The Present's Problematic Predicament for Past Presidents

Professor Pitney mentioned a while ago that Woodrow Wilson would not get away with referencing Darwin in today's political culture. When you come to think of it, many past presidents would probably perish politically in the present.

This is an interesting article about Ken Burns's documentary about the Roosevelts. Of particular relevance is the description of how TR and FDR would fare in today's political-media culture. 

"We are in a media culture where we are buried in information but we know nothing," said Burns. "Because of that superficiality, we expect heroes to be perfect, but they're not. They are a strange combination of strengths and weaknesses." He points to two of his main characters as examples. "Franklin and Theodore couldn't get out of the Iowa caucuses [today]. Franklin is too infirm. CNN and Fox would be vying for the worst images of him unlocking the braces, the sweat pouring off his brow, the obvious pain and that kind of pity that it would engender would be political poison. And Theodore is just too hot for the new medium of television. There would be 10 'Howard Dean' moments a day."

And it also touches on their role in expanding presidential powers:

Bold, persistent experimentation is what FDR called it. Both Roosevelts were always on the move, clashing with the prevailing order, whether it was the party bosses or members of Congress. They often won. FDR had the Depression to create the sense of crisis that gave him free rein, but Teddy Roosevelt had no such calamity. He worried about that, saying that Lincoln would have been a forgettable president without the Civil War. Teddy had no such war, and yet we still talk about his bully pulpit and quote his aphorism about carrying a big stick when talking about presidential power. He took on the monopolies, threatened to send federal troops to operate the coal mines, and battled for the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Federal Meat Inspection Act.

Definitely worth a read-through.


Apologies for missing the past two classes -- I'll see you all on Monday!


NUF said

Ike Through Jimmy

Just before Eisenhower became president, his son John went to Korea to serve in an infantry unit. In the New York Times, the younger Eisenhower recalls a conversation that you probably never had with your dad.

As the time for my deployment approached, I discussed my intentions with my father. We met at the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago, just after the Republican convention, and I explained my position. My father, as a professional officer himself, understood and accepted it. However, he had a firm condition: under no circumstances must I ever be captured. He would accept the risk of my being killed or wounded, but if the Chinese Communists or North Koreans ever took me prisoner, and threatened blackmail, he could be forced to resign the presidency. I agreed to that condition wholeheartedly. I would take my life before being captured.

Ponder that last line. A president needs a pint or two of very cold blood.

In early 1961, Ike gave his Farewell Address, famously warning of the military-industrial complex. Days later, the torch passed to JFK, who took a distinctly militant tone in the Cold War. Kennedy took full advantage of new technology, starting the practice of holding press conferences on live TV. His successor, Lyndon Johnson, had an earthy way of expressing himself.

In future weeks, we shall discuss Nixon in greater detail. But this brief clip gives a glimpse of what he termed a "cold-blooded" view of international politics. President Nixon sought to rally the "silent majority" for his Vietnam policies.  Also note a small chapter of actual drunk history.

• Ford was a healer.
• Carter wore a sweater and gave the "malaise" speech.

Yeah, I'd Be Pretty Ticked Off, Too...

In 2011, a man used a semiautomatic rifle to fire at least seven shots at the White House.  It took the Secret Service four days to figure out what had happened.  The Washington Post reports on the rather understandable reaction of President and Mrs. Obama:

The first lady was still upset when her husband arrived home five days later from Australia. The president was fuming, too, former aides said. Not only had their aides failed to immediately alert the first lady, but the Secret Service had stumbled in its response.

“When the president came back . . . then the s--- really hit the fan,” said one former aide.

Tensions were high when [Secret Service Director Mark] Sullivan was called to the White House for a meeting about the incident. Michelle Obama addressed him in such a sharp and raised voice that she could be heard through a closed door, according to people familiar with the exchange. Among her many questions: How did they miss bullets from an assault rifle lodged in the walls of her home?

Sullivan disputed this account of the meeting but declined to characterize the encounter, saying he does not discuss conversations with the first lady

FDR through Ike

FDR Inaugural:

Yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. ... Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men. 

True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.

The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.
....
In the field of world policy I would dedicate this Nation to the policy of the good neighbor—the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others—the neighbor who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a world of neighbors. 

.... This I propose to offer, pledging that the larger purposes will bind upon us all as a sacred obligation with a unity of duty hitherto evoked only in time of armed strife.
With this pledge taken, I assume unhesitatingly the leadership of this great army of our people dedicated to a disciplined attack upon our common problems.

Action in this image and to this end is feasible under the form of government which we have inherited from our ancestors. Our Constitution is so simple and practical that it is possible always to meet extraordinary needs by changes in emphasis and arrangement without loss of essential form. That is why our constitutional system has proved itself the most superbly enduring political mechanism the modern world has produced. It has met every stress of vast expansion of territory, of foreign wars, of bitter internal strife, of world relations. 

It is to be hoped that the normal balance of executive and legislative authority may be wholly adequate to meet the unprecedented task before us. But it may be that an unprecedented demand and need for undelayed action may call for temporary departure from that normal balance of public procedure. 

I am prepared under my constitutional duty to recommend the measures that a stricken nation in the midst of a stricken world may require. These measures, or such other measures as the Congress may build out of its experience and wisdom, I shall seek, within my constitutional authority, to bring to speedy adoption. 

But in the event that the Congress shall fail to take one of these two courses, and in the event that the national emergency is still critical, I shall not evade the clear course of duty that will then confront me. I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis—broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.

Gene Healy on Gabriel Over the White House from Cato Institute on Vimeo.

(Sorry, offensive word in the credits for the clip below.)

Mrs. Roosevelt for JFK

A fun picture related to Monday's class

The Presidency in the Early 20th Century

Federalist 8:  "It is of the nature of war to increase the executive at the expense of the legislative authority."

Tocqueville, Democracy in America: "If the Union’s existence were constantly menaced, and if its great interests were continually interwoven with those of other powerful nations, one would see the prestige of the executive growing, because of what was expected from it and of what it did."

Darth Sidious: "We stand on the threshold of a new beginning. In order to ensure our security and continuing stability, the Republic will be reorganized into the first Galactic Empire, for a safe and secure society which I assure you, will last for ten thousand years. An empire that will continue to be ruled by this august body, and a sovereign ruler chosen for life... an empire ruled by the majority... ruled by a new constitution..."

THREE VIEWS OF PRESIDENTIAL POWER

Wilson and presidential power in wartime (Milkis 254-255);

• American Protective League
• Committee on Public Information
• Espionage Act of 1917
• Sedition Act of 1918
• The Palmer Raids

Woodrow Wilson's stroke.

From Wilson's History of the American People, vol. 3.

Intertitles from The Birth of a Nation

The Harding letters and a recent news story about them

The underrated Calvin Coolidge made the first presidential speech on sound film:



Do you think Hoover was a great media president?

To and From the Civil War

Civil War timeline

• Lincoln letter to Albert Hodges on presidential prerogative
• Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and second inaugural

Between 1876 and 1892, no president won a majority of the popular vote:

1876 Hayes.......... 48.0*
1880 Garfield........48.3
1884 Cleveland.....48.5
1888 Harrison.......47.8*
1892 Cleveland.....46.1

*Won fewer popular votes than his main opponent.

The Senate Still Reads Washington's Farewell Addres

As the first president of the United States, George Washington yielded immense power to set precedents for his successors. In his Farewell Address, he emphasized his beliefs about certain issues still plaguing the U.S. today: the preservation of the union, the danger of factions, religion and morality, and America's role in the world. For a deeper discussion of those points, click here.


Over two hundred years later, the Senate is still looking to Washington for advice and encouragement, as supported by their annual tradition of reading his Farewell Address. Each year one senator is selected to read the address out loud, and the reading is followed by the writing of small notes which are maintained by the secretary of the Senate.


What this article pointed out was the hypocrisy of this practice: a very bipartisan legislature championing the ideas of a man who condemned political factions, long term foreign alliances, and the division of American unity.

Early 19th Century Presidency

Writing

Jefferson inaugural:



The drunk version is fun and broadly true -- but it was a low-level bureaucrat, not Mrs. Madison, who saved the Declaration.


Andrew Jackson was bat-guano crazy.



"I should have hit him," said Jackson after the duel, "had he shot me through the brain."

Jackson and the Bank Veto






  Territorial expansion

First Assignment, Fall 2014

Pick one of the following:

1. Ask any American over the age of forty to describe the first presidential event that he or she can clearly remember (e.g., FDR’s Pearl Harbor speech, the JFK assassination). Then “go back in time” to contemporary press reports and documents. How did the event look then? What accounts for differences between memory and the printed record? 
2. Find a recent (2013-2014) speech that invokes Washington, Lincoln, FDR, or JFK in order to make points about current politics. Why does the speaker or writer use this comparison? Is it historically accurate? How well does it apply to current politics? 
3. Pick any president between Washington and Bush 43. If Milkis and Nelson were to give four more manuscript pages to that president, what should they say? That is, what key aspects of this presidency did they downplay or overlook?

• Whichever essay you choose, do research to document your claims. Do not write from the top of your head. 
• Essays should be typed, double-spaced, and no more than four pages long. I will not read past the fourth page. 
• Cite your sources with endnotes, which should be in a standard style (e.g., Turabian or Chicago Manual of Style). Endnote pages do not count against the page limit. 
• Watch your spelling, grammar, diction, and punctuation. Errors will count against you. 
• Turn in essays to the class Sakai dropbox by 11:59 PM, Monday, September 29. Late essays will drop a gradepoint for one day’s lateness, a full letter grade after that. I will grant no extensions except for illness or emergency.

The Early Presidency

Washington Inauguration


Presidential power:  Neutrality, Pacificus and Helvidius

The Whiskey Rebellion:

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Farewell Address:

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice ? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

... 

Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people under an efficient government. the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel.

Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or caprice?

It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world; so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements. I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy. I repeat it, therefore, let those engagements be observed in their genuine sense. But, in my opinion, it is unnecessary and would be unwise to extend them.

The Election of 1800


The "bald, blind" Adams
Jefferson and the "pike and halbert"


For more on Washington, see a lecture by Yale historian Joanne Freeman (Pomona `84):

The President and the Constitution

Article II

Federalist 70 and plurality in the executive:

But one of the weightiest objections to a plurality in the Executive, and which lies as much against the last as the first plan, is, that it tends to conceal faults and destroy responsibility. Responsibility is of two kinds -- to censure and to punishment. The first is the more important of the two, especially in an elective office. Man, in public trust, will much oftener act in such a manner as to render him unworthy of being any longer trusted, than in such a manner as to make him obnoxious to legal punishment. But the multiplication of the Executive adds to the difficulty of detection in either case. It often becomes impossible, amidst mutual accusations, to determine on whom the blame or the punishment of a pernicious measure, or series of pernicious measures, ought really to fall. It is shifted from one to another with so much dexterity, and under such plausible appearances, that the public opinion is left in suspense about the real author. The circumstances which may have led to any national miscarriage or misfortune are sometimes so complicated that, where there are a number of actors who may have had different degrees and kinds of agency, though we may clearly see upon the whole that there has been mismanagement, yet it may be impracticable to pronounce to whose account the evil which may have been incurred is truly chargeable.

"I was overruled by my council. The council were so divided in their opinions that it was impossible to obtain any better resolution on the point." These and similar pretexts are constantly at hand, whether true or false. And who is there that will either take the trouble or incur the odium, of a strict scrunity into the secret springs of the transaction? Should there be found a citizen zealous enough to undertake the unpromising task, if there happen to be collusion between the parties concerned, how easy it is to clothe the circumstances with so much ambiguity, as to render it uncertain what was the precise conduct of any of those parties?

The oath (keep in mind next week when we discuss Lincoln):

May 19, 2008, in Billings, Montana

White House Delays Executive Actions on Immigration

Hello everyone, happy weekend!

I wanted to get this up before the headline disappeared, but the White House announced this morning that it will be delaying executive action on immigration. This announcement came despite a previous one made this summer in the White House Rose Garden that the president will act immediately after Jeh Johnson, the Secretary of Homeland Security, finished his review and presented recommendations to the president.

The article goes on to note that the reversal came likely due to mounting pressure from Senate Democrats, who are worried about the potential political ramifications that would come from executive actions during an election year. (POLITICO has reported that pressure from Senate Democrats have been ratcheting up for a bit now) It's interesting to note that while the response from the GOP is predictable, the harshest criticism comes from immigration reform groups, players that have typically supported the president and the Democrats.

Also, it'll be interesting to learn more throughout the class what exactly "executive actions" are! I found a nice basic primer for what executive "tools" the POTUS can use, written by Cass Sunstein, the former administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA)

The American Presidency

The presidency:  Kevin Spacey perspectives

Stuff you want to know:

• The president's salary and pension
• The Oval Office
• The Situation Room
• Presidential Emergency Operations Center (still photo)
• The Secret Service