Download 20418_chapter 1 The Machiavellian Presidency

The Machiavellian Presidency
On the morning of January 23, 1939, in Los Angeles, California, two men took off
in a DB-7 bomber built by the Douglas Aircraft Corporation. The bomber was still
in the development stage. The pilot, John Cable, pushed the envelope on the
aircraft, trying to climb at half power. The plane went into a flat spin and crashed
in the parking lot of the Santa Monica airport. Cable bailed out at 500 feet, but his
chute didn’t open in time. He was killed. The passenger on the plane survived,
suffering a broken leg and other injuries. He was identified by the Douglas
people as a mechanic, by the name of Smith.
His real name was Capt. Paul Chemidlin of the French Air Force, military attaché
in Washington. The Douglas people didn’t have time to cook up a better cover
story, and his real identity was quickly found out by the press, triggering uproar in
Congress. The DB-7 was a classified aircraft, not yet released to the Army Air
Corps. What was a French pilot doing in an experimental and classified aircraft?
The answer was the President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt wanted him there.
Roosevelt knew that war was coming in Europe. He wanted Germany contained,
preferably without the use of American troops, a preference driven as much by
political reality as by strategic consideration. American public opinion did not
want U.S. troops in Europe again and many in Congress were hostile to the idea
of any U.S. involvement in the emerging European conflict. Roosevelt faced
opposition from his advisors on selling weapons to France but it was far better,
Roosevelt felt, that France fight the Germans than the Americans.
Roosevelt
Here is what Roosevelt knew. He knew that if Germany overran France and
dominated Europe, it would represent a direct threat to the United States.
Germany, controlling the resources of Europe would soon build a fleet that would
challenge the U.S. in the Atlantic and potentially threaten the United States itself.
As Roosevelt put it, “…if the Rhine frontiers are threatened, the rest of the world
is too. Once they have fallen before Hitler, the German sphere of action will be
unlimited.1”
Roosevelt wanted to maintain the balance of power in Europe. Put another way,
he wanted the French to block the Germans. Therefore, Roosevelt wanted to
sell them the most advanced planes the United States had available. He faced a
Congress and public that didn’t want to get involved in the war, and which
regarded arming one of the potential adversaries as a potentially hostile act, that
violated the spirit of the Neutrality Act and the letter of the law prohibiting
transferring advanced aviation technology to foreign countries.
Roosevelt’s solution was to try to deceive the public for as long as possible by
keeping the sale secret. He lied by omission and when caught, went on the
attack against his critics. It was far from the only time he lied. In September
1941, he made a commitment to Winston Churchill to convoy ships in the
Atlantic, protecting them from German U-Boats. He publicly denied that U.S.
ships were convoying, saying only that they were patrolling in order to keep lines
of communication in the Atlantic open, a very different thing. But the fact was
that he was protecting ships against U-Boats, was prepared to attack U-Boats
that threatened shipping, and was hoping to create an incident that would allow
him to justify convoying to the public. He got that incident when the U.S.S.
Greer, a destroyer, exchanged fire with a German U-Boat, which Roosevelt used
to justify a “shoot on sight” order to the Navy.
His explanation for withholding the facts from the public was simple:
“Governments such as ours cannot swing so far or so quickly. They can only
move in keeping with the thought and will of the great majority of the people.2”
That did not mean that he was a prisoner of public opinion. Rather, it meant that
to the extent possible, he would keep his actions secret from the people until
such a time as public opinion caught up.
Roosevelt was morally offended by Nazi Germany. He also saw a strategic
threat to American interests in a Europe united under one country, regardless of
the kind of regime it had. He also believed deeply in democracy. Morality,
strategy and democracy were the three foundations of his foreign policy. The
problem that he faced—as all Presidents do—is that the three frequently
diverged. In the run-up to World War II, morality and strategy required one set of
actions, democracy another. Roosevelt could have let himself be paralyzed. He
bridged the gap by lying—essentially doing what he had to do to serve the first
two interests, and putting democratic values on hold until it caught up with the
other two. As he put it to Sam Rosenmann, his speech writer: “It’s a terrible thing
to look over your shoulder when you are trying to lead, and find that there is no
one there.”
Franklin Roosevelt is generally considered one of the great Presidents, and I
think he is, particularly in the conduct of foreign policy. He took a country that
was virtually unarmed and emerged from the war as the preeminent global
power. Where Germany lost about 8 million dead in the war, Russia perhaps 25
million dead, the United States lost a little over 400,000, less than the smaller
Great Britain. And it emerged from the war occupying Western Europe, Japan
and controlling the world’s oceans. It was a strategic triumph.
It was a moral triumph as well. The two main adversaries of the United States
were moral monstrosities. The German regime was perhaps the most morally
repugnant of our time. The Japanese were less systematic in their slaughter, but
they killed between 15 and 20 million Chinese in the war and occupation. Had
either of these countries won the war, it would have created a dark age.
Roosevelt’s unrelenting hostility to both regimes has to be praised.
But even here, there was a tension, this time between morality and strategy. In
order to defeat Germany, it was strategically essential that the United States ally
itself with the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union, in 1941, had certainly killed more
of its citizens than the Nazi’s had. Joseph Stalin, like Adolph Hitler, was a
genocidal maniac. Roosevelt had no illusions about Stalin. Immediately after the
German invasion of the Soviet Union, Roosevelt had Secretary of State Cordell
Hull issue a statement that called the “principles and doctrines of Nazi
dictatorship and the “principles and doctrines of communistic dictatorship” both
“intolerable.” Hull did say that “Hitler’s armies are today the chief danger of the
Americas. 3”
And this was the key. Roosevelt came under severe criticism from the Right for
allying the United States with the Soviet Union, particularly before Pearl Harbor
and particular from Catholics.4 But the strategic fact was simple. If the Soviet
Union collapsed, the Germans would dominate the European continent. The
possibility of mounting an invasion of Europe would disappear. The only thing
that would open the door for the defeat of Germany was the Soviets imposing a
war of attrition on them that would break the back of the Wehrmacht.
When the Soviet Union invaded Poland in 1940, as per its agreement with
Germany, Roosevelt refused to lump the Soviets with the Germans as
belligerents. Similarly, when the Soviets invaded the Baltic countries in
September and October, 1940, Roosevelt chose to interpret the actions officially
as directed against Germany, rather than as collaboration with Germany
(Roosevelt was simply unprepared to do anything that would alienate the
Soviets. His vision was of the long run. As Robert Morgenthua, Roosevelt’s
Secretary of the Treasury put it to the Finns, also invaded by Russia, when the
U.S. refused to intervene strongly on the Finnish side, even rhetorically, “The
whole picture is so important for you and for everyone else.” ( paragraph from
Dallek—208).
The “who picture” was that the United States had to split the Soviets from
Germany. Without that, there was no possibility of containing Germany. He was
prepared to pretend that the Soviets were not committing aggression against
Poland, the Baltics and Finland. Obviously he knew better, but he also
understood that condemnation, however satisfying, would not only achieve
nothing, but would take Roosevelt farther from his ultimate goal. He was
prepared to right these countries off for the time being, shrounding it in publich
hypocrisy and maintaining a moral double standard—in the short run.
The moral reality was defined by the strategic reality. Both Nazi Germany and
the Soviet Union were inherently evil. If Roosevelt adopted the purely moral
course of opposing both regimes simultaneously, the result would be moral and
strategic catastrophe. The Soviet Union would collapse the Nazis would rule
Europe, creating both a moral and strategic nightmare. Therefore, Roosevelt
chose to ally with Joseph Stalin in spite of his morally odious nature, in order to
defeat a more immediate strategic threat and therefore, in the long run, to lay the
groundwork for the destruction of both regimes.
In order to pursue strategic and moral ends, Roosevelt had to lie to the public. In
order to pursue these same goals, he had to ally his country with one of the most
evil men of our time. Political leaders in democracies are constantly struggling
with the three part problem, a problem which never quite resolves itself, but
always requires the reconciliation of the irreconcilable—doing immoral things in
order to be moral, undemocratic things in order to preserve democracy,
strategically unwise things in order to protect the strategically valuable things.
Roosevelt went beyond lying, to directly violating civil rights and the Constitution
in or order to achieve his goals. In May, 1940 while investigating a Germany spy
ring, J. Edgar Hoover informed Morgenthau that a ruling by the Attorney General,
Robert Jackson, prohibited him from wire tapping the known members basing it
on a supreme court ruling on wiretaps. Roosevelt overruled Jackson, saying that
the supreme court never intended the ruling on wiretaps to apply to “grave
matters having to do with the security of the nation.” Roosevelt went on to ask for
a means to justify opening mail of suspected spies and saboteurs. Hoover
proceeded on the basis that the President’s request was sufficient justification
and complied with his wishes, instituting a program of intercepting and reading
mail without warrants and in violation of federal law. (Dallek 225). The program
expanded, with a special unit being established within the FBI. Roosevelt went
on to investigate political opponents, but even used the FBI to gather information
on Congress. (Dallek 289)
The decision to detain and relocate ethnic Japanese, regardless of citizenship
was approved by Roosevelt. His reasoning was partly political—he did not intend
to stand in the way of public animosity toward Japan, but to use it to power his
strategic intentions. He also seemed to have genuinely believed that there was
some danger from the Japanese-American community and was not prepared to
tolerate risks in an already dangerous situation. For him Constitutional
protections that got in the way of preserving, protecting and defending the
Constitution of the United States, clearly did not have priority. A commitment to a
free press did not mean that dispatches from the battlefield would not be
censored nor that letters from serviceman to their families would not be read and
rigorously censored. Both prior to and during World War II Roosevelt
systematically undermined civil liberties—knowingly and deliberately and without
remorse. On occasion he used his powers against his domestic political enemies,
and not in the narrowest definition of national security.
More precisely, Roosevelt saw the preservation and enhancement of his power
as President as essential to national security, and saw anything that threatened
that power as undermining national security. The idea that the protection of the
Constitution requires its violation seems paradoxical and in some sense
undermines the entire enterprise. Yet it was at the center of Roosevelt’s entire
project. As he had Morgenthau tell the Finn’s, the issue is the whole picture—and
the long run. The preservation of the Constitution at the time when doing so
might undermine its ultimate survival was unacceptable and a perverse defnition
of civil liberties.
For Roosevelt, the preservation of the constitution meant national security. In a
broader sense, the preservation of the moral principles of the regime might
require—and in his time did require—their temporary suspension. Strategy
required alliance in the monstrous Joseph Stalin. Suspension of constitutional
rights, without any pretense of going through constitutional processes to do so,
might be essential to protect the nation and its power. Morality might have been
the end, but power was the means and without power and its exercise, it was
impossible to act morally.
The action could not be taken frivolously, but neither could it be refused. The
refusal to engage in immoral acts might have been personally satisfying, but
Roosevelt did not have the option for such self-indulgences. In order to achieve
the good, he had to be prepared to do evil things. And this was the heart of his
dilemma, which was the Machiavellian dilemma.
Lincoln
The Lincoln Memorial sits at the end of the Mall in Washington, with the
extraordinary statue of a brooding Lincoln gazing over the White House and up to
Congress and the Supreme Court. In a sense, that memorial symbolized the
moral gravitas of the Republic, to which he will always be seen as the Great
Emancipator. There is no doubt in my mind that this vision is valid, but it is far
from complete. Like Roosevelt, Lincoln had a moral core. He also had a clear
understanding of power, and the ruthless will to accumulate and use it. If you
look closely at the brooding presence, you can see not only justice, but the
willingness to use unjust means to pursue justice.
Elected in 1860 in an extraordinarily complex and contested election, his
inauguration triggered a secessionist movement in the south. The reason was
the suspicion in the South that Lincoln intended to abolish slavery. Lincoln
countered that he had no intention of abolishing slavery, but merely limit its
expansion. The South doubted this explanation on the surface, but understood
that even if he meant exactly what he said, it would inevitable result in the
abolition of slavery. Non-slave states would be added to the Union while the
number of slave states would remain fixed. The balance of power in Congress
would shift, and the electoral college would bar southerners from the Presidency.
They regarded Lincoln’s best stated intentions, even if taken at face value, as an
indirect route to destroy slavery and the southern economic and social system.
They seceded and the crisis of the Union turned into war.
There is no question but where Lincoln’s moral commitment lay. In 1858, when
running for the Senate, he conducted the famous “Great Debates” with Stephen
Douglas. In those debates Lincoln emphatically came out in opposition to
slavery as a moral principle, proclaiming his hatred of the idea of the spread of
slavery: “I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it
because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the worldenables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as
hypocrites-causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and
especially because it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an
open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty-criticizing the
Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no right principle of
action but self-interest.”
Lincoln also made it into a moral issue, arguing that the Negro “…is not my equal
in many respects-certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual
endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without the leave of anybody else,
which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and
the equal of every living man.”
Lincoln’s position on slavery in 1858 is clear. He has a moral opposition to it on
the basis of the right to the bread a man earns, and a broader interest in the
effect of slavery on the moral claims of the United States. But he insists
throughout the debates, and then in the presidential election of 1860 that while
he opposed the spread of slavery beyond the south, he did not wish to abolish
the right to own slaves in states where owning them was currently legal.
Lincoln suspended his moral position for a simple reason that he expressed in
the debates: “Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can
fail; without it nothing can succeed. Consequently he who molds public
sentiment, goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions.
He makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to be executed.” Lincoln
certainly understood what the South understood. His long term intention as to
abolish slavery. How he got there was not Lincoln issue.
Like Roosevelt, who understood that moving ahead of public opinion was
dangerous, Lincoln understand not only the importance of public opinion, but that
public opinion can be shaped and that shaping public opinion is more important
than writing laws. Stating a moral position is easy. Reshaping public opinion to
align with moral principle is much harder. Without doing that, moral sentiment is
just spouting off. But reshaping public opinion, even if that means accepting
slavery in the south in order to win an election, is necessary if moral sentiment is
to have any practical effect.
Lincoln also understood that without the preservation of the Union, his moral end
was unattainable. It followed from this that winning the war, the key to preserving
the Union, was the key to preserving the Union. Therefore, as events moved
toward war, he started treating the ultimate moral cause as simply a tool in
winning the war, and if its pursuit interfered with winning the war by splitting
public support, Lincoln was prepared to vigorously deny what his intent was.
Truth, for Lincoln, was a tool in pursuing a moral end, and was measured by the
extent to which the truth served to create the power he needed to win the war.
Lincoln understood, in ways that the Abolitionists didn’t, that simply expressing
moral sentiment was insufficient. He was deliberately unscrupulous in stating his
aims in order to stay in tune with public opinion, while leading it and shaping it.
His actions were infinitely complex. He was prepared to go to war, yet present it
simply as a matter of saving the union without any reference to the issue of
slavery, in order to keep the border states—states that had slavery but remained
in the Union—from switching sides. Then, as the war raged on, he issued his
Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves in areas not under union control,
but not slaves in areas that were. Lincoln had an absolute moral principle, yet
was as unscrupulous as necessary to manage public opinion toward his moral
end. He understood that moralism without power was impotent. Lincoln was
quoted as saying: “I hope to have God on my side, but I must have Kentucky.”
As the war began, so did the battle for the border states. Lincoln order that the
right to Habeas Corpus be suspended along the rail lines running to Washington
and Philadelphia, rail lines that ran through Maryland, a slave state where
secessionism was powerful. Essentially, this gave the military right to arrest and
hold indefinitely and without trial, anyone it suspected of aiding secession or the
Confederacy. When it appeared that Maryland would vote to secede in a secret
session, following the Union defeat at the Battle of Bull Run, Lincoln authorized
the arrest of some pro-secession legislators. Both of these were in violation of
the Constitution and federal statute—even Common Law. (Miller 116-117)
On September 24, 1862 Lincoln suspended Habeas Corpus throughout the
country, a power explicitly reserved to Congress in the Constitution. By doing so,
Lincoln effectively suspended civil liberties in their most fundamental sense
without recourse to the Constitution. Anyone, anywhere was subject to indefinite
arrest without any recourse, the simplest definition of tyranny, given that it was
done unconstitutionally. Lincoln had no legal right to take any of these steps. An
appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals filed, ironically to now Appeals Judge Roger
Taney. He had authored the famous Dredd Scott decision in 1857, while on the
Supreme Court. Taney ruled against Lincoln on Habeas Corpus. Lincoln ignored
him asserting that “…it cannot be believed the framers of the government
intended, that in every case, danger should run its course, until Congress should
be called together; the very assemblage of which might be prevented, as was
intended in this case, by rebellion.” (McPherson, 28-29)
In a legal sense, Lincoln might not have the power to suspend Habeas Corpus,
but he did have the power to do so, because he controlled the Army. He
knowingly and intentionally violated the constitution in order to save it. He gave
this elegant defense: “Was it possible to lose the nation, and yet preserve the
constitution? By general law life and limb must be protected; yet often a limb
must be amputated to save a life; but a life is never wisely given to save a limb. I
felt that measures, otherwise unconstitutional, might become lawful by becoming
indispensible to the constitution through preservation of the nation.” (McPherson
29)
To understand this quote is to understand the reality and dilemma of the
Presidency. Lincoln had a profound moral intention hidden away and
unmentioned in this controversy, the unstated driver of it all—slavery. The issue,
however, was power and geography. If the Maryland and the border states
seceded, the war would be lost and the nation dismembered. The Constitution
would mean little at that point, and the moral goal farther away than ever. The
key was to preserve the nation and that meant to defeat the insurrection. To put
meticulous respect for the Constitution ahead of the preservation of the nation—
in other words to accept the collapse of the nation in order to preserve protect
and defend the constitution of the United States, violated common sense. Both
the nation and the constitution would be lost. Therefore, the power to preserve
the nation was the power to protect the constitution. Power was the key. One
way to protect power was to hide the ultimate moral goal. The other was to
violate the constitution. Not all Presidents face such an extreme dilemma, but
Lincoln did and succeeded by remembering that the preservation of the nation
required power, and the maximization of that power superseded all other
considerations.
Reagan
Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy is framed by three separate images. First, we
think of the release of the American hostages Iran on his first day in office.
Second, we think of Lt. Colonel Ollie North being sworn by a Congressional
committee investigating Iran-Contra. Finally, we think of his speech in Berlin,
where he said “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” Iran, Central America and
the collapse of Communism was the frame. Reagan is not normally ranked with
Lincoln and Roosevelt in foreign policy, but I put him here for two reasons. First,
his achievement—or the event that unfolded on his watch—made the United
States the world’s only global power, a moment as defining as what happened
under Lincoln or Roosevelt. Second, the principles and practices he employed
were actually quite similar to those of the other two.
Lincoln faced the problem of preserving the Republic while abolishing slavery.
Roosevelt face the problem of defeating Nazi Germany and Japan, while
simultaneously serving as midwife to the decline of the British Empire. Reagan
faced the problem of undermining the Soviet Union in the face of the reluctance
of the American public to engage in foreign adventures after Vietnam. The moral
end that Reagan wanted to achieve was the fall of the Soviet Union, but if he had
mentioned this publicly as a goal, the response would have been a combination
of ridicule and horror. The ridicule would have come from both the apparent
impossibility of the task and the simple-mindedness of Reagan’s moral revulsion.
The horror would have come from the risk taking in a nuclear world. Reagan
never hid his intention—and of course was regarded as both a simpleton and a
reckless cowboy, and still is—but he put it aside in a series of clever moves, in
particular his arms control initiatives.
To understand Reagan’s dilemma it is important to remember the strategic
position of the United States in 1981. The American strategy against the Soviet
Union was the creation of a series of multi-lateral and bilateral alliances designed
to surround them. By doing so, it forced the Soviets to devote inordinate
defenses to the conventional defense of the Soviet Union, limiting resources for
naval development, which was the key to breaking out of their encirlclement.
The alliances were based on three principles. First allies would enjoy favorable
economic relations with the United States. Second, allies would proved the force
to protect their own frontiers against Soviet attack, or at least to serve as a trip
wire in case of attack. Third, in the event of an attack, the United States would
rush weapons first, and troops if necessary to protect the ally. In the case of
Europe, the guarantee was that nuclear weapons would be used if all else failed.
Promises are promises, but what the United States would have done in extremis
was not known to the allies, to the Soviets, and ultimately, not even to American
leaders. That decision would be made at the time it had to be made and no
promise could be guaranteed. The alliance system depended on the most fragile
of things—the credibility of the American guarantee. In a way, this is what led
the United States into the Vietnam war. Declining to defend an ally—regardless
of the legal definition of what an ally was—would have raised questions of the
credibility of the American commitment throughout the periphery of the Soviet
Union.
Refusing to defend Vietnam—or South Korea—because it made no sense for the
United States to do so would have raised questions in German or Japan on the
value of the American guarantee. When the time came, the U.S. might also
determine that protecting their interests made no sense, and that would leave
them in a terrible position. Far better to declare neutrality and reach
accommodation with the Soviets. Indeed, this was the entire point that Charles
De Gaulle made—the United States would pursue is own interest, and would not
risk New York to protect Bonn.
With the U.S. defeat in Vietnam, many of the allies that had criticized the United
States for being in Vietnam in the first place, now raised questions about
American will and power. This threatened the foundations of the entire alliance
system and American strategy. It also made the Soviet Union increasingly
powerful and feared. With the fall of the Shah, a long time ally of the United
States, the capture of U.S. personnel at the Teheran Embassy, who were held as
hostages, and the failed rescue attempt, the United States looked, in the phrase
of the time, “a pitiful, helpless giant.” The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was
simply confirmation of the rise of Soviet power.
Reagan came to power with the understanding that the reversal of this trend was
essential and had to be rapid, or the alliance structure would crack. A serious
neutralist movement was developing in Europe, China was reassessing its
alignment with the United States and there was profound uncertainty throughout
the line running from Yugoslavia to Afghanistan. The southwestern part of the
encirclement was crumbling. Tito, the founder and myth around which Yugoslvia
was built had just died, Greece was in turmoil following the fall of a military junta,
Turkey was torn by left wing and right wing movements, Iran seemed wide open
to Soviet power and, of course, Afghanistan was occupied. In 1981, the United
States appeared to be declining, the Soviets ascending.
Reagan saw the Soviet Union as the evil empire. He also understood that his
task was to harness the underlying power of the United States to confront it—a
daunting task in the face of what was called the Vietnam Syndrome, a weariness
with foreign commitments and their cost. The United States had become
demoralized and uncertain of itself, caught between serious economic problems
and strategic erosion. The problem was not that the United States lacked power
as much as it lacked will—the latter paralyzing the former and just as deadly.
Announcing his intention to destroy the Soviet Union in this environment would
not have been productive. Doing nothing would have been equally harmful.
Reagan, like Roosevelt, needed to begin actions in such a way that a reluctant
public, while at the same time managing public opinion in such a way to increase
his room for maneuver would not block it.
It is not clear that Reagan had a clear strategy to achieve his goals in 1981. What
is clear is that a strategy evolved over time, and it was one that was as
opportunistic as Roosevelt’s or Lincoln’s. Like theirs it was shaped as much by
domestic opinion as by the strategic challenge. Like them, Reagan concealed as
much as he revealed, all with an eye to managing public opinion while he carried
out his strategy.
When we look back on Reagan’s strategy, it had four threads. First, Reagan
sought to exploit the underlying weakness of the Soviet empire. It was both
multinational and sought to suppress indigenous culture by a homogenized
atheism. Reagan sought to exploit this weakness by strengthening religious
forces opposing the Soviets. He continued and vastly deepened support for the
Mujahidin in Afghanistan. He supported Solidarity in Poland, as much a Catholic
movement as a trade union. He supported Jews inside the Soviet Union who
wanted to emigrate. Some of the support was overt, as public diplomacy. Some
of it was covert, helping to fund and organize the movements. Together they
formed a model for resistance to the regime. The Soviet hold on Eastern Europe
crumbled first, for example, and Solidarity was the prototype of resistance. These
movements served a dual function, weakening the Soviets and strengthening
support in the United States to the concept that the Soviet Union was an evil
empire worth resisting.
Second, he imposed an arms race on the Soviet Union. It is not clear whether
Reagan used the Strategic Defense Initiative, or Star Wars, simply as a goad to
the Soviets or whether he believed it could work. Over time, however, it became
clear that the Soviet’s believed it could work, along with other military initiatives
Reagan undertook. The Soviet economy was pressed to its limits, spending a
huge proportion of its GDP on defense. Imposing an arms race on the Soviets
did not create the Soviet problem, but exploited it.
Third, in order to hold public opinion in place—which was still wary of
international adventures after Vietnam—Reagan reversed course on nuclear
weapons. Where he had criticized earlier arms control initiatives, he moved, in
1983, to the most radical arms control initiative imaginable, the actual reduction
and elimination of nuclear weapons. This was not an initiative likely to bear fruit
quickly, but it allowed him to position himself in a way that was designed to
disarm his critics who thought he was excessively moralistic and aggressive on
the Soviet Union.
Finally, Reagan moved to block Soviet support for national liberation movements
in the third world—thereby directly challenging the legacy of Vietnam. Wherever
the Soviets were supporting wars of national liberation they were confronted by
the covert capabilities of the United States. Fearing Soviet penetration of Central
America and the Caribbean, Reagan ordered the invasion of Grenada in 1983.
More significantly, Reagan supported insurgents fighting the Marxist government
of Nicaragua.
This was an operation of enormous complexity and dishonesty, driven by the fact
that providing aid to the insurgents, called Contras, was illegal under a
Congressional act called the Boland amendment, which prohibited the
expenditure of money on such an enterprise. The Reagan administration solved
the problem by selling arms indirectly through the Israelis to Iran. That was not
illegal. The money that the Iranians paid for the weapons was both a deep secret
and technically not money from the U.S. Treasury. This money was used to
fund the Contras in Nicaragua.
It is difficult to believe that Reagan didn’t know about Iran-Contra, or that at the
very least his ignorance was not deliberate. Like Roosevelt’s decision to work
with the British before Pearl Harbor, it was an action best withheld from the
public. The law, as with Lincoln’s decision on Habeas Corpus, would have to
bend in the face of strategic necessity. Reagan helped keep the Iranians in the
war, bleeding both Iran and Iraq; placed the Nicaraguans under constant
pressure so they had difficulty supporting insurgencies in El Salvador and
elsewhere, and blocked Soviet expansion, which had seemed so easy just a few
years before.
Reagan had a moral goal that was the anchor of his foreign policy, the
destruction of the Soviet Union. He developed a strategy over time,
accumulating power as he went. He used that power to simultaneously deceive
the American public as to his ultimate intent, while never really concealing it. And
in the course of pursuing this end, he was prepared to violate laws as necessary,
on the principle that destruction of the Soviet Union required the full exercise of
unfettered power.
Reagan lied where he needed to, such as about assisting Nicaraguan rebels
against he Soviet Union, and certainly sought to deceive everyone on the risks
he was taking around the world. But his ultimate moral principle remained firm,
destroying the Soviet Union. He even allied with the Mujahidin in Afghanistan
who would eventually morph into the Taliban, just as Roosevelt allied with the
Soviets against the Nazis, strengthening them for later confrontation with the
United States. He systematically combined moral principle with deception in
order to shape public opinion.
The Good President
We see three Presidents living in different times with utterly different issues.
Each issue, the Civil War, World War II and the Cold War involved profound
moral issues and each of the three Presidents was clearly morally committed to
defensible positions: the evils of slavery, Nazis and Communism. Each faced
public opinion that either didn’t share their moral concerns, or wasn’t prepared to
take the kind of risks and pay the kind of price that confronting these evils would
take.
None of these Presidents railed against the public, nor did any capitulate to the
public. They led the public to the positions they wanted, but not by simply
hammering away on the moral theme. They hid the moral theme behind a
bodyguard of lies. Lincoln never admitted his ultimate goal even as he moved to
it. Roosevelt moved toward war while lying to the public about his intentions.
Reagan confused everyone about his intentions by striking contradictory poses
and frequently lying about what he was doing. But each of them bought along
enough public support through these maneuvers to allow them to carry out their
policies.
Imagine if they had simply told the truth. They might have held the moral high
ground in some historical sense, but Lincoln surely would not have been elected
and could not have won the civil war if he had stood openly by his moral
principles, driving Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri to secede. If Roosevelt had
simply declared his intention to go to war with Germany, it is doubtful that he
would have been reelected in 1940—and how Wendell Wilkie would have
handled World War II is anyone’s guess. And if Reagan had simply condemned
the Soviets as evil, without putting forth the START Treaty and hiding his covert
actions to destabilize the Soviet Union, his political survival, and the American
alliance might have shattered.
For all three, dishonesty was what made the realization of their moral principles
possible. And with all three, the failure to reach their moral principles would have
been historically catastrophic. None of them had the choice to be simply honest.
Each had to make their ultimate moral principles clear, and then act as if they
weren’t actually pursuing it. As Lincoln made clear, public opinion in a
democracy defines what is possible. Manipulating public opinion means not only
being willing to deceive the public, but being very good at it. All three of these
were that and more. The more was that they were extraordinarily successful at
achieving their moral ends.
At the same time, each marked a dramatic moment in the development of the
United States, quite independent of the moral goal. Lincoln preserved the Union
and set the stage for the massive industrial surge that made the United States a
preeminent economic power. Roosevelt preserved the regime in the depression
and fought a war that gave the United States the absolute control of the world’s
oceans, an extraordinary achievement unparalleled in human history. Reagan
out dueled the Soviet Union, creating a reality that had not existed for five
hundred years: not a single European power was any longer a global power.
Only the United States was.
There is no question but each understood that their pursuit of the moral was also
the enhancement of American power. Lincoln spoke of what free labor could do.
Roosevelt preserved American military power until the last year of the war, then
invaded Germany and the Japanese empire simultaneously after weakening
them, destroying hostile naval powers, and overwhelming friendly ones, like the
British. The collapse of the Soviet Union achieved not only Reagan’s moral end,
but made the United States the preeminent global power. The complex
relationship between morality and power cuts both ways. Power is needed to
pursue moral ends. As Machiavelli tried to show, the pursuit of moral ends yields
power.
Lincoln, Roosevelt and Reagan shared three characteristics. First, each had a
deep moral core, each understood power, and each understood leadership.
Most important, each understood the relationship between the three. They had
the ability to pursue that moral end in devious and quite dishonest ways, and the
ability to retain their political base in the face of the deceptions they practiced.
Each of them was able to retain their moral principles even when they chose to
temporarily betray them in pursuit of their ends. Each of them understood that
the path to their moral end did not involve merely stating their ends and then
pursuing them. Sometimes the ends had to be hidden and even denied, while
strategies where shaped to pursue these ends, and public opinion manipulated to
allow room for maneuver.
I have a particular definition of moral in mind. It is not any particular set of moral
values. Rather, it is a belief in some value that does not provide any personal
benefit and that complicates governance rather than simplifies it. Some
examples:
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Churchill badly wanted to save the British Empire. He saw it as a civilizing
tool. His strategy in World War II would have been much simple had he
not had that goal. For Churchill, it was a moral principle.
Hitler wanted to annihilate the Jews. That interest even transcended
German winning the war. Desperately needed rolling stock and
locomotives were diverted from military use to transporting Jews to the
gas chambers.
David Ben Gurion had a vision of a resurrected secular, socialist Jewish
state. He was prepared to do anything, including wage civil war against
Jewish factions who didn’t share that vision, in order to achieve it.
Yassir Arafat has a vision of a unified Palestine replacing the State of
Israel. He never wavered from that belief, but was quite prepared to make
it appear that he was prepared to compromise.
I include Hitler goal of annihilating the Jews in order to make clear that when I
speak of moral ends, I do not necessarily mean decent or praiseworthy ends.
Hitler regarded his ends as being good, and the end transcended and shaped his
strategy—even when he hid his end from world and even German view. The
presence of a moral principle does not mean that the principle is not monstrous.
It simply means that there is a motive that transcends the simple desire for
power. The desire for power is a means toward this moral end.
I compare Ben Gurion and Arafat as well, because the supporters of each would
regard the other as monsters. I do not intend here to become involved in the
polemics of the case. Whatever my views on the subject are, are irrelevant to this
discussion. I am simply distinguish leaders for whom power is a means toward
an end—to be exercised and accumulated to be sure—but not an end in itself. I
am also pointing out that the exercise of the power in pursuit of an end can
possibly lead to great injustice. As Machiavelli would put it, the intention to do
good and doing good are two different things.
This is not moral relativism on my part. There are other places in my life where I
have my own standards which I would defend as necessary to a decent and just
human life and clear understanding of what I think to be a moral—and immoral—
regime. But for the sake of this book, I must discipline my self not to let my own
shadow fall across these pages. It is not about what I think to be moral, but
rather, the more complex question of the relationship between morality and
power, and how successful leaders, and particularly American Presidents,
pursue each.
The argument that I am making here is that great leaders like Lincoln, Roosevelt
and Reagan have clear and fixed goals that they regard as moral and
praiseworthy. These goals are somehow rooted in the core values of the
American republic, clearly differentiating them from foreign leaders and making
them far more similar to each other than they might appear to be given superficial
ideological divides. But each had a moral end that he pursued and that could be
clearly defined.
They do not, however, constantly parade these goals. Rather, they focus on
accumulating power so that they can pursue moral ends. They understand that
wanting to do good and doing good are two very different things. They also
understand that in accumulating and exercising the power needed to do good,
they frequently must appear to be doing the opposite. This is particular the case
with managing public opinion in a democracy, where the public might oppose or
resent the moral goods being pursued. Three men for whom liberal
democracy—and therefore the right of the public to govern were moral principles
deeply embedded in their souls—undermined that right consistently by pursuing
policies not supported by the public. In the pursuit of a virtuous regime, they lied
without scruples.
Lincoln, Roosevelt and Reagan pursued each developed a strategy for pursuing
their moral ends. They didn’t enter office with a clear strategy. They developed it
as they went along. What in retrospect appears clearly calculated and thought
out, and what was in fact remarkably successful, appeared to them improvisation
forced on them by circumstance. Lincoln developed his war strategy during the
war. Roosevelt did the same. Reagan, no matter what his supporters might say,
did not have anything like a master plan for wining the Cold War. But
interestingly, all three depended on the same basic grand strategy to define their
strategies: economic power. Lincoln relied on the industrial strength of the North
to field massive armies that ground down the Confederacy. Roosevelt used
American industrial power to fight the Germans and Japanese simultaneously.
Reagan used American economic power to force the Soviets into an arms race
they couldn’t afford and couldn’t win. All three understood the underlying power
of the United States and used it ruthlessly.
Each of them understood power and its uses. Each linked power to a moral end
but none of them succumbed to simplistic notions, such as the idea that it was
unacceptable to ally with evil in order to do good, or necessary to be truthful in
order to pursue the truth, or even, as we shall see, to act constitutionally in order
to preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the United States. Each
understood the paradoxical and complex nature of power and morality—that you
do not achieve the good simply by pursuing it. Rather, you must accept the
extraordinary compromises and corruptions that history forces on a leader,
without ever forgetting the ultimate end.
Each had a sense of morality and power. Each also shared a view of public
opinion in a democracy. Each manipulated public opinion shamelessly and
effectively. It was an odd thing. None of them hid their core beliefs. Each denied
that those core beliefs were taking them where logic and common sense showed
they were going. Lincoln insisted that he wasn’t fighting to free the slaves;
Roosevelt insisted that he wasn’t going to war; Reagan constantly denied that he
was reckless enough to believe that the Soviet Union would crumble. Their
extraordinary ability to lie while holding on to public opinion made their strategy
possible, which made their moral principles practical.
One should add a final category, that is beyond any President’s personal virtues:
luck, or what Machiavelli called “Fortuna.” For Machiavelli, a prince used his
virtues, the things we discussed above, to deal with luck, good and bad. The
uncertainties of the world must be managed, particularly in the short run, where
immediate events loom so large. But there is another side of luck that makes up
greatness: the luck of living in the right moment. Lincoln, Roosevelt and Reagan
all were presidents at the right moment and made the most of it. At another time,
their Presidencies might well have been banal. But this cannot be taken away
from them: They made their own good luck and when faced with bad luck, they
overcame it
Morality, clear but flexible strategy, the willingness to use dishonesty as a tool
marked three very different men living at three very different moments of history,
facing very different problems with different political ideologies. Each was bitterly
attacked and ridiculed as both unprincipled and unsophisticated while in office.
Each in retrospect was both morally grounded and extraordinarily effective.
Lincoln, Roosevelt and Reagan give us a sense of the Machiavellian President.
There are then others who did not.
Presidents need to have a moral end that is in some sense congruent with the
principles of the Republic. They must have an understanding of power and
strategy. They must be able to manage and lead public opinion. There are some,
like those mentioned, that had all three. There are then those who lack one of the
virtues. The most defective presidents are those who have moral ends but lack
an understanding of the complexity of power and of leadership—good men do
not necessarily make good Presidents.. The three men that come to mind are
Woodrow Wilson, Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush.
Virtuous Failure
Woodrow Wilson had at the center of his moral vision, the idea of a multi-lateral
world not governed by the European system of the balance of power. From his
point of view, the cause of World War I was the fact that the only thing
maintaining peace in Europe was the ever shifting, secretive and militaristic
processes of the balance of power. He felt that if that were left in place, there
would be other wars and the U.S. would be dragged into it.
He had two strategic choices. One was to use the million man American force in
Europe to enforce and American pax, replacing the balance of power with
unilateral American presence. The other, which he pursued, was collective
security, where the balance of power was replaced by an international
organization that would govern the behavior of nations. His strategy was the
League of Nations.
That was a defensible strategy as it would give the United States the decisive
hand. That was important for this reason. To create the League, Wilson had to
support the Treaty of Versailles, that essentially prevented France from
dismembering and occupying Germany. Wilson compromised with crippling
reparation payments. So he wounded Germany badly, but didn’t kill it, a
dangerous strategy. Now, if the League of Nations included the Americans, it
could manage the situation possibly. In effect, rather than directly occupying
Europe and imposing peace, Wilson was going to have the United States act
through the League of Nations.
The problem was that he could never explain to the American public what they
were going to get out of the level of effort and risks that the League of Nations
would impose. The moral impulse was defensible and in keeping with American
values. The strategy was sound. At best, it would create a system that would
regulate European conflict. At worst, it would preserve German sovereignty and
restore the balance of power World War I upset, this time with at least a vague
American guarantee.
What was completely missing was leadership. By leadership I don’t mean simply
rousing speeches. I mean a management of public opinion that requires duplicity
along with passion. When we compare Roosevelt, Lincoln and Reagan to
Wilson, what was missing was not the ability to rouse people, but to deceive
them. Roosevelt, Lincoln and Reagan all manipulated public opinion. They had a
moral end, a strategy evolved to achieve that end, the public was maneuvered
into supporting each step whether or not they supported or believed in the end
being pursued. Wilson, missed the last step. He stated his views and waited for
the country to rally to his cause. When it didn’t he was defeated.
There are then Presidents who have moral principles, but never develop the
strategy to implement it or manage public opinion. Two come to mind. Jimmy
Carter sought to move the U.S. from a position of confrontational power to a
conciliatory one. He spoke at one point of America’s “irrational fear of
communism.” At another point, when the Shah of Iran had clearly become
enormously unpopular, he withdrew American support in the hope that this would
open the door to the new regime. When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan
he felt betrayed and reevaluated his view of the Soviets. When the Iranians
seized the American Embassy in Teheran, he changed his view of Iran.
Carter’s problem is that no strategy evolved from his moral principles. One
problem he had was that his moral principles and developing a strategy clashed.
In order to create a harmonious international environment, Carter had to face the
fact that it was no simply a decision to be made but a complex maneuver that
had to unfold. Indeed, at some points, achieving a moral international order
required that he engage in immoral actions, such as Roosevelt’s alliance with
Stalin. By the time Carter began to grasp the complexities of strategy, he had a
failed Presidency and was defeated for re-election. Having no strategy that
connected with his moral goals, Carter could never cope with public opinion.
Whatever moral goals he pursued he failed to secure, because he had not
mastered either the art of strategy or leadership.
George W. Bush’s Presidency was similar to Jimmy Carter’s. After 9-11 Mr. Bush
adopted a moral stance, which was that al Qaeda had to be crushed at al costs
and that this had to be the centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy. Bush created a
strategy toward that end, but while at times it made sense, it never evolved into a
coherent whole. As with Carter, Bush had a general moral theory that did not
evolved into a coherent long term strategy—although it had components that
made sense at times. As was the case with Carter, the lack of a strategy meant
that he couldn’t manage public opinion. Strategic failure led to a failure in
leadership which left his Presidency in shambles.
Machiavelli argues that a Prince should never lift his eyes from war. What he
meant by that is that the focus of a Prince or President must be the development
of strategy, and that if the strategy is systematic, moral ends will follow from that.
Lincoln focused on strategy rather than morality. As a result, he achieved his
moral end, the abolition of slavery. Lincoln understood that strategy might
appear to be leading him away from his end at times, but that successful strategy
is the prerequisite for moral action. Both Carter and Bush wanted to draw a
straight line from where they were to the moral ends they wanted to achieve. As
a resulted, they lifted their eyes from war—from strategy—and achieved neither a
strategy or their moral end.
Power Without Purpose
On the other side of the equation there are Presidents who are skilled in
developing strategies, and even in leading the public, but who have no moral
core. By that I mean, they are skilled in the political and military arts, but have no
end but power by itself. Certainly, all Presidents must possess power in order to
do good. Power is the prerequisite. And a President who spends excessive time
contemplating moral ends is likely to be caught unaware by events. Yet at the
same time, the Presidents that I think are most effective—Lincoln, Roosevelt and
Reagan—begin with and return to an end other than power.
Two Presidents exemplify the tendency to pursue power without moral ends. One
is obvious—Richard Nixon. In February, 1972, while the Vietnam war was still
being fought, Nixon travelled to China to meet with Mao Tse Tung, one of the
great mass murderers of the twentieth century—and a country that supplied
weapons to North Vietnam, then fighting and killing American troops in Vietnam.
The reason for the visit was strategic. The war in Vietnam had strained American
resources and confidence among its allies, particularly in Europe. The Soviet
Union was becoming stronger. China feared the Soviets. Regardless of
ideology, the Soviets were afraid that Chinese power would threaten the Russian
hold over their far eastern Maritime provinces. The Russians were considering
preemptive war against China, and fighting had already broken out on the Ussuri
River in Siberia in 1989.
The Americans and the Chinese had the same interest: block Soviet power. By
aligning the United States and China, Nixon and Mao created a situation where it
was threatened both in the east and west. Implicit was the threat that an attack
in one direction would result in a counter-attack from the other, since neither
America or China wanted to face the Soviets alone. From a strategic point of
view, the action made perfect sense. Indeed, it could be compared to Roosevelt’s
decision to ally with Stalin against Hitler.
It was strategically brilliant, but what Nixon lacked that Roosevelt had was a
sense of the moral end, and understanding of where this was leading. At the
same time as he was pursuing his opening to China, Nixon was pursuing détente
with the Soviet Union. He was playing one off against the other. Rather than
understanding that both were morally decrepit regimes and using relations with
one to destroy the other, Nixon was content to balance them off against each
other. At the root of Nixon’s thinking was that the Soviet Union and Communist
China were permanent features of the international system, and that preserving
and balancing them was the best that could be done.
Underneath this was a profound indifference to the kind of regimes they were.
Unlike Roosevelt, who understood the kind of regime he was dealing with, Nixon
was indifferent to it. His willingness to support the Pinochet regime in Chile, did
not derive from a strategy intended to achieve some good. It was what we might
call an instrumental strategy, a strategy in which managing the situation is an end
in itself, and there is no expectation or interest in a moral outcome in the long
run. It was strategically brilliant foreign policy devoid of moral character.
It is interesting to note that in spite of his ability to operate brilliantly on the
international stage, he failed as a leader precisely because of the defect in his
foreign policy. He was entirely operational, without a moral core. The Watergate
transgressions plus his other actions generated opened him to effective attacks
by his enemies, without serving—or being intended to serve—a clear purpose.
In the same way that his foreign policy lacked a moral core, so too did his
leadership, and he was, in due course, found out and bought down. Nixon’s
cynicism, unlike Lincoln, Roosevelt’s or Reagan’s had no moral core. Rather
than making him more successful, the lack of this core destroyed his Presidency
because in the end, he was no longer able to lead, undermining his strategic
vision, shattering is leadership.
John F. Kennedy was similar to Richard Nixon, in that, in the final analysis, he
too lacked a moral core in foreign policy—a sense of purpose behind his
strategy. Kennedy is important to my argument because he appears to be the
antithesis of Nixon ideological and as a person. Both might well be true. But the
defect I’m speaking of occurs in all ideologies and isn’t rooted in personality. It
occurs sometimes randomly, sometimes when the moral end is so self-evident
that it doesn’t seem to need clear definition.
During his inaugural address, Kennedy said that “Let every nation know,
whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden,
meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the
survival and the success of liberty.” Kennedy had fought in World War II against
Japan and his brother died fighting Nazi Germany. He entered politics at a time
when the United States was locked in what seemed a death struggle against the
Soviet Union. This statement was shaped in World War II and frozen in the Cold
War.
As a strategic statement, this is of course meaningless. As the old saw goes, “he
who defends everything defends nothing.” It is impossible to support every friend
or fight every foe. But the moral sense of course is clear—a commitment to
resist Communism wherever it might arise. Superb rhetoric, this was not meant
to be strategy. But neither was it morality in the sense of freeing slaves, crushing
the Nazis or he Soviet Union.
Looked at carefully, this is a purely negative commitment. It is a commitment to
defend liberty, not a commitment to expand it. It is a defensive statement. The
victory is in survival. In 1961, this was all that Kennedy could perhaps imagine.
The Soviets were enormously powerful and their defeat imaginable only at the
risk of nuclear war. History might have imposed this as the moral end, but
Kennedy did not have the long range vision to look beyond it. Perhaps he
couldn’t reasonably have been expected to do so. A purely negative moral vision
might not derive from a personal or ideological defect, but its effect on a foreign
policy is present regardless of the reason.
Nixon saw the strategic as an end in itself, leading to the balance of power and
the preservation of American interests. So did Kennedy. Kennedy’s foreign
policy had no coherence beyond the operational and the defensive. In Berlin he
sought to hold the line after the Soviets build the Wall. In Cuba, he probed at the
Bay of Pigs, withdrew on finding resistance and final engaged after the Soviets
took the initiative in deploying Missiles. In Southeast Asia, he sought a means
for defending the region without excessive risk to US forces and without
threatening the survival of Communist regimes.
The lack of a clear, positive moral sense allowed Kennedy to pursue a strategy
that was ultimately dedicated to managing crises and avoiding risk, rather than
pursuing an end that he didn’t have. It is useful to consider how he managed the
Cuban Missile Crisis. Having miscalculated on Soviet intentions, Kennedy
discovered that the Soviets were placing missiles in Cuba. That would have
changed the balance of power dramatically, since at that point, the United States
both had a massive bomber force and—contrary to campaign rhetoric—a
massive advantage in missiles. Placing missiles in Cuba would negate the
American advantage.
Kennedy’s goal was the withdrawal of the missiles without actions that risked
nuclear war. The ultimate solution to the crisis was a secret deal with the Soviet
Union in which the United States agreed to trade missiles in Turkey—not quite as
obsolete as the Kennedy Administration would always claim—for the missiles in
Cuba. The price for this deal from the American side was an agreement that the
quid pro quo be kept secret by the Soviets, and that the withdrawal of the
missiles in Turkey appear to be at the American option, while the Soviet
withdrawals appear to be the result of American power.
The Soviets agreed to this in large part because the consequence of nuclear war
at that time would have destroyed the Soviet Union, and the Soviet deterrent was
not really fully in place yet. The Soviets couldn’t take the risk and accepted the
public humiliation in return for private mutuality. To this day, while the secret
deal is well known, the Cuban Missile Crisis is viewed as the Soviets backing
down. When the day was done, there was no missiles in Cuba—as had been the
case before the crisis. There were now also no missiles in Turkey, a net gain for
the Soviets.
Kennedy made a lie part of the deal, which was clever and effective. As we have
seen, deception, particularly of the American public, is part of leadership. But
where Lincoln, Roosevelt and Reagan were deceiving the public on the how their
ultimate ends and how far they were prepared to go to pursue them, Kennedy
was not deceiving anyone on his ends. He was deceiving the public on what us,
in the final analysis, a capitulation, although not an enormously significant one.
The deception did not serve the end of strengthening the pursuit of the moral
goal. It strengthened in part the strategic element, by making him appear more
fearsome than he was. But its greatest effect was on leadership. He appeared to
have one a great victory—the Soviet backed down in the face of his measured
resoluteness—when in fact he capitulated to a Soviet demand that he publicly
rejected.
The issue with Kennedy, as with Nixon, is the end to which this was dedicated.
The same could be said about his Vietnam policy. He certainly appears to have
had questions as to what his ultimate purpose was in Vietnam, and he may have
been intending to withdraw, but those who argue this forget that three weeks
before his own assassination, the United States approved a coup d’etat against
Ngo Dinh Diem, the President of Vietnam. Whether Kennedy knew of or
approved of Diem’s execution, he certainly knew of and approved his
assassination.
Kennedy’s reasoning is murky. The most plausible theory is that he felt that if
Diem were ousted, a military junta could stabilize Vietnam, resist the Viet Cong
and allow the U.S. to withdraw. Obviously that isn’t what happened. Quite the
contrary. Had he lived, Kennedy would have faced the same dilemma as his
successor—to stay or withdraw allowing collapse, and betraying his inaugural
speech.
Kennedy’s foreign policy strategy was reactionary and opportunistic. It reacted to
events rather than controlled them. It took advanatage of what appeared to be
opportunities, where frequently the opportunities were illusory, such as the
assassination of Diem. The problem was not his deception or his ruthlessness.
All Presidents must have that. The problem was that his foreign policy had no
anchor. Except to react, it wasn’t going anywhere.
Conclusion
The job of the President is defined by his oath of office: to preserve, protect and
defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies, foreign and
domestic. That in itself contains complexity upon complexity. The preservation
of he constitution can require the violation of the constitution.
Political morality in the United States must be linked to two documents—the
Declaration of the United States which enunciates the moral foundation of the
nation, and the Constitution which defines the mechanics of the regime. In other
countries are moral values are necessary, and for revolutionaries, their own
moral values take priority. But in the United States, it is these two documents.
In a theoretical sense the principles in these two documents transcend place.
They can exist anywhere—in theory. In practice, preserving, protecting and
defending the constitution of the United States requires that America be
protected. That protection requires power and strategy and the acquisition and
employment of that power and strategy is not always compatible with the moral
principles. In order to pursue the moral ends, national security is a prerequisite
and that is the profound tension in the American Presidency. That, combined
with the uncertainties of public opinion, which governs a democracy, forces the
successful President to manipulate public opinion and when necessary lie to it,
either about ends or means—or both.
A President who won’t violate the principles of the country and regime, and who
won’t lie to the public, threatens to do them great harm. Imagine if Lincoln,
Roosevelt or Reagan had not done what they had done. Imagine if Wilson,
Carter and Bush understood that the pursuit of moral ends required more
cunning than they had. Imagine if Nixon or Kennedy understood that cunning
wasn’t enough.
The American Presidency requires a moral end, an understanding of power and
strategy and the ability to lead the American people to where the President
needs them to go, knowingly or not. Moralist cannot be President, nor can the
amoral. The Presidency requires the ability to act in violation of fundamental
principles in order to secure those principles. That has always been the basis of
the Presidency and that will be the basis in the next decade.
1
Dallek, p. 181
Dallek, p. 287
3 Rees, p. 98
4 Dallek, p. 296-297
2