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Category: Presidents

  • Taps For An American Hero

    On Wednesday, Colonel Robert L. Howard, the most decorated American soldier living, passed away at the age of 70. He served five tours of duty in Vietnam and the extraordinary list of honors and unit citations he received in those years is itemized in his Wikipedia entry. But one honor stands out among them, and how he came to receive it is described by Richard Goldstein in Col. Howard’s New York Times obituary:

    In December 1968, Sergeant First Class Howard, his rank at the time, was in a platoon of American and South Vietnamese troops who came under fire while trying to land in their helicopters on a mission to find a missing Green Beret. As the men set out after a prolonged firefight to clear the landing zone, they were attacked by some 250 North Vietnamese troops.

    As related in “Medal of Honor: Portraits of Valor Beyond the Call of Duty,” by Peter Collier, Sergeant Howard was knocked unconscious by an exploding mine. When he came to, his eyes were bloodied and his hands injured by shrapnel that had also destroyed his rifle. He heard his lieutenant groaning in pain a few yards away. He then saw an enemy soldier with a flamethrower burning the bodies of American and South Vietnamese soldiers who had just been killed.

    Sergeant Howard was unable to walk, but he threw a grenade toward the soldier with the flamethrower and managed to grab the lieutenant. As he was crawling with him toward shelter, a bullet struck his ammunition pouch, blowing him several feet down a hill. Clutching a pistol given to him by a fellow soldier, Sergeant Howard shot several North Vietnamese soldiers and got the lieutenant down to a ravine.

    Taking command of the surviving and encircled Green Berets, Sergeant Howard administered first aid, encouraged them to return fire and called in air strikes. The Green Berets held off the North Vietnamese until they were evacuated by helicopters.

    Having gained an officer’s commission after that exploit, he received the Medal of Honor from President Richard M. Nixon on March 2, 1971. The citation credited him for his “complete devotion to the welfare of his men at the risk of his life.”

    Presenting an award to so valiant a warrior was, indeed, one of the proudest moments of the Nixon White House. May the Colonel rest in the eternal peace that he so very much has earned.

  • We’re All Nixonians Now

    Bruce Bartlett is a former Reagan administration official who wrote in 2002 that President Nixon had “betrayed” conservative principles by acquiescing in big-government policies. Bartlett now argues that all conservatives will have to live with big government and higher taxes. He wants them to focus on promoting economic growth and keeping tax increases as moderate as possible:

    I think conservatives would better spend their diminished political capital figuring out how to finance the welfare state at the least cost to the economy and individual liberty, rather than fighting a losing battle to slash popular spending programs. But this will require them to accept the necessity of higher revenues.

    It is simply unrealistic to think that tax cuts will continue to be a viable political strategy when the budget deficit exceeds $1 trillion, as it will this year. Nor is it realistic to think that taxes can be kept at 19 percent of GDP when spending is projected to grow by about 50 percent of GDP over the next generation, according to both the Congressional Budget Office and the Government Accountability Office. And that’s without any new spending programs being enacted.

    ***
    I had an enjoyable exchange of e-mails with Mr. Bartlett in response to this post. I don’t have his permission to reproduce his messages, so I won’t. But in his first one, he said he wouldn’t be surprised if I accused him of flip-flopping when it came to the need to hew to conservative principles no matter what. My reply:

    I wouldn’t say a flip-flop at all. Just an irony. You make clear that we are in unanticipated times and that conservatives need a new script to match. It does seem that for nearly a century they have been fighting the same improvisational and ultimately losing rear guard action against the growth of government. Depression, World War II, Cold War, war on poverty, civil rights, Vietnam, 1980s recession, Social Security crisis, war on terrorism, war on global meltdown — in response to every crisis, government has grown. I believe it was you who demonstrated somewhere that by the end of his term Ronald Reagan himself had earned the title of biggest tax increaser ever.

    I hear you saying that there’s a point at which the market will cease having an incentive to recover and grow. Perhaps one sign would be the feds telling Detroit what kinds of cars to build in the teeth of a recession. (Oops! Already happened.)

    As for President Nixon, whatever his pragmatic disposition, I don’t think conservative critics have appreciated how hard it was to stay in Vietnam (which he’d determined was a vital national interest) with a Democrat-dominated Congress. He couldn’t have been more conservative if he’d wanted to (which the tapes and memos show he did, at least sometimes). In California even the governor was tacking to the center. It took the 1980s for Reagan to be Reagan. In the early 1970s, I’ll bet he would’ve been Nixon.

  • Of Mice, Pumpkins, And Former Presidents

    Sometime after the transition in January of 1969, President Richard Nixon asked his predecessor, Lyndon Johnson, how it felt the moment he knew he wasn’t president anymore. LBJ replied:

    I don’t know whether you’ll understand this now or not, but you certainly will later. I sat there on that platform and waited for you to stand up and raise your right hand and take the oath of office, and the most pleasant words that I ever – that ever came to my ears were ‘So help me God’ that you repeated after that oath. Because at that time I no longer had the fear that I was the man that could make the mistake of involving the country in war, that I was no longer the man that would have to carry the terrifying responsibility of protecting the lives of this country and maybe the entire world, unleashing the horrors of some of our great power if I felt that was required.

    As the nation watches the high and historic drama unfold on January 20th, all eyes will be on Barack Obama and his beautiful family. While he assumes the awesome responsibilities that come with being America’s 44th president, there will be another – much quieter – drama unfolding.

    George W. Bush will fade into the political sunset and take his first steps as a former leader of the free world. And as he takes a final lap during these waning moments of his administration, complete with exit interviews, a press conference, and address to the nation, he has the look of someone who is very much looking forward to some of what Lyndon Johnson was talking about.

    Harry Truman remarked at the moment he inherited the presidency that he felt as if a “load of hay” had fallen on him. Well, hay or whatever, the day he left office he felt relief. As he sat on the platform listening to Dwight D. Eisenhower deliver his inaugural address, Truman found his mind wandering. A short while later, he was in a limousine for a ride to a farewell luncheon. Suddenly, the driver stopped for a red light – the first such traffic observance for Truman since April of 1945.

    Those first hours as a former president must be interesting indeed.

    In 1921, Woodrow Wilson was a shell of the man who had heard cheering in so many languages just a year or so earlier. There was a moment when he had been seen as an almost Messiah-like figure. But then, virtually wheelchair bound due to the debilitating effects of several strokes, his health prevented him from sitting outdoors to observe Warren Harding’s inauguration. Instead, as he heard cheers for his successor in the distance, he was driven along the quiet streets of Washington, D.C. to his home on S Street.

    But Wilson was still in the vicinity of the Capitol as his presidency expired, not so with Richard Nixon who relinquished the burdens of his presidency 39,000 feet over Jefferson City, Missouri on August 9, 1974, as Gerald R. Ford was taking the presidential oath in the White House East Room. The moment was marked by the singularly simple act of Colonel Ralph Albertazzie, the pilot of the presidential plane carrying Nixon to California. He changed the aircraft’s call sign from Air Force One to SAM 27000.

    The most dramatic inauguration day in recent memory was in 1981. At the very moment Ronald Reagan was succeeding Jimmy Carter, 52 hostages held by the Iranians for 444 days were boarding a plane at Tehran’s airport en route to freedom. Carter had spent a sleepless night monitoring the situation. The next day, the 39th president flew to Germany on behalf of the 40th to meet the freed Americans. Mr. Carter’s defeat in the recent election was due, in part, to his inability to obtain their release. The timing of the plane’s departure from Iran was delayed. This was one final act of insult by the captors. They didn’t let the captives go until the new president was sworn in.

    As the now-former president met with the hostages, one aid, Hamilton Jordan, noted that Jimmy Carter “looked as old and tired as I had ever seen him.”

    Years before he was elected to the nation’s highest office, William Howard Taft – who had a well-known aversion to overt politics – said: “It will be a cold day when I go to the White House.” He was right. That inauguration 100 years ago (though then still taking place on the 4th of March) was conducted against the backdrop of frigid temperatures and freezing rain that formed an arctic crust over the Capitol grounds. But the weather wasn’t the only frosty element that day – outgoing president Theodore Roosevelt, already less-than-enamored of his hand-picked successor’s moves away from “continuity,” watched the proceedings with “a stony expression and balled up fists.” This body language seemed to telegraph coming problems between Teddy and Taft.

    John F. Kennedy’s celebrated inauguration was also tempered by hard and bitter weather, in the wake of a blizzard in Washington. As he spoke that day, vapor surrounded his words. The contrast between the youthful new leader and his aged predecessor was stark.

    Following the ceremony, Eisenhower and his wife Mamie slipped out a side exit and went to the F Street Club for a luncheon with close friends. They then got in their car – just the two of them – and drove to their farm in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The drive should have taken a couple of hours, but because of the weather it turned into a ten-hour ordeal.

    Eisenhower, by the way, was the first former president to retain the services of a personal Secret Service bodyguard after leaving the White House – but only for two weeks.

    On March 4, 1933, Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt rode together from the White House to the Capitol to transfer power at a critical moment in our nation’s history. But any eavesdropping fly on the car window would have been disappointed at the dialogue. Breaking a long and awkward silence, the generally loquacious Roosevelt noted the new Commerce building under construction. Hoover had been Secretary of Commerce before becoming president, so FDR likely thought this would be a good icebreaker. The man who would soon take the oath of office remarked: “Lovely steel.”

    Hoover had no response. It was the last time they would ever “speak.”

    Whatever warm fraternity exists these days between former presidents – as was demonstrated last week at the ultimate White House power lunch – no such feelings were anywhere to be found 76 years ago as administrations changed during that time of severe economic crisis.

    By the way, one of the first things Harry Truman did after becoming president was to invite Herbert Hoover back to the White for the first time since March 4, 1933. Truman correctly sensed that only former presidents truly understand what the office personally means.

    The journey from power to lack thereof is a short one. It passes as quickly as the flip of a switch as the clock marks the moment and solemn words are uttered. In this unique split-second, one person assumes an awesome burden, while another gives it away.

    As you watch the events unfold on Tuesday, look closely at the faces of George Bush and Barack Obama and you’ll see two men smiling – one out of relief, the other out of excitement. And both men will likely be thinking “Now what?”

    Long after nightfall on January 20, 1969, Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson arrived at their 330-acre Texas ranch. LBJ had been an ex-President for just a few hours. Throughout the day friends had gathered – first at Andrews Air Force Base, then at Bergstrom Air Force Base in Texas. They showed up to say thank you to the man who had ascended to the presidency in those chaotic Dallas moments more than five years before – and who less than a year before had pulled himself out of the race for a final term in the White House.

    One of the first tell-tale signs that life was going to be comparatively perk-free was when they came upon their massive collection of luggage that had been left in the carport that evening, with no one around to carry the bags. Mr. and Mrs. Johnson laughed. Ladybird then uttered a phrase that captures what all former presidents probably come to understand as they take their first steps as former presidents:

    “The coach has turned back into the pumpkin and all the mice have run away.”

  • Gen ‘08

    In the July 30 “New Republic,” Michael Crowley has a thoughtful profile of McCain right-hand man, co-author, and speechwriter Mark Salter. Here’s the 53-year-old Iowan’s challenge as he heads to to his cottage in Maine to work on Sen. McCain’s acceptance speech at the GOP convention:

    Salter hints the speech will spotlight McCain’s moments of self-sacrifice, as when he refused early release from captivity in Vietnam or challenged his own party over campaign finance reform. The contrast, he says, will be the “selfishness” of “self-interested” political partisans–i.e. Obama–who, he argues, have risked nothing of substance in their lives.

    …[T]he challenge Salter’s convention speech encapsulates is the generational showdown this election has become. The baby-boomer speechwriter must come up with an address that explains why voters should choose the elderly McCain’s experience and grounding in traditional values over the youthful Gen-X audacity of Obama. In the Salter narrative, the self-sacrificing war hero could not meet a better foil than the Obamamaniacs’ narcissistic world of Facebook and YouTube and Scarlett Johansson. But voters aren’t likely to base their decision on the past. With the economy on fire, gas prices soaring, and the Bush presidency a disaster, voters are feeling the fierce urgency of now. Even many Republicans concede John McCain may be waging an unwinnable fight.

    A funny thing happens in that second paragraph. After reprising Salter’s somewhat overwrought argument that McCain’s narrative is redolent with self-sacrifice compared to that of the untested Sen. Obama and his self-obsessed, youthful hordes, Crowley doesn’t bother sticking up for the younger cohort. It wouldn’t be a tough argument. After all, aren’t Salter’s own boomers supposed to be the most narcissistic generation in history? Instead, Crowley nods in the direction of Salter’s world view but then suggests that voters will be so distracted by their troubles and worries that they…well, I guess he’s saying that they’ll vote for whomever more persuasively promises instant relief.

    That sounds like a voters-are-dumb argument. Since voters definitely aren’t dumb, perhaps Republicans shouldn’t be so discouraged. Obama is brazenly reaching for the Kennedy mantle, especially with his coming star turn in Berlin. Not much of a Kennedy person, even I’m offended. Obama’s no Kennedy. A 13-year veteran of the House and Senate, the son of a U.S. ambassador, Kennedy’s World War II and Cold War bona fides (together with his fictional missile gap and deft manipulation of state secrets about Cuba) even enabled him to edge to Richard Nixon’s right on foreign policy in the 1960 election. He didn’t shift a whole range of positions within weeks of winning primaries with them, and he never said blithely that he’d be President “eight to ten years.” He earned his aura by his easy style and humor in office as well as his martyrdom. Obama pretends to it as a national figure for under two years. If Europeans go nuts over him, what does that prove? That they’re as easily fooled as Americans and their lapdog network anchors?

    Sure, Obama may be the real thing. Inexperienced leaders have sometimes risen to historic, wrenching challenges. But nobody really knows if Obama is such a leader, because nothing in his record demonstrates it. Supporting him urgently is by and large an act of faith. Meanwhile, there’re ample grounds for Obamagnosticism. Ryan Lizza, who studied him carefully for “The New Yorker,” wasn’t even willing to say for sure that Obama puts the public’s interests ahead of his own political advancement. His policy shifts, even if some are in the right direction, add credence to the view that he’ll do whatever is necessary to win. I think voters will notice that and begin to hold him to a higher standard than either they or the media have so far. In the months to come, for the very reason that they’re worried about their future, as Crowley notes, voters in key states will look for a substantive debate about issues that matter to them, and they’ll know when they’re being spun and manipulated. In anxious times, authenticity counts. McCain’s “experience and grounding in traditional values” may yet come in handy.

  • The Great Pennsylvania Debate – in McKeesport

    Presidential debates, especially the intra-party variety we are witnessing these days, are frequent to the point of becoming common place, if not benign. They seem to prove what Marshall McLuhan said about medium equaling message. The recent gotcha-fest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama could make even the wildest political animal long for the days when debates were fewer and farther between.

    Or at least interesting.

    I’ve found myself longing a bit for those sixteen silent years between 1960 and 1976, when debates weren’t part of presidential campaigns. In fact, they were rarely mentioned at all. Maybe Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon were on to something.

    In spite of abundant current evidence of forensic mediocrity, there does seem to be renewed interest these days in the gold standard for political debate – those serious and cerebral verbal exchanges between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas one hundred and fifty years ago. And, even though their experience was part of a campaign for a U.S. Senate seat, and not the White House itself, comparing that historic dialogue with what political debating has become in our age tempts one to switch the television channel to something with more depth.

    Like a rerun of The Price is Right on The Game Show Network.

    It actually took ninety years for what Abe and Steve did so well to even begin to impact modern American presidential politics. In 1948, Republican hopeful Harold Stassen debated Thomas Dewey before the Oregon Republican Primary. In 1956, Estes Kefauver debated Adlai Stevenson before the Florida Democratic Primary. And, of course, all modern day discussion of presidential debates inevitably includes a reference to the Kennedy-Nixon debates of 1960.

    The first of those now legendary debates took place in Chicago on September 26, 1960. It was moderated by Howard K. Smith and watched on television by more than 70 million Americans. But, in fact, it really wasn’t their first debate.

    With this year’s Pennsylvania primary now on center stage, it’s interesting to note that Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy had their very own Keystone state debate moment many years before – back in 1947.

    The two young Navy war veterans were elected to Congress in 1946 – Kennedy from Massachusetts and Nixon from California. During their first days in congress, they were appointed to the House Education and Labor Committee and were, as Nixon later recalled, “like a pair of unmatched bookends.”

    In April of 1947, they traveled to McKeesport, Pennsylvania, a coal mining and steel industry town of around 50,000 citizens at the time, located about fifteen miles from Pittsburgh, at the confluence of the Monongahela and Youghiogheny Rivers. They had been asked to debate before a Junto Forum (this kind of discussion-based group dated back to the days of Benjamin Franklin) and to argue the merits, or lack thereof, of a piece of legislation informally known as the Taft-Hartley bill (officially, it was “The Labor-Management Relations Act”).

    This legislation had already passed the House and was at that time before the Senate. It was designed to rein in what was referred to at the time as Big Labor, and was the most successful of more than 200 similar bills proposed in the immediate aftermath of the war, as the country faced significant labor unrest. It would eventually clear the Senate and be vetoed by President Truman, who referred to it as a “slave labor” bill. His veto was then overridden and he actually found himself using the act a dozen or so times during his presidency.

    The debate took place at the Penn McKee Hotel, with about one hundred and fifty people in the audience. Nixon spoke in strong support of the bill. Kennedy was opposed – but not without commending certain aspects of the legislation. Chris Matthews in his 1996 book – “Kennedy & Nixon: The Rivalry that Shaped Postwar America”- suggested that the crowd clearly favored Kennedy (being a largely blue-collar and pro-labor district) and that the catcalls from some had been so fierce that “a local business leader felt called upon to apologize to the Republican congressman in writing.”

    But Kennedy saw it differently. In October of 1962, just three days before he would see the first photographic evidence of the Soviet missile build up in Cuba, President Kennedy returned to McKeesport. In his speech that day at their City Hall, he recalled: “The first time I came to this city was in 1947, when Mr. Richard Nixon and I engaged in our first debate. He won that one, and we went on to other things.”

    Indeed.

    It’s a fascinating little bit of history in preview – a joint appearance of these two young men with such compelling and interrelated futures ahead of them.

    Following their debate that evening long ago, the two future fierce opponents made their way to the town’s Star Diner to eat hamburgers and talk about baseball. They were killing time before heading to the train station to catch the midnight Capital Unlimited back to Washington.

    Sharing a compartment on the train, they drew straws to see who got the lower berth. Nixon won that one too.

    By all accounts, Mr. 35 and Mr. 37 talked long into the wee hours of the morning about the issue that most resonated with them – foreign policy. The Cold War was underway, and these two men who would play such vital roles during its most critical moments, contemplated their world.

    If only we had a transcript of THAT debate. — DRS