Continuing my three-volumes-at-a-time survey of the American Presidents series, edited by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. This installment covers the presidencies of 1933-1961.
As the presidencies of 1861-1877 were those of the Civil War presidents, these were the presidencies of the World War II presidents. You had, first, the great leader who directed the war and died almost simultaneously with its conclusion; then the obscure border-state senator who succeeded him, about whom everybody wondered if he'd be up to the job; lastly came the war's victorious general, elected president more as a reward for his victory than out of confidence that he'd make a good president.
Roy Jenkins on Franklin Delano Roosevelt is the unique case in this series, so far, of a non-American author, and also the unique case of an author who died before finishing his book. He got as far as the middle of the 1944 presidential campaign, leaving the last 15 pages and 8 months of FDR's presidency and life to be finished off by his consultant, historian Richard E. Neustadt. Jenkins was a major British politician of his day who in retirement turned to penning massive biographies of Gladstone and Churchill. At one point he thought of taking on FDR in the same manner, but concluded that he didn't have enough original thoughts about him to make it worth the effort. But he did have enough to make a reasonable book in this briefer series. Interestingly, years earlier Jenkins had written a short book about Truman which would have made a perfect entry in this series: a brilliant character study bristling with fresh insights on him from a British perspective. By the time he got to his FDR book, though, Jenkins' knack had devolved into making every possible comparison with anything British he could think of, often ludicrously irrelevant. But, like his Truman book, it works as a chronological character study, devoting three chapters to FDR's earlier life and smoothly seguing into one chapter for each of his four terms as president. Jenkins' interest in FDR's relationships with others (sometimes abruptly terminated) leads him to a full account of Eleanor Roosevelt's earlier life, by far the most attention paid to a First Lady in this series. (And yes, the effect of FDR's affairs on his marriage is covered.) Jenkins has a solid grasp of his subject's often enigmatic thought processes, and is particularly brilliant on the president's diplomatic balancing act between a desperate UK and an isolationist Congress in the period before the US entered WW2. (He's properly dismissive of conspiracy theories regarding Pearl Harbor.)
Robert Dallek on Harry S. Truman introduces a new organizational pattern to this series, possibly because the post-war status of the US President as leader of the Free World requires this approach. (But Jenkins' Truman book was far more interested in exploring Truman's background.) After a chapter briskly summarizing the subject's earlier life, Dallek devotes one chapter to each year of Truman's presidency, throwing everything that happened in that period into a hopper and grinding it up. There's no narrative theme, just a lot of events, which is how life really is. Dallek is an academic historian who's written many general-audience books on other modern presidents; I haven't read any of the others, so I don't know if his tendency to evaluate the president's decisions by their effect on his political career is a regular tick of Dallek's; it fits oddly with his judgment that Truman's skill as president improved markedly once he stopped trying to please everybody and just did what he thought was right. Dallek virtuosically balances the rises and falls of Truman's popularity with the wise and foolish decisions of the presidency. Among the actions he defends is the dropping of the A-bomb, and I think he gets the arguments right on that point. Dallek acknowledges that Truman was a good president, who with experience rose to the challenges of his office, but he also claims that Truman was an unreliable narrator about his own actions (stating that his account of MacArthur's behavior at their Wake Island meeting was untrue, something I'd never previously read), and opines that Truman's ferocious temper, even though he kept it under wraps (it only erupted in public in his infamous pop-eyed letter to a music critic who'd given his daughter's concert a bad review), made him emotionally ill-suited to be president, even a potentially dangerous figure. This book was published over a decade ago, but we could use it now.
Tom Wicker on Dwight D. Eisenhower follows the same organizational pattern as Dallek on Truman: one chapter briskly summing up the man's earlier life and (approximately) one chapter each on each year of his presidency, with no division by theme or topic, with the organizing principle being the expression of the president's character. Wicker was a journalist who offers this series' first testimony to personal acquaintance with the subject. Wicker begins by admitting that he was a "devout" (his word) Stevenson man, but rather than disqualifying himself for writing about Ike, he skillfully leverages this into a severe critique of what he considers Ike's bad decisions, balanced with a sincere admiration of Ike's charm (which Wicker personally testifies to) and ability to maintain his popularity. Ike may not have covered himself with glory in dealing with Joe McCarthy, for instance, but getting out of that mudhole unstained was a sign of his political skill. And Wicker praises Ike for some wise initiatives, particularly in high diplomacy. However, it's the criticisms that stick in the mind from this book. Wicker credits, or rather blames, Ike for the creation of US covert warfare policy (engineering coups in Iran and Guatemala, though I'm not sure earlier presidents hadn't also done such things), the domino theory (which later led us into such trouble in Indochina), and the concept of executive privilege (a two-edged sword, that one). Wicker also concludes baldly that Ike's reluctance to intervene in post-Brown integration crises came simply from a preference for segregation, though his worst single mistake may have been sending that last U-2 flight, which torpedoed his nuclear disarmament initiative. Though there's much about Ike's character in this book, there's virtually nothing on his personal life; Kay Summersby goes completely unmentioned, even to deny that they had an affair.
No comments:
Post a Comment