Trumanostalgia

Where have you gone Harry Truman, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you. Or, at least, the right eye of the nation -- that internationalist conservative eye which occasionally peers out, rather nervously, from the op-ed pages of the New York Times. In today's Times, resident right eyed nostalgist David Brooks, confessing to "Truman-envy", waxes nostalgically about an American dominated post WW2 world in which guys like George C. Marshall, Dean Acheson, W. Averell Harriman and, of course, Harry Truman ran the global show.

In contrast with the American-centric certainties of the Truman years, today, Brooks complains, power is dispersed and fragmented. This leads to what he calls "globoschlerosis" in which all it take is a few "well-placed parochial interests" to undermine international accords like Doha:

The world has failed to effectively end genocide in Darfur. Chinese and Russian vetoes foiled efforts to impose sanctions on Zimbabwe. The world has failed to implement effective measures to deter Iran’s nuclear ambitions. The world has failed to embrace a collective approach to global warming. Europe’s drive toward political union has stalled.

Brooks might have added Russian plans to establish a state grain company which the FT reported this morning -- a classic case of the way in which Russia is using globoschlerosis to enrich itself and hold the international system to ransom.

So what would Brooks see if he opened his left eye? He'd get to see an international system in which all participants -- and not just the US -- have the power to shape events. Brooks' "de-centered world" is really just a place in which Americans aren't running the show. After all, in Harry Truman's world, all it took is a few well-placed Kansan interests to bring a vast global process tumbling down.

Meanwhile,the right eyed Edward Luttwak, writing in this month's Prospect magazine, is also nostalgic for Truman. Unlike Brooks, however, Luttwak finds a contemporary Truman and his name is George W. Bush. In "A Truman For His Times", Luttwak argues that Bush 's foreign policy, like Truman's, is massively unpopular and yet will, in retrospect, be seen as successful. For Truman's Korea war, Luttwak suggests, read Bush's Iraq war. For Truman's confrontation of global communism, read Bush's pushing back of the global Jihadist threat.

If Luttwak opened both eyes he would, of course, see an American loathed in the world and still mired in failed wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan. However, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king and I can't help thinking that both Brooks and Luttwak make more sense of America's role in the world than the myopic, self-satisfied pacificism of most American leftists.

And what about in November -- will we get Harry Truman as an early Christmas present?  Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to me that neither McCain nor Obama much resemble Truman. One gets us an underbaked JFK, the other delivers a schlerotic Teddy Roosevelt. So a rerun of the Truman Show looks unlikely. History, I'm afraid, will have to wait to repeat itself.

Comments

[worriedyank]

While England was to busy living in 1984 the almighty EU super state conquers the great British empire with nothing more than a billion word and a million sheets of paper. The EU soon and quickly learns to obey its new Russian leadership at the mere threat of having the lights turned off. The US is reduced to a 3rd world country but, hey! American's didn't mind as they no longer receive hate mail.

We need to forget about the Truman days and move forward. It's a well known fact we aren't liked by our allies, They want nothing to do with us so we should do whats right and pack up and leave.

Our problems could be easily fixed if we renounced all war, much like Japan has done, we then closed all military bases in Europe, South Korea and the UK, Pull out fully of the UN and NATO. We would then have no need for any large standing military and exchange our debt to China with all our weapons technology and research, they would more than likely call the deal even.

America is no longer tasked with the self appointed responsibility of policing the world and protecting any country again, Europe and UK are big boys now, they can look out for there selfs. We would save enough money to live very quietly and happily with the rest of the world as War is and would be very very unlikely because as the Russians are now finding out that they can use capitalism not tanks to march across Europe.

But it does seems like half baked JFKs as presidents are all that America can produce here lately, but for us clever types, if you listen really carefully obama and McCain are saying the same things...just in different ways.

[Vince Williams]

"Globoschlerosis" is a hideous neologism.

I doubt Harry Truman and Dean Acheson felt quite so certain they were running the global show when they eyed the superpower on the other side of the Iron Curtain and pondered the mortality of Joseph Stalin.

So we got a containment strategy to deal with Communist expansion and combat Soviet aggression-- the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, and NATO.

They armed us with nuclear weapons and created the national security state to put us on permanent war footing against Godless communism.

Even the high priest of scientific rationalism, Albert Einstein, warned his fellow Americans that we shouldn't let fear of communism cause us to surrender our civil liberties. We had to wait until 1961 for President Eisenhower to warn us "against the acquisition of unwarranted influence... by the military-industrial complex."

The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 was the end of the cold war and left the whole apparatus of the national security state without its raison d'etre. The US then experienced the longest economic expansion in its history, and George W. Bush inherited a $127 billion budget surplus when Bill Clinton left office.

The horrors of the terrorist acts of 9/11 mobilized the ever-expanding national security state, and Al Qaeda conveniently filled the essential role of threatening antagonist left vacant by the Soviet disintegration.

After 9/11, John Ashcroft insisted that constitutional rights are weapons with which terrorists kill Americans. Now we have perpetual war for 'peace'-- the Bill of Rights has been shredded by the Patriot Act, Bush uses presidential signing statements to usurp the power of Congress to make law, and dissent has been equated with subversion.

The next president will inherit a record budget deficit of about $562 billion dollars courtesy of Bush, Cheney, &Co.

We didn't see the "Family Jewels" of the CIA until 2007 (the reports were commissioned in 1973).

And people said I was crazy when I told them the CIA dosed unknowing citizens with LSD.

[Stephen Smoliar]

The real target of our nostalgia should be for those twentieth-century writers (both left and right) who could keep knee-jerk ideology from interfering with both clarity of analysis and accessible literary style. If I devote very little of my time to your precious NEW YORK TIMES (that particular time being spent almost entirely on the arts pages) and your equally precious PROSPECT, it is because of the impoverished level of both ideas and writing I find in each of those sources. In the words of a failed Presidential candidate, "Let's look at the record."

For all of his foibles, Truman understood a few key principles that rarely appear in the foreground of today's political discourse. Most importantly, he took is Oath of Office literally, particularly that part about preserving and protecting the Constitution. If you examine his career in the Oval Office, you will see that this guided much of his actions and interactions in both domestic and global matters. He also attached great value to the advisers he enlisted (as at the bottom of your opening paragraph); but he took responsibility for his own actions (as in where the buck stops). If Eisenhower had chosen better advisers, we would probably wax as nostalgic for him as for Truman.

Regarding our current prospects, the thing about Theodore Roosevelt is how mixed his bag was. Yes, he played a very active role in the Spanish-American War (which, as I recall, THE NATION dubbed "year one of the empire"). On the other hand he was an equally ardent enemy of the legacy of the Gilded Age (one of the better models of our current conditions). Thus, we need to remember him as an energetic reformed on the domestic front, even if he was "that damned cowboy" in foreign affairs. Can anyone say with a straight face that they anticipate McCain reforming anything?

As to Obama, it is too easy to forget that JFK did not have that all much "baking" when he entered the Oval Office. It is even less clear how much JFK acquired from being "baked." Consider the efforts of Jawaharlal Nehru to inform JFK, the young congressman, on what was really going on with the French presence in Vietnam. LBJ was stuck holding the Vietnam bag; but, had JFK paid more attention to those, like Nehru, who emphasized proceeding with caution rather than playing with dominoes, he could have dispensed with that bag (and might have done so, had he not been assassinated).

In the long view of history, Obama's approximation to JFK may be better than you have suggested. JFK understood the necessary dialectical opposition of elevated goals (which inspire the electorate) and base political machinery (which gets things done). During his brief time in office, it looks like he was on the road to finding the right synthesis of these opposing interests; but we shall never know if he would have ultimately caved into the machine side. Our hope for Obama is that his actions will be informed by the need for such synthesis, which is far more than we can even dream for for McCain!

[andrew]

thanks Vince and Stephen, great posts. Much to think about. Cheer up, though. Obama is going to get elected and he'll make everyone feel more cheerful again. A half-baked JFK sounds pretty good after a raw Hoover.

[Stephen Smoliar]

Andrew, I wish you were less confident about an Obama victory! I am still haunted by the sandbagging of John Kerry after it seemed as if his election would be a slam dunk! I am superstitious about very few things, but politics is one of them!

As to Hoover, you are either to generous to Bush or too harsh to Hoover. If the Kennedy assassination left Johnson holding the Vietnam bag, then Hoover was left with the bag of an inevitable Depression without being directly responsible for it. Perhaps he could have done more to lessen the blow, but the Harding legacy was of a White House too weak to stand up to Wall Street greed.

[andrew]

Stephen -- you are probably right about Hoover. Paul Johnson certainly has a high opinion of him. But you're wrong on Obama. He's gonna win. Want to bet?

[Stephen Smoliar]

Andrew, I know I am wrong to be superstitious; but, as they say, the opera ain't over! Hell, the second act (the conventions) has not even begun! Who knows who will be on stage when the fat lady finally starts to sing!