action to deceive those in Washington into continuing a hopeless situation, Dallek presents Vietnam as a problem caused by LBJ's personality and political maneuverings. Following the Gulf of Tonkein incident, LBJ wanted to hide the growing scope of Vietnam as long as possible to thus avoid diminishing the momentum of the Great Society. By the time the public and Congress began to pay closer attention to Vietnam in 1966, it was too late to reverse course (at least in LBJ's mind and the mind of most of his advisors). Once it became apparent to other experts that Vietnam had reached a stalemate, LBJ still refused to seek a way out. For example, he saw McNamara's proposal to declare victory and leave as a personal betrayal, and banished McNamara to the World Bank.
Connection to Broad Political Themes
The irony of LBJ is that he tried more than any President to create programs for the benefit of just about every American, conceivably bringing them all into the Democratic camp. Yet his Presidency marks the end of the New Deal coalition.
Reviews
Gil Troy - JAH
Both the Great Society and Vietnam were rooted in LBJ's emotional emptiness, which fed his grandiosity. "Fearing rejection, Johnson minimized the commitment to achieve both goals." Ultimately, then, he never felt he fully achieved his Great Society goals.
Argument
Dallek proposes that the best explanation for both the remarkable successes and devastating defeats of the LBJ presidency lie in his personality. He believed he was and strove to be the greatest President ever. At the same time, he suffered a constant crisis of confidence that led him to paranoia and indecision.
Domestic
How did he get so much done? p.236
1. The Johnson treatment - unparalleled relationship with a Congress that was, until 1966 midterm, incredibly favorable. 2/3 of both houses is a rarity
2. The legacy of Kennedy's death
3. The "national receptivity to righting historic wrongs and using federal power to improve people's lives." p.236
"Johnson had at least one indisputable triumph in domestic affairs for which he deserves credit. He played a large part in bringing the South into the mainstream of the country's economic and political life." p.625
"One observer of the mourners...overheard one black woman say to her little girl: 'People don't know it, but he did more for us than anybody, and President, ever did.'" p.623
Civil Rights Act 1964, Voting Rights Act of 1965
Medicare for the elderly
Medicaid for the impoverished
War on Poverty
Environmental Protection
Education - teachers, high school, college
Tranportation
Urban development - response to urban riots
Vietnam
Dallek portrays LBJ as constantly searching and hoping for an avenue to negotiate with Hanoi, a sign that part of him knew he had not quite grasped a winning strategy for Vietnam. By 1966, he felt he had to see the episode through though he knew his previous estimate of reaching an end to the conflict by 1967 would not come to pass.
Given America's aerial supremacy, LBJ long believed that bombing North Vietnam would tip the tide. But it didn't.
Dallek also frequently notes public opinion polls that show the American public generally agreed with LBJ's assessment of how the war should be fought, up until Tet.
The mounting American death toll led LBJ to personalize the war, drawing the conclusion that he had better not lose the war (not that he had better end the war).
Connection
While Halberstam blames the Vietnam quagmire largely on the flow of information created by a willful desire by those close to the action to deceive those in Washington into continuing a hopeless situation, Dallek presents Vietnam as a problem caused by LBJ's personality and political maneuverings. Following the Gulf of Tonkein incident, LBJ wanted to hide the growing scope of Vietnam as long as possible to thus avoid diminishing the momentum of the Great Society. By the time the public and Congress began to pay closer attention to Vietnam in 1966, it was too late to reverse course (at least in LBJ's mind and the mind of most of his advisors). Once it became apparent to other experts that Vietnam had reached a stalemate, LBJ still refused to seek a way out. For example, he saw McNamara's proposal to declare victory and leave as a personal betrayal, and banished McNamara to the World Bank.
Connection to Broad Political Themes
The irony of LBJ is that he tried more than any President to create programs for the benefit of just about every American, conceivably bringing them all into the Democratic camp. Yet his Presidency marks the end of the New Deal coalition.
Reviews
Gil Troy - JAH
Both the Great Society and Vietnam were rooted in LBJ's emotional emptiness, which fed his grandiosity. "Fearing rejection, Johnson minimized the commitment to achieve both goals." Ultimately, then, he never felt he fully achieved his Great Society goals.
Friday, March 11, 2011
Halberstam - Best and the Brightest
Halberstam, David. The Best and the Brightest. New York: Random House, 1972.
Argument
Halberstam uses his reporters' eye and writing skill to set the personalities of the JFK and LBJ Presidencies over the written evidence (particularly from the Pentagon Papers, which emerged a year before this was published) to answer the question: How and why did such intelligent, thoughtful men get involved in the quagmire (as Halberstam's '65 book title called it) of Vietnam?
More specifically, their faith in bombing's chances of success was misplaced and could have been anticipated, and they never fully grasped why France had lost so they were doomed to repeat those mistakes.
The How - From as early as 1950 through JFK Presidency, intelligence and diplomatic correspondence from Vietnam, as well as from policy experts state-side (George Kennan, for example) was filtered before it reached the White House to paint a positive and optimistic picture and support the vision of a winnable intervention in Vietnam. At the same time, various military officers were presenting truthfully pessimistic reports from the field, but they too were filtered out to give the White House what commanders thought they wanted to hear.
The Why - Halberstam suggests that had the post-WWII anxiety about communism not been so thick in the U.S., America would have supported Vietnamese nationalism. Set against Korea (a relatively traditional geopolitical war rather than the nationalist war of Vietnam) and the fall of China, however, the U.S. opted to support France, and eventually step into France's place. Culturally at that moment in time, most U.S. leadership could not see Vietnam for what it truly was: a nationalist war, not a Cold War war.
Culpability of Individuals
JFK - JFK may have erred in putting Dean Rusk in Sec State; he wanted a weak Sec State and got that, but a stronger Sec State might have pushed more policy recommendations in front of JFK instead of telling him what he wanted to hear. When the few honest, pessimistic reports reached him, he was furious. Halberstam implies JFK might not have proceeded with the war escalation LBJ did.
LBJ - Persevered in Vietnam partly because he felt he owed it to JFK's legacy, partly out of his personality.
McNamara - "even if he was brilliant, [McNamara] was not wise." Mac's success in reorganizing the defense budget came from collecting data and making a thorough analysis on his own, outside of the recommendations of military. In Vietnam, he took the reports of others at face values from the beginning.
Westmoreland - Intentionally lowered estimates of troops needed. "Lyndon Johnson was a great salami slicer, and no one was smarter than Westmoreland at knowing how much salami to order at a given time, how much he would be allowed to carry home."
Useful link
http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/03/15/home/halberstam-best.html
Critique: assumption implied by Halberstam, that the history might have been different if the people who understood Vietnam, as well as the people who understood LBJ, had been in the positions of power. This seems to undermine the thesis: the best and the brightest weren't good enough, and were victims of history, bureaucracy, and the Cold War.
Deception of the elite military and bureaucrats: the American public, each other, and themselves
"What shortly becomes clear is that no single military turning point, no single or two or three arch villains explains anything. "Dean Acheson was the architect of our commitment to Vietnam." The Europeanists got us in there to support the French. The Kennedys got us in there because "it gave them opportunities for grace under pressure." The Bay of Pigs really did it because ironically, its aftermath saw "the strengthening of State's tough-minded realists," and the weakening of those less inclined to use force, like Bowles. Maxwell Taylor and the military mind are really responsible because as late as 1961 he mistakenly saw Korea as the parallel war, whereas as Halberstam points out, "The former was a conventional war with a traditional border crossing by a uniformed enemy massing his troops; the latter was a political war conducted by guerrillas and feeding on subversion." Walt Rostow...is the culprit because of his infectious enthusiasm, as a member of the L.B.J. White House, for air war. Machismo, says Halberstam, "was no small part of it." [particularly for LBJ] ...Westmoreland and McNamara are guilty because of their misplaced confidence in ground troops. L.B.J. was the real war criminal when he deceived the American people in July, 1965... Dean Rusk ("color him neutral or color him hardline. Which side was he on? . . .") ought to take the rap because he never spoke up; he never fought; he let McNamara take over State. Take your pick the list is endless. What's interesting, though, are not any key decisions or decision-makers, but the pattern that emerges, a phenomenon we might call The Fallacy of the Misplaced Center. " - From NYT review
Argument
Halberstam uses his reporters' eye and writing skill to set the personalities of the JFK and LBJ Presidencies over the written evidence (particularly from the Pentagon Papers, which emerged a year before this was published) to answer the question: How and why did such intelligent, thoughtful men get involved in the quagmire (as Halberstam's '65 book title called it) of Vietnam?
More specifically, their faith in bombing's chances of success was misplaced and could have been anticipated, and they never fully grasped why France had lost so they were doomed to repeat those mistakes.
The How - From as early as 1950 through JFK Presidency, intelligence and diplomatic correspondence from Vietnam, as well as from policy experts state-side (George Kennan, for example) was filtered before it reached the White House to paint a positive and optimistic picture and support the vision of a winnable intervention in Vietnam. At the same time, various military officers were presenting truthfully pessimistic reports from the field, but they too were filtered out to give the White House what commanders thought they wanted to hear.
The Why - Halberstam suggests that had the post-WWII anxiety about communism not been so thick in the U.S., America would have supported Vietnamese nationalism. Set against Korea (a relatively traditional geopolitical war rather than the nationalist war of Vietnam) and the fall of China, however, the U.S. opted to support France, and eventually step into France's place. Culturally at that moment in time, most U.S. leadership could not see Vietnam for what it truly was: a nationalist war, not a Cold War war.
Culpability of Individuals
JFK - JFK may have erred in putting Dean Rusk in Sec State; he wanted a weak Sec State and got that, but a stronger Sec State might have pushed more policy recommendations in front of JFK instead of telling him what he wanted to hear. When the few honest, pessimistic reports reached him, he was furious. Halberstam implies JFK might not have proceeded with the war escalation LBJ did.
LBJ - Persevered in Vietnam partly because he felt he owed it to JFK's legacy, partly out of his personality.
McNamara - "even if he was brilliant, [McNamara] was not wise." Mac's success in reorganizing the defense budget came from collecting data and making a thorough analysis on his own, outside of the recommendations of military. In Vietnam, he took the reports of others at face values from the beginning.
Westmoreland - Intentionally lowered estimates of troops needed. "Lyndon Johnson was a great salami slicer, and no one was smarter than Westmoreland at knowing how much salami to order at a given time, how much he would be allowed to carry home."
Useful link
http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/03/15/home/halberstam-best.html
Critique: assumption implied by Halberstam, that the history might have been different if the people who understood Vietnam, as well as the people who understood LBJ, had been in the positions of power. This seems to undermine the thesis: the best and the brightest weren't good enough, and were victims of history, bureaucracy, and the Cold War.
Deception of the elite military and bureaucrats: the American public, each other, and themselves
"What shortly becomes clear is that no single military turning point, no single or two or three arch villains explains anything. "Dean Acheson was the architect of our commitment to Vietnam." The Europeanists got us in there to support the French. The Kennedys got us in there because "it gave them opportunities for grace under pressure." The Bay of Pigs really did it because ironically, its aftermath saw "the strengthening of State's tough-minded realists," and the weakening of those less inclined to use force, like Bowles. Maxwell Taylor and the military mind are really responsible because as late as 1961 he mistakenly saw Korea as the parallel war, whereas as Halberstam points out, "The former was a conventional war with a traditional border crossing by a uniformed enemy massing his troops; the latter was a political war conducted by guerrillas and feeding on subversion." Walt Rostow...is the culprit because of his infectious enthusiasm, as a member of the L.B.J. White House, for air war. Machismo, says Halberstam, "was no small part of it." [particularly for LBJ] ...Westmoreland and McNamara are guilty because of their misplaced confidence in ground troops. L.B.J. was the real war criminal when he deceived the American people in July, 1965... Dean Rusk ("color him neutral or color him hardline. Which side was he on? . . .") ought to take the rap because he never spoke up; he never fought; he let McNamara take over State. Take your pick the list is endless. What's interesting, though, are not any key decisions or decision-makers, but the pattern that emerges, a phenomenon we might call The Fallacy of the Misplaced Center. " - From NYT review
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