PAtownhall.com
Pennsylvania's Marketplace of Ideas
Pennsylvania's Marketplace of Ideas
PAtownhall.com
Pennsylvania's Marketplace of Ideas
Pennsylvania's Marketplace of Ideas
by Nathan Shrader
"In politics, today is not yesterday, and forever does not exist." These are the words of historian Geoffrey Perret, whose spring 2007 book lays out the blueprint for how our nation drifted from the path of being a diplomatic nation that avoided entanglements abroad and set an example of liberty for mankind to its present state of playing the international card shark who loses every hand he is dealt.
Perret's recent book, Commander In Chief deserves to be read by any American seeking a realistic, factual, historical analysis of why and how Executive Branch power has been magnified, subverted, and used against the best interests of the American people.
Aptly subtitled "How Truman, Johnson, and Bush Turned a Presidential Power into a Threat to America's Future," Commander-In-Chief traces the excessive and manipulative forces of presidential overreach to the days just prior to the death of President Franklin Roosevelt who made promises with the Soviets prior to his death only never to bother relaying this information to his successor, all the way to President G.W. Bush's bungling of the war in Mesopotamia.
Perret does not play party politics, taking equal shots at Truman, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, G.H.W. Bush, Clinton, and Bush 43. While critically reviewing the tenure of Eisenhower and Kennedy at the helm, Perret is much kinder to the legacy of Ike and Jack, painting them as measured, even-handed, reasonable presidents who appeared to be able to judge situations and render decisions without the ultimate goal being to increase presidential power and executive authority.
Perret successfully delves into Truman's indecisiveness, his fear of making the wrong decision, his obsession with living outside of Roosevelt's shadow, and his bizarre need to down a mystery tonic (ingredients known only to his private doctor) to calm him down enough to make crucial decisions or give a major speech. Truman's penchant for talking tough against the Chinese, the North Koreans, and communism made for great political rhetoric, but when the time came, he could not back up his gusto with action and was frequently seen as a waffler.
The most humiliating portrait of Executive Branch madness was that of Lyndon Johnson. A political power broker whose goal was to mentally and emotionally control and break his staff and cabinet, Johnson was perhaps the nation's most disastrous "accidental president." Johnson's top priority as president was gaining power and putting it to use for personal advantage. Perret tells the tale of Johnson urinating on the leg of one of his secret service agents simply because he could. Not to mention exposing the presidential penis to demonstrate his manhood to the press.
Perret seems to believe that given his reelection in 1964, Jack Kennedy would have started withdrawing US forces from Vietnam. Kennedy's untimely death in Dallas allowed Johnson to escalate the Vietnam War to epic proportions. Johnson, so afraid of being remembered by history as an accidental president, vowed to flex America's strength by committing to an un-winnable war in Vietnam that cost America its prestige and thousands of American lives.
After meticulously picking apart the failed humanitarian blunders of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, specifically their engagement in Kuwait, Kosovo, and Somalia, Perret blames Bill Clinton for annihilating the tenants of the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) which set the standard for international politics: "the internal affairs of a sovereign nation were not the business of other sovereign nations."
According to Perret, the rejection of the principles of Westphalia by both Bush 41 and Clinton helped blaze the trail for Bush 43 to make his historic and strategic blunder in invading Iraq by using "human rights" and "democracy" as viable excuses for occupation and regime change. Tying everything back together, Perret is able to use the examples of FDR, Truman, Johnson, and Nixon routinely fabricating the truth, subverting the Constitution's provision of divided government with co-equal branches, and providing blatantly false information to the media and the people as a means for Bush to do the same.
Bush's potential inspiration for convincing Congress to abdicate its responsibility and allow for war without a war declaration? You guessed it, Johnson's bogus Gulf of Tonkin resolution. Despite Bush's promise in the 2000 campaign of no nation building (see pg. 330 in this book), Bush embarked upon the greatest nation building experiment in history. Stressing that "As a leader, you can never admit a mistake" (see pg. 340) or the best gem of them all "[In Iraq we are] not going to have any casualties" (pg. 352), Bush 43 has been able to expand executive power seemingly without effort, including this summer's revision of the FISA that takes the judicial branch out of the equation.
The end result is that Perret has produced a powerful book which serves as a clarion call for Congress to reassert itself into the national debate, to stop handing blank checks and open resolutions for war to the Executive Branch, for the presidency to recall that a revolution was fought in this land to prevent a unitary executive, and for the American people to arise from their slumber and realize that this nation is in great peril at our own doing.
Just a few weeks ago, Congress' Joint Economic Committee reported that the total cost of the Iraq and Afghan wars is now estimated at $1.6 trillion. The Iraq Coalition Casualty Count web page now puts U.S. military deaths at 3,889 with 28,661 wounded. On this same date, the Iraqi civilian fatality count stands between almost 78,000 and 85,000 according to Iraqbodycount.org.
Perret's work deserves to be read now more than ever and his call for disarming the Executive Branch's efforts to radically alter our political system should be seriously reviewed by all of us for the sake of saving our nation.
Nathan Shrader can be reached at nathanrshrader@yahoo.com
