WHITE HOUSE STUDIES COMPENDIUM VOLUME 4
WHITE HOUSE STUDIES COMPENDIUM VOLUME 4
ROBERT W. WATSON EDITOR
Nova Science Publishers, Inc. New York
Copyright © 2007 by Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means: electronic, electrostatic, magnetic, tape, mechanical photocopying, recording or otherwise without the written permission of the Publisher. For permission to use material from this book please contact us: Telephone 631-231-7269; Fax 631-231-8175 Web Site: http://www.novapublishers.com NOTICE TO THE READER The Publisher has taken reasonable care in the preparation of this book, but makes no expressed or implied warranty of any kind and assumes no responsibility for any errors or omissions. No liability is assumed for incidental or consequential damages in connection with or arising out of information contained in this book. The Publisher shall not be liable for any special, consequential, or exemplary damages resulting, in whole or in part, from the readers’ use of, or reliance upon, this material. Independent verification should be sought for any data, advice or recommendations contained in this book. In addition, no responsibility is assumed by the publisher for any injury and/or damage to persons or property arising from any methods, products, instructions, ideas or otherwise contained in this publication. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information with regard to the subject matter covered herein. It is sold with the clear understanding that the Publisher is not engaged in rendering legal or any other professional services. If legal or any other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent person should be sought. FROM A DECLARATION OF PARTICIPANTS JOINTLY ADOPTED BY A COMMITTEE OF THE AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION AND A COMMITTEE OF PUBLISHERS.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Available upon request.
ISBN: 978-1-60692-760-1
Published by Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
New York
CONTENTS Preface
ix
Reluctant Home Remodeler, General Contractor, or Chief Architect: Foreign Policy and the Education of George W. Bush Glenn P. Hastedt and Anthony J. Eksterowicz
1
Eisenhower, Reagan, and Escaping the Dilemmas of Deterrence Robert A. Strong Beyond the Water’s Edge: Public Opinion, Foreign Policy,and the Post-Cold War Presidency Michael R. Chambers and Robert K. Goidel The Foreign Policy Architecture of the Clinton and Bush Administrations James K. Oliver Architect or Home Builder? President George W. Bush, Mexico, and the Misunderstood European Referent Mark J. Miller Presidents and Intelligence Arthur S. Hulnick “A Squadron of Observation”: Thomas Jefferson and America’s First War Against Terrorism Craig L. Symonds The Wilson Presidency, the U.S. Navy, and Homeland Defense George H. Quester
17
29 45
69 83
99 111
Navigating Shallow Waters While Avoiding a Course to Empire: American Presidential Doctrines and the United States in the Gulf, 1969-2003 Ernest S. Tucker
123
The Presidency and Building a Coalition to Wage a War on Al Qaeda and the Taliban Regime Jack M. Beard
133
vi
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Between the Storms: How Desert Storm Shaped the U.S. Navy of Operation Iraqi Freedom Jeffrey R. Macris
153
Civil-Military Relations and the War on Terror Stephen D. Wrage
173
September 11th and the Bush Presidency: Rally-Round-the-Rubble Stephen E. Frantzich
193
Freedom Challenged: Due Process of Law During War Lewis S. Ringel
207
The Evolving Role of the National Security Adviser: From Executive Secretary to Activist Counselor Loch K. Johnson and Karl F. Inderfurth
229
Victims or Rogues? The Impeachment of Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin in Comparative Perspective Ryan Barilleaux and Jody Baumgartner
245
The Permanent Campaign in the White House: Evidence from the Clinton Administration Stephen K. Medvic and David A. Dulio
265
From the Baltic to the Black Sea: Bush’s NATO Enlargement Ryan C. Hendrickson and Kristina Spohr Readman
283
Spanning the Century: Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, and the Environment Glen Sussman and Byron W. Daynes
301
The “Fashionable” End to Discrimination: The Development of Affirmative Action in the Kennedy-Johnson White House Stacy K. Sewell
319
The Dysfunctional Presidency of Calvin Coolidge Robert E. Gilbert The Case for the Study of Presidential Children: Julie Nixon Eisenhower’s Role in the Nixon White House Tabitha Alissa Warters Treatment of the Electoral College in American Government and Presidency Textbooks Robert P. Watson, Anthony J. Eksterowicz, Charles Gleek and Sarah Brendel Andrews Bureaus in Motion: Civil Servants Compare the Clinton, G.H.W. Bush, and Reagan Presidential Transitions Robert Maranto
333
349
365
377
Contents Unearthing The Buried Foundations of the American Presidency: What the Native Americans Taught the Framers About Political Leadership, and What They Can Teach Us Michael A. Genovese The Clinton Factor: The Effects of Clinton’s Personal Image in 2000 Presidential Primaries and in the General Election Mark J. Wattier
vii
393
407
Executive Power and the Constitution in Times of Crisis Robert P. Saldin
429
Does the Size of Midterm Election Loss Matter? Kevin R. Spiker
445
Eleanor Roosevelt as an Entrepreneur Maurine H. Beasley and Henry R. Beasley
455
Eleanor Roosevelt: The Path to Equality Susan Abrams Beck
469
Roosevelt Campobello International Park Morgan Reichek
483
Book Reviews
487
Considering the Bush Presidency. Edited by Gary L. Gregg II and Mark J. Rozell Reviewed by: Gary Aguiar
487
From Munich to Pearl Harbor: Roosevelt’s America and the Origins of the Second World War. By David Reynolds Reviewed by: Ahrar Ahmad
488
The Presidency & the Law: The Clinton Legacy. Edited by David Gray Adler and Michael A. Genovese Reviewed by: Timothy O. Lenz
490
The Presidency, Congress, and Divided Government: A Postwar Assessment. By Richard S. Conley Reviewed by: Melody Rose
492
Living History. By Hillary Rodham Clinton Reviewed by: Jerome Short and Colleen Shogan
493
Lyndon Baines Johnson. By Thomas S. Langston Reviewed by: Richard M. Yon
496
I Do Solemnly Swear: The President’s Constitutional Oath. It’s Meaning and Importance in the History of Oaths. By Matthew A. Pauley Reviewed by: Erin O'Brien
497
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Reassessing the Reagan Presidency. By Richard S. Conley, ed. Reviewed by: John P. Burke
499
Presidential Elections, 1789-2000 Reviewed by: Matthew J. Streb
501
Power to Destroy: The Political Uses of the IRS from Kennedy to Nixon. By John A. Andrew III Reviewed by: Stephen J. Wayne
502
Debating the Kennedy Presidency. By James N. Giglio and Stephen G. Rabe Reviewed by Steven A. Shull
504
George Washington: Uniting a Nation. By Don Higginbotham Reviewed by: Thomas S. Langston
506
Choosing a President: The Electoral College and Beyond. Edited by Paul D. Schumaker and Burdett A. Loomis Reviewed by: R. Sam Garrett
507
Reflections: Life After the White House. By Barbara Bush. Reviewed by: Colleen Shogan and Jerome Short
509
Reaganism and the Death of Representative Democracy. By Walter Williams Reviewed by: Charles E. Walcott
511
Forged In War: Roosevelt, Churchill, and the Second World War. By Warren F. Kimball Reviewed by Chris J. Dolan
513
Honor and Loyalty: Inside The Politics of the George H. W. Bush White House. Edited by Leslie D. Feldman and Rosanna Perotti Reviewed by: Russell L. Mahan
515
Thomas Jefferson: A Chronology of His Thoughts. Edited by Jerry Holmes Reviewed by: Will R. Jordan
516
About the Contributors
519
Index
527
PREFACE The American presidency has become one of the most powerful offices in the world with the ascendency of American power in the 20th century. “White House Studies Compendium” brings together piercing analyses of the American presidency - dealing with both currect issues and historical events. The compendia consist of the combined and rearranged issues of “White House Studies” with the addition of a comprehensive subject index.
In: White House Studies Compendium, Volume 4 Editor: R. W. Watson, pp. 1-16
ISBN: 1-60021-541-6 © 2007 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
RELUCTANT HOME REMODELER, GENERAL CONTRACTOR, OR CHIEF ARCHITECT: FOREIGN POLICY AND THE EDUCATION OF GEORGE W. BUSH
Glenn P. Hastedt and Anthony J. Eksterowicz ABSTRACT The intention of this article is to examine the second Bush administration in an attempt to answer these questions. We have selected the metaphor of home building to illustrate President Bush’s learning curve or education. We will trace the evolution of the Bush foreign policy from the beginning of the term to the congressional and United Nations resolutions on Iraq and finally to the aftermath of the Iraq War. It is our contention that the President’s perception of presidential power combined with the cycles of influence and effectiveness have combined to push the President and his advisers through various phases of foreign policy formulation.
INTRODUCTION The more determinedly a President seeks power, the more he will be likely to bring vigor to his clerkship. As he does so he contributes to the energy of government. In Congress and the agencies and in the national parties, energy is generated by support and opposition. But first there must be something to support or oppose. Most Washingtonians look to the White House for it. There often is no other place to look.1
As Richard Neustadt has observed, all presidencies embark upon a quest for power. Power is essential for without it the president can do little. But the quest for power begins with a president unfamiliar with the ways of Washington. A new president and his advisers are at a distinct disadvantage early in the presidential term. They must master a learning curve that threatens to rob them of political capital. Paul Light has captured this dilemma nicely with his cycles of increasing effectiveness and decreasing influence. All presidents are in a race with time. They are very influential early in their term yet this is precisely when they lack knowledge on how to be effective leaders.2 Another dilemma also threatens new presidents and that is their perception of power. Many presidents believe they can master their own fate and make good public policy for the nation but all of them suffer from naiveté and excessive hubris.3 This leads them to make
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mistakes early in their term. President Clinton’s gays in the military policy and President George W. Bush’s Faith Based Initiatives are but two examples. These mistakes confront them with the reality of their power. Power is not automatic. It must be nurtured. This can result in a temporary inferiority complex for new chief executives. Thomas Cronin has captured this nicely with one of his presidential paradoxes. The presidency is always too powerful but always too constrained.4 A picture of an insecure, untested new chief executive in search of power but racing against the political clock emerges. A new president must learn and be educated by events, political actors, institutions and self inflicted mistakes. The learning curve is wide. All of these factors commingle in the area of foreign policy. Recent presidents have been elected on their domestic policy agendas. Foreign policy has not been the major area of concern in the last three presidential elections. Yet the last two presidents have faced foreign policy crises in Bosnia, Kosovo, the Middle East, China, Afghanistan and Iraq. How does a new president go about formulating American foreign policy? How constrained will he be in the beginning of a presidential term? How will the aforementioned cycles and insecure perception of presidential power work to complicate the formulation of this policy? What does a president’s learning curve look like and how will he cope with it? The focus of this article is to examine the second Bush administration in an attempt to answer these questions. The authors have selected the metaphor of “home building” to illustrate President Bush’s learning curve or education. What follows is an explanation of the metaphor.
THE ARCHITECTURAL METAPHOR When formulating foreign policy presidents have to decide just what their approach should be. For example, should the president serve as a chief architect in formulating foreign policy? An architect is one who draws up plans, devises solutions to problems, and creates new structures. A lot depends upon the time within which the administration is serving and the various issues of the day. For example, President Harry S. Truman found himself confronted with a new world after World War II. He seized the initiative and along with his advisers formulated the foreign policy of Containment of Communism based upon economic (the Marshall Plan) and military (Mutual Assured Destruction) foundations. This historical period does not come along often but presidents have to recognize their responsibilities and opportunities during these times. The Truman administration not only served as chief architect but also as an architectural firm engaged in discussions with other architectural firms on the necessary foundations (NATO, the United Nations, various regional alliances) for a successful foreign policy. The strategies of the Nixon/Kissinger regime with respect to the multi-polar balancing of China, Russia, and United States’ interests through the institution of détente might also fit nicely into the chief architectural metaphor. Other presidents may function as general contractors. Their vision is less sweeping and their time frame more immediate but they do see foreign policy problems in broad terms. General contractors are implementers who work with an idea or mission for American foreign policy and take the initiative in finding others to help implement the project. These subcontractors may be allies or the tasks may be delegated to various departments and agencies within the U.S. government. The Gulf War in the first Bush administration would fit
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this pattern. Other nations were contracted to participate or pay for parts of this war in the grandest coalition of forces since World War II. Still other presidents have been reluctant home remodelers. Their perspective on foreign policy is the most limited. They are not oriented to undertaking grand initiatives but to attacking discrete problems or issues. They work on the margins of existing policies. These presidents are content to work within the framework of a previous chief architect type perhaps changing the carpeting or painting a few walls. This is akin to adding their own nuances to the established foreign policy. President Dwight Eisenhower may have engaged in this type of behavior. He faithfully followed the principles of Containment. President Ronald Reagan, not withstanding his admirer’s contentions that he ended the Cold War, also followed the principles of Containment. However, in both cases there was an attempt to escape from these principles and put a more personal stamp on foreign policy. President Eisenhower proposed his “Open Skies” initiative which contradicted the principles of Containment. It was not institutionalized. President Reagan sought to escape from one of the pillars of Containment. Deterrence and Mutual Assured Destruction with his ballistic missile defense system known as Star Wars. It has not yet been deployed.5 None of these three metaphors, or the leadership styles they communicate, is inherently superior to the others. Domestic political circumstances, presidential personality, and the nature of the international system are key variables that affect this choice. Each leadership metaphor does, however, convey a different set of foreign policy dangers. The principal challenge facing the architect is that of selecting a proper design. Blurred vision as to what is being created or a lack of boundaries to the project heightens the potential of producing a flawed blueprint that cannot sustain the efforts of those that try to turn rhetoric and image into reality. General contractors run a different set of risks. They may either be too literal in their implementation of the design given to them or they may misinterpret the design. Michael Vlahos suggests this is a reoccurring type of problem the further one moves chronologically from the originators of ideas to the implementers of existing policies.6 General contractors also run the danger of improperly delegating tasks to specific "firms" or bureaucratic agents to implement the design of failing to coordinate their activities effectively. Finally, home remodelers run the risk of destroying the foundation of the policy they are tinkering with through ignorance or hubris. Alternatively they may leave a project half completed as they become caught up in other tasks or run out of the necessary financial resources to complete the project. These various metaphors are not necessarily exclusive to certain presidential administrations. In fact many administrations can adopt various elements of these metaphors. For example a single administration can evolve from say a reluctant home remodeler metaphor to a general contractor metaphor or even a chief architect metaphor. Evolution along these lines depends upon the original agenda of the president and any subsequent changes in this agenda due to events, political circumstances, original intentions, presidential power conceptions, political difficulties, education, and presidential outlook. In short presidencies are in flux. The presidency of George W. Bush demonstrates such evolution. The Bush Presidency has evolved from a reluctant home remodeler metaphor to perhaps a reluctant general contractor with aspirations of becoming a chief architect.
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THE BUSH PRESIDENCY PHASE ONE: RELUCTANT HOME REMODELER George W. Bush ascended to the presidency under less than ideal circumstances. The election was a long, painful and contested process with the Supreme Court finally ending the contest in favor of Mr. Bush. However, this process left bitter feelings on the part of at least half the electorate. Mr. Bush’s congressional coattails were not only short but non-existent. His party lost three House seats and five Senate seats. Furthermore, less than two hundred days after the inauguration Republican Senator James Jeffords (VT) defected from the Republican Party to give the Democrats a one vote lead in the Senate and the power to organize the institution. The new president’s approval rating hovered between 50 and 55 percent, a historic low for a modern president but not unexpected from such a unique and historical election.7 This type of an election does not do much for the confidence of a new president. Low popularity, an uncertain mandate and early mistakes like the Faith Based Initiative, along with the problems associated with Secretary of Labor Nominee Linda Chavez and the Jeffords’ defection all combined to make this presidency appear initially weak. The president adopted policies to counteract this weakness. First, he moved to increase secrecy over information within the administration. Second, he made it known that his successor had relinquished too much presidential power specifically to the Congress and his administration would work to reverse this. Two examples suffice here. First, the President refused to release information on the participants involved in the formulation of the administration’s energy policy under the direction of Vice President Cheney even when confronted by a lawsuit and a GAO challenge.8 Second, later in the administration the President would issue an executive order allowing a sitting president to ban the release of an earlier president’s papers nullifying a congressional law opening such papers.9 These are actions of a president dedicated to reinstituting power in the oval office but also recognizing the weakness inherent in the modern office. Insecurity breeds attempts to consolidate power. The new president was not elected or selected with a specific foreign policy agenda. In fact, during the second Bush/Gore debate Mr. Bush was asked specifically if he disagreed with Clinton Foreign policy goals around the world. Amazingly, he refused to contrast himself to the Clinton administration. He agreed with just about every major goal. He differed in that he desired to build an ABM system and he desired, clearer, more refined goals for military intervention. He also expressed skepticism about the amount of involvement in world affairs. Clearly his administration would concentrate upon domestic policy.10 Despite candidate Bush’s refusal to distance himself too much from the Clinton foreign policy, there were differences. Note the following analysis during the election campaign. Texas Governor George W. Bush, his (Gore’s) rival for the presidency, has tried to turn Gore’s foreign policy responsibilities into campaign liabilities, charging that he has been part of an administration whose approach to world issues has lacked focus and an overall strategy. Pointing to the ailing Russian economy and the tarnished image of the United States among Russians, Bush and other Republican critics – most recently a group of Republican House members in a report last week – dismiss the U.S. policy toward Russia as a failure. Pointing to the open-ended U.S. troop commitment in Kosovo and Bosnia, they charge that Clinton – and Gore – have been too quick to use American soldiers to intervene in problems abroad.
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“This administration has acted in an ad hoc fashion,” says Robert Zoellick, one of Bush’s foreign policy advisors.11
An early picture emerged of the Bush foreign policy. The administration would pull back on what they considered excessive commitments abroad. They would avoid needless entanglements in foreign policy while concentrating upon the domestic agenda, which included an emphasis upon tax cuts and education policy. They would avoid attempts at nation building such as those in Bosnia and they would withdraw from international treaties they considered inimical to United States national interest. In addition, they would emphasize ballistic missile defense for the protection of the homeland. Thus the new administration gave an early impression that it would withdraw from various aspects of world policy behind a fence of ballistic missile defense. President Bush can best be described as a reluctant engager or home remodeler in this early phase of his presidency. He was content to live in the house that Clinton had constructed but he would simplify the interior ridding it of lavish decorations and useless functions. There would be a fence in the back yard to keep the neighbors at bay. The word isolationist crept into descriptions of the early Bush foreign policy. Once in office the president acted upon this vision. The administration declared that there would be a new relationship with China. Eschewing his predecessor’s policy of active engagement, Bush replaced it with a more “competitive” relationship. The president said in a Good Morning America interview that he would do “whatever it takes” to defend Taiwan. He had to backtrack later that day and reaffirm the one China policy.12 The damage had been done and the president had to deal with the collision of a Chinese fighter jet and a U.S. spy plane which landed on Hainan Island. Intense negotiations ensued reluctantly dragging the Bush administration into international politics during a crucial time for the president’s domestic agenda in the Congress. On the positive side, the crisis seemed to educate the Bush administration to the importance of nuance in public statements and to the unique relationship with China. The President was clearly learning on the job.13 In the Middle East the new administration was reluctant to get involved in brokering a peace deal between the Palestinians and the Israelis. They observed the final Clinton effort dissolve in failure and were not ready to jump into the fray.14 Presented with two choices of either pressuring the Israelis for a peace deal or withdrawing until another time more ripe for peacemaking, the administration chose the latter in keeping with its early proclivity to disengage from around the world. However, the eventual Palestinian uprising led by suicide bombers and subsequent invasion by Israel forced the administration to stay engaged and attempt to broker a ceasefire between the parties as the Israeli occupying force began to dismantle Arafat’s office. Again, the administration was reluctantly engaged after initially attempting to stay out of the fray. Again, the president was learning that Middle Eastern politics must be attended to. In other areas of international diplomacy the administration expressed skepticism. The Bush Administration eventually served notice upon the Russians that it was withdrawing from the 1972 Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty and reserved the right to construct a ballistic missile defense system. It withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol dealing with global environmental issues that it deemed inimicable to U.S. economic interests. It withdrew from the International Criminal Court because it feared American soldiers might be tried by this
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institution. It demonstrated in all of these actions a propensity to go it alone to preserve U.S. national sovereignty. However, was the administration proceeding with unilateral arrogance as our European neighbors suggested or was it drawing back from nation building and overt involvement in difficult international engagements which might have required the commitment of U.S. troops? These efforts could be viewed both ways but September 11, 2001 changed the Bush administration. This reluctant home remodeler now had to confront terrorist elements within a chaotic international system for the protection of the homeland
THE BUSH PRESIDENCY PHASE TWO: RELUCTANT GENERAL CONTRACTOR The Bush administration's foreign policy entered a second phase with the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. A conservative unilateralist foreign policy could not support a global war against terrorism. President Bush characterized this conflict as a new type of warfare, one that would not be easily concluded. Terrorism had not moved to the top of the Bush administration's policy agenda by 9/11. Bush administration officials were reportedly unhappy with the Clinton administration's approach to dealing with al Qaeda but action had not progressed far beyond a second tier of advisors who were working on a National Security Presidential Directive. It was taken up by Cabinet officials on September 4 and called for a phased escalation of pressure against the Taliban to force them to abandon al Qaeda. In concrete terms, however, Bush's antiterrorism policy fit very much into the home remodeler mode. Its policy showed more continuity than change and where there was change it was not always in the direction of a more assertive stance. For example, Bush did not resume Clinton's policy of covert deployment of cruise missile submarines or gunships near Afghanistan that would have allowed short notice attacks on al Qaeda leadership targets. Bush did not speak publicly of the dangers of terrorism prior to 9/11 except in the context of the ballistic missile defense system. Internal wrangling within the Treasury Department crippled efforts at implementing policies designed to identify and interrupt secret terrorist financial systems of support. Twice the Bush administration informed the Taliban it would hold them responsible for an al Qaeda attack but took no military action.15 The administration's post 9/11 rhetoric and mood of the times suggested a possible embrace of the architect's role to making foreign policy. This was especially the case at the Pentagon where Donald Rumsfeld was now transformed from a secretary of defense who had been outmaneuvered and defeated by the military services in his attempt at meaningful reforms to the administration's prime strategist and spokesperson for this new form of warfare.16 Yet, the administration did not go down this road. Instead, George W. Bush settled on the role of a general contractor. Two factors appear to have blocked movement to an architect's role. The first problem was the lack of time. Most officials inside and outside the United States recognized the dangers of a premature military response that might make the situation worse but few doubted that a robust and prompt policy response was needed. The second problem was a lack of clarity within the administration over what to do. Bush found that the
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rhetoric of a global war against terrorism came more easily than did designing a strategy to deal with terrorism. The largest divide was between those who supported a narrow definition of the immediate task that entailed only strikes against Afghanistan and those who had a broader vision that included war with Iraq. The latter group was led by Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. The issue was settled in favor of an Afghanistan only strategy in large part because those favoring war with Iraq were not able to present a strategy for accomplishing its objectives.17 The debate over Afghanistan options was more expansive and open ended than that which preceded initiating the Persian Gulf War where for all practical purposes a military plan, Operations Plan 90-1002, was pulled off the shelf and modified for use. From the outset the Central Intelligence Agency argued for an expanded covert action mission in Afghanistan and in 80 countries around the world. In terms of covert action techniques there was little that was truly innovative. It was the proposed scope of the covert action program and its inherent riskiness that was a departure from past policies. On September 17 President Bush would sign a Memorandum of Notification authorizing the CIA to engage in global counter terrorism operations.18 The professional military view, as expressed by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Henry H. Shelton, put forward a pessimistic evaluation of series of currently available military options. Bush agreed with Rumsfeld in evaluating the options as inadequate and stating "this is a new world" and had Shelton go back for new plans.19 When he returned, Shelton presented three options one of which now included a "boots on the ground" component but he cautioned that it would take time to put the force together. It was this option, the most expansive of the three, that Bush selected.20 Once the war began in Afghanistan it was a very conventional war and one that on the whole brought a great deal of credit to the Bush administration. The CIA engaged in covert action by providing financial and material support to dissident forces in Afghanistan. The military undertook highly successful air strikes against targets inside Afghanistan. U.S. troops on the ground engaged in limited military action with much of the search and destroy efforts being carried out by local allied forces. The mission was also a success in the conventional sense that it brought down the Taliban government. The total cost of the operation were modest: 110 CIA officers, 315 Special Forces personnel, massive air power, and $70 million in CIA funded bribes and inducements. Evaluations after the war were not as positive suggesting that Bush's effort at being a general contractor had encountered problems. Most visibly it failed in accomplishing its "new war" task of capturing Osama bin Laden. But there were other critiques as well. Mark Helprin faulted the Bush administration for failing to pursue a massive military build up that would allow the United States to act unilaterally in combating terrorism.21 Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard B. Myers observed that the U.S. military was losing momentum in the war against terrorism in Afghanistan and that al Qaeda and the Taliban were proving to be more successful in adapting to U.S. tactics than the U.S. military was in adapting to theirs. A CIA report called the security situation in some smaller cities and rural setting precarious. And, Myers went so far as to suggest that the military might need to change its mission from combat operations to societal reconstruction. Rumsfeld reportedly concurs with the conclusion that the military's performance leaves something to be desired seeing it as still operating according to the glacial pace of cold war military problems rather than the new pace of anti-terrorist warfare. An Army War College report concurred with these
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pessimistic assessments noting that al Qaeda was proving itself to be "extremely adaptive and cagey...not weakened terrorists." 22
THE BUSH PRESIDENCY PHASE THREE: GENERAL CONTRACTOR OR ARCHITECT? The Bush administration's foreign policy took another turn in the months following the defeat of the Taliban in Afghanistan. The general contractor's job was done. The only loose end involved the capture or killing of Osama bin Laden and references to this goal all but disappeared in the administration's commentary on the war against terrorism. The question that now had to be answered was "what next?" An answer was not long in coming. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were now joined by Vice President Dick Cheney in championing a war against Iraq. Cheney had been in favor or expanding the war against terrorism to include Iraq in the earlier deliberations but in the end concluded that the timing was not right. Powell remained opposed but this time he was in the minority. In September the administration's rhetoric about the need to bring about a "regime change" in Iraq became more pointed. The time for such action was at hand and the Bush administration was prepared to act unilaterally. Domestic and global opposition to war forced President Bush to delay and obtain congressional and United Nations support for military action but it did not deter him. The military build up in the Persian Gulf continued and in November UN weapons inspectors returned to Iraq supported by not so veiled threats of military action should Saddam Hussein not cooperate fully. What is unclear at this time – and may not be clear for some time – is whether in moving toward war against Iraq President Bush is continuing to act as a general contractor or if he has embraced the role of architect. Evidence of a continued acceptance of a general contractor orientation toward foreign policy comes from revelations about the nature of foreign policy discussions following the defeat of the Taliban in Afghanistan. "Virtually all of the Iraq discussions in the National Security Council had been about war plans – how to attack, when, with what force levels, military strike scenario this and military strike scenario that."23 Missing from Powell's point of view was an understanding and appreciation of the broader context within which the proposed military action was taking place. Once Bush came to accept the validity of Powell's argument he continued to act as general contractor delegating to his secretary of state the task of assembling a global coalition just as he had done earlier in preparation for military action against Afghanistan. In each case the purpose of the coalition was to support and buttress U.S. action and not constrain it. The most notable sign of Bush's possible shift to an architect perspective was the release of a new national security strategy for the United States.24 In it Bush again observed that defeating terrorism is "a global enterprise of uncertain duration." In this conflict he noted the U.S. would "make no distinction between terrorists and those who knowingly harbor or provide aid to them." Finally, the administration's new national security strategy asserted that deterrence does not work against terrorists and that the United States would move to a strategy of preemption. An earlier sign that Bush might be moving an architect approach to foreign policy came in his 2002 State of the Union address in which he identified Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as constituting an "Axis of Evil."
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President Bush's possible adoption of an architect's perspective on American foreign policy raises the question of what type of architect he might be. A full and fair assessment needs to wait until his term in office is complete. However, a number of factors can be highlighted that bear on his prospects. First, a good architect is experienced and knowledgeable in his craft. George W. Bush does not fit this mold but neither did Harry Truman who served as a primary architect of containment. Bush's image of world politics is built around stark contrasts of good versus evil and friend versus foe. It is an outlook likely to be strong in the area of boldness but lacking in detail and subtlety. The announcement of a strategy of preemption is a case in point. Critics noted that it blurred or ignored the longstanding distinction between preemptive war and preventive war. They also observed that the one state to employ such a strategy against terrorism was Israel and that it had not succeeded in defeating terrorism. Problems for the Bush blueprint (whether it is defined as preemption or anti-terrorism) also have come from the need to make repeated exceptions to the rule. As was the case with Jimmy Carter, another inexperienced president who saw the world in bold and dichotomous terms, Bush's blueprint does not seem to provide sufficient guidance for coherent implementation. North Korea is discovered to be pursuing a nuclear capability but no preemptive action is taken or threatened. In fact, the United States seized a ship containing fifteen North Korean Scud missiles bound for Yemen. After protests by Yemen and reconsideration of Yemen’s role in the war on terrorism, the Bush Administration agreed to release the ship and allow delivery of the North Korean missiles to Yemen.25 In addition, the Administration reversed a Clinton Administration nuclear pre-emption policy regarding the North Korean nuclear reactor in favor of greater diplomatic efforts.26 Regarding other nations, Pakistan is found to be a supplier of key nuclear material to North Korea but it has suffered few consequences. Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, has come in for strong public rebuke for providing terrorists with financial assistance. Egypt is criticized for human rights violations. And, the administration is virtually silent on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict or the RussianChechen conflict, situations where terrorism and anti-terrorism activity abounds. To be fair to the Bush administration, its National Security Strategy did not assert preemption would take place all of the time. However, as exceptions mount the Bush anti-terrorism strategy may come to look as inadequate as Carter's human rights policy. Stanley Hoffman's evaluation of Carter's strategy as "the hell of good intentions" may equally apply to it.27 What Truman possessed that Bush appears to lack is a strong architectural firm to support him. Bush's architectural firm is a house divided. To be sure Truman's architectural firm had internal disagreements but with the removal of Henry Wallace a general consensus existed on the nature of the post World War II world and the American place in the new world order. Today, the Bush architectural firm is divided. One the one hand there are those who hold a conservative unilateralist perspective that sees the United States as beholding to no one and demanding the allegiance of all. On the other hand there are those who continue to work from the premises of a conservative internationalism that is built around U.S. leadership but accepts the need for rules and multilateral endeavors. The former are largely found in the Pentagon while the later are largely found in the State Department.28 Bringing these two sides of the architectural firm together requires compromise that risks undermining the internal logic of both positions thus producing a structurally flawed blueprint. A third indicator of potential architectural success is the nature of the challenge for which the blueprint is being created. Is it defined in such a way that an affordable solution exists?
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The great danger here is the "Lippman Gap, a situation where power and goals are not commensurate with one another. The Truman administration was able to balance goals and resources."29 Containing communism was initially defined in European terms and as were the solutions advanced (the Marshall Plan and NATO). When the challenge became global with the onset of the Korean War the administration expanded the resources devoted to the task through the adoption of NSC-68. The Bush administration has defined the challenge it faces in global and open-ended terms. This requires a blueprint that must address the most basic forces at work in international politics. As many have commented, the September 11 attacks were in one sense a climax of the globe's growing fragmentation.30 Defeating global terrorism, in essence, requires retarding fragmentation. Should it lack the necessary power resources to accomplish this end, the Lippman Gap predicts that the blueprint created will fail and that one of three consequences will result: preventable wars will not be prevented, unavoidable wars will be fought without adequate preparation, and peace settlements will be flawed and lead to a new round of violence. Finally, a fourth factor affecting the success of Bush's efforts as an architect is the continuing problem of political weakness we noted earlier that characterized the foreign policy initiatives early in his administration. They temporarily faded from view in the national outpouring of unity that characterized the national political process in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks. They did not, however, disappear. Bush's strategy for coping with these weaknesses after 9/11 is to control information, present his policy in absolute terms, and limit the participation of others by denying their legitimacy. The specter of war with Iraq was raised but little justification was given as to why now. Initially, the president neither felt the need to go to Congress or the United Nations for approval. When he decided to approach Congress for a resolution concerning Iraq, he did not tell Congress about the discovery of North Korea's nuclear arms programs until after congressional approval was secured for war with Iraq. The president initially rejected efforts by Congress to establish an independent commission to study the performance of the intelligence community prior to September 11. It is a strategy of non-cooperation and defiance that forces others to move toward his position and allows him to concentrate foreign policy power in his administration. It is a strategy that has produced visible successes. Both Congress and the United Nations acquiesced to his administration's policy toward Iraq. It is not a foolproof strategy, however, for the very reason that it is based on weakness. Compromises were necessary with both Congress and the United Nations because neither institution could be kept out of the policy process. In the end Bush could not exclude Congress from information about the performance of the intelligence community and accepted the establishment of an independent 9/11 intelligence panel chaired by former New Jersey Governor Tom Kean. These four factors affecting the Bush architectural vision have become noticeably important in the aftermath of the Iraq War. While the United States achieved a swift and significant military victory over the Iraqi forces the tough job of reconstructing Iraq is ahead. In fact, according to President Bush’s national Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice what is at stake in the aftermath of the Iraq War is the virtual transformation to, “a very different Middle East in which the ideologies of hate will not flourish.”31 The vision in the aftermath of the war had become bolder, wider and more comprehensive than before the conflict began. But the Bush Administration defects are still in place. The plan lacks subtlety and detail or as Joseph Nye Jr.has observed:
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The Bush Administration’s new national security strategy correctly identified the challenges growing out of the deep changes in world politics that were illuminated on September 11. But the administration has still not settled on how to implement the new strategy most effectively. Rather than resolving the issue, the second Gulf War leaves the divisions in place, and the real tests still await.32
These policy divisions and exemptions to self-imposed rules have continued in other areas, for example, North Korea. The administration was and is insistent on multilateral negotiations concerning North Korea. As of this writing, some in the administration were exploring the possibility of a non-aggression pact guaranteed by the multilateral nation participants in a conference with North Korea if North Korea eschews the development of nuclear weapons. However, in a bizarre event taking place virtually the same day that this report surfaced, Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton delivered a stinging speech calling for regime change in North Korea and referring to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il as a “tyrannical rogue leader.”33 It was unclear how the United States could engage in diplomatic discussions with the leadership of North Korea while calling for their overthrow. By late July 2003, former Secretary of Defense William J. Perry felt compelled to issue a dire warning on the situation which he believed was spinning out of control.34 The problems of inexperience and knowledge continue to plague the Administration in the aftermath of the war. Exceptions to self imposed rules and divisions within the Bush policymaking community also continue as does the lack of a comprehensive coherent plan for implementation. As the North Korea example illustrates, the administration is still a house divided. Specifically, with respect to Iraq, questions remain concerning future troop deployment levels, sufficient personnel in the armed forces to implement the new and ambitious strategy, a potential policy concerning Iran and its development of nuclear weapons, the necessity of securing United Nations support to help with administering post war Iraq, the necessity of bringing in more nations to help with the reconstruction effort including the policing of Iraq. In all these areas the Bush administration remains an architectural firm divided. There are also continuing problems associated with the challenge for which the architectural blueprint is designed to meet. Specifically, what are the costs and does the United States have the resources for the task. Secretary of Defense Rumsfled has indicated that the “burn rate” for Iraq is about four billion dollars a month. The Congressional Budget Office has projected a fiscal 2003 deficit for the government at above four hundred billion dollars.35 There appears to be no effort at deficit reduction by cutting federal government spending as there was in the late 1980s. In addition, India has rejected a request by the United States to send peacekeeping forces to Iraq absent a United Nations mandate.36 It was also revealed that the Polish led peacekeeping forces will be subsidized by the United States.37 All of these budget questions provided administration officials with an exceptional grilling from both Republican and Democrat members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.38 These budget questions reflect poorly upon the unilateral conceptual and architectural design for post war Iraq. In addition, the nature of the future challenge has not been presented with clarity. Is it a search for global weapons of mass destruction, an effort to thwart global terrorism, a policy to insure global stability with respect to oil for the industrial nations, a way to transform Middle East politics, an effort to bring democracy to heretofore monarchial and dictatorial middle eastern regimes or all of the above in some part. But in what parts?
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Finally, President Bush, acting as chief architect, operated largely in secret. Key decisions were made by a small circle of individuals notably Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. The need for confidentiality in policy deliberations is well understood. A decision making process in which participation is not limited or restricted, or which lacks firm guidance on the goals to be pursued or the means used to realize them is unlikely to come to closure much less stay on track. Excessive secrecy, on the other hand, tends to result in foreign policy decisions made on the basis of rigidly held values and in which policy makers loose touch with political realities both at home and abroad. Excessive secrecy is also incompatible with the aims and purposes of architecture. Colin St. John Wilson observes that “architecture is a public and practical art…we [architects] are required to engage in a dialogue with those for whom we build in order to discover what to build.”39 In a similar vein Christian Norberg-Schulz writes “the architect does not work in a vacuum. His products are solutions to problems coming from the environment. We therefore have to ask what the environment asks from the architect…the situations are not static, but always changing.”40 Again, we see that the success of an architect’s efforts is dependent upon staying in touch with the environment. The excessive secrecy exercised by the Bush administration decision making in its decision making on war with Iraq was counterproductive to the success of its architectural efforts in post war Iraq. War fighting was disconnected from societal reconstruction. The administration’s optimism that the liberating and occupying forces would be met with a warm welcome, that domestic order would easily be restored, that Iraqi oil revenues would finance much of the reconstruction effort, and that the Iraqi experience would provide a positive catalytic example in the region proved to be unfounded. In large measure these false assumptions were embraced and held on to because the architects of the reconstruction policy were detached from the environment that they sought to influence. The intelligence community warned the administration before the war that the United States would face significant armed opposition. In September the number of Americans wounded in action since the war began in March 2003 totaled 1,124. This number is twice that experienced during the Persian Gulf War. Additionally, the number of troops killed in Iraq since the beginning of May surpassed the total killed during the height of the fighting. When then Army Chief of Staff General Eric K. Shineski told Congress in February 2003 that an occupation force of several hundred thousand would be needed Wolfowitz quickly countered that this figure was “widely off the mark.41 September found 130,000 U.S. forces in Iraq with estimates of a needed 200,000 troops being commonplace and the Bush administration now was publicly expressing its interest in attracting forces from other states. That same month President Bush announced that he would seek an additional $71 billion for the U.S. effort in Iraq for the next year: $51 billion for military operations and $20 billion for reconstruction. Bush’s total request was for an additional $87 billion, a figure that was more than 50 percent higher than administration officials had predicted they would make a few months earlier. Though possessing the world’s second largest proven oil reserves at 112.5 billions of barrels of oil, Iraq was poorly positioned to turn these reserves into wealth. A State Department study stated that it would cost more than $30 billion to bring Iraq’s output to 6 billion barrels per day. Iraq was producing 2.5 billion barrels per day before the war. A Council of Foreign Relations study concluded just prior to the war calculated that it would
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take $10 billion in capital and $3 billion per year in operating costs to bring Iraqi oil production up to pre-1991 levels. A regional consulting firm concluded that after the cost of paying off debts and fees to companies extracting oil, what is going to be left is minimal.42 Attacks on Iraq’s oil pipelines in August further reduced the possibility that oil revenues could be used to offset reconstruction costs. The pre war conviction that post war Iraq would become a catalyst for constructive regional change has been replaced by the recognition that Iraq has become a magnet attracting terrorist groups and others hostile to the United States. The anticipated diplomatic-political payoffs from the successful conclusion of the war have also not materialized. By summer’s end escalating violence between Israel and Palestinian terrorist groups had all but rendered the road map to peace unintelligible and left America’s influence in the region severely damaged.
CONCLUSION So how can we finally characterize the Bush administration according to the adopted metaphor? Mr. Bush enters his presidency as a reluctant home remodeler but after September 11 he moves to a reluctant general contractor model and with the War in Iraq and its aftermath he appears to become a unilateral chief architect seeking international and public support for a U.S. architectural design in foreign policy that confronts numerous questions and costs. The odds for success appear problematical at this time. In fact, one scholar has argued that the excesses in the Bush conceptual design will virtually guarantee an end to unilateralism by force.43 However, this administration is clearly a work in progress. There are severe problems ahead (some of them mentioned above) which indicate an extended learning curve. We must remember that public claims of policy victory by any presidential administration tend to bolster an image of presidential dominance. However, this image may not capture the conflict, compromises, concessions and policy reversals, i.e. the overcoming of presidential weaknesses, that may be necessary to achieve such policy victories. The tension inherent in these two realities is sustainable only when foreign policies succeed. When a policy fails the illusion of presidential domination recedes and the weakness of the modern presidency emerges with greater clarity. As of this writing, President Bush’s job approval ratings have dropped and Democratic presidential candidates are salivating, perhaps, too soon. There are dangers to presidents operating under all of the aforementioned metaphors. For the president as architect the failure of a foreign policy blueprint conceived under conditions of weakness runs the risk of calling into question his foreign policy agenda and even his basic understanding of foreign policy. The danger for the president operating under a general contractor or home remodeler metaphor may be less severe since the scope of any failure would be less magnified or less discernible. Under such conditions parts of a president’s foreign policy may emerge unscathed. However, modern presidents (and the current administration is no exception here) are rarely content to simply remodel their home. Economic conditions and international events conspire to draw them into the global fray where grand architectural dreams and images seemingly provide future hope. The Bush administration’s education in foreign policy is thus just beginning. This and any presidential
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administration must be mindful that future hopes can provide marvelous opportunities but they can also lead to tremendous disillusionment if their promises are not realized.
NOTES 1
Richard Neustadt, Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents (New York: The Free Press, 1990), 155. 2 Paul C. Light, The President’s Agenda ( Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1983 ), 13-60. 3 Glenn P. Hastedt and Anthony J. Eksterowicz, “The Perils of Presidential Transition,” Seaton Hall Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations, 2, No. 1 (Winter/Spring 2001), 67-85. 4 Thomas E. Cronin and Michael A. Genovese, the Paradoxes of the American Presidency ( New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 1-29. 5 For a discussion of these two initiatives see Robert Strong, “Eisenhower, Reagan and Escaping the Dilemmas of Deterrence,” in Glenn P. Hastedt and Anthony J. Eksterowicz, eds. “The President and Foreign Policy: Chief Architect or General Contractor,” Special Issue of White House Studies, Vol. 4, No. 1 (2004), 19-29. 6 Michael Vlahos, Thinking About World Change (Washington: U.S. Department of State, Foreign Service Institute, 1990). 7 For a discussion of this election see, Anthony J. Eksterowicz, “ The Presidential Election of 2000: Significance and Lessons,” in Robert P. Watson and Colton C. Campbell, eds. Campaigns and Elections (Boulder: Lynne Reinner Publishers, 2003). 8 Neely Tucker, “Judge Orders White House Papers’ Release,” The Washington Post (October 18), A6-7. 9 See, Walter LaFeber, “The Post September 11 Debate Over Empire, Globalization, and Fragmentation,” Presidential Studies Quarterly, 117 no. 1 ( Spring 2002 ), 14-15. 10 David S. Broder and Ceci Connolly, “Bush, Gore Find Some Accord On Foreign Policy in 2nd Debate,” The Washington Post, (October 12, 2000), A1, A6. 11 Steven Mufson, “Gore and Foreign Policy: Key Role, Mixed Record,” The Washington Post (September 27, 2000), A13. 12 Kurt M. Campbell and Derek J. Mitchell, “Crisis in the Taiwan Strait?” Foreign Affairs 80, no. 4 (July/August 2001), 22. 13 For the Chinese perspective on U.S./Sino relations see, Yong Deng, “Hegemon on the Offensive: Chinese Perspectives on U.S. Global Strategy,” Political Science Quarterly 116, no. 3 (Fall 2001) 343-365. 14 For a discussion of the failure of the Clinton Middle East peace attempt see, Jerome Slater, “What Went Wrong? The Collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process,” Political Science Quarterly 116, no. 2 (Summer 2001), 171-104. 15 Barton Gellman, " Strategy's Cautious Evolution," The Washington Post (January 20, 2002). A1. 16 Elliot Cohen, "Tale of Two Secretaries," Foreign Affairs 81, (May 2002), 33-46. 17 Bob Woodward and Dan Balz, "At Camp David, Advise and Dissent," The Washington Post (January 31, 2002), A1.
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15
Bob Woodwad and Dan Balz, "Combating Terrorism: 'It Starts Today,'" The Washington Post (February 1, 2002), A1. 19 Dan Balz, Bob Woodward, and Jeff Himmelman, "Afghan Campaign's Blueprint Emerges," The Washington Post (January 9, 2002), A1. 20 Woodward and Balz, "Combating Terrorism." 21 Mark Helprin, “Phony War,” National Review 54 (April 22, 2002), 29-34. 22 Thomas E. Ricks and Vernon Loeb, Afghan War Faltering, Military Leader Says," The Washington Post (November 8, 2002), A1. 23 Bob Woodward, "A Struggle for the President's Heart and Mind," The Washington Post (November 17, 2002) A1. 24 "Full Text: Bush's National Security Strategy," www.nytimes.com/2002/09/20/international/20STEXT_FULL 25 Glenn Kessler and Thomas E. Ricks, “U.S. Frees Ship With N. Korean Missiles,” The Washington Post, (December 12, 2002), A1, 34. 26 Dana Milbank, “U.S. Open to Informal Talks with N. Korea,” The Washington Post, (December 30, 2002), A1,4. 27 Stanley Hoffmann, “Requiem,” Foreign Policy 42 (1981), 3-26. 28 Frances FitzGerald, "George Bush & the World," New York Review of Books (September 26, 2002), 80+. 29 Samuel Huntington, "Coping with the Lippman Gap," Foreign Affairs 66, (Winter 1988), 448-453. 30 LaFeber, "The Post September 11 Debate Over Empire, Globalization, and Fragmentation," 3. See also, Essays in America and the World: Debating the New Shape of International Politics (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 2002) 31 Condoleezza Rice. “Transforming the Middle East,” The Washington Post, (August 7 2003), A21. 32 Joseph S. Nye Jr., “U.S. Power and Strategy After Iraq,” Foreign Affairs 82, No. 4 (July/August 2003), 72. 33 Glenn Kesler, “N. Korea Arms Talks Appear Near,” The Washington Post, (August 1, 2003), A1, 16. 34 William J. Perry, “Its Either Nukes or Negotiation,” The Washington Post, (July 23, 2003), A23. 35 Jonathan Weisman, “$400 Billion-Plus Deficit For Fiscal’ 03 Seen By CBO,” The Washington Post, (July 11, 2003). See also, Jonathan Weisman, “White House Forsees 5year Debt Increase of $1.9 Trillion,” The Washington Post, (July 16, 2003), A1,4. 36 John Lancaster, “India Rejects Request By U.S. for Iraq Force,” The Washington Post, (July 15, 2003). 37 Vernon Loeb, “U.S. to Fund Polish-Led Peacekepping Force,” The Washington Post, (July 29, 2003), A12. 38 Vernon Loeb, “Senators Grill Administration Over Iraq Costs,” The Washington Post, (July 30, 2003), A11. 39 Colin St. John Wilson, Architectural Reflections. Butterworth: Oxford, 1992, p. viii. 40 Christan Norberg-Schulz, Intentions in Architecture. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1965, p. 21.
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Walter Pincus, “Spy Agencies Warned of Iraq Resistance,” The Washington Post, September 9, 2003, A1. 42 Peter Goldman, “Iraq is Ill-Equipped to Exploit Huge Oil Reserves,” The Washington Post, June 4, 2003, A1 43 Morton Abramowitz, “After Iraq, Shrinking Horizons,” The Washington Post, (July 31, 2003), A19.
In: White House Studies Compendium, Volume 4 Editor: R. W. Watson, pp. 17-27
ISBN: 1-60021-541-6 © 2007 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
EISENHOWER, REAGAN, AND ESCAPING THE DILEMMAS OF DETERRENCE
Robert A. Strong ABSTRACT Though separated by nearly three decades, two important presidential initiatives—Atoms for Peace and Star Wars—have a great deal in common. Both were bold policies announced in public statements that were prepared in confidence by a small circle of advisors. Both were accompanied by critiques of deterrence and reflections on the moral and political dilemmas associated with cold war threats of mutual annihilation. Both made claims, ultimately unfulfilled, that they could reduce the dangers of deterrence by expanding an arms control agenda or by providing defenses rendering nuclear weapons “impotent and obsolete.” These two initiatives can be legitimately, and simultaneously, presented as evidence of presidential power and as products of forces that constrain that power.
INTRODUCTION Three names were commonly given to the period of American foreign policy that began with the conclusion of the Second World War. The years after 1945 were widely referred to as the post-war era, the Cold War, and the nuclear age. At the dawn of a new century only one of those names still has relevance. The Cold War is over and now has it’s own hyphenatedpost for the years following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. But despite the end of the Cold War, and the superpower arms competition that accompanied it, we still live in the nuclear age. Given the threat of terrorism and the reality of nuclear proliferation we may actually face greater dangers today from nuclear or radiological weapons than we did at any time since 1945. Because those dangers remain and because they have played a significant role in foreign policy for more than half a century, it is worth reexamining and reconsidering how presidents lived and worked in the age of nuclear armaments. The issues surrounding nuclear strategy, the procurement of strategic weapons, and their delivery systems, and the diplomacy of arms control have been high presidential politics for decades. But they have also been issues where there were serious claims that much of the agenda in these matters was driven by forces — science and technology, the logic of deterrence, the demands of a military-industrial complex — that were largely beyond presidential control. Throughout this period important presidential decisions were made about nuclear arms and their control, but arguably within limits and under constraints that severely restricted the scope of those decisions. Asking
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whether presidents can be the architects of foreign policy, as the editors of this volume do, is particularly worth asking in connection with the central issues of the nuclear age. The argument that the development of nuclear weapons places significant limits on political action is a familiar one. Well before the Second World War began, Charles de Gaulle pointed out that “the political paths which the various nations tread must lead them, so far as war is concerned, to the same conceptions, exactly implied by the material progress of the time.”1 He was discussing tanks and their inevitable dominance of mobile land warfare in the Twentieth Century, but the broader principle applies to nuclear armaments as well. Nations, and certainly great powers, in the long run face enormous pressures to add to their arsenals of war whatever science and technology, “the material progress of the time,” allows. The nuclear age began with scientists on both sides of the Second World War racing with each other to develop weapons based on principles known to physicists around the world once the nucleus of an atom had been split in laboratory experiments at the end of the 1930s. Harry Truman, announcing the Hiroshima bombing, explained to the world that the new weapon had been the product of a “race of discovery against the Germans.”2 The British Maud Committee’s wartime report urging atomic research put the idea of an arms race in somewhat understated language. “No nation would care to risk being caught without a weapon of such decisive possibilities.”3 Nuclear weapons were built, so this argument goes, for the same reason that Mount Everest was climbed. They were there. The rest was a race to achieve what was possible. And of course, what was possible for one nation was eventually possible for others. With spies and the knowledge that the technology actually worked, it was easier for the Soviet Union to realize the material progress of their time than it had been for the United States. Once two nations had what came to be called weapons of mass destruction, a new force loomed large in the emerging nuclear age — the logic of deterrence. Alfred Nobel, the benefactor of the Nobel Peace Prize and the inventor of dynamite, once defended his invention by lamenting that it was not more destructive. “I wish,” he wrote in the 1890s, that “I could produce a substance or invent a machine of such frightful efficiency for wholesale destruction that wars should thereby become altogether impossible.”4 Dynamite was not quite it. But from 1945 on, many observers argued that nuclear weapons, particularly after the development of the hydrogen bomb, were that frightfully efficient instrument that would make war impossible. Nobel did not give us the weapon that would end war, but he did give us the unit of measure we would use for at least a hundred years of further weapon’s development. The largest conventional bomb in World War II was equal to ten tons of TNT and was designed for use against the concrete bunkers protecting German submarines in port. The Hiroshima bomb was the equivalent of 15,000 tons of TNT, an enormous leap in the concentration of explosive power, but only the first step in what was to come.5 The initial hydrogen bomb tested in 1952 was ten million tons of TNT and a typical bomb produced in the 1950s would have exploded with a force equal to 20 megatons (20 million tons) of TNT. The Soviets once did a test explosion that was nearly three times larger than that. These were staggering, almost incomprehensible, numbers. In the course of the cold war the United States and the Soviet Union built arsenals that contained tens of thousands of megatons.6 Winston Churchill, in the last important policy speech he gave in the House of Commons, said that “with the development of the hydrogen bomb, the entire foundation of human affairs was revolutionized, and mankind placed in a situation both measureless and laden with
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doom.”7 Measureless was precisely the right word for the military might available to the superpowers in the nuclear age. And as the superpowers would later learn, in the course of their strategic arms negotiations, a 50 percent reduction in arsenals that are measureless and laden with doom leaves both sides with arsenals that are still too large to measure and with more than enough doom to go around. Of course, in the logic of deterrence, the dread of doom is the whole idea. If, as Nobel suggested in the Nineteenth Century, the prospect of nuclear war could be made so dangerous and so terrible that it could not be countenanced, then a balance of terror would be produced and a kind of stability, all be it a precarious stability, would exist. Here again, Churchill gives us the classic formulation of what he called a “sublime irony.” In the nuclear age “safety will be the sturdy child of terror, and survival the twin brother of annihilation.”8 Churchill elegantly expressed the central idea, and the central problem, of deterrence. The idea was that careful planning and preparation for mutual annihilation would so terrify all involved that nuclear advocacies would be deterred from going to war and perhaps cautious in their behavior toward each other. The problem was that once the planning and preparation for annihilation had taken place the plans might accidentally or inadvertently be set in motion or fall into the hands of a madman unaffected by the terror that would temper the actions of others. All the presidents who served in the cold war years of the nuclear age built weapons of mass destruction and the delivery systems that would eventually take those weapons, with steadily improving accuracy, to any location on the planet. There were persistent questions raised about how much strategic spending would be enough and concerns about the influence of the military-industrial complex, but no real turning back from the commitment to build whatever was deemed necessary. It is hard to think of a major strategic weapon system, fully supported by the Pentagon, which was cancelled by civilians in the Defense Department or the White House. Jimmy Carter thought he killed the B-1 bomber and the neutron bomb, but Ronald Reagan brought both of them back to life. All of the nuclear age presidents built strategic weapons for the purpose of creating or enhancing deterrence. Vague threats were occasionally made about using nuclear weapons in Korea or to protect islands in the Formosa Straits, but these threats were made against a nation that had not yet acquired a nuclear arsenal and were never seriously put to the test.9 Crisis confrontations between the two superpowers raised more important concerns about what might provoke the use of nuclear weapons beyond retaliation for an attack, but in general those confrontations produced the caution that the theorists of deterrence had predicted. Deterrence remained the consensus justification for having and improving a nuclear arsenal. Even Ronald Reagan, whose administration initially toyed with the idea of fighting and “prevailing” in a nuclear war, came around to the conventional position that nuclear war can never be won and must never be fought.10 Electoral controversy, when it arose in connection with these issues, tended to be about which candidate would do a better job of building the things that were needed to make deterrence work. The “missile gap” of 1960 and the “window of vulnerability” in 1980 were the two occasions when the issue of doing more had some real political traction. In both instances the candidate warning about Soviet advances and calling for an accelerated American strategic buildup won. Presidential candidates who tried to make arms control a major campaign theme — Adlai Stevenson in 1956 or Walter Mondale in 1984 — failed to make much headway against popular Cold War
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incumbents who were solidly anti-communist and committed to improving strategic military forces. Nevertheless, those two Cold War incumbents — Eisenhower and Reagan — are worth looking at more closely. Both thought seriously about the dangers of deterrence and, like all the nuclear age presidents, questioned the long-term wisdom of basing our safety on terror and our survival on annihilation. Both gave major speeches that bracket cold war presidential thinking about nuclear issues; both attempted to find some way out of, or perhaps beyond, the dilemmas of deterrence; and in important ways both failed. The speeches they gave contain clues to the problems cold war presidents faced in designing an architecture for foreign and defense policy in the nuclear age.
ATOMS FOR PEACE Eisenhower’s election to the presidency and the arrival of the hydrogen bomb took place in the same year. As president-elect, he received a highly classified briefing on the successful test of the first fusion devise exploded in the South Pacific. He was surprised to learn that the island where the test had taken place no longer existed. All that remained was an underwater crater 1,500 yards in diameter.11 Nine months later he was told that the Soviet Union had conducted its own test of a thermonuclear explosive. Eisenhower shared Churchill’s conclusion that the hydrogen bomb was revolutionary. As he would later observe in his memoirs, “The Army in which I was commissioned a second lieutenant in 1915 underwent phenomenal changes in the thirty years from then until the German surrender in 1945…But those changes, startling as they were, faded into insignificance when compared to those of the postwar period.”12 The most important of those changes was the development of thermonuclear explosives and one of Eisenhower’s earliest presidential decisions involved how this new discovery would be formally presented and explained to the American people and to the world. Eisenhower inherited a recommendation developed for President Truman by Robert Oppenheimer. The former Manhattan Project scientist and administrator, whose security problems were under investigation but not yet public, had advised the president to set aside the secrecy that tended to surround most things nuclear and deliver a candid report to the American people about the new dangers associated with the staggering explosive power of thermonuclear weapons. Oppenheimer delivered his own message on these subjects in an influential article titled “Atomic Weapons and American Policy” in Foreign Affairs that was published in July of Eisenhower’s first year in office.13 Eisenhower, who kept some distance from Oppenheimer because of the emerging security issues, nevertheless, took his advice about leveling with the American people seriously. He commissioned C. D. Jackson, whose odd Cold War White House title was psychological warfare advisor, to draft a major speech outlining the significant developments in nuclear armaments and the dangers associated with them. Jackson dubbed the project “Operation Candor.”14 For months, the president reviewed and rejected the various drafts he was given. He complained that they “left the listener with only a new terror, not a new hope.”15 Jackson was at a loss as to how to discuss the realities of thermonuclear weapons in a way that would contain much that was hopeful. The hope, such as it was, that was eventually added to the speech came from an unusual source — an idea developed by the president himself.
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Presidents make policy decisions on a daily basis, but almost always on the basis of options and information that they receive from staff and administration officials. On this occasion, the president came up with his own option. It was relatively simple. He proposed that the United States and the other nuclear powers — at that time the Soviet Union and Great Britain — each contribute fissionable material to a kind of “atom bank” where it could be used for research and development by other nations in the world. In addition to being simple, the idea was also very modest. By 1953 the United States had a rapidly growing supply of enriched uranium and plutonium and small contributions of those materials to some new international agency would not interfere with any military programs. The commercial use of nuclear power for submarine propulsion and electrical power generation was in its infancy, but there were expectations, some wildly optimistic expectations, that these commercial activities would expand dramatically in the years ahead. A bank of fissionable material would allow other nations to share in the prospects and promise of emerging peaceful nuclear technologies. More importantly, from Eisenhower’s point of view, it would give the United States and the Soviet Union a small arms control project to cooperate on that would not involve any of the problems that were then blocking progress in this arena. Since the rejection of the Truman administration’s Baruch Plan, calling for complete international control of all aspects of nuclear technology, various proposals had been made by the United States and the Soviet Union regarding the control of nuclear arms. The negotiations about these proposals were going nowhere. The Soviet Union resisted any meaningful inspection procedures and insisted on unenforceable pledges not to use nuclear weapons first. The United States wanted comprehensive disarmament agreements limiting both conventional and nuclear weapons with substantial inspection procedures to guarantee compliance. Late in 1953, immediately after conferring with Churchill in Bermuda, Eisenhower flew to New York to address the United Nations. The speech he gave was the final version of operation candor linked to the president’s proposal for an atom bank now under the title, “Atoms for Peace.” The speech began with the observation that issues related to nuclear armaments had been on the president’s mind and heart for many months and that the things he was about to say to the United Nations had originally been planned as remarks to the American people. The actual candor about the size and capabilities of America’s nuclear arsenal was more limited than it had been in some of the earlier drafts. Nevertheless, there were some new pieces of information. The president announced that the United States had conducted 42 test explosions since 1945 and that the existing American nuclear stockpile, which was growing daily, already exceeded “the explosive equivalent of the total of all bombs and all shells that came from every plane and every gun in every theatre of war through all the years of World War II.” Effective defense against these weapons would not be possible and there could be no guarantee of “safety for the cities and the citizens of any nation….The awful arithmetic of the atomic bomb does not permit of such an easy solution.” Instead, the awful arithmetic results in what was the already familiar description of deterrence. Any aggressor in possession of a “minimum number of atomic bombs” could easily cause “hideous damage.” Should the United States be so attacked our response would be “swift and resolute,” and “such an aggressor’s land would be laid waste.”16 Had the speech stopped here, and in earlier versions it had, there would have been little that was remarkable about it. It would have covered the same ground Churchill was to cover in his speech to the House of Commons on the thermonuclear revolution, but with less
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eloquence. Of course, Eisenhower had delayed giving the speech in order to make sure that he would have more to say. After summarizing the basic framework of deterrence, the president went on to provide a powerful critique of that framework. He asked if we could live with a “hopeless finality” that the “two atomic colossi are doomed malevolently to eye each other indefinitely across a trembling world.” Could we accept the risk that civilization might be destroyed? If war did occur, the results would be catastrophic. “Surely no sane member of the human race,” the president observed, “could discover victory in such desolation.”17 Then the hopeful half of the speech began as Eisenhower promised to “help us move out of the dark chamber of horrors into the light, to find a way by which the minds of men, the hopes of men, the souls of men everywhere, can move forward toward peace.” After restating American willingness to participate in the various ongoing arms control negotiations and discussions with the Soviet Union about Korea, Germany, Austria, and other Cold War issues, Eisenhower went on to make his atom bank proposal in grandiose terms. “The United States would seek more than the mere reduction or elimination of atomic materials for military purposes. It is not enough to take this weapon out of the hands of the soldiers. It must be put into the hands of those who will know how to strip its military casing and adapt it to the arts of peace.” The modest proposal of some small contributions of fissionable material to a new international organization rapidly became a way “to diminish the potential destructive power of the world’s atomic stockpiles,” and ultimately to find a “way by which the miraculous inventiveness of man shall not be dedicated to his death, but consecrated to his life.”18 The Atoms for Peace speech was extremely well received. The applause in the United Nations was followed by favorable editorials in major American and international newspapers. Hardly any observers raised the possibility that sharing nuclear material and know-how with other nations might lead to the spread of nuclear weapon technology to those other nations. Gerard Smith, who was then an adviser on arms control issues to John Foster Dulles, claims that the first serious administration discussions of the proliferation problem associated with Atoms for Peace did not occur until the Soviets forcefully raised the issue following the president’s speech.19 The United Nations speech did contain a vague assurance that “our scientists will provide special, safe conditions under which such a bank of fissionable material can be made essentially immune to surprise seizure,” but no one really knew how this might be done or just how important it would be to keep peaceful uses of nuclear power isolated from the military ones.20 The Soviet Union did not cooperate in the establishment of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that became the institutional embodiment of the Atoms for Peace idea. Though the Soviets helped the Chinese develop nuclear technology for a few years, they eventually cancelled those cooperative programs and, thereafter, avoided direct contributions to nuclear proliferation. The United States, in bilateral agreements, and sometimes under the auspices of the IAEA, did provide fissionable material and nuclear know-how to a large number of developing countries including India and Pakistan. Atoms for Peace did contribute to the spread of peaceful uses of nuclear technology, but it also contributed to nuclear proliferation. It never became anything like the first step toward nuclear disarmament that the president hoped for in his United Nations speech. Throughout his administration, Eisenhower made several attempts to find a modest starting point for a broader arms control agenda. He failed with “open skies” at the Geneva
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summit when the idea of mutual aerial inspection was summarily dismissed by the Soviet Union. He lost any opportunities to raise new ideas when the U-2 incident destroyed the second superpower summit in Paris, and he never got further than a temporary moratorium on atmospheric testing. At the end of his farewell address he lamented that he had not been able to do more to promote peace and the control of nuclear armaments.21 He had been attempting to move in that direction since 1953. His United Nations speech was more than an exercise in inadvertent proliferation and cold war propaganda. The speech contained a plain-spoken but profound critique of deterrence. It was a critique that Eisenhower repeated in public and private communications throughout his time in the White House.22 It reflected his sincere belief that a balance of terror could not be sustained indefinitely and would eventually have to be replaced. Of course, what would replace it was hard for the president to see or explain. Like many of the nuclear age presidents, he was hopeful that, in the long run, an arms control process could be started that would gradually lead to comprehensive agreements and substantial movement toward a world less dependent on deterrence. He was frustrated by his own failure to make much progress on an arms control agenda, but convinced that there was no real alternative. A quarter of a century later another cold war president frustrated by the dangers of deterrence would claim to have found another alternative.
STAR WARS Ronald Reagan entered the White House in 1980 when issues related to nuclear strategy and arms control were major public concerns, partly as a result of his campaign. As a candidate, he had criticized the era of détente and the strategic arms control agreements negotiated by the United States and the Soviet Union. The fact that we were talking with the Soviets had led us to let our guard down and prevented us from making improvements in our strategic arsenal made necessary by the rising accuracy of Soviet delivery systems. And while the United States observed the arms limitations we agreed to, the Soviet Union did not. SALT II, the complicated agreement with modest restraints on strategic weapon systems signed by Carter and Brezhnev, was fatally flawed and should be rejected. What America needed, according to the new president in 1981, was not arms control but new and better arms that would close the “window of vulnerability.” Once in office, Reagan dramatically increased the military budget that had already been rising in the last two years of the Carter administration. His defense expenditures included funding for a number of strategic systems, particularly the problematic MX missile, but none of those new systems, including the MX, could effectively reduce the growing vulnerability of land-based weapons. That vulnerability was another product of technology and naturally accompanied the deployment of highly accurate warheads by both the United States and the Soviet Union at the end of the 1970s. The budget increases when combined with the rejection of arms control and the talk about civil defense and the possibly of having to fight a nuclear war raised the level of public anxiety about the dangers of the nuclear age. The problems confronted by the administration in the deployment of new medium range missiles in Europe only complicated matters further. There were massive European protests against new missile deployments in NATO and a surprisingly powerful grassroots freeze campaign in the United States that called on both
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superpowers to stop all new strategic weapon programs. A best selling book, Jonathan Schell’s The Fate of the Earth, called for the abolition of all nuclear weapons and the American Catholic Bishops issued a controversial report questioning the morality of deterrence. In the midst of these developments, the President went on national television to ask for public support of his military budget on Capitol Hill. After several paragraphs of routine Reagan rhetoric about the need for increased defense spending, the President shifted to a new subject. While recognizing that “stability through offensive threat has worked,” the President described our dependence on deterrence as “a sad commentary on the human condition.” There had to be a better alternative. Of course, missile defense was that alternative and the president famously called on “the scientific community in our country, those who gave us nuclear weapons, to turn their great talents now to the cause of mankind and world peace, to give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete.”23 What came to be called the Star Wars speech was one of the most important presidential statements in Reagan’s White House years. Martin Anderson argues that the seed for the proposal was planted when candidate Reagan toured NORAD headquarters in Colorado, heard a briefing on what would happen in a large scale Soviet nuclear attack on the United States and realized that we could do nothing about such an attack beyond retaliating in kind.24 Others attribute Reagan’s interest in the subject to the influence of Edward Teller, the noted physicist who was promoting new space-based lasers and some of the President’s California friends who shared Teller’s optimism about new defensive technologies. Still others describe the star wars proposal as a diplomatic maneuver devised by NSC staffers to give the United States a new bargaining chip in future arms control negotiations with the Soviet Union.25 In an exhaustive review of the origins of the speech, Frances Fitzgerald concludes that none of these accounts is complete. In the final analysis, she argues that Reagan was drawn to missile defense for many of the same reasons that Eisenhower was attracted to Atoms for Peace. The President simply wanted to give the American people some hope to offset a grim assessment of the dangers inherent to the Cold War balance of terror. In February of 1983, when the Joint Chiefs of Staff, with the support of several of Reagan’s White House advisers, suggested that it might be a good time to reexamine and reconsider defensive options, the President took that suggestion, developed it with a small circle of advisors, and personally converted it into the expansive language used in his March 13 television address.26 Immediate public reaction to the President’s televised remarks, like the immediate reactions to Eisenhower’s speech to the United Nations, was generally favorable. Many military experts who had long been dubious of the prospects for missile defense inconsistently criticized the president’s proposed program as both impossible to achieve and potentially destabilizing. But despite these expert criticisms, ordinary citizens liked what they heard from the Oval Office on March 13, and missile defense rapidly became a popular program and a permanent fixture of Republican campaigns and platforms. In the eight years of the Clinton administration, even with the end of the Cold War, there was never a serious attempt to shut the program down. In the 1980s and 90s, the strategic defense initiative absorbed billions of dollars in new spending, strained the ABM Treaty to its breaking point, led to a major confrontation with the Congress over treaty interpretation, and though repackaged in the post-cold war era as a program aimed at the capabilities of rogue states has yet to produce a working system with even limited abilities to shoot down incoming missiles.
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CONCLUSION Both Star Wars and Atoms for Peace could be cited as examples of presidential architects designing and building important structures in the landscape of foreign and defense policy. Missile defense and the transfer of peaceful nuclear technology were certainly issues that would have received some level of U. S. government attention, but it is highly unlikely that they would have reached the scale they achieved, without direct presidential attention and initiative. These are cases where presidents made a difference. Eisenhower, by himself, came up with the idea for an international atom bank; Reagan heard various people talking about new technologies for missile defense, adopted the concept, simplified it and made it his own. For these initiatives, two popular presidents prepared important public statements in secret inviting less consultation within the bureaucracy or with our allies than would have been expected. These were occasions when the chief executive took considerable time and care in selecting the exact words that would be used to introduce new policy proposals. And the policies they announced were controversial and consequential. All of this should be evidence that presidents can take charge and get things done. But, as often occurs in presidential studies, it is also possible to look at these two cases from a different perspective, producing a very different conclusion. Both Eisenhower and Reagan came to their policy initiatives with a sense of frustration about the helplessness and hopelessness that accompanied life in the age of nuclear armaments. They accepted the realities of a defense based on deterrence, but refused to believe that this was an acceptable way to permanently provide for the nation’s security. Something better had to be found, or at a minimum, the serious search for something better had to be promised. The atomic bomb, Eisenhower once noted, was the first weapon ever to scare the American people. In 1953, at the dawn of the thermonuclear age, he wanted to reassure them that there was some alternative to living under the edge of a nuclear sword. In the early 1980s, Reagan’s own rhetoric about the Soviet strategic threat and the window of vulnerability contributed to the ratcheting up of public fears that had been dampened in the era of détente. Reagan, like Eisenhower before him, wanted to deliver a hopeful message that would address the public fears he respected and shared. Both presidents felt constrained by the realities of the enormous military power available in the nuclear age and by the dilemma that security had to be purchased with threats to unleash unimaginable degrees of death and destruction. In these two instances presidential desperation and exasperation may have been important factors in pushing Eisenhower and Reagan toward bold initiatives. Their desperation may, in fact, have been more important in their movement toward Atoms for Peace and Star Wars than anything that was inherently attractive about those initiatives themselves. The ironic image of popular and powerful presidents making dramatic proposals in widely noted speeches that may owe part of their origin to a presidential sense of powerlessness and desperation in the face of implacable technological realities should not be surprising. The glass of presidential power is almost always half full and notoriously hard to measure. From the outside the holders of that office are often seen as the chief executive of the nation, the commander in chief of the military, the leader of the free world and the bearer of a long line of impressive titles. From the inside the same office appears to its holder to be burdened by constraints and limitations that make the empty portion of the glass loom large.
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At the very moment that Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. was declaring the existence of an imperial presidency the White House was occupied by a president who felt besieged — plagued by divided government, resisted by a disloyal bureaucracy, hated by a hostile media, and supported only by a silent majority. None of this makes it any easier to answer the question posed by the editors of this volume, but it may encourage us to consider carefully how important their question is.
NOTES 1
Charles De Gaulle, The Army of the Future (London: Hutchinson, 1940), p. 63. Statement by the President of the United States, Harry S. Truman, August 6, 1945. 3 A. J. R. Groom, British Thinking About Nuclear Weapons (London: Frances Pinter, 1974), p. 2. 4 Quoted in Warner Wells, “Our Technological Dilemma or An Appraisal of Man as a Species Bent on Self Destruction,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. 16, No. 9 (November 1960): 363. 5 Of course, substantial damage was done to Japanese and German cities using conventional weapons even before the atomic bomb was developed. The fire bombing of Tokyo took more lives and destroyed more property than either Hiroshima or Nagasaki. 6 For detailed information on weapons production see, Thomas B. Cochran, et. al., Nuclear Weapons Databook, Volume II U.S. Nuclear Warhead Production (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Ballinger, 1987). 7 David Cannadine, ed., Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat: The Speeches of Winston Churchill (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989), p. 341. 8 Cannadine, p. 345. 9 For a detailed discussion of this issue see, McGeorge Bundy, Danger and Survival: Choices About the Bomb in the First Fifty Years (New York: Random House, 1988), chps. V & VI. 10 For a detailed review of Reagan’s views on nuclear weapons and the development of his Star Wars proposal see, Frances Fitzgerald, Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars and the End of the Cold War (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000). 11 Richard G. Hewlett and Jack M. Holl, Atoms for Peace and War 1953-1961 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), p. 3. 12 Dwight D. Eisenhower, The White House Years: Mandate for Change, 1953-1956 (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1963), p. 457. 13 Steven Ambrose, Eisenhower The President (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984), p. 131. 14 Ambrose, p. 132. 15 Eisenhower, p. 252. 16 President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Speech to the United Nations General Assembly, December 8, 1953. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid. 2
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27
Interview with author, Charlottesville, Virginia, November 4, 1985. Eisenhower, Speech to the United Nations General Assembly, December 8, 1953. 21 President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Farewell Address to the Nation, January 17, 1961. 22 For a fuller discussion of Eisenhower’s views on nuclear weapons and arms control throughout his administration see, Robert A. Strong, “Eisenhower and Arms Control,” in Richard A. Melanson and David Mayers, eds. Reevaluating Eisenhower: American Foreign Policy in the Fifties (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987). 23 President Ronald Reagan, Address to the Nation Regarding Defense and National Security, March 23, 1983. 24 Martin Anderson, Revolution (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich), chp 3. 25 For McFarlane’s contribution to the decision see, Lou Cannon, President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991), pp. 324-333. Of course, when Reagan had the opportunity to use missile defense as a bargaining chip at the Reykjavik summit he did not use it. 26 Fitzgerald, Way Out There in the Blue, especially chp 5. 20
In: White House Studies Compendium, Volume 4 Editor: R. W. Watson, pp. 29-44
ISBN: 1-60021-541-6 © 2007 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
BEYOND THE WATER’S EDGE: PUBLIC OPINION, FOREIGN POLICY, AND THE POST-COLD WAR PRESIDENCY
Michael R. Chambers and Robert K. Goidel ABSTRACT Whether a president serves as an architect or a general contractor in the conduct of foreign policy is, at least in part, contingent upon the contours of existing public opinion. Though the public is more supportive of an activist foreign policy than is often assumed, public opinion during most of the post-Cold War era has nevertheless discouraged presidents from devising a broad, architectural foreign policy. Prior to September 11, when the public weighed in on foreign affairs, they had considerable influence; but public attention to, and interest in, international relations during most of the post-Cold War era has been sporadic and its effect on policy has often been contradictory. The events of September 11, 2001 dramatically altered the public opinion context, creating conditions receptive to a broader, more coherent foreign policy vision. To date, however, no such vision has emerged.
INTRODUCTION In trying to understand the forces at work in the creation of U.S. foreign policy, the international relations literature would have us consider three levels of analysis.1 At the first level are factors from the international system, including the structure of the system, the operation of international organizations, and the actions/reactions of other countries. At the second level are domestic factors, such as the nature of the political system, the interactions between the executive and legislative branches, the workings of the bureaucracy, and the influence of public opinion, special interest groups, and the media. The third level is the level of the individual, and includes such factors as the beliefs, values, and perceptions and misperceptions of the individual decision makers. While each American foreign policy will be influenced to varying degrees by factors from any of these three levels, during the Cold War era, the competition with the Soviet Union provided a dominant context or paradigm that guided much of U.S. foreign policy. For example, while there were sound economic reasons for assisting in the reconstruction and redevelopment of Western Europe and Japan after World War II, there was also a very important security rationale: not only would we create strong markets for our goods and trading partners in these countries, but their economic vitality would help them resist communism and assist us in countering Soviet expansionism.
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With the end of the Cold War, this strong international system-level influence on U.S. foreign policy disappeared, allowing a greater role for domestic-level factors to affect American policy. For example, we have seen Congress take a more active role in trying to shape American foreign policy during the 1990s, with many “pet projects” of members of Congress being elevated into U.S. foreign policy. Included here would be the efforts of members of the Senate and House of Representatives to revamp the finances of the United Nations (UN), to hold U.S. dues to the UN hostage to cutting American funding of international agencies that might in turn fund abortions in other countries, and the efforts of some Senators and Representatives to revoke China’s enjoyment of normal trade relations with the U.S. due to its human rights situation. Congress also forced the president to accept automatic sanctions against foreign countries (and companies) in pursuit of a number of different goals: investing in Cuba (the 1996 Helms-Burton Act), investing in Iran and Libya (the 1996 D’Amato-Kennedy Act), and the testing of nuclear weapons (the 1994 Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Act directed against India and Pakistan). With this rising influence of domestic factors on American foreign policy in the postCold War era, the purpose of this article is to assess the continuing role of the president in making such policy. In particular, the editors of the volume have asked the contributors to consider whether the president should be viewed as an “architect” of foreign policy or as a “general contractor.” We are limiting our consideration to the administrations of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Narrowing our focus even further, we consider how public opinion shapes (and is shaped by) U.S. foreign policy decision-making. Overall, we make four central arguments: 1. For the public to play a constructive role in foreign policy, they need a reasonably coherent vision of the goals and role of the U.S. in international affairs. The classic works on public opinion and foreign policy found a public greatly lacking in knowledge, interest, and involvement.2 Later works have revised this assessment, but the fact remains that the public is better at making “big picture” decisions with limited information than evaluating specific policy decisions requiring greater attentiveness and involvement.3 The general contractor model requires more citizen interest and knowledge of foreign affairs than they are likely to have, except perhaps in the midst of a crisis. While not every president needs to be an architect, we need the vision of one periodically ― especially following major reconfigurations of the international system. Subsequent presidents can then serve as general contractors to implement and manage U.S. foreign policy based on this vision. 2. Presidents are constrained by existing public opinion in terms of their ability to act as architects. Perhaps put differently, it serves no one’s interest if a president designs a foreign policy house that the public does not buy. Nor does it make any sense to build a beautifully designed house without first assuring that the foundation is on solid ground. Foreign policy in the Clinton and Bush White Houses has fallen considerably short of architecture, but the inability of these presidents to design a foreign policy vision reflects not only on the administrations in question, but also on the context in which they have served (and continue to serve). 3. Over the last several decades, public opinion has become a more important, but also a more erratic influence on foreign policy decision-making. Without architects designing foreign policy – and with a public only sporadically interested in foreign
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affairs – the impact of public opinion on foreign policy is at once more powerful and less predictable than in the past. 4. The events of September 11, 2001 provided a unique opportunity for the Bush administration to create a relatively enduring foreign policy structure. In the wake of the terrorist attacks, U.S. citizens were more attentive to international affairs and more supportive of an activist foreign policy. Although President Bush has sought to design a new foreign policy around anti-terrorism, no clear and coherent vision has emerged, in part because he has tied to it the new doctrine of pre-emptive attacks against countries developing weapons of mass destruction. As a result, while there are clear differences in the Bush administration's approach to foreign affairs, U.S. foreign policy continues in the ad hoc fashion characteristic of the Clinton administration. Before we make the case for these arguments, we begin by reconsidering the models themselves, and, in particular, how well the Clinton and Bush administrations fit into this theoretical framework. In concluding, we then consider the possibilities for foreign policy architecture in the world today.
ARCHITECTS, CONTRACTORS, AND THE WEEKEND HANDYMAN Neither the Clinton nor the Bush presidency really fits the mold of an architect of foreign policy. Clinton made an effort in this direction early in his administration as he enunciated a new, post-Cold War grand strategy for the United States based on the enlargement of “market democracies,” but the Clinton administration soon became bogged down in efforts to manage erupting ethnic conflicts and the peacekeeping missions created to alleviate these crises. Instead, President Clinton better resembles a general contractor working with a set of incomplete house drawings: he knows roughly how the house is supposed to look, and he manages the various groups of other countries and domestic constituencies to try to move in that direction while simultaneously coping with problems that arise. The Clinton administration believed very much in pursuing a multilateral approach to American foreign policy, as is evident from their attempts to create or strengthen international economic institutions (e.g., NAFTA, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Forum, the World Trade Organization (WTO)) as well as to address international security issues through multilateral agreements (e.g., the permanent extension of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), and the signing of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty). The Clinton administration also strove to bring various parties together to promote peaceful resolutions to several international conflicts, including in the former Yugoslavia, the Middle East, and Northern Ireland. While lacking the vision to create a new world order, President Clinton demonstrated an interest in and ability to work with other parties to bring some degree of order to the world. By contrast, President Bush has seemed to better resemble a “weekend handyman.” Whereas Clinton was the consummate multilateralist, Bush’s inclinations are toward unilateralism: having the U.S. take care of business by itself, except when it needs help. The weekend handyman does not have a grand vision for building the home, but instead knows that some repairs are necessary, and works away by himself to take care of these issues. Only
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on the really big jobs will the weekend handyman seek the help of others, but even then he will try to do as much as possible himself. Much ink has been printed concerning President Bush’s unilateralist approach to foreign policy. The tragic events of September 11, 2001 and the president’s creation of a coalition of nations to fight the global war on terrorism seemed to have moved the Bush administration toward a more multilateralist approach ― and toward the general contractor model. Similarly, President Bush forged a “coalition of the willing” for the war against Iraq. Nevertheless, despite NATO’s first-ever invocation of the collective defense clause of its treaty, the U.S. pursued the initial campaign in Afghanistan largely on its own, with only minimal assistance from NATO and its other allies. The war to rid Iraq and the world of Saddam Hussein was fought primarily by the U.S. and the British, despite the presence of more than 35 other countries in the “coalition of the willing.” Moreover, in December 2001, President Bush announced the U.S. withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty in order to begin construction on sites for the national missile defense system — a move seen by many observers as the quintessential unilateralist security policy. Within this framework, it is worth noting that presidents ― whether a general contractor or a weekend handyman ― are not merely reactive on foreign policy. Foreign policy issues may arise as the result of international crises or due to the so-called “CNN effect,” but they may also arise because a president decides to take the initiative on an issue. In terms of the framework here, the president can decide to renovate the living room or add on a garage. We have seen both post-Cold War presidents take such initiatives: President Clinton with his elevation of the APEC Forum meetings to the head-of-state level and his decision to expand NATO; President Bush with his decision to build a national missile defense system and abrogate the ABM Treaty, as well as his decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. As in the domestic arena, presidents have a remarkable ability to use the bully pulpit to set the political agenda, and both presidents examined here have successfully done so to achieve foreign policy initiatives. That neither Bill Clinton nor George W. Bush have been architects should not be surprising, but it should be of concern. There have not been many presidents in the last few decades that would fit the architect model; Richard Nixon and perhaps Ronald Reagan are the only candidates. Yet, with the end of the Cold War and the overarching paradigm for U.S. foreign policy that it provided, we sorely need a president who can fashion and enunciate a coherent design for America’s role and policy in the world today. Such a vision would tie into and clarify the values of the American people as they relate to U.S. foreign policy. This vision would also provide the basic guidelines by which the American public can evaluate specific policies and initiatives to determine their level of support, and could be used by a president to motivate popular support for these policies. While not architects, both presidents have made an attempt to provide the missing architectural vision. For President Clinton, as mentioned above, it was the short-lived doctrine of enlarging “the world’s free community of market democracies.”4 President Bush has sought to use the war on terrorism to provide a simple vision for his foreign policy: as he stated in his September 20, 2001 address to Congress, “[t]his is the world’s fight,” and “[e]ither you are with us or you are with the terrorists.”5 In his 2002 State of the Union Address, Bush sought to extend this vision to include confronting “the world’s most dangerous regimes” that are developing weapons of mass destruction with which to threaten the U.S. (the “axis of evil,” consisting of Iran, Iraq, and North Korea), as well as to gain support for economic policies and renewed civic volunteerism on his domestic agenda.6
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However, the extreme simplicity of the vision has severely weakened it; unable to cope with the complexities of the international scene, this vision has been compromised in the mountains of Kashmir and challenged in the occupied West Bank. An architect can conceptualize how the different parts of the house will fit together structurally and aesthetically, but the weekend handyman focuses more narrowly on the task at hand without fully comprehending these connections. Our interest here is to evaluate and analyze the role that public opinion has played in presidential decision making on foreign policy. Drawing on the notions of the general contractor and the weekend handyman, two general possibilities emerge. For the general contractor, public opinion is one of the groups to be managed and shepherded in the efforts to construct or repair the house. The general contractor will pay attention to this factor, sometimes trying to lead it, other times following it, and, at least occasionally, being constrained by it. Strong public reaction to the American casualties in Somalia in 1993, for example, constrained President Clinton from more actively seeking to end the genocide committed in Rwanda in 1994.7 And his reading of the American public being against military casualties constrained him to implement a bombing campaign against Slobodan Milosevic in spring 1999 with no threat of invasion for weeks after it was clear that bombing alone would not end the Serbian atrocities in Kosovo.8 The weekend handyman will be less attentive to public opinion, but will draw on it as necessary. In particular, the weekend handyman will try to use public opinion to legitimize foreign policy decisions already taken, and toward that end will seek to lead and shape it if required. He will sometimes feel constrained by public opinion, but only if the opinion is a strong one. During summer 2002, President Bush and his foreign policy aides began making the case to the American people that Saddam Hussein needed to be dethroned in Iraq, and that the United States might take military action to accomplish this goal. Despite White House denials, it was widely assumed that the decision to remove Hussein had already been made, and that these efforts to justify the impending conflict were intended to shape public opinion in the direction the administration had already chosen to go.9 Other significant foreign policy decisions by the Bush administration, such as the decisions to abrogate the ABM Treaty and to remove the United States from the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, seem to have been made with little heed to public opinion. These approaches to the role of public opinion in presidential foreign policymaking accord with the conceptual framework provided by Douglas Foyle. In Counting the Public In, Foyle argues that public opinion can play an important role in foreign policy decisions if the president believes that it should play an important role.10 Whether a president tries to be more of a general contractor or a weekend handyman will depend on their beliefs regarding the proper making and management of foreign policy, including how much influence Congress, international allies and friends, and the general public should have in deciding U.S. policy. For example, Foyle classifies President Clinton as a “delegate” style president because he actively sought public support both in crafting the administration’s foreign policy and throughout its implementation. Ronald Reagan, in contrast, is classified by Foyle as a “guardian,” because public opinion played a much smaller role both in the crafting and the conduct of the Reagan administration’s foreign policy.11 Yet, as Foyle also acknowledges, the role that public opinion plays in foreign policy decision-making depends upon context. In his model, Foyle focuses on whether the decision is being made in a crisis situation or whether there is time for careful deliberation.12 Drawing
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from ideas on the role of public opinion in the domestic political context, presidents may also be more or less inclined to seek public support in a particular instance depending on how important a given issue is to them politically and how salient it is to the public. In some instances, presidents may attempt to lead public opinion, in others they may circumvent public opinion by conducting foreign affairs by deception (à la the Iran-Contra scandal), and in some instances they may defer to public preferences.13 Even a president who minimizes the importance of public opinion in crafting their administration’s foreign policy might defer to majority sentiments on issues that are viewed as peripheral to the administration’s overall policy objectives. Overall, a president’s predisposition to consider public opinion clearly influences presidential decision-making, but so too does the context in which individual foreign policy decisions are made. In what follows, we consider the context and contours of public opinion in the post-Cold War era with an eye to how public opinion influences and, sometimes, constrains presidential decision making in foreign affairs.
ON FOREIGN POLICY ARCHITECTURE AND PUBLIC OPINION: OR WHY GEORGE W. BUSH IS NO ARCHITECT We begin with a simple assumption: If a president is to conduct foreign policy as an architect, s/he must have the support of the American public behind the central objectives of U.S. policy. This is not to suggest that presidents need public support on specific initiatives, they clearly do not. But the public must support the overarching goals of U.S. foreign policy, which must in turn be clearly articulated. The Reagan administration, for example, hardly courted public support for its foreign policy initiatives, but could count on more diffuse support in the form of anti-Soviet and anti-communist attitudes. The Clinton administration, in contrast, had to actively build public support for its specific initiatives, in large part because the broader goals of U.S. foreign policy in the post-Cold War era were neither clearly articulated nor widely recognized. As these examples illustrate, context clearly influences the extent to which a president can act as an architect or a general contractor. U.S. foreign policy most closely resembled an architectural vision during the Cold War when both elites and the mass public shared a consensus on the central aims of U.S. foreign policy. That consensus began to fall apart during the Vietnam War, and was then shattered with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union. Rebuilding a consensus has been difficult in part because there has been so much uncertainty in the international system. The system moved from bipolarity to unipolarity with the collapse of the Soviet superpower, but there is much disagreement as to whether this unipolarity will be a lasting structure, or a more transitory one on our way to some form of multipolarity.14 We have also seen a rise in the importance of non-state actors ― international organizations, multinational corporations, drug cartels and terrorist networks, and transnational non-governmental organizations ― that have challenged the traditional dominance of the sovereign states in the international arena. Finally, we have seen the breakup of several states in Eurasia (most prominently the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia) as well as severe challenges to several states in Africa based on ethnic conflicts. With so much flux, the central objectives of U.S. foreign policy during the post-Cold War era ― particularly prior to the 9/11 terrorist attacks ― have been less clearly defined. Not
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surprisingly, during this period there has been little consensus, at either the elite level or the level of the mass public, regarding the central objectives of U.S. policy. For the public, the collapse of the Soviet Union meant that international affairs not only became less ordered and less predictable, but also less salient among a host of concerns and issues that the public cares about. In the Chicago Council of Foreign Relations’ quadrennial surveys on foreign affairs, no foreign policy issue made the top ten biggest problems facing the United States in 1994 or 1998, and in 1998 the top response to the question asking the chief foreign policy problem facing our country was “Don’t know.” Moreover, the number of respondents claiming to be “very interested” in foreign news dropped from 36 percent in 1990 to only 29 percent in 1998.15 These attitudes led James Lindsay to characterize the American public as “apathetic” when it comes to foreign affairs.16 Among political elites as well, foreign affairs took a back seat to other issues. Lindsay describes how the public’s apathy toward international affairs has led politicians to neglect foreign policy in favor of more politically valuable domestic concerns, so much so that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and House International Relations Committee had trouble recruiting members.17 Moreover, even when international affairs have forced themselves onto the radar screen, the politics of foreign policy had become considerably more partisan and polarized.18 Whereas Cold War presidents found more freedom in the conduct of foreign policy, the post-Cold War presidents have found not only that foreign and domestic affairs are increasingly intertwined, but that the politics of foreign affairs has become virtually indistinguishable from domestic politics. As a result, the pathologies of American pluralism – so dominant in domestic politics – have become a fixture in foreign policy decision-making as well. The broad majority of Americans support what might be broadly classified as liberal internationalism, yet politics in the post-Cold War era has moved foreign policy in a unilateralist direction, with pressures toward isolationism. Whether this is the result of elites misreading public sentiments or of the vocal minority defeating an apathetic majority has been the subject of considerable debate.19 Regardless, both sides locate the root cause of this discrepancy between public sentiments and public policy in some distortion of representative or pluralistic democracy. As I.M. Destler observes, groups most supportive of liberal internationalism have generally been oriented toward specific causes (environmentalism and human rights). In their support of such causes, they have targeted government as an enemy of progress, thus increasing public distrust of political institutions and making it more difficult to articulate a broader vision of U.S. foreign policy based on the very principles of liberal internationalism they endorse.20 Moreover, as is so often the case in American politics, the intensity of public support (or opposition) matters at least as much as its breadth. The majority of Americans may support liberal internationalism, but the majority has also been also fairly characterized – particularly prior to 9/11 – as apathetic. The combination of this general public apathy and the highly partisan nature of the foreign policy decision making process led President Clinton to find himself regularly challenged by Congress on foreign policy issues, including over Kosovo and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, despite public support of these initiatives.21 Perhaps only the upsurge of patriotism following the attacks of 9/11 saved President Bush from similar confrontations. In such a context, presidents will find it difficult to formulate coherent foreign policies on specific issues, never mind a well-articulated design for America’s role in the world.
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Overall, public opinion, which has been frequently misread by elites as isolationist,22 has nevertheless discouraged presidents from acting as architects. Public opinion surveys have regularly indicated a strong commitment to an active U.S. role in international affairs, and despite rather drastic changes in the international system, public support for an activist foreign policy has not waned during the post-Cold War era (see Figure 1).23 At any given point over the last thirty years, roughly 60 percent of the public has believed that the United States should play an active part in world affairs, while less than a third has preferred that the country stay out of international affairs.
Active Part
1998
1994
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1986
1982
1976
1973
1955
1952
1948
1945
1942
90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0
Stay Out
Figure 1: Public Support for an Activist U.S. Foreign Policy, 1942-1999
Yet, if the public is largely supportive of an activist foreign policy, there are clear limits to that support. For one, as in most areas of public opinion, there are often considerable differences in public support as one moves from the abstract – “should the U.S. take an active role in international affairs” – to the more specific – “should the United States invade Iraq?” Questions about specific policies are more volatile and more sensitive to short-term changes in context. For example, as editorial and international criticisms of a potential U.S. invasion mounted, public support for an invasion of Iraq - though still garnering majority support declined significantly toward the end of 2002 through the early spring of 2003 (See Figure 2). Once hostilities began, support for the war increased dramatically and remained strong throughout the endurance of "major" combat.
Favor
Apr-03
Apr-03
Apr-03
37
Mar 23 2003
Mar 17 2003
March 5 2003
Aug-02
Mar-02
Jan-02
Dec-01
Nov-01
100 80 60 40 20 0
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Figure 2: Public Support for taking military action against Iraq (Washington Post/ ABC News).
Questions about the war arose again after major combat was declared by the president to have ended, in light of a rising number of U.S. fatalities resulting from guerilla tactics carried out by what was presumably the remnants of Saddam Hussein's Baathist Party and admissions by the Bush administration that a statement in the 2003 State of the Union Address regarding Saddam Hussein’s nuclear capabilities should have been vetted from the speech. The result was a sharp decline in support for the President Bush's handling of the war and in the belief that "the situation in Iraq was worth going to war over" (See Figure 3).24
80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 Jan-03 Mar-03 April 7 April 9 2003 2003
Worth Going To War
April 14 2003
Jun-03
Not Worth Going to War
Figure 3: Public Perceptions Regarding Whether the Situation in Iraq was Worth Going to War Over (Source: Gallup Polling Organization).
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Likewise, in September 1994, public approval of President Clinton’s handling of the Haiti crisis jumped from 36 to 55 percent following a televised address on the issue.25 And a few weeks into Kosovo campaign in spring 1999, Andrew Kohut warned American political leaders to be very cautious interpreting the surveys on public opinion regarding this conflict: great variation in the results of several polls indicated that the American public was not yet sure what to think.26 Steven Kull and Clay Ramsey have argued that widely held perceptions that the public shies away from military casualties are more myth than reality.27 Rather than wincing at conflict when American lives are lost abroad, they contend, public opinion generally supports more assertive and more militaristic responses to American casualties. In the aftermath of 9/11, for example, not only did over seventy percent of the public favor invading Iraq, roughly comparable support existed for invading Sudan and Somalia (and presumably, for that matter, any other country thought to be supporting terrorist organizations).28 While the public may have a higher tolerance for casualties and may be less isolationist than is commonly believed, they are not particularly fond of international engagements without clearly defined missions and international support. The Chicago Council on Foreign Relations refers to this limited support of an activist foreign policy as “guarded engagement.”29 First and foremost, this means that the public prefers that U.S. international engagements be motivated primarily by the pursuit and protection of U.S. interests. Second, while the public recognizes that the United States needs to be engaged in world affairs, it rejects the idea that the United States should be the world’s policeman. Other countries should pay their fair share. Practically, this translates into greater support for multilateral (as opposed to unilateral) action, and a general disinclination to committing U.S. ground troops overseas.30 For example, surveys indicated that public support for military action against Iraq was highly contingent upon multilateral support. According to the 2002 Chicago Council on Foreign Relations survey, only twenty percent of U.S. citizens believe that “[t]he U.S. should invade Iraq even if we have to go it alone,” while 65 percent favor such an invasion if it has the support of the UN and U.S. allies.31 Moreover, 61 percent of U.S. citizens believe that the “most important lesson of September 11” was that the “U.S. needs to work more closely with other countries to fight terrorism,” while only 34 percent believe that the most important lesson was that the “U.S. needs to act on its own.” The one possible exception to a general opposition to the use of American ground troops overseas – even before the World Trade Center attacks – involved international terrorism, where a majority of the public not only supported air strikes on terrorist camps (74%) and using ground troops (57%), but also the assassination of individual terrorist leaders (54%).32 As one would suspect, support for these military options has increased significantly in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, with a near consensual support for air strikes against terrorist training camps (87%) and attacks using ground troops (84%), and two-thirds support for assassinating individual terrorist leaders. (See Figure 4).
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87
39
84
74 57
60
57
66
40 20 0 U.S. Air Strikes
Attacks by U.S. Ground Troops
1998
Assassination of Individual Terrorist Leaders
2002
Figure 4: Percentage Favoring Military Action to Combat International Terrorism. Source: Council on Foreign Relations and the German Marshal Fund, Worldviews 2002.
Since 9/11, the possibility of the nation’s first CEO president designing foreign policy on the pillars of anti-terrorism has created what is perhaps an illusion of architecture, but any analogies to the Cold War consensus on containment are, at best, premature. U.S. anticommunist sentiments conveniently manifested themselves in the Soviet Union – and occasionally China, though for a variety of reasons China never served as the central foil of American economic and political belief systems. Terrorism – and by extension a foreign policy crafted around eliminating or reducing terrorist activity – is not nearly as easy to define as the Cold War policy of containment.33 This is true at least in part because it cannot be tied to a single state, and is often conducted by non-state actors who may not claim responsibility for their actions. Terrorism is also less an ideology than it is a means to a political end. As such, though terrorism may serve as the central enemy of contemporary American foreign policy, the parameters of such a foreign policy will necessarily be poorly defined. Put differently, what constitutes terrorism is largely in the eyes of the beholder, so much so that, using the rhetoric of the Bush administration, the Israelis can conduct war against Palestinian “terrorists” in a manner detrimental to U.S. interests in the Middle East, and India can conduct a war against “terrorists” based in Kashmir that brings them to the brink of nuclear war with Pakistan ― even while Pakistan supports these same people as “freedom fighters.” President Bush’s effort at architectural design has become even less stable as he has tried to merge the anti-terrorism campaign with opposition to “rogue” states that pursue weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). Certainly, concerns that economically desperate North Korea might sell such weapons or their components to terrorists are valid. Nevertheless, the White House is apparently discounting the negative consequences that focusing on rogue states would have on the global war against terrorism. First, several of these rogue states are Muslim (Iraq, Iran, and Syria), and further preemptive strikes will only provoke more Muslims to join the ranks of the terrorists challenging the United States. Second, unilateral U.S. decisions to preemptively remove WMD threats will weaken the international coalition necessary to fight the global war on terrorism. Evidence of this potential was seen in the
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severe strains that emerged between the U.S. and NATO allies France and Germany over the war in Iraq. Third, the Bush administration’s desire to continue pushing tax cuts while ballooning defense spending to cope with the putative threats from rogue states and to preemptively attack Iraq will leave very few funds for the non-military efforts that are crucial to combat terrorism.34 Moreover, U.S. efforts to combat both terrorists and rogue states are leading to an expansion of America’s military presence around the globe. Since fall 2001, the U.S. military has overthrown regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq, has established facilities in Africa, Central Asia, and the Middle East, and is engaging in “nation building” in Afghanistan and Iraq (in addition to Bosnia and Kosovo) with Liberia possibly being added in July 2003. In addition, we have strengthened military cooperation with several existing allies. Despite candidate Bush’s eschewing of a global policing role for the United States, President Bush has moved the country in that direction as a result of his foreign policy. The consequences are likely to be growing international animosity to the perceived American “neoimperialism” and domestic unhappiness as U.S. citizens are asked to bear the increasing financial and personnel burdens of this policy. Yet, if terrorism does not appear to be sufficient as the cornerstone of a new foreign policy architecture, and if George Bush does not appear to be an architect, the post-9/11 context nevertheless provided a unique opportunity for a president to articulate a broader vision of the U.S. role in the post-Cold War World. In the wake of the attacks, terrorism was widely cited as the number one problem confronting the United States, far surpassing domestic issues.35 Support for an active U.S. role in world affairs also increased substantially, as did interest in news about U.S. foreign policy and international relations.36 According the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations 2002 study, 42 percent of survey respondents indicated that they were “very interested” in news about other countries, and 62 percent in news about U.S. relations with other countries. This is the highest level of interest since the Council on Foreign Relations began its quadrennial surveys in 1974. Overall, there is a clear consensus on the need to fight a war on terrorism, but outside of retribution for the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a broader consensus on the means and ends of that war have proven elusive. It will continue to prove elusive if the Bush administration opts to “go it alone,” while defending U.S. actions in language that evokes images of the United States as the world’s policeman (even if it is of the “Dirty Harry” variety). To the extent that the Cold War may serve as an analogy, it is the post-Vietnam Cold War in which the consensus underlying U.S. foreign policy was being challenged – instead of the pre-Vietnam War era in which the consensus was largely accepted. We may now be on the upside of the curve building toward a consensus, but we are clearly not there yet.
BUILDING A FOREIGN POLICY CONSENSUS: ARCHITECT WANTED Given the instability of the international system, the polarized process of foreign policymaking, and the relative disinterest of the American public in foreign affairs, it has been difficult for Presidents Clinton and Bush to act as foreign policy architects. Constructing a coherent design for the goals and role of the United States in the world today requires a consensus that appears elusive ― particularly since the political elites have misread the public on several key aspects of their opinion. Still, drawing on the many surveys reported over the last decade or so, it is possible to configure a minimum level of consensus.
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First, Americans believe that the United States should play a leadership role in the world. This does not mean that it should be the world’s policeman, but an internationally active United States can better pursue its international interests. Moreover, events in other countries can affect Americans and their interests. For those who had not fully appreciated this fact previously, the terrorist attacks of 9/11 brought the message home. Second, Americans prefer multilateralism to unilateralism. They believe it is better and more efficient to cooperate with other countries to achieve our goals than it is to work against them. It is also more cost-effective, since our partners can share the burden. While U.S. citizens overwhelming supported the invasion of Iraq, it is unclear how willing they will be shoulder the burden of occupying and rebuilding Iraq without significant assistance from other nations. Third, Americans generally support the promotion of democracy, market-based economies, and free trade, although other values may take priority in some cases, and the promotion of these values has to be placed within the context of U.S. national interest. These are the core values of the United States, and their adoption by other societies is viewed as a positive development. Fourth, Americans believe that international terrorism needs to be confronted. While this attitude has been accentuated by the attacks of 9/11, terrorism was also one of the top foreign policy problems in the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations’ 1998 survey. Building from these points of public consensus, a president cum architect can design a foreign policy strategy that will guide the U.S. role over the next many years. While elaborating such a vision is beyond the scope of this paper, any such design will need to accommodate the following issues. •
•
•
•
First and foremost, the new strategy will have to address the issue of U.S. power. America is the lone superpower in the world today, and this position brings us special influence, but also will lead other countries to call upon us in times of need. When and where will the United States intervene, and using what means? Under what conditions will the United States commit its military forces? And while the United States will try to work in cooperative fashion with other countries, the president will need to enunciate the goals and interests for which s/he would be willing to act unilaterally. Second, the new strategy will have to address how broadly the president is willing to define American interests. In part, this will mean the extent to which our interests will be predicated on the interests of other countries. It also includes the extent to which our interests extend beyond security and economics to humanitarian and environmental concerns. Third, the new strategy will need to elaborate U.S. relationships with other major states, particularly the European Union and its members, Russia, China, and Japan. While none of these actors represents ― nor will they represent in the foreseeable future ― a superpower rival to us, they do have the capacity to greatly assist or hinder our efforts, and thus deserve American attention. This strategy must also address U.S. relations with the countries of the Middle East. Fourth, this strategy will have to provide a means to cope with international terrorism and the threat from weapons of mass destruction. How the president decides to
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Michael R. Chambers and Robert K. Goidel answer these two threats will depend heavily on how the previous three issues are addressed.
Enunciating this new design for the architecture of American foreign policy will not be easy or risk-free. The partisanship of the policy process and the relative disinterest of the public will make the costs of failure rather high. But the rewards of success could also be great. George W. Bush may have had the best opportunity to design and announce this new vision for American foreign policy in the year following September 11, 2001. The interest of the American public was again piqued, and the patriotism that bloomed across the country extended to the halls of Congress, where partisanship was squelched for many months to show American unity and resolve in facing this new threat. Moreover, countries around the world felt sympathy for the U.S. that could have been parlayed into a new international resolve to address important global issues. However, when historians look back at this presidency, they may very well claim that this unique opportunity was squandered on the road to Baghdad.
NOTES 1
For two classic examples of the levels of analysis approach, see Kenneth Waltz, Man, the State, and War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959); and Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Prineceton: Princeton University Press, 1976), especially chapter 1. 2 See e.g., Gabriel A. Almond, The American People and Foreign Policy, (New York: Praegar, 1950); Walter Lippman, Public Opinion, (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1922); James N. Rosenau, Public Opinion and Foreign Policy: An Operational Formulation, (New York: Random House, 1961); Philip E. Converse, “The Nature of Belief Systems in the Mass Public,” in Ideology and Discontent, ed. David Apter (New York: Free Press, 1964). 3 See, e.g., Ole R. Holsti, Public Opinion and American Foreign Policy, (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996); Ole R. Holsti, “Public Opinion and Foreign Policy: Challenges to the Almond-Lippman Consensus,” International Studies Quarterly 36 (1992): 439-66; John Hurwitz and Mark Peffley, “How are Foreign Policy Attitudes Structured? A Hierarchical Model,” American Political Science Review 81 (1987): 10991120; John H. Aldrich, John L. Sullivan, and Eugene Borgida, “Foreign Policy and Issue Voting: Do Presidential Candidates Waltz Before a Blind Audience?” American Political Science Review 83 (1989): 123-141; Eugene R. Wittkopf, “The Structure of Foreign Policy Attitudes: An Alternative View,” Social Science Quarterly 62 (1981): 108-123. 4 See Thomas L. Friedman, “U.S. Vision of Foreign Policy Reversed,” The New York Times, September 22, 1993, p. A13. 5 Text of President George W. Bush’s address to Congress, in Washington Post, September 21, p. A24. 6 Amy Goldstein and Mike Allen, “Bush Vows to Defeat Terror, Recession,” Washington Post, January 30, 2002, p. A1.
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Douglas Jehl, “Did U.S. Err on Rwanda?” New York Times, July 23, 1994, p. 1; Anthony Lewis, “World Without Power,” New York Times, July 25, 1994, p. A15. 8 For example, see John F. Harris and Bradley Graham, “Clinton is Reassessing Sufficiency of Air War,” Washington Post, June 3, 1999, p. A01. 9 Elisabeth Bumiller and David E. Sanger, “Threat of Terror is Shaping the Focus of Bush Presidency,” New York Times, September 11, 2002, p. A1, report the decision was made in principle in fall 2001. 10 See Douglas C. Foyle, Counting the Public In: Presidents, Public Opinion, and Foreign Policy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999). Foyle argues that the decision context also matters, and interacts with the president’s beliefs on the role of public opinion. 11 Foyle, pp. 197-199 12 Foyle, pp. 15-17. 13 David Skidmore. “Between Leadership and Retreat: The President, Foreign Policy, and Domestic Opinion.” International Studies Notes, June 1999. Vols. 24/2:1-14 (USA), research note. 14 For a sample of this debate, see Charles Krauthammer, “The Unipolar Moment,” Foreign Affairs: America and the World, vol. 70, no. 1, 1990-91, pp. 23-33; Christopher Layne, “The Unipolar Illusion,” International Security, vol. 17, no. 4, Spring 1993, pp. 5-51; and Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, American Primacy in Perspective,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 81, no. 4, July/August 2002, pp. 20-33. 15 See Worldviews 2002: U.S. 9/11 Key Findings Topline Data, available from the Chicago Council of Foreign Relations at www.ccfr.org; and John E. Reilly, “Americans and the World: A Survey at Century’s End,” Foreign Policy, Spring 1999, pp. 97-114. As a comparison, in 1982, 1986, and 1990 the number of foreign policy issues listed within the top problems facing the U.S. ranged from 3 to 4. 16 James M. Lindsay, “The New Apathy,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 79, no. 5, September/October 2000, pp. 2-8. 17 Lindsay, “The New Apathy.” 18 I.M. Destler, “The Reasonable Public and the Polarized Policy Process,” in The Real and the Ideal: Essays on International Relations in Honor of Richard H. Ullman, eds. Anthony Lake and David Ochmanek, (Boulder, CO: Rowman & Littlefield). 19 Destler, “The Reasonable Public;” Lindsay, “The New Apathy.” 20 Destler, “The Reasonable Public.” 21 Lindsay, “The New Apathy.” 22 Steven Kull & I.M. Destler, Misreading the Public: The Myth of a New Isolationism (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institute Press, 1999). 23 The data used to create this chart were obtained from Richard Sobel, The Impact of Public Opinion on U.S. Foreign Policy Since Vietnam, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). The original data were obtained from various sources including Gallup, Harris, the Washington Post, the National Opinion Research Center’s General Social Survey, the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, the Program on International Policy Attitudes, Princeton Survey Research Associates, Market Opinion Research, and ABC News. For a more complete description, see Sobel, pgs. 46-47.
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The specific question wording was as follows: “All in all, do you think the situation in Iraq was worth going to war over or not?” 25 “Clinton’s poll ratings soar as troops invade,” The Independent (London), September 21, 1994, p. 16. 26 Andrew Kohut, “Beware of Polls on the War,” New York Times, April 8, 1999, p. A27. 27 Steven Kull and Clay Ramsey, “The Myth of the Reactive Public: American Public Attitudes on Military Fatalities in the Post-Cold War Era,” in Public Opinion and the International Use of Force, eds. Philip Everts and Pierangelo Isernia (London: Routlege, 2001). Kull and Ramsey contend that continued public support depends less on the articulation of national interest than perceptions regarding the likely success of the action. 28 “Americans favor force in Iraq, Somalia, Sudan and …,” The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, January 9-13, 2002. N=1201. 29 John E. Reilly, “American Public Opinion and U.S. Foreign Policy, 1999.” (Chicago, IL: Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, 1999). 30 This may appear to contradict the Kull and Ramsey argument that the public prefers more militarist responses to American casualties, but the general disinclination involves the initial deployment of troops overseas. 31 The data for this section of the analysis were taken from the Worldviews 2002 Survey, a joint project of the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations and The German Marshal Fund of the United States. The key findings on U.S. public opinion are reported in “A World Transformed: Foreign Policy Attitudes of the U.S. Public After September 11” and can be found the Chicago Council for Foreign Relations web page – www.ccfr.org. 32 Ibid. 33 Admittedly, this point is overstated. The Cold War consensus was less consensual than is often assumed, see e.g. Eugene Wittkopf and James M. McCormack, “The Cold War Consensus: Did It Exist?” Polity 22 (1990): 627-654; and the specific application of containment was based on practical as well ideological considerations. 34 For a discussion of these military vs. non-military approaches, see Joseph S. Nye, Jr., “U.S. Power and Strategy After Iraq,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 82, no. 4, July/August, 2003, pp. 60-73. 35 “A World Transformed.” 36 Though see “Public News Habits Little Changed by September 11,” The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, May 26 – April 12, N=3002, for evidence that media attention has been significantly changed by September 11. According to this study, the increase in interest has occurred primarily among the “attentive public.”
In: White House Studies Compendium, Volume 4 Editor: R. W. Watson, pp. 45-67
ISBN: 1-60021-541-6 © 2007 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
THE FOREIGN POLICY ARCHITECTURE OF THE CLINTON AND BUSH ADMINISTRATIONS
James K. Oliver ABSTRACT The modalities of foreign policy provide a useful dimension by which the two post-Cold War foreign policy presidencies can be compared. This research also considers the substantive policy dimensions of the Clinton and Bush foreign policy records. Thus the two presidencies’ strategic assessments of the position of the United States are a second important point of comparison. How a president understands the structure and dynamics of the world constrains their sense of limits and opportunities as they engage the international system, i.e. whether one acts as a “grand designer” (“architect”) or “manager” (“general contractor”).
INTRODUCTION The years following the demise of the Soviet Union and the Cold War have been a far more frustrating period of foreign policy and policy making than some anticipated in the early 1990s.1 Only two presidents – Bill Clinton and George W. Bush – have had to deal with the challenges resulting from the onset of American primacy within a context of globalization. Though it is very early in the day to be comparing the two administrations, there are points of comparison allowing an interim overview of their foreign policy. Both administrations undertook strategic assessments of the international position of the United States and both administrations revealed their operational modalities for engaging the international system quite early in their tenures. Indeed, in the case of the Bush administration, it has been the operational style of the administration that has drawn the most attention. Thus “unilateralism” became the defining characteristic of the Bush administration for most observers before the catastrophic events of 9/11 and the descriptor stuck even as the administration defined its substantive focus in terms of wars on terrorism and Iraq, both fought by means of an international “coalition.” The modalities of foreign policy provide, therefore, a first dimension along which the two post-Cold War foreign policy presidencies can be compared. But there are substantive policy dimensions as well. Thus the two presidencies’ strategic assessments of the position of the United States are a second important point of comparison. How a president understands the structure and dynamics of the world constrains their sense of limits and opportunities as they
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engage the international system, i.e. whether one acts as a “grand designer” (“architect”) or “manager” (“general contractor”). Finally, there are the goals and objectives that an administration sets: the purposes for which the instrumentalities of power are developed, mobilized, and applied. Identifying the purposes for which power is exercised is one of the great challenges for foreign policy analysis for often these purposes are articulated by an administration retrospectively as a justification for its actions. In still other cases, administrations never really define a grand design or “doctrine” that guides their policy-making sometimes arguing that the very character of the system – e.g. unprecedented conditions such as globalization and/or the end of the Cold War – preclude such formulations or their application. In both administrations, attempts were made to define overarching frameworks for their foreign policy although in the case of the Clinton administration the “strategy” was never advanced as a “doctrine.” In contrast, Richard Haass, the former Director of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff for the Bush administration, insisted that such a doctrine is essential to any administration’s foreign policy if it is to be informed by “strategic clarity.”2 The content and clarity of the strategic visions of the two administrations will constitute a third point of comparison in the analysis.
SURVEYING THE LAY OF THE LAND U.S. POWER IN THE POST-COLD WAR LANDSCAPE The campaign for the White House produced the predictable statements of what a “Republican foreign policy” would consist of once a Bush reoccupied the White House.3 Nonetheless, when one strips away the campaign posturing and straining to define “differences,” the Clinton and second Bush administrations arrived at quite similar views of the contours of the international system. But if they were in basic agreement as to the lay of the land, there were nonetheless fundamental disagreements as to the foreign policy architecture appropriate to the environment. Clinton and Bush entered office lacking foreign policy blueprints. But within a year, both experienced brutal international engagements – Mogadishu in the case of Clinton and for Bush, the terrorist attack on the New York World Trade Center – that compelled them to more clearly articulate their foreign policy designs. In late September 1993, Anthony Lake, Clinton’s first Security Advisor laid out what the Clinton Administration saw as the salient characteristics of the new era. “[T]he pulse of the planet has accelerated dramatically and with it the pace of change in human events,”4 Lake observed, and this contributed to a dynamic and complexly interdependent globalization of human affairs. Moreover, among the major changes affecting the system was “an explosion of ethnic conflicts” giving to the system a dangerous and destabilizing source of dynamism, notwithstanding the end of the dreadful Cold War era. Nonetheless, there was little reason for anxiety for even as unsettling change was cascading through the system “America’s core concepts – democracy and market economics – are more broadly accepted than ever.” Furthermore, by any conventional measure the United States was the world’s dominant power: “The fact is, we have the world’s strongest military, its largest economy and its most dynamic, multiethnic society . . . Moreover, absent a reversal in Russia, there is now no credible near-term threat to America’s existence.” 5
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In sum, the central strategic reality for the foreseeable future was understood to be the surfeit of what Joseph Nye has termed U.S. “hard” and “soft” power.6 No one could remotely challenge U.S. military and economic capacity and insofar as America’s “core concepts” were driving the technological, social, and cultural dimensions of globalization American values were deemed ascendant as well. Under these circumstances, U.S. foreign policy should not only be “engaged” but it should lead.” The “successor doctrine” to containment should be “a strategy of enlargement” – “enlargement of the world’s free community of market economies.” 7 Eight years later, the new Bush administration arrived at a similar assessment of the strategic position of the United States vis-à-vis the international system. Moreover, this conclusion was reached notwithstanding the calamitous events of 9/11, events which in Secretary of State Colin Powell’s words ushered in the “Post-post-Cold War era.”8 Thus in the spring of 2002, then Director of Policy Planning Richard Haass observed that the United States “is – and will remain into the foreseeable future – the world’s preeminent power according to every metric – military, economic, political, or cultural. The United States will continue to affect the shape of international relations and their trajectory more than any other country.” This is an era defined by a number of realities, foremost among them American primacy, the low probability of great power conflict, and the spread of democracy and free market economics. But it is also a time of continuing regional threats, persisting widespread poverty and the exclusion of too many people from the benefits of globalization, and increasing transnational challenges.9
And like Lake, Haass insisted that the United States has unique responsibilities with respect to leadership in the new era.10
THE APPROACH TO ENGAGEMENT If the assumption of American primacy on the part of the Bush administration was not distinctive, their modalities of engagement have been the focus of much commentary. Most commonly the contrast has been drawn in terms of the “multilateralism” of the Clinton Administration vs. the “unilateralism” of the early Bush administration. Clinton seemed willing to undertake multilateral negotiations and commitments across the full range of international and transnational issues and issue areas. Thus, the early months of the Clinton administration, involvement in United Nations peacekeeping were characterized as “assertive multilateralism” by U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Madeleine Albright.11 In contrast, the hallmark of the early Bush administration was its unilateralism in dealing with allies and adversaries. Whether the issue was ballistic missile defense, enhancing UN capacity for monitoring agreements banning chemical and biological weapons, controlling the spread of small arms, population programs, global warming, or a UN conference on racism, the Bush administration pointedly asserted U.S. “national interest” as something apart from and in opposition to the Clinton administration’s more enthusiastic globalism. Indeed, Bush seemed to relish the opportunity to reverse prior agreements and commitments entered into by his predecessor.
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Much of Bush’s early unilateralism might be attributed to the seemingly inevitable inclination of new administrations – especially those representing a shift in partisan control of the White House – to distinguish themselves and their policies from the previous occupants. In this case, there was perhaps an even more intense desire to do so insofar as George W. Bush and his administration saw represented a restoration of the truncated term of Mr. Bush’s father. Virtually all of the top level foreign and defense policy administrators in George W. Bush’s administration had served together in similar capacities in the previous Bush years (and before in the Ford and Reagan Administrations). But there is both more and less here than meets the eye. Clinton was more unilateralist and Bush upon occasion more multilateralist than the conventional wisdom conveys. After Mogadishu, the Clinton administration’s enthusiasm for assertive multilateralism evaporated and the term was never used again. Indeed, even before the disastrous firefight that led to the deaths of 18 U.S. Rangers and hundreds of Somalis on October 3, 1993, a divided Clinton administration, its campaign rhetoric aside, was unable to muster any enthusiasm for a leadership role in the Balkans. They, therefore, promoted a UN weapons embargo on all parties, which, to the extent it was enforced, worked to the advantage of the Serbs who already controlled most of the assets of the former Yugoslav federal army. Diplomatically, they deferred to European and UN diplomatic initiatives, though criticizing the results for ratifying the results of Serb aggression. During the summer of 1993, Clinton and Albright had already qualified and distanced the United States from unequivocal support for UN peacekeeping operations.12 Though there was a substantial UN peacekeeping mission underway in Somalia under retired U.S. Navy Admiral Jonathan Howe’s leadership, the U.S. military operation in Somalia had never been under UN command and control, and the disastrous October 3 operation was a largely U.S. planned and implemented mission.13 The subsequent attacks from the political right wing in the United States blaming the UN for failure in Mogadishu were not rebutted by the administration. Further, the withdrawal from Somalia was soon followed by a new U.S. doctrine concerning U.S. approval of or involvement in multilateral operations, Presidential Decision Directive 25, The Clinton Administration’s Policy on Reforming Multilateral Peace Operations made public May 3, 1994, that codified the previous year’s incremental abandonment of multilateralism. A detailed examination of PDD-25 is beyond the scope of this discussion,14 but the preconditions established for U.S. involvement in multilateral peacekeeping operations were stringent and seemed to insure that few if any such operations would proceed in the future without a priori U.S. support. Moreover, Albright, in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee immediately after the Mogadishu catastrophe, explicitly diminished multilateralism as a policy mode for pursuing U.S. interests. Multilateral peace-keeping remained “potentially” important, but it cannot serve as a guarantor of our own vital interests, nor should it lessen our resolve to maintain vigorous regional alliances and a strong national defense. We want a stronger UN, but we are not about to substitute elusive notions of global collective security for battleproven and time-tested concepts of unilateral and allied defense.
UN missions were now in a category that “may not impinge directly on the national security interests of America or its allies.”15 Furthermore, the subsequent denial of a second term as
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Secretary General to Boutros Boutros-Ghali was in part a Clinton administration action driven by the perceived domestic political advantage of distancing the administration from the kind of “multilateral engagement and U.S. leadership within collective bodies”16 that had characterized the Clinton administration’s early months in the White House. The refusal by the United States to support decisive multilateral intervention in Rwanda and the vacillating and dilatory response of the Clinton administration to the disastrously deteriorating European and UN operations in Bosnia were consistent with this posture. When decisive intervention came to the Balkans in 1995 and again in Kosovo in 1999, it was in the form of U.S.-led and implemented air wars against Slobodan Milosevic’s forces. Indeed, in Kosovo, the Clinton administration explicitly rejected trying to obtain United Nations Security Council authorization arguing that such a step would be vetoed by the Russians. Instead the Clinton administration prepared for essentially American action by gaining a priori NATO commitment to act without UN authorization in the event of the presumed refusal of Milosevic to restore Kosovo’s autonomy and stop his refugee generating ethnic cleansing of the province. It mattered little to Clinton that the resulting intervention was widely regarded as a violation of the international law concerning the use of force embodied in the Charter.17 In retrospect, this outcome is not surprising. Very early in the Clinton administration, Anthony Lake had explicitly refused to adopt a rigidly multilateralist posture. In the same speech in which he laid out the fundamentals of the Clinton administration’s strategy of engagement through enlargement, he stated “my personal hope is that the habits of multilateralism may one day enable the rule of law to play a more civilizing role in the conduct of nations, as envisioned by the founders of the United Nations.”18 However, regarding the appropriate “mode of engagement,” he concluded: But for any official with responsibilities for our security policies, only one overriding factor can determine whether the U.S. should act multilaterally or unilaterally, and that is America’s interests. We should act multilaterally where doing so advances our interests—and we should act unilaterally when that will serve our purpose. The simple question in each instance is this: what works best?19
Bush’s foreign policy, vexed as it is by an on-going war and nation-building exercises in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Palestine, is quite obviously very much under construction. However, the enthusiastic unilateralism that marked the early months of the administration was at least marginally tempered in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The response to the attacks was essentially American conceived and executed, but the Bush administration found that it could more effectively respond with international support and assistance. Thus NATO’s unprecedented invocation of Article 5 of the treaty and offer of material assistance were welcomed and accepted as European piloted AWACs command and control aircraft exercised tactical control of the augmented air combat patrols over American cities during late 2001 and early 2002. U.S. assets were thus freed for use in Southwest Asia. United Nations Security Council resolutions were sought and provided as the United States and the international community undertook more extensive and intensive exchanges of intelligence and enhanced surveillance of the international financial system so as to thwart al Qaeda financial transactions. Bilateral and multilateral contacts throughout the world were stepped up as the United States and its allies sought to identify and then destroy Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda
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networks. Afghan, British, German, and Canadian troops participated in the fighting in Afghanistan which destroyed the Taliban and seemingly shattered the al Qaeda presence, albeit much of the leadership and significant operational elements of both remained unaccounted for in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere. Pakistan and other regional governments contributed to the American conceived and led operation by providing basing, over flight rights, and intelligence. Similarly, the war in Iraq, though very much an American affair, nonetheless took on a multilateral dimension out of necessity. In the run-up to the war, the Bush administration assumed the initiative in framing the case for going to war with Saddam Hussein’s regime, drove the ultimately unsuccessful diplomatic effort to gain UN Security Council approval for war, and established the strategic framework within which war would be prosecuted. When war came in the spring of 2003, the Administration characterized the forces arrayed against Iraq as an “International Coalition.” The exercise was, however, with the notable exception of a British theater in the extreme south of Iraq, an American war. The 423,998 US personnel deployed for Operation Iraqi Freedom constituted 91 percent of the forces engaged. Fully 93 percent of the air sorties in the war were flown by U.S. aircraft.20 Prior to the war, however, Prime Minister Tony Blair served as an articulate advocate of war and a consistent ally of the Bush administration. And, of course, the British did contribute 40,906 troops, carried the brunt of the fighting in the south, and maintained a major presence in the area around Basra. In addition, the administration had sought and failed to obtain Turkish support so as to establish a base for a northern invasion to complement the major thrust out of Kuwait. Other symbolic contributions were made by the Australians, Canadians, and the Poles.21 The “international coalition” aside, the more important of the administration’s ultimate concessions to the necessities of multilateralism came after Bush declared an end to major military operations on April 3. In the face of miscalculations concerning the likely course of combat, a botched initial post-war occupation administration,22 persistent insecurity, violence, and almost daily casualties inflicted on U.S. forces, the administration was forced to seek assistance, often from the very countries that had opposed US policy in the months before the war. Thus, the administration – with almost half of U.S. active duty Army brigades committed to Iraq – found itself soliciting peacekeeping forces and assistance from Turkey, India, Russia, Romania, and even the French and Germans who had led the opposition to Security Council support of the war. Most of the countries set as a precondition of their assistance, a United Nations Security Council resolution legitimizing the peacekeeping and reconstruction effort. As the recognized occupying force in Iraq the United States seemed likely to maintain the administrative initiative for the reconstruction, but negotiating some sort of UN cover for the multilateral effort was anything but appealing to an administration that had walked away from multilateral legitimization of its war four months earlier. Neither Clinton nor Bush has been, therefore, the consistent multilateralists or unilateralists respectively that journalistic accounts and op-ed writers might suggest. But it would be inaccurate to conclude that their operational modalities are indistinguishable. Clinton’s penchant for personal involvement in bilateral and multilateral negotiations grew during his eight years in office and his administration embraced an extensive array of international agreements and governance arrangements. The Bush administration on the other hand, illuminated its early months in office with a series of withdrawals from and rejections of bilateral and multilateral agreements and arrangements. Moreover, complaints, protests, or
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advice offered by others were often treated with indifference or curtly dismissed as wishful thinking. Arguably, Clinton was less a multilateralist than Bush a unilateralist, but to focus analysis of their foreign policies on these distinctions is to risk mistaking a house’s wallpaper and landscaping for its underlying architecture. There is substantively more to distinguish these administrations than the weighting of multilateralism and unilateralism in their respective efforts to utilize America’s strategic position at the turn of the new millennium. We can, in short, move beyond a comparison of the modalities of these first administrations to operate in an era of conjoined globalization and American primacy. In doing so we might better understand how it is that while understanding the position of American power in the world similarly – the lay of the land as it were – they nevertheless undertook quite different foreign policy projects. And in comparing the architecture of the projects we might also be in a better position to consider the future of American foreign policy in the midst of the turbulence and cascading change that is the essence of globalization.
ENLARGEMENT AND ITS LIMITS As Clinton began his second term he asserted: . . . The once bright line between domestic and foreign policy is blurring. If I could do anything to change the speech patterns of those of us in public life, I would almost like to stop hearing people talk about foreign policy and domestic policy and, instead, start discussing economic policy, security policy, environmental policy — you name it.23
Insofar as an administration that seemed, initially at least, to view foreign policy as a distraction sought to establish a coherent foreign policy framework, the interpenetration of foreign and domestic policy was a, perhaps the central assumption. “It’s the economy, stupid,” had been the Clinton campaign mantra in 1992 and something like it carried over into the administration’s foreign policy thinking. At the center of the strategy of enlargement was the strengthening and consolidation of the democratic capitalist core – the world’s liberal market political economies the center of gravity of which was understood to be the U.S. economy. The domestic and international economic linkage with trade as the nexus was in turn, equated with security policy.24 The substantive focus of American foreign policy was to be, therefore, on the North American-European-Japanese core and the international economic regimes, institutions, and arrangements designed to foster trade. This was necessary because at the heart of the Clinton administration’s strategic assessment and response was the assumption that American economic recovery and long-term prosperity were inextricably intertwined with global economic growth and especially that of the democratic capitalist core. The “domestic” and the “foreign” were co-constitutive. Further, this political-economic nexus was now understood to be the essence of U.S. security policy in an international system in which there were no plausible challengers to American security traditionally conceived. Operationally, therefore, the administration tried to hand-off the Balkans crisis to the Europeans and the UN, scuttle away from the multilateral engagement symbolized by Mogadishu, and disingenuously duck altogether the horrendous unraveling of Rwanda.
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Simultaneously, Clinton was personally and successfully engaged with bringing the North American Free Trade Agreement through the Congress, advancing the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the World Trade Organization, and energizing the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. In contrast with the lurching course of U.S. policy in the Balkans from 1993 through 1995, the Administration effectively mobilized a U.S.-led response to the Mexican economic and financial crisis of 1994-1995 in spite of vocal opposition from the Republican majorities in the House and Senate. Throughout 1993-1995, the Administration fashioned a strong and coordinated negotiating position for the United States vis-à-vis Japan as Clinton sought to force a Japanese leadership weakened by a slowmotion implosion of the Japanese economy into fundamental restructuring of their domestic economy and the broader U.S.-Japanese trade relationship. Within the policy making core of the administration, the leadership of the traditionally dominant State Department-National Security Council-Defense Department triad of agencies drew generally lower marks than Treasury, Commerce, the Office of Trade Representative, and especially the new National Economic Council under the leadership of Robert Rubin.25
Enlargement beyond the Democratic Capitalist Core When, however, the Clinton administration engaged beyond the democratic capitalist core, the strategy began to loose its clarity. The geostrategic areas of greatest concern were Russia, the remnants of the old Soviet empire, and China. Economic engagement was a part of Clinton’s approach, but the parlous state of the Russian and central European economies and political institutions precluded their rapid incorporation into the core. Rather, the administration had to deal immediately with problems and opportunities presented by the collapse of communism in central and Eastern Europe as well as the complexities of the Chinese-Taiwan-U.S. triangular relationship in Asia. Inasmuch as Russia and China had been the focus of containment, the residua of the Cold War remained and demanded attention. Not surprisingly, therefore, the approach to enlargement here was weighted towards more traditional political and strategic issues of arms control, nonproliferation, and shoring up the ever dodgy and often inebriated Yeltsin presidency in Russia.26 The relationship with China was especially vexing. Trade and economic engagement were central elements of the Clinton Administration’s approach to Beijing. However, the longstanding commitment to Taiwan provoked a nasty military confrontation involving Chinese missile tests off Taiwan answered by the movement of U.S. Navy carrier battlegroups into the waters between Taiwan and the mainland. Likewise, revelations of Chinese interference in U.S. elections as well as alleged espionage regarding U.S. nuclear warhead technology contributed to bilateral tension and domestic debates redolent of the 1950s. On the other hand, the Administration quickly severed its initial linking of human rights and trade, aggressively moved to expand U.S. trade in technologies with dual civilian and military use, and ultimately supported Chinese entry into the WTO after negotiating an agreement with Beijing concerning opening its internal markets. The effort to sustain and expand economic engagement with the Chinese occasioned some of Clinton’s most eloquent advocacy of his econocentric strategic notions.27 Nonetheless, at the end of his term, Clinton could not claim that enlargement extended to China anymore than he could with respect to the Russians.
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With respect to what Lake termed the “backlash” states of Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Libya, and Cuba, the administration’s policy adopted the language and instrumentalities of Cold War containment, not the modalities of economic engagement. U.S.-Iraq relations, for example, remained frozen in economic sanctions and a low intensity air war of attrition punctuated by brief spikes of intense cruise missile and air attacks. Elsewhere in the Middle East, Clinton found himself personally, intensely, and ultimately unsuccessfully engaged diplomatically in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict working the same agenda as his predecessors for more than 20 years. Humanitarian intervention was conceived as a tertiary priority in the original conceptions of enlargement. However, the complex political and humanitarian disaster of Balkan disintegration persisted at the top of the administration’s agenda throughout both terms and led to the first military action by NATO in its history. Moreover, U.S. policy was anything but “strategic” in conception and implementation. The administration attempted initially to disengage through a policy of skeptical support for European and UN diplomacy and peacekeeping in Bosnia during 1993 and 1994. By the late summer of 1995 that policy had failed catastrophically as the Serbs overran the UN protected safe area in and around Srebrenica, massacred its male inhabitants, and tightened their brutal siege of Sarajevo. Only after the Administration led a UN sanctioned NATO air campaign in support of a CroatianBosnian land offensive in September of 1995 was there a cease-fire, negotiations at Dayton in November, and, finally, a NATO-based peacekeeping force under UN mandate on the ground. But the Balkan Wars persisted. Within a year Kosovo Liberation Army insurgents had increased their activity across the Albanian border into the province of Kosovo. Milosevic, for his part, had earlier revoked the autonomous status of Kosovo and now escalated the expulsion of ethnic Albanians, destruction of Albanian villages, and egregious and massive human rights violations against the majority Albanian Kosavars. The massive flow of refugees into neighboring Albania and Macedonia threatened their stability and the credibility of NATO as a guarantor of stability in the region. Significantly, the Clinton administration rejected European appeals to seek UN Security Council legitimization of military action in Kosovo arguing that the Soviets would veto such a course. Instead, Clinton pushed for and received on January 30, 1999, authorization for NATO air strikes against Serbia if Milosevic did not honor a commitment to restore autonomy to Kosovo and cease the ethnic cleansing within the province. On March 24, NATO launched an air war against Serbia – without United Nations sanction – and conducted overwhelmingly by American forces. The air campaign lasted for almost three months before Milosevic capitulated and a NATO manned peacekeeping force was inserted to initiate the as yet incomplete task of reconstructing another part of the Balkans. Despite its early reluctance, the Clinton administration ultimately engaged and enlarged the U.S. presence in the Balkans. And though there was much multilateralism operating throughout the messy course of that engagement, neither the process nor the outcome bore much resemblance to the strategic concepts advanced by the administration throughout its tenure. The U.S.-led NATO intervention in Bosnia bore the legitimacy of UN Security Council sanction; the Kosovo intervention did not and is, therefore, an unsettlingly ambiguous marker in the Post-Cold War period. The Clinton administration had repeated throughout the 1990s its commitment to engagement and enlargement through multilateral modalities so as to construct a liberal international order. However, Operation Allied Force,
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although cloaked in the moral imperatives of humanitarian intervention by a NATO coalition of the willing, was essentially an American led intervention against a sovereign state without UN Security Council authorization. By the end of the 1990s, therefore, the strategy of engagement and enlargement had lost its focus. Moreover, although NATO, the very institutionalization of the liberal democratic core, had enlarged to include Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary, its internal balance, mission, and purpose had become problematic. Over the course of the interventions in the Balkan wars and especially in Kosovo, the radical asymmetry of military capability between the United States and the Europeans had become obvious and undeniable. In addition, there were accumulating instances of American impatience with European multilateral diplomacy in the Balkans, enthusiasm for an international landmine treaty, and the International Criminal Court. At the same time, the Europeans frequently found themselves at odds with the United States on matters ranging from the refusal of the United States to meet its financial obligations to the UN or support for various international agreements on the rights of children and women. Thus, within the liberal democratic core of the post-Cold War world, there were fissures. The Clinton administration’s vision and the President’s personal diplomacy bespoke multilateralism, engagement, and enlargement across an international system within which American ideas and ideals were more widely accepted than ever before. The sometimes scary ride with Boris Yeltsin through a decade of Russian transition and the rocky path to strategic partnership with the Chinese suggested a less benign or malleable global environment than might have been inferred originally. Mogadishu, the prolonged and brutal struggle in the Balkans, the collapse of negotiations in the Middle East, the containment of backlash states, and by the end of Clinton’s day, the emergence of an al Qaeda capable of bombing the World Trade Center, American embassies, and successfully disabling American warships indicated that there were large parts of the world far less receptive to American ideas of market economics and liberal democracy than assumed by the first post-cold war presidency.
From Liberal International Engagement to Primacy As noted previously, the Bush administration’s fundamental assumptions concerning the position of the United States within the international system are similar to those of Clinton. But there are fundamental differences between the two administrations rooted in quite distinct notions of what can and must be done with the singular power and position of the United States in the contemporary system. And these contrasting policy prescriptions are based on different conceptions of security and what is necessary to preserve security in the early Twenty-First Century. In effect, though Clinton and Bush would build on similar terrain with similar tools, they nonetheless, construct quite different structures based on contrasting architectural principles. Clinton’s construction of the post-Cold War world was one in which multidimensional interdependence and globalization are the dominant constitutive dynamics of an emergent global system or society. Traditional security concerns persist, but insofar as economic forces of globalization are of ascending and ultimately transcendent importance, security becomes redefined in terms of trade and economics. From Clinton’s perspective, however, the proper strategic response to this new world is not disengagement and/or defensiveness. Rather,
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because these forces of globalization are in fact derived form America’s most fundamental values and strengths; indeed, U.S. policy since the end of the Second World War, the United States ought to embrace interdependence and globalization. In so doing, globalization becomes both end and instrumentality of American foreign and national security policy. Insofar as U.S. strategy is based on engaging these forces and strengthening the institutions for regulating and fostering liberal globalization, the sphere of liberal democratic capitalism is expanded and American strategic interests are advanced. Bush’s advisers would not necessarily disagree with the general thrust of this strategic analysis. Richard Haass, for example, has asserted that “In the 21st century, the principal aim of American foreign policy is to integrate other countries and organizations into arrangements that will sustain a world consistent with U.S. interests and values, and thereby promote peace, prosperity, and justice as widely as possible.”28 Vice President Dick Cheney, when he was Secretary of Defense in 1992 advanced the concept of a “Democratic Zone of Peace,”29 the boundaries of which were coterminous with Lake and Clinton’s “Community of Major Market Democracies” – the liberal democratic capitalist core – the expansion of which was the vehicle of the strategy of enlargement. However, while accepting the central importance of this zone of peace and prosperity there is a clear inclination of the Bush administration to emphasize a darker side of the changes and forces that the Clinton administration seemed inclined to embrace in principle, if not always at the level of operational policy outside the core. Mid-way through the 1990s, Zalmay Khalilzad, now Bush’s special envoy to Afghanistan and Iraqi opposition, identified seven aspects of the international system all rooted in the dynamics of globalization and interdependence that might have appeared in any Clinton administration appraisal of the forces at work in world politics. In every instance, however, Khalilzad perceives negative or threatening implications:30 Economic growth in Asia, even it does not slow down, will produce relative power differentials with military implications.31 “Some” countries in areas outside the core will achieve market democracies, but the implication is that many will fail. Much of the world lies outside the zone of peace and will remain there even as they seek weapons of mass destruction. Increasing ethnic and other forms of subnational conflict will eventuate in more small wars. Technological change will produce dramatic effects on military and economic power. Competition within the zone of peace will increase. Finally, the backlash or rogue states will become increasingly revisionist and more important, Khalilzad foresaw the possibility of China and Russia trying to balance the power of the United States. Under this less sanguine globalization scenario, reconceptualizing security in terms of economics and trade are insufficient and even dangerous. Riding the forces of economic globalization as a vehicle of enlargement does not constitute a grand strategy for engagement and advancing the national interests of the United States. “Transnational” forces are indeed salient in the system. In that respect, the strategic assessments of the 1990s got it right. However, the world is now seen as having entered a period when increasingly potent transnational challenges intersect with still important traditional concerns. The [September 11] attacks were a grim reminder of how the march of globalization has raised the stakes from transnational threats. The murderers used cell phones, email and the Internet to communicate. They moved money via wire. And they turned civilian
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Furthermore, traditional challenges including the Middle East, the threat of nuclear war in South Asia, and the danger of Iraqi, Iranian, or North Korean weapons of mass destruction – all these persist and grow. Faced with what Haass referred to as the “intersection of the transnational and the traditional,” members of the Bush Administration insisted upon the necessity of a coherent foreign policy or “doctrine.” Prior to 9/11 however, it was difficult to determine the shape of this strategy. The unilateralism of the administration was already evident, but pre-election and early post-inaugural efforts to define a “Republican” foreign policy suggest more posture than policy. Condoleezza Rice and Robert Zoellick advanced an “alternative” that bundled together enhanced military capability to ensure deterrence, free trade and stable global finances, strong alliances, “comprehensive relationships”33 with Russia and China, and dealing forcefully with rogue states – all elements present in the Clinton administration’s first national security strategy document in 1994. If there was a distinctive note, it emanated from the assertion that the Clinton administration had lost sight of the fact that “power matters” and that the “national interest” and not “‘humanitarian interests’ or the interests of ‘the international community’” should be determinative in American foreign policy. Rice continues: The belief that the United States is exercising power legitimately only when it is doing so on behalf of someone or something else was deeply rooted in Wilsonian thought, and there are strong echoes of it in the Clinton Administration. To be sure, there is nothing wrong with doing something that benefits all humanity, but that is, in a sense, a second-order effect. America’s pursuit of the national interest will create conditions that promote freedom, markets, and peace. . . . So multilateral agreements and institutions should not be ends in themselves.34
Others in the administration put an even harder edge on these arguments. The Vice President, his Chief of Staff, Lewis Libby, the Secretary of Defense and the Under Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Khalilzad at the National Security Council, John Bolton, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control, and Richard Perle, Chair of the civilian Defense Advisory Board all advanced35 a view that privileged traditional power-based considerations of national interest. But they went further in that they seized on what they saw as the fundamental structural condition of the post-Cold War period as the crux of their strategic vision: the historically unique preponderance of structural power held by the United States, i.e. its military primacy. This notion actually goes back to the end of the first Bush administration and was revealed in one of the last strategic planning documents produced in 1992 and 1993 by then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney and Wolfowitz, also in the elder Bush’s Defense Department. Libby, a member of Secretary of Defense Cheney’s staff has been identified as the drafter of the Cheney document.36 As in the contemporary formulation, the central idea was that the unchallenged superiority of U.S. power globally presented the United States with the opportunity to “shape” the international environment in such a way as to preserve for the foreseeable future, U.S. primacy. Or, as Khalilzad, a member of Cheney’s staff in 1991 subsequently paraphrased the argument, “Precluding the rise of a hostile global rival is a good
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guide for defining what interests the United States should regard as vital. . . . It is a vital U.S. interest to preclude such a development – i.e., to be willing to use force if necessary for the purpose.”37 Before 9/11, the ABM Treaty renunciation, the rejection of Kyoto, and persistent public criticism of treaty initiatives undertaken by Clinton administration concerning the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), international conventions on land mines, small arms trafficking, biological weapons, and the treaty establishing an International Criminal Court signaled an intention to set a course for American foreign policy that would be only minimally constrained if at all by the views of others in the system including U.S. allies in Europe and elsewhere. While these actions were criticized for their unilateralism, they stemmed from the logic of primacy as a basic strategic framework. After 9/11 the “Primacists” within the administration became increasingly forceful and open in their advocacy and rapidly filled in the operational and geostrategic details. Most significantly, the “War on Terrorism” has proved to be but one and perhaps not the central element in the strategy. Beginning with his 2002 State of the Union Address, Mr. Bush made it clear that U.S. strategic concerns extended far beyond Osama bin Ladin and al Qaeda. In addition, the United States would “prevent regimes that sponsor terror from threatening America or our friends and allies with weapons of mass destruction.”38 Specifically, he singled out Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. He continued: States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic. . . . America will do what is necessary to ensure our nation's security. We'll be deliberate, yet time is not on our side. I will not wait on events, while dangers gather. I will not stand by, as peril draws closer and closer.39
Thus Bush conflated the war on terrorism and the states that constituted the “axis of evil.” They could provide material assistance to terrorists40 and/or attack the United States and its allies – and that was enough. Moreover, the President indicated that his administration would not adopt a reactive posture to the threats he outlined. The operational details and geostrategic foci of the American policy towards terrorism and the axis of evil emerged incrementally throughout the spring and summer of 2002. Early in 2002, the administration completed a Nuclear Posture Review that identified the new center of gravity of foreign and national security policy. The NPR envisions a farreaching reconstitution of U.S. national security policy away from deterrence and towards the “conventionalizing” of nuclear weapons within a newly conceived triad of “useable” American military instruments including: “offensive strike weapons” among which the line between conventional and nuclear weapons is blurred if not erased, “active and passive defenses” including BMD, and a “responsive defense infrastructure” that encompasses the production of new, smaller, precision guided nuclear weapons with low collateral damage potential, and the resumption of nuclear testing.41 In sum, the new NPR is infused with a forward leaning “strike” element that departs from the traditional paradigm of deterrence.
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Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton among others, reiterated this theme publicly throughout the first half of 2002. By mid-2002 if there was any doubt that the administration was prepared to move unilaterally and preemptively beyond the strategic paradigm of the Cold War, it was removed as Bush delivered a commencement address at the Military Academy in which he said: For much of the last century, America's defense relied on the Cold War doctrines of deterrence and containment. In some cases, those strategies still apply. But new threats also require new thinking. Deterrence – the promise of massive retaliation against nations – means nothing against shadowy terrorist networks with no nation or citizens to defend. Containment is not possible when unbalanced dictators with weapons of mass destruction can deliver those weapons on missiles or secretly provide them to terrorist allies. . . . If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long. . . . [T]he war on terror will not be won on the defensive. We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans, and confront the worst threats before they emerge. In the world we have entered, the only path to safety is the path of action. And this nation will act. Our security will require transforming the military . . . a military that must be ready to strike at a moment's notice in any dark corner of the world. And our security will require all Americans to be forward-looking and resolute, to be ready for preemptive action when necessary to defend our liberty and to defend our lives.42
Subsequently, the framework of the administration’s “National Security Strategy” was previewed by “senior officials” of the administration to the Washington Post. The traditonal reliance upon containment, deterrence, and retaliation as the basis of U.S. policy would now give way to preemption. Though justified as necessary to deal with terrorists who “have no territory to defend,” states possessing or aspiring to possess weapons of mass destruction, i.e. those operating along the axis of evil, were clearly at the top of the administration’s preemptive first-strike list.43 The axis of evil countries in general and Iraq in particular were now in the cross hairs of the Bush adminsitration. Further, during the spring and summer of 2002, alternative approaches to attacking Saddam Hussein’s regime ranging from an invasion involving 250,000 American troops to an airpower heavy attack on Baghdad designed to precipitate a rapid collapse of the Iraqi government and military were laid out in successive articles in The New York Times.44 In addition there was an almost daily run of administration spokespersons emphasizing the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s regime, claiming Iraqi support for al Qaeda including harboring of former al Qaeda leaders, asserting the necessity of regime change in Iraq, and the moral basis for removing Saddam by force. More concretely, the Defense Department initiated a buildup of materiel in Qatar necessary to support a strike against Iraq thereby circumventing Saudi refusal to allow the United States to use their territory in such a conflict. The public campaign culminated in a speech delivered by Vice President Cheney before the Veterans of Foreign Wars on August 26, 2002 in which he made it abundantly clear that “the challenges to our country involve more than just tracking down a single person or one small group.”45 Saddam Hussein was portrayed as a far greater threat for: Armed with an arsenal of these weapons of terror, and seated atop ten percent of the world’s oil reserves, Hussein could then be expected to seek domination of the entire Middle East,
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take control of the world’s energy supplies, directly threaten America’s friends throughout the region, and subject the United States or any other nation to nuclear blackmail. Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, our allies, and against us. And there is no doubt that his aggressive regional ambitions will lead him into future confrontations with his neighbors – confrontations that will involve both the weapons he has and the ones he will continue to develop with his oil wealth.
The prospect was not unlike that portrayed by members of the Truman Administration 50 years earlier at the onset of the Cold War. This time, however, there was a fundamental difference: As we face this prospect, old doctrines of security do not apply. In the days of the Cold War, we were able to manage the threat with strategies of deterrence and containment. But it’s a lot tougher to deter enemies who have no country to defend. And containment is not possible when dictators obtain weapons of mass destruction, and are prepared to share them with terrorist who intend to inflict catastrophic casualties on the United States.
Rather, there was in Henry Kissinger’s words approvingly quoted by Cheney: “an imperative for preemptive action.” The “imperative” did not, however, evoke consensus. It was widely speculated that within the administration only Secretary of State Colin Powell was opposed to unilateral preemptive action. Speculation aside, Powell’s position, though nuanced, was that preemption is not an entirely new concept. Preemption has always been available as a tool of foreign policy and military doctrine. . . . So pre-emption, or another way of putting it is prevention, is that when you see something coming at you, when it is such a clear and present danger, and you know what is going to happen, and you believe that you can make the case that it is going to happen, it is an option that is available to a president or to a leader. . . . It must be used with great care and judiciousness.
Accordingly he preferred that the ground be prepared by consultation with Congress and trying yet again to reintroduce UN arms inspectors in Iraq.46 Outside the inner circle of the Administration, however, there was much unease and even opposition. Whereas the response to 9/11 within the United States and across Europe and beyond had been strong support for the Administration’s “War on Terrorism,” the call for war on Iraq generated some skepticism among both Republican and Democratic Party leaders in the Senate and beyond. These doubts found voice through former top officials of the elder Bush’s administration, including former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft and former Secretary of State James Baker who publicly counseled caution, consultation, and a more explicit effort by the administration to make the case to the Congress, the American people, and U.S. allies for an attack on Iraq. And after the Bush Administration opined that it did not need congressional approval to launch a preemptive war congressional unease changed to demands for consultation. A majority of the public agreed that Iraq was a sufficient threat to warrant a war, but only a quarter of Americans believed that the threat was serious enough to require an immediate strike. Furthermore, majority support disappeared if the war were undertaken without Congressional or allied support.47
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Abroad, only British Prime Minister Tony Blair offered support and he did so in the face of considerable Labor Party skepticism and popular opposition in the United Kingdom. Otherwise, the administration’s seeming fixation on war opened up transatlantic cleavages with the German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder taking the lead in harshly criticizing U.S. policy. French President Jacques Chirac insisted that any war with Iraq should be launched only after UN Security Council debate and approval and only after Saddam Hussein flaunted UN inspection again. Vladimir Putin had been the first foreign leader to voice solidarity with the administration’s War on Terrorism and in the process reoriented Russian foreign policy much closer to the United States. But he joined other European leaders in opposing an American preemptive strike. The Arab states, already furious with the United States over its support of Israel as the latter sought to crush the Palestinian Intifada on the West Bank and remove Yasser Arafat as the leader of the Palestinian Authority, expressed virtual unanimous opposition to the United States. Little enthusiasm was expressed elsewhere in the world. Faced with this measure of doubt and outright opposition, the President insisted that he looked forward to a debate and then agreed to congressional hearings and some sort of congressional resolution expressing the sense of the Congress. In the meantime Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard B. Meyers were all on the weekend public affairs interview shows reiterating the Administration’s gloomy assessment of Saddam Hussein’s capabilities and intentions. Powell restated his position that preemption was a legal and necessary option, though he did not seem enthusiastic about that course of action. He was not optimistic about reintroducing arms inspectors, but indicated satisfaction that the President would be making his case before the United Nations and challenging the UN to take action against Iraq. The President’s September 12 address to the General Assembly broke no new ground concerning evidence for the Administration’s case for early action against Iraq. However, the President did commit the United States to working with and through the Security Council in developing new resolutions designed to force compliance by Iraq with the weapons inspection regime originally established in 1991 at the end of the Gulf War.48 This apparent commitment to a diplomatic track proved, however, illusory. The fall and winter were characterized by intense and extensive diplomacy as the United States and Britain sought a Security Council Resolution authorizing military action against Iraq, and the French, Russians, and Germans rejected any resolution constituting a priori and automatic use of force in response to Iraqi non-compliance. Resolution 1441 was unanimously passed on November 8, 2002, finding Iraq in material breach of its obligations concerning inspections. The resolution did not, however, commit the Council to any enforcement action, should Iraq not comply with the Security Council’s demand that inspectors be reintroduced and a full accounting of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction forthcoming.49 Inspections were resumed by mid-November and an Iraqi report produced. By year’s end, however, it was clear that the multilateral initiative had lost momentum and the administration’s commitment to diminished, especially as it became clear that the UN inspectors were not finding evidence of continuing weapons of mass destruction programs. Indeed, Dr. Hans Blix, the UN’s chief arms inspector and International Atomic Energy Agency Director Mohamed El Baradei rejected most of the U.S.-U.K. arguments and claims concerning Iraqi WMD by the end of January 2003. Nonetheless, ten days later on February 6th, Powell presented the U.S. case for war to enforce the UN resolution and remove the regime of Saddam Hussein.
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By the end of February negotiations within the Security Council had reached an impasse as the United States and Britain circulated a draft resolution that would commit the Council to war and the French, Russians, and Germans countered with a memorandum urging prolonging the inspections and yet more Council deliberation before a commitment to force was undertaken. In the meantime, the U.S. and British defense establishments systematically increased operational capability around Iraq and escalated the enforcement of the post-1991 no-fly zones over Iraq as a cover for extensive air strikes against Iraqi air defense and its strategic communications infrastructure.50 On March 17, 2003 the United States and Britain withdrew their Security Council draft resolution while reiterating their position that the UN Security Council Resolution and prior resolutions gave them sufficient justification for the use of force against Iraq. Three days later war began.
FOREIGN POLICY IN THE POST-9/11 WORLD The question remains, however, whether there is anything to the Bush administration’s strategy beyond preemptive action along the axis of evil and a global rolling-up of al Qaeda and terrorism in general. Richard Haass tried to argue that there was as he sought to frame the Bush Administration’s foreign policy in terms of a doctrine that he called “Integration.” This notion of integration was seen as encompassing a “consistent body of ideas and policies that guides the Bush administration’s foreign policy.”51 The description of integration developed by Haass sounded, however, quite similar to the core concepts of the strategy of enlargement articulated by the Clinton administration: The best way to describe this . . . is as a process of integration in which the United States works with others to promote ends that benefit everyone. Integration is the old balance of power turned on its head. It is an inclusive approach to international relations that involves creating ties between and among countries at all levels, from individuals to institutions to governments to multinational organizations. These ties link integrated countries in arrangements that help create and sustain a world consistent with the interests and values we share with our partners – such as the rule of law, open trade, the peaceful settlement of 52 conflicts – and in which these values and their benefits are enjoyed as widely as possible.
Haass’s description of the implementation of the doctrine was no less Clintonesque in that it anticipated “multilateral initiatives” and “new partnerships” involving bilateral relations with specific countries, international institutions, the promotion of free trade, and development. U.S. policy “must continue to try to integrate Russia, China, India, the Arab world, African countries, and others into our efforts to create a better future based on our common values.”53 Furthermore, when it came to the limits of multilateralism, Haass took another page from Tony Lake’s strategy of enlargement. [O]ur desire to work cooperatively with others does not imply a willingness on our part to agree to unsound efforts just because they are popular. . . . Nor can we forget that the United States has unique global responsibilities. If we are to meet them effectively, we may not always be able to go along with measures that many or even most others support. We will listen, learn, and modify policies when we hear compelling arguments. [But w]e will not go along simply to get along.
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Notwithstanding occasional echoes of the doctrine in the public statements of the Secretary of State, the doctrine of integration did not gain currency in the early Bush administration. Perhaps it was the extent to which integration echoed enlargement that led to its never gaining traction in the upper level bureaucratic struggle to define American foreign policy in the early months of the Bush administration. More likely, however, 9/11 had the same effect on the internal foreign policy discourse of the Bush administration, as did the Korean War on debates within the Truman administration at the dawn of the Cold War. The advocates of a more moderate containment lost out then to the global and militarized containment and rollback urged in NSC 68. The urgency and impetus for a less nuanced response was even greater after 9/11, for unlike the North Korean advance across the 38th parallel, the attack was on the homeland resulting in the bloodiest day on American soil since the Civil War.55 It became a commonplace after 9/11 to argue that it had changed everything. However, the elements of strategic thinking that dominated public discourse on foreign policy a year after those events were not born out of the catastrophe. Both the proponents and their arguments had been firmly ensconced at the upper levels of the Republican Party since the 1980s and more specifically, the first Bush administration. 9/11 changed the environment and context within which foreign policy debate within the administration proceeded and that policy presented to the American public and the world. But even before 9/11 those who held a harder and more traditional view of the world were dominant. The conflation of the War on Terrorism and the war in Iraq confirmed their dominance. George W. Bush may not have been inclined or capable of articulating conceptually elegant strategic doctrines, but he gathered around him men and women who almost without exception held a darker view of the world than Bill Clinton. They may have agreed with their counterparts in the Clinton administration that the world was now characterized by a degree of globalization and interdependence that was unprecedented. They would certainly agree that the United States occupied a position of primacy within that structure given its military, technological, and economic superiority. Moreover, they would accept the idea that especially the latter economic superiority meant that American ideas about how best to organize political economies had gained a position of primacy as well. Clinton’s administration was inclined to see in this constellation of forces and conditions, opportunities – especially in the new salience of economic and trade relations – for enlargement, albeit residual problems of transition from the Cold War to Post-Cold War persisted and would require attention. In contrast, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and even Powell were inclined to see threats in the form of potential competitors – both state and non-state – who might gain or already had access to weapons of mass destruction. Opportunities did indeed exist to pursue the expanding integration of the world, but in the meantime, traditional considerations of national interest continued to operate throughout the international system. Under this view of global circumstances, the instrumentalities of American primacy should be employed – unilaterally if necessary – to preclude the emergence of competitors and to chasten those “rogue states” and terrorists who challenged and would attack their neighbors, America’s allies, and the United States itself. The goal was to preserve the “unipolar moment.”56
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If these latter ideas were somewhat inchoate and lacking conceptual structure before the attacks of 9/11, they quickly crystallized in the necessities of the War on Terrorism. The Bush presidency immediately took on a definition and profile lacking before 9/11 and a president whose frequent malapropisms were fodder for late night comedy shows, morphed into a “wartime leader.” A man who failed to gain a majority of the popular vote in his campaign and could claim the White House only at the behest of five justices of the Supreme Court appointed by his father, Ronald Reagan, and Richard Nixon was suddenly the beneficiary of stratospheric approval ratings. The tortured verbalizations remained, but now they were glossed as evidence of his populist touch.57 More important, the prosecution of the War on Terrorism produced quick victories with relatively little exertion in Afghanistan during the fall and winter of 2001-2002. With the Taliban quickly defeated, al Qaeda dislodged, and the War on Terrorism taking on the attributes of a tedious, though dangerous manhunt, the President and his policy advisers shifted the focus to the Axis of Evil and the self-evident necessities of regime change including preemptive war in Iraq. The conflation of complex threats was thereby reduced to a focussed Manichean political and military struggle along the Axis of Evil. Foreign policy and strategic policy were, therefore, elaborated and re-centered within a policy space defined by the darker and more ominous view of the Primacists. Within that space, primacy was the reservoir of instrumentalities essential to the pursuit of the national interest and the preservation of primacy was the core element of that national interest. The first month of the Iraq War proved to be a triumphant display of U.S. military operational virtuosity and Bush was able to declare that major combat was over on May 2, 2003. The ensuing weeks suggested, however, that the application of military power was not sufficient for the achievement of the Primacist vision of an American dominated world order. The Administration’s rosy projections for the “liberation” and rapid transformation of postSaddam Iraq into a democratic Arab state that would serve as a launch point for the democratization of the rest of the region proved to be a desert chimera. Rather, as guerillastyle resistance emerged and the summer heat set in, the administration’s forecast was increasingly framed in terms of years of occupation and reconstruction of the crushed Iraqi economic infrastructure and reconstitution of a political culture roiling with ethnic and religious conflict. The administration was not prepared to discuss, however, costs which were already running at $3-4 billion per month and a daily butcher’s bill of one or two American military personnel killed by sniper attacks, rocket-propelled grenades, and explosions.58 Moreover, weeks of searching for weapons of mass destruction failed to produce anything thereby opening the administration to persistent domestic criticism – as the 2004 election season opened – that the Bush administration had consciously distorted or even lied about the evidence of an immediate threat of WMD in the run-up to the war. The administration’s response was to try and reframe the justification for the war in terms of human rights, i.e. the removal of a brutal regime – an odd argument, indeed, and one condescendingly discounted by the administration’s National Security Advisor, when she had previously critiqued the Clinton administration’s foreign policy as Wilsonian. It remained to be seen whether the imperatives of nation building and occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan, the demands of Middle East peacemaking belatedly undertaken via the “roadmap” to peace, and yet another bloodbath in a failed African state – Liberia – would shake the realist world view and unilateralist impulses of the Bush administration. By mid-
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2003, the administration was openly calling for greater multilateral support and assistance in all these areas. Bill Clinton had applied liberal internationalist architectural principles as he tried to open the walls of a Doge’s palace onto the marketplace of the city. Initially, George W. Bush seemed intent on relocating the palace to an impregnable fortress on a new building site above the city. But once construction was underway, difficulties with the site – ignored or discounted when plans were drawn up – imposed serious and perhaps intractable constraints, costs began to escalate, and the number of carpenters and masons assigned the job proved insufficient. A call for help and financial support was hastily issued to other contractors who had been summarily dismissed during the planning phase of the project. It seemed likely that they would demand changes in the plans before accepting sub-contracts. In sum, mid-way through Bush’s lease on the property, the schedule had begun to slip and the erasures and emendations to the blueprints threatened to render the original design unrecognizable and incoherent. The integrity of whatever structure eventually emerged was increasingly problematic.
NOTES 1
See, for example the euphoric proclamations of a “new world order” during the first Bush Administration. 2 Richard Haass, “Defining U.S. Foreign Policy in a Post-Post-Cold War World, April 22, 2002. Department of State. http://www.state.gov/s/p/rem/9632.htm. 3 See Condoleezza Rice, “Promoting the National Interest,” Foreign Affairs 79(2000): 45-62 and Robert B. Zoellick, “A Republican Foreign Policy,” Foreign Affairs 79 (2000): 63-78. 4 Anthony Lake, “From Containment to Enlargement,” Speech given at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, September 21, 1993 and reprinted in Alvin Z. Rubinstein, et al, eds., The Clinton Foreign Policy Reader: Presidential Speeches with Commentary (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2000): 20-27. 5 “From Containment to Enlargement.” 6 Nye first made an argument for the ascendancy of American “soft power” in Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power (New York: Basic Books, 1990) in response to the “declinist” arguments of the late 1980s and early 1990s. The character of fully dimensionalized American hard and soft power ascendancy is most recently explored by Nye in The Paradox of American Power: Why the World’s Only Superpower Can’t Go It Alone (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002). 7 Lake, “From Containment to Enlargement.” The position was predicated on what Lake calls “pragmatic Neo-Wilsonianism”: “. . . our goal in the era is to expand democracy and take advantage of the democratic tide running in the world. I believe that you best promote general goals not through absolute doctrines, but through a determined pragmatism that then can give substance to the general principles. Principles without pragmatism is posturing, and pragmatism without principles becomes rudderless opportunism.” Ibid.
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Quoted by Richard Haass, Director of Policy Planning for the Department of State in several speeches in early 2002. See, for example, Haass, “Defining U.S. Foreign Policy in a PostPost-Cold War World.” 9 Haass, U.S. “Russian Relations in the Post-Post-Cold War World,” June 1, 2002. http://www.state.gov/s/p/rem/10643.htm 10 Haass, ibid. 11 “Myths of Peace-keeping,” Statement before the Subcommittee on International Security, International Organizations, and Human Rights of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, June 24, 1993. Dispatch. 4: 464-467. 12 William J. Clinton, “Confronting the Challenges of a Broader World,” Address to the General Assembly of the United Nations, September 27, 1993, Dispatch, September 27, 1993, 4: 652 and especially Albright, “Use of Force in a Post-Cold War World,” Address at the National War College, National Defense University, September 23, 1993, Dispatch, September 27, 1993, 4: 667. 13 Michael R. Gordon and Thomas L. Friedman, “Details of U.S. Raid in Somalia: Success So Near, a Loss So Deep.” The New York Times 25 Oct. 1993, late ed.: A1. 14 For a more detailed discussion of PDD-25’s genesis and content, See “Multilateralism Abandoned? The US, the UN, and Peace Operations After the Cold War” by James K. Oliver and Joann Kingsley, paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association Toronto, Canada, March 19, 1997. 15 Albright, “Building a Consensus on International Peace-keeping,” Statement before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, October 20, 1993, Dispatch, November 15, 1993, 4: 790-791. 16 Albright, “Myths of Peace-Keeping.” 17 See “Special Supplement: opinions on the legality of NATO’s attack against the FRY,” in United Nations Law Reports, 1 May 1999, 33:9, 112-124 and also, “Editorial Comment: new international law norms sought in light of NATO actions,” United Nations Law Reports, 1 April 1999, 33:8, 109-110. 18 “From Containment to Enlargement,” p. 26. 19 Ibid. 20 US Air Force, CENTAF, Assessment and Analysis Division, “Operation Iraqi Freedom – By the Numbers,” Unclassified Version, 30 April 2003, pp. 3 and 7-8. 21 Ibid. 22 See Eric Schmitt, “U.S. to Outline 60-Day Plan for Iraq Rebuilding Projects,” The New York Times, July 23, 2003: A10 23 “Clinton’s Opening Statement and Responses at His News Conference,” The New York Times, March 8, 1997: 10. 24 See Lake’s linkage of economics and trade with security in “From Containment to Enlargement” and even earlier, Clinton’s speech at American University, February 26, 1993, “Liberal Internationalism: America and the Global Economy,” in Rubinstein, et al, eds., The Clinton Foreign Policy Reader: Presidential Speeches with Commentary, 8-14, esp. 12-13. 25 Compare for example David Halberstam’s assessment of the “thin” foreign policy “bench” of the Clinton Administration in War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton and the
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Generals, New York: Scribner, 2001 and I.M. Destler’s analysis of the economic team assembled by Clinton in “Foreign Economic Policy Making under Bill Clinton,” in James M. Scott, editor, After the End: Making U.S. Foreign Policy in the Post-Cold War World, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998: 89-107. 26 For a superb overview of the Clinton’s difficult relationship with Yeltsin and the Russians, see Strobe Talbott, The Russia Hand: A Memoir of Presidential Diplomacy, New York: Random House, 2002. 27 See for example, “Speech by the President on the Eve of President Jiang Zemin’s State Visit,” October 1997; “On US-China Relations in the Twenty-First Century,” June 11, 1998; and “Troublesome Times: Staying the Course,” April 7, 1999, all in Rubinstein, et al: 119-138. 28 Haass, “Defining U.S. Foreign Policy in a Post-Post-Cold War World.” 29 See Report of the Secretary of Defense to the President and the Congress, Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 1992: 1-19 and The Regional Defense Strategy, Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 1993. 30 See Zalmay Khalilzad, From Containment to Global Leadership? America & the World After the Cold War (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1995): 6-7. Khalilzad is now a senior member of the Bush Administration’s National Security Council and Bush’s special envoy to Afghanistan and to the Iraqi opposition. 31 Khalilzad echoes here at a policy level, the theoretical arguments of the neo-realists such as Joseph M. Greicco, “Anarchy and the Limits of Cooperation: A Realist Critique of the Newest Liberal Institutionalism,” International Organization, 1988, 42: 485-507 and Greicco, “The Relative Gains Problem for International Cooperation: Comment,” American Political Science Review, 1993, 87: 729-735. 32 Haass, “Defining U.S. Foreign Policy in a Post-Post-Cold War Era.” 33 Rice’s term in “Promoting the National Interest”: 47. 34 Ibid. 35 Nicholas Lemann, “The Next World Order,” The New Yorker, April 1, 2002: 42-48. Lemann’s piece is an invaluable survey of thinking in the Bush Administration as of spring, 2002. 36 The Regional Defense Strategy. An account of the drafting and content of the document is available in Lemann, “The Next World Order,” 42-48. 37 Khalilzad, From Containment to Global Leadership? : 21 and 25. 38 “The President’s State of the Union Address,” January 29, 2002 at http://www.whitehouse. gov/news/releases/2002/01/print/20020129-11.html. 39 Ibid. 40 Though the extent – if any – of this assistance remained a matter of dispute at the time of this writing. 41 See William M. Arkin, “Secret Plan Outlines the Unthinkable,” Los Angeles Times, March 10, 2002, www.latimes.com/news. Accessed March 10, 2002. 42 Remarks by the President at 2002 Graduation Exercise of the United States Military Academy West Point, New York, June 1, 2002. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/06/20020601-3.html.
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Quoted in Thomas E. Ricks and Vernon Loeb, “Bush Developing Military Policy of Striking First: New Doctrine Addresses Terrorism,” Washington Post, June 10, 2002, p. A1 at http:///www.washingtonpost.com. Accessed, June 10, 2002. 44 Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld claimed annoyance at the leaks, but seemed to enter into the public discussion by criticizing the air weighted option. 45 All quotes from: “Remarks by the Vice President to the Veterans of Foreign Wars 103rd Convention,” August 26, 2002. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/08/print/20020826.html. 46 Excerpts from an interview with Secretary of State Colin Powell in The New York Times, September 8, 2002: 18 and James Dao, “Powell Defends a First Strike As Iraq Option,” The New York Times, September 8, 2002:1. 47 See Adam Clymer and Janet Elder, “Poll Finds Unease on Terror Fight and Concerns About War on Iraq,” The New York Times, September 8, 2002: A1. 48 Department of State, E-mail Listserve, “The President’s Remarks before the United Nations General Assembly,” September 12, 2002. 49 The United States and the United Kingdom would subsequently argue that 1441 was itself a sufficient warrant for the use of force – a position rejected by the French and Russians. 50 The attacks had been expanded in mid-2002 and continued throughout the run-up to the war. Michael R. Gordon, “U.S. Air Raids in ’02 Prepared for War In Iraq,” The New York Times, July 20, 2003: 1, 12. 51 Haass, “Defining U.S. Foreign Policy in a Post-Post-Cold War World.” 52 Haass, “US-Russian Relations in the Post-Post-Cold War World.” 53 Haass, “Defining U.S. Foreign Policy in a Post-Post-Cold War World.” 54 Ibid. 55 As the initial roll-up of conventional Iraqi military forces proceeded throughout April of 2003, Richard Haass left the Administration to accept a position at the centrist Council on Foreign Relations. 56 For an academic presentation of the argument, see Michael Mastanduno, “Preserving the Unipolar Moment: Realist Theories and U.S. Grand Strategy after the Cold War,” International Security, (Spring 1997), 21:4, 49-88 and reprinted in Michael E.Brown, et al, editors, America’s Strategic Choices, Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1997. 57 For a skeptical European view of this process, see Gerard Baker, “Bush the Weak Turns into Global Commander,” Financial Times, September 6, 2002: 6. 58 Indeed, the Administration’s stonewalling of the question of costs and the extent of US commitment led, in late July, to a testy exchange between members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and representatives of the Administration including Wolfowitz, Joshua Bolten, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, and General John Keane, the acting chief of staff of the Army. See Eric Schmitt, “Senators Assail 2 Officials for Lack of Postwar Details,” The New York Times, July 30, 2003: A9.
In: White House Studies Compendium, Volume 4 Editor: R. W. Watson, pp. 69-81
ISBN: 1-60021-541-6 © 2007 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
ARCHITECT OR HOME BUILDER? PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH, MEXICO, AND THE MISUNDERSTOOD EUROPEAN REFERENT
Mark J. Miller ABSTRACT Was the U.S. - Mexico immigration initiative which so marked the initial phase of the George W. Bush presidency the result of an architect’s vision or that of a general contractor? Evidence can be found for either interpretation. But the strategic vision of a European referent to NAFTA appeared to originate in the Fox Administration and ignored major differences between labor migration in NAFTA and European regional integration history. Faulty understanding of the European referent combined with the sheer size and complexity of U.S. Mexico migration issues scuttled the initiative even before September 11, 2001. The post September 11, 2001 war on terrorism made it very difficult to revive the initiative. If anything eventually does come out of it, the changes are likely to be modest and small - scale, a far cry from what was billed and celebrated as a new departure in U.S. - Mexico relations in the early months of George W. Bush’s presidency.
INTRODUCTION U.S. immigration policy has largely been viewed as a domestic issue and one where the prerogatives of the Congress prevailed over those of the executive and judicial branches. By the 1970s, however, concerns over growing illegal migration led to the creation of an interagency task force to study the phenomenon. During the presidency of Jimmy Carter, the Interagency Task Force on Immigration Policy issued its Staff Report in March 1979, which noted that “In the last twelve years, I.N.S. apprehensions of deportable aliens have increased twenty - fold and the vast majority of those apprehended are Mexican nationals.”1 The work of the Interagency Task Force on Immigration Policy was superseded by the creation of the Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy by Public Law 95 - 412 in 1979. The 16 member Select Commission included four presidential appointees, four cabinet members, four U.S. senators, and four members of the U.S. House. It was led by Father Theodore M. Hesburgh, the President of the University of Notre Dame. An influx of Haitian entrants and the Cuban government-sanctioned outflow, which included numerous Cubans who had been incarcerated for non-political offenses, hurt Carter’s bid for re-election. In Arkansas, a riot by Cubans at a detention center in 1980 was
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widely seen as costing then Governor Bill Clinton re-election. The stakes of immigration and refugee policies for U.S. presidents were rising. This reflected a broader pattern of politicization and securitization of international migration policies in the transatlantic area.2 The Select Commission communicated its report and recommendations to President Ronald Reagan. It recommended a legalization policy, imposition of employer sanctions for unauthorized hiring of aliens, a system of more secure identification for all employees and a slightly modified, “streamlined” H-2 temporary foreign worker program which did “...not exclude a slight expansion of the program.”3 The purpose of the Select Commission was to forge a national consensus concerning reform of immigration policy. However, the vote on the question, “Do you favor employer sanctions with some system of more secure identification?”, was eight yes, seven no and one pass.4 The vote concerning temporary foreign workers was an unambiguous fourteen to two, a major setback to proponents of expanded temporary foreign worker policy. The text voted upon included “The Commission believes that government, employers and unions should cooperate to end the dependence of any industry on a constant supply of H-2 workers.”5 Bills reflecting the Select Commission’s recommendations concerning illegal migration were then submitted to both houses of the U.S. Congress but became mired in a protracted and complex debate.6 Supporters of expanded temporary foreign worker policy helped prevent passage of legislation until 1986 when Congressman Charles Schumer of New York brokered a deal which would authorize a special legalization program for foreign agricultural workers that ended the legislative logjam. President Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) into law on November 6, 1986. Meanwhile, all major Democratic Party presidential hopefuls in 1984 had announced their opposition to the imposition of employer sanctions. They viewed employer sanctions as damaging their electoral prospects with Hispanic voters. Polls, however, indicated that Hispanic voters were about evenly split for and against enactment of employer sanctions. One provision of IRCA authorized the creation of a Commission for the Study of International Migration and Cooperative Economic Development (CSIMCED). This Commission would produce numerous reports and studies which would pave the way to President George H. W. Bush embracing a Mexican proposal to enlarge the free trade agreement signed in 1988 between Canada and the United States to include Mexico. Very significantly, the major research finding of the scores of studies commissioned by the CSIMCED held that trade liberalization would reduce illegal migration from Mexico only in the long run. Over the short to medium term, it would significantly increase it. Philip L. Martin would later refine this insight into his theory of a migration hump.7 President George H. W. Bush, signed the Immigration Act of 1990 into law, which increased legal immigration into the United States by 35 percent. The new law reflected a growing conservative celebration of international migration as economically beneficial. Both of the principal contenders for the presidency in 1992 touted a North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) as a way to reduce illegal migration. President George H. W. Bush, referred Mexican President Carlos Salinas’ proposal for the creation of NAFTA to the National Security Council which, according to Mexican immigration specialist Jorge Bustamente, determined that international migration had created such interdependency between the United States and Mexico that any adverse development in Mexico would affect the United States. It recommended U.S. support for the Mexican initiative which dovetailed with many of the recommendations made by the CSIMCED. During the 1992 presidential
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campaign, the Democratic nominee criticized President Bush's policy of forcibly repatriating Haitians only to reverse his stand shortly before his inauguration.8 NAFTA came into effect on January 1, 1994. Later that year, a sharply contested referendum to deny public benefits, such as education to illegally resident alien children, passed by a large margin in California. Proposition 187 had been openly opposed by Mexican government officials who helped organize protests against the measure. Although implementation of the measure was determined to be unconstitutional, as it clearly clashed with the 1982 Plyler versus DOE Supreme Court decision which upheld the right of undocumented children to attend public schools in Texas, the referendum sounded a tocsin in Washington, DC. The subsequent flurry of legislative proposals to curtail legal immigration to the United States were defeated, however. President Clinton signed into law the Illegal Immigration Reform and Responsibility act of 1996 and thereby largely defused immigration as a campaign issue in the 1996 presidential election. The far-ranging legislation reflected a hardening of views in that it mandated a massive increase in Immigration and Naturalization Service personnel as well as support for enhanced border interdiction, removal of criminal aliens and expedited abjudication of asylum cases. Very significantly, however, the 1996 law did not reflect the recommendations of yet another federal commission, the Commission on Immigration Reform, which had recommended implementation of a secure employee identification system and other measures to bolster lagging enforcement of employer sanctions. President Clinton had endorsed the Commission on Immigration Reforms recommendations, which included reduction in legal immigration.9 President Clinton repeatedly voiced his opposition to guestworker policy and threatened to veto any measure expanding admissions of unskilled foreign workers. While immigration issues did not centrally affect the outcome of the 1996 presidential election, they nevertheless were accorded much more significance than had been the case in elections in the 1960s or 1970s. Influential newspapers scrutinized the positions of Senator Robert Dole and President Clinton on immigration.10 Senator Dole supported an amendment which would have denied public education to illegal immigrant children whereas Clinton opposed the amendment. The unsuccessful candidacy of Patrick Buchanan also served to heighten awareness of the principal candidates’ stances on immigration. By 2000, George W. Bush would conclude that the anti-immigration overtones of the 1996 GOP candidates had hurt the party’s performance in the election. By the 2000 election, international migration could be viewed in a strategic way. Virtually everyone acknowledged that international migration constituted a key dynamic within globalization which, in turn, was viewed as central to the advancement of U.S. foreign and security interests. (See the article by Oliver in this issue.) Moreover, more ideologicallyinclined Republicans took a dim view of governmental regulation in general and found confirmation of the accuracy of their views in the flagging effort of the U.S. government to curtail illegal migration despite the vast increases in resources devoted to that task in the Clinton administrations. Nevertheless, Republican candidate George W. Bush did not articulate a strategic or architect’s vision of international migration policy in overall U.S. foreign and national security policy in the 2000 campaign. It was widely known that he had supported a Southwest Governors’ endorsement of expanded admissions of temporary Mexican workers. The Republican candidate was generally not viewed as well-versed in foreign policy matters, save
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for his knowledge of Mexico. He had some Spanish language facility and kin of Hispanic background. Immigration policy issues, however, did not figure centrally in the 2000 race, although both candidates campaigned for Hispanic votes. Thus, if the Republican contender possessed a strategic vision of international migration in regional or world order, it was kept under wraps. In all probability, any strategic or architect’s view of international migration in global and regional order came from Vincente Fox Quesada, elected President of Mexico in July 2000 who, shortly after his election, called for the creation of a North American common market that would allow freer flow of merchandise and workers.11
THE U.S. – MEXICO MIGRATION “HONEYMOON” Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the initial (pre-9/11) period of the Bush administration’s foreign policy involved its relationship with the new Mexican government led by President Vincente Fox. The historic transfer of power in Mexico appeared to set the stage for a new approach. The former Coca Cola executive and U.S.-educated Mexican president was unabashedly pro-American and had promised to make improvement of the lot of Mexican citizens abroad a top priority. President Fox came into office in a bilateral context that had evolved significantly in recent years due in part to the patient work of a bilateral commission on border issues and a web of institutionalized meetings between U.S. and Mexican legislators and governmental counterparts that had fostered considerable mutual understanding. The North American Free Trade Agreement between the United States, Mexico, and Canada in 1993 profoundly altered the U.S.-Mexico relationship. Its signature bore witness to growing North American socio-economic and political interdependence. However, with one minor exception, immigration issues were pointedly excluded from NAFTA’s purview because U.S. and Mexican positions on issues like illegal migration diverged to such a degree that they were deemed unbridgeable. During President Clinton’s second term, nevertheless, progress had been made in easing bilateral tensions over migration issues. For instance, the United States acceded to, even welcomed, expanded Mexican consular protection of its citizens within the United States. In the last year of President Clinton’s second term, the AFL-CIO declared its support for a broad legalization or amnesty for Mexican workers and withdrew its support for enforcement of provisions of the 1986 law which made it a punishable offense for U.S. employers to hire aliens ineligible for employment under the U.S.-employer sanctions. The new Mexican administration accurately interpreted the AFL-CIO shift as signaling a possible seachange in the political environment of U.S. immigration policy. It made betterment of the status of Mexican citizens abroad through diplomatic initiatives the centerpiece of the Fox administration’s foreign policy. As expected, President Bush made his first trip abroad to Mexico where he met with President Fox at his home. In the weeks preceding the visit, there was a frenzy of talk and speculation about the possible contours of a U.S.-Mexico migration initiative. Reference was made to a European referent in negotiations over labor mobility in the context of regional integration. The Treaty of Rome of 1957, which created the European Economic Community, contained provisions for freedom of movement for employment within the then six-nation framework. It seemed that the Fox administration perceived the freedom of labor mobility provision as something for possible emulation in the context of North American regional
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integration. The OECD had several years earlier held a conference on migration, free trade and regional integration in North America which may have encouraged such thinking.12 At a subsequent summit of the three heads of states of the NAFTA signatories in Ottawa, Canada, however, President Fox could only articulate a vision of greater labor mobility and deeper North American integration as long-term goals. Speculation about opening of borders and freedom of movement for employment in North America proved to be just that. The substance of U.S.-Mexico talks about immigration during the early months of the Bush administration appeared to center chiefly around proposals for expanded temporary foreign worker recruitment and the modalities of a legalization or regularization initiative. This outcome supports interpretation of President Bush’s foreign policy as the product of a home builder more so than that of an architect. Presidents Fox and Bush agreed to establish a high-level (Cabinet) bilateral working group to translate the desire for improved relations into specific policy initiatives. Shortly before the September 11, 2001 violence, President Fox toured areas of the United States and addressed a joint session of Congress. U.S.-Mexico agreement on an immigration-related initiative was announced. But the details of it were not specified. The Mexican President returned home with a face-saving promise without mutually agreed upon content. Moreover, U.S. congressional leaders made it clear that they would exercise their traditional prerogatives. In other words, the U.S. Congress would have to authorize through legislation components of a U.S.-Mexico agreement concerning U.S. immigration law. As best as can be discerned, the Bush administration appeared to offer a vague reassurance that it would endeavor to expand temporary foreign worker recruitment perhaps in conjunction with an earned legalization procedure for illegally resident Mexicans in the United States. Interpreting just what was promised or agreed to, however, is challenging because of the vagueness of public declarations. The Bush administration clearly was already backtracking on the bilateral immigration initiative even prior to 9/11. No consensus for either expanded temporary foreign worker policy or legalization emerged in the U.S. Congress or in public policy debates. The U.S.-Mexico high-level dialogue over migration in the initial period of the George W. Bush presidency appeared quite broad ranging. Mexico unilaterally announced a legalization program for certain illegally resident aliens. And it pledged to cooperate with the United States in suppression of human trafficking. The contours of the improved bilateral cooperation seemed to include measures to prevent illegal entry from the Mexican side in return for legalization of Mexicans illegally residing in the United States and for expanded legal employment opportunities for Mexicans in the United States. Foreign Minister Casteneda made reference to a whole enchilada and, at one point, warned that all the requisite elements of a comprehensive migration initiative had to be in place for Mexico to support it.13 The Mexican foreign minister also claimed that the bilateral talks were without historical precedent.
ASSESSING THE HONEYMOON The events of 9/11 abruptly ended the honeymoon. By the end of the day, matters like overstaying of visas or document fraud to circumvent immigration law loomed large as they affected everyone's security. The legalization proposal had dropped off the agenda. Several days later, the Bush administration did announce that it intended to respect its commitments
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pertaining to the U.S.-Mexico migration initiative, but prospects for congressional support for expanded temporary foreign worker recruitment or legalization had dimmed, especially as the economic downturn and unemployment worsened. In retrospect, several competing interpretations of the honeymoon appear plausible. If one accepts the gloss of U.S. and Mexican proponents of the initiative, it might be viewed as a radical departure in U.S. foreign policy. Migration policy became the priority and there was comprehensive discussion of how it affected U.S.-Mexico relations. Moreover, the U.S. relationship with Mexico became a top priority if not pre-eminent concern. This suggested a fundamental recasting of U.S. foreign policy by the Bush administration, an architect’s vision of U.S. foreign policy. A less generous view derives from skepticism about the Bush administration's foreign policy credentials in general. Seen in this light, the honeymoon betrayed inexperience and diplomatic naiveté. The new administration rushed pell-mell into an embrace of the Fox administration which itself harbored unrealistic expectations for radical departures in U.S. foreign policy, especially within the context of NAFTA. The lack of preparedness and unsophistication of the new U.S. administration overall provided a window of opportunity which was exploited by a relatively small coterie of diplomats and migration policy advocates to advance their agendas. This resulted in the creation of unrealistic expectations about prospects for a U.S.-Mexico immigration initiative that burst before, not after, the events of 9/11. A third interpretative narrative would view the honeymoon as a regression to an earlier period in U.S.-Mexico relations. In this perspective, underneath the hoopla and symbolism of the honeymoon lay the reality of Americans and Mexicans negotiating a return to bracero policy, a recurrent feature of U.S.-Mexico relations in the twentieth century. Ever since the unilateral termination of the bracero policy by the United States in 1964, successive Mexican administrations had sought renewal of U.S. authorization for temporary Mexican employment in agriculture and other industries heavily dependent on illegally employed workers. Contrary to appearances, thus, the U.S.-Mexico migration initiative principally involved a turning back of the clock. The Fox administration might aspire to major power status and posture as an equal partner to the United States but this stance had little to do with U.S. and Mexican realities which have proven durable in the face even of skillful public relations. Hence, stripped of its embellishments, the U.S.-Mexico initiative centrally involved renegotiation of a temporary Mexican worker admissions program that would subordinate Mexico once again in a bilateral labor agreement with the economically and diplomatically dominant United States. Was there any reason to believe that the outcome of a renewed bracero policy would differ from the past? Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the honeymoon involved the European referent. Both the Mexican media and U.S. media began to buzz with allusions to a coming opening of borders in North America and freedom of labor mobility within the NAFTA bloc. Much of such speculation might best be described as journalistic hyperbole, but the Fox administration and its allies in the United States contemplated a recasting and deepening of NAFTA to become a regional integration framework akin to the European Union. By early February 2001, as Secretary of State Powell journeyed to Mexico to set the stage for President Bush's inaugural trip abroad to Jalisco state, the Bush administration already was pointedly distancing itself from speculation about open borders and freedom of labor mobility within NAFTA.
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In fact, NAFTA differed greatly from the European regional project. While it is true that the original proposal floated by then President Salinas was referred to the U.S. National Security Council, which recommended approval on the grounds of U.S.-Mexico interdependence, NAFTA was a free trade agreement without an explicit political project. The origins of the European Union, on the other hand, involved an explicit security policy-driven commitment to the goal of European federation. Supporters of the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community, the forerunner of the European Economic Community and today's European Union, viewed regional integration as imperative to prevention of recurrence of war in Europe. The Treaty of Rome foresaw eventual implementation of freedom of labor mobility between the signatories. However, with the partial exception of the Italian case, there has been relatively insignificant labor movement within the European regional framework. This was due to continuing barriers to freedom of labor mobility long after the coming into effect of the Treaty of Rome, the rigidities of European labor markets and the underlying socioeconomic convergence of the states involved. More to the point, the European referent speculation or vision seemed to obscure the key fact that the states involved in the European regional integration process had pointedly rebuffed Turkish and Moroccan bids for full membership. The Islamic background of Turkey and Morocco figured in this. But Europeans obviously would not agree to extension of full membership to states and societies that would likely result in large - scale emigration even after a transition period. In other words, the European referent, when construed to suggest that the NAFTA signatories could and should follow the precedent for labor mobility within European regional integration badly missed the mark. It is within the realm of possibility, however, that President Fox’s call for a new vision of NAFTA at the Ottawa summit of the NAFTA signatories may still prove prophetic. Some view the integration processes generated by free trade agreements as mechanistically fostering deeper forms of integration, although this did not occur in the history of the European Free Trade Agreement and the world is littered with regional pacts that have gone bust or become moribund. Another clear difference between the North American and European situations arose from U.S. preponderance within NAFTA as compared to the European situation. The predominance of one partner country in African regional integration frameworks has contributed to a pattern of failure of such pacts in Africa.14 Another puzzling aspect of the honeymoon arose from the sheer complexity of the bundle of legalization and temporary foreign worker recruitment issues. A series of federal commissions studying U.S. immigration laws and policies had consistently recommended against expansion of temporary foreign worker recruitment. Nevertheless, advocacy of such policy has been persistent and support in Congress for expanded temporary foreign workers admissions had grown although partisans of such an approach often disagree on key features of such a policy. Canada’s relatively small admissions program for Mexican agricultural workers was touted as fit for emulation by the United States. In fact, steadily growing numbers of temporary foreign workers, including Mexicans, have been admitted to the United States in recent years. Advocacy of legalization or regularization policy also has been persistent. But again no consensus emerged amongst advocates as to the scope and nature of the policy. Many Republicans, such as the influential former Republican senator from Texas, Phil Gramm, vociferously oppose legalization on the grounds that it undermines the rule of law and
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rewards lawbreaking, but favor expanded temporary foreign worker admissions. While Senator Gramm proposed detailed legislation to expand temporary foreign worker admissions, like-minded conservatives often favor administrative transformation of currently illegally employed aliens into legally-admitted temporary foreign workers. However, with an estimated nine million illegal aliens in the United States, transforming a concept into administrative reality is a daunting matter. Would a temporary foreign worker program be available only to Mexican workers? What would be the rights of such workers? Could they qualify for eventual legal residency in the United States with full employment rights after a certain period of employment in the United States? The answers to such questions were not disclosed. Advocacy of legalization similarly came in different shapes and sizes. At one end of the spectrum, the U.S. Catholic Conference and the AFL-CIO called for a quite open-ended legalization available to non-Mexicans as well. While several proposed bills before Congress envisage some form of legalization, they differ on scope of eligibility and other all important details. Moreover, the legalizations enacted under the much- decried 1986 law, the Immigration Reform and Control Act, resulted in widespread fraud, especially in the Special Agricultural Workers program. The Bush administration’s problem was clear. Even if called regularization and not legalization, the narrower the scope of eligibility and the higher the standards set for eligibility, the less likely it was to address the public policy problem for which it was ostensibly designed to correct. Likewise, the greater the coverage and openendedness of such an initiative, the less likely it was to garner congressional and public support. More puzzling still, beneath all of the diplomatic fanfare of the honeymoon period lay a domestic political calculation, perhaps constituting the best evidence of an interior decorator reality behind the Bush administration’s policy. President Bush apparently viewed a migration initiative with Mexico as a way to garner more electoral support for Republicans like himself amongst Mexican-American voters and perhaps Roman Catholic voters. Similarly, President Fox’s initiative towards Mexican expatriates was also calculated to result in additional votes for his National Action Party. To the extent that the honeymoon was motivated by domestic political calculations, President Bush certainly appeared to be gambling as Mexican-Americans vote heavily Democratic. It may be that he viewed the migration initiative as likely to reduce the level of Mexican- American support for Democratic candidates. President Bush also sought a greater constituency amongst Roman Catholic voters and may have viewed the U.S.-Mexico migration initiative as a means to that end even though migration policy matters do not sway Roman Catholic voters to the same extent as abortion or death penalty questions do. In sum, the domestic political calculus on the U.S. side of the honeymoon loomed large but also, at best, was highly dubious. The risk of alienating voters through a migration initiative, including loyal Republicans opposed to legalization, also ran high. The honeymoon in U.S.-Mexico relations appeared to end in the days prior to September 11, 2001 when President Fox returned home with a promise but no deal. The sheer complexity of bilateral U.S.-Mexico migration issues mitigated against the quick deal sought by the Fox administration in particular against a backdrop of growing economic and political woes in Mexico.15 The Fox administration staked its prestige on securing improved treatment of Mexicans in the United States and its partnership with the Bush Administration. This created enormous pressure on the Bush administration to fashion policies amenable to
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Mexico. But, in the end, longstanding differences on policy matters and enduring realities like the socio-economic disparities between Mexico and the United States could not be overcome. Any victory, if a U.S.-Mexico migration initiative could be termed such, was likely to prove pyrrhic over the long run. In the final analysis, a genuine referent to Europe was missing because there was no consideration on the U.S. side of a massive program of investment in Mexican infrastructure and economic assistance to reduce inequalities in Mexico that would reduce incentives for emigration.
THE U.S. – MEXICO INITIATIVE AFTER SEPTEMBER 11, 2001: FROM HONEYMOON TO LIMBO An assortment of mainly recent immigrants from the Middle East perpetrated the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. In late 1999, the arrest of an Algerian who belonged to the Armed Islamic Group and who planned to bomb Los Angeles airport prompted a month-long state of alert. Nevertheless, despite such ominous warnings, securitization of U.S. immigration policy had not occurred prior to September 11, 2001. The concept of securitization derives from the post-Cold War or new security literature and specifically from writings by Ole Waever and Barry Buzan.16 Securitization refers to a perception of an existential threat to the ability of a society to maintain and reproduce itself. When this occurs, issues are viewed differently and governments reserve the right to address the threat by extraordinary means. A number of analysts have argued that European migration policies, and particularly asylum/refugee policies, were securitized in the 1990s. In the United States, the Oklahoma City bombing perpetrated by U.S. citizens and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing prompted adoption of a new counter-terrorism and effective death penalty law with significant implications for non-citizens and influenced adoption of the 1996 immigration law. But even key features of the 1996 law motivated in part by security concerns, such as the provision calling for implementation of monitoring system for foreign students studying in the United States, remained stillborn due to intense opposition to the measure. In the wake of 9/11, however, opposition to implementation of the monitoring system for student visa holders crumbled. The Border Patrol immediately went into a heightened state of alert and much more aggressively patrolled the U.S. borders with Mexico and Canada, which caused enormous backups and considerable economic losses. Both the Canadian and Mexican governments declared their support for the Bush administration’s campaign against terrorism and promised full support for bilateral efforts to prevent cross-border movements of political extremists and funding. Some analysts argued in favor of deepening NAFTA area “perimeter defense” through closer cooperation on migration and security issues. But such advocacy ran smack into a long-standing frustration in the United States with Canada’s migration policies and its perceived laxity towards militants from Sri Lanka and Algeria in particular. Similarly, cascading revelations about corruption in Mexico’s police and civil services did not inspire confidence in “perimeter defense” from the south. Nevertheless, heightened “harmonization” of U.S. migration policies with its neighbors to the North and South in the context of NAFTA has been discussed. The concept resembles the Schengen visa-free zone among participating members of the European Union.
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The attacks of 9/11 exacted a large toll in immigrant dead. While incomparable, the economic effects of 9/11 on immigrants also were devastating. Several industries particularly dependent upon immigrant labor experienced mass layoffs. Moreover, it became increasingly difficult to cross into the United States illegally from Mexico or Canada. The heightened prospects for an economic recession made congressional support for legalization and/or temporary foreign worker policy less likely. Overnight, the discourse about U.S. migration policies shifted to prevention of recurrence of 9/11. Admission of refugees to the United States slowed. U.S. visa policy came under intense scrutiny as most of the airplane hijackers possessed visas, although some had overstayed theirs. In 2000, almost 10 million aliens applied for visas and three-quarters of the applications were approved. About 1,100 consular officers at U.S. embassies and consulates around the world bear the brunt of the visa workload. Most consular officers are young and relatively inexperienced. The Congress chronically underfunds the Department of State and the extremely heavy caseload of individual consular officers has long been a concern.17 Most of the 31 million aliens entering the United States temporarily each year, however, do not require visas. They are citizens of 29 countries which have signed reciprocal visa waiver agreements with the United States. At least one suspect arrested in the wake of the attacks had French citizenship and thereby entered the United States visa-free.18 The United States also has made special arrangements for Canadian and Mexican citizens living in border areas to receive Border Crossing Cards. There are about 500 million recorded crossings each year at the U.S.-Mexico and U.S.-Canadian borders. The 1996 immigration law authorized creation of a system to track all aliens entering and leaving the United States. But, like the monitoring system for students, the measure generated intense political opposition. Compliance with the new I-94 form requirement for airlines to provide the Immigration and Naturalization Service with records of entry and exit by airline passengers has been incomplete and many aliens exiting by overland routes do not turn in the form.19 The work cut out for the newly created Department of Homeland Security headed by former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge in the visa area seems enormous. Consular officers currently have no way of knowing who overstays visas and who does not. Nearly half of the estimated 9 million illegally resident aliens in the United States are thought to have overstayed visas.20 The National Automated Lookout System used by the INS, Customs officials and the Department of State to stymie entry of unwanted persons can be circumvented by changing names or adoption of a false identity. Moreover, access to the information stored in the system is limited. Interior enforcement of U.S. immigration law also came under renewed scrutiny. Several of the hijackers had obtained valid drivers licenses through fraudulent means. Several states are notorious for the ease of obtaining valid driving licenses by illegally resident aliens. The driving licenses are then used, along with other false documents, to prove eligibility for employment in the United States and thereby circumvent the intent of the 1986 immigration law.21 The events of 9/11 quickly rekindled discussions of the pros and cons of a national identity card and a more counterfeit-resistant card for resident aliens and temporary visitors. In 1986, the Congress did not adopt a recommendation by the Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy to adopt a counterfeit-resistant employment eligibility document when it made employment of unauthorized aliens illegal and punishable. In so doing, Congress all but invited wholesale circumvention of the 1986 law through document fraud. The Commission on Immigration Reform subsequently recommended adoption of a
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counterfeit-resistant employment eligibility document, but no such provision was adopted in the 1996 immigration law. The events of 9/11, however, seemed to alter the context or policy environment of matters like enforcement of employer sanctions. Suddenly, the germaneness of effective employer sanctions enforcement to a comprehensive response to perceived insecurity could be ascertained. However, it was also clear that whatever steps were taken could not preclude a similar disaster. There is no silver bullet solution to U.S. vulnerability. Estimates of the Muslim population in the United States vary from two to six million.22 Most Muslims are of immigrant background. President Bush and many other U.S. officials and local and state government officials spoke of the need to differentiate between a minority of political extremists and Muslims in general. Still, there has been some political violence targeted at foreign-looking persons, such as a Sikh apparently killed in response to 9/11. And many immigrants have reported incidents of harassment. Between seven and eight hundred individuals were detained by law enforcement officials, most of whom appeared to be of immigrant and Muslim background. And a new counter-terrorism law lengthened the time that suspects could be detained without formal charges being brought. Many of those detained were detained for violations of immigration laws. It is conceivable that the response to 9/11 will jeopardize integration and incorporation of Muslim immigrants. Measures to curb fundraising and financing of terrorism raise important disagreements over what precisely constitutes terrorism. More broadly, the events of 9/11 raise important questions about the relationship between immigration policies and U.S. foreign policy in general. Several years ago, the influential American Assembly called for more systematic coordination of U.S. immigration and foreign policies.23 Whereas U.S. unilateralism characterized the initial period of the Bush administration’s foreign policy, save perhaps with reference to NAFTA partners, its declared war on terrorism clearly necessitates close cooperation and harmonization of policies with states and international organizations around the world. Inevitably, a campaign against global terrorism must engage the so - called root causes of terrorism. When that happens, the migration and security nexus will come into sharp relief as will the insecurity perceived by so many around the world, inclusive, of course, of the many millions of international migrants driven by adverse circumstances to seek better lives elsewhere. Unlike the post-1993 situation, securitization of U.S. immigration policy is occurring. This is unlikely to result in fundamental alteration of legal immigration policy. It will foster more credible enforcement of existing laws and better coordination of immigration, foreign and security policies. A principal casualty of securitization was the U.S.-Mexico migration initiative, but that foundered before September 11, 2001, perhaps for the better. The long history of temporary foreign worker policies suggests that they are not conducive to improved bilateral relations, but the contrary. Studies of past legalizations in the United States and elsewhere suggest that they do not alter underlying labor market dynamics fostering illegal migration. Indeed, such policies attract further illegal migration. Nevertheless, Democratic Congressman Richard Gephardt of Missouri would call for legalization at a 2002 meeting of Hispanics, suggesting that the U.S.-Mexico initiative could rise like the biblical Lazarus, back from the dead.
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NOTES 1
Interagency Task Force on Immigration Policy, Staff Report (Washington, DC: Departments of Justice, Labor and State, 1979). 2 The French presidential election of 1981 witnessed Socialist candidate Mitterand vow his solidarity with the SONACOTRA rent strikers, a protest movement that had begun in 1975. Asylum policy played a key role in the 1982 German elections won by Helmut Kohl. On the concept of securitization, see Barry Buzan, Ole Waever and Jaap de Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1998). 3 Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy, US Immigration Policy and the National Interest, staff report of April 30, 1981, p.Lii. 4 Ibid, p. xxxiv. 5 Ibid, p. Lii. 6 Mark J. Miller, “Continuities and discontinuities in immigration reform in industrial democracies: The case of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986” in Han Entzinger and Jack Carter, eds. International Review of Comparative Public Policy, volume 1, (Greenwich, CT/London: JAI Press, 1989), pp. 131-151. Also see Nancy Humel Montwieler, The Immigration Reform Law of 1986, (Washington, DC: The Bureau of National Affairs, 1987). 7 Philip L. Martin and J. Edward Taylor, “Managing Migration: The Role of Economic Policies,” in Aristide R. Zolberg and Peter M. Benda, eds., Global Migrants, Global Refugees, (New York/Oxford, Berghahn, 2001), pp. 95-120. 8 Eric Schmitt, “Milestones and Missteps on Immigration,” The New York Times, October 26, 1996, p. 9. 9 Ibid, p.9. 10 See, for example, Gerald F. Seib, “Backlash Over Immigration Has Entered Mainstream This Year,” The Wall Street Journal, September 27, 1996, p. A20. 11 Ginger Thompson, “Victor in Mexico Plans to Overhaul Law Enforcement,” The New York Times, July 5, 2000, p. A8. 12 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, Migration, Free Trade and Regional Integration in North America, (Paris: OECD, 1998). 13 Ginger Thompson, “Mexico Takes Small Steps to Improving its US Ties”, The New York Times, September 5, 2001, p. A6. 14 Anderanti Andepoju, “Regional Integration, Continuity and Changing Patterns of IntraRegional Migration in Sub-Saharan Africa,” in M.A.B. Siddique, ed., International Migration into the 21st Century, (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2001), pp. 50-73. 15 Ginger Thompson and Tim Weiner, “Great Expectations of Mexico’s Leader Sapped by Reality”, The New York Times, September 4, 2001, p. A1. 16 Barry Buzan, Ole Waever and Jaap de Wilde, Security: A New Framework of Analysis, (Boulder: Lynne Reinner, 1998). 17 Philip Martin and Susan Martin, Immigration and Terrorism: Policy reform challenges, manuscript submitted to Migration World, pp. 3-6. 18 Ibid, p. 3
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Ibid, p. 3 Martin and Martin, p. 1 21 Ibid, p. 5 22 Daniel Pipes and Khalid Durán, “Muslim Immigrants in the United States,” Washington, DC: Center for Immigration Studies backgrounder series, August 2002. 23 Michael S. Teitelbaum and Myron Weiner, eds., Threatened Peoples, Threatened Borders, (New York: W.W. Norton, 1995). 20
In: White House Studies Compendium, Volume 4 Editor: R. W. Watson, pp. 83-98
ISBN: 1-60021-541-6 © 2007 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
PRESIDENTS AND INTELLIGENCE
Arthur S. Hulnick ABSTRACT U.S. presidents are consumers of intelligence and managers of the sprawling U.S. intelligence system. The Founders believed intelligence was an executive function and so it has been through U.S. history, although in the modern era the Congress has played an increasingly significant role in controlling and funding the system. Intelligence played a key role in fighting the Cold War, but now the intelligence agencies have been forced to change their focus to grapple with the threats of terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. If the U.S. intelligence system is going to be effective in its various new roles, presidents are going to have to spend some of their political capital to streamline and strengthen an intelligence community that was created in the last century and which has hardly changed since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
INTRODUCTION There are many definitions of strategic intelligence. Some say that it is information that provides the basis for action: others claim it is information that adversaries, competitors and enemies don’t want us to have. Still others remind us that intelligence may also involve stopping spies, terrorists, or other treats to national security. Finally, intelligence may drive secret operations designed to carry out foreign or defense policy using surreptitious or clandestine methods. Whatever the definition, it seems clear that for the presidents of the United States, intelligence is an important, sometimes critical factor in policy making. Some presidents have used intelligence wisely, some have ignored it foolishly, but in the modern era, no president has been able to function effectively without good intelligence. The roots of American intelligence run deep, to the days when patriots and revolutionaries decided that they should no longer remain colonists of a distant power to whom they no longer wished to devote their allegiance. The various secret committees that supported the American Revolution were well regarded and used by the first national leaders, including George Washington, who often extolled the virtues of intelligence in his secret correspondence.1 When he became the first president, Washington demanded and obtained a secret fund to carry out some aspects of hid foreign policy, understanding full well that the fledgling new nation could only prosper if it’s enemies whether potential or real, were kept under careful observation. Early presidents used secret operations and spies run right out of the newly-constructed White House to expand American power and territory, and while the Congress complained
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from time to time that it had not been informed about these operations on a timely basis, presidents usually were able to fend off congressional curiosity by citing the wishes of the Founding Fathers that intelligence remain an Executive Branch function. President Thomas Jefferson used secret operations to attempt the overthrow of the Pasha of Tripolitania, while sending Lewis and Clark on a spying mission in the unexplored west.2 James Madison used secret agents to try to wrest southern territory from the Spanish; Andrew Jackson used an agent to try to bribe the rulers of Mexico to cede Texas to the United States. When called upon to explain to the Congress the details of his predecessor’s use of foreign funds and altered maps to settle a border dispute with Great Britain over the border between Maine and Canada. President James Polk refuse, claiming Executive Privilege and the need to keep secret agents and operations from public scrutiny so that their successes might be repeated.3 It is a familiar argument that modern presidents have often cited. President Lincoln, unlike some of his generals, was adept at the uses of intelligence in keeping the European powers from recognizing or supporting the Confederacy.4 Unfortunately, the Civil War generals were equally inept, after the war, in learning about the Native Americans they were trying to subdue, extending the battles with the tribes into the early days of the Twentieth Century. But Teddy Roosevelt certainly understood the uses of intelligence as he manipulated events to create an American Empire after the SpanishAmerican War, and later support the independence of Panama so the United States could build the Isthmian Canal there.5 Roosevelt, of course, denied that he had used secret agents at the time, but later admitted his involvement in an effort to bolster his failing third party run for another presidential term. Woodrow Wilson expressed surprise and shock when he learned that German agents were spring in the United States as he sought to keep America out of the European war, but when the time came to get involved, Wilson had no qualms about leaking stories about German clandestine operations to the press to bolster his plans.6 In terms of intelligence, the United States was ill prepared for combat in World War I, with only small intelligence units active in the armed forces. Stopping spies and revolutionaries, however, was a different manner. The Justice Department created a small bureau to investigate such matters and in the aftermath of the war, this grew into what became the Federal Bureau of Investigation.7 As the United States once again sought to stay out of conflict in Europe with the rise of Fascism and protect our interests at home against Communism, J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI formed the leading intelligence element in the struggle, but did not impress President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who turned to this socialite friends for assistance. An informal intelligence unit called oddly enough “the Room” and made up of such people as Vincent Astor, was able to give FDR some insights into what was happening abroad.8 This was entirely inadequate, however, in determining what the Japanese were doing in seeking hegemony in the Pacific. The Japanese surprise attack on Hawaii and made clear that the United States had to have better intelligence both within the military and to support policymakers in Washington. FDR turned to another member of his social circle, William “Wild Bill” Donovan, a WW I hero, to build an independent intelligence capability.
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The OSS and Post-War Intelligence Donovan’s Office of Strategic Services (OSS), while nominally a military intelligence unit under the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was in fact mostly a civilian organization made up of a few career soldiers, a series of academics, business people, and those oddly talented professionals who should carry out espionage, secret operations, and analyze the activities of our enemies.9 Because Donovan had a direct line to FDR when he needed it, the OSS had a certain independence that military intelligence units lacked. The OSS was active in the European Theater, but in the Pacific, General Douglas MacArthur isolated the OSS into minor operations on the Asian mainland, while J. Edgar Hoover made sure that the OSS stayed out of Latin America and domestic activity. Nonetheless, as the war wound down, FDR asked Donovan to design an intelligence system for the post war period. Donovan’s plan, which called for a civilian-run independent intelligence service reporting directly to the president, was derailed by Hover, who leaked it to the press, claiming it would establish a Nazi-style secret police in the United States.10 After FDR’s death in 1945, President Truman, no friend of Donovan or the OSS (Oh So Social, according to some) rejected the plan and after the Japanese surrender, disbanded the intelligence organization. But this did not last long. By January, 1946, Truman realized that he needed an intelligence capability independent of the other parts of government and he created both the post of Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) and a small analytic unit, the Central Intelligence Group(CIG) to support the White House. Under the second DCI, General Hoyt Vandenberg, the CIG was expanded and became in 1947 the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). While Donovan received no credit for this transformation at the time, the CIA was clearly based on the Donovan’s original plan, and his portrait, in military uniform and wearing only the ribbon of his Medal of Honor, adorns to this day the wall of the CIA where all the DCI’s portraits are hung. Donovan’s portrait is the first in the long line.
The Cold War In the early days of the Cold War, the role of the CIA expanded to include not only espionage and analysis, but also covert operations and counterintelligence. But, the failure by both CIA and military intelligence to detect the North Korean surprise attack on South Korea in 1950 made it clear that the U.S. intelligence system still needed work. President Truman tackled the problem by making General Walter Bedell “Beetle” Smith DCI and charging him with fixing the CIA. In subsequent years, under President Dwight Eisenhower, the National Security Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency were added to what was becoming the US Intelligence “Community,” a conglomerate grouping of agencies, nominally run by the DCI, but in fact mostly military intelligence units controlled by the Secretary of Defense. This ungainly creation, now expanded after the end of the Cold War to include 14 agencies, proved inadequate to protect the US against the terrorists attacks of the 1990’s, culminating in the al Qaeda strike against New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. While the Intelligence Community did play a key role in the Cold War, many questions were raised during this period about the utility o covert operations, the adequacy of human intelligence for espionage, and the possible politicization of intelligence analysis.
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The collapse of the Soviet Union and the death of world communism reduced those questions to academic queries and the occasional bureaucratic overhaul. The Congress, through the Oversight Committees it had established in both the House and Senate in the 1970s, weighed in, from time to time, but their suggestions and attempts at micromanagement failed to change what had become a bloated, inflexible, expensive conglomerate with weak leadership and little clear direction. The events of 9/11 made it all quite clear that change was needed and that it had to come from the president.
THE PRESIDENT’S BIFURCATED ROLE This brief history illustrates the bifurcated role the president plays in regard to intelligence. He is both a customer of intelligence and its most important manager. He has to use intelligence and at the same time direct intelligence strategy. It was the role the Founders thought the president should play, although they could not have envisioned the complexities that face modern presidents. Just as in the early days of the republic, if the president fails to take charge of intelligence, the Congress will seek to control the system. As Alexander Hamilton and John Jay noted in the Federalist Papers, nothing could be kept secret under such management.11 Modern presidents have a mixed record in regard to fulfilling their dual role in intelligence and these experiences illustrate how complicated this issue really is. In 1948, President Harry Truman decided to use CIA resources to keep the Italian Communist Party from taking control of the government. At the same time, Truman realized that he needed a daily intelligence briefing to keep on top of world events. This began a tradition that continues to this day. The idea was to have CIA provide the kind of inside information that embellished, corrected, or expanded the daily news Truman obtained from the usual media sources.
The Daily Brief The idea of a daily intelligence briefing was nothing new to President Dwight Eisenhower who, as an army general, was used to having such a service provided by his intelligence staff. In fact, the daily intelligence brief has been common within military organizations dating back to Roman times. In order to operate the system that provided such briefings, the military as well as the civilian agencies began to develop 24-hour-a-day, 7-daya-week operations centers to gather and collate material from whatever sources were available. The idea was to piece together fragments from human sources, communications intercepts, photo intelligence, and media reports so that senior leaders could be advised of developments as they occurred. If the intelligence analysts were doing their jobs properly, they might even be able to anticipate events and warn officials in time to take action to forestall a crisis. Thus, these centers, located within key military commands as well as civilian agencies became known as “Indications and Warning” centers. Of course, such a center was created within the White House itself, housed in the basement, but with access to the president as needed.
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At first, the daily brief was called the President’s Intelligence Check List (PICL), but the acronym was an unfortunate choice, so it eventually became known as the President’s Daily Brief (PDB). Of course, the other intelligence agencies could not permit the CIA to be the only presidential briefer, so both the State and Defense Departments developed their own sensitive intelligence publication just for the White House. One of these, the State Department’s Morning Summary, was considered by many who saw it to be perhaps more authoritative and policy-relevant than the PDB.
Forecasting the Future President Truman had clear orders for DCI General Beetle Smith, after the surprise of the North Korean invasion of the South, to shake up intelligence to prevent surprises. Smith created an Office and Board of National Estimates to try to forecast future events by producing National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs) with inputs from all the intelligence agencies.12 This was a much different task for intelligence than warning or current intelligence. While it is relatively easy to add intelligence value to an analysis of on-going events, it is much harder —some would say impossible — to forecast the future. Nonetheless, this was the mandate Truman gave Smith. Looking back, it seems clear that the results were quite mixed. Over at the years, a variety of long-range intelligence estimates have become public, but unless one could see all of them, it would be hard to make a judgment about how well the estimates actually assisted policy officials. Often these estimates have only become public in the wake of an intelligence failure or charges that the estimates have been politicized to suit the president’s politics. Considering the difficulties and the high level of uncertainty in predicting the future, the NIEs have, in general, been quite good, but it would be hard to prove this. One must also take into account that even accurate forecasts are of little use if decision makers ignore them.
IGNORING INTELLIGENCE General MacArthur, warned by CIA that the Chinese would enter the Korean War, rejected that forecast, preferring to listen to his own intelligence advisors who consistently told MacArthur what he wanted to hear. Both Presidents Johnson and Nixon ignored intelligence analysis that indicated the futility of bombing the North during the Vietnam War. In typical fashion, both presidents dismissed the analysis and the briefers who carried the messages as “disloyal” and “obstructionist.” The Office of National Estimates was accused of failing to warn the White House that the Soviets would invade what was then Czechoslovakia in 1968, although the record, if it were to be made public, would show adequate warning. When he became DCI, career professional William Colby decided to change the system for creating estimates by getting rid of the Board of National Estimates, which had become a haven for elderly senior intelligence professionals, and replacing it with a National Intelligence Council (NIC) made up of senior officers and academics. Nonetheless, the complaints continued.
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The Carter White House charged that it had not been given predictions of the collapse of the Shah’s government in Iran, the fall of Somoza in Nicaragua, or the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. A careful examination of the record would show that in each case, the estimates, while not predicting exactly what was to happen, gave the White House at least a general consideration of the possible scenarios that might take place. Although the U.S. Embassy in Teheran tried to maintain an upbeat view of the Shah’s increasingly desperate situation, eventually the impending disaster could not be ignored. Similarly, the White House was given months of warning about Somoza. In Afghanistan, there were serious disagreements about what the Soviets might do, but an invasion was clearly one of their options.13 Perversely, the perception remains that the Intelligence Community had failed to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union, although the record is mixed. Several studies have been done on this issue, and while none are conclusive, it appears that the Intelligence Community’s record in this regard is much better than critics have said. Of course, as Professor Richard Betts has long argued, intelligence failures may be inevitable and some will turn out to be policy failures.14 When Charles Allen, the National Intelligence Officer (NIO) for Warning, advised senior officials at State, Defense, and the White House that Iraq would invade Kuwait, no one took him seriously until it was too late. Policy makers then charged another intelligence failure, but the record is clear.
The 9/11 Terrorist Attack Studies of what happened before 9/11 have yet to be made completely public because of security concerns, but the Intelligence Community’s inability to detect the al Qaeda terrorist plot has been called the greatest intelligence failure since Pearl Harbor by the press and members of Congress, but not by President George W. Bush, who has steadfastly defended the intelligence system. Critics have blamed a lack of human agents, because of restrictions on recruiting spies put in place during the Clinton administration, reduced intelligence budgets beginning during the late 1980s, a failure to share intelligence between FBI and CIA, and bureaucratic inertia for the perceived failure. Could the intelligence system have predicted the al Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington? As facts began to emerge, the record is again a mixed one. Journalists who have been digging away at the issues have developed two main theses. One suggests that the intelligence system was trying to get close to Osama bin Laden and his key aides, but with limited success and was hampered by limited resources, bureaucratic infighting, and failure to share data. Policy officials were also interested in possible terrorist attacks, but were stymied by the shift from the Clinton administration to a George W. Bush White House, in which antiterrorist plans developed by Clinton’s people had to be re-evaluated by the new staff.15 The George W. Bush White House was accused of politicizing intelligence in order to gain support for the invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorial regime in 2003. Opponents of the President called for an investigation and public release of intelligence estimates which allegedly concluded that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, although none were found when U.S. troops actually invaded Iraq. While the President may have overstated the case against Hussein, his use of intelligence was little different from several of his predecessors.
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Access to the President Because access to the president is a key role for the DCI, the officials who have served as DCI have often been concerned about maintaining ties to the Oval Office. DCI Allen Dulles never had to worry about this during the Eisenhower administration because he was part of the inner circle headed by his brother John Foster Dulles, the Secretary of State. His successor, John McCone, who came in after the Bay of Pigs debacle during the Kennedy administration, was not a White House insider. Kept on by Lyndon Johnson, McCone eventually quit because of disputes over Vietnam.16 Johnson’s first choice for DCI, Admiral “Red” Raborn, was a close friend of LBJ but a disaster as DCI, and was replaced by Richard Helms, the first CIA career professional to serve as Director. During the Nixon era, Helms worried about his access to the President and found that Henry Kissinger, Nixon’s National Security Advisor, wanted to act as an intermediary between Helms and the White House. In order to establish his access to the President, unfiltered by Kissinger or other senior officials who surrounded and protected Nixon, Helms sent a briefing team to Nixon’s pre-inaugural headquarters in New York City to provide the PDB to the incoming president, and in the process, educate him about the intelligence resources that would be at his command. This process proved so successful that it has been replicated with each incoming new president, albeit with mixed results.17 President Jimmy Carter was still skeptical about the intelligence system, even after briefings in Plains, Georgia, and President Bill Clinton failed to take advantage of the intelligence system until late in his presidency. President Carter’s first choice for DCI, Ted Sorensen, never even made it to congressional hearings before his nomination was dropped, but his second choice, Admiral Stansfield Turner, an Annapolis classmate of the President, was confirmed without trouble. Carter was an avid reader of intelligence, but the forecasts that predicted the collapse of the Shah in Iran, the ouster of the Somoza regime in Nicaragua in favor of the leftist Sandinistas, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan never seemed to translate into policy until it was too late. President Ronald Reagan came into office with a reputation for being a manager who did not like detail and who had no patience for reading lengthy reports. Those intelligence officials who were close to Reagan paint an entirely different picture, however. Reagan read intelligence material in great detail and obtained even more intelligence from his DCI, William J. Casey, a personal friend and OSS veteran. Some intelligence officials at the time and later complained that the intelligence judgments were being politicized by Casey’s Director of Intelligence, Robert M. Gates, to fit White House strategy, but a careful reading of the material would likely show that the CIA and other agencies were calling the shots as they then saw them. When Casey suffered a fatal brain tumor, Reagan turned to Gates as a possible replacement, but the turmoil surrounding Casey’s alleged role in the Iran-Contra affair washed over onto Gates and he was forced to withdraw his nomination. The new DCI, Judge William Webster, the outgoing FBI Director, brought some stability to the system after the scandals. Even President George H. W. Bush, who had served a brief period as DCI and who probably understood the intelligence system as well as any modern president, failed to accept predictions that Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and the Soviet system were on the way out, in part because Bush liked the Soviet leader and wanted him to survive the transition.
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Nonetheless, Bush was eager to have his daily briefing. Gates, who had moved to the White House to serve as deputy to Bush’s National Security Advisor, Brent Scowcroft, returned to the intelligence community as DCI, but not before contentious Senate hearings in which several former CIA colleagues accused Gates of once again politicizing intelligence, but he was eventually confirmed.18
The Clinton Years President Clinton, as compared to his predecessors, was not interested in intelligence and was therefore not well served by it. This was due, in part, to his focus, at least in his first term, on domestic issues. His choice for DCI, R. James Woolsey, had no experience in intelligence, although he had been active in arms control issues. But, Woolsey was not part of the Clinton inner circle and had only limited access to the President. The daily PDB briefings fell by the wayside and thus there was no feedback loop between Clinton and the intelligence system. Frustrated by these developments, Woolsey resigned. Clinton had a tough time recruiting a new DCI, since everyone knew the position carried little importance in the Clinton White House. Eventually, John Deutch, Undersecretary of Defence, was pressed to accept the position. Deutch, an academic by background, knew little of intelligence when he took the post, brought in assistants who knew less than he did, and found himself without support from above or below. In one of his most controversial moves, Deutch imposed restrictions on the recruitment of sources who might have been guilty of violating human rights or conducting illegal activity. Deutch did not seem to understand that in going after terrorists, such “bad guys” can be invaluable if unpleasant agents. In the wake of 9/11, these restrictions have often been cited as one of the reasons for the intelligence failures in detecting the looming attack.
George Tenet as DCI When Deutch decided to return to academe, after suffering repeated criticism both from the media and from the intelligence community, Clinton was again without a DCI. He turned to a mid-level Washington intelligence insider, George Tenet, who had served as a staffer on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was as Intelligence Coordinator in the White House. This proved to be a fortuitous choice both for the President and for the intelligence community. Tenet established a good working relationship with Clinton and with intelligence professionals. He pushed the President to resume daily briefings and eased some of the restrictions on source recruitment. When George W. Bush assumed the presidency in 2001, one of his first moves was to retain Tenet as DCI, thus serving to depoliticize the position, as it so often had been in the early days. Tenet quickly moved to cement his relationship to the new team at the White House and was able to retain his position even after the 9/11 disaster. As is usual after intelligence failures, cries went out for an overhaul of the system, but Tenet, with the backing of the President, kept the intelligence system on an even keel. This highlights one of the key roles the DCI plays on behalf of the president: designing and implementing intelligence
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policy. This role is not well recognized in the literature, but is critical in managing an intelligence system that costs in the neighborhood of $35 billion or more annually.
MANAGING INTELLIGENCE POLICY Again, a look at developments in the Cold War period provide insights into this aspect of the relationship between the White House and the intelligence community. At first, the DCI was really only the manager of the CIA, with very few responsibilities in regard to the other intelligence agencies. The dialogue among agencies was fostered by a standing committee of agency heads called the U.S. Intelligence Board, later the National Foreign Intelligence Board. The board met to approve National Estimates and other issues of common concern, but it was hardly a management or strategy group. This all changed with the development of the so-called “spy satellites” for intercepting communications and overhead photography. Since the agencies had to share the use of these systems, some inter-agency mechanism was needed. In 1976, the Congress established the Oversight Committees; among the demands the committees made of the intelligence community was the submission of a unified budget, combining the various agency budgets into one National Foreign Intelligence Program. The DCI was to manage the budget arrangement in terms of funding levels and priorities. The need to share collection systems, the budget demands, and the increasing interest in interagency analysis made it clear that some sort of community management system was needed. The DCI had to develop some kind of planning system to develop strategies for the intelligence community and this could only be done in coordination with the White House. This led to the creation of an intelligence community staff, later called the Community Management Staff, made up of intelligence professionals with a mandate to help the DCI manage his responsibilities as nominal head of the intelligence community. The role the president plays in intelligence planning and management varies from administration to administration. In fact, when one speaks of the president, what is really meant is the president and his close advisers. These aides usually include those members of the Cabinet who make up the National Security Council, the political advisers who surround the president, the National Security Advisor, the White House Intelligence Coordinator, and the president’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. The latter group is usually made up of retired senior military officers, former ambassadors, business leaders, and anyone else the president chooses. This board would, on the face of it, seem to be an ideal mechanism for assisting the president in dealing with intelligence policy, but in reality it is reminiscent of FDR’s informal group “The Room.” Members of the board serve without pay, usually spend relatively little time working on intelligence issues, expect when there is a crisis, and rarely reveal anything about their work. Thus, the president may hear from them, but intelligence professionals rarely do, so whatever lessons the board may learn do not really translate into intelligence policy.
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Using Independent Commissions Another mechanism for developing intelligence strategy for the White House is the independent commission. Ever since the Eisenhower administration, such commissions have been established to investigate or review aspects of intelligence, including the structure of the intelligence system and the ways in which it operates. The theory is that the commission’s advice will eventually translate into policy, but this only happens when both the White House and Congress agree, which is usually a rare event. In 1995, the White House and Congress agreed to establish a joint commission to review and overhaul the intelligence system. The commission, made up of senior officials already in government and served by a paid professional staff, labored for about a year to deal with 19 key issues, including the community structure, the uses of intelligence, the quality of analysis, and the need for secret operations. This joint committee was chaired by former Defense Secretary Les Aspin, but when he died during its deliberations, another former Defense Secretary, Harold Brown, took over. The commission was thus known in Washington as the Brown Commission. It made a series of recommendations for intelligence overhaul, but almost none of them were implemented.19 The one major move that came out of the effort was the establishment of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) to consolidate the various imagery analysis units scattered throughout the intelligence community. This might well have happened anyway, without the commission’s recommendations, since it was already in the works. Several other studies focused generally on intelligence for the Twenty-first Century were also published in 1996, including one from the House Permanent Committee on Intelligence and another from the Council on Foreign Relations, a private think tank. Many of the people who contributed to the Brown Commission Report also made inputs to the other studies, but nothing of substance came of any of them. When President George W. Bush took office, he commissioned yet another study on restructuring the intelligence community, this one was headed by former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft. The Scowcroft Commission began its work well before the events of 9/11, but when the al Qaeda terrorists struck, it had not yet completed the report. A similar internal intelligence study attempting to restructure the community was headed by Joan Dempsey, who was DCI George Tenet’s Deputy Director for Community Management. After 9/11, the Dempsey study was shelved so that its members could concentrate on battling terrorism. At the end of 2001, the Scowcroft Commission’s main findings were leaked to the press. They called for moving all the intelligence collection agencies – including the National Security Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), and NIMA – under the direct control of the DCI.20
Problems in Reorganization From a management perspective, such a move would have given the DCI control of all the intelligence collection assets of government, including the clandestine collection unit of the CIA, the communications and electronics assets of NSA, and the two imagery agencies (NRO and NIMA). It was clear from the first press story that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld would never agree to give up most of the intelligence collection assets of the Department of Defense embodied in NSA, NRO, and NIMA. This veto was apparently
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upheld by President Bush, who never said anything about the issue, but who never contradicted Rumsfeld either. Finally, in July 2002, Rumsfeld let it be known that he intended to create the post of Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence. One of the people who might have been named to the post told a reporter that Rumsfeld wanted “only one dog to kick” in regard to intelligence, rather than the “kennel of dogs” he already had. After the position was created and filled, it became clear that the Secretary of Defense did not intend to give away intelligence capability, but rather, wanted a more senior officer to take charge of all his intelligence functions.21 The Undersecretary has become, in effect, a director of military intelligence, outweighing the DCI in terms of positions and budget. Again, the President remained silent on the issue, but it seemed unlikely that Rumsfeld’s move was made without coordination with the White House. The president’s role in intelligence management was made even more clear by the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in the wake of the 9/11 attack. The new department included an intelligence unit that would receive raw intelligence from the collection agencies and create warning analysis on terrorism. The new unit is the conduit for passing intelligence to state and local governments, something the federal intelligence agencies have never done, except in such unusual circumstances as protecting the Olympic Games when they were held in the United States. Some pundits even suggested that the FBI and CIA, the alleged culprits in the 9/11 intelligence failure, should be incorporated in DHS, but instead yet another new organization – the Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC) – was created to serve as the focal point for all incoming intelligence on terrorism. The TTIC has representation from all the intelligence agencies, including officers from DHS. As far as intelligence on terrorism in concerned, the president is likely to get it whether the new units function or fizzle. For intelligence users at the working level, however, intelligence on terrorism may not reach them if DHS and the intelligence community cannot make the system work.
The President and Counterintelligence The president’s relationship with the leadership of the FBI presents a somewhat different story and it has little to do with counterintelligence. J. Edgar Hoover, the legendary FBI Director apparently kept secret files on Washington politicians, some of whom were hiding sexual relationships or financial dealings that would have been embarrassing if these peccadillos were revealed. Hoover, of course, denied that he had such files, but no one wanted to challenge hi and discover that his or her political career was in ruins. This situation gave Hoover a kind of untouchable status, but President Franklin F. Roosevelt realized that he could deal with the irascible Hoover by working around him. After World War II, Hoover tried to derail the creation of the CIA, hoping that he could become the chief intelligence officer of the government, but the FBI was not really an intelligence agency and the scheme failed. While both President Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon would have liked to get rid of Hoover, the FBI’s cooperation in trying to find foreign roots in the anti-Vietnam War movement induced both presidents to avoid a confrontation with the FBI chief. As it turned out, the anti-war movement was an indigenous operation, although the Nixon administration did not believe it.
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The FBI after Hoover J. Edgar Hoover died in office in 1972 and this changed the relationship between the president and the FBI quite markedly. President Nixon’s first FBI chief, L. Patrick Gray, became involved in trying to have the CIA join in the cover-up of the Watergate scandal, in which burglars hired by the White House broke into Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate complex near the Kennedy Center in Washington. The ensuing scandal eventually forced Nixon to resign the presidency. A second leadership scandal developed at the FBI when Judge William Sessions took over the agency after Judge William Webster, the FBI leader for nine years, moved to become DCI in 1985. Webster had been seen as clean and incorruptible, but Sessions used the office for personal benefit, encouraged in part by his wife Alice, who was even worse than the judge. President Clinton asked Sessions to resign, but the FBI Director refused. The situation became so intolerable that President Clinton was forced to phone Sessions directly and order him to leave FBI Headquarters immediately.22 It was yet another blow to the morale and leadership of an agency that had at one time been among the most respected in government. President Clinton’s choice for FBI Director, Louis Freeh, appeared on the surface to be an ideal candidate. Freeh had been an FBI street agent, a prosecutor, and a judge with a reputation for honesty and toughness. Freeh, however, was no innovator and failed to bring the FBI into the modern computer era. This was well illustrated when FBI agent Robert Hanssen was arrested on charges of spying for the Soviet Union and its Russian successors. Hanssen had been able to manipulate a creaky FBI computer system, which was well behind the state of the art, before he was betrayed by a Russian turncoat. Freeh’s stubborn refusal to reorganize and modernize the FBI led to his resignation in 2001, just before the terrorist attack on the US. It was only after Robert S. Mueller III was appointed to the post of FBI Director that the full extent of the FBI’s problems were revealed. President George W. Bush found himself in the unenviable position of having to defend the FBI and its new leader in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attack, when it was clear that the Bureau had made some serious errors in handling data on the terrorists before they struck the United States. The full extent of the problems may never be revealed, but enough had appeared in the press to make it clear that a total overhaul of the FBI was needed. Some former intelligence officers even called for the creation of an internal security service, modeled on the British MI-5, instead of making changes in the FBI.23 In order to fend off critics and preempt any effort to create a new agency, Director Mueller set out to fix the FBI’s many problems, including the creation of an internal security and analysis unit within the Bureau. Whatever gets done, it seems clear that the relationship between the president and the FBI has changed. The extent of this change will have to be reexamined in the years to come, but it now seems clear that the White House can no longer remain aloof from the FBI.
Presidents and Covert Action The last aspect of the relationship between the president and intelligence concerns what used to be most controversial, but the controversy has diminished since the end of the Cold War. This involves covert action, the use of intelligence resources to carry out the foreign and
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security policy using clandestine methods. It was a role quite familiar to early presidents, as Professor Stephen Knott has so carefully documented. In fact, before the creation of the CIA in 1947, presidents had nowhere else to turn to run secret operations and were forced to run them right out of the White House. When the CIA was created, the 1947 law that established it was quite vague, noting only that the agency was to “carry out such other duties related to intelligence and the President and the National Security Council might, from time to time, direct.” The role of CIA in covert action was made clear, however, in 1948 when President Truman decided that he could not allow Italy, France, or Greece to slip into the growing Soviet empire, as had happened in Eastern Europe. The Communist Party of Italy (PCI) was vying for control of the Italian legislature with the Christian Democrats and stood a good chance of gaining enough seats to form a government. When that had happened in Czechoslovakia, the Communists had quickly taken control of the government and established a Communist dictatorship. To stop this possibility, Truman ordered the DCI, Rear Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter, to use CIA resources to make sure the good guys won the Italian election. “Hilly,” as he was called, turned to his Legal Counsel, Larry Houston, to see if this directive fell within the 1947 law. When Houston said it did not, Hilly declared that the CIA would follow Truman’s order anyway.24 The CIA, in turn, set up a secret operation to buy radio time, newspaper space, and votes for the Christian Democrats, methods that would have been familiar to some big city politicians in the United States. In the end, the Communists were defeated, and the role of the CIA in covert action was established.
A Weapon of Choice During the Eisenhower administration, the CIA became one of the weapons of choice during the growing Cold War, aided by the fact that Secretary of State John Foster Dulles could count on the cooperation of his brother Allen, the DCI. While some of the discussion about covert action probably took place informally, the Eisenhower White House set up an executive committee to plan and oversee covert action operations. Such committees, under a variety of titles and euphemistic names, has existed ever since. The committee usually consists of senior officials below cabinet rank, including a senior officer from the CIA’s Clandestine Service, but excludes the direct participation of the president so as to create a situation called “plausible deniability.” If the covert action became public, the president could deny that he knew about it or endorsed it. One result of this arrangement was that it appeared that CIA was a “secret government,” planning and carrying out government overthrows, assassinations, or support for secret armies without the knowledge of either the White House or the Congress. None of this was true, as the Church Committee investigations revealed in the 1970s. The post-World War II presidents may not have known all the details of the covert actions, but certainly they had some inkling of the undertakings. Key members of Congress knew as well, since they had to provide the secret funding for the operations, but some said they did not want to know the details of the operations. After the overthrow of President Salvador Allende in Chile, which appeared at first to have been aided and abetted by the CIA, Senator Frank Church, an Idaho Democrat, set up
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his landmark investigation. Church thought the CIA was a “rogue elephant running amok.” His hearings, however, revealed just the opposite. All covert actions had been ordered by the White House and funded by the Congress. The elephant had been under careful control.
Congressional Oversight of Intelligence Nonetheless, the Church Committee investigation, along with a similar set of hearings in the House of Representatives, led to the creation of the Intelligence Oversight Committees in both House and Senate. Under the new rules, the president had to sign a written finding that a covert action was needed and the action had to be briefed by the committees. Plausible deniability was dead, as was ostensible congressional ignorance of covert action. With the end of the Cold War, the utility of covert action was once again called into question. The kinds of clandestine activity that had been seen as a key element in fighting the Soviet Union, with its own brand of “active measures,” as the KGB intelligence service called it, seemed no longer necessary or even wise. Under the Clinton administration, cutbacks in intelligence budgets and personnel were the order of the day. White there was still support for some kinds of espionage, the CIA’s resources for overseas operations had been reduced to the point that ruled out many of the more exotic activities that had been common during the Cold War.
Covert Action After 9/11 The events of 9/11 have changed this situation remarkably, but perhaps a bit too late. After the terrorist attack on the United States, there were calls from both the Congress and the media to use intelligence resources to strike back at al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, the selfacknowledged author of the attacks. Indeed, CIA officers were dispatched, along with regular military and special operations forces to oust the Taliban government in Afghanistan and one CIA operative was killed in the fighting. This led to a lengthy debate in the press, as well as within the government, about the utility of covert action in the war against terrorism. That debate is likely to continue because it is not yet clear that clandestine resources, rather than military force, can be effective against close-knit terrorist cells. In the war against Iraq in 2003, CIA and military Special Forces units played a key role in preparing for the incursion of U.S. forces, in finding leading members of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorial regime, and in the perplexing and difficult hunt for the weapons of mass destruction that intelligence sources had claimed were in Hussein’s arsenal before the war. This melding of covert action and military unconventional warfare may prove to be a new method of carrying out covert action in the future, but it will require continuing close coordination between the civilian-run CIA and the military services.
REBUILDING INTELLIGENCE CAPABILITY Meanwhile, President George W. Bush called for rebuilding intelligence capability and intelligence budgets soared to Cold War levels. The CIA began a “full court press” to recruit new officers along with the FBI and the other intelligence agencies, but so are with limited
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success. Even when new people are hired, it will take years before they are capable of the kinds of sophisticated and dangerous operations required to go after terrorists. At least, there seems to be common understanding that America’s intelligence resources need to be rebuilt, although intelligence professionals and political leaders differ on how to do it. Future presidents are going to be faced with an intelligence dilemma that won’t go away. The American intelligence system, cobbled together to fight the Cold War, is bound by a structure that seems incapable of change, with too many agencies, under limited control and leadership, and hounded by critics in the Congress, the media, and academe. Modern presidents have shied away from weighing in on this dilemma, preferring to have their subordinates fight the bureaucratic battles, while they pontificate from the sidelines. If changes are to come, the presidents are going to have to spend some of their political capital to make them. At the same time, future presidents, like their predecessors, are going to need superior intelligence gathering and sophisticated and insightful analysis to stay on top of world events. Like most consumers, presidents will get what they are willing to pay for. Presidents must make clear what they want to know and must be prepared to accept not only the judgments they prefer, but also bad news they may not want to hear. Presidents must be active participants in the intelligence process, as the Founders of the United States well understood. That lesson should not be lost on future residents of the Oval Office. Clearly, the American intelligence system was built without an architect or designer. That is the main reason why the system is so complicated and unwieldy. The best one might say about President Truman was that, as a general contractor, he was ready to turn the work over to his DCI to complete and asked only that he be kept advised of his progress. Subsequent presidents were content to allow the DCI to build on to the structure Truman had ordered and the result was the system we have today, still geared to a Cold War that has been over for more than a decade. The intelligence system is not a “tear-down” that can be rebuilt from the bottom up. Future presidents may be content to be remodelers of intelligence, tearing out bits and pieces of the system to rebuild on the foundation already laid. It would be a lot better, however, if they served as architects to design and engineer a new system more responsive to the demands of the Twenty-first Century. Modern presidents have always been reluctant to invest a great deal of political capital in American intelligence. They probably see themselves as consumers and not managers. Yet, if future presidents want a system that suits their needs, they need to do more than peer over the shoulders of the DCI or other intelligence managers as Plans are set out on the drawing board. Presidents have to be involved in both the design and the building phase of intelligence if they wish to be satisfied with the edifice their contractors deliver.
NOTES 1
Stephen F. Knott, Secret and Sanctioned: Covert Operations and the American Presidency (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 13-14. 2 Ibid., pp. 67-69; 72-79.
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Ibid., pp. 125-127. Ibid., p. 124. 5 Edmund Morris, Theodore Rex (New York: Random House, 2001), pp. 270-294. 6 Barbara Tuchman, The Zimmerman Telegram (New York: Ballantine Books, 1966), pp. 171-175. 7 Ronald Kessler, The Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002), pp. 9-11. 8 George J.A. O’Toole, Honorable Treachery (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1991), pp. 347-349. 9 Ibid., pp. 404-405. 10 Ibid., p. 425. 11 Knott, pp. 45-46. 12 O’Toole, p. 444. 13 Douglas MacEachin, Predicting the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan: The Intelligence Community Record (Washington, DC: Center for the Study of Intelligence, CIA, 2002). 14 Richard K. Betts, “Analysis, War and Decision: Why Intelligence Failures Are Inevitable,” World Politics 31 (1978). 15 “They Had a Plan,” Time (Aug. 12, 2002), pp. 28-39. 16 John Helgerson, Getting to Know the President: CIA Briefings of Presidential Candidates, 1952-1992 (Washington, DC: Center for the Study of Intelligence, CIA, 1995), p. 77. 17 Ibid., pp. 79-83. 18 Ronald Kessler, Inside the CIA (New York: Pocket Books, 1992), pp. 247-250. 19 Preparing for the 21st Century, Report of the Commission on the Roles and Capabilities of the U.S. Intelligence Community (Washington, DC: GPO, 1996). 20 Vernon Loeb, “Scowcroft’s Vanishing Plan,” Washington Post (July 15, 2002). 21 James Risen and Thom Shanker, “Rumsfeld Moves to Strengthen His Grip on Military Intelligence,” New York Times (Aug. 3, 2002), p. A1. 22 Kessler, pp. 298-300. 23 William Odom, Fixing Intelligence for a More Secure America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), pp. 167-184. 24 Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, The CIA and American Democracy, 3rd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yales University Press, 2003), pp. 51-52. 4
In: White House Studies Compendium, Volume 4 Editor: R. W. Watson, pp. 99-110
ISBN: 1-60021-541-6 © 2007 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
“A SQUADRON OF OBSERVATION”: THOMAS JEFFERSON AND AMERICA’S FIRST WAR AGAINST TERRORISM Craig L. Symonds ABSTRACT When Thomas Jefferson became America’s third president in March of 1801, the country’s difficulties with the so-called “Barbary Pirates” were already two decades old. The corsairs that operated from Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli on the North African coast, all of them loosely affiliated with the far-flung Ottoman Empire, made a practice of seizing the merchant vessels of infidel nations and holding the passengers and crew for ransom. Over the years, most European powers had found it easier and cheaper simply to pay a preemptive ransom (called a tribute by those who found the practice distasteful) than to maintain large and expensive naval squadrons in the Mediterranean or fight nearly continual wars with the perpetrators. Until the Revolution, American merchant ships had flown the British flag and were therefore included under the umbrella of protection offered by whatever financial arrangements the British government had made that year with the several potentates of the North African coast. But with independence came new perils. The corsairs of Algiers and Tripoli soon identified the striped flag with stars on it as easy meat, and the new nation had to contrive a policy to deal with the protection of American trade in the Mediterranean. The options were to pay (as most nations did) or to maintain a naval “squadron of observation” in the Mediterranean to protect vessels flying the U.S. flag. This triggered a national debate that lasted for most of two decades about the most effectual and efficient way to deal with the threat. It was America’s first policy discussion over counter-terrorism.
INTRODUCTION An on-line poll conducted in January 2003 invited Americans to share their views about the best way to handle the pending crisis with Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. The results were mixed, and betrayed some of the uncertainty and diffidence with which Americans approached the looming conflict. The greatest number (though at 29% far less than a majority) favored war, and another 22 percent favored exile for Saddam Hussein, though they did not specify how that might be achieved. Some 19 percent thought (or perhaps hoped) that an internal coup might take care of the problem; another 19 percent wanted to allow the diplomats to negotiate a settlement; and 11 percent wanted the United States simply to leave Iraq alone. Fundamentally, the options came down to the application of military force, relying
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on diplomacy, or bowing out completely, and Americans were obviously divided about which of those options was most desirable.1 The United States confronted similar options in 1785, barely two years into its national existence, when an armed vessel flying the flag of the North African city-state of Algiers stopped and boarded the American schooner Maria on the high seas. The Algerines (as the residents of Algiers were known in the Eighteenth Century) declared the Maria to be a prize, stripped the American prisoners naked, and locked them in the hold. When the captured vessel reached Algiers, the American men were sold into slavery at public auction and the one woman on board was shipped off to Constantinople to be a concubine in a Turkish harem. As if to demonstrate that this was not an isolated incident, the Algerines struck again only days later, seizing the American ship Dauphine of Philadelphia, treating its crew similarly. One can only imagine what the governmental response would be to such outrages today. In 1785, however, the U.S. Confederation government was hamstrung not only by its lack of defined powers, but also by an embarrassed public treasury. In consequence, the seizure of the Maria and the Dauphine initiated a lengthy policy struggle inside the U.S. government about how best to handle this assault on American citizens and American interests. Over the next two decades, U.S. policy makers were deeply conflicted and sharply divided about how to respond.2 The rulers of the small city-states of North Africa – Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli – had no particular political objective in targeting American vessels. Unlike the leaders of al Qaeda, they did not object to American policy, or for the most part have any notion of what that policy was. These were equal-opportunity pirates who attacked unarmed vessels from any western (that is, non-Muslim) nation that did not pay an annual tribute. Today such behavior would very likely be labeled “state-sponsored terrorism.” Terror, however, was not the objective; the Barbary System was no more and no less than organized brigandage. When the ruler of a city state determined that there were profits to be had, he simply declared war on one or more of the Western maritime powers, often signaled in melodramatic fashion by sending a team to chop down the flagpole at the embassy of the target nation. No causus belli was deemed necessary in such cases because the Muslims claimed sovereignty over the whole Mediterranean, and argued that any transit of that sea by other nations took place only at their sufferance, a claim similar to Muammar Qaddafi’s assertion of Libyan sovereignty over the Gulf of Sidra in 1986. Though the Muslim rulers of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli justified their piracy on the grounds that, after all, westerners were “infidels” and therefore fair game for true believers, their actual motive was pecuniary. They did it for the money.
THE ARGUMENT FOR PAYING OFF THE PIRATES A modern reader might wonder why the maritime powers of Europe did not simply put an end to this nonsense by sending a fleet to smash the impertinent upstarts. After all, the “navies” of these North African states were not particularly impressive. The largest of them, that of Algiers, consisted of four frigates, an equal number of lateen-rigged xebecs with fewer than 24 guns each, and a handful of gunboats. Surely it would require no great effort on the part of Britain or France to shatter this small fleet and end the Barbary system. The explanation for European tolerance of this maritime robbery is two-fold. First, it was generally cheaper to buy protection in the form of tribute payments than it was to carry on a
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lengthy war, even if the outcome was certain; and second, some nations (Britain in particular) found it useful for the Barbary States to maintain their system of brigandage in order to discourage maritime competition from others.3 By the time the Barbary corsairs turned their attention to the infant United States in the 1780s, this tribute system was already more than a century old. The British had begun making regular payments to Algiers and Tunis as part of a ransom agreement in the mid-Seventeenth Century. At the time, England was wracked by civil war and focused on internal considerations; the government had few military assets to devote to a war against the citystates of North Africa, and even less interest. Wars, after all, were expensive. As a result, the tribute policy begun by Charles I in 1642 was continued by Cromwell and then by the Restoration kings up through the time of the American Revolution, by which time the British were shelling out the equivalent of a quarter million dollars in tribute payments each year. The amount of tribute paid varied form state to state. Spain paid the most, a total of $1.2 million per year. In part, this was because the Muslims of North Africa recalled and resented Spain’s lengthy war against Islam. Smaller European nations paid smaller amounts: the Danes and the Swedes paid the least, about $20,000 per year. Paying tribute was America’s first instinct as well. Lacking a navy, or indeed any kind of organized military at all, there was not much that the Confederation government in the United States could do in response to North African piracy other than pay the price demanded or suffer the consequences. Even if the wherewithal could be found to carry on a war against these brigands, such a war would be open ended. Contemporaries understood that it would not be enough to defeat the Barbary States. To ensure that they did not simply renew their old habits once the American warships departed, it would be necessary for the United States to maintain a naval force in the Mediterranean indefinitely. In other words, though most Americans were confident that they could win a war with Algiers, they shrunk from the openended commitment to maintaining the ensuing “peace.” In 1785, most Americans concluded that it was better and cheaper to pay the tribute as a kind of maritime insurance policy than to embark upon a potentially endless – and endlessly expensive – war with the states of North Africa. After the seizure of the Maria, Richard O’Brien, the U.S. Consul at Algiers, urged the government to settle at once. Familiar as he was with the Barbary System, he argued that “The United States should use every means to obtain a peace with the Barbary States,” and he especially feared the negative effect that any attempt to fight back would have on U.S. relations with the North African states. “It is bad policy,” he wrote in June of 1786, “to use any threats or make any parade with cruisers [warships] if we intend suing for a peace.” The key to a satisfactory settlement was to pay a ransom like everybody else. “Money is the God of Algiers,” he wrote.4 The Confederation government was willing enough to pay. The question was how much would it cost? The Congress authorized a payment of $200 per citizen to ransom the Americans captured on board the Maria and the Dauphine, but the Dey of Algiers demanded more: $1,200 per person. Somewhat reluctantly, Congress approved the larger amount – but the Dey then demanded more than twice as much: $3000 per person. From the start, the issue was not whether to pay or to fight, but rather how much the United States was willing to pay. While dickering continued over the price, some 50 Americans languished in captivity. O’Brien, who saw the prisoners on a regular basis, urged Congress to act quickly. He reported in the spring of 1787 that in addition to being put to hard labor on public projects, the
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American hostages were subject to “the pest” (as he called the plague), so that in his view it was unlikely they would last very long. By 1787, one had died; five more would perish over the next three years.5
THE APPLICATION OF LIMITED NAVAL FORCE One man who disagreed with the policy of paying ransom was Thomas Jefferson, who at the time was the American ambassador to France. Jefferson is remembered in American history as the champion of small government, and therefore an opponent of both a standing army and a sea-going navy. And, to be sure, Jefferson did oppose the idea of building the kind of navy that might be noticed by the great powers of Europe and therefore pull the United States into the game of great-power politics. Building a large standing navy, he believed, would very likely make the young nation a pawn in Europe’s nearly–interminable wars. On the other hand, Jefferson also had a strong practical streak (witness the several inventions on display at Monticello), and it seemed to him that in this particular case, the application of naval power was the most practical solution to the problem of North African piracy. In a famous letter to John Adams, he laid out his argument for opposing the Barbary System with force. Though he couched his arguments in the language of offended national honor, the core of his position was that over the long haul it would be both cheaper and more certain to produce a good result to build and maintain a small navy than it would be to continue making annual tribute payments.6 Jefferson conducted what a latter day systems analyst would call a cost-benefit calculation. He first determined the precise strength of the Barbary navies that the United States would have to confront in a war against Mediterranean piracy. Based on the information he was able to collect, he calculated that a U.S. “fleet” mounting a total of about 150 guns would be sufficient to compel even the most powerful of the Barbary states to grant the United States a favorable treaty. In making this calculation, Jefferson amortized the expense of a 150-gun fleet over the presumed life of the ships, and concluded that the annual cost of building and maintaining a navy would be less than the annual tribute payments demanded by the Barbary States. In addition, Jefferson argued, tribute payments were subject to revision at the whim of the North Africans (as the continued increase in ransom demands demonstrated), whereas building and maintaining a fleet was a fixed cost (or so he assumed, though subsequent events would prove otherwise). And finally, he insisted that the maintenance cost of a navy could be reduced even more if, when the vessels were not in use, they were laid up in dockyards to await the next emergency. In this respect, Jefferson envisioned a U.S. Navy that would be more or less the national equivalent of the musket that frontier settlers kept above the fireplace: an instrument ready to hand when emergencies arose.7 In his reply to this missive, John Adams made it clear that he saw the problem much differently. Philosophically, Federalists like Adams were advocates of a stronger and more assertive national government, one that could (and in their view, should) play an important role in world events and which would therefore maintain a strong national navy as well as a standing army. But Adams and his fellow Federalists envisioned a navy of a quite different sort than the one proposed by Jefferson. In order to influence world events, Adams wrote, the United States would need a navy composed of several dozen two-deck ships of the line, not
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the musket-over-the-mantelpiece navy advocated by Jefferson. Besides, while Adams readily conceded that the United States should build a navy “whether to be applied to the Algerines or not,” in this particular case he doubted that Congress could be convinced to support a naval force. Demonstrating that he knew his fellow citizens well, Adams asserted that Americans did not have the stomach (or the pocketbook) to fight an extended overseas war with a determined enemy. “We ought not to fight them,” Adams wrote, “unless we determine to fight them forever,” and an open-ended overseas conflict, he wrote, “is too rugged for our people to bear.”8 Adams was proved correct in his suspicion that Congress would not support the construction of a naval force in 1786; the congressional response to the Barbary threat was to negotiate a treaty, one that included tribute payments. But the issue did not go away. The event that triggered a reconsideration of American policy toward North Africa was Portugal’s decision to sign a peace treaty with Algiers in order to join the anti-French coalition sponsored by Britain at the outset of the Wars of the French Revolution. Until 1793, Portugal’s small navy served as the cork in the Mediterranean bottle: Portuguese warships patrolling the Straits of Gibraltar had kept the North African corsairs within the confines of the Mediterranean Sea. With their adherence to the coalition against France, however, the Portuguese had bigger fish to fry, and they pulled their navy out of the strait. Almost at once, a large Algerine force of four frigates, three xebecs, and a brig-of-war sailed through the strait to attack American merchant ships in the Atlantic. No fewer than 11 U.S. vessels were taken by these Algerine cruisers within only a few weeks. This dramatically strengthened the hand of the ruling Bey of Algiers, Ali Hassan, because with each capture, Algiers gained another score or so of American hostages. In addition to combating terror, the United States also faced a hostage crisis.9 This time, however, the policy debate in the United States took on a different tone. For one thing, the nation had a new government. The ratification of the Constitution in 1788-89 had established a stronger central government, and with the Barbary powers in mind, the new president, George Washington, had warned legislators in December of 1791 that “If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace . . . it must be known at all times that we are ready for war.”10 In consequence, instead of dickering over the price per head that the United States might pay to have its hostages released, Congress addressed the crisis in 1793 by debating a resolution declaring that “a naval force, adequate to the protection of the commerce of the United States against the Algerine corsairs, ought to be provided.”11 Apart from Indian hostilities on the western frontier, this was America’s first attempt to combat a non-Western assault on American interests. Of course, the context was dramatically different from America’s modern campaign against terror. Far from being the world’s greatest superpower attracting foes because of its perceived influence or heavy-handedness, the United States in 1794 was a fledgling nation, itself buffeted by the powerful gusts of wind generated by the mighty blows that Britain and France aimed at one another. Nor was ideology a factor. Though Americans suspected the British of brokering the PortugueseAlgerine Treaty in order to weaken competition from American merchants, Algiers did not target U.S. interests because of its support for one side or the other in the ongoing war (in fact, the U.S. took special care to be as neutral as possible in that conflict). It was simply a matter of opportunity. Nor was religion a factor except insofar as the North African city-states used it as a justification for their piracy.
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On the other hand, economic interests were a factor; indeed, they were the dominant factor. A hundred U.S. ships a year sailed from America to the Mediterranean, and they carried upwards of 20,000 tons of rice, dried fish, and wheat annually, returning with cargoes of citrus fruit, olive oil, and occasionally, Turkish opium. The protection of this trade was clearly as important to American policy makers as the health and safety of the growing number of American hostages held in Algiers. (Oil, of course, was not a factor, for at the turn of the Nineteenth Century oil was a commodity that as yet had no perceived value on the world market.) Still, the options with which American policy makers wrestled in 1793 were not significantly different from those facing modern policy makers: 1) they could negotiate with their tormentors and seek an agreement based on mutually acceptable terms (that is, paying tribute, while dickering over the amount); or 2) they could confront the perpetrators with armed force. And as alternatives within that second option, they could confront their enemy independently or as part of a coalition. Back in 1786, Jefferson had toyed with the idea of constructing a Franco-American alliance to suppress the Algerine corsairs – Jefferson had always been a Francophile, and in his mind a stronger Franco-American relationship was a worthy end in itself. But most of his fellow citizens were opposed to such an alliance, and once the French Revolution turned Europe into a theater of war – a war that would last, with only short interruptions, for some 22 years – it became clear that an alliance with France would drag the United States into a European war. Wary of such involvement, the government renounced the treaty it had signed with France in 1778. By 1793, it was evident to Jefferson that if the United States opted to use force to solve the problem of the Barbary pirates, it would have to do so unassisted. Even after the Algerines renewed their attacks on U.S. trade that year, not all Americans agreed that the application of force was necessary or even desirable. The debate that took place in Congress in 1793-1794 over the proposal to build six frigates for the purpose of suppressing North African piracy exposed a deep cleavage in American attitudes about constructing and maintaining a navy, and by extension, about the role that the United States should play in world affairs. The congressional debate that took place in 1793-1794 focused not so much on whether it was proper to build a navy at all as it did on the question of that navy’s ultimate purpose. Jefferson’s supporters, who wanted the six frigates strictly for the current emergency, were suspicious that Federalists who backed the motion did so only to gain a foot in the door for the subsequent development of a standing naval force that would make the United States a player in the game of great power politics – a goal Jeffersonians abhorred. Nor were their suspicions groundless. One of the bill’s floor leaders, William Laughton Smith of South Carolina, declared openly that he supported the bill principally because it was proper that the nation should become a naval power – the sooner the better. “Whatever gentlemen may think,” he announced, “it was probable that we should at some time become a naval power; and even with the most distant prospect of that, it would show economy to prepare for it.”12 Most of the bill’s supporters, however, denied that this was their objective. They asserted that the six warships proposed in the pending legislation were needed only for the immediate emergency and not as part of any long-term scheme to make the United States a naval power. Denying that the construction of a large standing navy was their goal, they poked fun at those who accused them of such ambitions. Somewhat disingenuously, Uriah Tracy of Connecticut declared that it was “a sorry compliment to the good sense of the United States . . . to say that
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if we build six ships this year, we much never stop until we built two hundred.” This curious debate led Federalists who opposed the use of force in the Mediterranean to support the bill, while Republicans who favored the use of force (in this limited instance) tried to keep the number of ships limited so that their mission would also be limited. Many found it confusing if not absurd. James Madison reported to Jefferson that “the vague idea of protecting trade when it needs it, misleads the interested who are weak, and the weak who are not interested.”13 Whatever the motives of the bill’s backers, the final wording of the proposal declared flatly that the measure was motivated solely by “the depredations committed by the Algerine corsairs.” Suspicious Jeffersonians included language specifying that “if a peace shall take place between the United States and the Regency of Algiers” the construction of the ships would stop, that funding would cease, and that “no farther [sic.] proceeding be had under this act.”14 The bill became law on March 27, 1794, and for all practical purposes, it marked the beginning of both a U.S. Navy and of an American policy to confront overseas assaults against American interests with force. But it bore the potential to become even more: by authorizing a standing navy, even one so small and focused on so specific an object, the bill was a major step toward re-defining the role that America would play in the world.
INFLUENCING WORLD EVENTS THROUGH NAVAL POWER The passage of the 1794 Naval Act did not end the crisis with Algiers, nor the debate over how to deal with it. Two years later the United States and the Dey of Algiers, Ali Hassan, struck a deal. Hassan agreed to release the 119 U.S. hostages he held in exchange for a one-time payment of $620,000 and an annual tribute of another $21,000. It was a far cry from “victory,” but it was a deal that U.S. negotiators felt they could accept, and a price they could pay.15 Or perhaps not. The United States had trouble raising the money; American credit was so poor that U.S. officials could not turn their bills of credit into cash – and Ali Hassan was a strictly cash negotiator. Hassan agreed to wait for his money, but only after America pledged itself to sweeten the deal by promising him, in addition to the ransom already negotiated, a brand new 36-gun frigate in exchange for the 119 hostages. Thus nearly two centuries before Ronald Reagan, the United States agreed to its first arms-for-hostages exchange. It was hardly a diplomatic triumph, but it was peace, and according to the “Peace Establishment Act,” all work on the six U.S. frigates was now to cease. The Federalist advocates of an active, internationalist United States were disappointed by these developments. Their disappointment stemmed not so much from a concern that American honor had somehow been compromised – they did not object in principle to paying the tribute – but rather from a conviction that other international disputes would surely arise eventually, and it seemed to them only common sense to anticipate such problems now by building a standing navy. Besides, they argued, so much had already been spent on building the six frigates: most of the timber had been acquired, the plans had been drafted, and the keels had been laid. To abandon all that now was simply wasteful. Opponents found it hard to defend the deal with Algiers, but they repeated their concerns about a standing naval force. They asserted that it would somehow drag the United States into
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European squabbles. They claimed that it would necessitate a new bureaucracy including: “A Marine Department, something like a War Department.”16 Proponents did not deny it, but they insisted that such a bureaucracy was both desirable and inevitable. With remarkable prescience, John Swanwick of Pennsylvania predicted that “whenever an equal number of years has passed over this country to that which passed between the reign of Queen Elizabeth and George 3rd [a period of 147 years], America will doubtless be found to possess naval strength equal to that possessed by any other power whatever.” Adding those 147 years to 1796 makes 1943 the year that Swanwick prophesied that America would emerge as the greatest naval power on earth.17 By now the issue had metamorphosed from “Should the United States use force or diplomacy in dealing with the Barbary powers?” into “Should the United States aspire to become a great power in order to influence world events?” Navalists in Congress wanted to complete the six frigates not so much because they feared that the Algerines would recant the recent agreement as because they wanted a standing American Navy to serve as a tool of power politics. Though six frigates were not particularly impressive when measured against the gigantic fleets of Britain and France, they were at least a start, and navalists offered up visions of a small U.S. Navy that could tilt the world balance of power to its favor. If the United States only had a navy, Samuel Smith of Maryland declared, it would be possible to tell the European nations “we will throw our weight into the opposite scale if you continue to insult and injure us.”18 Opponents of a standing navy were horrified by such a vision. They cited the danger of being drawn into the ongoing world war in Europe; they cited the great expense of building and maintaining a navy; they cited the threat to democratic processes posed by creating a standing military force with its own hierarchy and self-interest. They objected that the ships had no immediate utility. “The expense was certain,” one declared, “and the advantages doubtful.”19 Such arguments won the day. Navalists failed to convince Congress to complete all six frigates; the best they were able to do was gain an authorization to complete three of the six, and moreover, even those three were to be kept out of service to await a future emergency much like Jefferson’s musket-over-the-mantelpiece navy. In March 1801, Thomas Jefferson became the third president of the United States after a confusing and controversial election that had to go to the House of Representatives after the vote in the Electoral College ended in a tie. At last Jefferson was in a position to direct American foreign and defense policy. By then the navy that he inherited from his old friend and rival John Adams consisted of 13 frigates. It had grown from the original three to nearly 50 warships during the Quasi War with France, and was then reduced to a baker’s dozen by the Peace Establishment Act passed just before Jefferson took office. That act stipulated that of the 13 frigates, only six were to be kept on active duty; the rest were to be placed in storage (what a later generation would call “mothballed”) to await a future crisis. This was precisely the kind of navy-in-waiting that Jefferson had long advocated. As far as he was concerned, a 13 ship navy was just the right size: large enough to get the job done in the Mediterranean where the North African city states continued to cause trouble, but not so large as to pose a realistic threat to the major powers of Europe, still locked in their interminable death struggle.20 Moreover, Jefferson knew exactly what he wanted to do with his small navy. With only six ships in active service, he would divide this force into two squadrons, sending one to the
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Mediterranean to act as a restraining influence on the Barbary States, and keeping the other at home. After six months, the two squadrons would rotate. In this way, the United States could maintain what Jefferson called “a squadron of observation” on duty full time in the Mediterranean. In effect, this was the origin of what is now the U.S. Sixth Fleet: a standing American naval force on guard in the Mediterranean to enforce American policy and protect American interests. It did not take long for this policy to be tested. When Commodore Richard Dale arrived in the Mediterranean with the first such “squadron of observation,” he discovered that the bashaw of Tripoli, a wily political survivor named Yusuf Karamanli, had already decided to nullify the existing treaty with the United States and resume hostilities with an eye to renegotiating a new and more profitable arrangement. Jefferson’s policy of distancing the nation from European entanglements while applying force to the Barbary corsairs would now be put to the test.21 Jefferson’s use of naval force during his first term was consistent with his longstanding opposition to navalist ambitions and to his pragmatic roots. His object was the specific and narrow goal of defending American commerce in the Mediterranean from the corsairs of North Africa, and the means he employed were proportionate to that end. It is worth noting that the force he dispatched – three frigates and a sloop of war – mounted a total of 130 guns, very nearly the size of the force he had proposed back in 1785. At the same time, Jefferson was careful not to conduct the war in a way that would involve the United States in any aspect of the ongoing war in Europe. Jefferson’s use of naval force was thus both limited and specific; his fear of wider entanglement remained a key aspect of his naval policy.22 The American war against Tripoli progressed haltingly. Dale proved a disappointment as a wartime commander, as did his successor, Richard Valentine Morris. Not until the arrival of Edward Preble in 1803 did the small U.S. squadron find both leadership and success in its first overseas military adventure. At first it seemed that Preble, too, was doomed to failure. Just before he arrived, his principal subordinate, Captain William Bainbridge, ran the U.S. frigate Philadelphia aground on Kailusa Reef outside Tripoli Harbor. Unable to re-float his vessel, Bainbridge ordered the crew to toss the ship’s guns over the side in an effort to lighten ship. Alas, the Philadelphia remained hard aground, and now it was also defenseless. The Tripolitans soon captured it as a prize, and though the ship itself was subsequently burned in a daring raid led by Lieutenant Stephen Decatur, Yusuf Karamanli had gained an invaluable bargaining chip: more than 300 American prisoners of war, including Bainbridge. In spite of this disaster, Preble soon imposed a full-time blockade on Tripoli Harbor, and conducted several daring raids into the harbor (including Decatur’s). Eventually, he also agreed (though with some initial reluctance) to cooperate with a scheme concocted by William Eaton, the American consul in Tunis, to engineer a plot designed to bring about a coup d’etat inside Tripoli. To unseat Karamanli, Eaton recruited Yusuf’s older brother Hamet, then living in Egypt, and convinced him to claim the throne. Backed by a rag tag Arab army bolstered by a company of nine U.S. Marines, Hamet began a quixotic march across North Africa aimed at toppling Yusuf from power. Just as American policy makers in the early Twenty-first Century hoped that Saddam Hussein’s own people would overthrow him once it became clear that the United States would provide aid and support for such a venture, so to did American policy makers in the early Nineteenth Century hope to engineer a “regime change” in Tripoli.
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Then as now, not all Americans believed that a regime change was a good idea. Tobias Lear, the chief American negotiator, thought that Hamet, once on the throne, was likely to be worse than Yusuf, for Hamet was more mercurial and therefore less reliable. Even William Bainbridge, languishing as a POW in the bashaw’s castle, was skeptical. Secretly he wrote from his prison (using invisible ink made from lemon juice) to urge Lear not to allow the United States to get involved in “such an impolitic & extraordinary measure.”23
ACCEPTING SUCCESS OR PURSUING VICTORY? The war lasted most of five years, though the active phase occupied little more than two. In the end, American success was marked not by a military victory, but by another negotiated settlement. Yusuf was pragmatic enough to recognize that prolonging the war indefinitely was not in his best interest. The lengthy American blockade was having a disastrous effect on Tripoli’s economy and therefore on his own popularity, and the Arab-American army, with his brother Hamet in tow, was coming closer. Yusuf’s determination to remain in power trumped his reluctance to give in to American demands. He decided to seek a deal. By now, the American naval commanders of the Mediterranean Squadron believed that victory was close, and they wanted to fight it out to a final conclusion. But Lear was practical enough to appreciate that a complete victory – which would necessitate the conquest of Tripoli, the release of the American prisoners, and the elimination of Yusuf Karamanli – was sure to be costly if not, in fact, impossible. Yusuf had warned John Rodgers, who now commanded the blockading squadron, that if U.S. forces tried to seize the city, he would take the American hostages and flee inland to a fortress in the desert from which he would continue his defiance.24 Lear concluded that it was more realistic to accept a quick settlement than to press for a final and complete victory. His minimum goals were (1) the release of the American POWs, and (2) an end to the tribute system. As for a “regime change,” Lear decided that as long as Yusuf was reasonable in his demands, he could stay on as bashaw. To him, a chastised Yusuf was better for future U.S. interests than his unpredictable brother who, after all, might not be able to consolidate power in Tripoli. Hamet, Lear concluded, was disposable. Lear agreed to pay a token sum for the release of the POWs if Yusuf would drop his demands for an annual tribute. Yusuf was willing. He asked for a one-time fee of $200,000 for the American hostages. Lear offered $60,000, and after some blustering, Yusuf agreed. As for Hamet, now that he was no longer needed, the Americans dropped him. He was given $200 for his trouble and cut loose. Few second-guessed the decision. This American volte face angered only William Eaton, who had recruited Hamet and organized the overland expedition designed to bring about a regime change. Eaton conceived of his mission as one that involved American honor as well as American interests, and he felt that Lear’s decision to abandon Hamet was dishonorable. In a passionate letter to Congress, he declared that “honor recoils” from such perfidy. His anguished complaint, however, fell on deaf ears. With the war over, most Americans, including Jefferson, were willing to accept the terms.25
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CONCLUSION There was a postscript to the American success at Tripoli. A decade later in 1815 as America’s second war with Britain was winding down, the Dey of Algiers tried to renew the Barbary System, and once again corsairs from North Africa struck at American trade in the Mediterranean. The U.S. response was swift. President Madison sent not one but two squadrons to the Mediterranean to uphold American maritime rights. Stephen Decatur, in command of the first squadron, captured the flagship of the Algerine Navy en route to Algiers and this gave him decisive leverage in negotiating an end to the tribute system with Algiers as well as with Tripoli. A year later an English squadron put a final end to the Barbary System by pounding Algiers into submission, and in 1830 France made it a colony. In the end, the United States used a variety of tools to bring about a satisfactory solution to the crisis in the first half decade of the nineteenth century. After several attempts to purchase a peace, policy makers eventually concluded that such negotiations were unreliable as well as dishonorable. But the application of naval force also proved of limited utility. It was only the combination of military pressure, political isolation, and financial inducement that led to the re-establishment of peace. Though Yusuf Karamanli remained bashaw in Tripoli, the American hostages came home, and U.S. trade returned to the Mediterranean. Jefferson’s decision to focus U.S. naval power on a specific and obtainable objective, as well as his determination to keep the United States out of the broader and more dangerous European war, were important elements in securing this success. Though William Eaton felt that the United States acted ignobly by dumping Hamet Karamanli, and John Rodgers was disappointed not to be allowed a final assault on the citadel at Tripoli, Tobias Lear was willing to accept a success rather than insist on victory. That success came at a modest cost whereas a commitment to victory would have prolonged the war indefinitely with no certainty of a satisfactory outcome.
NOTES 1
Poll figures from AmericaOnLine, accessed 20 January 2003. The trauma of the American crew aboard the Maria is contained in James Leander Cathcart, The Captives: Eleven Years in Algiers (LaPorte, IN: J.B. Cathcart, 1899). 3 The Barbary system is described in Gardner Allen, Our Navy and the Barbary Corsairs (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1905); Glenn Tucker, Dawn Like Thunder: The Barbary Wars and the Birth of the U.S. Navy (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963); and A.B.C. Whipple, To the Shores of Tripoli: The Birth of the U.S. Navy and Marines (New York: William Morrow, 1991). 4 Richard O’Brien to Thomas Jefferson, June 8, 1786, Naval Documents Related to the United States Wars with the Barbary Powers, Dudley Knox, ed. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1939-1955), vol. I, p. 3. Hereafter cited as NDBW; all references are to volume I. 5 O’Brien Report dated April 28, 1787, and Jefferson’s letters to Congress dated December 28 and December 30, all in NDBW, pp. 18-26. 6 See, for example, Jefferson to Adams, July 11 and July 31, 1786, both in NDBW, p. 12. 7 Jefferson to Adams, July 11, 1786, NDBW, p. 10. 2
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Adams to Jefferson, July 31, 1786, NDBW, p. 12. D. Humphreys to Edward Church, October 12, 1793, NDBW, p. 47. 10 Washington’s Address to Congress, December 3, 1793, in A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, James D. Richardson, ed (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1896-99), 1:140. 11 Annals of Congress, 3rd Congress, 1st session, pp. 143, 154. 12 Annals of Congress, 4th Congress, 2nd session, p. 2122. 13 Annals of Congress, 3rd Congress, 1st session, p. 449; Madison to Jefferson, March 9, 1794, in James Morton Smith, ed., The Republic of Letters: The Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, 1776-1826 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1995), vol. 2, p. 835. For an extended discussion of the Congressional debates over the Act of 1794 see Marshall Smelser, The Congress Founds the Navy, 1787-1798 (South Bend, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1959), 12-24; and Craig L. Symonds, Navalists and Antinavalists: The Naval Policy Debate in the United States, 1785-1827 (Newark, DE: Delaware University Press, 1980), 27-38. 14 U.S. Congress, The Public Statutes at Large of the United States of America (Boston: Little and Brown, 1859), 1:350-51. 15 The text of the treaty is printed in NDBW, pp. 107-116. The sum negotiated did not include “Peace Presents” totaling $36,028 nor the “Present to Hadgi Ali,” that is, to Hassan, in the amount of $1,659.60. See Ray W. Irwin, The Diplomatic Relations of the United States With the Barbary Powers (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1931), 71-72. 16 Annals of Congress, 4th Congress, 1st session, 873. 17 Ibid., 878. 18 Annals of Congress, 4th Congress, 2nd session, 2117. 19 Ibid., 2119. 20 Jefferson has long been credited with (or condemned for) the reduction of the Navy in 1801, but the Peace Establishment Act was one of the “midnight acts” passed by the lame duck Federalist Congress on March 3 before Jefferson took office, though it was intended to forestall an expected effort by Jefferson to make even deeper cuts once he took office. 21 Karamanli demanded a lump-sum payment of $225,000 and an annual tribute of an additional $25,000. See Secretary of State to William Eaton, March 21, 1801, NDBW, p. 425. 22 Symonds, Navalists and Antinavalists, 95. 23 A.B.C. Whipple, To the Shores of Tripoli: The Birth of the U.S. Navy and Marines (New York: William Morrow, 1991), 248. 24 Ibid. 25 William Eaton to Isaac Hull, January 8, 1805, The Hull-Eaton Correspondence (Worcester, MA: American Antiquarian Society, 1911), p. 21; Whipple, To The Shores of Tripoli, 254-56. 9
In: White House Studies Compendium, Volume 4 Editor: R. W. Watson, pp. 111-122
ISBN: 1-60021-541-6 © 2007 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
THE WILSON PRESIDENCY, THE U.S. NAVY, AND HOMELAND DEFENSE George H. Quester ABSTRACT With the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, some analysts have characterized the United States as entering upon an entirely new situation in foreign and defense policy, with supposedly unprecedented implications for the presidency or the U. S. Navy. But there are indeed some close analogs in the past debates about whether the United States should invest in a powerful navy, especially in the American 1917 entry into World War I, preceded by a 1916 decision to build “a navy second to none.” The pre-1917 German-instigated sabotage attacks on munitions plants and shipment points were an attack on the American homeland by any definition. The U-boat sinkings of merchant and passenger ships on the high seas were also such an attack, by the way that Americans have all along seen the high seas. But the decision to build a large fleet also had an important anti-British tinge, as British “navalism” had upset Americans as a threat to their homeland. The ensuing policy debate involved the general alternatives we confront also today: withdrawal from the conflict, or a tough unilateral assertion of sovereign rights, or a coordinated attempt to reform the system.
INTRODUCTION In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, some analysts have proclaimed the United States as now entering upon an entirely new situation in foreign and defense problems, with the American homeland seen as being under direct physical attack for the first time. By such an interpretation, the implications for the presidency, and for the United States Navy, would be basically unprecedented, with the future of American policy thus becoming enormously difficult to predict, as “homeland defense” suddenly has become a centerpiece of American military policy. This article will argue that there are indeed some close analogs and precedents in the past evolution of American foreign policy, and in the debates on whether the United States should invest in a powerful navy, illustrated quite well in the American 1917 entry into World War I, preceded by a 1916 decision to build “a navy second to none.”1 “Homeland defense,” – a defense against the threats that came in from the seas – thus was related quite closely to decisions about a navy, and therefore may have been a driving force in American policy decisions for a longer time than is generally appreciated. The largest explosion to rock Manhattan before the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center occurred just across the Hudson River in New Jersey on July 30, 1916, at a dock
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stockpiled with munitions to be shipped to Britain and France. The dock, which was not very far from the Statue of Liberty, bore the name of “Black Tom.”2 The explosion was the result of sabotage instigated by agents of the German Imperial Embassy, at a time when the United States was still neutral in World War I but was engaged in exporting substantial shipments of munitions to the Entente (Americans being unable, because of the British maritime blockade, to make any parallel sales to Germany and its allies). These German sabotage attacks, parallel to the German submarine attacks on ships going to Britain and France, might have been portrayed as a simple attempt to deny munitions to an enemy, a legitimate target in war. Alternatively, such attacks could have been characterized as attempts to impose enough hardship on the British to erode their resolve for the war, or similarly, to impose hardship on the American homeland and on things Americans hold dear, so as to reduce American willingness to sell Britain what it needed. The sabotaging of munitions plants and shipment points within the United States was, by any definition, an attack on the American homeland. But the sinking of merchant and passenger ships on the high seas also had been such an attack, by the way that Americans all along have seen the high seas. The United States since its inception has been a maritime nation and a trading nation, regarding “freedom of the seas” as almost as important as the physical security of its ground at home, with the War of 1812 having been a classical illustration of this principle.3 Just as with the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, the German campaigns of 1914 to 1917 thus could have been calculated as perhaps seeking to intimidate Americans to induce them to cease supporting any causes in the outside world. The shock of Americans at such threats to what they hold dear, on shore and on the seas, undoubtedly was quite significant. Yet the Germans surely faced the risk (just as did Osama bin Laden) that such an attack, rather than intimidating and deterring Americans, would enrage them and cause them to launch a military counter-attack.4 Submarine warfare, and terrorism on-shore, thus definitely amounted to the crucial factors in leading the United States to declare war on Germany in 1917, settling the outcome of the war in 1918 when Germany had to sue for peace. Yet the American decision in the same years to build “a navy second to none,” a navy of big battleships rather than smaller anti-submarine warfare vessels, was related to an even broader American tradition of concern for homeland security, a tradition of concern that merely matured during World War I, with overtones that might often have been as much anti-British as anti-German. This article will review the interaction of presidential leadership, naval power, and homeland security as it evolved before and during World War I, tying this evolution to earlier American fears and traumas, and then relating it to today’s concerns about “homeland defense.”
BEFORE SARAJEVO The major thrust of the argument here is that Americans have felt concerns about the physical security of their homeland all through their history. It is simply not true to say that America has never had to fear what the Europeans so often experienced – the threat of foreign invasion. In 1814, the British occupied the American national capital, Washington, D.C., burning the White House and the Capitol building, and then laid siege to Baltimore.5 The successful defense of Baltimore against the British amphibious force is hardly erased from the
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American collective memory (although American students are notorious for how little history or geography they are taught), for this defense is commemorated in our national anthem, the Star-Spangled Banner. The United States, throughout the Nineteenth Century, did not try to match the power of the British fleet, but this was hardly because Americans regarded the British as their natural friends and cousins, with the seas being no source of threat so long as the Royal Navy dominated them. Rather, the explanation for the lack of American investment in a navy was that the task of matching and beating the British always looked too daunting. After Trafalgar in 1805, the British Navy was larger than all the other navies of the world combined, and the British, right up to World War I, proclaimed a national policy of having a navy larger than the next two fleets combined. To try to match the British, when they were so far ahead, would have been a most difficult task; to try to challenge Pax Britannia would have been to provoke a serious political and military conflict with the British, with the risk of a British preemptive attack. The British Navy, in its analyses of the possibility of the growth of any hostile foreign navy, used to refer to “Copenhagening” such an upstart, referring back to Nelson’s preemptive destruction of the Danish Navy when the risk had emerged of this force being put at the disposal of Napoleon.6 Indeed, the same British rocket-launching sailing ships that had set fire to Copenhagen had been brought across the Atlantic and up the Chesapeake for the attack on Baltimore. The vulnerability of American port cities to a British or other naval attack was thus a continuing part of the scene until the end of the Nineteenth Century. If one is asked to explain what worked to deter an American invasion of Canada through these decades, when the Canadians were still often portrayed in American 4th of July speeches as being held against their will under British colonial rule, it was hardly the presence of any substantial ground forces north of the 49th parallel. In the calculations of the British government, the reliable deterrent was instead what the Royal Navy could do to American high seas commerce and to American port cities.7 During the 1898 Spanish-American War, great concern similarly was voiced along the Atlantic seaboard about what the Spanish fleet might do to these cities.8 If the Royal Navy’s capability for attacking American commerce and coastal cities might thus have been seen as the deterrent to an American invasion of Canada, the American ability to invade Canada might similarly have served as the reassuring deterrent against any particularly arrogant use of British naval power. Until the last decade of the Nineteenth Century, the United States thus largely had no choice but to live with this continuing threat to the safety of the homeland, the threat embodied in the “rocket’s red glare.” But there were three important changes in this picture after 1890. First, in what is often seen as the basic sign of an American shift from isolation to playing a major global role (a shift then to be reversed again in the 1919 rejection of the League of Nations), the United States began building a major navy. Second, in the same decades, the president’s leadership role and visibility increased dramatically. Woodrow Wilson had made his original reputation by publishing Congressional Government,9 a book decrying the weakness of the presidency compared to the chairmen of the key committees of the Congress, but we all remember assertive presidents like Theodore Roosevelt and Wilson himself much more vividly than the presidents who had followed Abraham Lincoln in the latter half of the Nineteenth Century. A third factor of change, more than a little paradoxically, was that relations between Britain and the United States basically improved, in part because Americans came to realize that Canada was not being held under British rule against its will (it helped when Canada finally
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established its own Embassy in the United States, rather than having its affairs handled by a section of the British Embassy). The British, seeing their naval hegemony challenged by Germany, Japan, the United States and other powers, were forced to try to make friends with some of these potential adversaries, and in effect chose to appease Tokyo and Washington rather than Berlin. The United States’ decision to begin building a powerful navy after 1890 is often credited to the influence of the great book The Influence of Sea Power on History, published that year by Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan.10 This American shift toward a naval role has been alternatively depicted by radical or “revisionist” historians such as Walter Lafeber11 as reflecting the closing of the American western frontier, which might have served as a safetyvalve earlier for periodic bouts of unemployment. By an analysis that has been very appealing to Marxists and other radical critics of American foreign policy in general, the defects of capitalism thus required a shift to imperialism, and the growth of the U.S. Navy therefore could be explained by domestic factors rather than by international threats. The argument in this article instead focuses on the perceived international threats to the security of the American homeland, as stressed by Mahan, rather than on any defects of capitalism. The United States for all its history had sensed such threats coming from the sea. And the timing here might relate not simply to the influence of a particular book or to the closing of the western frontier, but to a major change in the technology of naval warfare, a change that would begin an entirely new round of the naval competition. After 1890, after the shift to steam-propulsion and steel warships rather than wooden fighting ships of sail, the United States, like such other powers as Japan, France and Germany, was finally in a position where it could challenge the British monopoly at sea rather than simply having to accept it. Frank Klingberg published an analysis in 195212 of the ins and outs of American involvement in foreign policy that argued that the United States had continually oscillated back and forth over its history, in a pattern in which the outward swings averaged 27 years in length, while the inward swings averaged 21: “Introvert” 1776-1798 1824-1844 1871-1891 1918-1940
“Extrovert” 1798-1824 1844-1871 1891-1918 1940-
Klingberg’s analysis was based on many factors, including the number of references to foreign threats and foreign affairs in congressional debates and presidential speeches, and the appropriations voted for support of the U.S. Navy. (One enormously engaging feature of Klingberg’s analysis is that it seemingly, some 15 years in advance, predicted the date of America’s retreat from Vietnam, exemplified in Lyndon Johnson’s decision to not to seek reelection in 1968.) By Klingberg’s analysis, the years from 1891 to 1918 were thus a period of extroversion for American foreign policy, as the United States began building a serious navy, fought a war with Spain, became engaged in a round of imperialism with the acquisition of the Philippines, Guam, and Hawaii, and possessions in the Caribbean, and then got drawn into World War I, with this phase being terminated by the American rejection after 1919 of President Wilson’s League of Nations.
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But the years from 1891 to 1918 were not quite such a steady period of American investment in a very active defense of the homeland. While President Theodore Roosevelt favored a larger navy,13 his successor William Howard Taft was not nearly as supportive of such expenditures, and Woodrow Wilson came into office similarly leaning against naval growth, and even hoping that foreign policy would not occupy a major portion of his presidency. The threat of foreign attack on the American homeland could always be envisaged, but it was no surprise that there were interior portions of the United States that felt much more secure against such threats, and hence disinclined to spend tax moneys on warding them off. And, even along the exposed coasts, the argument could be made that one did not have to immediately respond to a foreign capability for attack if one did not see any immediate inclination to attack. It is thus paradoxical indeed that the American post-1890 decision to begin challenging the British monopoly of high seas power came at a time when relations between the two English-speaking powers were generally improving rather than worsening. American congressmen after 1900 no longer gave speeches looking forward to the amalgamation of Canada into the United States. Yet the improvement in relations was hardly yet so pronounced that Americans would forget the War of 1812 and the issue of freedom of the seas. When the United States, together with the other smaller maritime states, had pressed Britain to renounce the interruption of high seas commerce in future wars, the British government had done so only very reluctantly, and London reneged on such commitments when World War I broke out.14 In the years leading up to World War I, Americans thus were not freed of their inherent fears of what could be inflicted on their homeland from the seas. Almost as importantly, Americans’ fears of what could be inflicted on their commerce out on those seas also endured. As American presidents were to become more prominent in the making of domestic policy, they were called upon to assert a greater leadership role in addressing these threats.
VARYING PERSPECTIVES As always with any issue of foreign policy, Americans would differ in how they saw the threat to the homeland. One can sketch out at least four dimensions of such differences of evaluation. One classic interpretation pits the coastal regions of the United States against the inherently more “isolationist” interior.15 The residents of the Midwest would not feel the pain of naval bombardment nearly as directly as the people in New York or Baltimore, and hence would be much more likely to scoff at the need for American investment in a navy. Here we might find a significant difference from today’s reactions to the new terrorist attacks, since tall buildings in Chicago are just as vulnerable to a 9/11 type of attack as those in New York. Even earlier, during the Cold War, the United States Air Force expended a major effort on getting Americans to refer to polar-projection maps of the world, rather than Mercator projection maps, with the message being that, in an age of intercontinental-range bombers and missiles, the interior of the United States shared the perils of the coasts. Concerns about what a terrorist group might do with an atomic bomb or with biological weapons thus are not to be limited to the coasts. Yet the maritime focus of American concerns looms up again when one realizes that perhaps the easiest approach for a terrorist attack will come now by means of the
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freight containers carried aboard a modern container-ship, or by a cruise-missile fired from some tramp steamer, with the U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Navy having to be quite concerned about how such an attacker could be spotted in advance and intercepted. A second kind of issue related to partisan politics, for the notion of bipartisan foreign policy had not yet won general acceptance in the United States, and indeed was not to settle in until the eve of World War II. If a Republican president favored naval appropriations, Republicans in Congress might be generally inclined to support their president, in hopes of strengthening their appeal for the next election. Democrats, however, might be just as tempted to snipe at such proposals, with a view to similarly laying the groundwork for the next election. And the same might hold true in reverse when a Democrat was president. One can find examples of Democrats disagreeing with Democratic presidents in one direction or another on naval spending, and Republicans disagreeing with Republican presidents, because of the regional differences cited above, or analytical differences. But there was always also an argument for parties hanging together on this issue, as on any other issue in politics when the substantive disagreements on the issue were not too great, because of the inherent importance of winning over the voters. Third, the issues of protecting against foreign attacks on the homeland relate more broadly to the strength of the national government vs. the states, and the strength of the presidency vs. the Congress. There were thus always members of Congress who saw any move towards greater military preparedness as a threat to their own share of decision-making power, or to American liberty in general, as “militarism” and “navalism” were the diseases of the Prussians and the British and to be avoided for the United States if at all possible.16 If a stronger navy and a stronger military were to tend to coincide with a stronger presidency, under either Theodore Roosevelt’s or Woodrow Wilson’s versions of “progressivism,” there would be opposition to such preparations on very basic domestic and constitutional grounds. A fourth and final major argument about the perennial naval threat related to the analysis of the motivation of foreign powers, and of the basic nature of the international system. If one assumed that relations with Britain were improving, or that a balance-of-power on the high seas would keep foreign navies tied up in confronting each other, so that they would have no time to attack the American coasts, did one really have to build up a large U.S. Navy?17 Alfred Thayer Mahan’s case for American naval growth went well beyond traditional American concerns for the safety of the homeland and the sanctity of commerce. His argument was that historical experience showed that the United States needed to expand if it were not to decline – that imperialism and a very extended naval presence, out and away from the American mainland, were now the natural course of things. In the age of sail, which Mahan so vividly recounted, Britain’s naval superiority around Europe had led to its being paramount everywhere around the globe, for the wind-driven warships of the Royal Navy were virtually unlimited in range. Yet the introduction of steam-propelled steel warships had not merely opened up a new round of naval competition, in which every power in effect had to begin again from scratch. Such ships would be tied much more closely to their coaling stations, with the result that each navy might now have a local preponderance in its own waters close to home base, with no navy any more able to achieve a global preponderance. An analytical disagreement thus was opened here about whether it was necessary for the United States to be so very much concerned about the German or French Navy ever coming across the Atlantic in force. How
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much American naval investment was now really needed, even if one could not count on the good intentions of other powers? In Mahan’s analysis, however, each separate naval power would not be so secure in its home waters because of the need for coaling stations, for he still saw the possibilities of a grand naval hegemony, just as in the days of sail, by which one battle fleet or another would come to dominate the seas. By Mahan’s analysis, an analysis very appealing to Theodore Roosevelt,18 America might have to establish such coaling stations and advance naval bases around the globe, as America might face an inherent choice of dominating or being dominated. Here differences of analysis about American values and motivation would play a most central role. Woodrow Wilson, however much he favored a strong presidency and a strong and active federal government, did not come into office intent on playing and winning some game of global naval power politics.19 Wilson’s instincts were more in line with the American traditions of defending America itself; beyond this, they would turn to reforming the international system so that wars would be eliminated.
THE ONSET OF WORLD WAR I The year 1914 would have been an appropriate year for Americans to celebrate an entire century passing since the last foreign invasion of their homeland, 100 years since the British occupation and burning of Washington. Yet, this was more importantly the year of the outbreak of World War I, inducing at least two new rounds of feeling of homeland vulnerability. Americans had always felt a certain kind of such vulnerability, as already noted, simply because of their commitment to trade on the high seas. The exposure of coastal cities to attack from these seas was a more directly “homeland” threat. But international trade increasingly had occasioned foreign nationals to reside within the United States, selling their own goods and buying those made by Americans – and perhaps carrying a military threat into the homeland. As the war began, British warships intercepted American ships trying to go to Germany, followed by a German use of submarines to sink ships going to Britain. The first kind of action, very reminiscent of 1812, damaged the material interests of the United States, while the second took a toll as well of human life, but both caused indignation among Americans, and great frustration about how best to respond. Particularly shocking was the sinking of huge passenger liner Lusitania early in 1915, with almost 1,200 passengers losing their lives, including some 128 Americans.20 The Germans could claim, with some justice, that the Lusitania was carrying British munitions, but Americans would see such a submarine attack as much worse than a simple counter-military act of war. As the ground war in Europe settled into an ongoing stalemate, American manufacturers of munitions sold larger and larger quantities of weapons to the British and French, while being kept by the intervening British naval blockade from doing the same for the Germans. Americans then experienced the closer-in threat to the homeland in a round of sabotage fomented by the German and Austrian embassies, with the most dramatic example of this being the Black Tom explosion just across the river from Manhattan. Exemplifying what Americans have had to fear since the Anthrax attack late in 2001, German agents also utilized a form of biological warfare in this sabotage campaign, seeking to infect American horses
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destined for the British or French cavalry with a disease called “glanders.”21 The German Embassy always disclaimed responsibility for any of this sabotage, and some of the actual agents involved could have been Irish opponents of British imperialism, or anarchist or Bolshevik opponents of the capitalist system, simply encouraged by the German or AustroHungarian Embassies, with the ultimate guilt being difficult to prove. The question of assigning responsibility for terrorist attacks, so much a part of the scene in 2001, was thus similarly a part of the American problem here. The earliest pro-Allied propaganda in 1914 had conjured up visions of a German victory in Europe bringing the German Navy to attack American shores. While this version of the future could easily be dismissed, as it was likely that the German fleet would be very much weakened even if it ever could win a naval battle with the British, the generic prospect of battleships attacking American ports had never been as easy to dismiss, and this was to account for some of the American policy that ensued. British surface warships interfered with American commerce more than did any German surface warships, but the German U-boat response conjured up a new threat, amid rumors, both before and after the United States entered the war, that German agents were flashing signals from locations on the American shores out to waiting U-boats. Even if no such light signals were ever flashed, German U-boats did several times sink British merchant ships just outside the American three-mile limit, and German agents surely did engage in sabotage. An attack on the American homeland (broadly or narrowly defined) seemed underway, amid American suspicions of hostile agents that had slipped into the country. If the German plan in launching the sabotage and submarine attacks had been to frighten the United States out of selling war material to the British and French, Berlin was to be very much disappointed. The end result was to bring the United States to declare war on Germany in April of 1917, and then to send a substantial force of ground soldiers to France – soldiers who staved off a German breakthrough in the summer of 1918 and then sealed the German defeat by fall of that year.22 Terrorist attacks on a homeland are typically part of an endurance contest, as the attacker is betting that the victim will not be able to bear the suffering imposed, and will choose to back away from the conflict. One can recount a long series of instances in which a foreign adversary has underestimated the willingness of the American government or people to endure such a confrontation of wills, with the German miscalculations in World War I being matched later by the Japanese expectations of what they might achieve at Pearl Harbor, and Josef Stalin’s expectations about Korea, Mikhail Gorbachev’s assumptions about Afghanistan, Saddam Hussein’s suppositions about Kuwait, and Osama bin Laden’s 2001 assumptions about post-Cold War America. Democracies may be bad at advertising clearly enough in advance their willingness to persist in endurance contests and games of “chicken,” and the United States may be particularly bad at this. But the historical experience is that Americans in general (the Vietnam War perhaps being a major exception) have indeed been willing to hang on through the pain of an endurance contest, and the foreign adversaries contemplating new rounds of terrorist attacks would do well to take note of this. For the entire period of American neutrality in World War I, President Wilson was regularly accused of being too timid and weak by his Republican opponents, in particular by former President Theodore Roosevelt. Wilson’s detractors accused him of advertising an aversion to war, which thereby invited the assaults of the bullies of the world, including the German attacks on things Americans held dear. When the United States at length opted to
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enter the war, the manner in which it did so was nonetheless somewhat paradoxical, illustrating some of the particular feelings and values of President Wilson (as contrasted sharply with those of Theodore Roosevelt) and demonstrating a basically defensive concern about the safety of the American homeland and extended rights at sea. Woodrow Wilson had come into office opposed to large investments in the U.S. military, unconvinced of the imperialist argument that a country like the United States had no choice except to grow if it were not to decline. Wilson’s view, very much reinforced by the specter of World War I as it became prolonged, was that war was a disaster for mankind, something to be avoided. Over time this conviction became Wilson’s commitment to a League of Nations, to a collective security system that would make war much less likely by directing punishment at any power that initiated war. The United States, under Woodrow Wilson, thus was to enter World War I not as one of the Allies, a member of the Entente, but as an “associated power” pursuing its own agenda.23 Theodore Roosevelt would have had the United States behaving like any other power, pursuing its own national interest. Woodrow Wilson saw the United States as behaving as a more noble and beneficent power, serving global interests. Protecting America itself against attack had always had priority, of course, but beyond that, the goals of America’s participation in World War I were to be nobler than mere American imperialism. Consistent with this world view, and with all the older concerns about American homeland security and the security of American shipping on the high seas, Wilson, a year before asking for a declaration of war against Germany, had asked the Congress to lay down a naval building program for “a navy second to none.” With an emphasis on capital ships, on dreadnought battleships, this could be seen as directed against some possible German threats (if Germany ever decisively won something like the Battle of Jutland), but it just as easily could be perceived to be directed against the British, and against the generic threat of damage to America that always had come from the sea. The new U.S. battleships being built were hardly required for immediate reinforcement of any British fighting force facing off against the Germans. Neglected in this building program were the anti-submarine vessels that were to be much more specifically appropriate to countering the kind of naval warfare Germany was waging.24 In 1916, therefore, the United States was definitely more sympathetic to Britain and the rest of the Entente than to Germany and the Central Powers. But, as late as 1916, the United States was advertising its resentment of what all the warring powers had been doing to damage important American interests – a resentment of the British blockade alongside its resentment of the German U-boat campaign and sabotage, and a resentment of the folly of war itself, in which the stubbornness in Berlin and Vienna seemed matched by that in London and Paris. The American decisions of 1916 and 1917 thus reflected much more than a commitment to the side of Britain and France in the war. The kinds of warships procured for the U.S. Navy (in a program that President Wilson in fact decided to continue after the German surrender, and which was not to be cut back until the Washington Naval Disarmament Conference convened by President Harding in 1921) were in fact functionally more of a challenge to Britain and British “navalism” than to Germany.25 The new fleet was an investment in more generic “homeland defense.” The German U-boat attacks and the German-instigated sabotage attacks had indeed prodded America to come into the war, but the British interference with
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American commerce on the high seas also had been a provocation, activating Americans’ historical memories of their vulnerability to attacks from the seas. The worldview of the President was most important here, for Wilson did not share the perceptions of Mahan or Theodore Roosevelt that America should become engaged in the games of international power politics. Rather, Wilson’s view was that America at the minimum needed to be defended against attack, and at the maximum should work to eliminate the power politics game entirely. When opponents of naval appropriations in the Congress after 1918 questioned the need for a navy now that the Germans had been defeated, Wilson repeatedly proposed to them a choice: Join the League by ratifying the Versailles Treaty, or instead build a large navy.
SOME LESSONS FOR THE PRESENT In the years since the Cold War ended, many observers have expressed doubts and confusions about where American foreign policy is headed. Would the United States seek to dominate the world as a “hegemon,” as the only superpower? Or would it seek to withdraw from such burdens, tending more basically to its own affairs, giving up on any instincts of reforming the world? President George H.W. Bush’s campaign to force Iraq out of Kuwait in 1991 struck many as the realization finally of Woodrow Wilson’s intentions for the League of Nations and a system of collective security. But Bill Clinton defeated the elder Bush in 1992 on the accusation that he had devoted too much energy and attention to international affairs. When George W. Bush defeated Al Gore in 2000, he did so on the parallel campaign argument that America should look after its own narrow interests more, and be less concerned with the welfare of the world. If Americans were thus displaying a tendency to turn inward after 1989, with a series of presidential elections demonstrating that they were less concerned with the outside world, then the attacks of September 11, 2001, amounted to a very rude awakening – a signal that their homeland would be physically vulnerable even if Americans wanted to isolate themselves from an unpleasant world. Yet the analogy to World War I is strong, because the American homeland has been physically vulnerable for a longer time. The American people, and American presidents, have wrestled for a longer time with choices about what role to play in the world, and about how American naval power would fit into this. When the outside world impacts so directly on the United States itself, some of these choices then become simplified. If nothing else produces clarity for American foreign policy choices, a threat to the homeland indeed serves this purpose. Beyond this elementary prod to action, it has never been clear that the United States would aspire to power or world domination, to being a “hegemon.” Even if Mahan or Theodore Roosevelt aspired to this, they may not have had any majority of Americans behind them. This very reticence, by which Wilson’s view of the world was perhaps much more in synch with ordinary Americans, may explain why the world would be ready to tolerate the presence of the U.S. Navy off its shores, ready to tolerate an exertion of American power. United Nations General Assembly speeches aside, the world fears American military power or naval power much less than it fears the power of any other state. For as long as the basic
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character of American motivation does not change from what Wilson took it be in World War I, the world will be ready to tolerate whatever the United States has to do to defend and respond to attacks on its homeland. The United States today, as during World War I, faces a threefold choice in responding to attacks on its homeland: 1) it can withdraw from world affairs as a way of avoiding such attacks, and this remains the unlikely choice; 2) it can respond militarily on its own, acting like any other militarily strong power, this being more or less what Theodore Roosevelt advocated; or 3) it can attempt to coordinate with other democracies and peace-loving states to establish a global system discouraging wars and aggressions, shielding all the homelands and all the international waters against attack, this being what Woodrow Wilson envisaged (and what many gave President George H.W. Bush credit for accomplishing in 1991).
NOTES 1
On the evolution of American commitment to a major navy, see Harold and Margaret Sprout, The Rise of American Naval Power: 1776-1918 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1939). 2 This particular event, and German-sponsored sabotage in general, are detailed in Jules Witcover, Sabotage at Black Tom (Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Press, 1989). 3 On the history of American feelings about the high seas, see Forrest Davis, The Atlantic System: The Story of Anglo-American Control of the Seas (New York, NY: Reynal and Hitchcock, 1941). 4 The American feelings leading to entry into World War I are analyzed in Patrick Devlin, Too Proud to Fight (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1971). 5 A very readable account of these events can be found in Walter Lord, The Dawn's Early Light (New York, NY: Norton, 1972). 6 On the memory of "Copenhagening", see Jonathan Steinberg, Yesterday's Deterrent: Tirpitz and the Birth of the German Battle Fleet (London: McDonald, 1965). 7 The interlocking of these political and strategic considerations is outlined in Kenneth Bourne, Britain and the Balance of Power in North America (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1967). 8 On these fears of the Spanish fleet, see Sprout, The Rise of American Naval Power: 17761918, p. 234. 9 Woodrow Wilson, Congressional Government (Boston, MA: Houghton-Mifflin, 1896). 10 Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History (Boston: Little Brown, 1890). 11 Walter Lafeber, The New Empire (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1963). 12 Frank Klingberg, "The Historical Alternation of Moods in American Foreign Policy," World Politics, Vol. IV, No. 2 (January, 1952), pp. 239-273. 13 On the attitudes of Theodore Roosevelt on naval expenditures, see Gordon Carpenter O'Gara, Theodore Roosevelt and the Rise of the Modern Navy (New York, NY: Greenwood, 1943).
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Britain's 1914 lack of commitment to international restraints on the Royal Navy's blockade options is outlined in Bernard Semmel, Liberalism and Naval Strategy (Boston, MA: Allen and Unwin, 1986). 15 On the significance of perceived geography here, see Ray Allen Billington, "The Origins of Middle Western Isolationism," Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 60, No. 1 (March, 1945), pp. 44-64, and Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1950). 16 On the perceived links between fears of a strong presidency and fears of militarism, see John Milton Cooper, The Vanity of Power: American Isolationism and the First World War: 1914-1917 (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1969). 17 On the improvement in relations between Britain and the United States, see Stephen R. Rock, Why Peace Breaks Out (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1989) Chapter 2. 18 On the largely parallel thinking of Mahan and Roosevelt here, see Richard Turk, The Ambiguous Relationship: Theodore Roosevelt and Alfred Thayer Mahan (New York, NY: Greenwood Press, 1987). 19 Wilson's initial fears of seeing America drawn into world power politics are outlined in John Dos Passos, Mr. Wilson's War (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1962). 20 On the Lusitania sinking, and conflicting accounts of whether it was loaded with munitions, see Patrick O'Sullivan, The Lusitania: Unraveling the Mysteries (Dobbs Ferry, NY: Sheridan House, 2000). 21 This early CBW attack on American soil is noted in Witcover, Sabotage at Black Tom, pp. 126-127, and 136-137. 22 The German calculations about American resolve are given a detailed analysis in Karl Birnbaum, Peace Moves and U-Boat Warfare (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1970). 23 The very distinctive nature of American war aims as presented by Woodrow Wilson is discussed in Edward Buehrig, Woodrow Wilson and the Balance of Power (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smoth, 1968). 24 On the very late adjustment of American naval preparations for the particular nature of the German threat, see Sprout, The Rise of American Naval Power: 1776-1918, pp. 359-369. 25 The motivation of America's continued naval buildup after the German surrender is analyzed in Harold and Margaret Sprout, Toward a New Order of Sea Power (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1943).
In: White House Studies Compendium, Volume 4 Editor: R. W. Watson, pp. 123-132
ISBN: 1-60021-541-6 © 2007 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
NAVIGATING SHALLOW WATERS WHILE AVOIDING A COURSE TO EMPIRE: AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL DOCTRINES AND THE UNITED STATES IN THE GULF, 1969-2003 Ernest S. Tucker ABSTRACT In the 1960s, Great Britain was completing the reshaping of its empire into a commonwealth. Part of that process entailed granting independence to former domains while continuing to guarantee their peace and security. The task of continuing Britain’s longstanding security commitments would prove more and more costly for a nation that was struggling to recover from the economic and material damage of the war. Following a series of domestic industrial problems in the late 1960s, Prime Minister Edward Heath decided to end Britain’s security role in the Gulf by withdrawing from HMS Jufair, the main British naval base in Bahrain, and granting Bahrain and the other Persian Gulf states associated with the U.K. full independence in 1971. With Britain’s exit, the United States took on Britain’s mantle as guarantor of Gulf security. Later the center of U.S. CentCom Naval Operations, Bahrain remains one of the key American military facilities in the region. This article will discuss how the Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations successively arranged and consolidated this transfer in a turbulent era for the region characterized by upheavals such as the 1973 October War. It will examine how the stage was set in the 1970s for Bahrain to become a critically important part of the U.S. security framework in the Middle East, particularly with the advent of the Iranian Revolution and the Gulf War, during an era when presidential focus remained principally on the Cold War.
INTRODUCTION In the spring of 2003, discussion in the United States began to focus on the fate of Iraq following the subsiding of hostilities designed to oust Saddam Hussein, a conflict with lasting impact on the Gulf region.1 The lessening of fighting in Iraq sparked considerable domestic debate about the U.S. role in that nation’s postwar reconstruction. It also caused speculation about possible American plans for regime change elsewhere in the Middle East. Paul Kennedy recently asserted, “It would…be best…to have some humility about whether a Western-led crusade for democratization is a wise policy, and to insist that Congress play its proper role in asking hard questions and setting reasonable limits on the republic’s future foreign policy in this troubled region.”2 Foreign press accounts of developments in Iraq
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voiced concerns about America’s ultimate goals there. Strident attacks in Asian newspapers denounced American “unilateralism” and “arrogance” in the current conflict. 3 Questions connected with the future of Iraq and the nations around it have dominated U.S. policy in the Middle East since the 1991 Gulf War. The most spectacular acts of terrorism against the United States originating in that region have been linked to heightened local resentment about the continuing presence of American troops in the Gulf region, particularly in Saudi Arabia, after that war. Anger at this deployment helped fuel forces that led to the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing and the attacks of September 11, 2001. This feeling, which exploded into violence again in May 2003 with suicide bombings that targeted Americans residing in Saudi Arabia, has become established among some components of Gulf societies due to continued opposition to any American military presence so near the holiest sites of Islam on the Arabian Peninsula. In spite of such rising tensions, the United States has helped maintain relative stability and freedom of navigation in the Gulf for more than three decades by following, to a substantial degree, the particular pattern of engagement developed by the British there during their 150 years of dominance. The Gulf always represented an anomaly within the British Empire because it was not perceived as an essential component of Britain’s national security until the discovery of oil there after World War I, but the longstanding British policy of minimal intervention continued even through the era of oil wealth. Britain conducted itself in the Gulf with a light touch and remained reluctant to become enmeshed in local politics and intrigues, except when it perceived threats to its larger strategic interests. Following the 1971 termination of Britain’s role as the Gulf’s main foreign security guarantor, the United States gradually became more and more involved in the region. The first few years of this American involvement saw an attempt to implement the Nixon Doctrine of transferring regional security responsibilities around the world to local allies. In the case of the Gulf, key security duties were to be transferred gradually to two key American allies, Iran and (to a lesser degree) Saudi Arabia – countries that became the “twin pillars” of American strategy there. The sudden and unexpected collapse in 1979 of the Shah’s regime in Iran, though, forced Carter to formulate a new doctrine more reminiscent of the traditional British approach. In January 1980, Carter asserted the full responsibility of the United States in securing the Gulf region from any foreign threats. This Carter Doctrine, followed consistently through the Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Clinton, and George W. Bush administrations, was based on a bipartisan consensus about the limits of devolving strategic U.S. foreign policy responsibilities to regional powers in areas as sensitive as the Gulf. From one point of view, the key policy statements that have shaped the U.S. approach to the Gulf over the last three decades (the Nixon and Carter Doctrines) might both be viewed as hasty reactions to developments on the periphery of larger contemporary U.S. global preoccupations: the Cold War standoff and the Vietnam War. However, in the larger historical context, the American government finally reverted to a policy that worked well for the British over many decades. The essence of the British approach to the Gulf was minimalist: to avoid becoming embroiled in local affairs to any extent beyond what was perceived as necessary to enforce security and stability. The Americans, like the British before them, faced decisive challenges to this minimalism. In the British case, the Ottoman-German alliance at the beginning of World War I and the ensuing end of the Ottoman Empire ultimately resulted in the British invasion of Iraq and the subsequent creation of a new state there. Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait created
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a situation for the United States that changed its posture in the region overnight. The destabilizing tension that Saddam Hussein’s regime continued to produce until its fall in 2003 also culminated in an American invasion and marked the beginning of a process of creating a new government there. It is too early to assess the outcome of this latest, ongoing process. However, the experience of the British in Iraq from 1920 until 1958, the period in which a Hashemite dynasty was placed on a newly-created throne of Iraq and maintained by the British, suggests that following the end of Ottoman dominance in the Middle East, which had maintained stable regional parameters for several centuries, specific British interventions occurred at crisis points more frequently than before. Iraq and the Gulf after Saddam may also make similar demands on the United States. Management of the continually evolving Gulf situation in the near future will pose challenges similar to those experienced by the British over their many decades of predominance. The era of their preeminence witnessed sporadic but extended periods of low-level conflict that demanded constant low-level British attention. These times of relative stability often ended suddenly with dramatic changes in neighboring areas, such as occurred in the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War and forced complete reevaluation of the smaller Gulf nations’ security situations. Despite such occasional shifts, though, the overall stability of the Gulf was maintained to a remarkable degree during the periods of British and American oversight there, an oversight marked in both cases by a reluctance to become too wrapped up in the internal politics of each small Gulf nation. At present, the most unpredictable dimensions of Gulf societies are the processes of demographic change underway there now. The relative stability and prosperity of the Gulf region over the past thirty years has improved standards of life there dramatically, creating a burgeoning young population now linked to global economic, political, and social forces in ways previously unknown to its inhabitants. If the consequences of this modernization become unmanageable, the long-established stability there may be overwhelmed in unpredictable ways. A comparison between how Britain and the United States contributed to preserving this stability over extended periods of time may offer lessons for the future.
TOWARDS “A MORE SETTLED STATE OF AFFAIRS”: THE BRITISH AS PROTECTORS OF THE GULF, 1820-1971 In the current situation of vast change, it is worthwhile to recall the longer continuities of the Gulf region, particularly during the period of British dominance there that extended over much of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. In November 1903, while on a tour of the region, then viceroy of India, Lord Curzon, remarked: We opened these seas to the ships of all nations, and enabled their flags to fly in peace. We have not seized or held your territory. We have not destroyed your independence, but have preserved it…. The peace of these waters must still be maintained; your independence will continue to be upheld; and the influence of the British Government must remain supreme.4
Throughout their involvement in the Gulf, the British limited their involvement in local affairs to the extent necessary to promote stability and freedom of navigation while protecting
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the region against the impact of larger international forces and trends that would upset these things. In contrast to the ways it ran its vast imperial domains in India and Africa, Britain maintained a restrained attitude in its management of the emirates of the Gulf from early in the nineteenth century through its withdrawal in 1971.5 The actual British presence consisted of military officers and diplomats linked to the government of India — a handful of officials whose authority derived from a series of treaties between Britain and each local ruler. The chief British official in the region, the Political Resident, generally resided in Bahrain. Many of the emirates of the Gulf had British Political Agents, under the direction of the Resident in Bahrain, who advised local rulers but were generally perceived as a helpful force in securing independence. One example of a noteworthy intervention took place in 1920 when the British Political Agent in Kuwait had the government of India dispatch armored cars and airplanes to thwart a Saudi Wahhabi attack on the fortress of Kuwait for which the Kuwaitis were grateful.6 Through its involvement in the Gulf during the Nineteenth Century, Britain pursued two main policies: 1) curbing the slave trade; and 2) suppressing piracy. Elimination of the slave trade became a particular goal after the abolition of slavery in the United Kingdom in 1833. British diplomats concluded agreements with all the local rulers of the Gulf prohibiting the slave trade in the late 1830s, after having made the first such treaty with the sultan of Oman as early as 1822. These agreements did not succeed in preventing all slave trading in the region. After 1852, regular patrols by the Indian Navy regularly intercepted thousands of African slaves, whose bad treatment continually made headlines in the British press and forced the convening of parliamentary commissions of inquiry on this issue. Another failure of the suppression of the slave trade concerned domestic slavery, which continued substantially unchanged through the early twentieth century in the Gulf. The British took the approach of articulating their opposition to slavery and encouraging local rulers to prohibit it, but they remained aloof from formally banning it in the Gulf countries under their protection. After the sultan of Zanzibar, a ruler under British protection off the coast of East Africa, decreed the elimination of slavery in his realm, the British government of India proclaimed its opposition to slavery in the Gulf, but demurred from taking any stronger stance.7 The suppression of piracy was another matter. This issue precipitated the most serious military interventions by Britain in the region during the first few decades of the Nineteenth Century. The most noted pirates in the region were those of the al-Qawasim tribe, who operated along the west coasts of the Gulf by trading and raiding much like their desertdwelling cousins farther inland. Most of the time, they engaged in commerce, deemed legitimate by the British in their role as the contemporary protectors of international Gulf trade at that time. Occasionally, though, the al-Qawasim would seize the cargoes of passing ships as legitimate booty according to time-honored Bedouin rules – an activity that the British considered piracy. Starting in 1820, British diplomats began a process of forcing these coastal emirates to formally relinquish any traditional combinations of commerce and piracy. This process which began with a General Treaty of Peace in January 1820 and was reinforced by a Maritime Truce in 1835, was intermittently stalled by the fact that although the General Treaty outlawed piracy, it did not prohibit declared war between emirs – an escape clause used to continue the standard piratical activities, now merely couched under the rubric of permitted “war.” After several more years of this, a Treaty of Peace in Perpetuity was concluded in 1853 that defined a formal British role in maintaining through the Twentieth
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Century that peace among the nations that became known as the “Trucial States.”8 The British were willing to tolerate a long, gradual process of incremental adjustments to secure the Gulf situation in a more enduring way. As long as the Gulf remained a backwater on the way to India, the general outlines of this British policy worked well and cost relatively little, allowing commercial relations and the region’s main traditional industries, pearl diving and the shipment of goods, to flourish. The Ottoman collapse following World War I and the discovery of oil in the Gulf rapidly increased the Gulf’s international importance. These developments created more uncertainties for the British, who felt even more compelled than before to bar any outside political influence. Despite these great changes, Britain maintained its longstanding policy of managing Gulf affairs at arm’s length through all the tumultuous episodes of Middle Eastern history that took place through the first six decades of the Twentieth Century. Britain’s success in preserving a system of minimal intervention that still kept the area sheltered from other outside powers allowed small local governments in the Gulf to prosper. Two examples of this can be found in Kuwait and Bahrain, where the British helped local rulers foster more representative governments by allowing institutions to develop from existing models. In the case of Kuwait, this can be seen in the 1920s and 1930s in the ways that the traditional institution of the majlis of tribal elders was used to form one basis for a constitutional government that derived from local models.9 It would be inaccurate to view such developments as any evidence that the British can be credited with securing democracy for the Gulf region, for representative bodies in Kuwait alone have undergone a complex history of openings and closures in light of the changing feelings of the local ruler and international political dynamics. The British did, though, support the establishment of a “rule of law” as local Gulf societies would come to define it. An important example of this can be found in the 1961 Kuwaiti Constitution, written by Kuwaitis with British advisers. This remains a document that has established important precedents for Kuwait’s emergence as an independent nation, and although its mandate has not always been respected or care taken with it, it remains the starting point for most political debate in the country today, a fact for which the British can take some credit. It is also noteworthy that although the United Kingdom promoted the interests of its own oil companies, they did not bar other companies from some participation in the region, particularly the Americans in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and the French in Qatar.10 Of course, the main element in these places’ fortunes was the continuous increase of their oil revenues from nothing in the mid 1930s to substantial incomes by the late 1940s. This created a prosperity that shielded these tiny places from upheavals taking place in other parts of the Middle East. In addition, through careful diplomacy and its continuous naval presence up through World War II, Britain kept Iran and Iraq from getting too involved in the internal affairs of these Gulf states. From the establishment of the British Empire by the early nineteenth century as the dominant force in international commerce, the Persian Gulf thus played a distinctive role as an entrepot of commerce and relations between two main poles of that domain: England and India. The Gulf was a key part of the “middle” of the eastward extension of Britain’s maritime reach. Although the Gulf’s position remained peripheral until the discovery of oil in the region in the early twentieth century and the emergence of the Middle East as one of the premier world fuel sources, Britain displayed remarkable consistency in its approach there from 1820 until its withdrawal as the protective power in 1971. Despite the vast
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transformations of the international and local situations through that period, Britain continued to allow and assist the small states of the Gulf to develop as autonomous nations, even as its role there shifted from being a distant hegemonic power to serving as the main guarantor of security for the world’s energy resources. Britain persisted in its engagement in this region longer than in virtually any other part of the Middle East, perhaps because the local rulers there viewed its role as being helpful to them. The British withdrawal, part of an “east of Suez” withdrawal strategy formulated after the Labor party came to power in 1964 and continued in the early 1970s under the Conservative prime minister Edward Heath was a money-saving measure designed to sweep away the last vestiges of empire in the Middle East. This British departure came fairly suddenly, and it left the U.S. scrambling to fill the gap that was created.
THE AMERICANS SUCCEED THE BRITISH Starting in 1971, the United States replaced Great Britain as the principal foreign power in the Persian Gulf, “not just commercially, but also politically and militarily,” or so it appeared in retrospect.11 It would not be accurate to view this transfer as a smooth and seamless affair or to see it as evidence of the emergence of the United States as the postmodern equivalent of imperial Britain in the Gulf. However, the fundamental similarities in how Britain and the United States conducted themselves in providing oversight for this region’s fairly laissez-faire political arrangements indicate that successive American presidents ultimately accepted the wisdom of having the United States continue Britain’s previous role in many of its most important aspects. The United States had signed a “Treaty of Unity and Commerce” with Oman in 1833 and appointed a consul there a few years later, one of the earliest official American presences in the Gulf.12 The United States continued to fall under the purview of the umbrella provided by the United Kingdom as it slowly expanded trade with the region and ultimately became militarily engaged there under the British aegis. The United States established some military presence in the Gulf after World War II with its Middle East Force as Britain’s junior security partner there. The United States also played a key role in the expansion of various oil projects that began to multiply after the war, particularly after the Standard Oil Company of California discovered unexpectedly large quantities of oil in Saudi Arabia in the late 1930s. The founder of modern Saudi Arabia, Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud, cultivated the United States as a counterweight to the British and created an enduring relationship with the Americans upon the founding of ARAMCO in 1944. The coalescence of Saudi Arabia as a nation beginning in the early twentieth century had always posed challenges for the British in their role as protectors of the Gulf since the rise and growth of the Saudi kingdom was fueled by the religious zeal of the Wahhabis.13 The American “special relationship” with the Saudis that began in the 1930s created complexities for the United States beyond those experienced by the United Kingdom during its period of dominance. Since the United States continued to allow its actions to be guided by the basic principles set forth by the British in promoting good relations between local rulers, however, it was able to defuse, like the United Kingdom before it, the numerous border disputes and conflicts between Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states that multiplied in the era of
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oil exploration. In the early Twentieth Century, the British brokered a peace between Bahrain and Qatar that resembled the manner in which the United States has assisted in mediating border disputes between Saudi Arabia and its neighbors over the past four decades.14 Despite the fact that the United States had been involved in various aspects of the Gulf security and economy since the 1940s, the swift and somewhat unexpected end in late 1971 of the British role in preserving Gulf security came at the precise time when the United States had become so enmeshed in Vietnam that it was unprepared to assume fully such a responsibility directly. The next decade saw successive American presidents struggling to find the right balance of local and American power to preserve the status quo that the British had so long maintained. Richard Nixon’s 1969 statement of foreign policy doctrine, set forth as he was trying to extricate the United States from its Southeast Asian quagmire, guided the initial American approach to this dilemma. This doctrine helped create the framework for Iran and Saudi Arabia to become, as proxies and allies of the United States, Britain’s de facto successors in guaranteeing local regional security, two allies who were designated to act under the broad umbrella of American global security. In reality, the 1969 Nixon Doctrine, which envisioned transferring many security responsibilities to regional U.S. allies, resulted as applied to the Middle East in a regional arms buildup and was marked by the destabilizing growth of Iran as a regional power. The destabilization caused by the Nixon Doctrine was the direct result of the overwhelming U.S. focus on thwarting the Soviet Union and ending the Vietnam War —considerations to which all regional intricacies became subordinated. It is easy, in retrospect, to criticize the American attempt to use Iran and Saudi Arabia through the 1970s as the local “twin pillars” of security, but it is important to place this initiative in its own particular context. As it became more engaged around the Middle East after World War II, the U.S. tried to present itself as something new and different from the imperial powers of “old Europe.” It would champion local powers as real partners in international security in order to promote their independence and emergence as modern nations. The Middle Eastern “twin pillars” strategy as adopted by Nixon and continued by Ford and Carter relied in particular on Iran as an agent of modernization in the region. With expanding industrial capability and a leader perceived to be energetically pushing it into the modern era through campaigns such as the “White Revolution” of the early 1960s, Iran was viewed, from many perspectives, as a critical bulwark against any Communist expansion in the direction of the Gulf. Having secured him as a loyal supporter by replacing him in power in Iran in 1953, the United States provided the Shah such massive amounts of armament and materiel that he began interfering in the affairs of Gulf states to a degree unprecedented for Iran for at least two centuries. Partly because the CIA had close ties with and relied on SAVAK, the Shah’s intelligence service, to provide it with assessments of how Iran was doing, the U.S. government was lulled into a sense of complacency, as the implementation of the “twin pillars” component of the Nixon Doctrine appeared to be working fairly well in the Iranian case. On September 28, 1978, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency reported that the Shah “was expected to remain actively in power over the next ten years."15 The departure of the Shah forever from his country only a few months later and the beginning of a total and unpredicted popular revolution that soon developed a profoundly religious orientation represented stunning reversals that forced the reshaping of the entire American policy for that region. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan before the end of the year confirmed that the
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region had entered an unpredictable period of upheaval that would force the United States to follow a more traditional agenda. On January 21, 1980, Jimmy Carter stated: “Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.”16 In essence, Carter implied that the United States would assume the role traditionally held by Britain, given the collapse of proxy powers like Iran as local security forces. This form of engagement has been the prevailing American approach since that time, but it is interesting to note that even before the Carter Doctrine was invoked, the groundwork was being laid for how the United States would establish conditions by which it could intervene more directly in the region if it saw this as necessary. One good example of how this worked in practice can be seen in the way that the United States physically established itself in Bahrain and secured its base there after the British left. The U.S. Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain still occupies the exact site of the old British base of Jufair. When the United States came into Bahrain, it was very soon challenged by a wave of anti-American sentiment in the wake of the Arab-Israeli war in 1973 and its parliament passed a resolution, while the ruler of the country was abroad, calling on the United States to leave its naval base in Bahrain, a gesture on the road to his dissolution of parliament in 1974. Under tremendous internal and external pressure the emir of Bahrain issued an order for the American base in his country to be shut down by 1976, but ways were found to delay the implementation of this decision and to tie it up in the complexities of international relations such that through the careful diplomacy of Admiral William Crowe and Ambassador Wat Cluverius, the continuity of the American naval presence there was secured. Crowe described the process through which this took place as quite complex: “The two trains [Bahrain’s plan and the U.S. plan] had managed to pass each other in the night on what looked like the same track.”17 This laid the groundwork for the more active role that the United States would play following the end of the Shah’s regime. Following the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the United States has been drawn into a number of conflicts in which it has had to assert an active role to enforce regional security. These interventions took place under the broad context provided by the Carter Doctrine, which asserted that the United States would intervene in the Gulf if its interests were threatened. Its interventions have been minimalist, though, designed only as limited exercises of the U.S. responsibility for guaranteeing security. A good example of this can be seen in Operation Earnest Will launched in July 1987, which included the reflagging of Kuwaiti tankers as U.S. merchant ships that would be escorted and protected on their routes by U.S. warships. It was designed to assert the American commitment to “freedom of the seas” in the Gulf without involving the United States directly in the ongoing Iran-Iraq War. Another example may be noted by recalling how the United States promoted the Gulf Cooperation Council. After its founding in 1981, the Gulf Cooperation Council was championed and assisted by the United States to a great degree, while the United States held back from its own direct military involvement, except when it saw its intervention to be necessary to check the potential of regional powers such as Iran and Iraq to destabilize the Gulf. The direct American military involvement in 1990 on a much more massive scale than ever before was caused by Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait might be viewed as the beginning of the end of this policy of minimalist engagement. However, once Kuwait’s
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territorial integrity had been restored and its borders secured, the American approach reverted to the time-honored role of promoting regional security. At present, with the ongoing American occupation of Iraq, there is broad concern about the U.S. role as a guarantor of security metamorphosing into the role of an occupying power. If, however, the United States can find a way to resume its long-term role as the Gulf’s main security guarantor, by continuing to follow the precedent established by the British in the region, its attempt to minimize its presence while guaranteeing stability can help the deliberate emergence in the Gulf of modern political, economic, and social systems. The recent U.S. announcement of its plan to transfer American command facilities from Saudi Arabia to Qatar, partly to minimize its regional footprint, resembles the ultimate transfer of the headquarters of British activity in the Gulf, the Political Resident’s base, from the Iranian coastal city of Bushire to Bahrain in 1946.18 If the powerful forces of change that are sweeping over its neighbors overtake and destabilize the Gulf to too severe a degree, though, it will be very difficult for the United States or any other outside power to count on traditional methods of promoting regional stability still working as in earlier times. The most recent and prominent actions taken following such a doctrine have been the 1991 Gulf War and the ongoing Operation Iraqi Freedom. The Gulf situation in the 1990s has reinforced the belief that the United States may be forced to intervene when its national interests coincide with international demands for economic and political stability in sensitive regions of the world.
CONCLUSION Overall, U.S. involvement in the Gulf certainly can be seen in many respects as a sequel to the British presence. Britain managed the Gulf through a system of Trucial States that, although independent in name, were run by the British agents in each capital. In a similar fashion, the United States has focused primarily on preserving the stability of commerce and fostering political and governmental stability by promoting the independence and autonomy of these nations, despite the turbulent pressures in the region. It may be this U.S. emphasis on national independence and autonomy, through the way in which various American presidential doctrines have been blended and implemented, that could help bring the region back to the relative stability that it has usually enjoyed over the past two centuries.
NOTES 1
In this essay, the term “Gulf” will refer to the body of water adjacent to the Indian Ocean called the “Persian Gulf” or “Arabian Gulf.” 2 Paul Kennedy, “The Perils Of Empire: This Looks Like America's Moment, History Should Give Us Pause,” Washington Post, April 20, 2003, p. B1. 3 See, for example, Alon Ben-Meir, “The Haunting Aftermath of the War” Manila Times, Jul 23, 2003 (http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2003/jul/23/opinion/20030723opi3.html [accessed July 29, 2003]).
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Lord Curzon, “Speech to Tribal Chiefs, November 21, 1903,” in Arnold Wilson, The Persian Gulf (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1954), p. 192. 5 The Gulf was not the only region in which Britain exercised imperial restraint. It was often reluctant to become too involved at a low-level with the management of colonial areas in which it became involved. The ways that it delegated power to numerous local leaders can be seen in the way it preserved different tribal chiefs and emirs in parts of Nigeria, supported the independence of Indian Princely States, and tried to satisfy the diverse constituencies of South Africa from the Afrikaners to the Zulu. In the latter case, see for discussion of how this reluctance shaped the British approach, John S. Galbraith, Reluctant Imperialism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963). 6 Wilson, The Persian Gulf, p. 252. 7 Ibid., p. 218 8 Ibid., pp. 210-212. 9 In particular, see Rosemary Zahlan, The Making of the Modern Gulf States (Reading, U.K.: Ithaca Press, 1998), pp. 36-39. 10 Ibid. 11 Michael Palmer, Guardians of the Gulf (New York: The Free Press, 1992), p. viii. 12 http://www.usa.gov.om/chronu.s [accessed May 20, 2003]. 13 Zahlan, The Making of the Modern Gulf States, pp. 136-137. 14 Wilson, The Persian Gulf, pp. 247-248. 15 http://www.fas.org/irp/world/iran/savak/ [accessed May 15, 2003]. 16 Jimmy Carter, “State of the Union Address 1980,” http://www.jimmycarterlibrary.org/documents/speeches/su80jec.phtml [accessed May 15, 2003]. 17 William J. Crowe, The Line of Fire (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993), p. 171. 18 Zahlan, The Making of the Modern Gulf States, p. 62.
In: White House Studies Compendium, Volume 4 Editor: R. W. Watson, pp. 133-152
ISBN: 1-60021-541-6 © 2007 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
THE PRESIDENCY AND BUILDING A COALITION TO WAGE A WAR ON AL QAEDA AND THE TALIBAN REGIME Jack M. Beard ABSTRACT The terrorist attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001, presented the Bush administration with many challenges. One of the most important of these challenges was the need to build an effective coalition of countries to wage a war on al Qaeda, the highly organized and elusive terrorist organization responsible for the attacks, and its sponsor, the isolated and fundamentalist Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Before the terrorist attacks of September 11, critics often had charged that President Bush and his senior advisors were “unilateralists” or “cowboys” who preferred to go it alone on major foreign policy issues. 1 Moving beyond such criticism, the Bush administration stressed that the challenge presented by the 9/11 attacks should be recognized, as Secretary of State Colin Powell noted, as “one that went far beyond America” and that any coalition “will be conducting a campaign that will have many parts to it: legal, political, diplomatic, law enforcement, intelligence collection and military as appropriate”2 As military action against al Qaeda and Taliban positions in Afghanistan began, British Prime Minister Tony Blair would declare that the continuing strength of the anti-terror coalition was due “in no small measure to the statesmanship of President Bush.”3 Later, as President Bush prepared to address the United Nations General Assembly on November 9, 2001, commentators noted, “President Bush’s transformation from a go-it-alone Texan into a coalition-building warrior will be on full display.”4 Successfully portraying the attack on America as an attack on civilization itself and the American response as an action justified under international law, the Bush administration was able to achieve an unprecedented level of international cooperation and build a coalition to wage effective war against al Qaeda and the Taliban regime. This article examines and assesses the efforts and underlying philosophy of the Bush administration in building this remarkable coalition, in contrast to some earlier less successful efforts by other American presidents to achieve such concerted action against states supporting terrorism.
DIPLOMATIC EFFORTS AND MULTILATERAL SUCCESSES The Bush administration began its coalition-building efforts on the multilateral level almost immediately after the September 11 attacks by seeking a U.N. Security Council Resolution affirming, among other things, America’s inherent right to self-defense in response to the attacks. Before the terrorist attacks of September 11, the U.N. Security Council had never approved a resolution explicitly invoking or reaffirming the inherent right of individual and collective self-defense in response to a terrorist attack. It is thus significant
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that while the U.N. Security Council stated on September 12, 2001, that it “unequivocally condemns in the strongest terms the horrifying terrorist attacks which took place on 11 September” it also explicitly and unanimously “recognize[d] the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense in accordance with the Charter.”5 Sixteen days later, the U.N. Security Council again unanimously condemned the terrorist attacks on the United States, explicitly “reaffirming the right of individual or collective self defense as recognized by the Charter of the United Nations as reiterated in resolution 1368 (2001).”6 The Council's unprecedented willingness to invoke and reaffirm the right of self-defense under Article 517 in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks was an important act, helping to legitimize the U.S. military response as a legal use of force and greatly assisting the United States in building a coalition against terror. For instance, at an emergency meeting of the European Union, Tony Blair, and the 14 other leaders “pledged total solidarity” with Washington in the fight against terrorism, concluded that “an American military riposte was legitimate,” and noted that “the UN Security Council had backed the principle of self defense.”8 The U.N. Security Council’s position on the issue of self-defense was a critical factor for some states in joining the coalition. For instance, Sweden’s Premier noted “the USA has a right to defend itself against terrorism… The Social Democrats stand behind the UN’s work and the Security Council has unanimously supported the United States’ right to self defense.”9 While obtaining the U.N. Security Council’s invocation and reaffirmation of the right of self-defense under Article 51 and the implicit finding that the United States had suffered an “armed attack,” the United States was acting in another multilateral forum, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO.) In an unprecedented move, the nineteen member countries of the North Atlantic Council, NATO’s governing body, issued a statement on September 12, 2001, agreeing that if it was determined that the September 11 terrorist attacks were directed from abroad against the United States, they "shall be regarded as an action covered by Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, which states that an armed attack against one or more of the Allies in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all."10 On the basis of subsequent briefings by the United States, NATO determined that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were indeed directed from abroad and the NATO Secretary General concluded that the attacks constituted an action covered by Article 5 of the Washington Treaty.11 Within two weeks of the attack, on September 22, 2001, the United States achieved another unprecedented multilateral success, this time at a special Washington D.C. meeting of the foreign ministers of the Organization of American States (OAS). At this meeting, the 22 states of the Western Hemisphere that are party to the 1947 Rio Treaty12 unanimously passed a resolution which declaring that: "These terrorist attacks against the United States of America are attacks against all American states, and … in accordance with all the relevant provisions of the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (Rio Treaty) and the principal of continental solidarity, all states party to the Rio Treaty shall provide effective reciprocal assistance to address such attacks and the threat of any similar attacks".13 While State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher noted that 46 different international organizations including NATO, the OAS, and the European Union (EU), had “passed multilateral declarations of support for the United States in the 13 days since the attack,”14 Secretary of State Colin Powell said that more than “rhetorical support” was expected of members of the U.S.-led coalition against terror.15 President Bush made this position clear on the eve of his address to the United Nations by saying that “the time of
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sympathy is over… now is the time for action, for coalition members to respond in their own way.”16 Stating that America would seek help with the military, law enforcement, intelligence, and financial fronts of the war, President Bush told other nations that, “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists…”17 In addressing the U.N. General Assembly, President Bush reminded members that the responsibility for fighting terror was “binding on every nation with a place in this chamber” and that, “Civilization itself, the civilization we share, is threatened.”18 Commentators observed that “Mr. Bush’s address seemed to affirm a new faith in multilateralism.”19
ONE COALITION, DIFFERENT TYPES OF SUPPORT Diplomatic and international legal support from multilateral organizations greatly assisted the Bush administration in its efforts to obtain various types of military, logistical, and other support from individual nations so that a coalition could be constructed to defeat al Qaeda. Coalition participation was also facilitated by the willingness of the United States to accept different types of contributions. Stating that “the coalition of legitimate governments and freedom-loving people is strong,” President Bush noted, “People will contribute in different ways to this coalition…. The duties of the coalition may alter, but the mission won’t alter. And that is to root out and destroy international terrorism.”20 The first type of support that was required was intelligence regarding al Qaeda’s secret operations and leaders. The U.S. State Department noted with appreciation the willingness of countries to assist the United States in this area, as manifested by offers from more than 100 countries “of increased information sharing and intelligence support.”21 Another important source of support from coalition members was financial cooperation. Saying that “Money can be as lethal as a bullet,” Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill sought to improve U.S. capabilities in tracking, freezing, and drying up terrorist finances.22 While these efforts met with some success in the United States as terrorist assets were frozen and financial links to terrorist groups were uncovered and disrupted, any serious attack on the global terrorist finance network required the active assistance of coalition partners. In this regard, within just a few weeks of the terrorist attacks on the United States, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher reported that “We have had 150 countries join the effort to disrupt terrorist assets. We've got about 80 countries that have blocked terrorist assets already.”23 Mr. Boucher also reported that 111 countries “had modified their banking laws to help crack down on assets held by terrorist groups.”24 These efforts to build a coalition of states to assist in cutting off al Qaeda’s access to its financial resources were facilitated by previous U.N. Security Council Resolutions sought by the United States to impose economic sanctions on the Taliban Regime and freeze the funds and other financial assets of Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda organization.25 In response to U.S. requests, the Group of Seven, the world’s wealthiest nations, also agreed in September 2001 to assist the United States in freezing terrorists’ assets.26
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BUILDING AND LEADING A MILITARY COALITION AGAINST TERROR Efforts to build a military coalition against terror as part of Operation Enduring Freedom began with the 19 member states of NATO, carrying out the alliance’s decision to declare the terrorist attacks on the United States as an attack against all of NATO. On October 5, 2001, NATO agreed to all eight of America’s requests for logistical and military support, authorizing such support measures to be taken “individually and collectively.”27 These requests included enhanced intelligence-sharing with the United States, provision of equipment back-up for U.S. forces, overflight clearance for U.S. and other Allied aircraft, access to ports and airfields on NATO territory, and provision of some of NATO’s 17 earlywarning aircraft.28 NATO’s support meant, among other things, that British missile-firing submarines would participate in the assault on the Taliban Regime, that forces from countries like Britain and Canada would join in the fight on the ground, that air bases in countries like Turkey and Spain and the British base on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia were made available to U.S. and Allied forces, and that France would make two of its Indian Ocean fleet vessels and some ground troops available.29 Although NATO support would figure prominently in the military campaign against al Qaeda, it would not be, as one NATO official noted, a “Kosovo-type operation led by NATO. The NAC [North Atlantic Council] will not make decisions on strikes and targets.” 30 In response to criticism that building a large coalition of states would require excessive deference to foreign states and dilute the effectiveness of any coalition,31 Bush administration officials made it clear that this global military coalition against terror was to be led by the United States and not by a committee. The leading proponent of this view was Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, who stated on several occasions that: “The mission must determine the coalition, and the coalition must not determine the mission.”32 If the United States did allow the coalition to determine the mission, suggested Rumsfeld, “the mission will be dumbed down to the lowest common denominator, and we cannot afford that.”33 Such sentiments were echoed by President Bush when he said, “Our mission will not change to fit any coalitions…. We hope everybody follows, but we’re marching on.”34 In addition to NATO members, the United States sought other states that were willing to join the coalition and support military action against terror. Of particular importance to military planners were those states offering access to ports and overflight rights. Unlike earlier efforts by the United States against terrorist-supporting states, which had been significantly inhibited by a lack of such cooperation, an unprecedented number of states assisted the United States by providing overflight rights and access to their ports and other military facilities. With respect to the war against al Qaeda and the Taliban Regime, Secretary of State Powell indicated that by October 30, 2001, the United States already had secured landing and overflight rights from more that 50 countries around the world.35 The United States was able to secure offers of military support for its War against Terror from around the globe, including a number of America’s Pacific allies, such as New Zealand, Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea.36 Australia would deploy some of its elite Special Air Service Troops to support coalition operations, along with British and German Special Forces.37 In addition to EU, NATO, and OAS members and America’s Pacific allies, numerous states throughout Eastern Europe, Africa, and Asia expressed their support for the U.S. military response to the September 11 terrorist attacks.38 It was immediately apparent that the coalition against terror would extend beyond America’s traditional allies when
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President Putin of Russia called President Bush on September 11 with expressions of sympathy and offers of assistance – prompting National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice to describe the event “as a kind of crystallizing moment for the end of the cold war.”39 Russia’s help would prove to be more than just a symbolic contribution to the U.S. effort, since President Putin would clear the way for U.S. and coalition forces to gain access to important airbases and other facilities in former Soviet states in Central Asia.40 Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan would, in fact, provide critical support for coalition military operations in Afghanistan.41 In contrast to earlier efforts by the United States to fight terrorism, Muslim and Arab states provided critical support for the war against al Qaeda. Although public opinion in the Arab and Muslim world opposed the U.S. action in Afghanistan, several Arab states such as Bahrain, Egypt, and Jordan expressed support (with varying degrees of enthusiasm) for the U.S. anti-terror campaign.42 Arab states also made significant contributions to U.S. military efforts. Some of the most noteworthy included Pakistan, which agreed to allow the United States to use a number of its bases and to provide other types of critical support required for U.S. military operations in Afghanistan;43 Saudi Arabia, which agreed to allow air operations to be directed from Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia (but did not allow airstrikes to be launched from its territory);44 and Persian Gulf states such as Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, and Kuwait, which allowed use of facilities, air bases, and pre-positioned equipment.45 Qatar would play a particularly key role as the “forward deployed location supporting the Afghanistan war.”46 Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates also quickly cut their diplomatic ties with the Taliban, leaving Pakistan as the only state recognizing the Taliban Regime; Pakistan would sever its last remaining diplomatic links with the Taliban on November 22, 2001. 47 Several Arab states such as Yemen closed their borders to would-be volunteers seeking to leave and join with their Afghan mujahedeen in a holy war against the United States.48 In addition, Egypt, Yemen, the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, Jordan, Sudan, Algeria, and Morocco all pledged varying degrees of financial cooperation and assistance, offering to help in closing down the financial networks of terrorists and terrorist groups.49
EARLIER EFFORTS TO BUILD COALITIONS AGAINST TERRORISM Earlier efforts by American presidents to build international coalitions against terrorists and terrorist-supporting states did not enjoy the success associated with America’s response to the September 11 attacks, particularly in the case of America’s attack on Libya in 1986. On April 14, 1986, in response to the bombing of a West German discotheque in which an American serviceman and a Turkish woman were killed and over 230 other persons injured, President Reagan ordered the U.S. Armed Forces to conduct air strikes against five terrorist related targets in Libya, saying: “I warned that there should be no place on earth where terrorists can rest and train and practice their deadly skills. I meant it.”50 Based on intercepted and decoded exchanges between Tripoli and the Libyan embassy in East Berlin, the United States claimed that this attack was one of a continuing series of Libyan state-ordered terrorist attacks.51 America’s action against Libya was not widely supported. A resolution condemning the U.S. action was introduced at the U.N. Security Council but was vetoed by the United
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States, France, and the United Kingdom.52 The U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution condemning the United States for the attack by a vote of 79 to 28, with 33 abstentions.53 Even more significant was the unwillingness of states to make their territories and airspace available for use by U.S. forces in action against Libya, in sharp contrast to the U.S. action against Afghanistan in 2001. In 1986, when the United States sought permission for its military aircraft to overfly territories in order to attack Libya in response to the West Berlin discotheque bombing, France refused to allow American F-111's from bases in the United Kingdom to overfly French territory.54 The American military responses to an attempted assassination of former President Bush in Kuwait in 199355 and the bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa in 199856 were less criticized at the United Nations than the attack on Libya in 1986 and did not result in any formal U.N. General Assembly or Security Council actions. However, efforts to achieve international cooperation or to build a coalition to respond to these terrorist actions again met with considerable resistance, as evidenced by official protests57 and the unwillingness of states to permit the use of their airspace or facilities to launch attacks against terrorist targets. For example, rather than allowing the United States to use Pakistani airspace for the overflight of cruise missiles directed at terrorist training camps in Afghanistan in response to the U.S. embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998, Islamabad instead filed a diplomatic protest with the U.N. Security Council after the raid.58 In contrast to these earlier efforts to combat terrorism, the Bush administration was able to build a broad and effective international coalition against al Qaeda and the Taliban regime. Several factors contributed to this success. In particular, while earlier efforts had been handicapped by questions regarding the legality of American military responses as legitimate acts of self-defense, such questions were absent in discussions regarding the 9/11 attacks. 59 In contrast to relatively isolated attacks on Americans overseas in previous terrorist attacks, the sheer magnitude of the 9/11 attacks on America itself prompted an immediate and unprecedented U.N. General Assembly condemnation.60 Previous efforts by the United States to combat terrorism had also been hindered by a lack of agreement at the United Nations in holding individual states legally and politically responsible for their support of terrorist organizations – a position that stands in stark contrast to U.N. Security Council resolutions holding the Taliban responsible for its support of al Qaeda.61 Finally, previous efforts to combat terrorism had suffered from a perceived lack of evidentiary support tying terrorist activities to particular states. For example, opponents of the United States’ actions against Libya in 1986 had criticized its unwillingness to share classified intercepted transmissions linking Libyan involvement in the Berlin bombing.62 Questions of evidentiary support were also raised regarding the alleged assassination attempt on President Bush in Kuwait in 199363 and the alleged chemical weapons factory in Sudan that was the target of U.S. cruise missiles after the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings.64 In contrast to these earlier perceived evidentiary shortcomings that hindered U.S. efforts to build an international coalition against terrorism, the Bush administration in 2001 made presentations of sensitive and classified information to a number of foreign governments and subjected this evidence to considerable scrutiny. The result was decisive. Following a briefing of the North Atlantic Council by the United States and speaking on behalf of the 19 members of NATO, the Secretary General of NATO, Lord Robertson, said: "The facts are clear and compelling. The information presented points conclusively to an Al-Qaida role in the 11 September attacks."65 A Foreign Ministry spokesman for the Government of Pakistan stated,
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"This material certainly provides sufficient basis for indictment in a court of law."66 America’s principal coalition partner, the United Kingdom, even took the unusual step of establishing a web site with continuously updated information on al Qaeda's and bin Laden's responsibility for the September 11 terrorist attacks.67 Denials of responsibility by bin Laden were further undermined by his own remarks68 and by a history of U.N. Security Council resolutions specifically condemning al Qaeda and the Taliban Regime for involvement in terrorist acts.69
THE “REVOLVING COALITION” AGAINST TERRORISTS IN AFGHANISTAN AND BEYOND The coalition against terror assembled by the United States after the 9/11 attacks enjoyed unprecedented worldwide support. From the beginning, however, the U.S. objectives in its campaign against terror went beyond Afghanistan and beyond the goals of some coalition members. America’s broad objectives were set forth on September 18, 2001, when the U.S. Congress approved, by an overwhelming margin, a resolution that authorized the president to “use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on Sept. 11 or harbored such organizations or persons....”70 Thus, at the outset, the Congress gave the president broad and sweeping powers to fight the terrorists responsible for the September 11 attacks wherever they might be located. President Bush clearly indicated that he intended to make full use of this authority in pursuing Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda by stating that America would “not stop until we get him and all those murderers that are associated with him.”71 In implementing this policy and further expanding the coalition against terror, Secretary of State Powell said, “We cannot rest until we have ripped up al Qaeda; every cell, wherever it is located around the world.” 72 Similarly, in urging NATO to expand its operations against terror beyond Afghanistan, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld said: “The only way to deal with a terrorist network that is global is to go after it where it is.”73 The Bush administration thus described the challenge presented by al Qaeda as one involving a prolonged struggle that would entail U.S. action against terrorists not only in Afghanistan, but anywhere else they tried to hide or conduct their operations. Since Operation Enduring Freedom would target terrorists beyond the borders of Afghanistan, the extent and types of support provided by each state in the U.S.-led coalition would vary considerably. In the earliest stages of the campaign, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld took note of this fact by observing that Operation Enduring Freedom would require support from “revolving coalitions” of nations that might support military strikes against terrorist targets in some countries but not in others. 74 Commentators correctly viewed such comments as a clear indication that the United States was “girding for a prolonged campaign using a variety of tools and involving action in other countries in addition to Afghanistan.”75 The pursuit of al Qaeda leaders by a revolving coalition successfully operating beyond the borders of Afghanistan would involve both military and law enforcement activities. President Bush himself would set the tone for coalition law enforcement activities by stating that he kept a “scorecard” on coalition members: “…if you want to win the War on Terror, you must perform…. I like to keep score. I like to see who’s performing and who’s not performing. It’s part of being a coalition.”76 He would bluntly state that “…one of the
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strongest messages that I send [to world leaders] is: Thank you for your condolences, I appreciate your flowers – now arrest somebody, if they’re in your country.”77 Less than a month after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, President Bush had made an impressive start on his scorecard, with “150 terrorists and their supporters” arrested in 25 different coalition countries.78 By the end of October 2001, the State Department would point to increasing cooperation in this area with arrests in over 40 countries.79 Further operations in coalition countries after the collapse of the Taliban Regime resulted in the capture of a number of key al Qaeda leaders, including: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (a central figure in the 9/11 attacks), Ramzi Binalshibh (a leading member of al Qaeda’s Hamburg, Germany, cell) and Mustafa Ahmed al-Hisawi (the alleged paymaster for the 9/11 hijackers) were all captured in Pakistan; Mounir El-Motassadeq (who also assisted the 9/11 hijackers in Hamburg) was arrested in Germany; and, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri (the al Qaeda leader responsible for Gulf operations and who may have lead the attack on the U.S.S. Cole) was arrested in the United Arab Emirates.80 In addition to the successful worldwide expansion of coalition law-enforcement activities, the coalition’s military efforts against al Qaeda continued to expand after the collapse of the Taliban regime. On December 29, 2001, with most Taliban and al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan defeated and their leaders in hiding, General Tommy Franks, Commander of the U.S. Central Command, noted that over 50 nations were involved in the coalition effort, with 26 nations represented in his command headquarters and 16 nations on the ground, in the air, or at sea supporting operations in Afghanistan.81 As al Qaeda leaders fled Afghanistan, the military operations of the “revolving coalition” expanded beyond the rugged mountain regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan. In one notable example, the United States and its coalition partners conducted an extraordinary operation against al Qaeda in Yemen. On November 3, 2002, Ali Qaed Sunian al-Harthi, a key ally of Osama bin Laden who was accused of masterminding the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in October 2000, was killed along with five of his underlings as their car was apparently hit by a Hellfire missile fired by a CIA-operated Predator drone on a road 125 miles from Sana’a, the capital of Yemen.82 Yemeni officials provided few official comments, other than to confirm the explosion and deaths. 83 Some reports further indicated that the Predator that was used in the attack reportedly was based in Djibouti, the small republic about 100 miles across the Gulf of Aden from Yemen.84 Although senior U.S. officials initially would not confirm American involvement in this operation, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld referred to “good” cooperation between America and Yemen after the attack and said, “It would be a very good thing if he [Mr. Harthi] were out of business.” 85 National Security Advisor Rice would use the Hellfire strike in Yemen as an example of the expanding War on Terror: “It’s a new kind of War [that] we’re fighting on a lot of different fronts.”86 While President Bush did not directly give his support to the missile attack on al Qaeda operatives in Yemen, he did note, “The only way to treat them is [as] what they are – international killers. And the only way to find them is to be patient and steadfast, and hunt them down.”87 Breaking a silence about the mission itself among senior officials, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz called the attack “a very successful tactical operation” that had “gotten rid of somebody dangerous.”88 In another interview he also explained, “We’ve just got to keep the pressure on everywhere we’re able to and we’ve got to deny the sanctuaries everywhere we’re able to and we’ve got to put pressure on every government that is giving these people support to get out of that business.”89 In contrast to previous actions
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against terrorists that were strongly criticized and in which U.S. forces were denied the use of airspace to conduct operations, the action in Yemen appeared to represent a new active level of cooperation in an expanding coalition against terror. Rather than condemning the United States in the wake of the attack, a statement by Yemeni President Ali Abdallah Salih was read over Yemen national television: “We call on everyone from among our countrymen who have been entangled in membership of the al Qaeda organization to repent…and renounce all means of violence.”90 The successful drone attack in Yemen was only one example of expanding coalition military cooperation. The training of Yemeni forces and the pooling of regional intelligence resources further demonstrated such cooperation.91 Preparations for intensive surveillance missions over both Somalia and Yemen were also reported, as both those countries were said to be regarded as “potential havens for terrorists” and one unnamed U.S. counter-terrorist official was quoted as saying that Yemen had “the second largest al Qaeda network outside of Afghanistan.”92 A year after the Taliban’s collapse and with “the bulk of the remaining al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan in hiding or on the run,” it was clear to many observers that “the United States has increasingly been focusing its anti-terror efforts elsewhere — particularly around the horn of Africa…” 93 While American officials in an earlier age paid little attention to matters in isolated regions like the Horn of Africa, the expanding coalition against terror explains why, after Afghanistan, U.S. Special Forces were reported to be training soldiers in counter-terrorism tactics in Yemen,94 why Djibouti was reported to be hosting thousands of U.S. forces and docking American warships,95 why Ethiopia was reportedly offering to base U.S. troops,96 and why the U.S. Secretary of Defense made previously unheard of visits to Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Djibouti on his way to Yemen in December 2002.97 These activities, along with operations in other formerly remote areas such as the jungles of the Philippines, 98 demonstrate how America’s revolving coalition against terror continues to open up new military fronts against al Qaeda beyond Afghanistan. The infrastructure and arrangements supporting these new fronts against al Qaeda also has profound consequences for the projection of American military power generally. For instance, the deployment of between 15,000 and 17,000 soldiers of the 3rd U.S. Infantry Division of the U.S. Army to facilities in Kuwait in December 2002 as well as other deployments throughout the Persian Gulf Region would have a significant impact on the U.S.-led campaign against Iraq that would begin in March 2003.99
THE “COALITION OF THE WILLING” MARCHES ON Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld stated after the defeat of the Taliban that one of the most important lessons to be “gleaned from recent experiences” was that “wars can be fought by coalitions of the willing, to be sure, but they can not be fought by committee.”100 Admirers of these “coalitions of the willing” see them as possible evidence of a “new multilateralism” on the part of the Bush administration. 101 Critics charge that they are no more than coalitions of convenience resembling “pickup sandlot teams,”102 and are based on “a one-sided multilateralism, with the United States doing most of the talking and not much listening”103 or a multilateralism that “means first pre-determining one’s agenda, then attempting to browbeat or bribe other countries into agreement or acquiescence.”104 Whatever the assessment, the
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Bush administration’s coalition-building philosophy was clearly effective in defeating the Taliban and it remains the guiding philosophy of the Bush administration in its efforts to wage war on al Qaeda and other terrorist-supporting states.
NOTES 1
Norman Kempster, “Europeans Dislike Bush’s Foreign Policy,” Los Angeles Times, August 16, 2001, Part A, Part 1, p. 4 (“More than 70% of people surveyed in four major Western European countries believe that President Bush is pursuing a unilateralist foreign policy….”); Thom Shanker, “Gephardt Launches an Attack on Bush’s Foreign Policy,” New York Times, August 3, 2001, Section A, p. 10 (“Representative Richard Gephardt accused the Bush Administration of an obsession with missile defense and of pursuing a unilateralist approach to world affairs…”); Keith Richburg, “After 100 days, Europe Divided on Bush,” Washington Post, April 29, 2001, A Section, p. A07 (“…many of Europe’s left-of-center news organizations have been quick to portray Bush as a dangerous cowboy, an incompetent, or both.”); Ronald Brownstein, “Response to Terror: Clamping Down; News Analysis, Coalition Puts Unity to the Test,” Los Angeles Times, September 28, 2001, Part A, Part 1, p.1 (“Until the attack, critics frequently accused [Bush] of a “cowboy mentality” that prized unilateral action and ignored contrasting views on a variety of issues….). 2 “US Accelerates Diplomatic Drive for Anti-Terror Coalition,” Agence France Presse, September 18, 2001; 3 Tony Blair, “In Defense of Freedom,” The Courier Mail, October 9, 2001, p. 15. 4 Edwin Chen, Los Angeles Times, November 9, 2001, Part A, Part 1, p. 5; The close cooperation evidenced by the numerous and almost daily phone calls made by President Bush and his senior advisors to world leaders prompted one newspaper to observe that this was a “pretty fair showing for an Administration once dismissed as unilateral.” “Freedom-Loving Nations Hit Back,” Chicago Sun-Times, October 8, 2001, Editorial Section, p. 39; Secretary of State Powell alone logged more than 100 phone calls to foreign ministers and leaders in the first two weeks after the attack. “Bush, Powell Focused on Building Anti-Terror Coalition,” Agence France Presse, September 25, 2001. 5 S.C. Resolution 1368, U.N. SCOR, 56th Session, 4370th Meeting, at 1, U.N. Document S/RES/1368 (2001). 6 S.C. Resolution 1373, U.N. SCOR, 56th Session, 4385th Meeting, at 1, U.N. Document S/RES/1373 (2001). 7 U.N. CHARTER, Art. 51. 8 Charles Bremner, “Europeans Support ‘Legitimate’ US Action,” London Times, September 22, 2001. 9 Dagens Nyheter, “Swedish Premier Reiterates Support for US Military Response,” BBC Worldwide Monitoring, September 25, 2001. 10 Press Release (2001) 124, 12 September 2001, NATO On-Line-Library, www.nato.int. 11 Invocation of Article 5 Confirmed (Special Press Conference by NATO Secretary General, Lord Robertson), 2 Oct 2001, NATO Update, 2 October 2001, Week of 24-30 September 2001 (available at
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Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, the "Rio Treaty," TIAS 1838, entered into force December 3, 1948. 13 Terrorist Threat to the Americas, RC.24/Res.01/01 (September 21, 2001) (available at ). Article 3 of the Rio Treaty, which underlies the September 21 Resolution, specifically provides: "The High Contracting parties agree that an armed attack by any state against an American State shall be considered as an attack against all the American States and, consequently, each one of the said contracting parties undertakes to assist in meeting the attack in the exercise of the inherent right of individual or collective self defense recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations." 14 Matthew Lee, “Bush, Powell focused on building anti-terror coalition,” Agence France Presse, September 25, 2001. 15 “Bush to Press Coalition Partners for Concrete Support: Powell,” Agence France Press, November 9, 2001. 16 Rupert Cornwell, “Campaign Against Terrorism: Diplomacy – Bush: Time for Nations to Stand Up Against Terror,” The Independent (London), November 10, 2001, News Section, p. 8. 17 Mike Allen, “Bush to Urge Nations to Fight Terrorism with Deeds,” Washington Post, November 4, 2001, Sunday Final Edition, A Section, p. A16. 18 Elisabeth Bumiller, “A Nation Challenged: The President: All must Join Fight Against Terror, Bush Tells U.N.,” New York Times, November 11, 2001, Sunday Late Edition, Section 1A, p. 1. 19 Ibid. 20 Dana Milbank and Glenn Kessler, “Saudis Sever Ties to Taliban,” Washington Post, September 26, 2001, Wednesday Final Edition, A Section, p. A01. 21 “Daily Press Briefing,” Richard Boucher, U.S. State Department Spokesman, M2 Presswire, October 31, 2001. 22 Lance Gay, “Treasury Center Tracks Terrorist Funds for Seizure; Money can be as Lethal as Bullets, O’Neill Says,” Washington Times, Friday, October 12, 2001, Final Edition, Part A, Nation, p. A4; See also Tim Jones, “Bush acts to cut off Terrorism’s ‘lifeblood’; Order freezes groups’ U.S. assets, pressures foreign banks to follow suit,” Chicago Tribune, September 25, 2001, Final Edition, p. 1 23 State Department Regular Briefing, Richard Boucher, Department Spokesman, Federal News Service, October 30, 2001. 24 Jane Perlez, “A Nation Challenged: Shaky Ally: Saudi Cooperation on bin Laden Lags, U.S. Aides Say,” New York Times, October 11, 2001, Late Edition, Section B, p. 5. 25 S/RES/1267 (1999); S/RES/1333 (2000). 26 Dana Milbank and Glenn Kessler, “Saudis Sever Ties to Taliban,” Washington Post, September 26, 2001, Wednesday Final Edition, A Section, p. A01. 27 “NATO Agrees to Eight-Point Strategy to Support US,” The Times (London), October 5, 2001, Overseas News. 28 Ibid. 29 Steven Mufson and Alan Sipress, “U.S. Gains Allies’ Support; Nations Willing to Commit Forces,” Washington Post, October 8, 2001, Monday Final Edition, A Section, p. A11;
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“Allies Firm Up Military Roles: NATO; US Makes Intelligence, Naval and Airspace Requests,” The Financial Times (London), October 4, 2001, Edition 1, Fight Against Terror Politics Section, p. 3; The French would also commit 2,000 troops, intelligence support and humanitarian aid for Afghanistan. Martin Merzer, “Bush to Allies: It’s Time to Act,” Philadelphia Inquirer, November 7, 2001, Wednesday, City-D Edition, National Section, p. A01; Other NATO countries offering military support included Spain, the Netherlands, and Turkey. Ibid. 30 “Allies Firm Up Military Roles: NATO: US Makes Intelligence, Naval and Airspace Requests,” The Financial Times (London), October 4, 2001, Edition 1, Fight Against Terror Politics Section, p. 3. 31 As one editorialist suggested, “Nevertheless, the coalition is not an end in itself. The U.S. will need to lead the coalition, not be led by it.” Editorial Writers Desk, “Colin Powell’s Comeback,” The Los Angeles Times, September 25, 2001, Tuesday Home Edition, California Section, Part. 2, p. 12. 32 Richard McGregor and Richard Wolfe, The Financial Times (London), Friday London Edition 2, February 1, 2002, The Americas Section, p. 7. 33 “Rumsfeld Outlines Plans for Transforming Military,” The White House Bulletin, In the White House and Around Town Section, January 31, 2002. 34 Ronald Brownstein, “Response to Terror: Clamping Down: News Analysis, Coalition Puts Unity to the Test,” Los Angeles Times, September 28, 2001, Part A, Part 1, p.1. 35 “Powell Says Anti-Terror Coalition Will Hold,” Agence France Presse, October 30, 2001; Seven days after the U.S. Air campaign had commenced against Afghanistan, the Washington Post reported that 36 countries had offered troops or equipment, 44 countries had allowed use of their airspace, 33 countries were offering landing rights and 13 countries had permitted storage of equipment. See “Inside Afghanistan,” Washington Post, October 14, 2001, p. A20. 36 “Actions Taken Around the World as Coalition Begins Air Strikes in Afghanistan,” Associated Press, October 14, 2001; Martin Merzer, “Bush to Allies: It’s Time to Act,” Philadelphia Inquirer, November 7, 2001, Wednesday, City-D Edition, National Section, p. A01; “Philippines Updates Disaster Contingency Plan,” Deutsch Presse-Agentur, October 5, 2001 (Philippine President Arroyo pledged “’unequivocal’ support for the U.S.-led international campaign against terrorism in response to the September 11 attacks….The Philippines has opened its airspace and other facilities for use by U.S. forces in the war against terrorism, and expressed willingness to deploy combat troops with the approval of Congress.”) 37 Mark Forbes, Canberra and Mark Baker, Quetta, Pakistan, “Australian Troops Go In,” The Age (Melbourne), December 4, 2001, News. Section, p. 1; Ian McPhedran, Canberra, “War on Terror: The Noose Tightens; First SAS Troops to Join in Hunt,” The Advertiser, November 22, 2001, News Section, p. 14. 38 Non-NATO and non-EU Eastern and Central European countries supporting the U.S. response include Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Estonia, and Latvia. Lithuania, Romania, Slovenia and Slovakia; African states expressing varying degrees of support for the U.S. response include Benin, Botswana, Cameroon, Congo, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Uganda, and Zambia; Asian states
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include Azerbaijan, Cambodia, China, Georgia, India, Israel, Russia, Singapore, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan. See: “Actions Taken Around the World as Coalition Begins Air Strikes in Afghanistan,” Associated Press, October 14, 2001; “Terrorism: World Governments’ Reactions,” South Florida Sun-Sentinel, September 18, 2001; America Strikes Back, Denver Post, October 9, 2001, p. A-08; J. Michael Waller, “Who Is With Us – and Against Us,” Investigative Report Insight on the News, October 29, 2001, p. 14. 39 Remarks by National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice at U.S.-Russia Business Council Conference, Federal News Service, October 4, 2001. 40 “Suddenly, Such Good Neighbours,” The Economist, U.S. Edition, November 10, 2001. (“Overriding the instincts of his generals and diplomats, Mr. Putin has offered over-flight rights to American military aircraft, provided intelligence help, and encouraged Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, two neighbours of Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, to allow the use of bases on their territory.”) 41 Louis Meixler, “U.S. Forces in Uzbekistan a Stunning Change for the Former Soviet Republic,” Associated Press, International News, October 18, 2001 (“The bases [in Uzbekistan] are particularly prized by Washington because they are located in remote areas and are considered safer than bases in other countries such as Pakistan.”); Pierre Lhuillery, “RAAF Launch Pad – Kyrgyzstan Offers Air Base to Australia,” The Daily Telegraph (Sydney), December 7, 2001, p. 4; Prior to September 11, 2001, America had no appreciable military presence or facilities in Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, or Uzbekistan - four states in which post-9/11 arrangements established a significant military presence. See William Arkin, “Response to Terror: Military Memo; U.S. Air Bases Forge Double-Edged Sword,” Los Angeles Times, January 6, 2002, Part A, Part I, p. 1. 42 Mark Mazzetti, “Taking Aim from Up Close,” U.S. New & World Report, October 29, 2001, p. 18; AFP World News Summary for Friday, October 26, 2001; Agence France Presse (citing Bahrain’s Crown Prince pledging “unreserved support for US-led War on Terrorism”); World Governments’ Reactions, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, September 18, 2001 (citing Oman’s leader, Sultan Qaboos and his pledge to stand “side by side” with the United States to fight terrorism.); “Special Report: Fighting Terrorism: Relaunching the Propaganda War,” The Economist, November 10, 2001, p. 15 (Egypt’s foreign minister, Amir Moussa, said, “There is war between bin Laden and the whole world.”). 43 A report by the U.S. Central Command covering the first year of the U.S. offensive in Afghanistan (from October 2001 to October 2002) revealed that during this period, Pakistan provided five air bases and airfields to U.S. and coalition forces and that U.S. and allied planes reportedly flew as many as 57,800 sorties into Afghanistan — either from Pakistani air bases or crossing Pakistani air space — in operations against the Taliban. The Pakistan Navy, the report says, also provided significant support by making facilities available for U.S. and coalition ships at Pasni. Despite domestic sensitivities, Pakistan also “deployed a total of 60,000 regular troops and 55,000 paramilitary personnel to seal off the western border, for internal security duties and protection of various bases being used by U.S. and coalition forces.” Anwar Iqbal, “U.S. flew 57,800 sorties from Pakistan,” United Press International, May 19, 2003.
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Esther Schrader, “AFTER THE WAR; U.S. Radically Cutting Military Presence in Saudi Arabia,” Los Angeles Times, April 30, 2003, Wednesday Home Edition, Main News, Part 1, p. 9 (The center at Prince Sultan Airbase was established after the 1991 war and was “the center of air control operations for the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan.”). 45 In addition to continuing to host the U.S. 5th Fleet, Bahrain would also send its best warship to assist coalition forces. Tony Perry, “Bahrain to Send Warship to Aid War on Terrorism,” Los Angeles Times, December 30, 2001, Part A, p. 5; Michael Jansen, “How Region Lines up Behind U.S. Campaign,” The Irish Times, October 8, 2001, City Edition, World News, Response to Terror, p. 6. 46 “Eventually, it [the Defense Department] divulged that the location [for the forward deployed location] was Al Adid in the tiny state of Qatar on the Arabian Peninsula. Al Adid is a billion-dollar base. Its 15,000-foot runway is one of the longest in the Gulf region. Construction began after an April 2000 visit by Defense Secretary William S. Cohen.” See William Arkin, “Response to Terror: Military Memo; U.S. Air Bases Forge Double-Edged Sword,” Los Angeles Times, January 6, 2002, Part A, Part I, p. 1. By December 2002, approximately 5,000 U.S. troops were deployed in Qatar and Secretary Rumsfeld signed an agreement with Qatar’s Foreign Minister to upgrade Qatari military facilities used by U.S. Forces. “Threats and Responses: U.S. and Qatar Sign Pact to Update Bases, New York Times, December 12, 2002, Section A, p. 25. 47 “America Strikes Back,” Denver Post, October 9, 2001, p. A-08; Pakistan would later sever diplomatic relations with the Taliban Regime on November 22, 2001; see Maura Reynolds, “Response to Terror,” Los Angeles Times, November 23, 2001, A1 (“The Taliban also became isolated diplomatically Thursday when the Pakistani government ordered the movement to close down its lone remaining embassy…); “Pakistan to Close Taliban Embassy: Official Sources,” Agence France Presse, November 22, 2001. 48 Yarslav Trofimov, “Arab Nations That Supported Past Jihads Shut Borders to Stop WouldBe Warriors,” Wall Street Journal, November 16, 2001, p. 1. 49 Michael Jansen, “How Region Lines up Behind U.S. Campaign,” The Irish Times, October 8, 2001, City Edition, World News, Response to Terror, p. 6. 50 Text of President Reagan’s Address, “Reagan: ‘We have Done What We Had to Do’,” Washington Post, April 15, 1986, Final Edition, 1st Section, A23. 51 Ibid; President Reagan referred to the evidence of Libyan involvement as “direct…precise… irrefutable.” Ibid; The U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Vernon Walters, informed the U.N. Security Council that the United States had acted in self-defense, consistent with Article 51, and that the air strikes were necessary to end Libya’s “continued policy of terrorist threats and the use of force in violation of ... Article 2(4) of the Charter.” U.N. Doc. S/17990 (1986) (Letter from Herbert S. Okun, Acting U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations (1986); U.N. SCOR, 41st Sess., 2674th mtg. at 16, U.N. DOC. S/PV.2674 (1986) (Statement by Vernon Walters, U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations.). 52 U.N. SCOR, 41st Sess., 2682nd Meeting, at 43, U.N. Doc. S/PV. 2682. Australia and Denmark also voted against the resolution, while Venezuela abstained. 53 G.A. Res. 41/38, U.N. GAOR, 41st Session, Supplement No. 53, at 34, U.N. Doc. A/41/53.
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James Adams, “How Europe Got Tough on Terrorism; Sharing Data and Surveillance Cast a Light into the Shadows,” Washington Post, February 14, 1988, p. C1. 55 On June 26, 1993, the United States launched a cruise missile attack on Iraq in response to a foiled assassination attempt against former President Bush. The twenty-three Tomahawk missile attack struck the Iraqi Intelligence Service in Baghdad, causing a number of civilian deaths and destroying much of the complex. On June 27, 1993, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright reported to the U.N. Security Council in this regard that "We responded directly as we were entitled to do under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, which provides for the exercise of self-defense in such cases." U.N. SCOR, 48th Session, 3245th Meeting, at 3-9, U.N. Document S/PV.3245 (prov. edition 1993). 56 On August 20, 1998, in response to the suicide bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya allegedly perpetrated by the al Qaeda terrorist network and which killed 224 people (including 12 U.S. citizens) and injured over 4,500, the United States launched seventy nine Tomahawk missiles at terrorist training camps in Afghanistan and against a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant that the United States identified as a “chemical weapons facility” associated with bin Laden. See Sean Murphy, “Contemporary Practice of the United States Relating to International Law,” 93 American Journal of International Law 161, 161 (1999). 57 While Western European nations supported the U.S. actions to varying degrees, the President of Russia declared that he was “outraged” by the “indecent” behavior of the United States. Phil Reeves, “Outraged Yeltsin Denounces 'Indecent' US Behavior,” The Independent (London), August 22, 1998, p. 2. 58 See Letter dated 24 August 1998 from the Permanent Representative of Pakistan to the United Nations Addressed to the President of the Security Council, U.N. Document S/1998/794. Pakistan also vigorously denied prior knowledge of the cruise missile attack. Betsy Pisek, “Pakistan Files Complaint Over Attack: Angry letter to U.N. Tells of Unexploded Missile,” Washington Times, August 25, 1998, at A1. 59 While a major part of the reaction at the United Nations to America’s raid on Libya may be explained by cold war politics, serious legal questions were also raised. A perceived lack of evidence tying the West Berlin discotheque bombing and other terrorist activities to Libya, questions regarding the propriety under Article 51 of an armed response against a state for the actions of terrorists, the suggestion of retaliatory motives, related arguments against the necessity and proportionality of U.S. actions, and the absence of an "armed attack" owing in part to an isolated murder of American servicemen abroad all contributed to criticism by states and scholars of the raid on Libya as a illegitimate act of self-defense. See William V. O’Brien, “Reprisal, Deterrence and Self-Defense in Counterterror Operations,” 30 Virginia Journal of International Law, 462, at 464-465 (1990). Another objection associated with the 1986 action against Libya included the argument that isolated or minor attacks on the nationals of a state outside that state’s territory did not warrant the use of force in self-defense under the U.N. Charter. Whatever the merits of the legal arguments against U.S. actions in Libya, they do not appear applicable to America’s claim to self-defense in response to the sustained campaign of terrorist acts launched by al Qaeda and supported by the Taliban Regime
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against the United States. See Beard, “America’s New War on Terror: The Case for SelfDefense,” 25 Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, 559, Spring 2002. 60 The U.N. General Assembly took the unusual step of meeting in a special session to condemn the “heinous acts of terrorism, which have caused enormous loss of human life, destruction and damage in the cities of New York ...Washington, D.C., and in Pennsylvania.” U.N. GA Resolution 56/1, 56th Session, 1st Plenary Meeting, A/RES/56/1, September 12, 2001. 61 Since 1986, the U.N. Security Council has increasingly acted to hold states responsible for support of terrorist activities, as evidenced by Resolution 1373 in which the Security Council decided on September 27, 2001, that all states shall, inter alia: Refrain from providing any support, active or passive, to entities or persons involved in terrorist acts, including by suppressing recruitment of members of terrorist groups and eliminating the supply of weapons to terrorists…. Deny safe haven to those who finance, plan, support, or commit terrorist acts, or provide safe havens...Prevent those who finance, plan, facilitate or commit terrorist acts from using their respective territories for those purposes against other states ore their citizens. S/RES/1373 (2001), subparagraphs 2(a), 2(c) and 2(d).
Such U.N. Security Council actions are in contrast to earlier U.N. actions that did not unequivocally condemn terrorist actions as criminal or make such demands on states. See General Assembly Resolution 2625, G.A. Resolution 2625, U.N. GAOR, 25th Session, Supplement No. 18, at 339, U.N. Document A/8018 (1970). 62 Bob Woodward & Patrick E. Tyler, “Libyan Cables Intercepted and Decoded,” Washington Post, April 15, 1986, p. A1. While Libya disclaimed responsibility, eleven years later the United States permitted decoded interception transcripts (which recorded the ordering and confirmation of the successful discotheque bombing) to be made public in the Berlin Chamber Court where persons employed by or affiliated with the Libyan Embassy in East Berlin were indicted for the bombing. The decoded transcripts indicated that Libyan authorities had ordered the raid and that Libyan operatives in Berlin had confirmed the successful attack. On November 13, 2001, four persons (including one Libyan diplomat and a Libyan Embassy worker) were convicted of the bombing, after prosecutors had argued that Libya was guilty of "state-sponsored terrorism." Steven Erlanger, “4 Guilty in Fatal 1986 Berlin Disco Bombing Linked to Libya,” New York Times, November 14, 2001. 63 See generally Seymour Hersh, A Case not Closed, New Yorker, November 1, 1993, p. 80. Commentators criticized the failure by the U.S. Government to disclose relevant facts and its statements unilaterally characterizing those facts; see also Louis Henkin, “Notes from the President,” American Society of International Law Newsletter, June 1993, p 2. 64 Sean D. Murphy, “Contemporary Practice of the United States Relating to International Law,” 94 Am. J. Int’l L. 348, 368 (April 2000). ("Although the United States had claimed the plant was linked to Mr. bin Laden and (based, in part, on a soil sample taken outside the plant) was involved in the production of chemical weapons for his terrorist purposes, there was very little publicly available evidence connecting the plant to chemical weapons production.") Mr. Murphy further notes that the United States was still not
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prepared to release "sensitive information" even to defend itself in a civil suit in 1999. Ibid. See also Jules Lobel, “The Use of Force to Respond to Terrorist Attacks: The Bombing of Sudan and Afghanistan,” 24 Yale Journal of International Law, 537, 548, 553 (Summer, 1999). 65 Statement by Secretary General, Lord Robertson, NATO HQ, NATO On-Line-Library, NATO Speeches, 2 October 2001 (available at ); NATO press releases further noted the following: "As a result of the information he [U.S. Ambassador at Large Frank Taylor] provided to the Council, it has been clearly determined that the individuals who carried out these attacks were part of the world-wide terrorist network of al Qaeda, headed by Osama bin Laden and protected by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan." 66 Amir Zia, “Blair to meet with Pakistani president as U.S. allies consolidate support,” Associated Press, International News, October 5, 2001. 67 www.pm.gov.uk/news, 10 Downing Street Newsroom, Responsibility for the Terrorist Atrocities in the United States, 11 September 2001. The U.K. Government would later utilize this web site to publicize new findings focusing on links between the majority of the hijackers and the al Qaeda network. 68 While noting that "the evidence presented by the United States proves [bin Laden's] guilt of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington," the Prime Minister of Finland, Paavo Lipponen, also noted that "the statements by al-Qa'ida and the Taliban perhaps present their own, clear proof of guilt." BBC Monitoring Europe — Political, October 14, 2001; Prime Minister Tony Blair told the British Parliament that "the intelligence material now leaves no doubt whatsoever of the guilt of bin Laden and his associates.... Far from hiding their guilt, they gloat about it.” Andrew Miga, “War on Terrorism; on the run — U.S. rescues aid workers as Taliban turns tail,” Boston Herald, November 15, 2001, p. 1. 69 S/RES/1214 (2001), preamble and paragraph 13; S/RES/1333 (2000), preamble and paragraphs 1, 2, 3; In Resolution 1267, the Security Council imposed numerous sanctions on the Taliban Regime, including the freezing of funds and other financial resources, while "deploring the fact that the Taliban continues to provide safe haven to Usama bin Laden and to allow him and others associated with him to operate a network of terrorist training camps from Taliban-controlled territory and to use Afghanistan as a base from which to sponsor international terrorist operations.” SEC/RES/1267 (1999), preamble and paragraph 4. 70 “Authorization to Use Force,” Section 2 (a), Public Law 107-40, 115 Statute 224, September 18, 2001, 50 U.S.C. Note. The Senate approved the measure by a vote of 98 to 0 and the House later did the same, 420 to 1. See John Lancaster, “Congress Clears Use of Force,” Washington Post, September 16, 2001, Final Edition, p. A11. 71 “A Nation Challenged: Words of Confidence About Afghanistan Mission and Central Asian Peace,” New York Times, December 29, 2001, Saturday Late Edition, Section B, p. 2. 72 “Powell heads for Home after Anti-Terror haul,” Agence France Presse, December 11, 2001.
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Thom Shanker, “A Nation Challenged: The Allies; Rumsfeld Asks NATO to shift to Wide Fight Against Terror,” New York Times, December 19, 2001, Wednesday Late Edition, Section B, p. 1. 74 Vernon Loeb, “Rumsfeld Says War Will Need Backing of ‘Revolving Coalitions’,” Washington Post, September 26, 2001, Final Edition, p. A07. 75 Ibid 76 “Remarks on the New Oval Office Carpet and an exchange with reporters,” Transcript, Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, December 24, 2001, No. 51, Vol. 37, Pg. 1813. 77 Helen Kennedy, “We’ll Nail Osama, Even if he Got Out,” New York Daily News, December 22, 2001, p. 2.; Mike Allen, “In Terrorism War, Another Stage; Bush Offers to Provide U.S. Troops to Other Countries,” Washington Post, Saturday, December 22, 2001, Final Edition, p. A06. 78 Naftali Bendavid, “House Forges Deal on Terrorism,” Chicago Tribune, October 2, 2001, North Sports Final Edition, News Section, p. 1. 79 Richard Boucher, U.S. State Department Spokesman, Daily Press Briefing, M2 Presswire, October 31, 2001. 80 Michael Elliott, “The Biggest Fish of Them All; Now that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is Snagged and al Qaeda is Damaged, Authorities Are Angling Anew to Land Osama bin Laden, Time Magazine, March 17, 2003, p. 48. 81 “A Nation Challenged: Words of Confidence about Afghanistan Mission and Central Asian Peace,” New York Times, December 29, 2001, Saturday Late Edition, Section B, p. 2. 82 David Johnston and David Sanger, “Threats and Responses: Hunt for Suspects; Fatal Strike in Yemen was Based on Rules Set Out by Bush,” New York Times, November 6, 2002, Wednesday, Late Edition, p. A16; Andrew Buncombe, “Yemen Terror Suspects Killed in CIA Attack,” The Independent (London), November 5, 2002, Foreign News Section, p. 12. 83 Brian Whitaker, “CIA Missile Kills al-Qaida Suspects: US Admits Involvement in Yemen Attack by Drone,” The Guardian (London), November 5, 2002, Home Pages, p. 2. 84 Walter Pincus, “Missile Strike Carried Out with Yemeni Cooperation; Official Says Operation Authorized Under Bush Finding,” Washington Post, November 6, 2002, Wednesday Final Edition, p. A10. 85 Brian Whitaker, “CIA Missile Kills al-Qaida suspects: US Admits Involvement in Yemen Attack by Drone,” The Guardian (London), November 5, 2002, Home Pages, p. 2. 86 Editorial, “Death by Drone; It’s War, So Using an Unmanned Aircraft to Take Out an alQaida Mastermind Was Apt,” Newsday (New York) November 12, 2002, Viewpoints Section, p. A26. 87 Greg Miller and Josh Meyer, “CIA Missile in Yemen Kills 6 Terror Suspects,” Los Angeles Times, November 5, 2002, Home Edition, Main News Section, Part 1, p. 1. 88 Walter Pincus, “Missile Strike Carried Out with Yemeni Cooperation; Official Says Operation Authorized Under Bush Finding,” Washington Post, November 6, 2002, Wednesday Final Edition, p. A10. 89 Andrew Buncombe and Raymond Whitaker, “Campaign Against Terror: Silent Killer Changes Rules of Engagement; How American Agents Tracked Down and Killed Top al
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Qaeda Targets in Yemen Thousands of Miles Away,” The Independent (London), November 6, 2002, News Section, p. 2. Walter Pincus, “Missile Strike Carried Out with Yemeni Cooperation; Official Says Operation Authorized Under Bush Finding,” Washington Post, November 6, 2002, Wednesday Final Edition, p. A10. Frank Gardner, “The Threat of War: With Little Fanfare, America Opens a New Front in the War on Terror,” The Independent (London) February 20, 2003, New Sections, p. 2. Michael Evans, “U.S. Turns to Yemen and Somalia in War on Terrorism,” The Times (London), February 11, 2002, Overseas News. Andrew Buncombe, “Bush Gives CIA Hit List of Senior Terrorists,” The Independent (London), December 16, 2002, Foreign News Section, p. 9. James Brooke, “Threats and Responses: U.S. Bases,” March 10, 2003, New York Times, Monday Late Edition, Section A, p. 14; Andrew Buncombe and Raymond Whitaker, “Campaign Against Terror: Silent Killer Changes Rules of Engagement; How American Agents Tracked Down and Killed Top al Qaeda Targets in Yemen Thousands of Miles Away,” The Independent (London), November 6, 2002, News Section, p. 2; Daniel McGrory, Michael Evans, “Robotic Warfare Leaves Terrorists no Hiding Place,” The Times (London), November 6, 2002, Overseas News Section, p. 3 (the U.S had “at least 800 marines and special operations troops in Yemen and other CIA personnel in the area. Their role is training local troops and police.”). Frank Gardner, “The Threat of War: With Little Fanfare, America Opens a New Front in the War on Terror,” The Independent (London) February 20, 2003, New Section, p. 2 (“Largely unseen by the rest of the world, America has opened up a new military front in the so-called war on terror. From a warship off Yemen, and from a heavily guarded base in East Africa, the Pentagon is running the Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa…. Quietly, and with little fanfare, the Pentagon and the CIA have been building up a sizeable presence in Djibouti, the peaceful republic in the Horn of Africa. At an old Foreign Legion base in the former French colony there are now nearly 2,000 US troops, preparing to go on counter- terrorist missions); Frank Smyth, “U.S.’s New Friend Could Pose Problems,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 15, 2002, Sunday Five Star Lift Edition, Newswatch Section, p. B5. Danna Harmann, “US Faces Test to Secure E. Africa,” Christian Science Monitor, December 13, 2002, World Section, p. 6. Editorial, “Africa in an Age of Terror,” Chicago Tribune, January 1, 2003, Wednesday Final Edition, p. 22, Zone C; Peter Spiegel, “Rumsfeld Seeks Terror War Backing,” The Financial Times (London), December 11, 2001, Wednesday London Edition 1, Middle East & Africa Section, p. 8. Secretary Powell indicated that “We’re going after terrorism wherever it is located…. In the case of the Philippines, United States Military Trainers will be helping the Philippine Government and Philippine Armed Forces to deal with the terrorist threat they have that affects their interests, as well as ours.” “Bush Promises War on Terror Won’t Flag,” The White House Bulletin, January 15, 2002. John J. Lumpkin, “Pentagon Orders 3rd Infantry Division to Persian Gulf,” Associated Press, December 31, 2002.
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“Donald Rumsfeld Delivers Remarks to the National Defense University,” FDCH Political Transcripts, January 31, 2002. Roland Watson, “U.S. Claims ‘Free Hand’ in its War Against Terror,” The Times (London), February 1, 2002, Overseas News. 101 Diane Marie Amann, “A New International Spirit, if the U.S. Can Cooperate to Pursue,” The San Francisco Chronicle, October 12, 2001, Final Edition, Editorial Section, p. A23. 102 William Safire, “The Inside Skinny,” New York Times, April 25, 2002, Section A, p. 31, Editorial Desk. 103 R.C. Longworth, “’Bush Doctrine’ Arises from the Ashes of September 11,” The Chicago Tribune, March 7, 2002, North Sports Final Edition, p. 4. 104 Rahul Mahajan, “The New Crusade: America’s War on Terrorism,” Monthly Review, February 1, 2002, No. 9, Vol. 53, p. 15.
In: White House Studies Compendium, Volume 4 Editor: R. W. Watson, pp. 153-171
ISBN: 1-60021-541-6 © 2007 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
BETWEEN THE STORMS: HOW DESERT STORM SHAPED THE U.S. NAVY OF OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM Jeffrey R. Macris ABSTRACT The U.S. Navy’s participation in Operation Iraqi Freedom was a natural continuation of policies, ideas, and force structures that evolved in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War. The naval portion of the 2003 war against Iraq reflected the lessons learned from the earlier conflict, and featured the heavy use of naval cruise missiles and aircraft carrier-based airpower, managed through a mature command and control structure that emerged from the confusion of the early 1990s. The ability to project and sustain a fleet-sized naval force in a distant land rested upon the post-1991 right to operate from facilities ashore, highlighted by the establishment in 1995 of the U.S. Fifth Fleet, headquartered in Bahrain. The U.S. Congress also had a hand in the shaping of the naval force that fought in Operation Iraqi Freedom. In post Gulf War hearings several naval shortcomings became apparent: insufficient numbers of precision guided munitions, inadequate sea lift capacity, and poor mine-hunting and mine-countermeasures capabilities, all of which naval leaders strived to correct during the 1990s.
INTRODUCTION The U.S. Navy’s participation in Operation Iraqi Freedom was a natural continuation of policies, ideas, and force structures that evolved in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War, an event that proved the largest sea change in U.S. defense and naval policy in the Persian Gulf since the fall of the Iranian Shah in the late 1970s. In approximately three weeks in March and April 2003, an American-led international “coalition of the willing” used ground, air, and naval forces to annihilate Saddam’s Ba’ath Party regime, with the stated goal of curtailing the manufacture and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and installing a new regime in Baghdad whose leaders would neither brutalize the Iraqi people nor threaten neighboring states. The naval campaign that unfolded reflected the lessons learned from the Gulf War, and featured the heavy use of naval cruise missiles and aircraft carrier-based airpower, managed through a mature command and control structure that emerged from the confusion of the early 1990s. The ability to project and sustain a fleet-sized naval force in a distant land rested upon the post-1991 right to operate from facilities ashore, highlighted by the establishment in 1995 of the U.S. Fifth Fleet, headquartered in Bahrain. This suggested a new permanence in the region: by the early years of the Twenty-first Century the number of American warships,
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officers, and sailors in the Gulf at times exceeded those of the more famous Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean. The U.S. Congress also had a hand in the shaping of the naval force that fought in Operation Iraqi Freedom. In post-Gulf War hearings, several naval shortcomings became apparent: insufficient numbers of precision guided munitions, inadequate sea lift capacity, and poor mine-hunting and mine-countermeasures capabilities, all of which naval leaders strived to correct during the 1990s. To understand the U.S. Navy’s participation in the 2003 Operation Iraqi Freedom, therefore, one must examine the Navy’s lessons from the Gulf War, and what transpired in the “interwar” years.
SUMMARY OF U.S. NAVY’S PARTICIPATION IN OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM “Operation Iraqi Freedom” (OIF) commenced on March 19, 2003, when coalition forces unleashed a strike on command and control elements of the Iraqi state, a blow that included dozens of Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles launched from U.S. naval vessels in the region.1 From that first day until the fall of Baghdad three weeks later, naval forces played an important role in the conduct of the campaign, which featured punishing Air Force and Navy air attacks in concert with an armored thrust northward from Kuwait. U.S. Army forces stormed up the Euphrates River valley, while U.S. Marines battled up the Tigris River valley, meeting for a coordinated assault on the capital city. As well, British land forces captured the southern city of Basra. An anticipated major northern front never materialized, due in large measure to the Turkish government’s refusal to allow coalition ground forces to operate from that nation’s eastern reaches. The naval armada that supported the ground and air campaign included over 200 warships in the waters of the Persian Gulf and the eastern Mediterranean Sea. U.S. naval forces included a maximum of six aircraft carriers (four in the Gulf, and two in the Mediterranean), 70 other U.S. warships, and more than 65 sealift and prepositioning ships. The United Kingdom contributed another 40 combatant and logistics vessels, to which Australia, Poland, and Spain added five others, as well as mine clearance dive teams.2 This armada rivaled in number the warships that had participated in Operation Desert Storm 12 years before (which had included over 170 U.S. vessels alone),3 and supported the ground forces that proved a mainstay of the campaign. The use of sea-launched land-attack missiles and manned naval aviation were the major U.S. Navy contribution to OIF, yet naval forces also contributed to other missions like special warfare, mine-clearance, materiel supply (including prepositioning ship movement and escort), and medical support. The naval elements of the campaign were shaped to a large degree by Operation Desert Storm, and the changes in policy, ideas, and force structure that followed it over the next 12 years.
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THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER The two biggest lessons learned from Desert Storm were the utility of our aircraft carriers, and the value of a weapon previously-untested-in-battle, the Tomahawk cruise missile.4 –Vice Admiral Douglas Katz, U.S. Navy (Retired), Former head, U.S. Naval Forces Central Command
The backbone of U.S. naval power for the past six decades, the aircraft carrier, proved a major element of Operation Iraqi Freedom just as it had in Operation Desert Storm 12 years before, although much had changed during the intervening years. Just as with Desert Storm, for example, in which 18 percent of all sorties (air missions) came from the sea services,5 in 2003 over 8,900 allied air sorties came from the U.S. Navy, approximately 21 percent of the total number.6 Prolonged Navy carrier operations in the Gulf, however, are relatively new, and can be dated from the Gulf War. When Saddam’s forces invaded Kuwait in August 1990, for example, no U.S. aircraft carrier had operated extensively inside the Strait of Hormuz since the 1970s.7 Senior naval leaders had long considered the shallow Persian Gulf, with its narrow mouth and limited deep water operating areas, off limits to its primary capital ship. Throughout the late-1970s and 1980s – a period of intense turmoil that witnessed crippling gas shortages in America, the overthrow of the Shah, the American Embassy Hostage Crisis in Tehran, and the Iran-Iraq War – no U.S. admiral sent his aircraft carrier into the Gulf, believing that the presence of anti-ship missiles in the hands of the hostile Iranian regime would prove too great a threat. Other contributing factors that kept naval leaders from deploying carriers to the Gulf included uncharted hazards, the presence of mines, and the lack of sufficient expanses of deep water to conduct flight operations.8 With so many potential perils, naval leaders kept aircraft carriers in the deeper and less threatening Arabian Sea, hundreds of miles further away from potential targets. Thus, in October 1990, when the senior naval officer in the Gulf ordered the USS Independence into the Persian Gulf for several days of preliminary air operations, this proved a milestone, and contradicted those who had long argued that the waters of the Persian Gulf would not support extended U.S. carrier operations. According to officials connected to the Center for Naval Analyses, a federally funded research and development center chartered to analyze naval affairs, the original decision during Desert Shield/Desert Storm to send a carrier into the Gulf was a natural outgrowth of late Cold War experiments to place carriers in “near-land operating areas.”9 Throughout the 1980s the fleet engaged in hypothetical and real-world exercises to see if U.S. carrier air could operate in confined waters like those surrounding the Norwegian fjords, and the Aleutian, Aegean, and Japanese islands. Exercise results suggested that aircraft carriers could in fact conduct safe operations in shallow waters, close to land.10 Following the October 1990 test of the Independence’s ability to operate inside the Strait of Hormuz, two carriers operated from inside the Gulf at war’s outbreak in January 1991, and ultimately, four sailed simultaneously in the shallow body of water during Operation Desert Storm. In both conflicts, the aircraft carrier proved especially useful in its role as a mobile base whose aircrews operate from international waters, free from the fetters of other nations. This flexibility allowed national leaders to move carriers from one body of water to another, without the cumbersome and sometimes lengthy diplomatic wrangling that frequently
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accompanies the land-basing of troops. Thus, when the Turkish parliament refused in the spring of 2003 to permit U.S. ground troops to operate on Turkish soil, and initially refused to grant to U.S. aircraft the right to fly through Turkish airspace, the U.S. Navy retained the ability to move the aircraft carriers as needed. This flexibility of naval air power in Operation Iraqi Freedom mirrored that of Desert Storm, when aircraft carriers moved easily from the Red Sea to the Persian Gulf as the war progressed, getting closer to Iraqi targets as it became clear that the Iraqi Navy posed only a minimal threat to U.S. naval forces. In the years between the two conflicts with Iraq, U.S. military leaders kept an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf environs nearly continuously; unlike during the 1970s and 1980s, carrier operations in the Gulf in the first decade of the Twenty-first Century have become routine. Navy fleet planners have now identified those areas in the Gulf with sufficient depth and maneuver room to accommodate the mammoth vessels, and designated them as Aircraft Carrier Operating Areas, from which the big flat-tops today still operate, and in which an aircraft carrier and its associated aircraft can safely conduct simultaneous flight operations with other carriers in separate areas. Thus, when three carriers (USS Kitty Hawk, Constellation, and Abraham Lincoln, with the latter replaced in April 2003 by the USS Nimitz) sailed simultaneously in Gulf Waters in OIF, their safe operations rested upon the experiences of Desert Storm, during which naval leaders proved the viability of using multiple carriers in shallow-water, close-ashore airborne strike missions.
TOMAHAWK LAND ATTACK MISSILES In addition to the utility and flexibility of the aircraft carrier, the second lesson that naval leaders took from the 1991 Gulf War was the proven success in battle of the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile, the use of which also played a large role in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Military leaders state that coalition naval vessels launched over 800 cruise missiles in the 2003 war against Iraq.11 As in the 1991 conflict, the United States started the 2003 war with the launch of unmanned cruise missiles, which are powered by air-breathing jet engines and can attack a target with pinpoint accuracy. The crews of naval surface ships and submarines (the U.S. Air Force also uses air-launched versions) launch each weapon with a pre-programmed course and altitude, and the missile then proceeds to and attacks a target without placing in jeopardy expensive manned aircraft and their human crews. Targets often included high-value aim points, such as command and control facilities, including those frequented by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, and air defense facilities. Due in part to its success in 1991,12 the United States later in that decade devoted resources to ensure that the Tomahawk would prove even more “flexible and survivable”13 in future conflicts such as Operation Iraqi Freedom. One of the advances that U.S. naval leaders embarked upon was an upgraded, more reliable, and quicker-to-program guidance system. The earlier models used during Desert Storm relied upon a “terrain comparison” guidance system that “looked out” with a digital scene matching area correlation device – a camera – to compare actual geography to a preprogrammed topographic “map” loaded into the missile’s memory. This old system proved very labor intensive to program, and could take several weeks to plan a single mission. In the mid-1990s, however, the Navy introduced a new variant of the Tomahawk that used for its guidance the Global Positioning System (GPS). By 2003, cruise missile planners had shaved to just hours the time required to plan a single Persian Gulf mission, in good measure due to
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the simplicity of the new GPS technology.14 By the time of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the turnaround time was so quick that when U.S. intelligence determined on the eve of the war that Saddam Hussein would be for several hours at a palace on the outskirts of Baghdad, cruise missile planners proved able within hours to plan new missions, and launch a coordinated strike with other U.S.A.F. assets that opened the war.
PRECISION MUNITIONS While we do not believe that the Gulf War was a model for future wars, we did identify areas where improvements were needed: precision guided munitions, joint command and control, mine countermeasures, and sealift. 15 –Vice Admiral John Scott Redd, U.S. Navy (Retired) Former head, U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, U.S. Fifth Fleet, In Congressional Testimony on the Lessons Learned from the Gulf War
There is no surer test of a military than its performance in battle, and the Gulf War highlighted several areas where the U.S. services had to improve. One of those areas was the need for greater numbers of precision weapons. Although the previously discussed Tomahawk missile was such a weapon, the collective use of these precision weapons in the 1991 Gulf War paled in comparison to the huge numbers of non-precision, or “dumb” bombs dropped: in Desert Storm, less than 10 percent, approximately 17,000, were precision weapons, compared to over 210,000 unguided “dumb” bombs.16 In post-Desert Storm Congressional testimony, military leaders from all the services realized that U.S. leaders had to increase their efforts to incorporate greater numbers of precision weapons. In OIF, precision weapons comprised over two-thirds of the total munitions expended.17 U.S. Navy leaders in the 1990s acted with vigor to transform its naval aircraft fleet to one that dropped precision weapons. In the Gulf War, naval aircraft dropped just five percent of the laser-guided precision bombs expended in the conflict,18 and not surprisingly, joint planners assigned to naval aircraft less challenging and rewarding targets. Television images broadcast during the Gulf War featured Air Force crews dropping precision weapons down air ventilation shafts of high value headquarters buildings; naval missions received lessimportant targets and correspondingly less publicity. While some argued this simply reflected a public relations failure,19 naval leaders following the war realized that there existed a larger, substantive problem: they must increase the number of precision weapons available to naval aircrews, as well as increase the number of planes that could drop them. In congressional testimony that followed the Gulf War, the future leader of U.S. Naval Forces in the Middle East stated, “We are investing heavily in a family of air-delivered precision guided munitions to correct strike deficiencies noted during the Gulf War. Aircraft carriers deploying today [1994] have three times the ability to conduct precision strikes as they did during Desert Storm.”20 In 1991, for example, only the U.S. Navy A-6 Intruders (approximately 12 of the 50 combat aircraft on an aircraft carrier’s flight deck) were outfitted with self-laser devices, and capable of dropping laser-guided precision bombs with no external assistance. By 1994, that number had increased three fold, as F/A-18 Hornets replaced the aging Intruders.21 Following the Gulf War, veterans pleaded not only for increased numbers of precision weapons, but also for those precision weapons that could be dropped in bad weather. Early
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versions relied upon laser illumination of targets, from specially-equipped airborne assets or ground-based spotters. In most cases, delivery pilots had to maintain visual contact with the ground. When low ceilings or fog moved into Iraq in January 1991, flight crews could not drop weapons on their primary targets. The need for all-weather precision weaponry became apparent, and was reflected in much congressional testimony during the post war years: “We found that we could not drop against targets in the [bad] weather. In some areas, this will be an absolute necessity.”22 With this in mind, service leaders in the interwar years embarked on a campaign to outfit their aircraft with precision technology that can be used in all weather, day or night, and to drop bombs guided by GPS instead of laser-guidance. Thus, with regard to aerial gravity bombs, the interwar transition to GPS guidance mirrored the evolution of the Tomahawk land attack missile, whose new GPS guidance proved less expensive and equally as accurate. This interwar push for all-weather precision GPS weaponry resulted in the late 1990s introduction into the Navy fleet of the Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM), and the Joint Standoff Weapon (JSOW), both of which saw use in the 2003 war with Iraq. The JDAM is a relatively low cost weapon that results from retrofitting an existing “dumb” air-dropped gravity bomb with a controllable fin and a GPS and inertial navigation system. Because it does not have its own propulsion system, the JDAM must be dropped within a few miles of a target, and the controllable fins guide the weapon to the exact GPS location; coalition crews dropped over 6,500 JDAMs in OIF.23 Where a greater standoff was required, however, coalition crews used the more expensive JSOW, 253 of which were dropped in OIF.24 This 1,000-pound class weapon features small wings that allow the delivery pilot to release the weapon up to 40 miles from a target, and the weapon’s guidance system guide the gliding weapon to the exact GPS location. According to a Navy wing commander with operational experience in the Persian Gulf, both new weapons performed well,25 and likely will continue to play a prominent role in future Navy air planning. Not only did U.S. Navy leaders in the interwar years strive to procure a greater number of precision munitions, but they also sought with those same weapons to deliver knockout blows to greater numbers of targets. The production JSOW, for example, can attack a single point target with a warhead; variants can disperse several anti-armor sub-munitions against tanks, or spread up to 145 bomblets over a target site.26 In 1994 Senate hearings, the senior U.S. Navy official in the Persian Gulf foreshadowed the growth in lethality of this weaponry: “As we head toward 2001 when the Joint Direct Attack Munition comes on line, you start talking about not numbers of sorties per target, but rather numbers of targets per sortie, because each one [of the sub-munitions can independently] go after a target. And we hope to have all 50 of the aircraft on our [aircraft carrier] flight decks capable of delivering those precision guided munitions.”27 These new munitions gave to U.S. Navy aircrews an unprecedented capacity to destroy targets, but the ultimate ability to stage operations in the region would come not from weaponry, but from the newfound political access to the shore facilities that ring the Arab western edge of the Gulf.
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SHORE ACCESS In the 1970s the U.S. Navy had virtually no access to the port facilities and shore infrastructure of the Persian Gulf nations, excepting Bahrain. Even when we were escorting Kuwaiti tankers in the 1980s, our warships weren’t even allowed into that nation’s ports. All that changed after Desert Storm, of course.28 –Admiral William Crowe (Retired), former Commander of the U.S. Navy’s Middle East force in the Persian Gulf, and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The ability of the Navy to support a huge armada of ships in the distant Persian Gulf is new, and grew from the new access that the United States enjoyed following its victory over Saddam in 1991. Despite a longstanding desire for shore-basing in the Persian Gulf’s Arab states that dated to fall of the Shah of Iran, no Arab nation other than Bahrain and Oman had granted U.S. forces the right to use shore facilities on a regular basis prior to Desert Storm. By 2003, however, the U.S. Navy used the shore infrastructure of all the Gulf Cooperation Council states’ facilities. In OIF, from Kuwait’s harbors, for example, the U.S. downloaded thousands of tons of munitions and supplies from prepositioned ships brought in from outside the Gulf.29 From Saudi Arabia, Coalition Commanders at Prince Sultan Air Base outside of Riyadh planned and executed the air portion of the integrated assault on Saddam’s forces, in which naval aircraft played a large role. In Bahrain, from the shore headquarters of the U.S. Fifth Fleet, naval officers organized and administered the naval armada. From Qatar, located next to the new, mammoth Al Udeid air base, U.S. Central Command officials oversaw the enormous command and control effort, directing over 250,000 U.S. and coalition forces. The United Arab Emirates throughout the 1990s welcomed U.S. naval warships on port and liberty calls, and opened its huge Jebel Ali port facility to aircraft carriers for visits and repairs. As well, for much of the 1990s the United Arab Emirates hosted U.S. air refueling assets, which supported Air Force and Navy sorties supporting Operation Southern Watch, the no-fly zones that coalition forces imposed upon the Iraqi regime following Saddam’s attacks on the Shia and Kurds after the 1991 Gulf War. Finally, from Oman, U.S. Navy P-3s continued to operate from Masirah, as they had for over a decade. Thus, Desert Storm served as the catalyst for the major sea change that allowed for the U.S. Navy to gain access in the region that it had not enjoyed in previous years.30 The chaos that followed the fall of the Shah – the Embassy Hostage Crisis, the Iran-Iraq War, the attack on oil supertankers, the invasion of Kuwait – led policy makers to believe that the United States must maintain some type of potent military presence in the region. Two things, however, worked against this. First, U.S. public opinion, still embittered from Vietnam, proved averse to deploying large numbers of troops in hostile lands. And second, even if the U.S. had mustered the political will to send large numbers of troops to the region, they would not have been welcome. Unlike Western Europe during the Cold War, no nation in the region would host large numbers of U.S. forces. Even Bahrain, long friendly, attempted to oust the Navy in the mid-1970s.31 U.S. planners overcame this fact by developing in the late 1970s a Rapid Deployment Force concept, based upon a highly mobile fighting force that could transport quickly its personnel from distant bases to the Gulf.32 (The administrative architecture of the Rapid Deployment Force eventually would grow into the U.S. Central Command, the administrative structure that directed U.S. forces in Iraqi Freedom.)
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COMMAND AND CONTROL In the course of Gulf War operations we found that we had not proceeded as far as we would like in the area of Joint Doctrine.33 -Dr. Edward L. Warner III, Assistant Secretary of Defense (Strategy and Requirements), Post-Desert Storm Congressional Testimony
The U.S. Navy also drew from Operation Desert Storm many lessons regarding command and control. The 1991 conflict proved the first large-scale military operation since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the passage by Congress of the Goldwater-Nichols Act (1986), both of which forced U.S. Navy leaders to integrate the naval service more closely with that of the other military branches. During the Cold War, the U.S. Navy trained and fought, to a large degree, around the idea that its aircraft carrier battle groups would fight wars at sea, sometimes far away from hostile shores, operating independently. Very early in the six-month buildup of forces that preceded Desert Storm, however, U.S. Navy personnel discovered that they could no longer embrace this operating style, and it caused a period of frustration and re-evaluation. In pre-war training in 1991, for example, naval aviators expressed dissatisfaction at having to comply with Air Force rules, and railed against the close integration needed to take advantage of joint air refueling assets, combat search and rescue, or airborne early warning procedures, all of which required close integration with the other services.34 The Goldwater-Nichols Act, which introduced the most sweeping changes to the defense establishment in more than a generation, reinforced this need, which was applicable to naval air in its relations with the other services. Rather than operating independently as they frequently had done in the past, U.S Navy aircrews and aircraft in Desert Storm fell under the control of a Joint Forces Air Component Commander, an Air Force flag officer, whose staff (which included Navy officers) planned and executed the air campaign. According to some military analysts, Navy leaders at first resented the loss of control over their own assets that this command relationship brought. The air plan that resulted, skeptics charged, proved inflexible in responding to the ever-changing air-sea battle over the Persian Gulf, which directly threatened naval surface combatants.35 Although in OIF the command relationship of Navy forces to theater commanders was well-known and smooth,36 such was not the case in 1991, a fact that reflected a lack of familiarity with the new reality of close joint operations. In both Operation Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom, the theater commander of the Central Command was a four-star Army officer. Although generally from one of the land services (the Army or Marine Corps), the head of the Central Command conceivably could be from the Navy or the Air Force. Working for him were the four component commanders, one from each of the armed services, whose role it was to manage the individual services’ assets in the overall campaign, and also to fight specific parts of the battle. Thus, the Navy’s component commander, for example, would administratively manage the Navy ships and sailors at sea, and would also fight the naval battle. Likewise, the Air Force’s component commander would manage the Air Force aircraft in theater, and also fight the air battle. But when the Air Force’s component commander took control of naval air forces as part of the Desert Storm air battle, it sometimes led to friction. Furthermore, the relationship between overall commander and component
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commander was rocky and marked by a “lack of trust,”37 in Desert Storm, the lessons of which U.S. Navy leaders appear to have learned in the intervening 12 years. In the Gulf War, U.S. Navy officers made some early critical command and control decisions that had dramatic consequences regarding the use of naval air in the conflict. When Saddam invaded Kuwait in August 1990, the senior ranking U.S. Navy official in the Gulf was the Commander of the Joint Task Force Middle East, a Navy flag officer, a holdover from the policy in the late 1980s of U.S. Navy warships escorting re-flagged American tankers. This officer, however, was not the Central Command’s naval component (NAVCENT) commander, who was a Navy captain back in Hawaii who had recently been selected as a one-star admiral. Thus, General Schwarzkopf, in his role as Central Command’s four-star commander, had the right under the Goldwater-Nichols Act to weigh in on the selection of his component commanders. Whom to choose: the Navy captain nominally filling the billet from his port in Hawaii, or the existing two-star head of the Joint Task Force in the Persian Gulf on his flagship USS La Salle in Bahrain, or perhaps someone else? After consultations with other naval leaders, Schwarzkopf chose neither, but requested from the Joint Chiefs of Staff the operational commander of the Navy’s Seventh Fleet in the Western Pacific, based in Japan.38 The initial confusion over who would head the Navy’s operations in the Gulf was paralleled by confusion over where the admiral’s headquarters would be: on the existing flagship, which offered proximity to the fleet and tried and tested communications links to the fleet, or at General Schwarzkopf’s headquarters in Riyadh. In the end, the fleet commander chose to stay on the flagship, and send a one-star admiral to Riyadh to serve as a liaison officer. Some Navy officers later blamed this command relationship for the Navy’s relegation to second-tier air duties in the conflict. At the Riyadh headquarters of Central Command, General Schwarzkopf’s inner circle of advisers consisted of two- and three-star flag officers. His three-star Air Force component commander was one of his most trusted. The one-star Navy representative had little say in matters of top policy, in the eyes of some participants, and was “not in on key decision.”39 These command and control difficulties, which stemmed from the Navy’s traditional policy of independent operations and lack of familiarity with joint operations that the Goldwater-Nichols Act demanded, seem to have been ironed out during the interwar years (1991-2003). There was no confusion over who would command the Navy’s forces in Operation Iraqi Freedom as there had been 12 years before: the three-star Commander of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, working from his headquarters in Bahrain, seamlessly adjusted to a war-footing. The liaison duties with Central Command’s war headquarters in Qatar fell to NAVCENT’s two-star deputy, who normally works from the Central Command’s administrative headquarters in Tampa. In addition, the Navy sent to the Combined Air Operations Center in Saudi Arabia the Commander of the Navy’s Strike and Air Warfare Center in Fallon, Nevada, to serve as the Deputy Joint/Combined Forces Air Component Commander. This functional command and control wartime apparatus stemmed from the Navy’s experiences in the interwar years, when the service saw progress in the tactical integration with other joint forces. Naval aircraft in the intervening years, for example, operated regularly with Air Force units, particularly during the 12 years of Operation Southern Watch, in which an Air Force-dominated Joint Task Force Southwest Asia incorporated U.S. Navy carrier and long-range patrol aircraft into its Air Tasking Order in enforcement flights over and in the
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vicinity of Iraq. Furthermore, the Navy made attempts at moving afloat to Navy aircraft carriers the Joint Task Force Air Tasking Order staff, whose members after the 1996 Khobar Towers explosion moved to isolated bases in the Saudi desert instead of military offices in downtown Riyadh. In short, the command and control difficulties that marked the beginning of the Navy’s participation in Operation Desert Storm were notably absent in 2003’s Operation Iraqi Freedom.40
COMMUNICATIONS If Desert Storm marked an improvement of the Navy’s participation in joint operations, it also led to improvements in its own command and control architecture in the Gulf, particularly the development of more robust communications lines to surface ships, and the establishment ashore of a permanent naval operations headquarters. One of the most glaring deficiencies of the 1991 conflict was the aircraft carriers’ inability to receive large documents electronically, including the JFACC’s mammoth Air Tasking Order that assigned to aircraft their daily missions and entry/egress routes. As naval doctrine traditionally had emphasized independent operations, the Navy had not invested in large electronic “pipelines” to support such communications. Within several months of the Gulf War’s conclusion, however, the Navy retrofitted its ships with such pipelines: “Within six months of the end of the Gulf War, we developed and deployed Super High Frequency Quicksat [that] greatly improved our joint connectivity and our overall communications capability. As a result of this interim fix, carriers and fleet flagships at sea today [1994] can receive the daily air tasking order in a matter of minutes….”41 The movement ashore from a flagship during the interwar years also improved the ability of Navy leaders to command, control and communicate with their ships in the Persian Gulf fleet. Prior to Desert Storm, Bahrain served as the homeport for the white-hulled USS LaSalle, the flagship for the existing Joint Task Force Middle East and home to several dozen sailors and officers. The ship, which most often remained pier side at Mina Sulman Port in the island nation’s capital, proved capable in the 1980s of communicating with the modest number of U.S. Navy ships that operated in the Gulf, normally about a half-dozen. Desert Storm, however, taxed to the breaking point the communications infrastructure of the Navy in the Persian Gulf. Instead of a handful of Navy vessels in the Gulf, by the end of Desert Storm over 200 coalition craft would enter the Strait of Hormuz. Although, as previously mentioned, the Navy considered sending to Riyadh its three-star commander, communications from there to surface ships would have proven even more problematic than from the LaSalle, and the three-star admiral chose to remain on his flagship. Following the Gulf War, naval leaders chose to move ashore their officer and enlisted personnel in Bahrain; the LaSalle sailed away for a major overhaul, and never returned to Bahrain. The need for robust communications was a prime factor42 in the decision to move to a shore base the Navy’s headquarters in the region. A permanent presence on land allowed naval leaders to construct first one, then two, large “golf ball” antennae, which provided for large bandwidth transmissions to ships afloat, and also to superiors in Washington and Central Command headquarters in Tampa. The move ashore was driven largely by communications needs, and those communications needs were made apparent by the Navy’s experiences in Desert Storm, another example of how the 1991 conflict shaped the Navy’s participation in Operation Iraqi Freedom. (It is worth noting that,
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given the increase in communications capabilities of U.S. Navy warships at sea, the need for an onshore presence in the first decade of the 21st century is less critical than in the mid1990s). Perhaps the most visible command and control change that followed Desert Storm was the re-christening in 1995 of the U.S. Fifth Fleet. The movement ashore made it possible to bring to the Persian Gulf region larger numbers of officers and enlisted personnel, because it removed the physical constraints of the flagship. Shortly after the move ashore, for example, large numbers of personnel and their families had arrived in Bahrain for tours lasting up to three years, instead of the normal 12-month tour that unaccompanied officers would complete on the flagship. This increase in manning was necessary to support the new communications infrastructure, and would also provide for a robust intelligence collection and weaponeering presence. The number of ships in the Gulf in the early 1990s regularly exceeded 25 ships, and it appeared that the U.S. Navy’s presence in the region would be long-term. Because this presence in a distant part of the globe was new, however, lines of authority, communication, and supply proved uncertain. Ships in the Gulf came from both the East Coast of the United States (the Second Fleet), and the West Coast (Third Fleet), the only fleet operations area on the globe where this happened routinely. Who would control these ships in theater? Under whose rules and guidance would these ships operate when in the Persian Gulf: the Sixth Fleet (Mediterranean naval commander), or the Seventh Fleet (Pacific naval commander)? Nominally, the Commander of the U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, a three-star admiral, would control them, but it was not entirely clear to many naval personnel who this officer was, for whom they actually worked while in theater, and where the demarcation line stood between the fleets. For all of these reasons, and to increase the visibility and prestige of the officers who served in the Persian Gulf, U.S. Navy leaders in summer 1995 re-christened the moniker “U.S. Fifth Fleet,” made famous during the Pacific campaign in World War II. Although few things physically changed when the Commander of the U.S. Naval Forces Central Command also took on duties as the Fifth Fleet Commander, it did suggest a permanence to the U.S. naval presence in the Gulf. Just as the presence of the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean during the Cold War reflected the United States’ resolve to maintain order and stability in Europe, so too did the re-christening of the U.S. Fifth Fleet in the Persian Gulf region.
LOGISTICS AND LIFT We learned in Desert Storm “the importance of early arriving fire power.”43 –Senator John Glenn, commenting on sealift in Desert Storm
As previously discussed, in the 1970s and 1980s United States military leaders recognized that the nation needed the capability to project power to the Persian Gulf, and to influence events ashore. With several of the Arab nations in a loose Soviet orbit, or simply unwilling to host American troops, United States defense officials had to develop a strategy far different from the one that it used in Europe and Asia, where large numbers of ground troops in Germany, Japan, and Korea dissuaded the Communist Bloc nations from threatening U.S. allies. By the end of the tumultuous 1970s, the Carter Administration had set
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in place the key elements of a strategy used in Desert Storm, and later perfected and used again in Operation Iraqi Freedom: the prepositioning on large ships of critical heavy armor, supplies, and equipment, to be married up with ground troops who would arrive quickly by air. This strategy proved pivotal in the victory over Saddam in 1991. Within eight days of the President’s August 7, 1990 decision to deploy U.S. forces to the Gulf, the first heavy ground equipment arrived in Saudi Arabia. The U.S. Marine Corps was the “father” of prepositioning, and its Maritime Prepositioning Ships (MPS) included over a dozen speciallyconfigured U.S.-flagged maritime merchant vessels with merchant crews, assigned to squadrons led by Navy officers and their staffs.44 The very early arrival of firepower was almost entirely due to the presence in the region of these MPS ships, and the expansion of that program within the Marine Corps and to other services would serve as a chief lesson learned from the Gulf War. Various types of sealift delivered 95 percent of all cargo in support of Desert Shield/Storm,45 and expanding and improving the various other elements in the “sea bridge” proved a major goal of the interwar military. Congress mandated a Mobility Requirements Study in 1992, which led to increased spending on afloat prepositioning and sealift capabilities, and appropriated an additional $5.4 billion in the 1990s to that end. The most notable element of this interwar investment in sealift was the funding of 19 large, mediumspeed roll-on/roll-off (LMSR) ships, which would add an additional five million square feet of sealift capacity: two million square feet for prepositioning requirements, and three million for surge sealift capability. Fourteen of the 19 ships were built from the keel up, and five ships were converted from existing commercial ships.46 Several LMSR prepositioning ships were among the first to off-load their military equipment in the months prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom, reflecting the importance of the strategy that was first proven operationally in Desert Storm. One of the places where these critical prepositioning ships are based is the British island of Diego Garcia, a facility that played a prominent role in both Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom. Over the past several years the military island’s lagoon has been home to several of America’s critical prepositioning ships, as their crews await orders to deploy to the Persian Gulf or elsewhere. The value of these prepositioning ships is immense, and can encompass billions of dollars worth of materiel. Furthermore, when U.S. political leaders decide to dispatch a prepositioning ship to the scene of a potential conflict, the U.S. Navy, as in Iraqi Freedom, often assists, ensures its safe passage and its continued safe operation in theater. Despite the fact that many of these prepositioning ships are painted combat grey and float on the water, they are not Navy combatant ships per se. A Maritime Preposition Ship that carries Marine Corps materiel, for example, might temporarily reside in the lagoon adjacent Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia. The ship’s civilian merchant crew, including a merchant marine skipper, receives direction from a Navy captain, the commander of a Maritime Prepositioning Squadron. Operationally, these Navy captains take their guidance from their appropriate Fleet Commanders, but administratively, the ships are controlled by the Navy’s Military Sealift Command, a component of the U.S. Transportation Command, usually headed by a four-star Air Force general. A similarly Byzantine chain of command exists for the Army’s Afloat Prepositioning ships, and for those of the Air Force and Defense Logistics Agency.
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Diego Garcia’s importance in Operation Iraqi Freedom stemmed not just from the prepositioning program, but also from its airfield, which is administered by the U.S. Navy and shared with the U.S. Air Force. Just as the prepositioning program had its roots in the 1970s and validated its worth in Operation Desert Storm, so too did the use of Diego Garcia as a bed-down site for long-range airborne bombers such as the B-2 and B-52. Although the isolated British Indian Ocean atoll is about 3,000 miles from Iraq, the base is the nearest site from which U.S. bombers can operate and fly unimpeded into the Persian Gulf; all other sites require transit over the airspace of a sovereign nation, whose leaders might deny to the U.S. such permission. From the Navy-run airfield at Diego Garcia, however, U.S. bomber crews can travel to Iraq over water through the Strait of Hormuz, exercising their right of passage through internationally recognized straits, which no nation can deny. U.S. military officials in the 1970s increased the length of the runway to one of the longest in the world, which also led NASA to utilize it as an emergency Space Shuttle divert airfield.
COUNTER-MINE WARFARE Most importantly, we learned from Desert Storm not to let them get mines in the water!47 –Vice Admiral Douglas Katz, former Commander, U.S. Naval Forces Central Command
It would have proved impossible to support allied ground forces in OIF without sealift, which a successful Iraqi mine warfare campaign in OIF may have denied. One of the most prominent lessons learned from Desert Storm was the need for a more robust counter-mine warfare program, a capability that was tested in OIF. The presence of hundreds of sea mines off Kuwait’s coast in 1991 led coalition leaders to forego a possible amphibious invasion; additionally, those same mines forced carrier battle groups in the Persian Gulf to operate at “greater ranges from targets in Iraq.”48 Congress in the early 1990s mandated that the U.S. Navy make progress in counter mine warfare. The fruits of these efforts became apparent early in OIF, for the Iraqis had mined the approaches to Umm Qasr, a seaport located on the Al Faw peninsula in the Khor Abdullah waterway that separates Kuwait from Iraq. Coalition forces from the United Kingdom and Australia, however, under the integrated command and control of the U.S. Navy Fifth Fleet acting as naval component commander for the U.S. Central Command, within 72 hours de-fused several mines in the waterway,49 and also seized two Iraqi tugboats and six Iraqi patrol craft in the area carrying nearly 200 mines,50 presumably destined for the waters of the Northern Arabian Gulf. Fearing the undetected placement of such mines, the U.S. Navy had in the region a robust counter-mine warfare contingent, including several Mine Counter Measures ships, Mine-Hunting H-53 helicopters, and over Explosive Ordnance Disposal personnel, whose mission is to destroy or deactivate mines once they are found. Although the majority of the Mine Counter Measures ships and aircraft that took part in Operation Iraqi Freedom deployed from the United States, some assets were permanently based in the region, a direct result of the U.S. experiences with mine warfare during the Persian Gulf War in 1991. In that conflict two U.S. combatant vessels, USS Tripoli and USS Princeton, struck mines, causing millions of dollars in damage. These mission losses, coupled
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with the mine strikes during the 1987-1988 tanker war in which the commercial tanker Bridgeton and U.S. Navy frigate USS Samuel B. Roberts struck mines, convinced U.S. Navy planners and the U.S. Congress that they must make more robust their mine countermeasures capabilities. Thus, in 1994-95 the U.S. Navy permanently deployed to Bahrain two new MCM ships, and two more in the late 1990s. Crews to man the ships rotated on a regular basis from their training headquarters in Ingleside, Texas.
NOT ALL LESSONS LEARNED EMBRACED The United States Navy that fought in the 2003 war against Iraq grew in part from the lessons learned from Desert Storm 12 years before, but this is not to say that the service adopted all of the war’s lessons learned, or changed solely as a result of it; in fact, U.S. Navy leaders have been slow to embrace some of the lessons learned from the conflict. The participation, for example, of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in naval operations in Desert Storm is one of the striking features of post-war Congressional testimony. One battleship commander told of his ship’s extensive use of UAVs in the reconnaissance and battle damage assessment roles,51 and suggested that the future Navy would rely on them to a much larger degree, yet the Navy today has largely mothballed and put in “contingency status” its fleet of Pioneer UAVs.52 Furthermore, some leaders with close contact with such programs have said that the service has given a “low value” to sea-based unmanned aviation, and that UAVs will therefore be very slow to enter the fleet. Perhaps due to the threat that the technology offers to manned naval aviation, these critics charge, Navy leaders have not yet “thought through how doctrine must change to employ, if not embrace, unmanned aviation.”53 Just as one should not assume that the Navy has embraced all of the lessons learned from the Gulf War, neither should one assume that all of the Navy’s changes during the interwar years resulted from the earlier conflict. In fact, the 1990s marked a period of enormous change for the U.S. military, as it drew down its numbers following the Cold War’s end and tried to adapt itself to the information revolution that raged around it. To attribute to the Gulf War all naval changes between 1991 and 2003 would be foolish, for the Navy surely would have changed in substantial ways without the desert conflict. The Navy’s policy paper “…From the Sea,” for example, at the close of the Cold War charted a new course for the Navy, moving away from an open ocean “blue water” navy designed for carrier vs. carrier engagements at sea, and toward a “brown water” navy armed for littoral shallow water engagements against smaller nations. Likewise, the communications and computer revolution that was reshaping the Western civilian world and workplace would inevitably have changed the Navy, with or without the Gulf War. Additionally, these changes took place while the Navy abandoned its 600 ship Cold War goal, and settled toward an equilibrium of 300-350, drawing down its personnel by approximately the same ratio.
CONCLUSION AND POSSIBLE FUTURE CHANGES That said, there existed some very concrete lessons learned from the 1991 Gulf War that shaped the OIF naval force that went into battle in Spring 2003. The U.S. Navy’s participation in Operation Iraqi Freedom featured the heavy use of naval cruise missiles and
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aircraft carrier-based airpower, managed through a mature command and control structure that emerged from the confusion of the early 1990s. The ability to project and sustain a fleetsized naval force in a distant land rested upon the post-1991 right to operate from facilities ashore, highlighted by the establishment in 1995 of the U.S. Fifth Fleet, headquartered in Bahrain. The U.S. Congress also had a hand in the shaping of the naval force that fought in Operation Iraqi Freedom. In post-Gulf War hearings several naval shortcomings became apparent: insufficient numbers of precision guided munitions, inadequate sea lift capacity, and poor mine-hunting and mine-countermeasures capabilities, all of which were addressed during the 1990s. How might the Navy change as a result of 2003’s victory? Perhaps very little, in that naval leaders had already corrected many of the troubles identified after Operation Desert Storm. Initial reviews of the military’s performance in Operation Iraqi Freedom, furthermore, characterized the war fighters’ performance as an “overwhelming success,” one that exhibited an ability to “combine land and air operations and support them from the sea… at very high tempo.”54 Groups that perform well in combat often don’t perceive a need to change. With that in mind, future changes stemming from OIF will likely be on the periphery. The Navy might address the future of UAVs, for example; specifically naval leaders will ponder whether or not to embrace an unmanned platform for missions like surveillance and battle damage assessment, or whether to continue using F-14 or P-3 aircraft with special optics capabilities. The Navy also might evaluate its new JDAM and JSOW precision airdropped weapons. Although the new weapons gave to aircrews a GPS capability to attack in all weather, these same GPS weapons became susceptible to low-cost jammers that the Iraqis reportedly purchased from former Soviet suppliers.55 Navy leaders might also choose to make those munitions selectable: laser guided, or GPS. As well, the U.S. military likely will continue to improve its sea lift capability; in OIF the U.S. experimented very successfully with a small number of very high speed catamarans capable of traveling 2,000 miles in less than 48 hours, an average of over 40 knots, twice the speed of more conventional supply ships.56 Variants of these High Speed Vessels (HSVs) also served as afloat forward staging bases for Navy special warfare forces.57 In the end, however, OIF was primarily a land and air campaign, and the U.S. Navy never had to confront a formidable foe at sea. Should the U.S. have to fight another rival with a more potent naval force, perhaps Iran, the lessons learned from OIF may offer precious little guidance.
NOTES 1
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3
Nick Brown, “U.S. Navy leads the opening assault on Baghdad,” Janes Defence Weekly Online, 26 March 2003, cited 14 April 2003. Guy Toremans and Kathryn Shaw, “Iraq Crisis – Orders of Battle,” Janes Defence Weekly Online, 2 April 2003, cited 12 April 2003. Although a maximum of six aircraft carriers were in theater at one time, it was for a very short period of time, as the USS Nimitz relieved the USS Abraham Lincoln in April. Naval Historical Center, “Ships participating in Desert Shield/Storm,” http://www.history.navy.mil/wars/dstorm/appenb.htm; INTERNET.
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Vice Admiral Douglas Katz, U.S. Navy (Retired), former Commander of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, interview by author, Annapolis, Maryland, 7 April 2003. 5 Eliot A. Cohen, Gulf War Air Power Survey, Volume V: A Statistical Compendium, Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., Table 81 (Total Sorties by U.S. Service/Allied Country and Aircraft Type), p. 316. 6 Operation Iraqi Freedom: By the Numbers, U.S. Air Forces Central Command (CENTAF) Assessment and Analysis Division, 30 April 2003, p. 8. 7 Marvin Pokrant, Desert Shield at Sea, Greenwood Press. Westport CT, 1999, p. 98. 8 Marvin Pokrant, Desert Shield at Sea, Greenwood Press. Westport CT, 1999, p. 100. 9 Marvin Pokrant, Desert Shield at Sea, Greenwood Press. Westport CT, 1999, p. 100-103 10 Marvin Pokrant, Desert Shield at Sea, Greenwood Press. Westport CT, 1999, p. 100-103. 11 Chief of Naval Information, Rhumblines, 17 April 2003, page 2. 12 F. B. Kelso, Chief of Naval Operations, The United States Navy in “Desert Shield”/”Desert Storm” Summary Report, 15 May 1991, p. 59. 13 Vice Admiral John Scott Redd, U.S. Navy (Retired), “Implementation of Lessons Learned from the Persian Gulf Conflict,” Joint Hearing before the Subcommittee on Coalition Defense and Reinforcing Forces, and the Subcommittee on Military Readiness and Defense Infrastructure of the Committee on Armed Services, U.S. Senate, 103rd Congress, Second Session, 18 April 1994, p. 27 14 Christine Fox, Analyst for the Center for Naval Analyses, personal interview, Arlington, Virginia, 14 August 2003. 15 Vice Admiral John Scott Redd, U.S. Navy, “Implementation of Lessons Learned from the Persian Gulf Conflict,” Joint Hearing before the Subcommittee on Coalition Defense and Reinforcing Forces, and the Subcommittee on Military Readiness and Defense Infrastructure of the Committee on Armed Services, U.S. Senate, 103rd Congress, Second Session, 18 April 1994, p. 26. Order of improvements was re-arranged by the author. 16 Thomas A. Keaney and Eliot A. Cohen, Gulf War Air Power Survey Summary Report, Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1993, p. 226. 17 Operation Iraqi Freedom: By the Numbers, U.S. Air Forces Central Command (CENTAF) Assessment and Analysis Division, 30 April 2003, p. 11. Total Guided Munitions: 19,948; Unguided Munitions: 9,251. 18 Thomas A. Keaney and Eliot A. Cohen, Gulf War Air Power Survey Summary Report, Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1993, p. 103. 19 Vice Admiral R.F. Dunn (Retired), “After the Storm,” Proceedings of the U.S. Naval Institute, June 1991, p. 60. 20 Vice Admiral John Scott Redd, U.S. Navy, Acting N3/N5 Chief of Plans and Policy, and future commander of U.S. Fifth Fleet/U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, “Implementation of Lessons Learned from the Persian Gulf Conflict,” Joint Hearing before the Subcommittee on Coalition Defense and Reinforcing Forces, and the Subcommittee on Military Readiness and Defense Infrastructure of the Committee on Armed Services, U.S. Senate, 103rd Congress, Second Session, 18 April 1994, p. 27. 21 Vice Admiral John Scott Redd, U.S. Navy, “Implementation of Lessons Learned from the Persian Gulf Conflict,” Joint Hearing before the Subcommittee on Coalition Defense and Reinforcing Forces, and the Subcommittee on Military Readiness and Defense Infrastructure of the Committee on Armed Services, U.S. Senate, 103rd Congress, Second Session, 18 April 1994, p. 29.
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Major General Larry Henry, U.S. Air Force, Acting Deputy Chief of Staff, Plans and Operations, Headquarters, USAF, “Implementation of Lessons Learned from the Persian Gulf Conflict,” Joint Hearing before the Subcommittee on Coalition Defense and Reinforcing Forces, and the Subcommittee on Military Readiness and Defense Infrastructure of the Committee on Armed Services, U.S. Senate, 103rd Congress, Second Session, 18 April 1994, p. 36. 23 Operation Iraqi Freedom: By the Numbers, U.S. Air Forces Central Command (CENTAF) Assessment and Analysis Division, 30 April 2003, p. 11. 24 Operation Iraqi Freedom: By the Numbers, U.S. Air Forces Central Command (CENTAF) Assessment and Analysis Division, 30 April 2003, p. 11. 25 Captain Robert “Brick” Nelson, Personal Interview, Pentagon, 14 August 2003. 26 Federation of American Scientists, http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/smart/agm154.htm, cited 29 April 2003, INTERNET. 27 Vice Admiral John Scott Redd, U.S. Navy, “Implementation of Lessons Learned from the Persian Gulf Conflict,” Joint Hearing before the Subcommittee on Coalition Defense and Reinforcing Forces, and the Subcommittee on Military Readiness and Defense Infrastructure of the Committee on Armed Services, U.S. Senate, 103rd Congress, Second Session, 18 April 1994, p. 64. 28 Admiral William Crowe, U.S. Navy (Retired), Personal Interview, Annapolis, 13 August 2003. 29 Ms. Marge Holtz, Military Sealift Command, Telephone Interview, 9 April 2003, Washington, D.C. 30 Personal observations of the author during two military assignments lasting 3 years in the Persian Gulf. 31 Admiral William Crowe, U.S. Navy (Retired), Personal Interview, Annapolis, 13 August 2003. 32 Robert J. Hanks, The U.S. Military Presence in the Middle East: Problems and Prospects. Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, Cambridge, 1982, p. 41. 33 Dr. Edward L. Warner, III, Assistant Secretary of Defense (Strategy and Requirements), “Implementation of Lessons Learned from the Persian Gulf Conflict,” Joint Hearing before the Subcommittee on Coalition Defense and Reinforcing Forces, and the Subcommittee on Military Readiness and Defense Infrastructure of the Committee on Armed Services, U.S. Senate, 103rd Congress, Second Session, 18 April 1994, p. 15. 34 Marvin Pokrant, Desert Shield at Sea. Greenwood Press, Westport, CT, 1999, p. 140. 35 Andrew Lambert, Chapter 6, “The Naval War,” in The Gulf War Assessed, John Pimlott & Stephen Badsey, editors. Arms and Armor Press, London, 1992, p. 132. 36 Vice Admiral Timothy J. Keating, Commander U.S. Naval Forces Central Command/U.S. Fifth Fleet during Operation Iraqi Freedom, Interview in Proceedings of the U.S. Naval Institute, June 2003, p. 30. 37 Marvin Pokrant, Desert Storm at Sea: What the Navy Really Did. Greenwood Press, Westport, CT, 1999, p. 284. 38 Marvin Pokrant, Desert Shield at Sea: What the Navy Really Did. Greenwood Press, Westport, CT, 1999, pp. 10-14. 39 Marvin Pokrant, Desert Shield at Sea: What the Navy Really Did. Greenwood Press, Westport, CT, 1999, p. 19.
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Personal observations of the author during two military assignments lasting 3 years in the Persian Gulf. 41 Vice Admiral John Scott Redd, U.S. Navy, “Implementation of Lessons Learned from the Persian Gulf Conflict,” Joint Hearing before the Subcommittee on Coalition Defense and Reinforcing Forces, and the Subcommittee on Military Readiness and Defense Infrastructure of the Committee on Armed Services, U.S. Senate, 103rd Congress, Second Session, 18 April 1994, p. 27. 42 Vice Admiral Douglas Katz, personal interview, 7 April 2003. 43 Senator John Glenn, “Implementation of Lessons Learned from the Persian Gulf Conflict,” Joint Hearing before the Subcommittee on Coalition Defense and Reinforcing Forces, and the Subcommittee on Military Readiness and Defense Infrastructure of the Committee on Armed Services, U.S. Senate, 103rd Congress, Second Session, 18 April 1994. 44 Captain Douglas M. Norton, U.S. Navy, “Sealift: Keystone of Support”, Proceedings of the U.S. Naval Institute, Naval Review, May 1991, p. 42. 45 Conduct of the Persian Gulf War, Final Report to Congress, Department of Defense, April 1992, p. 379. 46 Ms. Marge Holtz, Military Sealift Command, Telephone Interview, 9 April 2003, Washington, D.C. 47 Vice Admiral Douglas Katz, U.S. Navy (Retired), former Commander of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, interview by author, Annapolis, Maryland, 7 April 2003. 48 Senator John Glenn, “Implementation of Lessons Learned from the Persian Gulf Conflict,” Joint Hearing before the Subcommittee on Coalition Defense and Reinforcing Forces, and the Subcommittee on Military Readiness and Defense Infrastructure of the Committee on Armed Services, U.S. Senate, 103rd Congress, Second Session, 18 April 1994, p. 53. 49 Vice Admiral Timothy J. Keating, Commander U.S. Naval Forces Central Command/U.S. Fifth Fleet during Operation Iraqi Freedom, Interview in Proceedings of the U.S. Naval Institute, June 2003, p. 32. 50 Operations in Iraq: First Reflections, Director General Corporate Communication, United Kingdom Defence Ministry, July 2003, p. 17. 51 Captain David Bill, U.S. Navy, Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm Hearings before the Committee on Armed Services, United States Senate, 102nd Congress, First Session. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1991, p. 209. 52 U.S. Department of Defense New Transcript, attributed to “Senior Defense Officials,” Wednesday October 31, 2001. Cited from U.S. Defense Department DefenseLink On-line site, www.dod.mil/news/Nov2001/t11012001_t1031uav.html; INTERNET. 53 Commander William H. Johnson, U.S. Navy, “UAVs Need Doctrine and Tactics,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, April 2003, p. 37-38. 54 Operations in Iraq: First Reflections, Director General Corporate Communication, United Kingdom Defence Ministry, July 2003, p. 19. 55 Anne Marie Squeo, “U.S. Bombs Iraqi GPS Jamming Sites,” Wall Street Journal, 26 March 2003, p. A8. 56 Greg Jaffe, “Pentagon Prepares to Scatter Soldiers in Remote Corners,” Wall Street Journal, 27 May 2003, p. A1-A8.
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Captain Mike Olmstead, U.S. Navy, Chief of Naval Operations N3/N5 “Deep Blue” staff, Telephone Interview 24 September 2003.
In: White House Studies Compendium, Volume 4 Editor: R. W. Watson, pp. 173-191
ISBN: 1-60021-541-6 © 2007 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
CIVIL-MILITARY RELATIONS AND THE WAR ON TERROR Stephen D. Wrage ABSTRACT Richard Betts, in Soldiers, Statesmen and Cold War Crises (Oxford University Press, 1982) demonstrated that military leaders have been consistently more cautious in initiating the use of force than the civilian leadership to which they report. This article finds that pattern holds with respect to George W. Bush’s War on Terrorism. The U.S. military clearly was reluctant throughout the 1990s to intervene in many humanitarian crises (Somalia, Haiti, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Kosovo). Moreover, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, then led by Colin Powell, bargained hard in 1990 to delay the use of force against Iraq. After the embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998, the Joint Chiefs were content with cruise missile salvos. This article argues that if the source of the resistance to major military responses in all these cases were a well-founded doubt that vital national interests were at stake, then the resistance ought to have been dispelled by the events of September 11th. In fact, it has continued in pronounced form, particularly over President Bush’s plan to make war on Iraq.
INTRODUCTION Three articles in this issue have put the War on Terror in historical perspective, a fourth has considered its legal aspects, a fifth has charted its diplomacy, and a sixth has examined its impact on the president’s popularity. This article will consider the War on Terror in relation to civil – military relations. It will argue that two distinct and opposed views of proper relations between the elected and appointed political authorities on the one hand and the uniformed military authorities on the other compete for dominance in the foreign policy process. Furthermore, this piece will contend that one of these views, when it has been predominant, has significantly diminished the president’s force-using powers while the other, when it prevailed, has considerably enhanced them. The first of these views, which generally is preferred by the military, was predominant throughout the 1990s. The other, generally preferred by the civilian leadership, has prevailed more recently and has been dominant since the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. This article will show that the military’s preferred view dominated to such an extent in the 1990s that the Clinton White House was in significant respects intimidated by the Pentagon and the president was deterred by his own military from uses of force. As a result of this and other factors, the powers of the presidency were significantly diminished and the military
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instrument was left unused by its civilian masters on a number of occasions when use of force likely would have been constructive and appropriate. By contrast, the article will demonstrate that in the George W. Bush administration the civilian-preferred view has prevailed to such an extent that the military has been silenced or ignored and, as a result, its valuable professional advice has not featured as it should in the policy-making process. At the same time, however, the dominance of the civilian-preferred view has made possible certain innovations and reforms that are normally very difficult to accomplish and had proven impossible to carry out in the previous decade. These innovations and reforms have been instrumental in the War on Terror. The article will track the shifting balance between these two views with particular attention to the role of the U.S. Navy in contrast to its sister services. It will find that for various reasons, many of them involving new weapons and tactics, the Navy has in recent years found less occasion for tension with the civilian authorities than the Army, though somewhat more than the Air Force. If the uniformed authorities grew too assertive in the American foreign policy process in the 1990s – and this article will argue that they did – the irony at the current juncture is that the cause of sound policy would be well served if the military could recover some of its former capacity to resist and restrain civilian policy makers. The search for a proper balance between civilian and military authorities continues, and it moves forward in the precarious and fast-changing circumstances of a War on Terror and a new, radical, and aggressive preemptive national security strategy.
TWO VIEWS OF CIVIL MILITARY RELATIONS One vision of proper civil-military relations, which we will label the military-preferred view, holds that the civilian leadership should give the military a mission, and then get out of the way.1 Lay out the large objective, set out the major political limits, describe the desired outcome, and then stand back. Military people sometimes express this view by drawing an analogy to surgery: If you needed your appendix out, wouldn’t you go hire the best surgical team you could find? And once you did that, once you located the most qualified professional, would you try to stay awake during the operation and keep interfering? Of course not. You would let the professionals do it their way. They know best. They bring to the role great skills and vast experience. It’s their job and their responsibility. Let them do their job, or don’t expect the outcome you were hoping for at the outset. That’s the way it is in war. Don’t be looking over the officers’ shoulders; don’t be telling them what forces they must use, where they can bomb and where they can’t, where they can go and when they must stop. Those are technical questions that no one outside the military is qualified to answer.
Teaching at a military academy, one hears this view weekly, and not only from midshipmen and cadets too young to know better.2 The civilian-preferred view holds that the members of the military are and ought to be mere implementers of the objectives and plans drawn up by the political authorities. In this view, the military are functionaries whose skills are necessary but whose judgment must be
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limited to technical matters narrowly defined. “War is too important to be left to the generals,”3 the holders of the civilian-preferred view repeat. Left unsupervised they will let things get out of hand. In fact, they will carry things out of hand. They will dictate when and how the military can be used. They will refuse missions that do not fit their preferences and will undermine the accomplishment of missions they do not favor. MacArthur in Korea undertook on his own authority to spread a war, to try to take it nuclear, and ultimately to try to ride it to the White House. Nowadays these political generals are more likely to do the opposite – to refuse to go into a place like Rwanda or Bosnia or Kosovo, to put up enough resistance to forestall or defeat the decision to deploy, or to set severely limiting conditions on how missions can be carried out. Don’t let the officers come to threaten the Constitution they are sworn to protect. Keep the generals away from political decisions; keep them out of politics altogether. And if they don’t have the good sense and professionalism to stay out of political affairs, keep them out by keeping them functionaries, implementers. Let them simply carry out orders from their civilian superiors.
Both views, which admittedly are caricatured here, (but not so broadly as to be beyond what one actually hears) merely represent poles in a spectrum of debate that includes many more moderate voices. It became in the 1990s a polarized debate, however, marked by many unrealistic and oversimplified statements. The first view clearly arrogates to the military powers that ought to be left in the hands of elected and appointed political officials. The second view obviously shuts out military advice and attempts to monopolize issues that require the informed professional judgment of members of the uniformed services. Neither view can be sustained for long without inviting conflict and disaster, yet with so much at stake (including the success with which the president may resort to force), the struggle between the two views is incessant and important to understand and monitor.
A RECORD OF DETERIORATION The record of civil-military relations since World War II has been in most respects a record of deterioration. The decline in harmony and balance is captured in a number of changes, including the demise of one fundamental norm and the emergence of another. Officers in the 1940s held to a strong norm that they should steer entirely clear of politics. In the years following World War II, major former military figures took highly visible roles in public affairs, but they had during their days in uniform been scrupulous in avoiding partisan activity of any kind. One thinks of General George C. Marshall and General Omar Bradley who were so resolutely apolitical when they were in uniform that they refused even to vote. Eliot Cohen quotes General Marshall in 1943 instructing one of his subordinates: “We are completely devoted, we are a member of a priesthood, really, the sole purpose of which is to defend the republic.” The political neutrality of officers is “a sacred trust” between themselves and the American people to be kept in mind “every day and every hour.”4 One also thinks of course of General MacArthur with his blatant political ambitions,5 but those ambitions were frustrated when many of the most senior military officers stepped forward to criticize him before Congress for failing to defer properly to the civilian political authorities. In a sanctimonious and misleading attempt to excuse his violation of the norm, he
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offered this mystical appeal to Constitution and country: “I find in existence a new and heretofore unknown and dangerous concept that the members of our armed services owe primary allegiance to those who temporarily exercise the authority of the executive branch, rather than to the country and its Constitution which they are sworn to defend.”6 By this theory, the elected government is nothing but a bunch of transients, and it is up to each military commander to divine the high secret soul of the Republic in his own way and offer his allegiance to it. This appeal would be less pernicious if it had not worked so well for MacArthur, for a time at least, in 1951, and if one had not heard it again from Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North in 1983. By the 1980s the wall of separation between the military and politics had been so often and so thoroughly breached that it no longer existed as a norm. Americans had grown used to seeing active duty military officers as chief of staff to the President (Alexander Haig started as a colonel in the White House and rose from two to four stars in six months, so the lesson to other officers was not that being political does not pay), as National Security Advisor, (Brent Scowcroft, John Poindexter, Robert MacFarlane, and Colin Powell), and as special assistant for unannounced wars (North.)7 The society had grown equally used to seeing military men in all manner of civilian roles — General Julius Becton running the Washington, D.C., schools, General Barry McCaffrey as drug czar, etc. – and to turning to the military to take on new roles like keeping peace in riot-torn inner cities, cleaning up after natural disasters, patrolling the Mexican border for illegal immigrants, tracking private planes over the Caribbean, running boot camps for juvenile drug offenders, even teaching science in inner city high schools. In 1992 the barrier deteriorated still further as Americans witnessed a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs endorsing the Democratic presidential candidate and being rewarded with one of the finest ambassadorships. In 2000 the Republican candidate collected a long list of flag rank endorsements, “topped by three men who had retired only weeks or even days earlier from military service: the professional chiefs of the Navy and the Marine Corps, and the commander of the American forces in the Persian Gulf.”8 The demise of the apolitical norm was speeded by the rise of its inverse: insisting that political leaders follow the officers’ advice. “Contrary to the traditional understanding of civilian control, a majority of elite military officers today believes that it is proper for the military to insist rather than merely to advise (or even advocate in private) on key matters, particularly those involving the use of force – for instance, ‘setting rules of engagement’, developing an ‘exit strategy’, and ‘deciding what kinds of military units (air vs. naval, heavy vs. light) will be used to accomplish all tasks.”9 This “duty to insist,”10 which obviously runs quite counter to the more traditional duty to obey, primarily came out of the bitter experiences of Vietnam. Almost every war, but especially those wars and interventions that ended in an armistice (Korea), a debacle (the Bay of Pigs), a defeat (Vietnam), or even, to a lesser extent, an inconclusive settlement (the 1991 Iraq War), has given rise to charges that the “amateurs” in control were incompetent, selfserving, excessively political, lacking in resolve, timid or even treacherous. Robert McNamara’s In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam was a lightning rod for these sentiments and one can find statements and theories posted in Vietnam veterans’ chat rooms every bit as virulent as those made by the French and German “stab in the back” theorists who wrote after the Franco-Prussian War and World War I. The theme of the complaints is “never again,” and the admonition endlessly repeated is that the civilians must
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never be allowed to drag the military into another conflict the civilians will hold back on waging or back out of before it is finished.11 In each case the complaint is the same – that the civilian authorities were not prepared to do what it took to win.12 In Lebanon in 1983, after the unnecessary and tragic deaths of 241 Marines in their barracks, the secretary of defense himself became the primary voice of the “never again” message. His Weinberger Doctrine set out a six-item checklist of conditions that must be met before American forces could be committed to combat abroad.13 It was so extensive and categorical as to be quite unrealistic and in fact was ceaselessly cited by the military, yet seldom completely observed by the civilians, even by Weinberger.14 The doctrine soon came to serve more like a dogma and became a check-the-box expression of the military-preferred view. Colin Powell, who may have been the primary drafter of the Weinberger speech, fortified the checklist with the requirement that when force is applied it must not be just adequate or sufficient or appropriate but must be truly “overwhelming.” With this standard in place in the minds of the officer corps, any proposed use of force that was not outsized for the task at hand could be derided as a plan that merely “hoped to win” – one that showed the civilians were at it once again, fooling at war but not prepared to do what it takes to win. In any case, proposals for enormous uses of force would seldom survive the policy process. The Never Again Club and its successors won the debate either way. Two more factors are worth mentioning for their importance in the deterioration of civilmilitary relations, and for their importance in the 1990s and the current decade. One is the problem of limited war; the other is the growth of the military establishment. In the nuclear age, it was necessary to take those weapons out of the hands of the military and put them into the hands of the highest national command authority, and to recognize that henceforth escalation could not be open-ended, political objectives had to be limited, and the use of force could seldom be “all-out.” As the prime theorist of limited war, Robert E. Osgood, famously observed, military forces were not only for fighting but also for signaling. The idea of sending soldiers and sailors into harm’s way merely to “send a message” was anathema and provocative to the Never Again Club and its later manifestations. Their teaching was that you use force because you mean to win, not because you want to send a signal. Uses of force meant to be signals of resolve, to the military point of view, indicated the lack of a clear objective, or of will.15 Henry Kissinger was a great proponent of using military force for message sending. For example, in May of 1975, when the crew of the merchant ship Mayaguez was taken hostage by Cambodians just a few days after the fall of Saigon, he counseled President Ford that a splashy rescue in force was essential to show America still had pride, standing, and power. More Marines died in the rescue (18 killed and 50 wounded) than there were crewmembers to be saved. Ten of the eleven helicopters used in the assault were damaged or destroyed. After the crewmembers had been secured and as the troops were withdrawing, Kissinger called for one more bombing strike, to send a message – “Just to show we are really ferocious!” he said. “Otherwise they will attack us as the ship leaves.” President Ford gave the order for the last strike, but the order was never carried out. Ford did not press the point with the military.16 The deterioration in civil-military relations and the assertion of the military-preferred view was also driven by the dramatic increase in the resources controlled by the military. NSC 68, the New Look and the creation of what Daniel Yergin has called “the National Security State”17 meant an immense increase in resources and power for the officer corps.
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Eisenhower famously warned of the military industrial complex as a growing power center to be controlled. This process continued through the intervening decades, but accelerated greatly in the 1990s as distrustful Republican congresses with Senator Jesse Helms leading the way defunded the State Department and transferred resources and responsibilities to the Department of Defense, and particularly to the regional combatant commanders or CINCs.18 In 1999 the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General John Shalikashvili, rose at a State Department function and declared, “What we are doing to our diplomatic capabilities is criminal. By slashing them, we are less able to avoid disasters such as Somalia or Kosovo, and therefore we will be obliged to use military force still more often.”19 When the head of the military argues that his counterparts at State deserve more funding, one can be sure the situation is far out of balance in his direction.
THE EXPERIENCE OF THE 1990S AND THE DOMINANCE OF THE MILITARY-PREFERRED VIEW There is no question that the McNamara era was a time of strong reassertion of civilian control of the military and of the civilian-preferred view. It is equally clear that the Weinberger era was a time of ceding control to the military and of capitulation to the militarypreferred view. The ceding of control continued under the presidencies of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. One can look at the record of the 1990s for an indication of how the military-preferred view of civil-military relations tends to function when it is allowed to predominate. The decade featured an unusually large number of military interventions, and they fell into two categories: massive or minimal. The pattern was “all” or “nearly nothing at all.” When, to refer to the earlier analogy, civilian authorities backed off and the military were allowed to make the calls on when and how to use force, to behave like surgeons who are not second-guessed, they worked at the extremes and either practiced radical surgery or administered mere palliatives. Desert Storm set the pattern for the “all” extreme. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Powell’s intention seems to have been to make the White House and Congress commit themselves decisively, as the Weinberger Doctrine declares they must. Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait apparently did not meet the Weinberger criteria for a threat to a vital interest, at least to Powell’s mind, or he was not confident that the “reasonable assurance” of “the support of the American people and their representatives in Congress” was present. In the first week after the invasion he pressed for diplomatic rather than military options since the American people did not “want their young dying for $1.50 a gallon oil.”20 When the CENTCOM team came to Washington to brief Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney seven weeks after the invasion, they recommended either a massive ground attack running straight at the Republican Guard, with losses expected to be heavy, or a bombing campaign only.21 A more adequate attack would require another corps, Powell said. An air campaign alone could not be assured of driving Iraqi forces out of Kuwait. This was one of many times in the decade when the military would offer two bad options, confident that the civilian authorities would choose neither. From examining these instances, one gets the sense of a negotiation.
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The negotiation came to seem more like a poker game as Powell told a British officer, and later the U.S. Congress, that policy makers should allow sanctions at least two years to work before a resort to force.22 In late October 1990 CENTCOM commander General Schwarzkopf asked for two additional armored divisions, additional Marines, one more aircraft carrier and some additional Air Force planes. Powell chose not to pass on Schwarzkopf’s request. Instead, he raised the ante mightily, substituting a list of his own that “went well beyond what the CENTCOM chief had sought. Powell was proposing that a second Army corps be sent… a doubling of the Marine forces in the Gulf, three additional aircraft carriers, and a virtual doubling of the number of Air Force planes.”23 Secretary of Defense Cheney met Powell’s bet and endorsed the request without a single condition or expression of doubt, as though calling a bluff. "Scowcroft (the National Security Advisor) and his deputy, Bob Gates, both thought that Powell’s request might have been designed more to intimidate George Bush than Saddam Hussein, but unperturbed, the president responded, “If that’s what you need, we’ll do it.”24 In the end Desert Storm involved 451,000 troops.25 This was the pattern for most of the uses of military force in the 1990s. The militarypreferred view was dominant and the civilian leadership was deferential to the point of abdication. At the end of the first Iraq war, President Bush exulted, “I guess we have finally kicked the Vietnam syndrome,” by which he meant that the country and its leadership had gotten over the tension, reluctance, doubt and anxiety over the use of force. In fact there had been no resolution of the issues underlying the use of force. Instead, the civilian-preferred view had capitulated before the military-preferred view. Civilian abdication of leadership lay behind the story in Somalia in late 1992: A commitment of American forces under the auspices of the United Nations allowed for the pursuit of parallel and conflicting policies, which culminated in a disastrous attempt to kidnap a Somali warlord whose cooperation was essential to any stable arrangement in Mogadishu. Here, too, civilian abdication, not military arrogance, was to blame…. Some effort should be made by national authority to harmonize ends and means. Far from abusing the military by micro-managing it, the Clinton administration abused it by failing to take the war seriously and inquire into means, methods and techniques.26
One observer sees an overall pact of extreme forbearance with the military under the Clinton administration. After his atrocious start with them,27 “Clinton and his White House made an unspoken pact with the military brass: Don’t push us and we won’t push you. There would be no substantial restructuring of the armed forces. No deeper cuts. No radical social changes.”28 In a pattern to be repeated several times under the Clinton administration, the military perceived the Somalia deployment as a quagmire in the making and so resisted the deployment or encouraged the withdrawal of some kinds of troops or weapons. In Somalia the military “favored the withdrawal of the one system that might have rescued the Rangers, the AC-130 gunship.”29 Rwanda was another case where in the absence of assertive civilian leadership the military could choose to do all or nothing at all, and chose the latter. A massive genocide was clearly underway. According to good intelligence, much of it supplied in advance by General Dallaire, the Canadian mission commander for the U.N. Assistance Mission to Rwanda. Kigali, however, was too much like Mogadishu, but without a port. The practical difficulties
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of rapid intervention were substantial, so the military offered unthinkably massive and costly options, induced Clinton to commit not to send ground troops, then argued that no measure short of troops on the ground would help. The State Department under Warren Christopher was reduced to denying that genocide was occurring, or, when that was implausible, to painfully dodging the use of the word genocide lest it trigger a commitment under the U.N. genocide convention to intervene – a commitment Clinton had no intention of wrestling with the military to fulfill. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Prudence Bushnell argued for other options, including disrupting radio transmissions. (Rwanda is a mountainous country with poor communications and so relies heavily on radio. The genocidal forces had been using radio to announce the locations of victims and to direct attacks.) The U.S. military dismissed her suggestions that the broadcasts be jammed or the antennas destroyed by explaining that both measures would be too difficult and too costly. At one point, an exasperated Pentagon official cut her off with, “Pru, radios don’t kill people. People kill people.”30 Power, the author of Problem from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide, concludes, “However significant and obstructionist the role of the Pentagon in April and May, Defense Department officials were stepping into a vacuum. As one U.S. official put it, ‘Look, nobody senior was paying any attention to this mess. And in the absence of any political leadership from the top, when you have one group that feels pretty strongly about what shouldn't be done, it is extremely likely they are going to end up shaping U.S. policy.’ Lieutenant General Wesley Clark (then the Joint Chiefs’ director of strategic plans and policy) looked to the White House for leadership. ‘The Pentagon is always going to be the last to want to intervene,’ he says. ‘It’s up to the civilians to tell us they want to do something and we’ll figure out how to do it.’”31 While the fate of 800,000 Rwandans was in this way being sealed, the director of peacekeeping on the National Security Council, Richard Clark, was coordinating the drafting of PDD-25, a Presidential Decision Directive (and so the official policy of the White House) that erected seventeen tests to be passed before the United States would participate militarily in a peacekeeping intervention. These included all six tests from the Weinberger Doctrine, which was its model, but also some that went further. Was there a threat to world peace? A working cease-fire? A clear command-and-control arrangement? In this way the Weinberger Doctrine and the military-preferred view became the officially stated policy of the civilian authorities.32 In a pattern familiar from Somalia and to be repeated in Kosovo, the military strongly and successfully resisted supplying fifty armored personnel carriers (APCs) requested by the U.N. to be used by African troops. The APCs arrived in Africa, though never in Rwanda, after the genocide was over.33 Haiti was a harder intervention for the military to resist. Refugees were washing up on American shores, and the Congressional Black Caucus was focused in a way it never had been on Rwanda. The military did not refuse the mission outright, but it did insist on doing the operation its way, which meant massively. The Clinton administration was glad to cede control. Earlier it had flinched away from a chance of an incident by withdrawing a transport vessel loaded with American and Canadian troops, the Harlan County, when an angry crowd appeared on the docks. Later Clinton ceded the chance to lead again, offering it to former president Jimmy Carter, Senator Sam Nunn, and by then former JCS Chairman Powell who negotiated the last-minute peaceful exit of the
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dictator Raoul Cedras and his family. Ultimately, Clinton quietly ceded all control to the Joint Task Force Commander, Army Lieutenant General David C. Meade. General Meade brought in 20,000 heavily equipped troops, practicing risk aversion in the extreme. Though the mission was to stop human rights violations and usher out an obnoxious regime, he avoided any incidents by issuing rules of engagement that permitted no force, no matter what the provocation, short of danger to the soldiers’ lives. This meant that on the first day the American soldiers stood by on the docks, gripping their weapons and staring woodenly, as thugs from the Cedras regime beat to death a pro-democracy demonstrator only a few feet away from them. The troops were quartered and confined in an industrial park well away from Port au Prince. They were allowed to move only in convoys of two or more vehicles and in full battle gear, so heavily protected that the Haitians called them “ninja turtles.” It was not the kind of mission the military brass would have chosen, nor was it one they believed in or thought served an important national interest, so they performed it with maximal forces and minimal risk taking.34 “The primary mission of the U.S. military in Haiti was force protection.”35 The United States avoided involvement in Bosnia for most of the decade. The mission was delayed and resisted, then done the military’s way. The civilian tasked by the president to lead the Bosnia effort was no shrinking violet, Richard Holbrooke, yet in his memoirs he describes the attitude he was confronted with in the person of the military commander in the region, Admiral Leighton Smith: “He told me that he was ‘solely responsible’ for the safety and well-being of his forces, and he would make his decision, under authority delegated to him by the NATO Council, based on his own judgment. In fact, he pointed out, he didn't even work for the United States; as a NATO commander he took orders from Brussels.”36 The abdication of authority by the civilian leadership only deepened by 1998 as the Monica Lewinsky affair and other issues further weakened the president vis a vis the military. The late 1990s witnessed repeated swift and seldom effective uses of force – quick bombing spates and brief missile flurries. There was one on Slobodon Milosevic in August 1995 to punish him for a particularly horrifying attack on civilians in Sarajevo,37 one on Saddam Hussein in mid-December 1998 to make him stop blocking U.N. inspectors, one on Osama bin Laden in 1996 for bombing U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, and another on him in 2000 after the bombing of the Navy ship Cole. These were depicted as demonstrations of will and acts of coercion, but they could be taken as demonstrations of weakness and unwillingness to do more. It did not prove effective to put million dollar missiles on twentydollar tents in Afghanistan, for example. Operation Allied Force over Kosovo in 1999 may be thought of as bombing spate unexpectedly extended. Though its purpose was to stop Milosevic from driving the Muslim Kosovars out of their homeland, it actually accelerated the process. Undeniably the way to stop the Serb police and military from driving Kosovars out of their villages was to put troops into those villages, but as the bombing commenced Clinton actually declared he would not deploy ground troops. Milosevic was meant to fear how far Clinton might go, yet Clinton was telling him in advance exactly what he would never do. The announcement, so destructive of the ends of the mission, was necessary to reassure skeptical military leaders that this bombing was not a slippery slope to a ground war. Lieutenant General Mike Short, the air war commander, said later, “I can’t tell you how many times the instruction I got was ‘Mike, you're only going to be allowed to bomb two,
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maybe three nights. That’s all Washington can stand. That’s all some members of the alliance can stand. That’s why you’ve only got ninety targets. This’ll be over in three nights.’”38 In Operation Allied Force the regional commander in chief, General Wesley Clark, had bigger plans and was able to move into the vacuum of civilian abdication and military reluctance. His book, Waging Modern War, tells quite plainly how he parlayed his NATO position into an alliance commitment to war, drawing a reluctant JCS after him and prodding the White House with the implicit question, “Now [that] we are involved in this, are you going to withhold the assets that will let us win?”39 It is hard to say why, after over 70 days and more than 33,000 air sorties, Milosevic finally relented, but it is clear that the pattern of civil-military relations was not conducive to success.40 Clark’s story is part of a larger development in which the regional commanders in chief or CINCs grew in the 1990s to become a new diplomatic presence. Figures like General Wesley Clark, General Anthony Zinni, General Charles Wilhelm, and Admiral Dennis Blair devoted part of their great resources to what they called “engagement,” seeking to maintain regular and growing contact with governments and militaries in their regions, sending Special Forces units out on training missions, hosting rulers and leaders at conferences, building ties through sales and aid relationships, and creating regional security understandings. Through these activities the CINCs came to outweigh most ambassadors and indeed most figures in the State Department. This was partly the product of Congress’s de-funding of the State Department mentioned above, but it was more a matter of the CINCs stepping into a vacuum left by civilian leadership and was destructive of civilian control.41 As Clinton left office, Don Snider, a thoughtful student of civil-military relations and a professor at West Point, expressed his sense of unease at what he called “America’s Postmodern Military.” He looked around the military and sensed tension and anomie in many directions – a decline in political neutrality in the officer corps, unhappiness with attempts to use the military to fulfill a liberal social agenda (the gays in the military issue figures large in the article) and a sense of confused identity. Are we “high tech warriors facing a certain adversary” as he would like to think, and if so, where is the adversary? He announced, “There is now a consensus that no direct threat exists to the security of the United States, or to its interests abroad.”42 Under the Weinberger Doctrine, this would mean there was no justification for deploying the military in force at all.
THE CIVILIAN-PREFERRED VIEW REASSERTED However accommodating candidate George W. Bush was to the military, his choice for Secretary of Defense had an agenda in mind that would not go down well with those in uniform. Rumsfeld (re)entered office determined to change civil-military relations. Shortly after he assumed the job, he announced, “I want to reinstitute civilian control of the military!”43 Rumsfeld treated the Joint Chiefs, according to journalist Dana Priest, “like second-rate citizens.” Covering the Pentagon for the Washington Post, she reported on a private meeting in May 2001 with the Joint Staff directorate heads at which General Hugh Shelton praised their patriotism, asked for their patience and forcefully reminded them of their professionalism and their duty of allegiance and subservience.44
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Their patience and professionalism were tested as Rumsfeld set about taking back ground gained by the military in the previous decade. He banned the use of the term “engagement,” and ordered the termination of many of the programs, contacts, exchanges, missions, meetings and travels of the CINCs. He then banned the use of the title “CINC.” “‘There is only one CINC under the Constitution and law, and that is POTUS,’ he told the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s legal counsel…using the acronym for president of the United States.”45 The CINCs would now be called “combatant commanders,” a title that stresses the more purely military function that Rumsfeld preferred and required. Rumsfeld also excluded Shelton from major meetings and suggested to him at one point that he, Rumsfeld, ought to be the primary source of military advice to the president. Shelton quoted the Goldwater-Nichols Defense Reform Act to Rumsfeld, but still found himself severely limited in direct contact with the Commander In Chief in the first eight months of the presidential term. The civilian-preferred view could hardly have had more decisive and committed spokesmen than Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and head of the Defense Policy Board Richard Perle, all veterans of past Republican administrations (Ford, Reagan, and Bush) and strong advocates of use of force. Wolfowitz had drafted the current preemption strategy as long ago as 1992,46 a strategy that calls for many uses of force, has no patience with the Weinberger criteria and, as it has been pursued to date, has had the effect of reducing the military to mere implementers. Opposed to them in the State Department were three strong voices of the military-preferred view: Powell, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, and Zinni. Rumsfeld spoke of the entire “transformation” of the military, meaning a broad series of fundamental changes aimed at making forces lighter and more agile and faster to deploy, developing precision guided munitions and other high-technology weapons, and getting rid of outdated war plans for large, heavily armored campaigns of the type once contemplated for Europe. In short, Rumsfeld was bent on carrying out the post-Cold War reforms that Clinton and George H.W. Bush had backed away from forcing on the military in the 1990s. He was meeting serious resistance, and on the morning of September 10, 2001, he was speaking to 23,000 Pentagon employees, lecturing them sternly on the need to reform. “I have no desire to attack the Pentagon. I want to liberate it. We need to save it from itself.”47 On the morning of September 11, the Pentagon was in fact under attack.
THE WAR ON TERROR The attacks of 9/11 did finally kick the Vietnam syndrome, if only for a time, or at least they lifted the hold of the military-preferred view and broke the grip of the Weinberger Doctrine.48 Suddenly instead of Snider’s “consensus that no direct threat exists to the security of the United States, or to its interests abroad,” there was a realization that “the only true safety was no enemies anywhere – total world security management.”49 The War on Terror has been conducted in a setting in which the civilian-preferred view has dominated decisively, and so there has been little of the delay or resistance typical of the deployments of the 1990s. In Operation Desert Storm in 1991, it took from early August to mid-January to prepare a military response. In Bosnia a response to “ethnic cleansing” waited for most of a decade. In Afghanistan, by contrast, strikes against the Taliban and al Qaeda began on October 7, 2001, less than a month after the terrorist attacks themselves. This meant
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setting aside all of the military’s very substantial concerns about hasty innovation and inadequate planning, about needing more bases and assets in the region, about determining the reliability of Pakistani and Afghan “allies,” and about incomplete mapping and reconnaissance. The only delay permitted was waiting until combat search and rescue capability was in place.50 There was more resistance on the second major step, into Iraq. In 2002, the Joint Chiefs waged “a determined behind-the-scenes campaign to persuade the Bush administration to reconsider an aggressive posture toward Iraq.”51 The arguments closely paralleled those from the 1990s: “Franks told the president that invading Iraq…would require at least 200,000 troops,52 far more than some other military experts have calculated…. He emphasized the lengthy buildup that would be required….”53 In the new setting of a dominant and decided civilian leadership, however, Franks’s attempts to slow what “one top general called ‘Iraq hysteria’”54 merely had the unintended effect of turning the president more toward air campaigns, covert action, the CIA, and other alternatives that sidelined the Army. 55 A recent briefing by Air Force Lieutenant General T. Michael Moseley revealed that even though the Army’s top commanders were attempting to delay or avoid the war in late 2002, Navy and Air Force fliers had been “systematically bombing Iraq’s command posts, air defense and communication links” as early as autumn 2001.56 The leverage of the military in pressing for the sorts of terms it would prefer has been undermined in this strange terror war. The military’s typical desire for a massive operation has been set aside as well. In Afghanistan small teams operating far from bases collaborated with native fighters in coalitions hastily assembled with the help of the CIA.57 In Operation Iraqi Freedom, Army forces had to scramble to accommodate to the “rolling start” demanded by the secretary of defense. The closing of Turkey’s ports was not allowed to slow the start of operations, even if it meant foregoing the entire northern thrust toward Baghdad. In Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo (not to mention Rwanda!) the Clinton administration had permitted itself to be distanced from many aspects of running the operations. With respect to Haiti, for example, the President had made an initial speech on the need to intervene to stop torture and human suffering, but then had been silent about the conduct of the intervention. In the case of Kosovo, General Clark had been the public face of the operation. In Desert Storm Generals Schwarzkopf and Powell became the personalities of the war and both wrote bestselling memoirs. In the recent Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns, by contrast, Secretary Rumsfeld has insisted on being the unchallenged voice and face for the media, often with a tall, somber, silent general for stage dressing. The George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations sacrificed some degree of control in Desert Storm and in Kosovo by working through alliances of 34 nations in one case and 17 in the other. (We have seen how coalition politics strengthened the hands of Clark and Smith.) The current administration showed no hesitation in declining NATO’s offer to help in Afghanistan and was not phased at the loss of the U.N.’s endorsement in Iraq. Questions of escalation and rules of engagement are traditionally the most divisive in civil-military relations. In Vietnam the Navy and the Air Force were deeply embittered at Johnson’s and McNamara’s targeting rules58 and in Kosovo General Short was deeply frustrated at General Clark’s refusal to let him “go downtown” and bomb the highest value targets in Belgrade.59 In the Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns, there has been little friction, however, because the president and the secretary of defense seem to show little inclination to put targets or weapons off limits.60 Rumsfeld has even spoken of bringing ground-
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penetrating, bunker-busting nuclear weapons into the useable arsenal, and the president has approved assassinations. If there were any question of the firm grip the civilian leadership has established on the military since 9/11, and on the Army most particularly, Rumsfeld must have dispelled them with his decision to cancel the Army’s major new combat system, the Crusader artillery piece, as well as his decision to give the post of Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, traditionally an Army general’s post, to General Jones, USMC, as well as his choice to pass over all the three star and two star candidates in the Army and to recall from retirement General Schoomaker, a former Special Operations commander, to be his new Army chief of staff.
CONCLUSION The reassertion of civilian authority described above probably would not have been possible without the War on Terror as a force requiring forbearance and sacrifice on the part of the military, and the War on Terror could not have been conducted as it has without the reassertion of civilian authority. This is not to say, however, that civil-military relations are now on a better, more balanced and sustainable footing than they have been in recent years. It is worth remembering that these recent campaigns have been pursued under the same strongly civilian-preferred terms as when McNamara led the war in Vietnam – an experience that brought lasting and unhappy consequences. Some redress of the imbalance toward the military-preferred view was necessary. There were weaknesses and dangers exposed in the period of military domination and civilian abdication. In those years the U.S. was extremely reticent to use effective force – a pattern no doubt observed by Milosevic, Saddam, bin Laden, and perhaps Kim Jong Il.61 During those years necessary reforms were forestalled as well. Without strong civilian leadership, the military will not undertake self-transformation, particularly when the need for transformation is obscured by the perpetuation of old patterns of behavior, old styles of war plans, the old types of weapons and tactics to which the services were wedded. During those years less experience in occupation and nation building was gathered than might have been if troops had not been buttoned up in encampments as they were in Haiti and, to a lesser extent, in Bosnia. Yet there is also a danger now of going to extremes. There was a lack of civilian leadership and assertiveness; now there is a superabundance of it. There was a great reluctance to engage in an intervention or to escalate one; now any of a dozen countries seem possible candidates and even nuclear weapons are off the shelf. There was a sense that the United States might have sheltered behind alliance partners in places like Somalia; now the United States seems unilateralist to the core, even contemptuously so. There is also a serious danger of failing to benefit from professional military expertise. That appeared to have been the case in Operation Iraqi Freedom when, as troops moved from Basra toward Baghdad, Iraqi attacks on supply lines began. It was startling how quickly recently retired officers stepped forward to criticize Rumsfeld for failing to listen to his commanders. It was as though McNamara’s sins were being visited on Rumsfeld’s head. Still, if the Republican Guard units had not collapsed or the phantom weapons of mass destruction had been deployed, the critiques might have been on the mark. There may be a danger of provoking bitterness reminiscent of the McNamara days. This may not come from disputes over rules of engagement or issues of escalation, the usual points
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for embitterment, but there are other sources of lasting bad feeling. For example, McNamara is remembered for his “Whiz Kids” who brushed aside the work and thought of uniformed military analysts. Rumsfeld is almost equally well known for “defense reviews that ostentatiously excluded the active-duty military from participation save as a kind of uniformed research assistants.”62 One product of these reviews has been an agenda of missions for the military that could take them to Syria, Iran or North Korea, or back to Somalia or on to Sudan, or to all of the above. The danger of overextension is a clear and present problem. Pilots and ships’ crews have long been operating at an extremely high tempo, and the Navy has announced it may halve the time carriers spend in port. Ground troops – active duty, reserve and National Guard – are all experiencing greatly extended deployments abroad with the prospect of longer ones still in Iraq.63 The current balance between civilian- and military-preferred views is almost certainly not sustainable; it would be more accurate to speak of the current imbalance in the civilianpreferred direction. Secretary Rumsfeld, an unusually powerful secretary of defense, and President Bush, a popular president, have it within their power to guide the way toward a more even, lasting balance. They should not wait. To date, the enemies our troops have faced abroad have not been able to land serious blows against our forces. (Blows against our cities are another matter.) Our forces have outmatched their adversaries by orders of magnitude. None have been able to inflict serious casualties on our forces or stand long against our attacks. These favorable conditions for groping toward a more favorable basis of relations between political and military authorities will not endure. The near future could bring an opponent with real weapons of mass destruction, an adversary like Pyongyang with the ability to devastate a great city and kills thousands of our troops even without nuclear devices. The War on Terror is in its early stages. The Bush Administration apparently has more adventures like Iraqi Freedom in mind. Mr. Bush and Mr. Rumsfeld should lay the framework for a generous new and lasting relationship with America’s military at once.
NOTES 1
2
3
This paragraph and the one that follows appeared in shorter form in Stephen Wrage, “The Combatant Commander – The Man in the Middle” forthcoming in Derek Reveron, ed., The New Viceroys (New York: Palgrave, forthcoming in 2004.) The phrase “military people” is admittedly general and blurs valid distinctions between different types and ranks of officers. Members of the Joint Chiefs, for example, are certainly less likely to be parochial than lieutenants. I will use the phrase nonetheless, and will do so in order to underline the distinction members of the uniformed services themselves draw when they are critical of the civilians who hold authority over those services. To quote the most astute scholar of civil-military relations, Richard K. Betts, “Military men… usually see themselves as objective professionals, brought into political controversy by the incompetence of amateurs in authority.” Richard Betts, Soldiers, Statesmen and Cold War Crises (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), p. 40. This expression is attributed to French premier Georges Clemenceau in his arguments with his generals Philippe Petain and Ferdinand Foch.
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Eliot A. Cohen, Supreme Command (New York: Free Press, 2002), p. 205. It is interesting to learn that his ambitions were transparent enough in 1947 that Truman had agreed to cede the top half of the 1948 Democratic Party ticket to Dwight Eisenhower if MacArthur attempted to, in Truman’s words, “make a Roman Triumphal return to the U.S. a short time before the Republican Convention….” See the Washington Post, 11 July 2003, p. A1, “1947 Truman Diary Found in Truman Library: President Was Willing to Yield Democratic Nomination to Eisenhower.” 6 Quoted in Betts, p. 50. 7 Poindexter was a retired vice admiral at the time he held the NSA post. Retired Lieutenant General Vernon Walters held the post of Permanent Representative to the United Nations and retired Major General Secord played a major secret role in Iran-Contra. 8 See Cohen, p. 204. 9 Peter D. Feaver and Richard H. Kohn, “The Gap: Soldiers, Civilians and their Mutual Misunderstanding”, The National Interest, Fall 2000, p. 5. Their findings are based on a survey of 4900 Americans, about one third of them officers identified for promotion. They report “Ironically, many of them invoked a reading of Dereliction of Duty, H.R. McMaster’s widely read and influential analysis of civil-military relations under President Johnson and Secretary McNamara, to justify a norm that military officers ought to insist that their advice be followed, and resign in protest if the senior civilian leadership seems to be pursuing a reckless policy.” 10 One wonders how officers would fulfill this duty. There is no American tradition of such insistence, or at least none since 1783 when General Washington had to reprimand his officers about their “Newburgh Address” and remind them of their duty of obedience to Congress. 11 The Korean War gave rise to what was actually called the “Never Again Club”, led by General Mark Clark, who wrote in 1954, “Never, never again should we be mousetrapped into fighting another defensive ground war on that peninsula. Never should we commit numerically inferior American troops… against numerically superior forces of the enemy’s second team unless we are prepared to win.” Quoted in Betts, p. 167. 12 With regard to Vietnam, see Cohen, pp. 175-82 for a convincing defense of Johnson and McNamara in their dialogue with military commanders in the Vietnam War. He argues that Johnson was “prepared to win,” but that no one, including the military commanders, could tell him what it would take or how to do it. 13 A summary of the conditions as it appears in Betts, p. 221: “Combat should be joined only if (1) it is a last resort, when no other means can succeed; (2) the stakes are vital; (3) troops are unhindered in the pursuit of victory; (4) political and military objectives are clearly defined; (5) the relationships between objectives and the nature of forces committed is continually reassessed and adjusted; and (6) there is ‘reasonable assurance we will have the support of the American people and their representatives in Congress.” Betts adds, “The formulation was so extreme that, if taken seriously, it would preclude going to war short of another Pearl Harbor.” 14 Nonetheless, it is clear that civilian control of the military has slipped a good deal when the Secretary of Defense becomes the chief spokesman for what we have been calling the military-preferred view. 5
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Limited war theorist Alexander George, a successor to Osgood, elaborated the concept of coercive diplomacy, where force is used in a gradual, incremental, slowly escalating way in order to compel an opponent to do something. An example, again anathema to the military-preferred view, was the case of North Vietnam, with carefully calibrated levels of force designed to induce them to come to the negotiating table. This violated most of the Weinberger criteria and directly contradicted the Powell overwhelming force doctrine. Alexander George, Forceful Persuasion: Coercive Diplomacy as an Alternative to War (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1991.) 16 See David Brittan, “The Mayaguez Incident” (Cambridge, MA: Kennedy School of Government Case Program, 1983), p. 21. The source of the quotation from Kissinger is Ron Nessen’s memoir, pp. 128-9. After the rescue in force, President Ford’s popularity surged 12 points. (George W. Gallup, vol. 1, The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion 1972-75 (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources Inc. 1978), p. 519. 17 See Daniel Yergin, Shattered Peace (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977), passim. 18 On the growing diplomatic roles of the CINCs, see Derek Reveron, The New Viceroys (New York: Palgrave, forthcoming) and Dana Priest, The Mission (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003.) 19 Shalikashvili is quoted in Priest, p. 54. 20 Quoted in Michael R. Gordon and Bernard E. Trainor, The Generals’ War: The Inside Story of the Conflict in the Gulf (New York: Little Brown, 1995), p. 33. 21 Gordon and Trainor, p. 127. 22 See Henry S. Rowen, “Inchon in the Desert: My Rejected Plan” The National Interest (Summer, 1995), p. 36. 23 Bob Woodward, The Commanders (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991), p. 320. 24 Woodward, (1991) p. 320. 25 Desert Storm also featured the first large precision air campaign, designed by Colonel John Warden. Recalling the frustrations of the Rolling Thunder air campaign over Vietnam, Warden angrily named his plan “Instant Thunder.” “This is not your Rolling Thunder. This is real war!”, he said. David Halberstam, War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton and the Generals (New York: Scribner, 2001), p. 50. Ironically, the air war commander in Desert Storm, General Charles Horner, bore the same bitter Vietnam memories and angrily rejected Warden’s plan, telling Schwarzkopf, “Sir, the last thing you want is a repeat of Vietnam where Washington picked the targets! This is the job of your air commander.” (Halberstam, p. 53.) So Warden exulted at throwing off interfering civilians’ control, yet Horner perceived Warden’s plan as the thin edge of a wedge introducing exactly that. 26 Cohen, p. 201. 27 This start would include his record of evading military service, his letter to his ROTC commander speaking of sympathizing with those inclined toward “loving their country but loathing the military”, his young staffer’s rebuke to Powell’s White House representative, Lt. General Barry McCaffrey, the most decorated active-duty officer in the military (she returned his greeting in the halls of the White House with “I don’t speak to military”) and his extremely unpopular initiative supporting openly homosexual persons’ right to join the military. See Priest, p. 44.
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Priest pp. 43-4. Cohen, p. 202. Cohen points out that in a departure from practice, in this instance it was the civilian, Secretary of Defense Aspin, who resigned in disgrace after a debacle. Similarly, it was Secretary of Defense Perry, his successor, who took primary responsibility after the bombing of Khobar Towers. 30 Samantha Power, “Bystanders to Genocide: Why the United States let the Rwandan Tragedy Happen” The Atlantic Online, September 2001, p. 20. 31 Power, p. 21. 32 Clark explained that this policy was necessary to “save peacekeeping” (which it may have been) but this claim merely recognizes that it was within the power of the military to kill peacekeeping if they did not get the phalanx of assurances they demanded to bar it ever actually occurring on terms unacceptable to them. 33 Power, p. 23. 34 In the 1990s the perception grew that the military was casualty-shy. The research by Feaver and Kohn gives no support to this notion. It may simply be that many in the military leadership were convinced that in some of the missions in the 90s there was nothing worth dying for, so risks were avoided. 35 Bob Schacochis, The Immaculate Invasion (New York: Viking, 1999), p. 151. See also the testimony of Lieutenant Colonel Frank Bragg, Assistant Chief of Staff for intelligence, 10th Mountain Division and Director of Intelligence for the Multilateral Force in Haiti at the court martial proceeding for an officer who objected to the way the mission was handled. “Question: Would it be fair to say that actually your whole priority was force protection at that time? Answer: It is fair to say that there was no doubt, that was my number one priority and I had every intelligence asset I could muster focused primarily on that one thing.” Transcript of U.S. v. Rockwood, no. 261-29-6597 at 1372. 36 Quoted in Cohen, p 201. 37 Admiral Smith strongly resisted allowing the bombing to continue after three days. “Clinton would later tell his closest aides that he thought Smith had been insubordinate during this period as well as later when he was in charge of policing the Dayton accords.” Halberstam, p. 349. 38 Quoted in Halberstam, p. 425. 39 See Halberstam, chapter 41. Secretary of Defense Cohen and JCS Chief Shelton disliked Clark’s contacts with Congress and the White House enough to require that he submit an hourly schedule of his meetings whenever he was in Washington. They worked to exclude Clark, the current SACEUR, from the celebration of NATO’s 50th anniversary. Finally, shortly after the Kosovo campaign was over, they removed Clark from his post a year before the normal term expired and replaced him with his Shelton’s own deputy, General Ralston. 40 In a pattern familiar from Somalia and from Rwanda, the military, particularly the Army, resisted the expansion of the mission by sending certain weaponry, in this case, Apache helicopters. “To support and protect a mere 24 AH-64 Apache attack helicopters, the army determined that it was necessary to deploy a grand total of 6,200 troops. To provide this contingent with the wherewithal it required, the Army shipped 26,000 tons of equipment to a staging area in Albania. Doing so consumed 550 C-17 sorties and cost 29
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$480 million. The cargo included more than a dozen 70-ton M1A1 tanks – too heavy to use on most Albanian roads – 42 Bradley fighting vehicles, and 24 Multiple Launch Rocket Systems with extended-range, Army Tactical Missile System missiles. To preside over this arsenal, the army cobbled together a tactical headquarters that itself required the shipment of 20 five-ton Expando vans from Germany. The army also shipped 190 containers of ammunition, and enough repair kits to support twice the number of Apaches actually deployed. Thirty-seven other utility helicopters – Blackhawks and Chinooks – rounded out this mammoth task force…. The task force assembled over a period of weeks at such great expense never got into the fight.” Michael G. Vickers, “Revolution Deferred: Kosovo and the Transformation of War” in Eliot Cohen and Andrew Bacevich, War Over Kosovo: Politics and Strategy in a Global Age (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), p. 198. 41 See Priest, who refers to the CINCs as “modern proconsuls” and Reveron, who prefers the term “viceroys.” 42 Don Snider, “America’s Postmodern Military” World Policy Journal Spring 2000, p. 49. 43 Quoted in Priest, p. 24. 44 See Priest, p. 25. According to Priest, “a rebellion had hatched in the ranks.” 45 Priest, p. 28. Rumsfeld sometimes sarcastically referred to the “combatant commanders” as “the kingly CINCs.” 46 See Barton Gelman of the Washington Post, quoted on Frontline, “The War Behind Closed Doors,” www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shaws/Iraq/etc/synopsis/html. Last accessed 21 July 2003. 47 Quoted in Priest, p. 34. 48 Betts was quoted above on the Weinberger Doctrine: “The formulation was so extreme that, if taken seriously, it would preclude going to war short of another Pearl Harbor.” The September 11th attacks did in fact rise to the level of another Pearl Harbor. 49 The statement is from Michael Vlahos, “Military Identity in the Age of Empire” at Tech Central Station, www.techcentralstation.com, p. 1. (Italics in the original.) 50 See Woodward, 2002, p. 195. 51 Tom Ricks, “Military Bids to Postpone Iraq Invasion,” The Washington Post, 24 May 2002, p A1. 52 Franks’ troop level figure was less than half of the Desert Storm total and was widely derided in the military as “Desert Storm Lite.” Ricks, p. A1. 53 Ricks, p. A1. 54 Ricks, p. A1. 55 It has been surprising to see a secretary of defense put up no bureaucratic resistance to the CIA’s arrival on battlefields traditionally “owned” by the military. Many uniformed officers in Afghanistan were uncomfortable knowing that unmanned Predator drones were dispatching Hellfire missiles unexpectedly. They were used to controlling all the munitions in a region. It may be, however, that Rumsfeld has found that the CIA with its paramilitaries, its intelligence sources and its deep pockets for bribing warlords too useful to attempt to limit, or it may be that the CIA has been useful for outflanking the Army and others and for forcing them to adopt new ways of operating in conjunction with or even in imitation of the covert forces. In this strange war on terror, visa officials, customs
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agents, epidemiologists, airport security workers and scores of other professions have joined military people on the virtual front line. The huge and well-funded Department of Homeland Security has joined the Pentagon. A twinning of security agencies will alter the future of civil military relations. 56 Bradley Graham, ”U.S. Moved Early for Air Supremacy,” The Washington Post, July 20, 2003, p. A26. 57 See Priest, chapter 7. 58 Johnson famously told McNamara, “I’m not going to let those Air Force generals bomb a single outhouse north of the 17th parallel!” In Operation Allied Force some NATO governments were able to veto specific targets and French Premier Jacques Chirac bragged that if bridges stood in Belgrade, the people of the city had him to thank. 59 See Scott A. Cooper, “The Politics of Air Strikes,” forthcoming, in Stephen Wrage, ed. Immaculate Warfare (Westport, CN: Greenwood, 2003.) 60 One exception has been with regard to heightened expectations surrounding precisionguided munitions. In the article cited above, Graham reports General Moseley saying that “the decision to bomb targets in Iraq that military had estimated could result in the deaths of 30 or more noncombatants had been reserved for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. About 40 or 50 targets fell in this category…. All of these targets were eventually struck during the war, he said, but U.S. forces have not determined how many noncombatants died in the process – and have no plans to do so.” Graham, p. 26. 61 It has been argued that the decade of the 1990s was distinguished by a wonderfully low number of combat deaths, including unintended civilian casualties. (In Operation Allied Force, for example, over 33,000 air sorties brought fewer than 500 unintended casualties among the Serbs and no U.S. deaths.) The decade produced many hundred thousand Somali, Rwandan, Bosnian and Kosovar casualties, however. Perhaps a new category of unprevented civilian deaths is needed. 62 Cohen, p. 205. Cohen adds, “Until the outbreak of a new and different kind of war following the terror attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, the Rumsfeld Pentagon exhibited levels of civil-military mistrust as bitter as anything seen in the Clinton administration.” 63 A photograph circulating on the Internet shows a jeep in Iraq with a sign on the windshield: “One weekend a month my ass!”
In: White House Studies Compendium, Volume 4 Editor: R. W. Watson, pp. 193-206
ISBN: 1-60021-541-6 © 2007 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
SEPTEMBER 11TH AND THE BUSH PRESIDENCY: RALLY-ROUND-THE-RUBBLE Stephen E. Frantzich ABSTRACT Public opinion on how well the president is doing has become a prime measure of presidential performance and a useful tool in the presidential power game. Considerable research indicates that presidents faced with crises, and those taking dramatic action, are rewarded by the public. The events of September 11, 2001, as expected, had a dramatic impact on the public’s evaluation of George W. Bush. The issues to be discussed in this article involve the causes, comparative strength, continuity, media consciousness, composition, and consequences of the “bump.” Using a wide range of public opinion polls, this article places emphasis on determining why the post-9/11 presidential bump had a considerably longer run than the similar bump for other governmental institutions, and on the degree to which different demographic groups were affected in varying ways. While there is more to the presidency than public support, understanding its origins and consequences provides a richer understanding of the U.S. official who is most in the public limelight.
INTRODUCTION In some ways concerning oneself with presidential approval seems like an extension of the playground pleas of “pick me, pick me,” or the schoolyard search for validation of “I am your best, best friend aren’t I.” Seeking approval for approval’s sake is infantile at best. We expect political leaders to do what is right and anticipate that if they do so in ways that can be explained effectively, public approval will follow. The importance of presidential approval, however, goes beyond stroking the ego of the politician involved. It serves as both a measure of the effectiveness of a president in performing his dual job of serving as chief decisionmaker and chief explainer. While we choose presidents to lead, and generally condemn a poll driven presidency, approval ratings can serve as a reality test for an incumbent president, alerting him to political dangers and/or encouraging him to do a better job of selling his point of view. Presidential popularity also serves as a key piece of information for other decisionmakers, giving them a surrogate measure of public evaluations to which they can react. In both democratic theory and practical politics, wise decision-makers think twice about taking on popular presidents without powerful countervailing information. One of the most dramatic and measurable influences of 9/11 on the American psyche was the impact it had on George W. Bush’s approval ratings. While no slouch when compared to the ratings of previous presidents at similar points in their terms, Bush’s 35 percent increase
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from 51 to 86 percent in the Gallup Poll registered the largest increase in popularity since the regular measurement of presidential approval ratings began in the 1950s (see Figure 1).1 The increase was almost double the previous one-week record of 18 percent, experienced by his father during Operation Desert Storm. A few weeks later, George W. Bush’s approval increased to 90 percent, eclipsing his father’s record of 89 percent.
Figure 1: George W. Bush's Approval 100 90 80 70 60 Gallup Harr is
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My. June. July. Aug. Oct . Nov. Dec. Jan. Feb. Mar. Apr . May. June. July. Aug. Sept . Oct . Nov. Dec. Feb.
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The purpose of this article is to explore the causes and ramifications of the changes in presidential approval associated with 9/11 in the context of previous patterns of presidential approval.
A NOTE ON MEASURING PRESIDENTIAL APPROVAL Given the heavy reliance of this article on the empirical measurement of presidential approval through national polls, some methodological context is important. As with all public opinion polls, we must realize that presidential approval is a snapshot of a moving picture telling us what people are willing to say on a particular day to another person. We do not know what they would have said yesterday or what they will say tomorrow. We also do not have any direct evidence of why they said it. Presidential approval carries with it another vagary. It is not clear when a person is asked, “Do you approve of the way George W. Bush is handling his job as president,” whether the response is exclusively a personal endorsement of a particular president, a statement of support for the office of president, agreement with particular policy decisions, a mimicking of what the respondent heard from opinion leaders, an assertion of hope for the future, or some combination of these factors. This article will not attempt to sort out these considerations. The accuracy of a poll is based on a number of key factors including sample size, randomness, question format, and response options. There is little basis for doubting the
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sampling of the most quoted national polls. It is important, however, to recognize variations associated with the question format and the answer options. When interpreting assertions about George W. Bush’s record-breaking 90 percent approval, it needs to be pointed out that the Gallup respondents are only given the option to “approve,” “disapprove,” or express no opinion. The Harris Poll, on the other hand asks, “How would you rate the job President George W. Bush is doing?’ and allows respondents to select “excellent,” “pretty good,” “only fair,” “poor,” and “not sure or refused.” Summary comments about approval using Harris polls combine “excellent” and “pretty good” and call it approval. With more options, Harris approval rates tend to be a bit lower (see Figure 1). Princeton Research Associates use the same question as Gallup, and tend to get slightly lower approval rates. Given the variations, in longitudinal analysis, it is only methodologically legitimate to compare polls using exactly the same question. All this said, all three displayed polls (and numerous others using a variety of questions) track almost identically. There is no doubt that 9/11 led to a much more favorable view of George W. Bush. As in all polls, there is no guarantee that the responses are well thought out or based on similar criteria for evaluation. Even if one quibbles about the accuracy of the polls themselves, the reality that polling figures enter into the political dialogue is beyond question. Approval ratings become a surrogate measure of actual performance, with past polling results becoming a factor in future responses in polls and among decision-makers.
THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF RALLIES The general pattern of presidential approval reflects an immediate post-inauguration “honeymoon” evaluation giving him a higher rate of approval than in the election in which he was chosen. From there on, it is usually a general downward trend over time, with minor variations usually associated with highly publicized initiatives (especially those associated with foreign policy) or events (such as the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan) that thrust the president into public awareness. As a presidency proceeds, dashed expectations and tough decisions turn off some past supporters, lowering the overall approval rate. There is an old story around Washington about a president who called in a pollster on inauguration day and asked him how he could leave office with the highest level of approval, and the pollster replied, “That is simple, resign today.” The more atypical, yet relatively common phenomenon, is the presidential rally in which the previous decline is reversed, usually temporarily, by a significant improvement. The size of George W. Bush’s rally was unprecedented, making it the “mother of all rallies” to use terminology more associated with his father’s term in office.2 John Mueller was the first to carefully analyze the rally effect.3 Mueller argued that rallies were most likely to be associated with dramatic international events directly involving the United States in general and the president in particular.4 The events of 9/11 could hardly fit the bill more clearly. It is hard to imagine that even in his most optimistic hopes Osama bin Laden could have anticipated two direct hits with maximum damage captured live on television. The dramatic collapse of the World Trade Center and the gaping hole in the Pentagon created images seared into the psyche of American public. In our increasingly visually-oriented society, the images of the 9/11 destruction were particularly important in establishing a context to which the public had to react. In an era with
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an ever-expanding range of media sources and extensive audience fragmentation, it has become less and less likely for Americans to have shared national experiences. Economic considerations require media outlets to compete for “eyeballs” by providing unique content to serve as magnets for television remotes and mouse clicks. In the not so distant past, a limited number of national television networks with constrained and scheduled evening news programs fed similar content to largely passive audiences. In the print realm, all but the most well-endowed newspapers depended on a limited number of wire service stories for information about most national events. With limited choices and less control over content, most people developed “shared islands of understanding” about most major issues. 5 These “islands” were based on virtually everyone receiving the same content at the same time. This was facilitated by the existence of only three major networks all covering stories in similar ways and broadcasting at the same time. It was meaningful water fountain interaction to begin a conversation by asking “What did you feel when you saw John-John Kennedy salute his father’s coffin,” or “Weren’t the pictures of Germans chipping away at the Berlin wall dramatic?” The emergence of multiple cable television options (with news 24 hours a day 7 days a week) and a growing reliance on the Internet for news meant that such shared islands of understanding based on the consumption of common stories and images were less likely to form. News consumers increasingly receive different content at different times. The morning of September 11, 2001 began with media competition, audience fragmentation and content exclusivity and ended with an agreement by the major players to share all generic video. The images of the World Trade Center towers coming down became an icon on network television, cable television, newspapers, and Web sites, summarizing the horror of 9/11 and heightening its drama.6 In many ways, it was a throwback to a previous era, giving the public a shared national experience with a limited number of interpretations.
WHAT CAUSES A RALLY? In attempting to analyze the cause of presidential rallies, Mueller proposed a “rallyround-the-flag” explanation during times of international crisis and/or war. Proponents of this position see Americans as having a reservoir of patriotism. Citizens turn to the president as the symbol of the nation in times of crisis. When the nation is challenged, “the average man’s reaction will include a feeling of patriotism in supporting presidential actions.”7 From an alternative, although not entirely conflicting perspective, Richard Brody argues that not all dramatic international events result in rallies. He sees a larger role for political and media elites in interpreting events and guiding reactions. Brody argues that “the confusion accompanying an international crisis predisposes the public to take its evaluative cue from trusted opinion leaders,” and that rally effects only occur when “opinion leaders are outspokenly supportive of a president.”8 In an attempt to reconcile the “patriotism” school and the “opinion leadership school,” Hetherington and Nelson argue that the patriotism perspective goes a long way in determining why rallies occur, while the opinion leadership perspective helps explain how long they last.9 Rallies have stimulating events, opinion leader responses, magnitude, duration and composition. While not all are clearly identifiable or measurable, some clear hints are available.
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The Stimuli Not all events or presidential actions, even within the bounds of Mueller’s international focus, produce a rally. The 1995 bombing of the Murrah federal office building in Oklahoma City brought terrorism home. Initial and ultimately incorrect speculations centered on foreign terrorists. Although the incident killed 160 innocent people, there was only a limited rally. President Clinton’s Gallup Poll Approval moved from 46 to 51 percent, only to drop to 47 percent a few weeks later. All this happened despite the fact that 84 percent of the public approved of President Clinton’s handling of the particular incident. In August 1998, terrorist bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania killed 12 Americans and over 400 locals. The event was dramatic, international and clearly targeted the U.S. public reaction was nevertheless unimpressive. President Clinton’s approval only increased from 60 to 63 percent. On October 12, 2000, terrorists attacked the USS Cole while it was docked for refueling in Yemen. Seventeen sailors lost their lives. For those associated with the U.S. Navy, this was a particularly important and disconcerting event. President Clinton immediately expressed his outrage, but no rally ensued. His Gallup Poll approval went from 58 percent a week before the attack to 57 percent two weeks after the attack. While some would argue that Clinton’s lack of a meaningful response dampened any rally that might have taken place, it is probably more correct to say that most Americans saw this as a remote event that was not perceived as a direct threat to the American way of life. While Americans were sorry about the seventeen sailors who lost their lives, the deceased were perceived as professionals who had chosen to place their lives in harm’s way, and a dangerous world caught up with them. George W. Bush’s first international crisis, the forced landing of a U.S. reconnaissance plane on Hainan Island in China in April of 2001, was associated with a modest 6 percent increase in his approval (from 53% to 59%). Analysts of presidential approval using events as catalysts pick and choose carefully the events they utilize. Clear patterns seemed to have developed around events such as the Cuban Missile Crisis and Operation Desert Storm.10 Numerous foreign policy events have been followed by rallies of various sizes. Many rallies are probably legitimate public outpourings, but event analysis is hampered the inability to control for other factors. Is the public reacting to the event in isolation, the presidential reaction to the event, or some complex mixture of events or conditions? Since events, reactions and conditions are unique, it is impossible to control for competing explanations. It is probably too easy to say that the public is simply standing around waiting to jump on a rally based on patriotism. The public reserves such considerations for the most dramatic events. It seems legitimate to conclude that the pervasive disruption and magnitude associated with 9/11 places it as an extreme example of those stimuli capable of tapping the reservoir of patriotic support. People felt personally violated. Daily routines were disrupted. Whether it was vicariously experiencing the horror through the humanizing stories of victims, the fear of opening one’s mail after the follow-on anthrax scare, or the new challenges of air travel, virtually no one in the United States was the same after September 11th. One lesson for presidents is that it is not solely the event that affects presidential approval, but rather the president’s reaction to the event that potentially cements presidential approval. In a crisis-ridden world, the president has increasingly become the “reactor-in-
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chief,” and in the process helps define the magnitude and nature of the crisis. George W. Bush built on the potential of a “rally-round-the-flag” phenomenon by a telegenic “rallyround-the-rubble” set of words, images and actions from ground zero at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. It was probably predictable that some of our most vivid images of the aftermath of 9/11 combined the two images. The picture of New York firemen raising the flag in the rubble of the World Trade center and the image of the massive flag draped alongside the damaged Pentagon linked a symbol of hope with an image of threat. Flags became omnipresent on car antennas, bridge abutments and lapels in a way never seen before. Standing before the flags and the rubble in both New York and Washington, George W. Bush struck a fine balance between hope and threat, between presidential leadership focusing on a positive future and the common man’s concern for what the recent past portended. Presidents cannot afford to ignore events. Above all, the public expects presidents to act more than it holds particular expectations of how presidents should act.
Opinion Leader Responses September 11th clearly represented an example of political elites and members of the media giving the president a “pass” in terms of criticism. As the events were initially unfolding the “all is fair in love, war and politics” approach kicked in as the media and public officials played an adult version of “Where’s Waldo.” George W. Bush seemed to be on the run and was initially being criticized for not immediately returning to Washington to handle the crisis. Within a few hours, however, it became clear that logistics and legitimate security concerns delayed his return, but that he was in charge of the national reaction. For many in the media and political life, George W. Bush’s unique route to the presidency, failing to achieve a popular vote majority and requiring Supreme Court action to decide on state election laws in Florida, tainted his presidency from the outset. Bush had never acted like the demeaning president “select” characterization proffered by some of his political antagonists. He came into office with an agenda and claiming a mandate, but despite some early legislative success, he was not fully able to redeem that claim. September 11th, and his reaction to it, allowed his critics to assert that, at best, he had “grown into the job,” or at worst temper their criticism with the rationale that “he is the only president we have and now is the time to support our country through him.” His supporters saw his performance and the reaction of the public as a vindication for their past support. As the chorus of supporters grew and began drowning out the opponents, the less interested and committed members of the population began to go with the conventional wisdom. The key to bringing along the less opinionated depends on the news media to communicate the content and context of presidential approval as expressed by both political leaders and the public.
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The Magnitude and Duration of the Rally George W. Bush’s September 11th rally was not only historic in its magnitude, but also healthy in its duration. Only two other presidents in modern history have reached over 80 percent approval (John Kennedy at 83% in 1961 and George H.W. Bush at 89% in 1991) (see Figure 2). One way to think of duration is the number of weeks a president can maintain his personal record of high support. George W. Bush went over 30 weeks without dropping 15 percent below his personal high. It was the fourth most sustained personal high since polling data has been available, and particularly noteworthy because of its astronomical starting point and the fact that George W. Bush had been at his personal low (51%) only a few weeks before his personal high. Figure 2: Duration of Presidential Rally 70
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Another benchmark is to compare public evaluations of the president with other national institutions. Congress always lags behind the president as a subject of public approval, but even Congress saw a dramatic increase in its fortunes after 9/11. The bad news for Congress was that it did not last. Congress’s approval dropped precipitously in a few weeks and was back to its old levels in less than a year (see Figure 3). Source: Gallup Poll
Composition of a Rally Who rallies will help us better understand the origins and potential consequences of the rally phenomenon. Previous research has indicated that rallies stem from previous supporters strengthening their support. According to this view, members of the president’s party who have been withholding their support, but who have the lowest threshold to overcome,
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disproportionately get on the presidential approval bandwagon after a dramatic event.11 The reaction to 9/11 did not follow this pattern. To some degree the 9/11 rally represented a crystallization of opinion about George W. Bush. For first eight months of his term, over 12 percent of the public had no opinion about him. In the initial rally, that figure dropped to 4 percent and only inched up to 5 percent a year after the event. Above and beyond crystallization, the 9/11 rally was largely built on the backs of Independents and Democrats who moved their evaluation from disapproval to approval. Republicans moved from approval of 89 percent to outright adulation at 98 percent. Democrats moved from disdain (28% approval) to solid approval (84%) (see Figure 4). The subsequent weakening of George W. Bush’s support was largely a reversal of this pattern with Republicans maintaining almost universal support and Democrats turning from him.
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The Spring 2003 invasion of Iraq and the quick victory of the U.S.-led coalition forces led to another bump in George W. Bush’s approval based largely on Democrats reassessing the president and “rallying around the flag.” As the pacification of Iraq dragged on, as questions arose about the president’s forthrightness underlying the rationale for going to war, and as the public turned its attention to weakness in the U.S. economy, the typical downhill slide of presidential approval again kicked in.
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PRESIDENTIAL APPROVAL AS NEWS Public support for presidents becomes news in and of itself. In politics there is often a Gresham’s Law of information with hard empirical data pushing out soft interpretations. Regular assessments of presidential popularity become hooks for media stories. News by definition is something out of the ordinary. Therefore, stories tend to focus on record-breaking events or major changes. Personal highs or lows for presidents, especially resulting from significant shifts, are likely to generate more news than continuing strings of similar evaluations. Slow increases or decreases are likely to disappear under the radar screen of journalistic observers.
Is Presidential Approval News? The Gallup Poll measures presidential approval on an almost monthly basis, and dozens of other polling companies collect and distribute their own measures. Most poll results receive only limited coverage. A LEXIS-NEXIS search of newspaper articles and television news program transcripts indicated a dramatic increase in the coverage of presidential approval figures at rally points and on historic dates (i.e., one year after September 11th).12 Rallies are news and it makes sense to assume that positive coverage of a rally helps keep it going.
Framing the Story Even though poll results are hard data that seemingly leave little room for interpretation, the media have the power to frame the story in a variety of ways. In the abstract, most measurements of presidential approval do not have an absolute interpretation. A president with fifty percent approval can easily fall victim to the “is the glass half full or half empty” question. Presidential approval is gauged against an incumbent president’s previous levels and against the records of previous presidents. Two aspects of framing are possible. Individual writers have the power to frame their stories as they (and their editors) see fit, while headline writers (usually not the article author) have some leeway in encapsulating a story in a few words. It is widely accepted that many readers see nothing but the headline, others decide to read a story based on its headline, and that headlines create a mindset for readers of an article. The first wave of the Bush rally after 9/11, pushing him to 86 percent, was greeted with numerous stories quoting the Gallup Poll and a spate of positive headlines such as: “ Americans Support President in Times of Crisis” (Buffalo News, September 23, 2001, p. H1) and “Democrats Unite Behind Bush” (San Francisco Chronicle, September 20, 2001, p. A10). Interestingly, foreign newspapers expressed even more adulation in headlines like: “Bush’s Approval Rating Soars: More Popular than his Father During Gulf War,” (Ottawa Citizen, September 18, 2001) and “Support Surges as Bush Become the President the People Have Yearned For,” (The Daily Telegraph [London], September 17, 2001, p. 2). When Bush climbed to his record-breaking 90 percent approval, positive reactions to the poll results continued, although some sources began pointing out that significant decline was likely and initiated analysis of the political utility of the current, if temporary, approval level.
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The headlines read: “Once-in-a Lifetime Unity Envelops D.C.,” (San Antonio Express-News, September 19, 2001, p. 11b), “Bush Seems Invincible – For Now,” (Boston Globe, September 27, 2001, p. A15), and “Bush Uses Support for Long Campaign Against Terrorism” (CNN, O7:00 September 24, 2001). As the one-year anniversary approached, Bush’s approval had dropped to 66 percent (September 5th) and then jumped again to 70 percent a few days after the anniversary. Much of the press coverage emphasized the decline in presidential approval over the previous year with headlines such as: “United We Stood, Until Good Will Gave Way,” (St Louis Dispatch, September 11, 2002, p. 6) and “Bush Strives to Regain Magic; Partisanship Erodes Unity of a Year Ago” (Houston Chronicle, September 10, 2002, p. A1). Using the same poll results, one paper gave its readers two very different perspectives with seemingly contradictory headlines: “A Tragedy that Redefined a President: Despite Slippage in Polls, America Still Sees a Different Bush” (Hartford Courant, September 9, 2002, p. A1) and “Bush’s Democratic Support Eroding” (Hartford Courant, September 13, 2002, p. A8). A few months later, journalists had more fodder for analysis. In January 2003, George Bush’s approval dropped to 58 percent, the lowest level since the attacks of 9/11 and then returned to 61 percent the following week. Even though approval close to 60 percent is a respectable level of approval, the news was the drop. The headlines for three stories reflect their content and express very different interpretations: “As 9/11 Memories Fade so Does Bush’s Luster” (Baltimore Sun, January 16, 2003, p 1a), ”Bush Bounces Back in Popularity Poll” (The New York Post, January 19, 2003, p. 6), and “Bush Ratings Tumble Amid Iraq, Economy” (The Times Union [Albany, NY], January 19, 2003). Many newspapers rely on news services for their stories. Contracts with news services limit the nature of the editing subscribers can apply, but allow them to write the headlines. A more precise test of the power of framing through headlines emerges from looking at differing headlines on the same news service article. John Hall, senior Washington correspondent for the Media General News Service, wrote an article about George W. Bush and the emerging slate of Democratic contenders. Hall’s article is quite positive about the president’s approval rating, arguing that “President Bush was bound to begin sliding in the polls…it was extraordinary that he kept it rolling through the November election,” and “In parlous times, Americans look for a tower of strength. None of the Democratic candidates has yet shown signs of reaching very high, and an incumbent president may have slipped a notch or two. But it is way too early to tell what any of it means.” Four outlets, which printed the article in exactly the same way, headlined it in quite different ways: “Bush’s Shiny Armor Showing Wear” (Reidsville Review, January 15, 2003), “For Now Democrats Can Chip Away At Bush’s Approval Ratings” (The Tampa Tribune, January 16, 2003), “Bush Dips and 2004 Comes Early” (The News Virginian, January 16, 2003), and “Earlier Campaigns Mean Less Time for Teamwork” (The Richmond Times-Dispatch, January 16, 2003). Readers would clearly expect, and perhaps take away, very different information from articles with such widely varying headlines.
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What Difference Does News Media Coverage Make? The importance of news reports of presidential approval lies in the fact that they become one more piece of data the public uses in determining their own level of approval. For most individuals, presidential approval is not an article of faith or deep commitment impervious to outside forces. Emerging conventional wisdom of a highly effective president or a floundering one is likely to push less interested and less committed citizens to follow the lead of their fellow citizens as reflected in the polls. It is instructive to note that the record breaking 35 percentage point surge of George W. Bush bringing him to 86 percent approval, was followed a week later with another increase to 90 percent approval. If Bush’s approval was simply an outpouring of nascent patriotism, we should not have expected the second wave of the rally. This phenomenon adds some credence to the fact that elite opinion leadership and/or the publication of previous poll results play some role in the level and duration of approval ratings. Bush maintained his atmospheric 80 percent plus support for sixteen weeks. Individuals wavering in their support were faced with disagreeing with the vast majority of their fellow citizens. The media and the conventional wisdom it spawns not only affect the public, but also impinge on the evaluations of other politicians as well. Politicians use approval ratings as surrogate measures of whom it is safe to criticize and whom it is wise to give a pass. In reality, the relationship is interactive. By holding back their criticism, other public officials make it more acceptable for the public to approve of a president’s performance, opening the door to higher approval ratings, which in turn discourage those same public officials from taking a swipe at the president. Active support by other politicians and the media gives the wheel another spin, allowing further increases in presidential approval among the public. The process, of course, can also go the other way. Low or declining approval makes a president fair game for criticism by other politicians and the media. Negative comments by other politicians and the media can then speed the downward spiral.
WHAT PRESIDENTIAL APPROVAL BUYS Presidential approval easily gets caught up in the political jockeying associated with promoting one’s party, issues and political future. Opponents of a popular president eschew the value of the measure either by denigrating the purportedly hollow public relations gimmicks of the president or demeaning the wisdom of the public as evaluators. Supporters of a popular president are equally likely to interpret the data with self-interest, extolling the wisdom of the public and the utility in following his direction. On the eve the war deadline with Iraq and almost a year and a half after 9/11, historian David Greenberg pointed out that: The trauma of Sept. 11 marked another turning point. Surging with patriotism, citizens and journalists granted their leaders unwonted latitude…. [Despite Congress’s bickering on domestic policy] the new readiness to defer to the government on national security matters remained. Ever since, the public, including the press, has ascribed to the president a degree of goodwill unprecedented in the post-1960s era.13
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It has been shown empirically that popular presidents have more influence with Congress.14 Along with his extraordinarily high public approval ratings, George W. Bush also secured a near record high rate of legislative victory in Congress. By stating a clear preference on a very narrow agenda and using his popularity, Bush was successful with Congress 87 percent of the time in 2001 and 88 percent in 2002. Only Lyndon Johnson in 1965 surpassed that record with a 93 percent support level.15 While a lot more than presidential approval goes into legislative success, Bush did much better than many previous presidents who had larger party majorities in both houses of Congress. Again, although it is impossible to isolate presidential approval, Bush’s popularity certainly did not hurt his party’s fortunes in the 2002 midterm elections. Although the magnitude of the pattern of presidents losing significant numbers of seats at midterm elections has been declining, no president since 1934 had gained seats in both houses. Along with George W. Bush’s approval rally after 9/11, there was a modest increase in Republican party identification and a dramatic (8%) decline in Democratic party identification. By the time of the 2002 election, the Republican gains had been washed out, while the Democrats were down over 2 percent from their pre-9/11 position. The resulting growth in independents provided a pool of voters potentially more responsive to Republican appeals reinforced by relatively high approval (68%) for the incumbent Republican president. As Hetherington and Nelson put it, “Bush’s personal popularity affected the [2002] voting for Republican congressional candidates because he put that popularity on the line.”16
CONCLUSION George W. Bush’s 9/11 rally was an historic event the likes of which we hope we will never see again. While it could be viewed as an historical anomaly linked to a tragic enigma, it allows us to apply our analytical tools to events and behaviors occurring at the margins of political reality. Some of the theories associated with rallies and presidential approval stand up under these conditions, while others find less support. It is clear that the magnitude of the event affects the magnitude of the response, even if we lack the tools to clearly measure event magnitude. Both the nascent patriotism and opinion leader theories find some support. The internal dynamics of the 9/11 rally seems to have been different than other rallies, with support emerging from the least likely sources, and with that support being most transitory. The more impressionistic analysis of the media justifies the fact that far from simply reflecting reality like a mirror, the media refracts it like a prism.17 In its power of framing, the media has the potential for consistently changing the nature of perceived reality, especially under conditions where the new rules of media competition and audience fragmentation are at least temporarily rebuffed. While analysis of presidential popularity as a cause of the behavior of other political actors is less precise, it is clear that presidents do need to be concerned about their level of approval from a political perspective. Garnering public approval is clearly better than engendering disdain. Leadership and followership are closely intertwined phenomena, each influencing the other.
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NOTES 1
Except where noted, the data in this article come from Gallup Poll national surveys with margins of error of plus or minus 3% (based on samples of approximately 1000 respondents). The Gallup Poll asks, “Do you approve or disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling his job as president.” Respondents are given the option to “Approve,” “Disapprove” or express “No Opinion.” In months with multiple polls, the average for the month is reported. Poll data was collected from LEXIS-NEXIS, National Journal’s PollTrack and the Gallup Web site (www.gallup.com). 2 The phrase originated with Saddam’s Hussein’s reaction to the Gulf War as the “mother of all battles.” 3 John E. Mueller, War, Presidents and Public Policy, New York: Wiley, 1973. See also his updated discussion in Policy and Opinion in the Gulf War, Chicago, Ill: University of Chicago Press, 1994. 4 Mueller, 1973, p. 208. 5 For a discussion of this concept and the broader issue, see Stephen E. Frantzich, Cyberage Politics 101: Mobility, Technology and Democracy, New York: Peter Lang, 2002. 6 The agreement lasted for a number of days until the pressure of competition broke it down. See Stephen E. Frantzich, Cyberage Politics 101: Mobility, Technology and Democracy, New York: Peter Lang, 2002, p. 45. 7 See Jong R. Lee, “Rally Around the Flag: Foreign Policy Events and Presidential Popularity.” Presidential Studies Quarterly, 1977, Vol. 7: 252-266, direct quote is from page 253. For a good summary of the literature, see Marc. J. Hetherington and Michael Nelson, “Anatomy of a Rally Effect: George W. Bush and the War on Terrorism,” Political Science and Politics, January, 2003: 37-42. 8 Richard Brody, “The American People and President Bush,” The Forum, Vol. 1, 2002, available at Http://www.bepress.com/forum. 9 Marc J. Hetherington and Michael Nelson, “Anatomy of a Rally Effect: George W. Bush and the War on Terrorism,” Political Science and Politics, January 2003, pp. 37-42. 10 See Marc J. Hetherington and Michael Nelson, “Anatomy of a Rally Effect: George W. Bush and the War on Terrorism,” Political Science and Politics, January, 2003, p. 38 and John Mueller, Policy and Opinion in the Gulf War, Chicago, Ill: University of Chicago Press, 1994, pp. 70-78. 11 George C. Edwards and Tami Swenson, “Who Rallies? The Anatomy of a Rally Event,” Journal of Politics, February 1997, Vol. 59, No. 1, pp. 200-212. 12 LEXIS-NEXIS searches with the goal of measuring the amount of coverage (and therefore likelihood of public exposure) are tricky. Original articles are comprehensively included for the vast majority of papers. News service and syndicated stories published in a large number of publications are usually included in the database only once so it is impossible to determine the “multiplier effect” of a news service story. 13 David Greenberg, “We Don’t Even Agree on What’s Newsworthy,” Washington Post, March 16,2001, p. b1. 14 See George Edwards, Presidential Influence in Congress, San Francisco: W.H. Freeman, 1980, pp. 86-100; Robert DiClerico, The American President, Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
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Prentice-Hall, 1995, pp. 68-69; and Richard Neustadt, Presidential Power, New York: The New American Library, 1964, chapter 5. John Cochran, “Bush Readies Strategies for Legislative Success in 2003,” CQ Weekly Report, December 14, 2002: 3237, 3238, 3275. Marc. J. Hetherington and Michael Nelson, “Anatomy of a Rally Effect: George W. Bush and the War on Terrorism,” Political Science and Politics, January, 2003: 42. This view of the press can be found in Richard Davis, The Press and American Politics: The New Mediator, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 2001.
In: White House Studies Compendium, Volume 4 Editor: R. W. Watson, pp. 207-227
ISBN: 1-60021-541-6 © 2007 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
FREEDOM CHALLENGED: DUE PROCESS OF LAW DURING WAR Lewis S. Ringel ABSTRACT The United States is engaged in an unprecedented effort to destroy an international terrorist network al Qaeda. This effort involves America’s armed forces, agents of her intelligence gathering and law enforcement communities, and many allied countries. While the scope and extent of these operations may be new, America’s War on Terrorism is not. In the time since independence, the United States has wrestled with terrorism on the high seas, combated saboteurs at home, and committed acts of war against nations and various confederacies accused of supporting terrorism. Where there exist associated uses of force, declarations of martial law, the employment of law enforcement, the gathering of intelligence, and the capture and detainment of individuals hostile to the United States, there are sure to be questions of a legal, often constitutional, nature. The immediate situation, particularly as it relates to efforts to prevent future acts of terrorism and to punishing those accused of attacks against the United States, raises serious issues of due process and the separation of powers. This article examines how federal judges have resolved certain crucial constitutional conflicts with an emphasis on the implications of this history for the present and not-so-distant future. In addition, this piece draws several key lessons about the federal judiciary and the nature of the judicial process.
INTRODUCTION This article examines American due process during periods when the United States, led by an assertive president, was in conflict with terrorist elements of domestic or foreign origin. These include President Abraham Lincoln’s unilateral suspension of the right to a civilian trial (habeas corpus); President Franklin Roosevelt’s authorization of Japanese internment camps and military trials for suspected saboteurs; and the nation’s current efforts aimed at identifying terrorists who are plotting against the United States, its interests, or its allies. The focus of this article is on how the U.S. Supreme Court has resolved wartime due process cases. It highlights lessons about the Court itself and the judicial process in general, as well as separation of powers, legislative and executive powers, and, where relevant, the role that the armed forces have played in this history. This piece begins with a general discussion about freedom and due process during war. What follows is an examination of due process during the Civil War and World War II. This is followed by a discussion of the present Administration’s campaign against terrorism. The final section offers an assessment
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of how the judiciary has thus far handled, or is handling, due process cases related to the new War on Terrorism.
FREEDOM DURING WAR Freedom, like the truth, is often a casualty of war. The threat to freedom that occurs during war often comes from government efforts to keep order and protect property as well as from private citizens who are intent on silencing “heretics” who advocate unpopular or unorthodox political views.1 There are those who believe that liberty can be a threat to the state. In President George W. Bush’s words, “We must not let foreign enemies use the forums of liberty to destroy liberty itself.”2 A basic question for a society dedicated to freedom is whether freedom can be a threat to itself. If such a time is reached, it is possible that liberty must be compromised in the short term to save it in the long run. Determining what liberties to sacrifice to save a broader system of liberty itself is a great challenge. One freedom that is frequently at risk during war is due process of law.
Due Process of Law At some basic level due process means what is fair. The concept of fairness, however, is vague by definition, and its interpretation varies with circumstances or the accused.3 What is fair is affected by the threat. For instance, a terror group in possession of nuclear weapons commands immediate attention. In a war, the state might be permitted to limit due process in ways unimaginable in times of peace. Fairness may depend upon the accused. Persons accused of crimes against the United States who act alone might be treated differently than those who are agents of a foreign government, or are members of a terrorist group. Similarly, a citizen who is accused to conspiring against the United States may be entitled to greater rights under American law than non-citizens. There are two other issues that muddy the waters. First, in a federal system it is possible for different standards of due process to exist.4 Persons arrested by California may have greater due process rights under state law than persons arrested in Louisiana. Second, judges in different states or different federal circuits may have different conceptions of due process. That there is such variance makes it difficult to predict how cases related to the War on Terrorism will be resolved.
DUE PROCESS DURING THE CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION “With malice toward none, and charity for all….” It was with these words, characterizing his policy toward the South, that President Abraham Lincoln began his second term. Looking back, it is apparent that Union policy toward the Confederacy was anything but charitable; civil liberties were curtailed; voting rights were tied to loyalty oaths if not suspended entirely; food and supplies were scarce; and Union troops burned or destroyed much of the South. After the War, the Union imposed a Policy of Reconstruction that continued the erosion of due process freedoms. Predictably, federal courts found themselves inundated with challenges to the legality of the Union’s handling of the war and its management of the South in peace. This was especially true where civil liberties were concerned. Contested policies included the
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Union naval blockade of southern ports absent a declaration of war by the Congress, Lincoln’s unilateral suspension of habeas corpus and his use of military tribunals to try civilians, and the aforementioned Reconstruction of the Confederate States.
The Prize Cases (1863) On April 12, 1861, southern troops captured Fort Sumter. President Lincoln, on the authority of pre-existing congressional acts authorizing the president to respond to invasions or insurrections without the need for specific authorization from Congress, ordered a blockade of southern ports.5 The blockade resulted in the seizure of several ships, which were libeled and claimed as prizes.6 The owners of four of these prizes sought their return arguing that the blockade was illegal because Congress had never declared war.7 The Court disagreed and voted 5-4 that war can exist, even absent a declaration, if there are belligerent parties and foreign declarations of neutrality. The Prize Cases held that Congress can grant presidents standing authority to respond to insurrections or attacks. This means that presidents, if they have a general congressional delegation of power, do not need specific authority for each action taken that is related to that delegation. In the Court’s words: Whether the President in fulfilling his duties, as Commander-in-chief, in suppressing an insurrection, has met with such armed hostile resistance, and a civil war of such alarming proportions as will compel him to accord to them the character of belligerents, is a question to be decided by him, and this Court must be governed by the decisions and acts of the political department of the Government to which this power was entrusted.8
The Prize Cases declared the authority to judge threats against America an executive one beyond the reach of the courts. Subsequent presidents, including George W. Bush, have interpreted The Prize Cases to confer upon presidents a plenary power to judge threats against the United States. Having affirmed the blockade, the Court took up the question, “What is included in the term ‘enemies’ property?” Its answer was that “All persons residing within [an area in rebellion] whose property may be used to increase the revenues of the hostile power are, in this contest, liable to be treated as enemies.”9 The Court noted that, “Whether property be liable to capture as ‘enemies’ property’ does not in any manner depend on the personal allegiance on the owner.”10 In doing so, the Court appeared to confirm the state’s authority to seize the property of citizens whose sin might be where they live or the causes to which they contribute. In the present context, because there is no telling where terrorists may reside, or how they raise their money, some citizens may be wary of contributing to charities for fear that they are fronts for terrorist elements. Followers of religions for which charitable donations are part of religious doctrine, could be made to choose between their religious freedoms and a more general freedom from state-sponsored harassment and scrutiny.11 Some individuals may restrict charitable contributions out of fear that such contributions will lead to their arrest and/or deportation. A fear borne out by the fact that since September 11, 2001, 762 illegal immigrants to the United States, including at least one leader of an Islamic charity, have been deported (none were charged with terrorism) and scores more remain in federal custody.12
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Ex Parte Merryman (1861) Ex Parte Merryman (1861) is one of the few instances when a judge has stood up to defend due process freedoms during war.13 The case involved the arrest, by the military, of a civilian, John Merryman, on suspicion of helping to destroy railroad bridges. Merryman’s captor, General George Cadwalader, refused a court order to surrender Merryman to civilian authorities. He did so on the grounds that the president had authorized him to suspend habeas corpus. After the presiding judge, Chief Justice Roger Taney, tried unsuccessfully to arrest the general for contempt of court, he again ordered Merryman transferred to a civilian court, declaring in no uncertain terms that the president lacked the authority to suspend habeas corpus. Although Lincoln had Merryman transferred to a civilian court that ultimately released him, he never acknowledged Taney’s order, again unilaterally suspended habeas corpus,14 and ordered the Departments of War and State to institute widespread censorship.15 Congress ratified the suspension of habeas corpus – albeit not unconditionally.16 Having established martial law throughout the land, Lincoln used the armed forces, including the Navy, to arrest, try, and, execute scores of Confederate solders or persons suspected of Confederate sympathies. Reaction to Lincoln’s actions ranges from outright condemnation to fervent support with a significant bloc of interpreters who rationalize the White House’s policy as a necessary evil. Lincoln claimed that as president he had an inherent power to take any action “whether strictly legal or not” that was necessary for the Union’s survival, and he argued that due process of law ought not prevent an endangered nation from escaping its imminent destruction.17 Lincoln’s claims of a prerogative power were supported by John Locke, who asserted that in times of danger, a sovereign might possess assume extraordinary, perhaps illegal, powers. Lincoln’s policy of martial law met much opposition and led to several lawsuits.18 His judicial nemesis, Chief Justice Taney, died in early 1863. Under Taney’s successor, Salmon Chase, the Supreme Court, stung by the criticisms the judiciary had endured after Dred Scott and Merryman and aware of the control that Congress had over issues of importance to the judiciary, avoided wartime challenges to Lincoln’s imposition of military justice on civilians.19 In Ex Parte Vallandigham (1864), for instance, the Chase Court dismissed such a challenge because it lacked jurisdiction. After the war, the Court was, for a time, more willing to entertain such claims.
Ex Parte Milligan (1866) In late 1864, Lambdin Milligan, a civilian, was arrested in Indiana on suspicion of conspiring to free several Confederate prisoners held in a military jail. While there was no war in the Midwest, there was widespread anti-Union activity in much of the region. Civilian groups such as the Sons of Liberty or the Copperheads led much of this activity. Like the modern civilian-led state militias (e.g., the Michigan Militia) or al Qaeda, these “armies” were not formally associated with any government. In response to the threat posed by such groups, Lincoln authorized his commanders in the Midwest to suspend habeas corpus. Milligan, a “Major General” in the Sons of Liberty, was arrested and sentenced to death by military officials. Milligan applied to a federal circuit court for habeas corpus.20 Uncertain how to proceed, the circuit court certified the case to the Supreme Court, which took the
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case.21 Ex Parte Milligan (1866) turned on two key issues. First, did the president have the authority to suspend habeas corpus unilaterally? Second, did Congress have the power to suspend habeas corpus where there was no emergency or insurrection and where civilian courts were operating? With the war winding down, and the Union’s victory inevitable, the Court answered these questions in the negative. On the first question, the vote was 9-0. On the second, it was 5-4. With respect to Lincoln’s actions, Justice David Davis, an old Lincoln friend and ally, wrote: The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the shield of protection all classes of men, at all times, and under all circumstances. No doctrine, involving more pernicious consequences was ever invented by the wit of man than that any of its provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government. Such a doctrine leads directly to anarchy or despotism, but the theory of necessity on which it is based is false; for the government, within the Constitution, has all the powers granted to it which are necessary to preserve its existence.22
The Court treated Lincoln’s grant of judicial authority to the military as an act of presidential law making that is forbidden by the doctrine of separation of powers. Davis drew a distinction between an executive who acts incorrectly, albeit for the right reasons, and one who acts incorrectly for the wrong reasons when he distinguished between “wicked men, ambitious of power, with hatred of liberty and contempt of law, [who] may fill the place once occupied by Washington and Lincoln.”23 Having rejected the government’s arguments in support of martial law, the Court might have been expected to simply order the cessation of martial law and remand the case back to the circuit court. A bloc of five, however, for reasons never communicated to the public, answered a question not raised by the plaintiff or the circuit court.24 The Court asked if Congress could have suspended habeas corpus where civilian courts were open. The Court’s answer, which prompted a dissent by Chief Justice Salmon Chase, was that it could not.25 Davis held that civil liberties, which exist only in civilian law, cannot co-exist with military law. Put simply, if civil courts are open, martial law cannot exist. Congress could never establish martial law except in “the locality of actual war.”26
Ex Parte McCardle (1869) Ex Parte Milligan was the product of an assertive Court that had largely kept its misgivings about Lincoln’s handling of the war to itself. While the decision had its supporters, many greeted Milligan with contempt. As far as Milligan’s immediate impact went, the Administration conducted over 2,000 military trials of civilians in the South between 1865 and 1870.27 When it came to judicial reaction to Reconstruction, Milligan was the tip of the iceberg.28 The Justices who presided over southern circuits refused to serve on those circuits so as long as the South was governed by a military authority. Chief Justice Chase refused to preside over the trial of Jefferson Davis. Congress, concerned that the Court would invalidate its policy of Reconstruction, temporarily removed the Court’s circuit jurisdiction in the South.29 In addition, because it expected that the next Justices to leave the Court would be Democratic holdovers from the pre-Lincoln era, Congress voted not to fill the next two vacancies thus
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reducing future Courts from ten to eight.30 This act reflected Congress’ distrust of Lincoln’s successor, Andrew Johnson, a southerner. In the Judiciary Act of 1867, Congress gave federal courts jurisdiction “in all cases” when a person is denied a federal right. This move was intended to allow federal courts to shield federal officials, and freed slaves, from false arrest by southern law officials. William McCardle, a former Confederate, was arrested by the military for impeding a federal election. McCardle asked the Supreme Court for habeas corpus. Ingeniously, he did so under the Court’s new power to review “all cases,” including the decisions of military tribunals. The Court granted the writ. On March 9, 1868, McCardle’s counsel, Jeremiah Black, who had argued Milligan, used the case to challenge Reconstruction itself. On March 27, 1868, Congress, which was angry that McCardle’s suit had come under a law meant to protect Reconstruction, repealed the section of the Judiciary Act of 1867 that McCardle had used to get his case to the Court. Uncertain how to proceed, the Court postponed the case until 1869. In the interim, Congress impeached the president. When the Court revisited the case, the issue shifted to the legality of the repeal of the Judiciary Act. The Court was reluctant to take on Congress. In a short opinion, the Court refused to “inquire into the motives of the legislature” when it exercises an express “power under the Constitution” such as its powers under Article III, Section 2 to make “exceptions” to the Court’s appellate jurisdiction. Without jurisdiction, the Court voted 9-0 to dismiss the case. In Ex Parte McCardle (1869), the Court was scared and avoided a confrontation with Congress. This is a consistent pattern in U.S. history.31 Later Justices, free of the pressures of the Chase Court, have implied that if McCardle were re-argued it would be decided differently.32 Such assertions may be tested in the near future.
DUE PROCESS DURING WORLD WAR II: THE JAPANESE INTERNMENT CASES After the United States and Japan went to war, public anxiety on the west coast over possible sabotage by pro-Japanese elements grew. General John DeWitt, Military Commander of the Western Defense Command, and many state and national elected officials advocated separating the Issei (first-generation Japanese-Americans) and the Nisei (secondgeneration Japanese-Americans) from the larger population. These calls, whether motivated by racism, concern for security, or economic jealousy aimed at businesses owned by persons of Japanese origin, led President Franklin Roosevelt, in February 1942, to authorize the secretary of war to regulate the actions of the 50,000 Issei and the 70,000 Nisei living on the west coast. General DeWitt unilaterally established a curfew on persons of Japanese lineage. In March 1942, Congress and the president established military zones in the United States. The law made it a crime, punishable by a fine of $5,000 and jail time, for the Issei and Nisei to remain in a military zone without permission from the Department of War, or to disobey a zone commander’s orders. The new law validated the curfew. In May 1942,General DeWitt ordered all persons of Japanese ancestry living in west coast states to report to relocation camps. The Japanese internment found its way into the courts where this time it met with a receptive judiciary. Why the difference? Why did the Court tolerate the suspension of habeas corpus for a category of people whose sole crime, unlike a great many of the arrested
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Confederates, was their ancestry? It is possible that the Justices agreed with the policy, or even if they doubted its wisdom, they recognized its legitimacy. Based on records that have come to light, it appears that for some Justices, appeals to patriotism or friendships with administration or military members influenced their votes.33 It is also possible that the Court was intimidated into supporting the government.
Hirabayashi v. U.S. (1943) The first challenge to the Japanese evacuation came in 1943, when Gordon Hirabayashi, a Nisei, was apprehended in violation of both the curfew and the internment order. Hirabayashi was tried and convicted on both counts. He challenged the legality of the both the curfew and the internment order. Because Hirabayashi’s sentences ran concurrently, the U.S. Supreme Court did not need to affirm both convictions for him to go to jail. Writing for a 9-0 Court in Hirabayashi v. U.S. (1943), Chief Justice Harlan Stone confirmed the legality of the curfew without commenting upon the validity of the internment. This approach, because it did not directly sustain the relocation itself, satisfied Justices who had misgivings about the policy, but were reluctant to overturn it. The Court upheld the curfew as a reasonable means for exercising a legitimate purpose (survival). Stone defined the power to wage war as a power to do so “successfully” and one “not restricted to the winning of victories in the field.”34 The Court emphasized that while “it might have been wiser for the military to have dealt with people on an individual basis and through the process of investigation and hearings” it was not for the Court to second-guess the military when national security is at risk. As Justice William Douglas observed in his concurrence, “peacetime procedures do not necessarily fit wartime needs.”35
Korematsu v. U.S., (1944) A year after Hirabayashi, Fred Korematsu, a Nisei, was arrested and convicted on the sole count of not reporting for internment. Korematsu challenged the legality of the internment order. Because Korematsu was charged only with failing to report for internment, the Court could not skirt the constitutionality of the relocation order in the same way it had in Hirabayashi. Given the Court’s usual reluctance to rule on controversial constitutional issues, especially during a war, it is in some ways a surprise that the Court agreed to hear Korematsu’s case. The Justices could have allowed the internment camps to exist by refusing Korematsu’s appeal. Having taken the case, however, the Court had little choice but to address the constitutionality of the internment.36 Interestingly, when the Court did, it treated Hirabayashi as precedent for the affirmation of the Japanese internment policy. Justice Robert Jackson called attention to this point in a sharp dissent.37 It was a divided Court that decided Korematsu v. U.S., (1944). The original vote was 5-4; this changed when Justice Douglas, in a move he came to regret, joined the majority.38 Chief Justice Stone, one of two to oppose hearing the case, assigned the majority opinion to the other Justice to vote against hearing the case, Hugo Black. The assignment no doubt reflected Black’s support of the Government as well as two strategic factors. First, he had a reputation as a defender of civil liberties that might insulate the Court from libertarians. Second, he was
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close with several of the dissenters including Justice Douglas (whose vote Black ultimately did convert).39 Justice Black’s opinion employed similar reasoning to that in Hirabayashi. The Court found congressional war powers broad enough to sustain allowing the armed forces to segregate the population for security reasons. The Court brushed aside Korematsu’s equal protection claims because while “not unmindful of the hardships imposed by [internment] ... hardships are a part of war, and war is an aggregation of hardships.”40 Of citizenship, Justice Black wrote: [It] has its responsibilities as well as its privileges, and in time of war the burden is always heavier. Compulsory exclusion of large groups of citizens from their homes, except under circumstances of direst emergency and peril, is inconsistent with our basic governmental institutions. But when under conditions of modern warfare our shores are threatened by hostile forces, the power to protect must be commensurate with the threatened danger.41
Justice Black asserted that “all legal restrictions which curtail the civil rights of a single racial group are immediately suspect [and] courts must subject them to the most rigid scrutiny.”42 Black noted, “Pressing public necessity may sometimes justify the existence of . . . restrictions [that curtail the civil rights of a single race]; but racial antagonism never can.”43 By refusing to second-guess the conclusion that there were Japanese-sympathizers in the United States or that it was “impossible” to separate the loyal from the disloyal, and by dismissing charges of racial animosity without examining the motives behind the internment, the Court subjected the policy to minimal scrutiny.44 Several Justices dissented. Most dealt with the immediate facts. Justice Jackson looked past the case itself to fret about the effect that a ruling such as Korematsu might have on future events (such as the present situation). Echoing Justice Davis’s opinion in Milligan, Justice Jackson warned: [A] judicial construction of the due process clause that will sustain [interning people due to race] is a far more subtle blow to liberty than the promulgation of the order itself. A military order . . . is not apt to last longer than the military emergency . . . But once a judicial opinion rationalizes such an order to show that it conforms to the Constitution, or rather rationalizes the Constitution to show that the Constitution sanctions such an order, the Court for all time has validated the principle of racial discrimination in criminal procedure and of transplanting American citizens. The principle lies like a loaded weapon ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need. Every repetition imbeds that principle more deeply in our law and thinking and expands it to new purposes . . . A military commander may overstep the bounds of constitutionality, and that is an incident. But if we review and approve, that passing incident becomes the doctrine of the Constitution. There it has a generative power of its own, and all that it creates will be in its own image.45
The U.S. has moved away from Korematsu to the extent that the Congress has awarded survivors of the camps some financial compensation, while a U.S. District Court expunged Korematsu’s conviction from his record. The U.S. Supreme Court, however, has never reversed itself in the matter. Korematsu remains good law and could be cited to support future internments.
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Duncan v. Kahanamoku (1946) Following the Japanese attack on Hawaii, the Territorial Governor of Hawaii, pursuant to federal law, suspended habeas corpus and authorized the island’s Military Commander to assume judicial powers normally exercised by the Hawaiian government. The next day, the commander proclaimed himself Military General of Hawaii, established military government, and replaced civilian courts with military tribunals, which were not subject to review by civilian courts. President Roosevelt approved the commander’s actions. Most of the persons tried by these courts were civilians charged with what would normally be civilian crimes. Duncan and White were convicted by military courts of brawling and embezzlement, respectively. By the time of their trials, civilian courts had reopened and were handling most judicial business. Duncan and White appealed to civilian courts on the constitutional grounds that martial law cannot exist where civilian courts are open. A federal district court agreed and, on the basis of Milligan, ordered the two men released. The Military Governor refused the order and the United States appealed the decision.46 The U.S. Supreme Court agreed with the lower court and, in Duncan v. Kahanamoku (1946), ordered the men freed.47 Justice Black wrote for the majority. Unlike Justice Davis, who had used Milligan to issue a sweeping constitutional doctrine, Black’s narrow opinion skirted constitutional issues. The issue, Black held was not whether Congress could have authorized the actions by the state, but whether Congress intended for martial law and civil law to exist simultaneously.48 The Court, free of wartime concerns, found no such intent in the law. Duncan, followed Milligan to the extent that military and civilian courts cannot lawfully co-exist, but on its face appears inconsistent with Korematsu, insofar as Duncan seems to discourage, if not forbid, the state to establish martial law where civilian courts are open. Black never addressed this apparent inconsistency.
CASES THAT REDEFINED MILLIGAN In June 1942, eight men, all born in Germany, were taken into custody by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on charges of being German agents ordered to sabotage the American war effort. Because the men, who landed in Florida via a German submarine, were apprehended wearing civilian clothing, President Franklin Roosevelt refused to deem them prisoners of war and instructed that they be tried by a military tribunal. The FBI turned the men over to the military. The accused, one of whom claimed to be an American, challenged the custody transfer and the use of a military trial on the grounds that Roosevelt lacked the authority to order a military trial for persons arrested in the United States. They argued they were entitled to civilian trial under the U.S. Constitution. The Court, in Ex Parte Quirin, (1942), upheld the President’s actions by an 8-0 vote. It did so on several grounds. First, a government possesses inherent power to defend its citizens and protect its shores. Second, the president’s duty to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States” authorizes and compels him to carry out acts of Congress. Third, Congress, through its declaration of war, had authorized, if not required, the president to give effect to rules governing warfare. These rules included the Articles of War (10 U.S.C. 1471-1593), which authorize military trials for persons, such as spies, who aid the enemies of the United States. The Articles of War did not specifically mention saboteurs, however, they
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did state that failure to include a class of enemy did not render such a class immune to martial law. Therefore, the Court concluded that under American law saboteurs can be tried by military tribunals. In addition, the Court examined international law insofar as it pertained to trying saboteurs under military law. The Court found that under international law “lawful combatants” who wear “fixed and distinctive emblems” (e.g., soldiers) are not subject to military trials, but that “unlawful combatant’” are subject to martial law.49 American law defines “unlawful combatants” as those who do not display “fixed and distinctive emblems” on uniforms or headgear. American law considers persons “who during time of war pass surreptitiously from enemy territory into our own, discarding their uniforms upon entry, for the commission of hostile acts involving destruction of life or property [to] have the status of unlawful combatants punishable as such by military commission.”50 The language of American law aside, the conclusion that a military trial was appropriate for the captured German saboteurs in a state where civilian trials are open comes out of the blue insofar as Milligan spoke clearly on the subject of exceptions (there were none), and the fact that Milligan was hardly a “lawful combatant.” By creating this exception, the Court began a process of redefining Milligan that continues to this date.51 Johnson v. Eisentrager (1950), which redefined Milligan, involved an appeal brought by 21 civilian employees of the Third Reich who were apprehended in China, after Germany’s surrender to the United States, and were charged with aiding Japan against the United States. They were tried and convicted by a military court of crimes against the United States and were sentenced to jail in the American sector of Germany. The appellants contended that they were prisoners of war, and as such, were entitled to the constitutional protections afforded by American law. They argued that the fact that they were tried and held in territory occupied by the United States entitled them to habeas corpus. The Court dismissed their complaint on the grounds that the Constitution’s guarantees of Due Process do not extend “to alien enemies everywhere in the world engaged in hostilities against us.”52 Johnson limited Milligan so that it did not apply to non-resident civilians even if they were tried or held on U.S. territory. At the same time, the Court implied that if the prisoners were “within any territory over which the United States is sovereign,” a civilian trial might be warranted. This is because “the privilege of litigation has been extended to aliens, whether friendly or enemy . . . because permitting their presence in the country implied protection.”53 In Madsen v. Kinsella (1952) the Court affirmed a military trial for an American civilian charged with murdering her husband in the American zone of occupied Germany. The plaintiff requested a civilian trial on the grounds that Milligan had established that “it is the birthright of every American citizen when charged with a crime, to be tried according to law.”54 The Court rejected her claim because her crime (and arrest) had occurred in a military zone and was by statute subject to military law. In doing so, the Court created a further exception to Milligan. What do these three post-Milligan cases mean in the present context? The fact that Milligan has been weakened appears to strengthen the Government’s hand. Where Milligan and Duncan forbade martial law where civilian courts were open, Quirin established that martial law and civil law can coincide if the accused are “unlawful combatants.” This distinction might support President George W. Bush’s plans to use military courts to try accused terrorists arrested by civilian officials. Johnson might sustain efforts to try enemy combatants in military courts even if they are held outside any theater of war. While there are differences between Madsen and the current situation, Madsen may allow military trials for
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Americans arrested abroad by the United States. In fact, although John Walker Lindh was given a civilian trial, the United States is holding two citizens on charges of terrorism, one of whom was seized abroad, without any apparent plan to afford them civilian trials.55
POST-SEPTEMBER 11, 2001: THE DOMESTIC WAR ON TERRORISM What has the Bush administration done to combat domestic terrorism? It has interpreted legal precedent, acts of Congress, and the president’s Article II powers to expand government powers, often at the expense of due process freedoms. This approach, which has leaned heavily upon precedents set by past presidents as well as the judiciary, calls to mind the words of Benjamin Cardozo and Charles Evans Hughes. Justice Cardozo observed “The tendency of a principle is to expand itself to the limit of its logic.”56 Chief Justice Hughes, writing for the Court, asserted that “While emergency does not create power, emergency may furnish the occasion for the exercise of power.”57 In October 2001, President George W. Bush signed the U.S.A. Patriot Act. This act widened the definition of a terrorist,58 enhanced the powers of the secretary of state to certify groups as terrorist organizations, expanded Treasury Department powers to regulate moneylaundering,59 directed the Attorney General to fingerprint persons entering the United States, authorized the Justice Department to hold for up to seven days (and potentially deport) noncitizens suspected of terrorism, and temporarily expanded the surveillance powers ability of the Government vis-à-vis suspected terrorists. The act expanded surveillance capabilities by easing warrant requirements for intelligence gathering, broadening search techniques to allow “roving” surveillance, pen register, and trap and trace device searches of phones and email, allowing the Government to intercept messages to and from computer hackers, expanded what evidence intelligence agents can seize, and allowed intelligence agents and law enforcement to share intelligence.60 The Justice Department has hailed these expanded powers as valuable tools in the War on Terror and has requested additional expansions in surveillance powers and lifting a provision in the U.S.A. Patriot Act that causes the many of the government’s expanded surveillance powers to expire in 2005.61 Thus far, such calls have met with resistance in Congress62 and among civil liberties watch-groups like the American Civil Liberties Union, which has filed suit against the surveillance provisions of the U.S.A. Patriot Act alleging that they violate the privacy, free speech, and due process guarantees of the U.S. Constitution.63 On November 13, 2001, President Bush, relying on precedents set by Presidents Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, signed an executive order stipulating that non-Americans whom the president designates terrorists would be tried by secret military tribunals.64 Such tribunals would deliberate under special sets of rules and could be reviewed only by the President or the Secretary of Defense. Defendants will be afforded a military lawyer, and are entitled to a civilian lawyer; however, many lawyers are questioning the propriety of the rules that will govern their participation.65 The first of these trials will involve a Qatari student, Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, who is accused of assisting al Qaeda to plan post-September 11 attacks on the United States. Unlike other enemy combatants, Mr. Marri was initially arrested for civilian crimes (lying to the F.B.I. and credit card fraud). When charges of terrorism later surfaced, Mr. Marri was moved to a Navy jail in South Carolina.66
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The Department of Defense has been at the forefront of the War on Terrorism. In addition to its activities in battle, the military is detaining of hundreds of persons deemed “unlawful enemy combatants.” The military has also been quite involved in gathering intelligence. Little is known about much of this intelligence gathering except that it constitutes 90 percent of the federal intelligence budget.67 More is known about proposals for future intelligence gathering capabilities. The Pentagon has announced plans for an intelligence operation, Total Information Awareness Program (TIP), to “search for terrorists by scanning information in Internet mail and in the commercial and financial databases of [foreign and domestic] health, financial, and travel companies.”68 The Senate unanimously passed budget language to halt TIP’s development. As of August 2003, that language is before a congressional conference committee. The Pentagon has responded to congressional concerns by forming two civilianadvisory panels to monitor the program. Congressional concern over TIP has been heightened by the fact that the program’s development was to be managed by a former admiral and Naval Academy graduate, John Poindexter, whose felony conviction for lying to Congress about events related to Iran-Contra was reversed on a legal technicality.69 Poindexter has since resigned from his post after his plans for an online betting parlor that would have rewarded investors who predicted acts of terrorism became public.70 The Pentagon has terminated plans for such a program; what the future holds for TIP is not as clear. The United States is presently holding 650 foreign “enemy combatants” at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba. The Pentagon has given the impression that the detainees, who have undergone interrogation, will be tried by military tribunals. Not much is know about the conditions at Guantanamo Bay. American law and international treaties, which the United States has joined, forbid the torture of prisoners of war. Yet there have been allegations, denied by the United States, that it has turned Taliban and al Qaeda prisoners over to nations that do use torture or it has tortured them itself.71 The military is investigating the deaths of two prisoners who died in its custody.72 More clear, is that a suit filed by sixteen of the detainees requesting habeas corpus as per Ex Parte Milligan on the grounds that the jail at Guantanamo Bay is essentially United States territory was denied by a federal appeals court on the grounds that Cuba not the United States is sovereign over Guantanamo Bay and that consequently the detainees have never entered United States territory.73 As of August 2003, the Navy is holding two American citizens in the United States on suspicions of terrorism. Yasser Esam Hamdi, apprehended by the military in Afghanistan, is being held in Virginia. Jose Padilla was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Chicago in connection with a plot to explode a “dirty bomb” in the United States. He was turned over to the Navy and is being held in South Carolina. Unlike John Walker Lindh, who was granted counsel and allowed to plead to charges in a civilian court, the men are being held without charges or access to an attorney. Both have sought legal counsel. To date, Mr. Padilla has had more success than Mr. Hamdi. A District Court in New York has ordered that Mr. Padilla be provided legal counsel.74 This order is pending appeal in the 3rd Circuit. In Mr. Hamdi’s case, the Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit voted 8-4 to set aside a lower court ruling that had granted Mr. Hamdi’s request for legal counsel. In doing so, the 4th Circuit held that Hamdi could be detained without a lawyer “indefinitely.” While American case law seems to preclude military proceedings for American citizens where civilian courts are open, the military is asserting that civilian courts have no power to review its decision to declare the men “enemy combatants.” The military may be correct on that point where non-citizens are concerned, but the correctness of its actions is unclear as applied to Mr. Hamdi and Mr.
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Padilla because the relevant cases, Quirin and Madsen, involved non-citizens or Americans held abroad. An exception is Korematsu, which confirmed military trials for civilians, but that case has many unfavorable connotations that the president might prefer to avoid. The military is not alone in detaining suspected terrorists. In a high profile case, the Justice Department is charging Zacarias Moussaoui, a Frenchman, as a conspirator in the 9/11 bombings. If convicted, Moussaoui faces death. Mr. Moussaoui’s civilian trial is presently on hold after a District Court Judge in Virginia, Leonie Brinkema, ordered that Mr. Moussaoui be allowed to question a Government witness, who is a captured al Qaeda leader. The Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit has refused to overrule Judge Brinkema on the grounds that it lacks jurisdiction. The government, which fears the questioning would compromise national security, has announced its decision not to comply with Judge Brinkema’s order.75 At the present time, the decision to dismiss the case, or to lessen the charges, lies with Judge Brinkema. If she acts to do so, the government will almost certainly appeal. Another possibility is that Moussaoui’s case will be shifted to a military court. This would allow the government to avoid the Sixth Amendment, which guarantees defendants the right of “obtaining witnesses” to testify on their behalf. In addition to Mr. Moussaoui, the Justice Department has detained, often without charges, an undisclosed number of foreign aliens for immigration violations in connection with the 9/11 attacks. The names and locations of these persons are classified. When the Department has brought charges, usually for immigration violations, it has done so in secret hearings. These hearings have resulted in several contradictory appellate rulings that seem destined for the Supreme Court. The Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit has ruled that the Constitution’s mandate that trials be open does not apply to deportation hearings because they are not trials, while a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has upheld the withholding of the names of 762 detainees “most” of whom have been deported.76 Conversely, a Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit has ruled that the First Amendment entitles the press and the public access to deportation hearings. In instances when the Justice Department has granted suspected terrorists, or inmates convicted of terrorist acts, access to attorneys, it has done so under Special Administrative Measures (SAMs). SAMs allow the Government to “monitor” conversations between lawyers and their clients if “‘there is substantial risk’ that such conversations could facilitate terrorism.”77 The Justice Department, which has enforced these SAMs vigorously, brought charges in April 2002 against Lynne Stewart, who, in May 2000, unwittingly or not, relayed information from her client, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, leader of a jihad group, to his followers in Egypt.78 Ms. Stewart, was aware of a ban on transmitting messages from the Sheik to his followers, but was unaware that her conversations with her client were under surveillance. In these discussions, the Justice Department heard the Sheik plant his message with her, a message that she later delivered to the jihad group in a press conference. A federal judge later dismissed most of the charges against Ms. Stewart on the grounds that they were too vague. Charges that Ms. Stewart lied to and defrauded the United States remain.79 The Department of Justice announced that certain visitors from 25 nations, mostly Muslim nations, had to register with and be fingerprinted by the government. Persons who failed to comply within 40 days were susceptible to incarceration or deportation. Initial reports are that thousands of persons have been detained or have fled to Canada.80 In addition, the Justice Department is said to be exploring the creation of a DNA database for visitors to the United States.81
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The Treasury Department has seized the records and frozen the assets of businesses and charities alleged to have terrorist connections. A three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has affirmed the government’s authority to freeze such charitable assets.82 In a high profile case, the Departments of Justice and the Treasury arrested a university professor and seven of his associates in Florida in February 2003 on charges that they had aiding Palestinian terrorists. The arrests, which were the result of an investigation pre-dating September 11, 2001, were aided by the government’s new expanded surveillance powers. The suspects are awaiting trial.83 The Transportation Department has been involved in developing and executing new policies related to airport security. New federal laws, for example, require that federal employees search all luggage on commercial flights. Because bags often fly unaccompanied, there is a chance that bags that are locked might be damaged during the inspection process or that contents inside them might be stolen or broken. These concerns raise questions about who is liable for lost or damaged goods. Questions also exist with respect to how to best balance security with privacy and property rights. In November 2002, Congress passed and the President Bush signed into law the Homeland Security Act. This law consolidated twenty-two separate agencies into the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The new department’s responsibilities fall into four main areas: Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection, Science and Technology, Border and Transportation Security (Title IV), and Emergency Preparedness and Response. Is the United States succeeding in the War on Terror? Arriving at an answer is difficult, and beyond the scope of this article. What is know is that federal prosecution for terrorism and internal security offenses has risen from 115 in Fiscal Year 2001 to 1208 in Fiscal Year 2002. About one third of these prosecutions resulted in convictions, an increase over the prior fiscal year. While prosecutions and conviction rates have climbed, the average jail sentence has dropped between Fiscal Year 2001 and Fiscal Year 2002 from 20 months to two months. This drop is best explained by the fact that federal officials are less discriminating when it comes to filing charges than in the past. The result is more convictions for lesser charges such as identity theft, immigration violations, and reporting terrorist hoaxes.84 One crime that has prompted a proliferation in arrests that are just being resolved by the courts is making misrepresentations on airport job application forms. These cases, many of which involve honest mistakes made by applicants who have no connection to terrorism, illustrate the dilemma faced by prosecutors who are caught between a public that demands action, law enforcement agencies that view any security loophole as a threat to security, and judges and juries that tend to “focus on individual cases ... [rather than] overall problems.”85 The public, while supportive of preventing future attacks, has expressed unease about certain specific policies that it fears will result in abuses of power.86 Among the most vocal have been civil liberties groups,87 lawyers,88 and columnists.89 One scholar has termed Bush’s anti-terrorism policy as “pretty cautious by historical standards.”90 Others, however, have criticized Bush’s actions as a “threat” to American liberties, or as “confusing” and “inconsistent.”91 As is always so with republican government, public reaction to the president’s policies is interesting and important. Ultimately, it will be for unelected judges to decide the fate of due process within the context of the War on Terror and to decide whether America remains a nation of laws and not of men.
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CONCLUSION: ASSESSING COURT PERFORMANCE, PAST AND FUTURE, IN THE WAR ON TERRORISM How has the Bush administration’s domestic campaign against terrorism fared in court? How will it fare in the future? There are no easy answers to these questions both because opinions rendered are subject to interpretation, and because there is no way to know what the future will bring. Traditionally, courts in times of crisis have deferred to the elected branches of the government.92 The president appears to have benefited from this tradition, at least at the appellate level, where the administration thus far typically has been victorious. Bush has not fared as well at the district level. This dichotomy may reflect several factors. It might be due to the ideological biases of the judges, or the fact that District Courts can issue sweeping rulings secure in knowing that they are subject to appellate review. It could mean that appellate judges, many of whom desire a Supreme Court appointment, would prefer not to cross Bush. Other possible explanations are that the judges on the District Courts are the product of an era that has questioned, if not repudiated, rulings such as McCardle and Korematsu, or that the Courts of Appeals, which would prefer not to be overruled, believes that the Supreme Court will side with the government. The Supreme Court has yet to rule on any anti-terrorism disputes. That all decisions have come from lower federal courts is not surprising. Inferior federal courts decide 98 to 99 percent of all federal cases.93 This calls to mind J. Woodford Howard’s observation that the “Justices exert direct control over so little federal litigation that those concerned with the distribution of individual justice or the administration of national policy through law should look not only up but down and around.”94 That said, involvement in the anti-terrorism due process cases by the Supreme Court appears inevitable. To date, the Courts of Appeals have produced mixed results. The Supreme Court generally avoids reviewing lower federal courts except when mistakes are made, confusion exists, or the cases are uniquely important.95 The anti-terrorism cases, which are extraordinarily important, are ripe with confusion. Based on history, and given the Court’s ideological bent, one might expect the president to do quite well. That said, the present Justices are aware of how society and the legal profession view past capitulations in civil liberties cases during time of war. In addition, the Court has a sizeable center that may seek out a middle ground from which to guide the nation. When the Court has found this middle ground in the past, it has at times issued opinions that are partial victories for different sides.96 In the years ahead, Americans will see if the Court takes this tact.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT The Author wishes to thank Dr. Douglas M. Brattebo of the United States Naval Academy for the invitation to participate in this issue on the President, the Navy, and the War on Terror as well as for his editorial guidance and suggestions. In addition, I would like to thank my two assistants at California State University Long Beach, Nicole Gerson and Anastasia Benzel, both of whom made many fine and meaningful contributions to the final text. Finally, I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the value of the fine advice, technical assistance, and support of my wife, Dr. Jeanne S. Ringel.
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NOTES 1
Witness the example of Stephen Downs, who was arrested in a New Jersey mall for wearing a shirt with the slogan “Peace on Earth” or of Bretton Barber, a student in Michigan, who was suspended from school for wearing a shirt that labeled President Bush a terrorist. 2 Charles Lane, “Debate Crystallizes on War, Rights: Courts Struggle Over Fighting Terror vs. Defending Liberties,” The Washington Post (September 2, 2002.): A1. 3 For discussions of the difference between a concept and a conception as well as the central role that this difference plays in the process of constitutional interpretation, see Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977). That due process is of such a nebulous quality cannot be comforting for military personnel who could find themselves in the unenviable position of distinguishing between lawful and unlawful orders such as a suspension of habeas corpus or the collection of intelligence that might violate the due process of law, and facing disciplinary consequences for any misjudgments. 4 This is possible under the Independent and Adequate State Grounds doctrine, which allows states to interpret their own laws and constitutions to protect freedoms that are not protected by federal law. States can do so if they do not interpret their laws so as to abridge any federal rights. 5 Lincoln did so in two orders. The first, issued April 19, 1861, did not apply to Virginia or North Carolina. Those states seceded subsequent to the blockade. Lincoln responded to their secession on April 27, 1863 by extending the blockade to cover the entire Confederacy. The blockade, known as the Anaconda Plan, was designed to isolate the Confederate States from each other and from foreign nations. It was a risky plan. It risked alienating Europe, whose ships might be seized and appropriated by the Union. Because the blockade was arguably an act of war, and war is a state that can only exist among nations, Lincoln risked lending credence to secession itself. The blockade, which covered thousands of miles, was a risk in light of the fact that the Navy was rather small (less than 90 ships and just over 9,000 seamen) and under funded (its budget was about 12 million dollars). By the war’s end, there were 620 ships, 60,000 seamen, and the budget was over 20 million dollars. For more on these changes in the Navy, see: http://www.mariner.org/monitor/02_navalst/anaconda_plan.html or http://ragz-international.com/civil3.html 6 A prize is a ship that, along with its cargo, has been captured and becomes the property of the seizing party. 7 The ships in question were the Amy Warwick (loaded with coffee and headed from Brazil to Virginia), the Hiawatha (a British ship carrying tobacco leaving Virginia en route to England), the Brillante (a Mexican ship, bound for New Orleans, carrying flour owned by an American), and the Crenshaw (a Virginia owned ship bound with tobacco for England). The U.S. Navy took the prizes to various ports along the eastern seaboard of the United States. 8 The Prize Cases, 67 U.S. (2 Black) 635, 670 (1863). 9 Ibid., 674. 10 Ibid. 11 Susan Sach, “A Muslim Missionary Group Draws New Scrutiny in the U.S,” The New York Times, July 14, 2003: A1.
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Eric Lichtblau, “U.S. Report Faults the Roundup of Illegal Immigrants After 9/11,” The New York Times, June 3, 2003, A1. Also see Rachel L. Swarns, “U.S. Deports Charity Leader in Visa Dispute,” The New York Times, July 16, 2003, A10. 13 Ex Parte Merryman (1861), 17 Fed. Cases 144, (1861). 14 See Lincoln’s Proclamation of September 24, 1862. 15 See censorship orders of July 8, 1861, October 22, 1861, and February 25, 1862. 16 Suspension of Habeas Corpus Act of 1863. For a summary of these conditions see Ex Parte Milligan, 71 U.S. (4 Wall) 2, 132, Chase, C.J., Concurring (1866). 17 Louis Fisher, American Constitutional Law. 2nd Ed. (New York: McGraw Hill, 1995), 332. 18 The military arrested a host of individuals including “draft-dodgers, deserters, common criminals, blockade-runners, Confederate citizens, [and] possessors of contraband.” Craig R. Ducat, Constitutional Interpretation. 7th Ed. (United States: West/Thomson Learning, 2000), 185. 19 Even after Taney’s death, there were those who argued that the Court was sympathetic to the South. Such concerns led Congress to create a seat for Lincoln to fill with a proUnion Justice, Stephen Field. The message Congress sent to the Court was that it was willing to alter the Court’s composition to achieve its objectives. In addition, Congress could amend the Constitution or the various judicial acts to affect the Court’s jurisdiction and its powers or might use its powers over the judiciary’s budget to punish the Court for unpopular decisions. 20 Federal circuit courts of the time were forerunners of the modern federal courts of appeals. For more on the development of the federal judicial organization see Stephen L. Wasby, The Supreme Court in the Federal Judicial System. 3rd Ed. (Chicago: Nelson/Hall Publishers, 1988). 21 The circuit court asked three questions. First, should habeas corpus be issued? Second, should Milligan be released? Third, did the military tribunal have the authority to try and sentence Milligan? It was the third issue that was at the crux of the case. Alpheus Thomas Mason, and Donald Grier Stephenson, Jr., Eds., American Constitutional Law: Introductory Essays and Selected Cases. 12th Edition. (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1999), 121. 22 Ex Parte Milligan, 120-121 (1866). 23 Ibid., 125. 24 More sophisticated readers might be struck by the fact that the Court decided a question that could have been avoided and, arguably, was not raised by either of the parties. This would appear to violate the Court’s policy of declining to decide cases or questions that either are not “ripe” (meaning ready for adjudication) or involve a hypothetical question or a contemplated policy. For more on what types of cases the Court will or will not decide, consult the “Brandeis Rules,” which appear in Ashwander v. TVA, 297 U.S. 288 (1936). 25 Chief Justice Chase argued that “courts might be open and undisturbed in the exercise of their functions, and yet wholly incompetent to avert threatened danger, or to punish, with adequate promptitude and certainty the guilty conspirators.” Ex Parte Milligan, Chase, C.J., Dissenting, 140-141. (1866). Chase charged that the majority was acting “to cripple the constitutional powers of the government, and to augment the public dangers in times of invasion and rebellion.” Ex Parte Milligan, Chase, C.J., Dissenting, 142 (1866). This is a view that echoes in Justice Robert Jackson’s famous assertion that the Constitution is
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not “a suicide pact.” Terminiello v, City of Chicago, 337 U.S. 1, 37, Jackson, J., dissenting (1949). As we will see, it is a view that has found expression with respect to trying terrorists in civilian courts. 26 Ex Parte Milligan, 127 (1866). 27 Ducat, Constitutional Interpretation, 185. 28 Charles Warren, The Supreme Court in United States History. Vol. II. (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1926), 420-421. 29 The Judiciary Act of 1867 restored this power. 30 Congress subsequently raised the Court’s membership to its present level of nine. 31 See, for instance, Warren, The Supreme Court, Chapter XXX. Also see: Robert F. Cushman, and Brian Stuart Koukoutchos. Cases in Constitutional Law, 9th Ed. (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2000); Lee Epstein and Thomas G. Walker, Constitutional Law for a Changing America, 2nd Ed. (Congressional Quarterly Press: Washington D.C., 1995); James C. Foster and Eloise Leeson, Constitutional Law: Cases in Context (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1998); and Walter F. Murphy, James E. Fleming, and Sotirios A. Barber, American Constitutional Interpretation, 2nd Ed. (New York: The Foundation Press. 1995). 32 U.S. v. Klein, 80 U.S. 128, 145 (1872) limited McCardle when it asserted that, while Congress can make exceptions, it cannot do so as “a means to an end.” Justices William Douglas and Hugo Black have questioned in Glidden v. Zdanok, 370 U.S. 530, 601, Douglas and Black, JJ., Concurring (1962) “whether the McCardle case would command a majority view today.” 33 For an account of the Court’s internal proceedings in this case see Murphy, Fleming, and Barber, American Constitutional Interpretation, 87-101. For Justice Hugo Black’s friendship with the commander of the internment operation, General J. L. Dewitt and its possible impact on his vote in the case, see Walter F. Murphy, C. Herman Pritchett, and Lee Epstein. Courts, Judges, and Politics: An Introduction to the Judicial Process. 5th Edition. (New York: McGraw Hill, 2002), 683. 34 Hirabayashi v. U.S., 320 U.S. 81, 93 (1943). 35 Ibid., 105-106, Douglas, J., Concurring, (1943). 36 The majority asserted that the state could compel persons to report to relocation centers, but it did not affirm the power of the state to intern Korematsu since that had not actually happened and could not be assumed to have been inevitable. According to at least one case law text, few, if any, “took this disclaimer seriously.” Murphy, Fleming, and Barber, American Constitutional Interpretation, 94. 37 Justice Jackson wrote, “The Court is now saying that in Hirabayashi we did decide the very things we there said we were not deciding.” Korematsu v. U.S., 323 U.S. 214, 219, 242, 247, Jackson, J., Dissenting (1944). 38 Murphy, Fleming, and Barber, American Constitutional Interpretation, 98. 39 For more on the rivalries of the Stone years see David Danelski, “The Influence of the Chief Justice in the Decisional Process.” Paper Presented to the 1960 American Political Science Association Annual Meeting. New York. Also see Murphy, Fleming, and Barber, American Constitutional Interpretation, and Alpheus Thomas Mason, Harlan Fiske Stone (New York: Viking Press: 1956). 40 Korematsu v. U.S., 323 U.S. 214, 219 (1944). 41 Ibid., 219-220 (1944).
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Ibid., 219 (1944). Ibid. 44 Ibid. 45 Korematsu v. U.S., 323 U.S. 214, 219, 242 Jackson, J., Dissenting (1944). Justice Jackson’s fears proved prophetic. Congress, in 1950, authorized the president in emergencies to apprehend and detain citizens who are likely to commit sabotage or espionage. The president would judge if an emergency existed. That power was rescinded in 1971 after a House committee recommended interning races involved in urban rioting. After September 11, 2001, Congress authorized the president to apprehend and detain suspected terrorists, including citizens. 46 For his refusal, the commanding general was found in contempt of court and fined. 47 Duncan v. Kahanamoku, 327 U.S. 304 (1946). 48 See Section 67 of the Hawaiian Organic Act, 31 Stat. 141, 48 U.S.C.A. 532. 49 Ex Parte Quirin, 317 U.S. 1, 35 (1942). 50 Ibid. 51 For more on the Ex Parte Quirin case see Louis Fisher, Nazi Saboteurs on Trial: A Military Tribunal and American Law (Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2003). 52 Johnson v. Eisentrager, 339 U.S. 763, 782 (1950). 53 Ibid., 777-778 (1950). 54 Ex Parte Milligan, 119 (1868). 55 The men in question, whose cases will be discussed later, are Jose Padilla and Yasser Esam Hamdi. 56 Benjamin N Cardozo, The Nature of the Judicial Process (Yale University Press: New Haven, 1921). 57 Home Building & Loan Association v. Blaisdell, 290 U.S. 398, 426 (1934). 58 The law, for instance, expanded terrorism to include hacking into a federal computer system and established expanded penalties for such acts of “cyberterrorism.” 59 The law expanded such capabilities by requiring certain businesses and financial services to file suspicious activity reports on certain transactions (typically in excess of $10,000), cracking down on foreign shell banks, mandating that financial institutions verify the identities of foreign customers, and allowing the state to confiscate the property and assets of persons, charities, or businesses that commit or assist terrorist organizations. 60 www.eff.org/Privacy/Surveillance/Terrorism_militias/20011031_eff_usa_patriot_analysis. html: “Roving” searches refer to surveillance that focuses on individuals rather than places. If a surveillance target consistently changes phones or locations so as to avoid taps that are specific to certain phones or locations, the new law would allow the Government to essentially follow the target and tap multiple locations. Pen register and trap and trace devices act as a kind of “caller id.” They inform the surveillant who is emailing or calling the subject, as well as whom the subject is calling or emailing. The Patriot Act, as the text indicates, included a December 31, 2005, sunset that pertains to many of the surveillance enhancements that it made possible. Such a sunset, unless waived, would return the law to its status before the Patriot Act. For a more complete listing of these sunsets, see a report of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) at: www.eff.org/Privacy/Surveillance/Terrorism_militias/20011031_eff_usa_patriot_analysi s.html 43
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Eric Lichtblau, “Ashcroft Seeks More Power to Pursue Terror Suspects,” New York Times. (June 6, 2003): A1. 62 Eric Lichtblau, “Senate Deal Kills Effort to Extend Antiterrorism Act,” New York Times. (May 9, 2003): A1. Also see, Eric Lichtblau, “Suit Challenges Constitutionality of Powers in Antiterrorism Law,” The New York Times, July 31, 2003, A15. 63 Eric Lichtblau, “Suit Challenges Constitutionality,” A15. 64 Robin Toner, “Civil Liberty vs. Security: Finding a Wartime Balance,” The York Times, November 18, 2002, A1. 65 Of greatest concern are three issues: First, that lawyers inform the military of information learned from their clients that could signal impending crimes; second, that they provide the prosecution all of its evidence a week before the trial starts; and third, that lawyers pay for an expensive security clearance. For more on this, see Neil A. Lewis, “Rules Set up for Terror Tribunals May Deter Some Defense Lawyers,” The New York Times, July 13, 2003, A1. 66 Eric Lichtblau, “Bush Declares Student an Enemy Combatant,” The New York Times. (June 24, 67 No Author, “The Budget: Who Gets What,” Congressional Quarterly Weekly. (February 8, 2003): 318-319. 68 Adam Clymer, “Justice Dept. Draft on Wider Powers Draws Quick Criticism,” The New York Times, February 8, 2003, A9. 69 The designation of Poindexter to run the program seems an odd one, especially given the likelihood that it would engender congressional and civil liberties interest group opposition. Perhaps unexpected was the opposition from the prominent conservative columnist, William Safire, who published a pair of scathing editorials about Poindexter and TIP in The New York Times that triggered much of the public debate over the program. 70 Eric Schmitt, “Poindexter Will Be Quitting Over Terrorism Betting Plan,” The New York Times. (August 1, 2003): A 10. 71 Suzanne Goldenberg, “CIA Accused of Torture at Bagram Base,” The Guardian, December 27, 2002: http://www.guardian.co.uk/alqaida/story/0,12469,865311,00.html 72 Gareth Harding and Elizabeth Manning, “Pentagon Denied Afghan Torture Claims,” The Washington Times, June 13, 2002: http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/13062002-045203-1541r.htm 73 Neil A. Lewis, “Bush Administration Wins Court Victory on Guantanamo Detentions,” The New York Times, June 21, 2003, A14. 74 Benjamin Weiser, “Judge Says Man Can Meet with Lawyer to Challenge Detention as Enemy Plotter,” The New York Times, December 5, 2002, A23. 75 Phillip Shenon, “Future of Terror Case is in Judge’s Hands as Government Continues to Block Testimony,” The New York Times. (July 16, 2003): A10. 76 Eric Lichtblau, “U.S. Report Faults the Roundup of Illegal Immigrants After 9/11,” The New York Times, June 3, 2003, A1-A14. Also see, Neil A. Lewis, “Secrecy is Backed on 9/11 Detainees,” The New York Times, June 18, 2003, A1. 77 Ronald Dworkin, “The Threat to Patriotism,” The New York Review of Books, February 28, 2002, 44. 78 George Packer, “Left Behind,” The New York Times Magazine, September 22, 2002, 42.
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Michael Wilson, “Judge Dismisses Terror Charges Against Lawyer,” The New York Times, July 23, 2003, A 1. 80 Susan Sachs, “U.S. Crackdown Sets off Chaotic Exodus to Canada,” The New York Times, February 25, 2003, A1. Rachael L. Swarns with Christopher Drew, “Fearful, Angry or Confused, Muslim Immigrants Register,” The New York Times, April 25, 2003, A 1. 81 Clymer, “Justice Dept. Draft,” A9. 82 Neil A. Lewis, “Court Upholds Freeze on Assets on Muslim Group Based in U.S.,” The New York Times. (June 21, 2003): A11. Stephen Braun, “Appeals Court Upholds Freezing of Islamic Charity’s Assets,” The Los Angeles Times, June 21, 2003, A12. 83 Eric Lichtblau with Judith Miller, “Indictment Ties U.S. Professor to Terror Groups,” The New York Times, February 21, 2003, A1 and A15. 84 Eric Lichtblau, “Terror Cases Rise, But Most Are Small-Scale, Study Says,” The New York Times, February 14, 2003, A14. 85 William Glaberson, “First Airport Security Trials Show Hurdles to Prosecution,” The New York Times, March 7, 2003, A1 and A14. 86 No Author, “Poll: Concern War May Erode Freedoms,” The Associated Press, September 17, 2002, http://my.aol.com/news. Also see, Charles Lane, “Debate Crystallizes,” A1. 87 News articles are sprinkled with quotes from concerned advocates of civil liberties. In addition, newspapers include ads such as “Big Brother Isn’t Coming. He’s Already Here. And You Better Believe He’s Watching You.” This ad, which included a grainy photo of a portion of the president’s face (most prominently his eyes and ears), appeared on Page A9 of the January 17, 2003, New York Times. The ad, which solicited funds to fight Bush’s plans for a network of personal information about Americans was sponsored by a slew of concerned individuals and groups including the National Consumers League, public advocates Ralph Nader and Ralph Neas, attorney Gerry Spence, and actors Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, and Ed Asner. 88 Packer, “Left Behind,” 42. 89 Anthony Lewis, “Marbury v. Madison v. Ashcroft,” The New York Times, February 24, 2003, A21; and William Safire, “Privacy Invasion Curtailed,” The New York Times, February 13, 2003, A33. 90 University of Chicago Professor Cass Sunstein quoted in Lane, “Debate Crystallizes,” A1. 91 Dworkin, “The Threat to Patriotism,” 44. Also see Louis Fisher, “Who’s Minding the Courts on Rights?” Los Angeles Times, February 23, 2003, M2. 92 For general discussions of such deference see: Fisher, “Who’s Minding,” M2. Also see Lewis, “Marbury v. Madison v. Ashcroft,” A21. For more specific discussions, see Dworkin, “The Threat to Patriotism,” 45-47. 93 Sue Davis and Donald Songer, “The Changing Role of the United States Courts of Appeals,” Justice System Journal, 13 (1988-89): 323. Also see, Harry Stumph with Kevin C. Paul, American Judicial Politics, 2nd Ed. (Prentice Hall: New Jersey, 1998). 94 J. Woodford Howard, Jr. “Litigation Flow in Three United States Courts of Appeals,” Law and Society Review, 8 (1973): 33. 95 For analysis of why the Court takes cases see H.W. Perry, Deciding to Decide (Harvard University Press: Massachusetts, 1991). 96 See, for example, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 112 (1992).
In: White House Studies Compendium, Volume 4 Editor: R. W. Watson, pp. 229-243
ISBN: 1-60021-541-6 © 2007 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
THE EVOLVING ROLE OF THE NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: FROM EXECUTIVE SECRETARY TO ACTIVIST COUNSELOR Loch K. Johnson and Karl F. Inderfurth ABSTRACT The position of national security adviser has become one of great importance in the government of the United States. At the time of the establishment of the National Security Council in 1947, officials in Washington, D.C. viewed the post of executive secretary as little more than a neutral coordinator of information prepared for the president by those government departments and agencies with foreign policy responsibilities. Now the national security adviser resides at the center of the system for making foreign and defense policy. The individuals who have served in this capacity have exhibited a variety of approaches to the job. Some have been engaged only minimally, if at all, in policy advocacy; others have been strong policy advocates. The wide swings between passive and assertive advisers proved both inadequate and dangerous. The fact that the more moderate “counselor” role has prevailed in recent years reflects a learning experience regarding the dysfunction of extremes.
INTRODUCTION The National Security Council (NSC), created by the National Security Act of 1947, consists of three key groups of people: the statutory principals (the president, the vice president, the secretary of state, and the secretary of defense), the statutory advisers (the director of Central Intelligence and the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), and the professional staff. The bridge that joins all three groups is the “special assistant to the president for national security affairs, a job title established in the Eisenhower administration to designate the person who would be the overall director of the NSC’s activities. (During the Truman years, this position was known as the “executive secretary, in accordance with the 1947 National Security Act.) The cumbersome formal title of the new office was shortened under President Richard M. Nixon to the assistant for national security affairs or, in every day parlance, the national security adviser today’s common usage.
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The NSC Executive Secretaries Truman Administration Sidney W. Souers 1947-1950 James S. Lay 1950-1953 Eisenhower Administration Robert Cutler 1953 The National Security Advisers Eisenhower Administration Robert Cutler 1953-1955 Dillon Anderson 1955-1956 William Jackson 1956-1957 Robert Cutler 1957-1958 Gordon Gray 1958-1961 Kennedy and Johnson Administrations McGeorge Bundy 1961-1966 Walt W. Rostow 1966-1969 Nixon and Ford Administrations Henry A. Kissinger 1969-1975 (also Secretary of State in 1973-75) Brent Scowcroft 1975-1977 Carter Administration Zbigniew Brzezinski 1977-1981 Reagan Administration Richard V. Allen 1981-1982 William P. Clark 1982-1983 Robert C. McFarlane 1983-1985 John M. Poindexter 1985-1986 Frank C. Carlucci 1986-1987 Colin Powell 1987-1989 George H.W. Bush Administration Brent Scowcroft 1989-1993 Clinton Administration W. Anthony Lake 1993-1997 Samuel R. Berger 1997-2001 George W. Bush Administration Condoleezza Rice 2001Figure 1. Executive Secretaries and National Security Advisers, 1947-2004
THE RISE OF THE NSC ADVISER The position of national security adviser has become one of great importance in the government of the United States. At the time of the establishment of the NSC, officials in Washington viewed the post of executive secretary as little more than a neutral coordinator of information prepared for the president by those government departments and agencies with foreign policy responsibilities. Now, as journalist Elizabeth Drew has accurately noted, the national security adviser resides at the center of the system for making foreign and defense policy.1 By the 1960s, the office had undergone a metamorphosis into a number of
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complicated - and sometimes contradictory - roles. As General Colin L. Powell, who served as national security adviser under President Ronald Reagan, once put it: “I was to perform as judge, traffic cop, truant officer, arbitrator, fireman, chaplain, psychiatrist, and occasional hit man.2 The job had stretched from the original task of paper-coordinator to one of policy adviser and advocate for the president. While much has been written about the statutory principals on the NSC, less attention has been directed toward the national security adviser.3 The purpose of this essay is to examine the range of duties carried out by advisers over the years, as well as their differing operating styles. Twenty-one men and one woman have served as either executive secretary during the Truman and Eisenhower years (three) or beginning with Robert Cutler as national security adviser during and since the Eisenhower years (eighteen). Their names and years of service are presented in Figure 1.
A PANOPLY OF ROLES FOR THE NSC ADVISER The individuals who have served as either executive secretary or adviser have exhibited a variety of approaches to the job. Some have been engaged only minimally, if at all, in policy advocacy (the executive secretaries and the early advisers); others have been active policy entrepeneurs and advocates (Kissinger and Brzezinski, along with the most recent advisers). Two incumbents in this office Robert C. McFarlane and Vice Admiral John M. Poindexter strayed into questionable foreign policy and intelligence operations. Some have become internationally known: none more than Kissinger, who in 1973 combined the job for two years with his position as Secretary of State; others, like Gordon Gray and William P. Clark, have been almost as hidden to history as museum curators. Whatever their status or level of ambition, all advisers have faced a crowded NSC agenda with constant committee and subcommittee meetings that cover everything from budget reviews and crisis management to policy evaluations of specific topics (like arms control) or regions of the world. The adviser is steadily on the telephone with other key officials or meeting with them, and, occasionally, will host foreign representatives in the adviser=s spacious West Wing office. In addition, the activist national security adviser faces many managerial tasks: assigning studies for the NSC staff or other experts to prepare for the president; reading and commenting on completed studies, then distilling the findings and recommendations into a report for the president; serving as traffic cop for the seemingly endless flow of paper to the Oval Office on security and foreign policy matters from Cabinet officers and other officials; monitoring the implementation of decisions made by the president to ensure they are properly interpreted and carried out by the bureaucracy; and meeting from time to time with newspaper, magazine, and television reporters. According to former adviser Samuel (Sandy) R. Berger of the Clinton administration, the principle role of the adviser is to provide the president with information that he needs to know in addition to what he wants to know and to keep the process moving in a direction that he wants it to move. Berger stresses, too, that the purposes of the NSC (and, therefore, its adviser) lies in trying to have a coherent decision-making process and determining what [the] priorities are and what is important for the rest of the government to focus on.4 Another former adviser, Walt W. Rostow of the Johnson administration, enumerates five basic duties for the man or woman who holds the office:
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gathering information; presenting, sympathetically, the point of view of each relevant Cabinet member; stating his or her own opinion, without becoming domineering; helping to hold together the president’s foreign policy team; and, implementing the president’s decision.
Of these duties, Rostow believes that the biggest job is the gathering or mobilization of information.5 Like Berger, he emphasizes that the adviser’s number one duty [is] to give the president the facts.6 The role of fact-presenting is, of course, not the advisers alone. This responsibility is also considered, for example, the first duty of the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI). The NSC adviser, though, is expected to go beyond the facts to offer policy advice, while traditionally the DCI is expected to stick to the facts. Not every DCI has honored this distinction, however - notably, John A. McCone during the Kennedy years and William J. Casey under President Reagan, both of whom routinely weighed in with policy recommendations.7 Advisers Lt. Gen. Brent Scowcroft and W. Anthony (Tony) Lake have also addressed the question of roles. Scowcroft offers a series of axioms on the subject.8 The adviser should be a policy integrator and an honest broker, and should be willing to concentrate mainly on advising the president not making public pronouncements. In this spirit, the adviser should defer to the secretary of state as the chief explicator of foreign and security policy. Further, the adviser ought to eschew the temptation of running foreign policy from the White House and sharply limit the operational role of the NSC staff. The adviser has an obligation as well to carefully husband the president’s time, and should engage only sparingly in diplomacy with foreign nations and always in tandem with the secretary of state. The adviser has to organize the NSC staff to suit the president’s habits, needs, and proclivities, and work in close partnership with the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), instead of allowing OMB to make policy by default by dint of its control over money. Lake’s checklist of adviser duties is less in the form of axioms than challenges to the individual who holds the office.9 In his view, the adviser should be: • • • • • • •
an agenda setter, defining priorities; an arbiter, adjudicating conflicting interagency recommendations (the referee of internal bureaucratic scrimmages); a diplomat, selectively using the White House venue to engage foreign officials; an intelligence officer, helping to identify emergent threats and provide early warning; a media source, feeding media demand for explanation with background interviews; a congressional liaison, building trust with leaders on Capitol Hill; and, a national security professional, preserving a firewall between national security and U.S. domestic politics.
Lake stresses three essential duties of any NSC adviser: to ensure that others in the foreign policy hierarchy not only the president know the adviser’s views, so there are no surprises; to drive the foreign policy decision-making process forward; and to engage in selected diplomatic activities, as the president sees fit.10
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Clearly a primary obligation of the adviser is to make sure that the president hears from a wide spectrum of opinions before making a decision. Political scientist Alexander George once proposed the creation of a White House Office of Special Assistant for Multiple Advocacy for policy issues.11 The NSC adviser, if performing properly, already has this responsibility when it comes to national security as a part of his or her job description. The adviser is expected to keep the channels of communication open between the White House and the departments and agencies; to provide a voice for weaker advocates; to dredge new channels, if necessary, in the persistent search for information and policy options to assist the president; and to be alert constantly for malfunctions in the flow of information to, and orders from, the White House.
AN OFFICE OF GROWING INFLUENCE AND VISIBILITY As David K. Hall has observed, when Robert Cutler became the NSC adviser in the Eisenhower administration, the position took on new vigor in identifying issues, in pressing for information, in suggesting alternatives, in seeking compromises, in occasionally [original emphasis] advocating a view.12 With the exception of Brent Scowcroft when he labored for President Gerald R. Ford under the shadow of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the national security advisers from the Kennedy administration until the Reagan administration McGeorge Bundy, Walt W. Rostow, Henry A. Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft, and Zbigniew Brzezinski rejected the executive-secretary model in favor of a steadily more expansive interpretation of their responsibilities. The adviser position evolved rapidly into an office of considerable authority during the Kennedy years, prodded (Lake believes) by President John F. Kennedy’s unhappiness about the Bay of Pigs fiasco.13 Whatever the initial impetus, the exceptional energy and intellectual abilities of McGeorge Bundy and his successors (well-regarded scholars like Rostow, Kissinger, and Brzezinski), along with the backing of Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Jimmy Carter, allowed these advisers to expand the traditional boundaries of the office. Bundy has been described as a one-man replacement for the Planning Board of the Eisenhower years.14 He dismantled the Eisenhower NSC bureaucracy and introduced a much more fluid organizational structure; the White House was to run as if it were Harvard, with Bundy as dean and Kennedy as president intellectuals, not bureaucrats, would make foreign policy.15 With Henry Kissinger, the adviser position achieved the zenith of its influence. President Nixon relied heavily on his judgment, and Kissinger proved skillful in nurturing a close relationship with his patron. He took the office of NSC adviser public, becoming a leading spokesman for foreign policy and appearing frequently on television talk shows. When Brzezinski came into that office with the Carter administration, he even brought a press secretary into the NSC system a first. At times, he seemed to exercise as much sway over American foreign policy as Kissinger had achieved. I’m a synthesizer, analyzer, coordinator, Brzezinski declared to an interviewer. I might also be alerter, energizer, implementer, mediator, even lightening rod. All of these roles I play at different times, depending on the issues.16 Kissinger and Brzezinski may have gone too far in their public appearances as advisers. At least this was the view of some critics, not the least of whom were a number of officials
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who served under Secretaries of State William P. Rogers in the Nixon years and Cyrus Vance in the Carter years. They viewed Kissinger and Brzezinski as overly aggressive competitors for the title of chief foreign policy adviser and spokesman for the president.17 When Ford replaced Nixon as President in 1974, he kept Kissinger on as both his Secretary of State and NSC adviser. In November of 1975, though, the President decided to split these offices again into the hands of two individuals, with Kissinger as Secretary and Scowcroft (who had been Kissinger’s deputy national security adviser) as national security adviser. At the time, Kissinger recalls that he resented the decision bitterly; but he came to view the spit as wise, realizing that a determined secretary of state cannot fail to have his view heard regardless of who is chairing interdepartmental security committees: the secretary or the adviser.18 Both by personality and philosophy, Scowcroft settled into a less dominant role than Kissinger had displayed as adviser. I bent over backwards, he remembers, not to appear to be repeating, frankly, what Henry Kissinger did.19 Given Kissinger’s wile and stature as Secretary of State, it would have been difficult anyway for Scowcroft (or anyone else) to rise above him as the President’s chief foreign policy official. In hopes of toning down the tensions between the national security adviser and the secretary of state that occurred most prominently during the Nixon and Carter years, the Reagan Administration vowed to carry on in the style of Scowcroft, not Kissinger or Brzezinski. Richard V. Allen, William P. Clark, and Robert C. McFarlane (before becoming caught in the Iran-Contra affair) the first three Reagan NSC advisers assumed a more behindthe-scenes supportive role focused on the President’s needs, allowing Reagan’s Secretaries of State, first Alexander M. Haig, Jr., and then George P. Shultz, to serve as point men for foreign policy. During these years, the Secretaries’s major rivals were less the national security adviser than other powerful Cabinet and White House officials, especially Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger and White House chief of staff Donald T. Regan. The fourth Reagan NSC adviser, Adm. Poindexter, seemed by all accounts destined to fit well into the newly low-key style of his immediate predecessors. The Iran-contra scandal of 1986 (involving questionable arms deals with Iran and the funneling of the profits to the contra rebellion in Nicaragua) would reveal, however, that behind the Admiral’s military spitand-polish, by-the-book image hid a national security adviser prepared to push the boundaries of the office into a region of dubious propriety, if not outright illegality. To this day, though, Poindexter continues to believe that the NSC staff never violated the law during the Irancontra affair.20 This interpretation puts him at odds with a number of lawmakers and legal scholars.21 The scandal dealt the office of national security adviser a serious blow and the Reagan administration brought in Frank C. Carlucci, an experienced government official, to help repair the damage. He moved quickly to take the NSC out of operations and back to its managing and coordinating responsibilities. We had to back the NSC out of that role, he recalls, because once you become operational you couldn’t be the honest broker.22 Carlucci also took steps to shift the center of foreign policymaking back to the Department of State. In dealing with the media, he suggests: The national security advisor should not be out front, but should be part of a coordinated public relations strategy.23 But Sandy Berger steadfastly espouses an active media role for the adviser, since you need a lot of players on the field very often not just the president and the secretary of state alone to explain the nation’s foreign policy initiatives to the American people and the rest of the world.24 Lake agrees: With the increasing range of talk shows, news channels, and so on, you especially need all the voices you can get when you’re trying to explain a policy. He is critical of
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himself for not spending more time on such public activities, although he acknowledges that Secretary of State Warren M. Christopher didn’t like it very much when I did public work.25 Berger converted the NSC into what one senior official outside the White House referred to as by far, the most dominant entity in foreign policy making in [the Clinton] administration.26 As a New York Times correspondent reported in 1999, Secretary of State Albright had been effectively eclipsed in foreign affairs by Samuel R. Berger, the national security adviser, who has brought his physical proximity to the Oval Office and his personal relationship with President Clinton to bear on every foreign policy issue .27 Another Times correspondent concluded that Berger had become perhaps the most influential national security adviser since Henry A. Kissinger” – through more as a “political rather than strategic figure.28 President George W. Bush’s choice for NSC adviser was Condoleezza Rice, a former provost at Stanford University and an academic specializing in Soviet affairs. Rice joined an NSC team of well known former government officials, including Secretary of State Colin Powell, who once remarked that he regarded Rice like a daughter.29 She seemed unlikely to overshadow Powell and the other Council principals. On occasion, though, Rice has been an important go-between in the administration, arbitrating disputes among the principals. She also weighs in on policy and, with the leverage that comes with close ties to the President and proximity to the Oval Office, she has assumed an active role as adviser.
THE NSC ADVISER AS HONEST BROKER The adviser’s raison d’etre, writes Colin Powell, is to help the president manage foreign policy, especially by ensuring that the chief executive receives full, objective, coherent, and balanced recommendations on issues he must decide and that decisions are forced forward not allowing the bureaucracy to sit and spin its wheels and fail to move issues forward for decision.30 The president, he adds, must hear the strongest views as well as the weakest views. Moreover, it is imperative for the adviser to make the secretaries of state and defense look good not exactly Kissinger’s prime motivation when he served as adviser! It is in the best interest of the United States, Powell opines, for the secretary of state and the secretary of defense to be seen as the principal players in the executive of the president’s foreign policy. Further, he continues, the adviser is often called upon to be a crisis manager: When something happens in the world a military action in the Persian Gulf, a crisis in a foreign land, any kind of crisis that is going to be a major international event there is only one place that crisis can be managed from, and that is the West Wing of the White House, and it immediately flows into the National Security Council staff and the national security adviser.31 Perhaps above all else, the NSC adviser has evolved into a vital honest broker to mediate disputes among the Cabinet departments and especially to mollify as much as possible the institutional tensions between the Departments of State and Defense, serving as a bridge between the two. With this role in mind, Powell refers to the adviser as the conflict resolver.32 Scowcroft, considered by many the quintessential honest broker both times when he served as adviser (to Ford and President George H.W. Bush), adds: . . . . if you are not the honest broker, you don’t have the confidence of the other members of the NSC. If you don’t have their confidence, then the system doesn’t work, because they will go around you to get to the president and then you fracture the system.33
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THE INTERAGENCY PROCESS Making the NSC system work is increasingly seen as the responsibility of the national security adviser. The Tower Commission, established by President Ronald Reagan to investigate the Iran-contra affair, made several recommendations regarding the organization and functioning of the NSC and the roles to be performed by the participants.34 One of the Commission’s most important recommendations related to the interagency process the organizational structure and procedures set up by each administration to pinpoint issues, develop options, and clarify choices for the president. Many observers of the Council, like Ivo H. Daalder and I.M. Destler, consider the policy coordination role the NSC’s primary mission, indeed the critical task that it alone can perform.35 The national security adviser has the greatest interest in making the Council process work, for through this process the president acquires the information and analysis he needs to make decisions and build support for the administration’s programs.36 The Tower Commission noted that there has typically been a struggle over the chairmanships of the interagency committees created under the NSC, which has pitted the national security adviser and the NSC staff against the Cabinet secretaries and department officials. Based on its review of the Council’s operations over 40 years, the Commission reached the conclusion that the system generally operates better when the committees are chaired by the individual with the greatest stake in making the NSC system work and, therefore, recommended that the national security adviser chair the senior-level committees of the NSC system.37 Frank C. Carlucci, then President Reagan’s national security adviser, sought to codify the Tower Commission’s recommendations in a National Security Decision Directive (NSDD 276). He established a Senior Review group, chaired by the national security adviser with Cabinet-level attendance. Below the Senior Review Group, Carlucci set up several Policy Review Groups to be chaired by his deputy, Lieut. General Colin Powell. These organization changes proved contentious. In his memoirs, President Reagan’s Secretary of State, George P. Shultz, described his strongly felt objections: . . . . I confronted Carlucci directly about NSDD 276. I told him that I had no problem with informal meetings of the National Security Council being coordinated by the national security adviser . . . . But it would be a grave mistake, I said, for the NSC adviser, a non-statutory member of the National Security Council, someone not in the cabinet and not subject to congressional committee, to be designated in an NSDD as the chairman of NSC meetings. Frank Carlucci is not a member of the NSC, I said. You [Carlucci] are the staff of the NSC. You serve the principals of the NSC, especially but not exclusively the president.38
To make clear his view of where the NSC staff should be placed in the chain of command, the Secretary sent a formal memorandum to Carlucci detailing his objections to the directive. Shultz recalls, however, that the national security adviser did not yield. Forgive my annoyance, Carlucci told me, but I did not return to government in order to be an executive secretary.39 Nor did Brent Scowcroft wish to be a mere executive secretary when he returned to serve again as national security adviser in 1989 to the first President Bush. Scowcroft had been a member of the Tower Commission (in fact, had written that portion of the Commission’s report dealing with the NSC), so it was not surprising that he proposed an NSC system that
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would incorporate the Commission’s recommendations. Under President Bush, the formal Council would be supported by two key NSC subgroups: a Principals Committee and a Deputies Committee. The former would include the secretaries of state and defense, the director of central intelligence, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, the president’s chief of staff, and the national security adviser, who would serve as chair. This Committee, according to Scowcroft, was the major organizational change he wanted to make in the operation of the NSC, based on his past experience serving as national security adviser.40 The Deputies Committee would be chaired by the deputy national security adviser and would include the second or third ranking official from each of the departments or agencies represented by the principles. The primacy of the national security adviser for directing the work of the Council and for policy coordination was thus established. Moreover, a general consensus seems to have emerged across recent administrations that this role is the proper one for the adviser to play. The Clinton administration adopted the first Bush administration’s structure of a Council supported by a Principals Committee and a Deputies Committee, with the national security adviser or the deputy adviser chairing the two committees. This was the first time in the NSC’s history that an incoming administration adopted the main organization features of its predecessor. With the advent of the second Bush administration in 2001, there was some speculation that the NSC system might be altered to enlarge the role Vice President Dick Cheney would play, perhaps chairing important Council meetings even though these changes would come at the expense of the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice. When the President issued his new NSC directive, that speculation was laid to rest; the directive affirmed Rice’s authority and responsibility for directing the work of the Council, including her chairmanship of the key committees. Like Frank Carlucci before her, Rice had no intention of returning to government (she had served on the NSC staff during the first Bush presidency) in order to be an executive secretary. The role of the security adviser had evolved far beyond that.
TYPES OF ADVISERS Political scientists Cecil V. Crabb and Kevin V. Mulcahy have devised a useful four-fold classification of adviser roles: the administrator, the coordinator, the counselor, and the agent (see Figure 2).41 The adviser qua administrator is highly deferential to the secretary of state, unwilling to enter into policy advocacy, and, serving as a conveyer belt, devoted to the dayto-day chores of moving national security papers in and out of the Oval Office. The authors offer the executive secretaries Sidney W. Souers and James S. Lay as classic examples (to which we would add early Cutler as well, before he became adviser). So are some later advisers, they suggest, including Allen, Carlucci, and Powell. We agree with the Allen judgment, but feel that Carlucci and Powell played a more activist role (see below). The authors place Scowcroft in this category, too, during the Ford administration, but not when he became adviser to the first President Bush; we generally concur.
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Allen Low
Policy-Making Responsibility High
Low
High
ADMINISTRATOR Souers Lay Powell Carlucci
COORDINATOR Cutler Anderson
COUNSELOR Bundy Rostow
AGENT Kissinger
Clark
Scowcroft
Brzezinski
McFarlane
Poindexter
Figure 2. Styles of Leadership Among NSC Advisers. Source: Cecil V. Crabb and Kevin V. Mulcahy, American National Security: A Presidential Perspective (Pacific Grove, California: Books/Cole, 1991), p. 177.
The second category is the adviser as coordinator, whereby the job takes on the added dimension of greater policy initiative as the adviser defines decision options for the president. Here, according to Crabb and Mulcahy, one finds Cutler (as adviser, not as executive secretary), Dillon, Anderson, Clark, and McFarlane; however, we would place McFarlane into a far more assertive category, based on his involvement in the Iran-contra affair and his periodic attempts to bypass Secretary of State Shultz. As Shultz recalls, [McFarlane] in his position as NSC adviser to the president, yearned to make things happen through his own secret diplomacy . . . . he never found real satisfaction in the NSC adviser’s role as coordinator: he wanted to be the action man.42 The third category of counselor points to an adviser’s entry into the world of policy advocacy. He or she presents personal views on the issues to the president, and helps the administration project its policy initiatives to the public. Here, it is generally agreed, one finds Bundy, Rostow, and Brzezinski. The fourth category is the agent. In this instance, write Crabb and Mulcahy, the adviser combines the duties of a coordinator (directing the planning process) with those of a counselor (serving as a personal presidential adviser).43 The adviser-as-agent dominates the national security process and acts as the chief spokesperson for the president on foreign affairs. Kissinger is the only pure example of an agent in this classification, although Crabb and Mulcahy maintain that it was not for want of aspiration or effort that Brzezinski never quite made into the agent domain.44 The authors place Poindexter in the agent category, too, but on the extreme activist side, suggesting that his involvement in the Iran-contra affair actually bends him toward a fifth and unacceptable type of adviser: the agent-extremist or insurgent. As a result of inadequate supervision or guidance from President Reagan, they argue, Poindexter pushed the job description to the limit by acting on the basis of his personal assessment of the president’s intentions [original emphasis] rather than on expressed presidential policies.45
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Published in 1991, the Crabb-Mulcahy framework does not account for most recent advisers: Lake, Berger, and Condoleezza Rice. Using the Crabb-Mulcahy terminology, we would designate Lake and Berger under Clinton as counselors although with Lake at the lower end of assertiveness and Berger at a higher end (accompanying Brzezinski). Thus far, Rice is also functioning as a counselor, especially in assisting the second Bush administration present its policy initiatives to the public. The distinction we draw between Lake and Berger within the counselor category leads us to seek a more nuanced scaling of adviser assertiveness than allowed by the Crabb-Mulcahy typology. Based on a thorough sifting of the literature on advisers (oral histories, memories, and scholarly studies46), as well as our own observations in Washington, we present this evaluation below.
THE COUNSELOR’S ROLE PREVAILS From the National Security Act of 1947 through today, the history of the NSC advisor’s performance has swung between passive and active roles. During the Council’s first two decades, the advisers moved steadily toward a more assertive stance, as measured by their internal NSC managerial responsibilities and advocacy of policy (especially in public forums). As displayed in Figure 3, this trend toward “agentry” reached a high point under Kissinger. In reaction to Kissinger’s dominance over the policymaking process, the level of adviser activity devoted to policy initiation and going public gave way to a more behind-the-scenes approach under Scowcroft during the Ford administration. Then the role of adviser began to rise again under the aggressive leadership of Brzezinski, experienced another decline with the more passive Allen and Clark, followed by a disastrous turn upward on the aggressiveness scale with the questionable operations carried out under McFarlane and (particularly) Poindexter. As the Tower Commission inquiry into the Iran-contra affair made clear, the Council’s staff (led by McFarlane, then Poindexter) assumed an operational role in seeking assistance for the contras in Nicaragua even though lawmakers had prohibited (through the Boland amendments) government involvement in the supply of war materiel to the contra forces.47 When this scandal came to light in 1986, Senator John Glenn (D, Ohio) concluded that the NSC had become a rogue” elephant out of control.48 The strong personalities of Carlucci and Powell no doubt helped to slow a full swing back into an administrator or coordinator role in the wake of the Iran-contra excesses. Finally, in recent years, the role of adviser has leveled off in the activist counselor mode. This narrowing oscillation of adviser roles between the extremes of administrator, on the one hand, and insurgent, on the other hand, settling on the preferred job description of counselor, is a result of a long process of trial and error with the office. The wide swings between passive and assertive advisers proved both inadequate (the administrator and coordinator roles failed to assist the president in grappling with policy choices) and dangerous (the insurgents brought to the nation the Iran-contra affair).
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Figure 3. Levels of NSC Adviser Activism in Policy Initiatives and Public Advocacy
The fact that the counselor role has prevailed reflects a learning experience regarding the dysfunction of extremes, either passive or active. Moreover, presidents have understood that the complex issues of foreign and security policy in the aftermath of the Cold War demand an active adviser but not an independent “insurgent” in the McFarlane-Poindexter sense of the word. The goal is an adviser who can serve as an honest broker, faithfully representing the views and recommendations of the Council’s principals, while sharing his or her own thoughts with the president; a policy coordinator and someone who is a vigilant protector of the president’s national security stakes; someone of impeccable integrity who can manage the NSC process and keep the paper flowing to and from the Oval Office, while at the same time assisting the administration in the presentation of its foreign policy initiatives to an increasingly demanding public and media. In a phrase: an activist counselor.
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NOTES 1 2
3
4 5 6 7
8
9 10 11
12
13 14
15
16 17
18
Elizabeth Drew, “A Reporter at large: Brzezinski,” New Yorker (July 1, 1978), p. 90. Colin Powell, with Joseph E. Perisco, My American Journey: An Autobiography (New York: Random House, 1995), p. 352. Although see: Vincent A. Auger, “The National Security Council System After the Cold War,” in Randall B. Ripley and James M. Lindsay, eds, U.S. Foreign Policy after the Cold War (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997), pp. 42-73; the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland and the Brookings Institution, The National Security Council Project (College Park: Maryland: CISS, 2001); Ivo H. Daalder and I.M. Destler, “A New NSC for a New Administration,” Policy Brief No. 68 (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, November 2000); I.M. Destler, “The Rise of the National Security Assistant, 1961-1981,” in Charles W. Kegley, Jr., and Eugene R. Wittkopf, eds., Perspectives on American Foreign Policy (New York: St. Martin’s, 1983), pp. 260-281; Karl F. Inderfurth and Loch K. Johnson, eds., Decisions of the Highest Order: Perspectives on the National Security Council (Pacific Grove, California: Brooks/Cole Publishing, 1988); and The Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington, D.C., and The Baker Institute at Rice University, A Forum on the Role of the National Security Council (April12, 2001), Washington, D.C. Forum on the Role of the National Security Council, ibid., p. 3. Ibid., p. 4. Remarks, The National Security Council Project, op.cit., p. 15. See Loch K. Johnson, Bombs, Bugs, Drugs, and Thugs: Intelligence and America’s Search for Security (New York: New York University Press, 2001). “Passing the Baton: Challenges of Statecraft for the New Administration,” U.S. Institute for Peace (January 2001), pp. 24-25 (as summarized by Patrick M. Cronin). Ibid., pp. 25-27. The National Security Council Project, op.cit., p. 5. Alexander L. George, “The Case for Multiple Advocacy in Making Foreign Policy,” American Political Science Review 66 (September 1972): pp. 751-795; and Alexander L. George, Presidential Decisionmaking in Foreign Policy (Boulder: Westview, 1980), pp. 153-54. David K. Hall, “The ‘Custodian Manager’ of the Policy-Making Process,” Commission on the Organization of the Government for the Conduct of Foreign Policy (The Murphy Commission, II (June 1975): p. 101. The National Security Council Project, op.cit., p. 4. David Wise, “Scholars of the Nuclear Age,” in Lester Tanger, ed., The Kennedy Circle (Washington, D.C.: Robert B. Luce Publisher, 1961),p. 29. Kai Bird, The Color of Truth: McGeorge Bundy and William Bundy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998),p. 186. Drew, op.cit., p. 96. See, for instance, David S. McLellan, Cyrus Vance (Totowa, New Jersey: Rowman & Allanheld, 1985). Henry A. Kissinger, Years of Upheaval (Boston: Little, Brown, 1982), p. 435.
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21
22 23 24 25
26
27
28
29
30
31 32
33 34
35 36
37 38 39 40
41
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The National Security Council Project, op.cit., p. 9. Ibid., interview conducted by Ivo H. Daaalder and I.M. Destler (March 29, 2000), pp. 6174. William S. Cohen and George J. Mitchell, Men of Zeal: A Candid Inside Story of the Iran-Contra Hearings (New York: Penguin, 1988); Laurence H. Tribe, “Reagan Ignites a Constitutional Crisis,” New York Times (May 20, 1987): p. A31. The National Security Council Project, op.cit., p. 3. Forum, op.cit., p. 14. Ibid., p. 14. The National Security Council Project, op.cit., p.14; see, also, Anthony Lake, Six Nightmares: Real Threats in a Dangerous World and How America Can Meet Them (Boston: Little, Brown, 2000), p. 262. John F. Harris, “Berger’s Caution Has Shaped Role of U.S. in War,” Washington Post (May 16, 1999), p. A1. Jane Perlez, “With Berger in the Catbird Seat, Albright’s Star Dims,” New York Times (December 14, 1999), P. A1. R.W. Apple Jr., “A Domestic Sort With Global Worries,” New York Times (August 25, 1999), p. A1. Bill Keller, “The World According to Powell,” New York Times Magazine 19 (February 28, 2001), p. 65. Colin L. Powell, “The NSC Advisor: Process Manager and More,” The Bureaucrat 18 (Summer 1989), p. 45. Ibid., p. 47. Ivo H. Daalder interview with General Colin L. Powell, The National Security Project, op.cit. (November 23, 1999), p. 51. The National Security Council Project, op.cit., p. 2. The Tower Commission included the chair, John Tower (a former Republican senator from Texas), Edmund Muskie (a former Democratic senator from Maine and secretary of state in the Carter administration), and Brent Scowcroft (former national security adviser in the Ford Administration). Daalder and Destler, Policy Brief No. 68, op.cit., p. 1. President’s Special Review Board (the Tower Commission), Report, Washington, D.C. (February 26, 1987), pp. 350-51. Ibid., p. 351. George P. Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), p. 903. Ibid. George Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed (New York: Knopf, 1998), p. 31. Cecil V. Crabb and Kevin Mulcahy, American National Security: A Presidential Perspective (Pacific Grove, California: Brooks/Cole, 1991), p. 177. Shultz, op.cit., p. 798. Shultz writes that “Bud [McFarlane] seemed to want the NSC staff to run foreign policy, with the secretaries of state, defense, and treasury - and the director of central intelligence - as bit players. Bud was always tempted to go off on ‘secret’ missions and to negotiate back-room deals” (p. 524).
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47 48
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op. cit. p. 180. Ibid., p. 180. Ibid., p. 181. In addition to the articles cited in this essay, see the bibliography in Karl F. Inderfurth and Loch K. Johnson, Fateful Decisions: Inside the National Security Council (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004). We have had the opportunity to be participant observers in Washington, serving in various government positions (including on the NSC staff and on a White House Commission), allowing us to discuss the NSC experience with high level officials and examine at close hand its performance. Tower Commission Report, op. Cit., pp. C1-C14. Quoted in Inderfurth and Johnson, Decisions of the Highest Order, op.cit., p. 196.
In: White House Studies Compendium, Volume 4 Editor: R. W. Watson, pp. 245-263
ISBN: 1-60021-541-6 © 2007 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
VICTIMS OR ROGUES? THE IMPEACHMENT OF PRESIDENTS CLINTON AND YELTSIN IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE Ryan Barilleaux and Jody Baumgartner ABSTRACT In this essay we discuss the impeachment of United States President Clinton and Russian President Yeltsin, illustrating that although there were differences, there were also many theoretically important similarities between the two. In particular, we suggest that both involved highly controversial and polarizing presidents and were based in scandals that did not find much political traction; each president was very politically astute, and faced a hostile opposition legislature throughout much of their tenure as well. In the end, the most striking similarity is that the impeachment attempt in each case represented part of an ongoing and continual attempt by the opposition to drive a sitting president from office.
INTRODUCTION United States President William Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin shared certain qualities and career paths. Both, for example, enjoyed the trappings and power of presidential office; both were highly skilled campaigners, known as “comeback kids”; and, each faced and survived the challenge of impeachment by a hostile legislature. Although Yeltsin once claimed that his impeachment could not be compared to Clinton’s [1], we suggest otherwise in this essay. While outcomes in each case varied, between 1990 and 2001 there were several presidential impeachment attempts in various countries throughout the world, including, of course, in the United States. However, with some exceptions [2], political scientists have left the examination of presidential impeachment to legal scholars, historians, and journalists. [3] In addition, all of the published work on presidential impeachment is focused on the case of the United States. This study is an attempt to remedy that situation. Unlike much of the scholarship on the subject, the questions guiding our research are explicitly political. What factors contributed to the emergence of each impeachment attempt? Why did each ultimately fail? We first present an overview of the setting in which impeachment in each country occurred; after that, a brief summary of each impeachment effort will be presented. Finally, we compare the two cases, highlighting the similarities.
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THE UNITED STATES: THE SETTING The United States has a “separated political system.” The Constitution of 1787 establishes separate institutions of government, with incomplete and overlapping definitions of the power of the different branches. One of the central principles of this system, of course, is the idea of “checks and balances,” by which one branch of government can keep another from exceeding its constitutional power or acting in a manner inimical to the national interest. To that end, the presidency was established with a set of institutional limitations that make the office distinctly less autonomous than the monarch that the chief executive is designed to replace. Whereas the British sovereign serves for life, possesses a (theoretically) absolute veto, and cannot be removed from office other than through a revolutionary act, the American president has a fixed term of office, a qualified veto, and is subject to removal through impeachment. While only two presidents have been impeached and a third resigned after the House Judiciary Committee voted to report articles of impeachment to the full chamber, the threat of impeachment is potent. For example, John Kennedy confided to his brother Bobby that had he not responded to the Soviet emplacement of missiles in Cuba in 1962, he would have been impeached. [4] The point is that while the chance of a president being impeached and removed is small, all presidents understand that Congress has the power to do so if circumstances warrant. The few specific references in the United States Constitution has impeachment are derived in part from the Framers’ familiarity with impeachment as it was practiced under English law and in several of the American colonies. The power of the Congress is defined in Article I; Section 2 provides that the House “shall have the sole Power of Impeachment” and Section 3 specifies that “the Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments.” Article II, Section 4, discusses grounds for impeachment, specifying that a president “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” The basic structure and history of presidential impeachment is summarized in Table 1. Table 1: United States Presidential Impeachment Process and Cases House of Representatives Senate Grounds for Impeachment Penalty Cases
Votes to impeach by simple majority Conducts trial at which the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court presides; conviction is by 2/3 vote Treason, bribery, or, high crimes and misdemeanors Removal from office, and, may be subject to criminal prosecution Andrew Johnson (1867), acquitted by Senate Richard Nixon (1974), resigned* Bill Clinton (1998-9), acquitted by Senate
* The House Judiciary Committee voted to report articles of impeachment to the whole House, but Nixon resigned before debate in House began.
While the structure of impeachment closely resembles a court proceeding, the actual nature of the process is less clear: is impeachment a criminal proceeding, or is it better understood as a political affair? The answer to this question points directly to the range of
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“impeachable offenses” and to the issue of whether Members of Congress should be expected to apply standards of criminal law to a presidential impeachment. The answer may surprise many Americans, but is consistent with Berger’s [5] conclusions on the legitimate grounds for impeachment: most of the Framers of the Constitution of 1787, familiar with common law and English precedents, did not see impeachment as a special type of criminal law proceeding. While the Constitution employs terms such as “bribery,” “treason,” and “high crimes and misdemeanors” (terms drawn from criminal law), the authors and supporters of the Constitution did not view impeachment as a narrowly legal endeavor. For example, James Wilson, who represented Pennsylvania at the Federal Convention, argued that impeachments do not come “within the sphere of ordinary jurisprudence” [6]. Berger points out that the Framers were keenly aware that English impeachments (including that of Warren Hastings, whose trial was being conducted in Parliament while the Convention was underway) were frequently political affairs. Delegates to the Convention did not want impeachment to be used merely as a political device to undo the results of a presidential election by a faction that lost at the polls, but they did not see impeachment as a criminal proceeding. Speaking directly to that issue, in Federalist 65 Alexander Hamilton predicted that impeachments would be occasions of great political debate and: will seldom fail to agitate the passions of the whole community, and to divide it into parties more or less friendly or inimical to the accused. In many cases it will connect itself with the preexisting factions...and in such cases there will always be the greatest danger that the decision will be regulated more by the comparative strength of the parties, than by the real demonstrations of innocence or guilt.
Since the president cannot be removed through a vote of no confidence, impeachment provided a check against a chief executive who crossed some invisible line and committed a grave offense against the political community. In short, the Framers viewed impeachment as “safety valve, a security against an oppressive or corrupt President and his sheltered ministers.” [7] The idea that impeachment is a political rather than a legal affair is reflected in subsequent debate over the meaning of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” At one extreme, in 1970 then-Representative Gerald Ford justified his motion to impeach Justice William O. Douglas on the grounds that an “impeachable offense” is whatever the House, with the agreement of the Senate, “considers it to be at a given moment in history.” [8] At the other extreme is the view expressed by Theodore Dwight on the eve of the 1867 impeachment of President Andrew Johnson, that “high crimes and misdemeanors” means “a breach of the common or statute law.” [9] After an extensive review of the origins of impeachment in English practice and its history in American law, Raoul Berger concluded that the truth lay somewhere in-between, that impeachment could be for nonindictable offenses (i.e., it need not be a crime for which the accused could be tried in criminal court), but that the grounds for impeachment had to be something more than petty matters. In short, he argued that a president could be impeached for a category of behavior that was identified as “great offenses.” [10] Given all this, it is not surprising that the American experience with presidential impeachment has been very limited, one in which evidence of some political motive could be identified in the case against the president. Andrew Johnson was impeached for opposing
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Radical Republicans on Reconstruction; the proximate charge was violating the Tenure in Office Act, but Johnson’s real offense was being a former Democrat who pursued a mild policy toward the former Confederate states. Richard Nixon was accused of several crimes, but in essence the charges of the House Judiciary Committee could be summed up as “abuse of power.” And Bill Clinton’s was charged with lying to a grand jury and trying to cover up his involvement with Monica Lewinsky, but he was essentially tried for bringing shame the office. Actually, no president has been seriously threatened by impeachment when his own party had a majority in either House of Congress. In other words, the hybrid legal-political nature of impeachment the Framers understood has been maintained by Congressional practice.
RUSSIA: THE SETTING In June of 1991 Boris Yeltsin easily won Russia’s first presidential election; in 1996 he was re-elected to a second (four-year) term. The present Russian regime, founded in December of 1993, is “super-presidential” with respect to its institutional balance of power [11]; there are fewer formal checks on presidential power in the Russian system than in the United States. [12] This is no accident: After forcibly disbanding the legislature in October of 1993, Yeltsin presented citizens a draft constitution produced, in the main, by his loyalists; the legislature had no part in debating or drafting the document. [13] The constitution specifies a bi-cameral Federal Assembly made up of a 450-member lower-house State Duma and a 178-member upper-house Federation Council (FC), consisting of two members from each region. The president shares executive power with a prime minister, who is only marginally accountable to the Duma. The Constitution also created both Supreme and Constitutional Courts; members are appointed by the president subject to approval by the FC. Throughout Yeltsin’s tenure, the FC (not a co-equal branch of the legislature) was generally sympathetic to the president, and both courts were reluctant to challenge him as well, mindful that he had disbanded the Constitutional Court during the fall 1993 crisis. The president’s relations with the Duma, however, were strained. Elected to fouryear terms (half of the members from single-member districts, half by party list with a 5 percent threshold), the Duma was controlled by opposition parties for all of Yeltsin’s two terms. Although most Russian political parties are still largely disconnected from a shifting electoral base and relatively underdeveloped organizations, parliamentary parties are fairly well developed. [14]. After election to the Duma, most deputies join factions, which comprise a minimum of 35 members and are most often made up of members of the same political party; most factions exhibit a fair degree of cohesion. [15] Major factions during the impeachment saga included the leftist Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) and their close ally the Agrarian Party; the centrist and pro-government Our Home is Russia (OHR); reformist Yabloko; and, extreme right-wing (and misnamed) Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR). Although OHR and (formerly) Democratic Russia were informally considered “presidential parties,” Yeltsin pointedly eschewed formal association with any party since resigning membership in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Throughout his tenure he jealously guarded his power and prerogatives, relying on temporary coalitions.
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[16] Therefore, most Duma members had no partisan incentives to shield the president during the impeachment process; this, of course, differs from the American experience. Provisions for the impeachment of a Russian president are primarily found in Articles 93 and 109 of the Russian Constitution which states, in part, that a president may be impeached and removed from office for “high treason or another grave crime”; a decision to do so “must be adopted by a vote of two-thirds of the of the total number [of members] of each chamber [of the legislature].” The process formally begins whenever a third of the Duma deputies support a motion to indict the president. Following this, a special commission is formed. [17] Similar to work by the Judiciary Committees in the United States Congress, the commission hears testimony, examines evidence, etc., and if a majority supports the motion to indict the president, the resolution is sent to the Duma. If two-thirds of the Duma deputies accept the motion to indict the president (an affirmative vote is needed on only one charge), the Duma sends the case to the Supreme Court, who renders a decision on whether the charges constitute an impeachable offense; the Constitutional Court then examines the constitutionality of how the impeachment procedure has been carried out. If both courts approve, the case moves to the FC, who, within three months of passage of the original resolution to impeach, must vote on the charges. A twothirds vote is required for presidential removal. A few notes about the process are in order. First, and obviously, impeaching and removing a Russian president is exceedingly difficult. Not including the Duma special commission, there are at least four possible veto points – twice the number in the United States – where the process may be halted, and the threshold at each legislative point is fairly high (super-majorities). Moreover, the process is time-bound: if no action is taken by the FC within three months of the indictment by the Duma, the effort dies. A final constitutional provision of note is that after the Duma has successfully voted to indict the president, the president cannot dissolve the Duma. This played an extremely important role in the strategic calculus of many deputies in the 1999 impeachment.
THE UNITED STATES: THE 1998 IMPEACHMENT EFFORT AGAINST PRESIDENT WILLIAM CLINTON In December 1998, the United States House of Representatives voted to impeach President Bill Clinton, marking only the second time that body had done so. The House approved two of four articles of impeachment recommended by its Judiciary Committee, one charging the president with perjury, the other with obstruction of justice (the language of this article was drawn from the 1974 articles of impeachment against Nixon). In January and February 1999, the Senate conducted an impeachment trial, hearing presentations from a team of House managers (i.e., the prosecution) and the president’s attorneys. Although half of the senators voted in favor of the article charging Clinton with obstruction of justice, even this vote fell far short of the two-thirds required by the Constitution. In the end, the Senate rejected both articles. The roots of the Clinton impeachment lay in revelations about his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, which broke into the news in January 1998. It was revealed that Clinton had conducted an extramarital affair with Lewinsky and then lied about it in a sworn deposition in the sexual harassment case brought against him by former Arkansas state
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employee Paula Jones. Despite denials of the affair by the president and his staff the story quickly came to dominate national news coverage. Before long, rumors were circulating in Washington that prominent leaders of the president’s party were calling for his resignation, and some pundits began speculating how long it would be before Clinton would have to bow to the pressure to exit the political scene. In fact, one of the first mentions of the possibility that Clinton might be impeached came from George Stephanopoulos, a former Clinton aide turned journalist. Speaking on ABC’s This Week, Stephanopoulos suggested that a scandal of this sort made the “i-word” (i.e., impeachment) relevant to the ongoing national conversation about the president’s conduct. [18] Table 2: Chronology of the Clinton Impeachment, 1998-1999 Date Sept 11, 1998
Sept 21, 1998
Oct 5, 1998 Oct 8, 1998 Nov 13, 1998 Nov 19, 1998 Nov 27, 1998 Dec 8, 1998 Dec 11-12, 1998
Dec 18, 1998 Dec 19, 1998 Jan 7, 1999 Feb 12, 1999 Feb 18, 1999
Event Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr delivers report of his investigation into Monica Lewinsky affair to Congress; the report indicates that credible evidence existed that President Clinton had committed perjury House Judiciary Committee begins releasing thousands of pages of documents related to Starr’s investigation, as well as videotape of Clinton testimony before grand jury, to public Judiciary Committee approves resolution recommending impeachment inquiry against President Clinton on party-line vote House of Representatives votes to open impeachment inquiry Clinton and Paula Jones agree to settle Jones’s sexual harassment suit against the president Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr testifies before Judiciary Committee Judiciary Committee receives from White House responses to 81 questions it had asked of President Clinton White House attorneys and a panel of experts testify before Judiciary Committee that President’s behavior was wrong but not impeachable Judiciary Committee approves four articles of impeachment against President Clinton, charging him with perjury before a grand jury, obstruction of justice, perjury in a civil deposition, and abuse of power House opens debate on impeachment House impeaches President Clinton by approving two of the four articles of impeachment Impeachment trial opens in Senate Closing arguments by both sides in impeachment trial Senate acquits President Clinton on both articles of impeachment; vote on perjury is 45-55 and vote on obstruction of justice is 50-50
Adapted from Baker (2000), and other sources.
Although the White House was eventually able to undercut speculation about an impending presidential resignation, coverage of the Clinton-Lewinsky affair dominated the news throughout the spring and summer. Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, appointed to investigate Bill and Hillary Clinton’s involvement with the Whitewater land deal, was authorized to investigate the scandal and whether the president had violated any laws in his
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conduct surrounding the affair (in particular, whether he had committed perjury or obstructed justice). Eventually, Starr summoned President Clinton to testify before a grand jury, where Clinton repeated his denial of the affair. This denial revived charges of perjury and obstruction of justice and set into motion a series of events that resulted in his impeachment by the House. On August 17, Clinton testified before grand jury convened by Starr, following release of information suggesting that the President had committed perjury when testifying earlier; before the grand jury Clinton admitted his relationship with Lewinsky and then appeared on television to acknowledge that he “misled people” and charge Starr with invading his private life. Since the case is familiar to most, Table 2 summarizes what happened following.
RUSSIA: THE 1999 IMPEACHMENT EFFORT AGAINST PRESIDENT BORIS YELTSIN The 1990s were a period of radical and transformative social, political, economic, change for Russia, during which time the country faced a variety of crises; Yeltsin faced a hostile legislature throughout this entire period. Therefore it is hardly surprising that from 1994 to 1998, five impeachment attempts against him were initiated. All failed to make it past the first stage (in other words no special commission was formed to investigate). [19] Several things are notable about these abortive efforts. Three centered around the Chechen War issue, which later formed the nucleus of the 1999 attempt. One of the efforts centered (ostensibly) around Yeltsin’s health and pointed to the need for clarification of succession procedures in the case of presidential incapacity (Russia has no vice-president). Also notable is that most of 1995 and the first half of 1996 were quiet on the impeachment front; this can be explained by elite preoccupation with the Duma elections of December of 1995 and the presidential election of 1996. Although impeachment efforts heated up in the spring of 1998 over the sacking of Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and the confirmation of Sergei Kirienko, the immediate cause of the 1999 impeachment effort was Russia’s financial meltdown in August of 1998. As the result, Yeltsin fired Kirienko. Led by the CPRF, the Duma then twice rejected Chernomyrdin as his replacement candidate and threatened impeachment if he were put forward a third time [20]; a compromise was found in Yevgeny Primakov (loosely tied to the CPRF). But the Communists continued pressing, and in mid-October the impeachment commission (formed that spring) announced it was stepping up its investigation (“Who Runs Russia?” ND). By December it had drafted three clauses of a bill of impeachment; by late February two more were added. [21] In total, Yeltsin faced five charges: • • • • •
High treason, for signing the Belovezha agreements which effectively dissolved the Soviet Union; Inciting civil unrest by using force in dismissing parliament in the fall of 1993; Abuse of office, for initiating and conducting the war in Chechnya; Overseeing the disintegration of the country’s military forces; Genocide, for the number of abortions caused by failed economic policies. [22]
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The day before hearings began (May 13), Yeltsin fired the popular Primakov. According to the Russian Constitution, if the Duma rejects the president’s choice for prime minister three times the president may dissolve the Duma; however, the president may not dissolve the Duma after that body votes to impeach. Thus a potential constitutional stand-off was created, and under this cloud of uncertainty, impeachment hearings began. Voting took place after only two days (May 15). The Chechen War charge garnered the most support, but even this fell 17 votes short of the 300 necessary to move the process to the next stage (283-43). On the charge of dismantling the Soviet Union the vote was 239-78; on illegally dismissing parliament in 1993, 263-60; on destroying the army, 244-77; and, on the charge of genocide, 238-88. [23] Yeltsin, in short, survived in office. Table 3 summarizes the chronology of the Yeltsin impeachment attempt.
IMPEACHMENT IN THE UNITED STATES AND RUSSIA: THE CASES OF CLINTON AND YELTSIN COMPARED There were several important differences between the impeachment attempts of Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin, the most obvious being that Clinton was impeached while Yeltsin was not. Part of the reason is that impeachment procedures in Russia make it more difficult to impeach a president than in the United States. A second obvious difference is the economic circumstances surrounding impeachment in each case: The United States was enjoying a period of growth and prosperity, while Russia’s economy was limping badly. In the United States, a year-long media frenzy preceded and fueled impeachment, while in Russia, the media largely ignored the issue until a few months (really a few weeks) before. One president (Yeltsin) was extremely unpopular, and had been so for several years, while the other (Clinton) was relatively popular — in spite of the many scandals his administration had been plagued with. It might be argued that the many impeachment attempts against Yeltsin make it problematic to compare these cases. Strictly speaking this may be true, but all of the efforts prior to 1998-99, with the possible exception of the two that occurred under the previous constitutional regime, were primarily symbolic in nature, not unlike the early efforts of Bob Barr to impeachment Clinton. It might also be suggested that the cases are not comparable because Yeltsin’s opponents had tried various other means to remove Yeltsin from office (most prominently, having him removed for medical incapacitation). This of course would ignore the fact that conservative Republicans had been waging a media war against Clinton since before he took office. [24] Neither of these arguments should not distract us from the fact both presidents were the target of formal impeachment proceedings in 1998-99, and, at the root of all the efforts was the belief by a vocal and active minority that the president had overstepped his constitutional bounds.
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Table 3: Chronology of the Yeltsin Impeachment, 1998-1999 Date March 13, 1998
March 23, 1998
April 7, 1998 June 9, 1998 June 19, 1998 June 29, 1998 August 17,1998
August 23, 1998
September 11, 1998
January 26, 1999
February 12, 1999 March 16, 1999 April 12, 1999 April 14, 1999 May 12, 1999 May 13, 1999 May 15, 1999
Event Duma Defense Committee Chairman Lev Rohkin and Security Committee Chairman Viktor Ilyukhin form a committee to investigate possibility of impeachment Yeltsin dismisses Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, proposing Sergei Kirienko as successor; month-long confirmation struggle ensues, fueling impeachment flames Rohkin and Ilyukhin begin collecting the 150 signatures needed to put impeachment on Duma agenda Formal request to begin process of impeachment (signed by 215 deputies) submitted to Duma Duma votes to form impeachment commission to investigate charges against president Impeachment commission meets for first time; meets throughout summer Financial meltdown: After months of economic uncertainty, government announces they are defaulting on foreign loans and that the ruble will be allowed to devalue Yeltsin sacks Kirienko, proposing Chernomyrdin to replace him; Communists reject Chernomyrdin (twice) and link confirmation of a new PM directly to impeachment In what appears to be a compromise, Veteran Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov, loosely associated with Communist Party, is appointed prime minister; work on impeachment charges by commission continues throughout end of year Primakov proposes a truce under which Yeltsin (who is in the hospital) would refrain from dissolving Duma, who would in turn drop impeachment charges Impeachment Commission finishes work on the fifth and final charge of impeachment Impeachment hearings scheduled for April 15; Yeltsin hospitalized yet again Impeachment hearings are postponed, in part due to unresolved procedural questions Impeachment hearings re-scheduled for May 13 Primakov sacked, creating potential for constitutional stand-off between Yeltsin and Duma Impeachment hearings begin After only two days of (poorly attended and publicized) hearings, impeachment vote is taken on all five charges; Yeltsin is acquitted on all
From Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Newsline (various dates).
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This said, there are many similarities between the two cases; here we present these, along with a brief discussion of each. Perhaps the most obvious point is that taken together, the respective impeachment attempts against Clinton and Yeltsin represented a seemingly continuous effort to remove each from office.
1. Controversial Public Figures Few presidents escape controversy, but both Clinton and Yeltsin were polarizing figures who were at the center of controversy for much their respective public lives. This is especially true with regards to their personal lives and characteristics. In the case of Clinton, these controversies were not unrelated to the emergence of any variety of scandals which in turn led to his eventual impeachment. Bill Clinton achieved political success despite being associated with the sorts of personal problems and scandals that have ruined the careers of other American politicians. When he ran for president in 1992 he overcame revelations about his alleged affair with Gennifer Flowers while governor of Arkansas, was dogged by accusations that he had lied in order to avoid being drafted during and after college, dealt with questions about prior drug use, was accused of sexual harassment by Paula Jones, and was plagued by charges of corruption in the Whitewater land deal; in addition, his wife Hillary was accused of benefitting unethically (or even illegally) from insider information when she made a windfall in commodities trading. To opponents and critics, Clinton came to represent everything that was wrong with the generation of Americans who had come of age in the late 1960s. [25] With so much personal baggage, Clinton’s success in winning the presidency was remarkable, but it made him vulnerable to attack by opponents and the subject of efforts to find a scandal with which to bring him down. [26] Many of his Republican opponents thought that the Whitewater affair might be the weapon for unseating Clinton, but despite extensive investigations no evidence of serious criminal misconduct was produced. Many conservatives thought that his messy personal life, especially his womanizing, could be used to sour voters on the president; this failed also. Clinton had a strangely bifurcated relationship with the public: many voters expressed negative assessments of his personal life and personal morality but supported his policies and his performance in office. The resulting mix of public distaste for Clinton the man and public support for Clinton the president confused and frustrated opponents. In Yeltsin’s case, controversies surrounded oft-repeated charges that he was alcoholic. Yeltsin’s biographer goes to great lengths to explain that charges about his penchant for drink were initially false, that for most of his early career Yeltsin avoided alcohol. The misperception originated in a story from the fall of 1989 by Paul Hendrickson [27] that was based on certain innuendos that Steven Muller, president of Johns Hopkins, had made regarding whiskey bottles in Yeltsin’s university guest house room. Hendrickson, who later admitted he did not check the story out, penned several sentences suggesting that Yeltsin had been imbibing heavily the previous night. An even less scrupulous Italian reporter [28] took the story and embellished it, painting an image of Yeltsin as an alcoholic; he later admitted the story was false. However, Soviet newspapers picked up on the story and re-printed it with glee (Yeltsin was not Gorbachev’s or the establishment’s favorite person at the time), and the image stuck. [29]
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This said, Yeltsin clearly lived up to the image later, a fact that the same biographer does not avoid pointing out. His appearance at any number of state functions while obviously intoxicated, coupled with his health problems, led many to believe he was not fit to lead the country. This was the “character-issue” shadow under which Yeltsin lived for most of his presidency. In Clinton’s case, one of the controversies formed the base of his impeachment attempt; in Yeltsin’s case, he largely avoided any political fallout from his excessive consumption of alcohol, although his health prompted numerous calls for his resignation and a few abortive impeachment attempts. The larger point, however, is that each president gave their opposition plenty of non-policy related grist for the impeachment mill.
2. “Comeback Kids” Both Clinton and Yeltsin were astute politicians and each was fairly known as the “Comeback Kid.” Several times in their respective careers they recovered brilliantly from near-defeat to prevail. In one sense, impeachment for each was the ultimate political battle. Bill Clinton identified himself as “the Comeback Kid” after finishing second in the 1992 New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary. Throughout his career he had returned from apparent political oblivion: after losing the governorship of Arkansas at the end of his first term, he mounted a successful effort to return to office; shortly before the 1992 New Hampshire primary, he and his wife appeared on 60 Minutes to answer questions about his alleged affair with Gennifer Flowers and marital infidelity, revelations which caused him to slip from first place in the polls to second place in the primary results. In the spring of 1992 Clinton was in third place in polls (behind President George H. W. Bush and Ross Perot) but bounced back to win the election; and, despite the loss of both houses of Congress to the Republicans in the 1994 election (widely interpreted as a referendum on his presidency), Clinton managed to restore his support and beat Republican candidate Bob Dole in 1996. From his start in Sverdlosk, Yeltsin was elected to head the Moscow Party Committee in 1985 and elected candidate member of the Politburo shortly after. These career advances were made in typical, don’t-rock-the-boat, Soviet style, but Yeltsin soon began to assert himself in decidedly un-Soviet style. Criticism of Gorbachev led to expulsion from the Party in early 1988 and a Stalinist “confession” of his sins. In the Soviet Union this would have been the end of his political career. But Yeltsin, a quick study of democratic politics, parlayed his popularity with Muscovites to, in rapid order, election to the Soviet legislature (March, 1989), the newly-constituted Congress of People’s Deputies (CPD), and speakership of the Russian Supreme Soviet in May 1990. In June of 1991, after having convinced Russians of the need for a presidency, he won the post with 59.7 percent of the vote (his nearest competitor, Nikolai Ryzhkov, polled 17.6 percent). [30] In August, in front of television cameras and atop a tank, he dramatically defied a group of inept Communist hard-line putschists. By the time Gorbachev announced the dissolution of the Soviet Union on Christmas Day, 1991, Yeltsin, whose career had been almost finished a few years before, was in complete control of newlyindependent Russia. But his “honeymoon” period was short. By winter 1991-92, social costs of reform and the impact of the disintegration of the Union had changed the previously favorable disposition of the CPD (comprised mainly of Communist party functionaries) towards Yeltsin to one of hostility. What followed was a year-long struggle with the CPD in which the latter blocked
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virtually all of his initiatives. In the spring of 1993 he surprised observers by carrying the day in a referendum designed to shore up support for his presidency and economic policies; that fall he disbanded the legislature, and his constitution was ratified a few months later. Yeltsin faced an even tougher battle in his 1996 re-election campaign. With an extremely unpopular war in Chechnya and continued economic distress, the Communists won a clear victory in the December 1995 Duma elections, garnering almost 35 percent of the seats. [31] Yeltsin’s approval ratings were in single digits as late as 6 months before the election, and few gave him any chance for victory. However, with the help of astute advisers and a vigorous campaign, he prevailed in second-round voting over the Communist Gennadi Zyuganov (53.8 to 40.3 percent). [32] It often seemed as if Yeltsin welcomed crises; his pattern was to approach a crisis, prevail, and disappear until another crisis appeared. An associate summed it up best: “At key points in his life, Yeltsin wakes up.” [33] Like Clinton, his resolution of crises was masterful; like Clinton, Yeltsin was an extremely astute politician. His resignation on New Year’s Eve, 1999, is another example, a move that ensured his chosen heir, the popular Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, would be highly advantaged in the upcoming election.
3. Scandals with Little Traction There were also similarities in the scandals which drove impeachment in each case. While the meaning of “high crimes and misdemeanors” (United States) or “high treason or another grave crime” (Russia) is subject to debate, a successful impeachment and removal effort is facilitated by a scandal surrounding a clearly illegal act that the president has been personally involved in. [34]. In neither impeachment attempt was it clear that the charges leveled against the president rose to the level of “high crimes” or that the president was personally responsible for those “crimes.” Thus, it was difficult for the charges in either case to gain traction. There was, for example, little doubt that Clinton had an affair with Lewinsky or subsequently lied under oath about it; however, there was no real consensus over whether either of these two acts constituted an impeachable offense. Do an extramarital affair and/or lying to a grand jury constitute “great offenses?” Neither precedent nor the Constitution provide a clear answer; ultimately each house of Congress arrived at its own conclusion. In Yeltsin’s case, there was no debating that he: 1) signed the Belovezha agreements which effectively dissolved the Soviet Union; 2) initiated the Chechen War; 3) forcibly dismissed parliament in 1993; 4) was commander-in-chief while Russian military forces deteriorated precipitously; and 5) was partly responsible for failed economic policies in Russia which resulted in a dramatic decrease in the living standards of most Russians and declining birth rates. Did any of these acts qualify as “high treason or another grave crime?” Actually, most of the charges were policy-related, and three (at minimum) referred to policies or actions that took place prior to the 1996 presidential election. Interestingly, the charge that gathered the most support was Yeltsin’s initiation of the Chechen War, but the Constitutional Court ruled that even this was not an abuse of power (Center for Defense Information Russia Weekly, 1999).
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4. Hostile Legislatures, Ideological Committees, and Personal Animus Both Clinton and Yeltsin faced hostile legislatures, or legislatures controlled by an opposition party (or parties) not inclined toward compromise. In the United States, the Republican victory in the 1994 congressional elections meant that a Democratic president (Clinton) faced an opposition Congress. In Russia, in the 1993 Duma elections, three parties (LDPR, CPRF, and Agrarian Party) opposed to the president won a plurality of the seats (32.2 percent); these same parties garnered 50.6 percent - a majority - in 1995. But an opposition legislatures by itself is hardly cause to expect an impeachment attempt will emerge. Significant is that each of these opposition legislatures was hostile toward the president; moreover, in each there was a virulently ideological wing of the opposition who spearheaded the impeachment attempts. These ideological wings were represented in the committees that handled the impeachment investigation, insuring that the process went further than it might have if moderates had been responsible for the investigation. Finally, in both cases impeachment was led by a few individuals who, it almost seemed, were carrying out a personal vendetta against the president. The attack on Clinton was spearheaded by House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tx.), with help from other conservative Republican House Members. DeLay hoped the Lewinsky affair would be the final indignity that would bring the president’s political career to an end. Although the president weathered the initial scandal, DeLay and his associates did not give up on the idea of driving Clinton from office. After the president appeared before Starr’s grand jury and then went on television to attack the investigation as an invasion of his privacy, DeLay resolved to drive Clinton from office. He reasoned it was improbable that the Senate would vote to remove the president from office, but thought impeachment could become a lever to force Clinton’s resignation, just as the 1974 articles of impeachment led to Richard Nixon’s resignation. [36] But the drive to impeach Clinton also had a life independent of DeLay, fueled by a group of Republican conservatives. In the House of Representatives, initial consideration of impeachment is the province of the Judiciary Committee, and conservatives on that panel took the issue as their own. Many of the committee’s Republican majority were determined critics of Bill Clinton personally and of his administration generally. Representative Bob Barr (R-Ga.) had proposed impeaching Clinton for other offenses long before Monica Lewinsky became a household name, and had co-authored an anti-Clinton book. [37] Throughout the impeachment process, although they repeatedly denied any personal satisfaction in attacking the president, even sympathetic observers sensed in Clinton’s Republican accusers a sort of enthusiasm for their task. In Russia we probably need look no further than the fact that Yeltsin faced several previous impeachment attempts as evidence of a hostile legislature. Throughout Yeltsin’s presidency there were repeated calls for his removal or resignation; these came mainly, but not exclusively, from the opposition. The Duma special commission on impeachment, the engine of impeachment, was formed in June of 1998, long before the impeachment effort actually started. [38] In other words, there was an investigative committee in place waiting for a “crime.” That it was formed shortly after Yeltsin announced his choice of Sergei Kirienko for Prime Minister or that is stepped up its investigation after the Duma rejected Chernomyrdin that fall was a form of protection, an implicit threat warning the president
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against exercising his constitutional right to dissolve the legislature (“Who Runs Russia?”ND). The impeachment commission was comprised of ideologically extreme members of Duma factions, in particular, the chair, hard-line CPRF deputy Viktor Ilyukhin. He had been point man for all impeachment efforts since late 1996, and more than anyone else was responsible for sustaining the effort to impeach Yeltsin. In fact, it seemed at times as if impeaching Yeltsin may have been part of a personal vendetta on Ilyukhin’s part. Ilyukhin kept the drive to impeach Yeltsin alive, in spite of the fact that the CPRF passed government budgets largely intact year after year, and unlike Yabloko, the CPRF was not opposed to the Chechen War, but rather to the fact that it had not been successfully prosecuted. [39] In other words, policy differences between the president and the party were not the sole reason for the impeachment effort.
5. Impeachment Dynamics The dynamics in the Clinton and Yeltsin impeachment efforts were similar as well. In each case, elites seemed divided about the desirability of impeaching and removing the president; most of the participants in each case, including those leading the charge, understood that the attempt to remove the president would likely fail; and, finally, both presidents crafted successful defense strategies which did not revolve around absolute denial of the charges, and, survived the attempt to remove them. Clinton’s Republican accusers, from Tom DeLay to Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) and the other House managers, all knew that it would be nearly impossible to win a conviction from the Senate. The Constitution requires a two-thirds vote in favor of conviction by the Senate, but nearly all of the Senate’s 45 Democrats were expected to vote against removal. Moreover, with polls showing about two-thirds of respondents opposed to removal, there was almost no chance that public opinion would pressure Democrats to switch their vote. Although Yeltsin won re-election in 1996, popular support for him had steadily declined throughout the 1990s and those who thought he was guilty of the crimes with which he was charged ranged from a low of 67 percent (genocide) to a high of 87 percent. [40] However, this did not translate into overwhelming popular support for impeachment. In April 1999, only 47 percent of those surveyed were in favor of impeachment, while a full 40 percent were opposed; only 33 percent of respondents believed that impeachment could garner the necessary votes. [41] It was, however, feared by many that the Chechen War charge would garner the necessary votes, simply because the war was so unpopular. CPRF leader Zyuganov claimed the support of 312 deputies on the eve of the vote [42], and Yeltsin himself admits to having been “rather worried” about the possibility. [43] But the president succeeded in building a sympathetic coalition in the Duma, by persuading (or bribing) various members to vote against impeachment altogether, to vote strategically (“yes” on certain charges but “no” on the Chechen War charge), or, to abstain altogether. [44] For example, 294 deputies voted “yes” on one or more of the charges, but the charge that garnered the most support (the Chechen war) received only 283 votes. There is reason to believe that scattering “yes” votes across different charges was an effort by some deputies to be seen on the “right” side of
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impeachment (in favor) while ensuring that it did not succeed. [45] Another strategy antiimpeachment deputies took was abstaining. The CPRF claimed that the Kremlin had offered up to $30,000 to deputies to boycott the session [46]; as many as 34 did so. [47] Voting abstentions also included almost all of the LDPR’s 49 members, who, although in favor of impeachment earlier, walked out just before the vote. [48]
CONCLUSIONS Americans may not pay much attention to the internal politics of other nations, but they ought to realize that the impeachment of Bill Clinton was not unique. Boris Yeltsin and several other chief executives were on the receiving end of impeachment actions in the past few years, and a comparative look at presidential impeachments suggests some interesting conclusions. First, impeachment can be understood as a highly aggressive attack strategy against a sitting chief executive. Since independent presidents are not subject to the sorts of votes of no confidence that can be used to bring down prime ministers, adversaries of incumbent presidents must resort to other means to take on the chief. In that respect, we can conceive of impeachment as part of a continuum of attack strategies for taking on a president, as shown in Figure 1. Less Aggressive
←
More Aggressive
Resolutions Opposing Policy/Defeat of Proposals - Investigation - Censure - Impeachment - Coup d’etat Civil War
Figure 1: A Continuum of Strategies for Attacking a President
The prosecutors of both Clinton and Yeltsin were engaged in efforts to bring down a political adversary, and their actions must be interpreted in this light. Does this mean that impeachment is “merely” political and has no other basis? Not at all: impeachment becomes a weapon that can be used against a president when that chief executive takes actions of a highly controversial nature. Richard Nixon once told interviewer David Frost that he had handed his adversaries “a sword.” [49] In the case of Boris Yeltsin, it was clear that he had done many of the things for which his opponents desired to impeach him; in Clinton’s case, the same was also true. But it was not the proximate crimes that mattered to many of the presidents’ attackers; the abuses and wrongdoings embodied in the charges against Clinton and Yeltsin were in some respects “last straw” actions. Bill Clinton’s opponents had a litany of things for which they opposed him; they wanted him out of office long before revelations about Lewinsky were made public. DeLay understood that removal of Clinton via impeachment was doomed, but hoped to pressure the president into resigning. Yeltsin also faced ideological opponents in control of the Duma who were determined to get rid of him if they could. While there may be cases in which chief executives are impeached over fairly straightforward charges or corruption or treason, our contention is that impeachment is a political weapon. Clearly, the American Founders understood it that way - they were not under the illusion that English impeachments, such as the trial of Warren Hastings, were only
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about criminal behavior. Rather, given the need to balance between a chief executive who would not be removable and one who served at the pleasure of the legislature, they understood that some device was needed to deal with what Berger characterizes as “an oppressive or corrupt” president. To that extent, impeachment was introduced into the modern constitutional republic as a kind of political-judicial hybrid, so the attempts to remove Clinton and Yeltsin in this way are not surprising. A second conclusion that flows from the first is that party matters. Presidents are generally impeached by opposition-party dominated legislatures. To the extent that impeachment is a political weapon, it is not surprising that this should be true. In a system of separated institutions, partisan control of the legislature by the president’s party is not guaranteed, but neither is it insignificant. Having either control of at least one chamber of the legislature, or a strong enough minority to blunt attacks (such as an essentially convictionproof minority in the Senate for Clinton) makes presidential party a key factor in determining a chief executive’s vulnerability to impeachment. A chief executive who committed such grievous wrongs that he was abandoned by his own partisans would likely be advised by his colleagues to step down. Indeed, this is what ultimately happened in the Nixon case in 1974: Senator Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.) led a group of senior Republican Members of Congress on a mission to the White House to recommend Nixon’s resignation. They told the president that he could save himself, his country, and his party a lot of grief by resigning, and that he faced the very real prospect of being forced out of office. [50] Third, impeachment may be conceived as a political weapon, but it is a fairly blunt instrument. It has the potential to force an official from power, but that does not mean it can be used to force that chief executive to alter policy. A president who can resist removal can also resist pressure to change policies, as did Bill Clinton, Boris Yeltsin, Andrew Johnson, and others. Even Richard Nixon’s resignation did not have the result of changing policy: his successor, Gerald Ford, pursued policies similar to Nixon’s in Vietnam, arms control negotiations, budget restraint, and fighting the growth of government. Impeachment carries but one penalty: removal of a person from office; it is not directed at a coalition, an ideology, or a regime. In sum, we see that impeachment is one of several instruments that can be employed by an opposition party to attack a chief executive. While the device has its roots in the need to provide a way to remove an official who has committed grave crimes in office, it has long been recognized as a political-judicial hybrid that can be used for political ends. These ends might be political in the noblest sense -to remove an -oppressive or corrupt” officer - or in the more cynical sense - to remove a controversial and hated adversary. But no matter what the end, impeachment is a blunt instrument: it is a cumbersome device that applies great amounts of pressure to an official, but which can be resisted if the official has party support, public support, or even just doubt about the gravity of offenses on his side. Students of chief executives and of comparative political institutions should include impeachment in their analysis of executive politics. If, as Clausewitz said, war is politics by other means, then we might think of impeachment as civil war by other means. It is an attempt to drive from power a powerful political adversary by a well-organized and highlymotivated opposition party. Chief executives who are impeached are not completely victims or rogues. They usually face serious impeachment attempts because they do something to hand their adversaries a “sword,” which means they are not merely innocent victims of
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malicious opponents nor complete rogues. Some chief executives, like some judges or other officials, may be guilty of the sorts of crimes (e.g., bribery) that require immediate removal from office, but most cases concern controversial actions that raise questions about what Americans call “impeachable offenses.” Were presidents more clearly victims or rogues in most cases, impeachment would be much more like the criminal proceedings they are modeled on. Instead, they are political events cloaked in the aura of judicial proceedings. An independent republican executive, such as exists in the United States, France, Russia, and now many other countries, is built at least in part on the principle of executive stability. The president is not a prime minister, so not easily dismissed by the legislature. Therefore, it is probably appropriate that impeachments be cloaked in the mantle of court proceedings. This cloaking helps to maintain the integrity of the executive institution while subjecting the chief executive to possible political oblivion, for it discourages reducing impeachment to nothing more than an elaborate substitute for a vote of no confidence.
NOTES 1
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Yeltsin, Boris. 2000. Midnight Diaries. Translated by Catherine A. Fitzpatrick. New York: Public Affairs, p. 133. Heith, Diane J. 2000. “The Polls: Polling for the Defense: The White House Public Opinion Apparatus and the Clinton Impeachment.” Presidential Studies Quarterly. 30(4):783-90; Lanoue, David J., and Craig F. Emmert. 1999. “Voting in the Glare of the Spotlight: Representatives” Votes on the Impeachment of President Clinton.” Polity. 32(2):253-269; Morris, Irwin L. 2001. Votes, Money, and the Clinton Impeachment. Boulder, CO: Westview; Renshon, Stanley A. 2002. “The Polls: The Public's Response to the Clinton Scandals, Part 1: Inconsistent Theories, Contradictory Evidence.” Presidential Studies Quarterly. 32(1):169-84; Rothenburg, Lawrence, and Mitchell S. Sanders. 2000. “Lame-Duck Politics: Impending Departure and the Vote on Impeachment.” Political Research Quarterly. 53(3):523-36; Rozell, Mark J., and Clyde Wilcox, eds. 2000. The Clinton Scandal and the Future of American Government. Washington, DC: Georgetown University. Gerhardt, Michael J. 2000. The Federal Impeachment Process: A Constitutional and Historical Analysis. Second Edition. Chicago: University of Chicago and Posner, Richard A. 2000. An Affair of State: The Investigation, Impeachment, and Trial of President Clinton. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University are both standard legal texts. Journalistic accounts include: Woodward, Bob, and Carl Bernstein. 1976. The Final Days. New York: Simon and Schuster (on Nixon) and Baker, Peter. 2000. The Breach: Inside the Impeachment and Trial of William Jefferson Clinton. New York: Scribner (on Clinton). For a historical account of the Johnson impeachment, see Benedict, Michael Les. 1999. The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson. New York: Norton. Exchange between JFK and RFK, October 24, 1962, captured on the Kennedy tapes. Berger, Raoul. 1974. Impeachment: The Constitutional Problems. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University. Ibid., p. 86. Ibid., p. 104. 116 Congressional Record H 3113-3114. April 15, 1970.
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Ryan Barilleaux and Jody Baumgartner Dwight, Theodore. 1867. “Trial by Impeachment.” American Law Register 6: 264. Berger, 1974, p. 97. Holmes, Stephen. 1993. “Superpresidentialism and its Problems.” East European Constitutional Review. 2(4)/3(1):123-6. For a more detailed breakdown of the impeachment process, see Carey, John M., and Matthew Soberg Shugart. 1998. Executive Decree Authority. Cambridge, UK: University of Cambridge. Tolz, Vera. 1993. “Drafting the New Russian Constitution.” RFE/RL Research Report. 2(29):1-12; White, Stephen, Richard Rose, and Ian McAllister. 1997. How Russia Votes. Chatham, NJ: Chatham House, pp. 98-106. White, Stephen. 2000. Russia’s New Politics: The Management of a Postcommunist Society. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University, pp. 40-50. Remington, Thomas F. 1998. “Political Conflict and Institutional design: Paths of Party Development in Russia,” in John Löwenhardt, ed., Party Politics in Post-communist Russia. London: Frank. Cass, pp. 205-206. McFaul, 2000. For a more detailed breakdown of the impeachment process, see Rumyanstev, Oleg G. 1998. “Impeachment, Russian Style.” Perspective. 9(1). Available online at . Accessed on March 14, 2002. Harris, John F. 1998. “Stephanopoulos Remarks Raise Doubts of Loyalty.” Washington Post. February 14, 1998, p. A1. Yeltsin also survived impeachment attempts in 1991 and 1992, but the impeachment rules were different. Shevstova, Lilia. 1999. Yeltsin’s Russia: Myths and Reality. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Newsline. Available online at http://rferl.org (RFE/RL Newsline, February 15, 1999). See White, 2000, for a good overview of Russian politics since 1985. Wines, Michael. 1999. “Drive to Impeach Russian President Dies in Parliament.” The New York Times. May 16, 1999, Section 1, Page 1. Toobin, Jeffrey. 1999. A Vast Conspiracy: The Real Story of the Sex Scandal That Nearly Brought down a President. New York: Random House. The best source on the pre-presidential life and career of Bill Clinton is Maraniss, David. 1996. First in His Class. New York: Touchstone Books. For a discussion of the efforts to find a scandal to bring down Clinton, see Baker, 2000 (chapter 2). Paul Hendrickson, writing in the Washington Post, in the “Style” section of all places! Vittorio Zucconi, writing for La Republica. Aron, Leon. 2000. Yeltsin: A Revolutionary Life. New York: St. Martin, pp. 341-350. White, Stephen. 1997. “Russia: Presidential Leadership Under Yeltsin,” in Ray Taras, ed., Postcommunist Presidencies. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University, p. 39. Ibid., pp. 224-225. Ibid., pp. 260, 267. Ibid., p. 55.
Victims or Rogues? The Impeachment of Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin… 34
35
36 37 38 39
40
41 42
43 44
45 46 47 48
49
50
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Liñán, Aníbal Pérez. 1998. “Presidential Crises and Political Accountability in Latin America (1990-1997)”. Paper presented at the 1998 Meeting of the Latin American Studies Association, September, 1998. Center for Defense Information Russia Weekly. 1999. “Impeachment Process Will Take Up to Three Months.” Number 48, May 14, 1999. Available at . Accessed on August 20, 2001. Baker, 2000, pp. 43-44. “Committee Profiles.” Washingtonpost.com. December 11, 1998. RFE/RL Newsline, October 13, 1998. Richardson, Paul, and Mikhail Ivanov. 1999. “Doing It His Way: Russian President Boris Yeltsin.” Russian Life. 42(4):64. Petrova, Anna. 1999. “The Federation Council Will Not Vote for the President’s Impeachment.” The Public Opinion Foundation. April 7, 1999. Available online at . Accessed on March 14, 2002; Petrova, Anna. 1999. “Russians on the Duma’s Accusations Against the President.” The Public Opinion Foundation. May 21, 1999. Available online at . Accessed on March 14, 2002. Ibid. Helmer, John. 1999. “How Primakov Fell and Yeltsin Defeated Impeachment.” Johnson’s Russia List. Number 3288, May 16, 1999. Available at . Accessed on August 23, 2001. Yeltsin, 2000, p. 285. Thornhill, John. 1999b. “Zyuganov Moves Against Yeltsin.” Johnson’s Russia List. Number 3278, May 10, 1999. Available at . Accessed on August 23, 2001; The Tennessean. 1999. “Yeltsin Dodges Impeachment.” The Tennessean Online. May 16, 1999. Available at . Accessed on May 2, 2001. “Game’s Over,” 1999. Time, May 24, 1999. Many stayed away claiming they were ill. See, The Tennessean, 1999. In addition, as many as 18 ballots (unsigned or defaced) were discarded. See Helmer, 1999. Frost, David. 1978. I Gave Them a Sword: Behind the Scenes of the Nixon Interview. New York: Ballantine. Sperling, Godfrey. 1998. “Time for Another Goldwater Mission.” Christian Science Monitor. December 22, 1998, p. 11.
For further information, see “Who Runs Russia: No Scandal, No Action.” ND. Available at . Accessed on August 23, 2001.
In: White House Studies Compendium, Volume 4 Editor: R. W. Watson, pp. 265-281
ISBN: 1-60021-541-6 © 2007 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
THE PERMANENT CAMPAIGN IN THE WHITE HOUSE: EVIDENCE FROM THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION Stephen K. Medvic and David A. Dulio ABSTRACT The confluence over the past 30 years of a number of developments in American politics has created a mode of governing that is increasingly difficult to separate from campaign behavior. This phenomenon, known as the ‘permanent campaign,’ reveals much about current changes in elite behavior as well as shifting institutional incentives and trends in political communication in the United States. The normative questions raised by the permanent campaign focus on fundamental issues of representative democracy, the most obvious of which is the responsiveness of elected officials. The state of executive-legislative relations and nature of political party activity are also among the topics for which the study of the permanent campaign is relevant. As a result, the phenomenon deserves serious examination by scholars.
INTRODUCTION “Each day is election day in modern America.” – Dick Morris, The New Prince1
The permanent campaign was first described in the early 1980s by then-journalist Sidney Blumenthal2 but has only recently begun to garner academic attention.3 The increase in scholarly interest in the topic coincides with the end of the Clinton presidency, a period of time in which many believe the permanent campaign reached its apogee. This article examines the concept of the permanent campaign in the White House with specific attention paid to the Clinton administration. We seek to understand the nature and extent of this phenomenon through interviews with presidential advisers – both from the Clinton White House and earlier administrations – whose first-hand experiences can provide a reliable source of information on the strategies and tactics of day-to-day governing in the contemporary presidency.
WHAT IS THE ‘PERMANENT CAMPAIGN’? The term ‘permanent campaign’ has a seemingly self-evident meaning. Given that campaigns are efforts to win elections, being constantly in campaign mode must mean that
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one is always doing what is necessary to win reelection.4 Further, since many elected officials in the United States have become ‘career politicians,’ at least at the national level, it is reasonable to assume that reelection is the primary goal of politicians. As David Mayhew pointed out, even if an elected official has other objectives (e.g., enacting policy initiatives), reelection “has to be the proximate goal of everyone, the goal that must be achieved over and over if other ends are to be entertained.”5 Of course, if reelection is so important to elected officials, it would be no surprise to learn that they spend a great deal of time campaigning during an election season. Traditionally, campaigns began on Labor Day of an election year. Today, candidates routinely begin airing campaign commercials in the summer, or even late spring. Even this extension of the campaign, however, leaves plenty of time between elections for tending to the people’s business. Yet, increasingly, elected officials are devoting a significant amount of time and energy to their reelection efforts outside the election cycle. Anthony King has referred to this as the “never-ending election campaign.”6 Elected officials, according to King, are not only “extraordinarily sensitive to the opinions and demands of the men and women upon whom their political futures depend;” they are “continuously sensitive” to those opinions and demands.7 In fact, nearly all their behavior is altered by this single-minded obsession with reelection.8 Thus, the ‘permanent campaign’ could be used to refer to the attempts by the president and members of Congress “to exploit the resources and opportunities of their offices, with increasing energy and sophistication, to advance their reelection prospects.”9 We call this the electoral sense of the ‘permanent campaign.’ Of course, in order to win an election, a candidate must gain the support – in the form of votes – of a plurality of citizens casting ballots. But getting votes is only one form of gaining support. Campaigns understood at their most basic level are simply attempts to gather approval for one’s cause. As Hugh Heclo notes, the permanent campaign is “a nonstop process seeking to manipulate sources of public approval to engage in the act of governing itself.”10 In order to do so, tactics and techniques that have traditionally been associated with election campaigns are used for governing purposes. It is this broader meaning of ‘campaign’ – which produces the governing sense of the ‘permanent campaign’ – that will be our focus in this article. Perhaps the first political observer to identify the more comprehensive meaning of the permanent campaign was Sidney Blumenthal.11 Blumenthal argued that the era of the permanent campaign began in 1968, the year of the “critical election” for the “sixth great party system.”12 It was just after the 1976 presidential election, however, that “the conscious articulation of the permanent campaign as a method of governing” was expressed.13 In December of 1976, Jimmy Carter’s pollster, Pat Caddell, wrote a memo to the president-elect arguing that “a continuing political campaign” for public support was crucial to success in the White House.14 According to Blumenthal, the permanent campaign is a natural product of a political system where “parties are weak, media is strong, and the means are the ends.”15 Furthermore, it is a response to an alienated and disaffected electorate.16 “Having won office by appealing to uncommitted voters,” argues Blumenthal, the elected official finds his/her “base of support weak.”17 The result is a constant attempt to maintain support from an inherently fickle citizenry. Such an attempt requires the sort of tactics that are commonplace in today’s election campaigns, where polling is done frequently (if not constantly) in order to set agendas and
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craft effective messages; strategies are devised for disseminating those messages, targeting constituencies, and obtaining ‘earned media;’ advertising is used to frame debates; and a commitment to non-stop fund-raising is required in order to pay for the aforementioned tactics. Ultimately, the line between campaigning and governing is thin if not non-existent because enacting one’s agenda, like winning an election, requires the support of the public and gaining that support requires communication techniques that are applicable to a variety of situations.18 The popular characterization of the permanent campaign reduces it to political pandering by elected officials. Rather than being engaged in a dynamic process akin to a feedback loop, politicians are said to simply respond to popular demands. As Maureen Dowd put it, “polling has turned leaders into followers.”19 Though there is some empirical evidence to support the conventional view, there is also evidence that disputes that perspective. Lawrence Jacobs and Robert Shapiro offer the most serious challenge to the notion that politicians simply pander.20 Indeed, they find that far from pandering, politicians are most often engaged in manipulating the public. Polling is certainly involved in the process, but rather than being used for slavish responsiveness, it is used to help politicians frame their issue positions and policy proposals in ways that will be most appealing to the electorate and most likely to garner positive media coverage. Thus, politicians are engaged in “crafted talk” which helps them “simulate responsiveness” while actually changing public opinion.21 Jacobs and Shapiro do not examine the permanent campaign per se, but their description of crafted talk is central to understanding how the permanent campaign operates. By highlighting the use of research (i.e., polling), earned media, and priming, they have identified the tactics that a permanent campaign employs, without drawing the link between the electoral and governing forms of campaigning. Our goal is to build upon the foundation laid by Jacbos and Shapiro by making explicit that link and by describing in detail the mechanics of the permanent campaign. Like Jacobs and Shapiro, we focus primarily on the Clinton White House because (until, perhaps, the presidency of George W. Bush) it was viewed as the apogee of the permanent campaign.
WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON AND THE PERMANENT CAMPAIGN It is widely believed that Bill Clinton, as the “master of governing-by-campaigning,” perfected the permanent campaign.22 This is said to be partly the result of the president’s personality and skills and partly of changes in communication technology.23 Clinton’s use of campaign techniques for governing is well known, having been described by journalists24 as well as those who worked inside the White House.25 It is, however, hard to quantify ‘permanent campaigning,’ making it difficult to draw systematic comparisons between Clinton and his predecessors on this score. Nevertheless, there are disparate pieces of evidence suggesting a unique commitment to the use of campaign tactics for governing purposes on the part of Bill Clinton. Among such evidence is the apparent fact that “President Clinton set a new record with the sheer number of external consultants he employed.”26 Many of these consultants, whose knowledge and experience come almost exclusively from their work on campaigns, moved directly from the 1992 campaign to the White House, as Karl Rove did for George W. Bush
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after the 2000 election. Not only did Clinton utilize consultants for advice, those consultants seem to have “participate[d] in devising policy strategy to a greater extent than normal.”27 Polling has been used by the White House for decades though the amount of polling undoubtedly increased toward the end of the Twentieth Century. Again, it is difficult to quantify any president’s use of polling (in part because data on spending on polling is not easy to obtain28), but Kathryn Dunn Tenpas provides a good estimate for the Ford through Clinton presidencies. For his first five years in office, the Democratic National Committee spent $2.5 million annually on polling for Clinton. That figure is considerably higher than the estimates for any other president save Ronald Reagan, for whom the Republican National Committee spent $2 million per year on polling.29 Whether or not this quantitative difference between Clinton’s use of polling and other recent presidents represents a qualitative distinction in how those polls were used has yet to be answered (though our interviews, summarized below, attempt to address this question). Traveling the country is a necessary component to any permanent campaign strategy. Charles Jones charts President Clinton’s travel patterns in the first seven quarters of his presidency. Clinton traveled the country more than either George H.W. Bush or Reagan in their first two years in office, though the amount of travel is not considerably greater than Bush’s (i.e., Bush made 178 appearances in 136 places compared to Clinton’s 203 appearances in 150 places).30 However, unlike Bush and Reagan, for whom nearly a quarter of the appearances entailed partisan activities like fund-raising, Clinton’s travels were rarely political or partisan in nature. Instead, Clinton traveled to sell his policies, using the permanent campaign not to directly influence elections but, more importantly, to further his legislative agenda.31 Clinton, then, can be said to have used the techniques of the permanent campaign more than his predecessors, though his level of use is not significantly higher than, say, Reagan’s use of polling or Bush’s use of travel. Yet, in combination, Clinton’s high level of polling and traveling make his overall use of the permanent campaign unique. Furthermore, two new features of the permanent campaign were introduced during the Clinton presidency. First, campaign-like “war rooms” were established to plot strategy for major legislative battles over health care and the Clinton economic plan.32 Of course, the “war room” of the 1992 Clinton campaign had become famous (in part based on an Academy Award-nominated documentary about its operation). Given its connotation of an electoral campaign tactic, however, the use of the term “war room” was forbidden in the White House.33 Nevertheless, the term was used by the media to describe these strategy sessions, though the tactic itself was eventually abandoned by the Clinton team. Far more ground-breaking was the use of paid media to serve the dual purpose of fighting a legislative battle and kicking off a reelection campaign. “No president,” wrote Dick Morris, “had ever before used television advertising during legislative battles…”34 In July of 1995, however, the Democratic National Committee began airing ads that juxtaposed the President’s position on a host of issues against those of the congressional Republicans, including Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich.35 These ads, according to Morris, not only helped Clinton garner key legislative victories, they cemented his reelection victory. It should by now be obvious that President Clinton took the permanent campaign to new levels. As Jones concluded, “the Clinton years very likely witnessed acceleration in the unfolding and maturation of the permanent campaign. A communicating and traveling president took advantage of information technology and favorable conditions to interact
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constantly with the public.”36 Though we can draw such a conclusion through limited quantitative measures of Clinton’s public activity and by anecdotal evidence of new approaches to governing that he initiated, we are still without a complete understanding of how the permanent campaign operates. The rest of this article is intended to provide such an understanding based on the experiences of those who have witnessed the permanent campaign first-hand.
METHODOLOGY There is still much to be explained about the permanent campaign. For instance, how constant is the campaign that is supposedly waged in order to govern? How, exactly, are campaign techniques used in the White House? Specifically, how is polling employed in the process of policy-making? Do presidents use the advice of campaign professionals for governing and, if so, how? Does the permanent campaign take different forms at different points in an administration or for different governing purposes? These are among the questions we addressed with numerous individuals who have been centrally involved in one or more recent presidential administrations. We conducted interviews with political consultants, party officials, and senior advisers in each administration from Nixon through Clinton (see the full list of interviewees in the Appendix), though we placed special emphasis on the Clinton White House and, thus, most of our interviews are with Clinton officials. The interviews with those who did not work in the Clinton administration serve as a sort of baseline against which to check the responses of Clinton advisers. Nevertheless, it was with the Clinton administration that we were most interested because, as Jones has noted, “Here was a prime example of the campaigning style of governing, practiced by a virtuoso.”37 Most of our interviews were conducted over the telephone, though some were conducted in person. Interviews lasted between 30 and 90 minutes, though the average interview lasted roughly 50 minutes. In conducting the interviews, we utilized a semi-structured format with a flexible interview protocol. This approach is fruitful when studying elites whose experiences, and their own interpretation of those experiences, are unique.38 Our protocol began with a brief introduction to the permanent campaign and the two ways of conceptualizing that phenomenon (i.e., the electoral and governing senses of the term). We asked the interviewees which of the two approaches, if either, best described the activities of the White House according to their own experiences. From there, we asked about each individual’s role in the permanent campaign, the role of political consultants in the administration, and the use of polling and other campaign techniques by the White House. Generally, we asked for a description of the communication strategy of the White House and then asked for the interviewee’s normative evaluation of the permanent campaign. We acknowledge that there are disadvantages to the use of elite interviews for drawing general conclusions. First, the experiences of elites tend to be unique and, thus, generalizing from their responses may produce invalid conclusions. Second, as with any interviewee, elite memory may be imprecise. Each individual’s memory of a particular event, for example, may be influenced by subsequent accounts he/she has read of that event. In addition, the interests of an elite actor, whether in shaping future judgments of his/her activities or in fighting past political battles, may affect (inadvertently or not) his/her recollections.
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Nevertheless, we believe the advantages of elite interviews outweigh the disadvantages for this particular project. Our interviewees, most of whom were integral to the permanent campaign operations of the administrations they served, are in a unique position to offer a qualitative sense of how the phenomenon in question operates. Since it is a rich, descriptive understanding rather than quantitative validity or reliability that we seek, elite interviewing is an appropriate methodology. We believe the results of our interviews justify this approach despite potential objections that might be raised against this method.
HOW THE PERMANENT CAMPAIGN WORKS Our respondents provided a great deal of insight into how modern White Houses – and in particular, the Clinton White House – have approached the permanent campaign. Indeed, it should be noted that our interviewees thought some version of the permanent campaign had been employed by each of the most recent presidents. The American political system as it operates today was thought to virtually require such an approach to governing. As Dick Morris told us, in governing in the United States you have to use the same techniques that you use to win an election [and] to get a majority behind your every move every day. And if you fail to [do so] you are functionally out of power. Power… comes from a majority of the voters… Unless you are tapped into a power source of the majority of voters supporting your position, you can’t effectively sustain it in our system – you can’t get it passed; and if it’s passed, you can’t implement it; if you implement it, it can’t work. The process at every level requires popular support.39
We were particularly interested in how the permanent campaign operates; that is, we sought to explore how campaign tactics were adapted to the governing process. The bulk of the discussions focused on polling, since it is the most common campaign technique used by presidents. We wanted to know both how much polling is used in the White House and how, specifically, the results of polls are incorporated into the president’s decision-making. We also asked respondents about the use of other campaign tactics, such as earned media strategies and paid advertising. Finally, we tried to identify the different factors that can influence the use and effectiveness of permanent campaign techniques.
The Frequency of Polling in the White House The use of survey research in the White House is not a new phenomenon, nor is it as frequent as some critics would have us believe. Of course, the number of polls conducted varies across recent administrations. According to Robert Teeter, pollster for a number of Republican presidents, the Nixon administration relied heavily on polling; President Nixon liked reading the polls and would read them thoroughly. President Ford, on the other hand, did not look to polls much, even though Teeter “was there all the time” in a general advisory capacity; that is, he was not there as a pollster per se (Teeter). Richard Wirthlin, pollster for President Reagan, reported that he did polls through the Republican National Committee (RNC) on an average of one major poll per month, but that this frequency and his presence at
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the White House changed according to the political climate; under normal circumstances he would go to the White House three times per week to talk about general political strategy but in times of crisis he would be there more (Wirthlin). In President George H. W. Bush’s White House, there was very little use of polling – only between two and four major polls were conducted per year through the RNC (Teeter).40 As noted above, the conventional wisdom is that the number of polls taken by the Clinton administration increased significantly. President Clinton was criticized as one who was always “putting his finger in the wind” to see what direction public opinion was headed. While Clinton used polling more than his predecessors, the increase was not as great as some have suggested, according to Clinton advisors. Stanley Greenberg maintains that polls were conducted for Clinton once a month under normal circumstances and says he met with Clinton once per week to discuss these issues (although the number of polls would increase if there was a “hot issue” on the table). Clinton Communications Director Ann Lewis does not deny that there was “a lot of polling data” around the White House, but she explains that polling usage is more complicated than simply having “a pollster” do “a poll” for the White House. During the Clinton administration, there were many sources of data around the White House and, depending on the issue, a number of sources were used, from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the House and Senate Campaign Committees to organized interest groups (labor, environmental groups, etc.). Whoever had expertise or experience on a particular issue would go to the White House and give presentations on polling they had done. Key players, including important interest groups, play a prominent role in the interpretation of these data, though who specifically is involved in the process “depends on the day of the week, depends on what the priorities are, [and] depends on the legislation” that is in front of the president (Lewis).
The Use of Poll Results in Presidential Decision-Making Clearly, the harshest indictment of presidents’ use of polling is that they take the information collected in public opinion polls and use it to establish their position on an issue or an important policy question. The use of survey research itself is benign; problems and criticism arise when it is seen as the impetus for policy positions or for the president changing his mind, with Bill Clinton undoubtedly being the president most criticized for being “poll driven.” However, to a person, the presidential advisers we spoke to said that polling was not used during their tenure in the White House to adopt issue positions, but rather to help the president figure out the best way to make the case to the public for his policy initiatives on issues that he was interested in. In fact, according to Ann Lewis, “Polling is used in a couple of ways… you can use polling to decide which of several issues get priority; in other words, which one’s more likely to get attention. And once you decide which gets attention [it helps you know] how to talk about it, how to position it.” That is, polling is used for agenda-setting, or prioritizing issues on which the president will focus, and for framing debates surrounding those issues. Agenda-setting is absolutely necessary in today’s White House because, as Lewis explains, “There are so many issues and you have to figure out what promises [you] have made, [and ask] ‘what can I get passed in Congress and where can I build public support?’” In
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the early stages of the Clinton administration, polling data were heavily used in discussions of “sequencing;” for example, when should welfare reform be taken up, should health care be done as part of the budget package or separately, and where should reinventing government fit in the scheme of the administration (Greenberg)? All of these were principal issues in Clinton’s 1992 campaign and on which the president had stated positions; the president and his advisors employed polling to decide tactically when to initiate action. In other words, the data were used “more in terms of when [and] not what” (Greenberg). In addition, agendasetting also helps to “set the legislative debate” for dealings with Congress (Sheinkopf). Perhaps more important, polling is also used for framing discussions of the policies the administration has decided to pursue. According to Mark Siegel, Deputy Assistant to President Carter, “the most important function of [polling]… is the development of a salient political message and the coordination of an administration around those messages.” Even Dick Morris, who is widely thought to place extraordinary emphasis on polling, argues that it is not a tool for creating new policy positions or for altering unpopular positions. In fact, “it’s quite the opposite. It’s figuring out how to sell your positions to the voters.” This is the view of presidential advisors back to the Nixon administration. Robert Teeter recalls that even though Nixon was a big user of polls, they did not cause him to do or refrain from doing particular things. Rather, Nixon knew what he wanted to accomplish and used polling to help determine “how fast or slow to go [on an issue]… and how best to do it” (Teeter). A similar sentiment comes from advisers in the Reagan administration. Richard Wirthlin, an adviser to Reagan dating back to his years as governor of California, recalls that before Reagan entered the Oval Office he and his staff knew where the president wanted to take the country. Former RNC Chairman Frank Fahrenkopf also recalls that “Ronald Reagan knew what he wanted to do. He had three fundamental things [he wanted]: smaller government, increased military, [and] lower taxes… He was pretty clear as to the way he wanted to govern and what he would accomplish. He wasn’t someone who wet his finger and held it up to the wind.” Because of this, “Reagan didn’t use polling to tell him what position to take” (Wirthlin). Wirthlin describes the formation of policy directions and alternatives in the Reagan White House as one that started with the president’s goals and objectives and was implemented with “strategy, tactics and action steps” on which he provided “a good deal of input” including polling and strategic advice. Polling not only helps a president understand how to talk to the public about an issue, it can tell an administration how much the public knows about a particular issue. As Frank Fahrenkopf explains: … a poll can reveal to you a great deal about what the public knows about a particular issue; and [if] at this point in time… seventy percent are against X, it may very well be because they don’t know… a lot about X. So then you use the ‘bully pulpit’ to have the president [and] party leaders do a better job of educating [the public]. You can change public opinion through speeches and public information.
In short, using polling to help sell policy positions that you have already adopted is simply “the art of political persuasion” (Fahrenkopf). The same sentiment comes from those who served in the Clinton White House. Ann Lewis complained that the biggest oversimplification and “the most inaccurate [accusation] is
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the idea that you look at a poll and say ‘I guess I’m for that’ or ‘I’m against that.’” And according to Dick Morris: the way we used polling [in the Clinton White House] was to figure out how [Clinton] could be what he was for and at best persuade the electorate to follow him and at worst live to tell about it. [Clinton] was effective… because he worked at figuring out not how he could shape his proposals to get them approved but how he could shape the electorate to approve his proposals.
During his time conducting polls for Clinton, Stanley Greenberg reports that polling was used to decide “how best to make the case for X.” Similarly, Harold Ickes recalls that polling “was… used to test ideas, it was used to test initiatives, it was used to test language, [and] it was used to test words.” However, polling was not used to develop positions on major policy issues. Instead, as Clinton’s Assistant for Legislative Affairs, Patrick Griffin, notes, polling was used to “sell issues in order to build… public support and credibility for what would otherwise be controversial issues” and “[public opinion] research would suggest a better way to talk about [an issue]… how to talk about crime or how to talk about health care.” An example of the use of polling to advance a position in this manner is the 1995-1996 battle over the federal budget and the government shut-down. President Clinton took on the Republican leaders of Congress over budget priorities and framed the debate as being his agenda (balancing the budget without cutting social programs) versus that of the Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and the Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (balancing the budget by cutting social programs). Says Dick Morris, Clinton could not possibly have prevailed in those [battles] had he not used ads and polling because if the majority of the people saw the issue through Gingrich’s eyes… the public would reluctantly [have] side[d] with Gingrich… but because we were able to use the tools of a campaign to present a third option… we succeeded in winning the fight. And we won it in Congress because we won it among the American people.
President Clinton’s decision to finally support the welfare reform bill that he signed into law in the midst of the 1996 re-election campaign is widely thought of as the most egregious example of using polling and public opinion data to determine what position to take on a policy. After vetoing similar pieces of legislation twice before, Clinton signed the third reform bill that arrived on his desk from Congress having been told by Morris that he would lose reelection if he did not sign it, according to Harold Ickes. On the other hand, Ickes believes that Clinton was going to sign a welfare reform bill “no matter… what [because] it was something he had prosecuted for years.” He also points out that people say, ‘well Clinton read the polls on welfare reform’ but if you look back over the history of Bill Clinton, I mean if you really went back in a scholarly way and looked at the history of Bill Clinton on welfare reform, he’d been talking about it when he was governor [of Arkansas], and it was a key promise [in the 1992 campaign] – ‘change welfare as we know it.’
Similarly, Ann Lewis points out that Clinton came to office after “thinking about public policy for thirty years” and that he had “very strong feelings about what policy should be and
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what policies work.” Additional evidence that Clinton did not look to the polls to make decisions on major policy issues, but rather used them to find the best ways to sell his policy priorities to the public, is found in a number of issues he supported that were not backed by a majority of the electorate. Dick Morris reports that he could take more than two hours listing the things that Bill Clinton did that weren’t popular – he opposed the balanced budget amendment, he opposed the school prayer amendment, he fought for aid for Russia, he favored paying the [United Nations] dues, he sent troops to Bosnia, he bombed Kosovo, he opposed the partial birth abortion ban, he opposed parental consent for abortion,… he supported affirmative action.
Thus, the responses of our interviewees confirm the notion that politicians, and particularly presidents, are engaged in a strategy of “crafted talk.”41 But they also illustrate the use of polling for the purposes of agenda-setting and sequencing of legislative initiatives.
Other Campaign Techniques Employed in the White House Attempts at selling the policy preferences of the president, putting those issues and preferences on the public’s agenda, and getting them enacted into law require the use of campaign techniques besides survey research. Today, earned media strategies and, most recently, television advertising (as well as the fund-raising that is required to pay for the air time) are techniques that White Houses have looked to in trying to advance the president’s initiatives. The practice of using the media by creating “events” that will highlight the image of the chief executive and maximize publicity is nothing new for presidents. Upon President Nixon’s return from China in 1972, for instance, his plane stopped in Anchorage for an extended layover so he could land in D.C. for a prime-time television audience.42 Today, all White Houses are cognizant of the media and how they portray not only the image of the president but also his agenda, policies, and priorities. Patrick Griffin recalls that during his tenure at the White House the Clinton administration was very aware of the media; once they made decisions on policy, they then turned to how best to communicate the same message to the media that they would be sending to the public. These strategic discussions were part of a daily meeting. Much of Stanley Greenberg’s responsibility after major policy speeches or announcements lay in convincing the media to interpret different events or speeches with a particular “spin” (Greenberg). He was armed with the survey research data that he collected and could immediately reiterate the message of the speech or announcement to the press. In addition to the White House staff communicating with the media, the Clinton White House tried to create media coverage for their priorities with “message events” that would be held five or six times per week where “the goal was to get on television [and/or] get on radio” with short and persuasive messages that might be twenty, thirty or sixty seconds long (Lewis). Symbolism was important in these events; the White House would use the setting, the audience, and the people surrounding the President as well as “wallpaper,” consisting of no more than three or four words printed repeatedly on a backdrop behind the president, to provide their own headline. Clinton media consultant Hank Sheinkopf claims that “television is everything” and that getting on the evening news is important because “people respond to pictures and words attached to them.” Even though it was a daily concern, Harold Ickes
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believes that Clinton’s relationship with the press was not good enough and was “the single biggest mistake of his administration.” According to Ickes, Clinton did not cultivate a relationship with the working press of Washington because he thought he could go completely over the heads of the press. Decisions about where the president spends his time are based, in part, on how presidential travel will “play” in the media. During the Carter administration, the President had a strategy of selling his policy to the public by talking specifically to targeted constituencies. President Carter moved from state to state trying to gather support and move public opinion in the aggregate with press coverage of the individual events (Siegel). President George W. Bush used a similar tactic in 2001 with his trip across the nation to sell his tax policy to the public (Wirthlin; Ickes; Siegel). As he traveled to various congressional districts represented by vulnerable Democrats, the press covered the speech or showed the images to the rest of the nation. This tactic is also used by candidates hoping to gain some media attention for a campaign event. An earned media strategy is a crucial part of any campaign, whether it is a campaign for votes during an election or a campaign for support during a president’s term. The Clinton White House, however, took “ground breaking” steps in their use of campaign techniques in an attempt to build support for the president’s agenda (Griffin). For the first time in history, a presidential administration used television advertisements to tell the public about the president’s policy ideas and why they should support his programs. Dick Morris made the recommendation that the administration “go up early” with television ads in June of 1995. At the start of the media campaign the goal was to tout the accomplishments of the administration and rhetorically “move Clinton to the center” of the electorate (Sheinkopf), but as the budget battle began to heat up, the focus shifted to the showdown with the Republican Congress. According to Morris, “during that [later] period, our ads were focused, our intent in running those ads was to win the legislative fight.” However, after the budget battle was won in early-1996, the focus of the advertising shifted to the reelection campaign, illustrating that the use of campaign techniques to govern cannot be totally separated from the electoral sense of the permanent campaign.
CONTEXT MATTERS One last aspect of the permanent campaign that we were interested in was the context in which campaign techniques are most likely to be employed and under which they are likely to be successful. The context that surrounds an issue on the national stage is complex and multifaceted. Those features of the context that can have a major effect on the implementation and success of campaign tactics as governing tools include the partisan make-up of Congress, the strength of the opposition on a given issue, and the nature of the issue being considered. The fight over any issue or piece of legislation is much easier from the White House’s perspective when the president faces a receptive legislature. When Congress and the president are on the same page, policy can move more easily through the legislative process. With respect to the permanent campaign, this would indicate that when the president and the Congress are in agreement, tactics normally associated with a campaign – those designed to build support for an issue – are not necessary. In the simplest form, this is manifested in unified government. Typically when the president and the majority in Congress are of the
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same party, campaign tactics are not as likely to be used because the president does not need to “convince” Congress to take up his initiatives. Of course, a president may face opposition from within his party, even if they have a majority in Congress. As Patrick Griffin explains, “if you have supermajorities or strong majorities… you speak [directly] to Congress” because the basis for a winning coalition is already present. However, “if you have slim majorities, majorities in your own party, but not even majorities for your issues you have to speak over” the heads of Congress directly to the general public in hopes of building support for those issues. Thus, even though Democrats were in the majority during the health care and budget debates of 1993, support was not overwhelming for the president’s policy alternatives and it was necessary for him to build public support and confront Congress using campaign tactics (Greenberg). Consequently, the Clinton White House established “war rooms” to handle both initiatives. These rooms resembled well-oiled campaign machines that included polling, rapid response, and a strategy, theme, and message. Obviously, when the president’s party is in the minority, there is even more incentive to utilize campaign techniques to garner public support. For example, after the Democrats lost control of Congress as a result of the 1994 mid-term elections, the Clinton administration had a difficult time with legislation because they were facing an antagonistic Republican Congress, and it created a situation where Clinton could not just “run up to the Hill and try health care again” (Griffin). Instead, Clinton had to focus on small initiatives – an aspect of modern politics often associated with the permanent campaign – that he could count as successes and thereby maintain public support (Griffin). According to Griffin this was driven to a large extent by “the fact that [he] had no control; it wasn’t [his] Congress, [and] it wasn’t [his] agenda.” In short, when the makeup of Congress is such that no consensus or support has to be built, the president does not have to employ campaign tactics. However, if the makeup of Congress is such that it is a hostile environment for the president, he may have to go elsewhere to find the support he needs to push his priorities or policy alternatives through. If he cannot appeal directly to Congress he will have to take his case to the public. The success of campaign techniques in governing is a complex matter that we are unable to address fully in this article. Nevertheless, one notes that the Clinton “war rooms” on health care and the budget failed to bring victory in the former and appears to have had only a modest effect (at best) in the latter. Indeed, the 1993 budget famously passed only after oldfashioned arm twisting of Representative Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky by the White House. Though the White House can bring to bear a vast array of resources in the permanent campaign, the intensity of the opposition also matters for the success of such a strategy. According to Clinton advisers, the opposition to the Clinton health care initiative, including congressional Republicans and the insurance industry, was simply more effective than the White House in their effort to stop the reform package. The insurance lobby had their own permanent campaign operation in motion, most notably with the now-famous “Harry and Louise” advertisements that attacked the Clinton program. According to Patrick Griffin, the Clinton administration “got beat in the campaign technique game.” No one in the administration foresaw the strength of the opposition and “their campaign was much more effective and much more credible” than the administration’s (Griffin). In the end, it is far more difficult to successfully employ campaign techniques to push a policy initiative when the opposition is relying on similar tactics.
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Finally, the nature of the issue also appears to be an important factor in both the use and effectiveness of campaigning to pass legislation. Campaign techniques are typically more beneficial when the issue under consideration is of limited scope (Lewis). Patrick Griffin suggests that the larger the issue the more controversial it is likely to be and the less useful campaign tactics will be. That may explain why Clinton’s health care “war room” was unsuccessful. Ironically, presidents might still be more inclined to use campaign techniques when the issue is large and complex because they might view that approach as a way to control what seems uncontrollable. Just as the permanent campaign is likely to be less successful for issues that are vast, when there are a number of competing issues on the agenda, campaign techniques may not be as useful. Harold Ickes also points to the Clinton health care initiative as an example, noting that the stimulus package, gays in the military as well as the beginnings of the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) were also on the table while it was getting off the ground. As many Clinton advisors indicated, there were a number of problems with the health care initiative; however technically sound were the tactics, the issue was simply not one that was favorable to their use. According to Griffin, the “tactics were a good first effort” in the fight for health care reform, they simply ran into other constraints – including other high profile issues – that could not be overcome. In addition, issues or policy alternatives that are new to the agenda can be more conducive to the successful use of campaign techniques. Dick Morris reports that supportbuilding and campaign techniques are of great use “when [you are] trying to inject a new way of approaching an issue [or] a new thought about the issue.” He continues, “When you get a new idea [on an issue] that is not currently in play, whether it comes from the left or the right – school vouchers would be a good example from the right – you very often need to use the techniques of the permanent campaign to put the issue in play” (Morris). These are the situations that are most similar to that of a campaign. Just as a campaign has to figure out how best to talk to potential voters about a candidate’s message, the White House has to figure out how best to talk to the public about the new issues. As the name implies, the permanent campaign is an on-going effort to structure support for a president’s efforts. Still, not all the components of such a campaign will be used in every instance and various levels of implementation are possible. Thus, presidents have to decide when to utilize their resources in this regard. Interestingly, they may do so when the odds of affecting the outcome of legislative debates are least favorable. Clearly, more research needs to be done to determine when the permanent campaign is most likely to be fully employed and when campaign techniques are most likely to be successful. We have tried to point to just a few of the variables that play a significant role in this phenomenon.
CONCLUSION The presence of the ‘permanent campaign’ in the modern White House is much more subtle than the conventional wisdom suggests. The results of our interviews illustrate that: 1) the tactic most associated with the permanent campaign – the use of polling – is not as common in the White House as critics would have us believe; 2) polling is used to craft messages and shift priorities, not to create policy positions out of whole cloth; 3) earned media strategies (and, perhaps increasingly, paid media strategies) are used to highlight
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presidential initiatives in a crowded information environment; and 4) the context in which a president finds himself – including the partisan make-up of Congress and the nature of the issues being debated – plays a significant role in whether campaign techniques are employed and how successful they will be. While our interviews allow us to draw a number of qualitative conclusions about the permanent campaign, space does not permit us to identify the normative concerns raised by the phenomenon. Suffice it to say that an understanding of the permanent campaign is a prerequisite to addressing the age-old tension in representative democracy between “responsiveness and independent leadership.”43 That may be, as Jacobs and Shapiro suggest, a false choice, though the simulated responsiveness of politicians is not the solution to the problem that Jacobs and Shapiro have in mind.44 On the contrary, we believe that the permanent campaign, while far from harmless for democracy, strikes more of a balance than most observers recognize.
APPENDIX. LIST OF INTERVIEWS Patrick Griffin, Assistant to President Clinton for Legislative Affairs, June 28, 2001, Washington, DC. Mark Siegel, Deputy Assistant to President Carter, June 28, 2001, Washington, DC. Ann Lewis, Communications Director and Counselor to President Clinton, August 6, 2001, Bethesda, MD. Harold Ickes, Deputy Chief of Staff to President Clinton, August 6, 2001, Washington, DC. Richard Wirthlin, pollster and advisor to President Reagan, August 8 and 13, 2001, telephone. Robert Teeter, pollster and advisor to Presidents Nixon, Ford and Bush, August 10, 2001, telephone. Stanley Greenberg, pollster for President Clinton, September 10, 2001, telephone. Dick Morris, pollster and advisor to President Clinton, September 27, 2001, telephone. Hank Sheinkopf, media consultant for President Clinton, October 1, 2001, telephone. Frank Fahrenkopf, Chairman of the Republican National Committee (1983 - 1989), October 9, 2001, telephone.
NOTES This research was partially supported by the “Improving Campaign Conduct” project at American University which is funded through a grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts. We would like to thank James A. Thurber and Candice J. Nelson for their support of our research. A previous version of this research was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Southern Political Science Association, Atlanta, GA, November 7-10, 2001. 1
2
Dick Morris, The New Prince: Machiavelli Updated for the Twenty-First Century. (Los Angeles: Renaissance Books, 1999a), 75. Sidney Blumenthal, The Permanent Campaign. Rev. ed. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982).
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See, for example, Norman J. Ornstein, and Thomas E. Mann, (eds.) The Permanent Campaign and Its Future (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute and The Brookings Institution, 2000). 4 See Robert Blaemire, for example “The Permanent Campaign: Running for Re-election Starts the First Day of Your Term.” Campaigns & Elections, April-May (1993), 58-9. 5 David R. Mayhew, Congress: The Electoral Connection. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), p. 16; emphasis in original. 6 Anthony King, Running Scared: Why America’s Politicians Campaign Too Much and Govern Too Little. (New York: Free Press, 1997), 3. 7 King, Running Scared, 73. 8 King, Running Scared, 73-4. 9 Ornstein and Mann, The Permanent Campaign and Its Future, vii. 10 Hugh Heclo,“Campaigning and Governing: A Conspectus,” In The Permanent Campaign and Its Future, Norman J. Ornstein and Thomas E. Mann (eds.) (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute and The Brookings Institution, 2000), 17. The suggestion that permanent campaigning is manipulative clearly indicates Heclo’s normative evaluation of the phenomenon but our use of this quotation should not be taken as an expression of our own position. 11 Blumenthal, The Permanent Campaign. 12 Blumenthal, The Permanent Campaign, 306. 13 Blumenthal, The Permanent Campaign, 310. 14 Blumenthal, The Permanent Campaign, 56. 15 Blumenthal, The Permanent Campaign, 25. 16 Blumenthal, The Permanent Campaign, 310. 17 Blumenthal, The Permanent Campaign, 24. 18 See Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein. “After the Campaign, What?: Governance Questions for the 2000 Election.” Brookings Review 1 (2000), 44-48. 19 Maureen Dowd, “Leaders As Followers.” New York Times, January 12, 1997. 20 Lawrence R. Jacobs and Robert Y. Shapiro. Politicians Don’t Pander: Political Manipulation and the Loss of Democratic Responsiveness. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000). 21 Jacobs and Shapiro, Politicians Don’t Pander, 27; 44. 22 Thomas E. Mann, “The Bush Administration Hopes to Bolster Sagging Ratings By Waging a Permanent Campaign.” http://www.brook.edu/pagedefs/39a42744bc15ff3a23429f770a141465.xml, 2001 (Accessed June 17, 2002.) Indeed, Clinton is said to have been so fully committed to constant campaigning that he “is trying to extend the permanent campaign even beyond his presidency” by essentially campaigning to defend his presidential legacy (Richard L. Berke, “Clinton and Aides Lay Plans to Repair a Battered Image.” New York Times, December 21, 2001). 23 See Charles O. Jones, “Preparing to Govern in 2001: Lessons from the Clinton Presidency,” In The Permanent Campaign and Its Future, Norman J. Ornstein and Thomas E. Mann. (eds.) (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute and The Brookings Institution, 2000). Jones notes that conditions were ripe for permanent
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campaigning during the Clinton years – the period was virtually free of national crises, the opposition controlled Congress for the majority of Clinton’s time in office, and the policy agenda had been nationalized by Republicans in 1994 (197-201). See, for example, Bob Woodward, The Agenda: Inside the Clinton White House. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994); and Howard Kurtz, Spin Cycle: Inside the Clinton Propaganda Machine. (New York: Free Press, 1998). For example, Dick Morris, Behind the Oval Office: Getting Reelected Against All Odds. (Los Angeles: Renaissance Books, 1999b). Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, “The American Presidency: Surviving and Thriving amidst the Permanent Campaign.” In The Permanent Campaign and Its Future, Norman J. Ornstein and Thomas E. Mann. (eds.) (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute and The Brookings Institution, 2000), 113. Charles O. Jones, “Campaigning to Govern: The Clinton Style,” In The Clinton Presidency: First Appraisals, Colin Campbell and Bert A. Rockman. (eds.) (Chatham, NJ: Chatham House Publishers, 1996), 45; see also Tenpas, “The American Presidency: Surviving and Thriving amidst the Permanent Campaign,” 113-4. Polling for the president is conducted, and paid for, by the national committee of the president’s party. Tenpas, “The American Presidency: Surviving and Thriving amidst the Permanent Campaign,” p. 115. Tenpas’s estimates also support the notion that George H. W. Bush was less of a permanent campaigner than other post-Nixon presidents. Tenpas found that polling for Bush averaged $500,000 a year, quite a bit less than any of his contemporaries except Ford (for whom $480,000 was spent on polling annually) (p. 115). Jones, “Campaigning to Govern: The Clinton Style,” p. 31-2. Jones, “Campaigning to Govern: The Clinton Style,” p. 31. Tenpas, “The American Presidency: Surviving and Thriving amidst the Permanent Campaign,” p. 123-4. Woodward, The Agenda, p. 259. Morris, Behind the Oval Office, p. 140. Morris, Behind the Oval Office, chapter. 8. Jones, “Campaigning to Govern: The Clinton Style,” p. 202-3. Jones, “Campaigning to Govern: The Clinton Style,” p. 185. Lewis Anthony Dexter, Elite and Specialized Interviewing. (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1970); David Richards, “Elite Interviewing: Approaches and Pitfalls.” Politics (1996), 199-204. Direct quotations, unless otherwise cited, are taken from the authors’ interviews (see appendix for a list of interview dates); paraphrasing from interviews is indicated by a parenthetical reference to the interviewee. The dollar figures quoted earlier from Tenpas, “The American Presidency: Surviving and Thriving amidst the Permanent Campaign” (in footnote 26) may at first glance appear inconsistent with the number of polls reported from the interviews. The figures are only estimates and likely include not only “major” polling but minor “brushfire” polls and focus groups as well as various other costs. Jacobs and Shapiro, Politicians Don’t Pander.
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Samuel Kernell, Going Public: New Strategies of Presidential Leadership, 2nd ed. (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 1993), 103. Jacobs and Shapiro, Politicians Don’t Pander, p. xix. Jacobs and Shapiro, Politicians Don’t Pander, p. xix.
In: White House Studies Compendium, Volume 4 Editor: R. W. Watson, pp. 283-299
ISBN: 1-60021-541-6 © 2007 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
FROM THE BALTIC TO THE BLACK SEA: BUSH’S NATO ENLARGEMENT Ryan C. Hendrickson and Kristina Spohr Readman ABSTRACT The enlargement of NATO is an issue of central concern to many in Europe and the United States, and questions remain about who should be a member of the organization and if, how, and when to enlarge the transatlantic body. This article examines the move to enlarge NATO under President George W. Bush, with consideration to the politics and policy ramifications behind the enlargement.
INTRODUCTION After NATO’s 1999 Washington Summit, NATO enlargement dropped precipitously from the foreign policy agendas of most allied states, especially the United States. U.S. president, Bill Clinton, made few references to NATO’s future expansion during his last two years in office, and NATO’s eastern widening was basically a non-issue in the American presidential campaign in 2000. Texas Governor George W. Bush, for his part, spoke of “strengthening” the alliance, but made only vague campaign pledges to work toward a larger alliance if elected president.1 With a new American administration in place in 2001, the world saw Washington move in a “unilateralist” direction. The newly elected president, George W. Bush, pushed aggressively for a National Missile Defense (NMD), the reduction of American troops in the two Balkan peacekeeping operations, and announced that the United States would not accept the Kyoto Treaty’s requirements on global warming. While he presented himself as conducting a “realist” foreign policy, to many Bush acted as a foreign policy maverick. His policies prompted great concern in Europe, and suggested America’s distancing from its old allies.2 Although Bush reiterated his promises of strengthening U.S.-led alliances, NATO’s open-door policy did not appear to fit with the Bush administration’s military-strategic views of minimizing rather than extending American military commitments abroad. Consequently, the question of NATO’s expansion seemed buried under a host of more pressing domestic issues and other strategic concerns. In this light, it came as a great surprise when Bush — during his first tour of Europe in mid-June 2001 — officially announced his ideas for a broad eastern expansion of NATO, namely “from the Baltic to the Black Sea.” In an instance, NATO’s open door promises were turned into an operative enlargement policy. Yet, the policy that just gained momentum was
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halted with the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. These unexpected events triggered instead a far-reaching debate on new definitions of security and defense. Even though terrorism was considered one of the main security risks in the aftermath of the Cold War, nobody imagined its true scope and impact. NATO allies awoke on September 11 to new realities. However, within weeks, and despite a new political focus on what was called ‘the war against terrorism,’ the issue of NATO enlargement re-emerged. The NATO capitals had in fact committed themselves in summer 2001 to a further round of enlargement, with the actual decision as to how many and which states NATO would be invited to join the alliance at the Prague Summit in November 2002. As expected at Prague, seven central Eastern European countries (Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Romania) were issued membership invitations. The United States as the leading NATO power played a central role in these decisionmaking processes. This paper explores the evolution of the Bush administration’s policies on NATO expansion, in which we trace the international political environment and Bush’s domestic challenges in gaining Senate approval. We suggest that President Bush faced major international challenges and domestic political hurdles, with most of the challenge coming from the U.S. Department of Defense, in his efforts to gain an expansion of NATO as ambitious as his earlier speeches implied.
NATO’S ENLARGEMENT: FROM MADRID 1997 TO PRAGUE 2002 At the Madrid Conference in 1997, it had been under American and especially German pressure that NATO invited the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland to join the military alliance.3 In 1993 the then defense minister of Germany, Volker Rühe, was the first to publicly float the idea of NATO’s eastern enlargement as he sought to improve Germany’s geostrategic location. Rühe wanted NATO to include Warsaw, Prague and Budapest because he desired a zone of stability on Germany’s eastern border. Significantly, the Visegrad states’ potential membership was compatible with Moscow’s interests and thus did not endanger the German-Russian partnership. With American support, the enlargement idea quickly became a political reality. Washington not only shared German views, but recognized Bonn’s pivotal role as an intermediary between NATO and Russia. A new strategic triangle — WashingtonBonn-Moscow — had appeared,4 with Chancellor Kohl persuading Russian president Yeltsin to finally sign on to the NATO-Russia Founding Act and to accept NATO’s widening in 1997.5 At the same time, a wider enlargement that included the Baltics was not sought due to Russian opposition and Bonn’s interest in maintaining good ties with Russia. Consequently, after the Washington summit in April 1999, Bonn lost interest in actively promoting a further expansion of the Alliance. Bush’s proposals for a second round of NATO expansion during his summer, 2001 European tour suggested that this time the United States intended to play the principal leadership role in pushing for enlargement and in defining its parameters. Yet, despite Washington’s dominant role in transatlantic security and within NATO, the Bush administration faced various challenges before NATO could grow. Internationally, a need existed to create consensus among the differing European views on the choice and number of invitees – views that are guided by national interests and are strongly influenced by
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developments of the European Union and with Russia. On the domestic front, Bush had to break resistance from the Pentagon and convince an unpredictable Senate. Moreover, at home and abroad the issue that shifted the focus away from NATO enlargement was the so-called ‘war on terrorism’ after September 11. Not only did Washington begin to concentrate on its ‘homeland security’, but also NATO was forced to define new priorities on the wider question relating to its viability, and specifically to its mission, its capabilities, and its organization. NATO’s widening, although still on the agenda, seemed to have lost its absolute urgency.
THE WASHINGTON SUMMIT, THE OPEN-DOOR POLICY AND THE MAP The foundation for the “second enlargement round” was set at NATO’s Washington Summit, albeit hesitantly. At a time when NATO concentrated on its bombing campaign in Kosovo, the Clinton administration encouraged the Alliance to refrain from any discussion of expansion. It was agreed that NATO should address the next expansion round at the Prague Summit, scheduled for November 2002.6 To demonstrate NATO’s continued commitment to its “open door policy,” however, the Membership Action Plan (MAP) was created and aspiring states were invited to join the process. MAP was intended as a guideline for aspirant countries to achieve certain standards (in the following areas: political and economic, military and defense, legal, protective security, resources), that would improve their eligibility for NATO membership. It was strongly underlined that these were not to be considered as ‘specific criteria for membership.’7 As the MAP process unfolded, public lobbying within the alliance for preferred applicant states was limited.8 In fact, NATO Secretary General George Robertson asked member states to refrain from active diplomatic politicking on the issue and rarely spoke of enlargement in major addresses. Robertson’s preference for downplaying enlargement was encouraged at the highest levels in NATO headquarters.9 Ostensibly his strategy was to avoid a highly politicized process (of choosing new members), as it had occurred prior to the Madrid Summit in 1997. Indeed, after the Washington Summit nearly all allies kept quiet on the issue. Much changed in spring/summer 2001. Czech President Vaclav Havel’s speech at the Bratislava conference of May 9-11, 2001, was the first strong statement on the merits of NATO widening (and especially into the Baltic region) by a political leader of a NATO member-state.10 It was clearly designed to publicize and accelerate discussion of NATO enlargement in view of the Prague summit in 2002, and to explicitly support the Baltic case. At the NATO ministerial meeting in Budapest on May 29, 2001, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell stated: “The exact manner in which we approach Prague 2002, and how we will make judgments and against what standards we will make those judgments with respect to expanding the alliance, will be announced in due course.”11 Consequently, the attention turned to the June 13, 2001, Special Meeting of the North Atlantic Council in Brussels, with the participation of heads of state and government including the new U.S. President. The vocal attention given to enlargement at the summit ensured this topic became a hot issue from then onwards.12 It was announced that NATO would enlarge in Prague 2002. As Lord Robertson put it: “the zero option is out”. In other words, the questions of enlargement ceased
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being ‘if’ and ‘when’, and became ‘who’ and ‘how.’13 Re-emphasising Robertson’s words in Warsaw on June 15, 2001, President Bush placed himself at the forefront of the enlargement debate by calling for an expansion from “the Baltic to the Black Sea.”14 Formally, by fall 2002 there were ten applicant states, all of whom were participants in MAP. These states were: Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. Ever since the MAP countries had gathered in Vilnius, Lithuania in May 2000, and proposed an all-inclusive so-called Big-Bang expansion, they had tried to increase public awareness and to keep diplomatic pressure on the allies for a wide enlargement ‘round’. Bush’s challenge now was to gain support for this extensive alliance expansion.
BUSH’S NATO EXPANSION OFFENSIVE Upon entering the White House in January 2001, the Bush administration placed NATO expansion low on its foreign policy priority list. Secretary of State nominee Colin Powell noted in his testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the administration supported NATO enlargement, but otherwise was noncommittal on the shape or timetable for expansion.15 Two months later, Powell noted to the House International Relations Committee that a zero-option for enlargement at Prague was possible, and that no agreement on enlargement existed within the Alliance at that time.16 As Bush’s European trip came closer, the president sent a letter of encouragement to the nine MAPs and Croatia, who had gathered together at the Vilnius 10-enlargement conference in Bratislava, Slovakia. In his letter, Bush promised all aspirants equal consideration for membership, which included Macedonia, then in the midst of a civil-military conflict with ethnic-Albanian rebels.17 Clearly by this act the administration wanted to reaffirm the “open-door” policy more generally without giving any details of the U.S. position on enlargement. The first major indication of a new enlargement policy came in the first days of Bush’s tour of Europe in June 2001, as he attended the NATO summit at the Alliance’s headquarters in Brussels. Among the five major issues discussed between the Allies, Bush noted that “NATO must prepare for further enlargement.” Moreover, he stressed the United States’ desire to work in concert with its European partners.18 When he addressed the issue three days later at Warsaw University, his rhetoric had gained significantly in substance and boldness. Bush stated: “All of Europe’s new democracies, from the Baltic to the Black Sea and all that lie between, should have the same chance for security and freedom and the same chance to join the institutions of Europe...I believe in NATO membership for all of Europe’s democracies that seek it and are ready to share the responsibility that NATO brings.”19 In sum, the Bush administration left Europe with a vision of a potentially robust expansion at Prague. The overall message seemed to reflect real interest in going beyond NATO’s “least common denominator” by extending invitations to several Central and East European democracies. Why did the Bush administration suddenly make such a foreign political offensive on the issue of enlargement in the summer of 2001? Clearly, promoting NATO expansion seemed at odds with Washington’s previous policy indications about unilateralism and disengagement from Europe. Furthermore, with Germany and Britain skeptical of enlarging NATO into the Baltics because of Russian sensitivities, Bush’s vigorous moves toward expansion certainly
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put the United States out of line with its European allies. In many ways, Bush’s support for a robust enlargement seemed to be a tactical step to sustain the United States’ influence in Europe at a time when the EU looked to progress further in its own security and defense policy (ESDP). Moreover, within the United States all through spring 2001 when the Bush administration appeared to give the enlargement issue little thought, some conservative senators and defense industry lobbyists were frequently putting the topic of NATO’s widening on the agenda. As political scientist Sean Kay has explained, “these enlargement advocates were particularly motivated by the desire to show Russia that NATO had freedom of movement in Moscow’s ‘sphere of influence’ by extending Baltic invitations in particular.”20 After the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States and America’s war on terrorism that followed, the Bush administration “stayed on theme” with a number of clear statements support expansion, especially into Northeastern Europe.21 By early 2002, it crystallized more and more that the United States, as the strongest power within the Alliance, was advocating of NATO expansion to the Baltic as well as to Southeastern Europe. In fact, at the Bucharest meeting of the NATO aspirant countries in late March 2002 Bush reemphasized his vision of an undivided Europe. U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage pointed to American desires for the “most robust possible accession to NATO membership at the Prague summit.”22 The same message was sent by Colin Powell from NATO’s Reykjavik summit on May 14-15, 2002. By this time, it was becoming increasingly clear that Europe, including Europe’s major powers in the Alliance, was not going to stand in the way of a wide expansion.
EUROPEAN ALLIES Until early 2002 it seemed President Bush’s greatest challenge within the Alliance was Germany.23 As the wealthiest state in Europe, the leading power in the European Union, and Russia’s special Western European partner, its voice was rather significant in the NATO expansion debate. Now surrounded by NATO allies, in 2002 Germany had arguably fewer incentives than in the early1990s to push for a second eastern expansion of NATO.24 German national interests were shaped to a large extent by the perception that security concerns were independent of the highly contentious Baltic accession to NATO. Rather, Germany was focused on Russia’s growing need for natural resources in the future and a wish to secure repayment of German loans to Russia of the 1990s. Certainly, Germany’s NATO policies on the enlargement issue had to be seen in context of Berlin’s close ties with Moscow. Only in spring 2001, German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder had noted about German-Russian relations: “We should do everything in order to anchor the close partnership with Russia formed in the last few years even more strongly in the hearts and minds of the people.”25 At that time Moscow was still steadfast in its opposition to NATO’s enlargement, especially with regard to Baltic inclusion.26 Moreover, Schröder made no secret about his view that the new Central and Eastern European democracies should first gain membership in the European Union before being invited into NATO27 and that he placed Slovenia “far ahead” of the other applicant states.28 Both remarks suggested considerable German reservation over expansion, while indicating at most only a limited interest in a second enlargement round.29
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Yet Germany’s position on enlargement was not as monolithic as it seemed. Within Germany a domestic battle raged. Despite the chancellor’s dominance in German politics, Joschka Fischer, the German foreign minister, had a voice of his own; he seemed to be always slightly more favorable for the Baltic NATO cause. Moreover, in the German Bundestag the leading political factions were crafting widely varied positions on expansion, even within Schröder’s own Social Democratic Party.30 The lack of a clear political line on NATO enlargement was potentially connected to the fact that Berlin had recently suffered from the lack of direction in its security policy more generally: first, Schröder’s government had been taken to the Federal Constitutional Court by the Party of democratic socialism for not having sought Bundestag-approval in agreeing to NATO’s new strategy at the 1999 Washington Summit.31 Second, Berlin had stumbled over its announcement that it cannot afford to purchase the 73 transport aircraft for the EU’s military force it had pledged to provide.32 Abroad these events led to speculation on Germany’s military credibility. NATO allies feared that Berlin may also be hesitant to provide economic assistance for the potential new NATO members as they were making their necessary military transitions into NATO. Another influential and unpredictable Alliance member was France. In Madrid in 1997, France led the effort to extend invitations to the three Visegrad states and also to Romania and Slovenia. This position was rejected by the Clinton administration and the Kohl government. Instead, Washington promised that NATO’s door would remain open. Ever since Madrid, Chirac publicly supported Slovenia’s as well as Slovakia’ inclusion,33 but made little mention of Romania and Bulgaria, as both applicants struggled with their economy, political corruption and military reforms.34 This does not mean that France officially stopped offering general support to Southeastern Europe, but Paris refrained from making any committing statements with regard to their future in NATO.35 The same went for the Baltic applicants. Overall, France’s position appeared somewhat fluid after 1997. The reason lay mostly in France’s long term strategic priorities and ostensibly on the promotion of a military arm for the EU, including the establishment of an EU Rapid Reaction Force (RRF). Since the era of Charles de Gaulle, Paris had always preferred the idea of an independent “European” military organization. Chirac only underwrote this assumption by stating his interest in a “coordinated, but independent,” EU force in spring 2001.36 Significantly, President Chirac made no mention of NATO expansion in a major speech he delivered at France’s Institute of Higher National Defence Studies in Paris only one week before Bush’s European visit to NATO in June 2001.37 Given France’s historic independence and outspokenness within the Alliance, its silence on enlargement was most noteworthy. It was only following Bush’s NATO expansion offensive and Chirac’s visit to the Baltic states one month later when indications existed that the Elysée’s position had changed. Upon his return from the Baltics he began to express strong support for their entry into NATO at Prague 2002.38 Chirac had evidently begun moving his position towards a wider enlargement. Like Germany and France, the United Kingdom was rather hesitant to call for a substantial expansion. London tended to opt for minimal position of supporting an open-door policy, but otherwise refrained from comments on the choice of future members.39 This silence could partly be explained by the close relationship between Prime Minister Tony Blair and NATO Secretary General, George Robertson, and indeed the latter’s role in subduing open debate on this question until mid-2001. Another explanation may be the United Kingdom’s search to improve relations with Russia in the aftermath of NATO’s military
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activities in Kosovo. Despite British reluctance to actively promote the Alliance’s enlargement, Bush could be sure that if he was to press the issue, Blair would turn out a supporter of U.S. policies. The Prime Minister’s statements of solidarity with the United States after the terrorist attacks of September 11, Downing Street’s strong backing of the White House’s military action in Afghanistan, and Blair’s early backing of Bush’s threat to forcefully disarm Iraq were evidence of a seemingly unshakable Anglo-American axis. As this examination of the three big (West) European allies shows, President Bush’s sudden push for NATO enlargement went against the general political stream. Significantly, the only Europeans who vocally welcomed Washington’s new tone were Denmark and Norway, who had already both been aggressively promoting Baltic membership in the alliance.40 Even if not as influential as the European big three, the views of Copenhagen and Oslo could hardly be ignored. And in that sense, two of the smallest Allies turned out to be rather influential next to Washington. Bush could be sure that the two Scandinavian capitals would back any model of a wide enlargement as long as the three Baltics were included. Had Bush pressed only for the inclusion of only one Baltic state, the Scandinavian states could potentially become a diplomatic thorn for the United States. Following the events of September 11 and the subsequent growing debate about NATO’s future mission and capabilities, the Allies also began to look afresh at the enlargement issue. It seems that they were encouraged by vivid discussions in the media as to how a vast, allinclusive expansion could be accomplished. Indeed, in the late fall months of 2001, various enlargement models were floated by analysts and political actors alike.41 NATO governments who previously played with the idea of the expansion of two or three new members, now entered into open discussions about inviting all MAPs in 2002.42 At the same time, the Alliance was also looking at how to create a better relationship with Russia. This was now possible since Washington (plus its European NATO Allies) and Moscow acted together in the same interest within the anti-terror coalition and the Russian president was indicating his willingness to potentially allow for the Baltics’ NATO membership. Vladmir Putin surprised many when in October 2001 he expressed a new qualified willingness to allow NATO’s widening even to the Baltics “if we [Russia …] feel involved in the processes.”43 Of course it cannot be ignored that Russia sought a quid pro quo. Moscow made clear that it was very interested in gaining entry into the Word Trade Organization sooner rather than later, as well as getting its view on its Chechnya campaign recognized by the international community. Even if in the first half of 2001 it still was difficult to gauge precisely how far Russia was going in ‘supporting’ expansion, certainly Russia appeared less opposed to enlargement than previously predicted. In this context, NATO was probably in the best possible situation to push through a decision on a wide enlargement. In December 2001 NATO launched a new Russia-initiative with the intention to “develop...new, effective mechanisms for consultation, cooperation, joint decision and coordinated/joint action”, which culminated in the establishment of a new NATO-Russia partnership at the Reykjavik summit in spring 2002.44 The initiative stemmed originally from British Prime Minister Tony Blair. In this context it is important to note that despite seeking a new rapprochement with Moscow, London by now had also officially shifted to a much more favourable position for an extensive expansion of the Atlantic alliance, which included the Baltics.
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Similar developments could be seen in Berlin’s policies: when President Putin visited Germany in late September 2001 and suggested Russian membership in NATO, German political actors in particular were keen to state that such a move was not unthinkable. And while in February 2002 Schröder continued to emphasise the need to find a place for Russia in NATO, Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer indicated for the first time Germany’s commitment to supporting Baltic NATO membership. These views were furthered when the Bundestag expressed its support for a wide NATO enlargement round on April 30, 2002. Germany was indeed moving toward a position supporting a Southern and Northern expansion of NATO.45 Apart from the important shifts in Berlin’s and London’s positions, in spring 2002 France, Turkey, Italy and Greece began to lobby for the Southern applicants, Romania and Bulgaria.46 This southern ‘coalition’ was significant as it united to a certain extent the political adversaries Greece and Turkey. Ankara had not traditionally been treated as a major diplomatic player in the Alliance. Some research suggests that Turkey has linked its voting behavior within NATO to its troubled relationship with Greece and Greek EU policies.47 Yet, given its interest in gaining entry into the EU, its political weight grew. With decisions on EU expansion coming soon after Prague 2002, one could see Turkey using its political leverage in NATO to advance its own national interests in the EU. As became visible at NATO’s Reykjavik meeting in May 2002, the Allies were much more in line (than previously expected) to go for the option of issuing seven invitations in Prague. Albania and Macedonia were seen as having no chance of becoming members any time soon due to their own internal political crises, as well as their slow progress on military and economic reform. Croatia in turn had simply joined the MAP process too late. Clearly, by the summer of 2002 the enlargement gamble had moved closer and closer toward the Bush vision of an enlargement “from the Baltic to the Black Sea”. When the Allies met at Prague in November 2002, no further debate ensued over expansion: seven states were invited to join the alliance. Bush’s vision won out. It stood in stark contrast to the contentious and difficult Madrid summit where deep divisions between the Allies had been visible for the world to see. With Bush’s first major hurdle cleared, the challenge moved to gaining domestic approval. Indeed, there were many challenges to be faced at home rather than at the negotiating table in Brussels.
CHALLENGES AT HOME The various domestic hurdles that President Bush will have to overcome are not insurmountable, yet must be recognized as real political challenges. In what follows, we examine the attitudes of the two most important government institutions of the United States that had major voices in the American NATO enlargement debate: the Pentagon and the U.S. Senate.
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The Pentagon Bush’s biggest obstacle at home up to the Prague summit was the U.S. Department of Defense. During the negotiations for the first round of enlargement, Pentagon officials were the most aggressive opponents of expanding the Alliance within the Clinton administration. They were only muted after senior Clinton officials began to push the enlargement agenda from the White House.48 After the Alliance’s 1999 expansion, the Pentagon continued to eye the processes toward a further NATO enlargement with much skepticism. Among the few American military officials favorable to further NATO expansion, most were only looking for a small next round. In fact, they were seeking to build a political foundation to create a highly controversial debate in the hope that it would thwart Bush’s far-reaching enlargement agenda. A number of senior NATO international staffers and senior allied diplomats pointed out that American military analysts focused increasingly on the MAP ‘criteria’, especially since the completion of MAP’s second cycle in spring 2001. It seemed that the Pentagon was seeking to base its anti-enlargement arguments on the evidence that the aspirant countries did not entirely fulfill the MAP standards, the military ones in particular. The Pentagon’s outspoken disappointment over the military performance of NATO’s newest member states, especially the Czech Republic and Hungary, was proof to many in the Pentagon that additional expansion was a poor strategic choice.49 The Visegrad states’ ability to adapt to the Alliance was certainly a question that enlargement opposition groups were expected to raise in view of the next ‘round’.50 Military analysts concurred that Poland was an excellent ally during NATO’s Kosovo war and had made the most progress in integrating into the alliance, while the evaluations of Hungary and the Czech Republic were less positive. The latter were criticized for their relatively low defense spending levels, as well as their “guarded” participation in the Kosovo campaign.51 From the view at the Pentagon, all three had not made enough progress in the military reform processes to meet NATO standards. With specific reference to the Baltic states’ entry into NATO, military circles were vocalising concerns about outdated military materiel, the treatment of Russian minorities, and the Baltic’s ability to defend themselves.52 American military planners were also quick to point to the strategic problem of Kaliningrad — the Russian exclave that borders Poland and Lithuania. In particular, allegations raised by press reports about movements of Russian nuclear weapons into the region in early 2001, generated serious concerns from some Pentagon officials.53 Another concern raised by the Pentagon to Bush’s NATO enlargement agenda was rooted in the events of September 11. Since the last round of NATO expansion, the U.S. military establishment feared the Alliance’s watering down from a military institution to a mere political club. Even though NATO members invoked NATO’s Article V clause of collective defense in the aftermath of the horrific attacks, the Alliance itself played little role in the actual ‘war on terrorism’ waged in Afghanistan (and recently also in Iraq). Subsequently doubts about NATO’s military ability to counter terrorism have been raised, especially in military circles in the United States. And ever since September 11 the Pentagon has felt particularly strongly about the need for NATO to reform military capabilities for meeting the new challenges of international terrorism and of the potential use by ‘rogue states’ of
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weapons of mass destruction. The focus during late 2001 and 2002 was certainly not on expanding the alliance. In short, the Pentagon was not enthusiastic about a second NATO expansion before the September 11 attacks, and remained cautious after these events. Although the subject remained on the political agenda, it was the development of new security policies in response to the perceived terrorist threats that preoccupied the military establishment — NATO’s widening was a distant, if not tertiary concern. As the Bush administration moves to gain Senate approval for NATO’s expansion, it is not unrealistic to expect that the Pentagon will continue to raise concerns and objections, and can consequently on the domestic front make life difficult for Bush’s ambitious NATO enlargement policy.
The Senate In order for NATO to expand and for Bush to later secure the U.S. Senate’s constitutional consent on a treaty (at the time of ratification), two thirds of the Senate, or sixty-seven members, must agree to the proposed expansion.54 In 1998, when the Senate voted on the Visegrads’ membership, President Clinton received strong backing in an 80-19 vote. As soon as the new administration was in place in early 2001, a number of Senators began to state their favorite NATO candidates, indicating that a foundation of support already existed. Before Bush was even sworn in as chief executive, former Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) called for the inclusion of all the Baltic states as a moral imperative for the United States.55 Foreign policy expert Senator Richard Lugar (RIN) in turn was quick to follow up from Bush’s visionary enlargement speeches in June 2001, that the “Alliance should be aggressive” in its second enlargement.56 Soon thereafter at a congressional hearing then Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Joseph Biden (D-DE) called Slovenia a “shoo in” for membership, and noted that Slovakia fell very close behind. He added that Lithuania was meeting the MAP criteria quite well, and that Estonia and Latvia were progressing similarly.57 Despite these levels of backing, however, other evidence suggested that the Senate would approach enlargement more cautiously. When it agreed to the Visegrad states’ membership in 1998, it attached a condition to the Treaty. On future enlargement, the Senate called for advance consultation from the president before inviting candidate countries, and that potential members must be able to fulfill the military responsibilities of the Alliance.58 The Senate did not specifically define what was meant by “consultation,” but the protocol language clearly indicated that the Senate wanted close oversight of the next expansion round. In this vein, it could be speculated that the Bush administration’s unwillingness to specify its preferred candidates could play in the hands of the Senators opposed to expansion. Moreover, if Senators were to abide closely to the Senate’s 1998 protocol language, it could be expected that they might find problems with the abilities of the MAP states to enhance the alliance’s military capabilities. In the Senate, Bush’s biggest challenge for enlargement ratification is likely from Senator John Warner (R-VA), Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Warner voted against expansion in 1998, and sponsored an amendment requiring a three-year moratorium on future members beginning with the 1999 accession of the Visegrad states. His amendment failed, but demonstrated some desire in the Senate to proceed cautiously in inviting new
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members. Warner and Senator Pat Roberts (R-KS) remarked in June 2001 that getting Russia’s approval to amend the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty — which would provide the formal international legal approval for the Bush administration to move forward with NMD — was more critical to the United States than NATO’s enlargement to the Baltics.59 Now with improved U.S./Russian relations, this particular issue is unlikely to surface again, but Warner and Roberts’ philosophical concerns on NATO expansion remain. Still, in the larger scope of American foreign policy making it is important to realize that not all Republicans automatically stand behind a Bush decision.60 In his first year as president, some Republicans voiced concern early on with President Bush and his foreign policy making approach. Former Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) for instance challenged the Bush administration on its decision to discontinue its military bombing tests on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques, noting that Bush erred in this decision and did not adequately consult Congress prior to the decision. Bush also was criticized by Congress for his first defense budget and interest in closing a number of military bases around the United States.61 Many of the apprehensions subsided in the wake of September 11 as Bush united the nation behind him and effectively built an international coalition against terrorism. But the president cannot be certain that the Senate will back a vast enlargement. In fact, it would only take thirty-four Senators to reject a treaty. Moreover, in the wider context of Washington’s ‘war against terrorism’ some Republicans openly challenged Bush on his plans for a unilateral military intervention into Iraq, including Senators Chuck Hagel (R-NE) and Lincoln Chaffee (R-R.I.). Senators opposed to Bush’s foreign and security policy including NATO expansion will most likely have some support from the Pentagon. Only in January 2002, Senator Lugar previously a strong supporter of NATO as such and the Alliance’s enlargement, raised concerns when he brushed aside the expansion issue by questioning NATO’s relevance altogether. He suggested: “the reality is that we can launch the next round of NATO enlargement as well as a new NATO-Russia relationship at Prague, and the alliance can still be seen failing – that’s right, failing – unless it starts to transform itself into an important new force in the war of on [global] terrorism.”62 Senator Warner reiterated Lugar’s thoughts the following month.63 Indeed, since fall 2002 the original question of mission and area of responsibility received a new emphasis. With terrorism no longer a ‘paper tiger’ but a real threat, some Senate circles in Washington began to raise serious qualms about NATO’s military and political roles, and hence NATO relevance altogether. In sum, certain groups within the Senate were or grew sceptical toward NATO enlargement. While for the latter the political emphasis had shifted to America’s ‘war on terrorism’ and its consequences for the Alliance altogether, the former more generally expressed reservations on the idea of expansion itself. Yet, in the aftermath of Prague, senate hearings held in the Spring 2003 indicated overall support for expansion, with no serious opposition surfacing.64 The opposition voices appeared to be in the minority. Still the total of only 34 votes necessary to prevent Bush’s massive expansion, the question whether the Senate would eventually ratify the Prague NATO enlargement remained unresolved at the time of writing.
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The Prague Summit and Its Outcomes NATO leaders at the Prague summit (November 21-22, 2002) inaugurated the Twentyfirst Century transformation of NATO by inviting seven countries to join the Alliance, by agreeing to acquire new capabilities to combat terrorism (endorsing in particular a highly mobile and effective NATO Response Force), and by strengthening its relations especially with Russia. Significantly, NATO enlargement to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria and Romania was no surprise. In the days preceding the Prague Summit, and during the meeting itself, however, it was Washington’s pre-emptive strike doctrine coupled with the question of the adequate development of NATO’s capabilities to address the threat of terrorism that dominated the agenda. At the actual Prague summit NATO members found agreement on a few central military issues: the Prague Capabilities Commitment (which requires the members to improve their ability to operate in a high threat environment targeting new challenges) was approved, as well as the streamlining of NATO’s military command arrangements.65 The most significant outcome was NATO’s commitment to create a response force consisting of a technologically advanced, flexible, deployable, interoperable and sustainable force including land, sea and air elements ready to move wherever needed. The intention was for the force to have initial operational capability no later than October 2004, and full ability to act by October 2006. At the same time, these achievements are not meant to suggest that a real consensus exists on NATO regarding its larger purpose in global security. The rift between continental ‘western’ Europe and the United States grew visibly deeper as the Bush administration moved toward war with Iraq. With the support of future Eastern European NATO members, Washington and London pressed for the ‘forceful disarmament of Iraq’ and the ‘removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime’ without a second UN resolution, alienating France and Germany (as well as Russia) — the most vocal anti-war and pro-UN weapons inspection campaigners. Hence not only did the world witness the deepening of the transatlantic rift, but a wedge was also driven between the so-called ‘old’ and ‘new’ Europe. This profound divide leaves many questions regarding NATO’s future role in transatlantic security, but is not likely to have a significant impact on the process of the Alliance’s enlargement itself, as it was set in motion in Prague.
CONCLUSION When NATO announced its enlargement in Prague in November 2002, a historical step was taken. The Atlantic Alliance made a bold move to erase the remaining dividing lines of the Cold War by inviting seven new democracies to join NATO. The vision of a Europe whole and free in alliance with the United States was finally becoming reality. Such a wide enlargement round of NATO was the achievement of President Bush and his administration: Bush was the clear leader in these processes. Without the United States’ leadership on membership expansion, it is likely that NATO would have been content to add only two or three members at Prague. Yet, it must not be overseen that Bush’s motives for enlargement changed significantly over two years. If it was in the first half of 2001 about an undivided, free and a stable Eastern Europe, by fall 2001 America’s focus had shifted to concentrate on
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adapting NATO to combat terrorism with the Alliance’s expansion as part of the latter being primarily seen as extending U.S. influence into Central and Eastern Europe. Bush achieved a clear victory in Brussels with his expansion plans. At home, however, the administration’s challenge now is to develop widespread support for enlargement in the U.S. Senate and the Pentagon. Such support cannot be taken for granted. Moreover, with the profound rift in NATO over the use of force against Iraq, some Senators may question the need for an expanded membership. For Senators who are more sympathetic to a more unilateral foreign policy approach, it is possible that they will not want to ratify the enlargement of an institution which they see as obsolete. On the other hand, it is possible that others will support expansion for reasons of Realpolitik calculations, namely that enlargement will bring Washington new loyal allies in its war against terrorism. In either case, in a political environment where military and diplomatic differences remain omnipresent in NATO, membership expansion will not necessarily make NATO any more relevant to the future of transatlantic security. Obviously, a larger NATO will continue to have extremely important functions to play in the Euro-Atlantic area. Expansion will assist in reconciling historic animosities among Europeans, solidify and enhance the new democracies of the seven members, and will help integrate Russia into the Western institutional space. A number of the Prague invitees also have niche military capabilities that will certainly help NATO in its effort to modernize to meet new security challenges. Yet until the Allies, especially the United States, France, Germany and the United Kingdom are able to repair relations and build consensus again on the broader issues of transatlantic security following their fallout over the war on Iraq, NATO’s future, and the impact of an expanded membership, remains uncertain.
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See George W. Bush’s written position at www.expandnato.com/bush1.html. Sean. Kay, “NATO’s Open Door: Geostrategic Priorities and the Impact of the European Union, Security Dialogue 32, 2 (2001): 201-215; Philip H. Gordon, “Bush, Missile Defense and the Atlantic Alliance,” Survival 43, 1 (2001): 17-36. Thomas S. Szayna, NATO Enlargement, 2000-2015 (RAND: Washington D.C., 2000), 18. See also Ronald Asmus, Opening NATO’s Door: How the Alliance Remade Itself for a New Era (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002). Author’s (Spohr Readman) interviews with German government officials. Kristina Spohr Readman, Unified Germany and the Baltic Problem after the Cold War (London: Frank Cass, forthcoming). For the formal announcement, see NATO Press Release NAC-S(99)63, “The Washington Declaration,” (April 23, 1999). See NATO Press Release NAC-S(99)66, “Membership Action Plan,” (April 24, 1999). Ryan C. Hendrickson, “NATO’s Open Door Policy and the Next Round of Enlargement,” Parameters 30, 4 (2000-2001): 53-66. Author’s (Hendrickson) interview with Karel Kovanda, Ambassador from the Czech Republic to NATO (Summer 2001).
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Vaclav Havel’s speech at the Bratislava Conference on May 11, 2001, “Europe's New Democracies: Leadership and Responsibility,” Bratislava Conference at http://expandnato.org/nedbmay.html 11 “Press availability with Secretary of State Colin Powell following meeting with NATO leaders; Budapest, Hungary,” May 29, 2001: http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2001/3126.htm 12 For all on the record speeches and press conference of the summit see, “Special Meeting of the North Atlantic Council with the Participation of the Heads of State, NATO HQ – June 13, 2001,” http://www.nato.int/docu/comm/2001/0106-hq/010613-hq.htm. 13 “Press conference by NATO Secretary General, Lord Robertson,” June 13, 2001, Brussels NATO HQ, http://www.nato.int/docu/speech/2001/s010613l.htm. 14 “Remarks by U.S. President Bush in adress to faculty and students of Warsaw University,” June 15, 2001, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/release/2001/06/200106151.html 15 Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Senate, “Nomination of Colin L. Powell to be Secretary of State,” (January 17, 2001). 16 International Relations Committee, U.S. House of Representatives, “Reinvigorating U.S. Foreign Policy,” (March 7, 2001). 17 Robert Anderson, “Bush boost for NATO applicants,” Financial Times (May 11, 2001), p. 10. 18 George W. Bush, “The President’s News Conference With NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson in Brussels,” Weekly Compilation of the Presidential Documents (June 13, 2001): 891-896. 19 George W. Bush, “Address at Warsaw University,” Weekly Compilation of the Presidential Documents (June 15, 2001): 914-918. 20 See Sean Kay’s introductory chapter, ‘NATO’s next enlargement’ in T. Valasek and T. Hitchens (eds.), Growing Pains: The Debate on the Next Round of Enlargement. Washington DC: CDI, 2002. 21 Tom Canahuate, “U.S. Reasures NATO Aspirants on Enlargement,” (September 26, 2001) at www.DefenseNews.com; Baltic News Service, “Bush Pushes NATO Enlargement After Attack,” (October 12, 2001); Marc Grossman, “Remembering the Transatlantic Purpose,” Address to NATO Parliamentary Assembly (October 9, 2001) at www.expandnato.org/grossmanato1.html. Baltic News Service, “Outgoing US Ambassador to Latvia to Work With State Department,” (September 6, 2001). 22 Quoted in AFP, “US Seeking ‘Robust’ NATO Expansion at Prague Summit,” (March 25, 2002). 23 Germany’s importance to NATO expansion was identified in a number of off-the-record author (Hendrickson) interviews among individual NATO member-state delegations and NATO international staff members (Summer, 2001). 24 David G. Haglund, “NATO Expansion: Origins and Evolution of an Idea,” in idem. ed., Will NATO go East? (Ontario, Canada: Center for International Relations, 1996): 26. 25 Quoted in BBC Monitoring Europe, “Schroeder views German’s policy toward Russia,” (April 7, 2001).
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Oksana Antonenko, “Russia, NATO and European Security after Kosovo,” Survival 41, 4 (1999-2000): 124-144 for a broader discussion of NATO-Russian relations. See also Gregory Hall, “NATO and Russia, Russians and NATO: A Turning Point in Post Cold War East-West Relations?” World Affairs 162 (1999); Before the September 11 attacks, Putin had also called for NATO’s dissolution. See John Dansiszewski, “Putin Urges Russian Role in New NATO,” Los Angeles Times (July 19, 2001): A3. Lionel Barber and Haig Simonian, “Schroeder Urges Caution on new EU Constitution,” Financial Times (June 14, 2001). BBC Monitoring Europe, “German chancellor optimistic about Slovenia’s accession to EU, NATO,” (June 26, 2001). See also Baltic News Service, “Baltic Defense Minister Don’t Get From Germany Concrete Opinion About NATO Expansion,” (April 27, 2001). Baltic News Service, “Important Bundestag MP Says Colleagues Favor Baltic Membership in NATO,” (May 3, 2001); Baltic News Service, “Bundestag Vice President Tells Lithuania Germany Sensitive to Russian Fears on NATO,” (June 15, 2001). BBC Monitoring Europe, “German foreign, defense ministers defend support for NATO strategy,” (June 19, 2001). Michael Smith, “Germany cannot pay for planes to carry Euro-army,” Daily Telegraph (June 18, 2001): 6 Agence France Presse, ‘France Backs Slovakia bid for NATO membership,” (May 5, 1999): in Lexis-Nexis, Europe; BBC Monitoring Europe, “Slovene premier, French Senate Speaker discusses Slovene EU, NATO Membership,” (April 25, 2001). Background author (Hendrickson) interviews with NATO international staffer members and Senior officials from various allied states (Summer, 2001); See also Elizabeth Pond, “Romania: Better Late Than Never,” Washington Quarterly, 24, 2 (2001): 35 for more on its recent reforms in Romania under President Ion Iliescu. BBC Monitoring Europe, “French Minister promises support for Romania’s EU, NATO Integration,” (January 14, 2000). Quoted in Keith B. Richburg, “European Military Force to Cooperate with NATO,” Washington Times (December 9, 2000): A22; See also Judy Dempsey and Alexander Nicoll, “World News--Europe: EU Force may plan apart from NATO Rapid Reaction Force,” Financial Times (April 30, 2001): 6. Jacues Chirac, Speech delivered to the Institute of Higher National Defence Studies (June 8, 2001). Nick Coleman, ‘Chirac Boosts Baltic Hopes’, Baltic Times (August 2, 2001) in LexisNexis. News Bulletin, “British Minister Confirms NATO’s plans to continue expansion,” (October 6, 2001). Background author (Hendrickson) interviews with NATO staffers, Pentagon officials, and allied diplomats. Denmark was most vocal in its support of Lithuania in a recent MAP discussion (Summer 2001). See also, “Denmark say to Support Baltics Joining NATO,” Reuters (August 27, 2001). See Kristina Spohr, “‘Stream’ Flow: NATO’s Growing Pains,’ in Wall Street Journal Europe, (November 20, 2001) p. 6. In Finland K. Honkanen has introduced the term
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‘flexible Big Bang 2’, see eadem, ‘Naton laajentuminen uuteen vaiheeseen, Aamulehti, June 19, 2001, http://www.upi-fiia.fi/kommenttikh.html. See Kristina Spohr, ‘The Politics of NATO Enlargement: Problems, Prospects and Visions’, in Vlasek and Hitchens eds., Growing Pains, pp. 101-25. Suzanne Daley, “Putin Softens Stance Against NATO Expansion,” New York Times (October 4, 2001): A1. See Judy Dempsey, ‘NATO offers Russia a new kind of relationship’, Financial Times (UK), (February 25, 2002). See ‘Germany supports NATO enlargement to all qualified candidates: Fischer’, in AFP, Feb. 11, 2002; ‘Joint Communiqué of the Meeting of the Foreign Ministers of Germany and the Baltic states, (February 11, 2002) http://www.am.gov.lv/e/?id=2440. See Reuters, ‘Momentum building for sweeping expansion of NATO’ (February 24, 2002); Bruce Jackson, “Romania stands high chances to be invited,” Rompres, February 25, 2002). Ronald R. Krebs, “Perverse Institutionalism: NATO and the Greco-Turkish Conflict,” International Organization 53 (Spring 1999): 343-377. James M. Goldgeier, Not Whether But When: The U.S. Decision to Enlarge NATO (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1999) This section is based largely on off-the-record author (Hendrickson) interviews with NATO staffers and delegation officials from four allied states in NATO (Summer 2001). F. Stephen Larabee, “NATO’s Adaptation and Transformation: Key Challenges,” in Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, “NATO’s 50th Anniversary Summit,” (April 21, 1999): 61. See also State Department Briefing, “Foreign Press Center Briefing with Andrusyszyn, Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, and Ron Asmus, Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs,” (March 20, 2000). Jeffrey Simon, “Poland: Prepares for the Alliance,” Joint Forces Quarterly (Summer 2000): 39. Ryan C. Hendrickson, “NATO’s Visegrad Allies: The First Test of Kosovo,” Journal of Slavic Military Studies 13, 2 (2000): 25-38. Kent R. Meyer, “US Support for Baltic Membership in NATO: What Ends, What Risks?” Parameters 30, 4 (2000-2001): 67-82. Lucian Kim, “Kaliningrad: model of cooperation with EU?” Christian Science Monitor (January 10, 2001): 8. For the constitutional processes of NATO’s other member states, see Sean Kay and Hans Binnendijk, “After the Madrid Summit: Parliamentary Ratification of NATO Enlargement,” Strategic Forum 107 (March, 1997). Congressional Record (February 16, 2001): See also Congressional Record (March 2, 2000): S 1156. Richard Lugar, “Why Europe Still Matters and Why NATO Should Enlarge Again,” at www.expandnato.org/lugarcsis.html (June 13, 2001). Congressional Record (June 21, 2001) S 6595. “Protocols to the North Atlantic Treaty of 1949 on Accession of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic,” Executive Report 105-14 (March 6, 1998): 40.
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Miles A. Pomper, “Members Debate Whether Expansion of NATO Should be Limited to Aid Anti-Missile Talks with Russia,” Congressional Quarterly Weekly (June 16, 2001): 1456. Ralph G. Carter, ed. Contemporary Cases in U.S. Foreign Policy (Washington D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Press, 2001); James M. Scott, ed. After the End (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1998). Roberto Suro, “Bush will ask Congress to cancel vote on Vieques,” Washington Post (June 16, 2001): A3. James Dao, “Much-Maligned B-1 Bomber Proves Hard to Kill,” New York Times (August 1, 2001): A1. See Frederick Kempe, ‘Lugar’s doctrine for NATO’, in The Wall Street Journal Europe, January 21, 2002; Richard G. Lugar, ‘NATO's role in the war on terrorism’ (January 18, 2002): http://www.senate.gov/~lugar/011702.html. See, US Senate Armed Services Committee hearings “The Future of NATO,” (February 28, 2002). U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, “NATO Enlargement: Qualifications and Contributions,” (March 27, 2003); U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, “NATO Enlargement,” (April 1, 2003); U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, “NATO Enlargement: Part II,” (April 3, 2003). See ‘Prague Summit Declaration’, http://www.nato.int/docu/pr/2002/p02-127e.htm (November 21, 2002).
In: White House Studies Compendium, Volume 4 Editor: R. W. Watson, pp. 301-318
ISBN: 1-60021-541-6 © 2007 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
SPANNING THE CENTURY: THEODORE ROOSEVELT, FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT, RICHARD NIXON, BILL CLINTON, AND THE ENVIRONMENT Glen Sussman and Byron W. Daynes ABSTRACT In this study, we examine four presidents of the twentieth century who had a recognized attachment to the environment - - namely, Theodore Roosevelt (the establishment of a national conservation policy), Franklin Roosevelt (the golden age of conservation), Richard Nixon (the decade of the environment), and Bill Clinton (the greening of a president). Although not equally successful, the two Roosevelts, Nixon, and Clinton, each in their own way, played an important part in advancing environmental interests. They did so using the instruments of presidential power including reaching out to the American public through the media, issuing executive orders and proclamations, signing legislation, and as signatories to regional and international environmental agreements. These four twentieth century chief executives represent a model of an “environmental” presidency for future occupants of the White House. Their performance demonstrates that despite individual issue preferences, personal priorities, institutional constraints, and pressure from organized interests, presidents can and will exercise power in support of environmental and conservation policies.
INTRODUCTION Presidents have a variety of tools with which to influence public policy. Included among these instruments of power are the “bully pulpit” as presidents reach out to the American public, signing legislation or using the veto, and issuing executive orders and proclamations. Presidents can set the agenda by drawing attention to specific public policy domains or by focusing on specific public concerns. The environmental presidency has received only minor attention.1 As the central figure in the American political setting, the presidency has been viewed in terms of its involvement in traditional policy areas – namely, economic policy and foreign policy while the environment as an important public policy issue has been examined in terms of actions taken by other institutions including Congress, the courts, and interest groups. It is now important to address the role of presidents and the environment over time. The study reported here will examine four presidents who have been regarded as playing an important role in environmental and conservation policy – Theodore Roosevelt (the establishment of a national conservation policy), Franklin Roosevelt (the golden age of conservation), Richard Nixon (the decade of
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the environment), and Bill Clinton (the greening of a president). These presidencies span the Twentieth Century and provide guideposts of presidential action in support of environmentalism. It is important to note that the environment has been a peripheral issue for many presidents or the target of deregulation efforts by others. For example, Eisenhower viewed water pollution as a state and local rather than national issue. The Clean Air Act of 1977 languished during Reagan’s tenure in office. George H.W. Bush stood alone at the 1992 Earth Summit in his refusal to sign the Convention on Biodiversity. In this paper, we provide case studies of each president with attention to their actions regarding the environment. We then present a comparative assessment of their role in shaping environmental policy and advancing environmental and conservation interests.
PRESIDENTIAL INFLUENCE AND PUBLIC POLICY While the literature on the presidency has developed considerably in recent years, some scholars still argue that “behavioral research has made less progress in the study of the presidency, perhaps, than in other parts of the American political system.”2 While recognizing this dilemma, scholars have established a body of research on the occupant of the White House that has added to our understanding of the institution of the presidency. According to Paul Light, it is the president that sets the agenda and who presents a “vision of the past and the future.”3 Yet the president must prioritize issues and then present a case in support of them to the public and to the Congress. Richard Neustadt points out that while presidents have choices that define the prospects for success, they are also confronted with multiple constraints on their actions.4 Fred Greenstein argues that the “highly personalized nature of the modern presidency makes the strengths and weaknesses of the White House incumbent of the utmost importance. It places a premium on the ability of the chief executive to get the most out of their strong points and to compensate for their limitations.”5 Research has shown that presidents can influence the public policy agenda.6 According to Mary Stuckey, “The presidency has become the primary focus of national political attention, and the president’s talk has become the primary focus of the presidency.”7 For instance, public opinion can be especially heightened and supportive when presidents give full attention to an issue (e.g., in a major speech).8 Samuel Kernell has promoted the notion that modern presidents now “go public” and take their case directly to the American electorate.9 Moreover, presidents can command attention when attempting to establish a link with the public or constituency groups. When involved in executive-legislative relations, presidents can exercise influence using a variety of power resources including the veto or budget authority. Both Corwin and Koenig have argued that in dealing with the Congress, the president can be successful when functioning as a legislative leader.10 Presidents can also exercise considerable influence in shaping policy by using executive authority including executive orders and making appointments and staffing decisions.11 As Pfiffner informs us, presidents have learned to use the resources of the “managerial presidency” as well as persuasion to advance their policy preferences.12 Barbara Hinckley has argued that “work comparing presidents and the repetition of events over time should have the highest priority.”13 Other than Dennis Soden’s, The
Spanning the Century: Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Richard Nixon … 303 Environmental Presidency, few, if any, studies of the American presidency have focused specifically on presidential involvement with the environment. The study presented here addresses the actions of the White House incumbent and the environment as an important public policy issue. In doing so, we attempt to respond to Landy and Milkis who in their assessment of the presidency argue that “The great presidents were great because they not only brought about change but also left a legacy – principles, institutional arrangements, and policies that defined an era.”14 We focus on four presidents who advanced environmental interests and established a model for future presidents. They used the power resources of the White House in support of the environment and had considerable impact in furthering environmental progress. Although other presidents have been involved in environmental matters in positive (LBJ and beautification, Carter and energy policy) and negative (Reagan and George W. Bush) ways, the accomplishments of the two Roosevelts, Nixon, and Clinton stand as mileposts across the twentieth century. These four presidents committed themselves to environmental/conservation progress while directing their attention to traditional economic and foreign policy issues. This demonstrates that presidents can integrate the environment into their larger public agenda.
Presidential Roles Throughout the case studies, we will be referring to the presidents’ five roles, an approach developed by Raymond Tatalovich and Byron W. Daynes in their book, Presidential Power in the United States.15 The roles are distributed according to a power component beginning with the most powerful – Commander-in-Chief – the only role that is specifically mentioned in the Constitution, and the role that includes the president’s responsibility regarding national security and environmental security followed by the Chief Diplomat – that empowers a president to engage in diplomatic efforts with other nations; the Chief Executive that involves a president in domestic policy making; the Legislative Leader that encompasses the president’s relationship with the Congress; and finally, the Opinion/Party Leader the president’s weakest role, where the president reaches out to the public through the political party and public opinion.16
CASE STUDIES Theodore Roosevelt: The Establishment of a National Conservation Policy The president who is generally considered the first environmental president is Theodore Roosevelt. TR, in many ways, set the pattern for the other environmental presidents who would follow. Vice President Theodore Roosevelt assumed the presidency after William McKinley’s assassination in 1901; he then ran successfully on his own and served as president from 1904-1908. He was a committed conservationist throughout his tenure in office. He repeatedly made it clear during his seven-and-one-half years in office that it was crucial for the United States to preserve natural resources for the generations that would follow. As he stated: If there is any one duty which more than another we owe it to our children and our children’s children to perform at once, it is to save the forests of this country,
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for they constitute the first and most important element in the conservation of the natural resources of this country.17 And in reflecting on what his administration had done for the environment, he suggested: The policy of conservation is perhaps the most typical example of the general policies which this Government has made peculiarly its own during the opening years of the present century. The function of our Government is to insure to all its citizens, now and hereafter, their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If we of this generation destroy the resources from which our children would otherwise derive their livelihood, we reduce the capacity of our land to support a population, and so either degrade the standard of living or deprive the coming generations of their right to life on this continent.18
Roosevelt was particularly aggressive in preserving national forests and establishing national monuments during the period 1907 to 1909. He accomplished most of what he did using executive orders and a very broad reading of the Antiquities Act, a public law passed by Congress in 1906. This Act authorized the president to . . .declare by public proclamation historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest that are situated upon the lands owned or controlled by the government of the United States to be national monuments, and may reserve as a part thereof parcels of land.”19 Roosevelt discovered, quite soon, that he could use the Antiquities to set aside national monuments or national forests. As one might expect, Roosevelt’s interpretation of the Antiquities Act to achieve his conservation goals became a continual source of conflict between the Congress and the Executive branch. At first, the Congress was supportive of granting this unchecked authority to the president. On passage of the Antiquities Act, members of the 58th Congress generally felt that conservation should be a part of a president’s power, and if problems arose with regard to the Act’s application, these details or, as one witness described it, these unessential things” could be worked out at a later time.20 As Roosevelt began to use the Antiquities Act, however, those unessential things referred to in the Act were repeatedly questioned. Not surprisingly, it was the western senators who were most upset with Roosevelt’s extension of executive power through the Act. Opposition came to a head in the Sixtieth Congress, with Roosevelt’s insistence that the meaning of conservation should be broadened to include not only timber, but also gas, coal, oil, iron, water and grazing lands.21 In response, one opponent, Senator Charles Fulton of Oregon, proposed an amendment to the 1907 Appropriations Bill for the Department of Agriculture – the department responsible for the Forest Service – that would provide that [h]ereafter no forest reserve shall be created within the limits of the states of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Colorado, and Wyoming except by an act of Congress.22 Roosevelt, on the advice of Gifford Pinchot, head of the Bureau of Forestry and TR’s close adviser on the environment,23 responded by completely ignoring the amendment and, instead, setting aside an additional 21 forest reserves by executive order, that totaled some 17,000,000 acres. As a result, conflict became so intense between the president and Congress that House Speaker Joseph Cannon and Republican Senate Majority Leader Nelson Aldrich thought of formally censuring Roosevelt for these actions.24 Theodore Roosevelt also found that he could use executive orders to conveniently serve his conservation objectives. This strategy permitted him to protect natural resources by
Spanning the Century: Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Richard Nixon … 305 placing public land under the protection of the national government, an action that was later supported by the Congress. It was the son of another president, then Secretary of Interior, James R. Garfield, who explained this strategy: From the earliest days the Executive has found it necessary in the public interest to take action concerning the public lands by withdrawing areas from entry. There was no specific provision of law for many of these withdrawals, and yet they were made unhesitatingly by the Executive as steward and were approved by Congress in acts granting land for the purpose for which it was withdrawn.25
Garfield’s appointment was an example of the type of person that Teddy Roosevelt looked for to fill positions in his Cabinet. Garfield supported TR’s efforts to expand executive power and conserve resources. In addition to land preservation, Roosevelt established four study commissions to gather information about public lands so that he could use the findings to educate and encourage the public as well as urge the Congress to exert a greater effort in conserving natural resources. 26 Also, Roosevelt helped to pioneer the president’s legislative leader role in Congress as he put together winning coalitions to sustain his environmental efforts.27 Roosevelt also used his opinion/party leadership role to good effect in selling conservation to the public. Stephen Ponder observed that Roosevelt, along with others in the executive branch, not only used the bully pulpit to sell his message, but also took opportunities, whenever possible, at conventions, and other public occasions, to preach conservation. He also made visits around the country to explain the need for conservation. Roosevelt even took a steamboat cruise down the Mississippi River, to illustrate what his Administration had done for inland waterways.28 On occasion, he waxed lyrical on occasion in his responses to the environment. As he suggested of the conservation of wildlife, When I hear of the destruction of a species, I feel just as if all the works of some great writer have perished.29 Roosevelt considered his own conservation efforts to be some of the outstanding landmarks of his presidency - which they certainly were.30 By the end of his presidency, U. S. Statutes at Large31 indicated that he had created, by presidential proclamation, 13 national monuments, as well as 25 national forests, and one national game preserve; moreover, he had enlarged 45 other national forests by presidential proclamation, and modified ten additional national forests. His efforts to create and shape public lands, however, in a few instances, reduced the size of land sections. For example, he diminished five national forests and one national monument.32 Regarding the international arena, TR called for a North American Conference on Conservation and went so far as to use American military forces to ensure wildlife preservation in the Pacific. Overall, there have been few other presidents who made such contributions for conservation during their tenure in office.
Franklin Roosevelt: The Golden Age of Conservation Franklin D. Roosevelt was not only our first modern president, he was our first modern environmental president. While his fifth cousin, Teddy Roosevelt, established a national conservation policy, it was Franklin Roosevelt who was designated as the president who
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would introduce the Golden Age of Conservation.33 Of the 12 years he spent in office, his most productive environmental years were those during his first term. Franklin Roosevelt’s views of conservation had certain philosophical roots. He believed, for example that conservation was somehow connected to liberty both liberty of the community as well as liberty of the individual.34 His belief in the conservation of resources also had national roots since, for FDR, preserving a national park became a symbol of America and of Americanism. As he stated: There is nothing so American as our national parks. The scenery and wildlife are native. The fundamental idea behind the parks is native. The parks stand as the outward symbol of this great human principle.35 Yet Roosevelt was also a balancer in his approach to the environment, recognizing that the country could not completely exclude the need for development. Faced with conditions of the Depression, he took account of the pressing need for creating jobs, for stabilizing the economy in addition to preserving the environment. With the establishment of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), he was able to respond to both of these concerns, putting some 2 million people to work in the national parks and forests.36 CCC members built roads, firebreaks, planted trees, constructed trails, and prevented soil erosion. For Roosevelt, the CCC became the primary instrument to effectuate change and improvement in the environment. It was his hope, as he later revealed, that involvement with the CCC would build character and reinstate the sort of self-confidence needed in the employees that would help serve to revive a nation. As he indicated: I had determined even before Inauguration to take as many of these young men as we could off the city street corners and place them in the woods at healthful employment and sufficient wage so that their families might also be benefited by their employment.37 For Roosevelt, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) was also very important to his approach to the environment. Energy production and dam construction at that time were not seen in opposition to environmental preservation. TVA was described by Roosevelt as the laboratory for the Nation to learn how to make the most out of its vast resources for the lasting benefit of the average man and woman.38 FDR hoped that there would be other TVA’s organized nation-wide to help people across the nation, and also preserve the environment. Roosevelt used his chief executive role to staff his Administration with several environmental activists. Those closest to Roosevelt, in fact, were individuals who closely advised him on the environment. The most important of these persons he appointed were Harold Ickes, Roosevelt’s Secretary of the Interior and Henry Wallace, FDR’s Secretary of Agriculture and later his Vice President during his third term. Other’s in his administration who supported his environmental efforts included F. S. Silcox, Forest Service head; Arno Camerer, National Park Service; Rexford Tugwell, staff adviser; Hugh Bennett, Soil Erosion Service; Elwood Mead, Bureau of Reclamation; and Frank T. Bell, Bureau of Fisheries. FDR focused his attention on several particular environmental issues over the years including forestry, national parks, water conservation, land management, wildlife preservation and conservation of natural resources. Moreover, many of the structural additions to government added under the New Deal, were devoted to both energy and conservation that expanded in some way his environmental efforts. These offices included the Soil Erosion Service; the National Resources Board; the National Power Policy Committee; the Soil Conservation Service; the Civilian Conservation Corps; the Works Progress Administration; the Rural Electrification Administration; the Federal Emergency Administration; and the Division of Grazing Control. Roosevelt’s environmental efforts were
Spanning the Century: Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Richard Nixon … 307 helped along in 1933 when Congress gave him the power to reorganize the government for two years without any Congressional oversight.39 The National Industrial Recovery Act alone provided a $3.3 billion program that included conservation as well as the development of natural resources and water power, the redirection of rivers and harbors, the implementation of flood control, the purification of water and the prevention of coastal and soil erosion.40 FDR did enjoy success as an executor of environmental policy. Part of this was due to the budget that was devoted to the improving the environment. His budget messages delivered to Congress demonstrated that the environment was an important focus. As much as 20.8 percent of the administration’s budget in 1935 was devoted to the environment; whereas the lowest percentage of the budget devoted to the environment was 11.2 percent in 1936, which was quite a bit higher than most other presidents before or after the FDR years. A number of agencies and bureaus in the Roosevelt bureaucracy carried on with environmental efforts. The Works Progress Administration (WPA), for example, took much of the responsibility to create nearly 34,000 projects for the environment at a cost of nearly $4 billion. These projects included flood control projects, dam construction as well as water pollution corrections.41 Agencies like the WPA also became involved with environmental concerns and again put people back to work at the same time. Thousands were employed to build dams, to build some two million privies in rural and suburban areas, to bring seepage from abandoned mines to a halt, and with the help of state and local areas, to seal abandoned mines.42 In 1938, the first division of water pollution was established in the Public Health Service, providing funding to state and local areas for treating sewage problems. In exercising his opinion/party leadership, Franklin Roosevelt was somewhat sporadic as far as including references to the environment in his major addresses. It would seem that 1936 was FDR’s best year with fully six percent of his State of the Union Address focused on the environment, but in the following year, the environment was barely mentioned at all. FDR also attempted to convey his message and educate both the public and policy maker through press conferences and radio messages. His press conferences averaged 6.9 a month a sizeable number when one compares it to Clinton’s 3.4 a month held during his first term.43 His radio messages – though fewer in number – were FDR’s most memorable means of communication. His fireside chats reached a large audience and were thought to be a masterful way to connect with the public. In his first term in office, Roosevelt was a particularly effective legislative leader. In those first 100 days a period that has not been replicated by any other modern president FDR was able to send 14 major pieces of legislation through, including legislation establishing the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). He also sent legislation to the Congress dealing with two of his particular natural resource interests, namely, forestry and national parks. Other legislation important to the environment that attracted the attention of FDR dealt with dam construction, crop rotation, preservation of natural resources and water pollution. Although his global environmental activity was limited, in 1936, he negotiated an important migratory bird treaty with Mexico. Clearly, one could say, that FDR continued to contribute to the nation’s natural resource base regardless of the great Depression and U.S. wartime involvement, which would suggest his sincerity of purpose as a conservationist.
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Richard Nixon: The Decade of the Environment The year 1968 brought Richard Nixon into office, and Nixon would turn out to be one of the greenest presidents ever elected. Two years later, Nixon would declare the 1970s to be the decade of the environment. In his 1970 State of the Union address, he indicated its importance by noting that . . . restoring nature to its natural state is a cause beyond party and beyond factions. 44 During his first term in office, Nixon determined that his focus on the environment would be both diverse and all encompassing. It was to include a focus on air and water quality and on new ways to increase the number of national parks and on the expansion of open space.45 A Harris Poll found the public quite supportive of Nixon’s focus on the environment, with 54 percent willing to pay $15 more a year in taxes in order to finance a federal program to control air and water pollution in 1970,46 and 59 percent willing to do the same in 1971.47 This interest of the public was undoubtedly the reason Nixon initially became involved with environmental policy.48 In his book, The Wars of Watergate: The Last Crisis of Richard Nixon, Stanley I. Kutler argued persuasively that early into Nixon’s first term, the president admitted that he had never really been attracted to the environment but found it politically expedient for him to become interested since it would become a way to secure an important element of the voting public. Despite his real feelings about the issue, Nixon recognized a popular policy area when he saw it. Indeed, his speeches and actions of support for the environment tended to follow public opinion quite closely, and in his 1970 State of the Union message, Nixon devoted more than a third of his time to environmental issues and was bold enough to indicate to the Congress and the public that "[t]he program I propose to Congress will be the most comprehensive and costly program in this field in America's history."49 Indeed, it was in the 1970s that Nixon supported passage of more environmental legislation than was passed in any other modern-day Congress.50 Nixon fortunately had a Congress that was even more supportive of the environment than he was. As legislative leader, Nixon saw 25 pieces of environmental legislation become law, and all but four were passed during his first term.51 Among these policies was the landmark National Environmental Policy Act – an act which, for the first time, required impact statements, to be filed for any developmental interest that might intrude on the environment. Other acts passed during this period protected endangered species, and dealt with coal mine safety, water quality, clean air, hazardous materials, occupational safety and health, water pollution, ocean dumping, pesticides, oil spills and excessive noise.52 One of the more creative attempts by Nixon to control government was the creation of four super departments one of which was to be a department devoted to Natural Resources and environmental affairs. The effect would have been to weaken the clientele-related Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Labor, and Transportation, while enhancing the protection of natural resources. Because of Nixon’s resignation due to the Watergate scandal, the reorganization never came about. While his super cabinet reorganization failed, Nixon succeeded in creating three additional environmental agencies. These included the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Environmental Quality Council, and the Citizens’ Advisory Committee on the Environment – the agencies that have become environmental mainstays to presidents since Nixon. The most successful of these agencies
Spanning the Century: Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Richard Nixon … 309 was the EPA, created in 1970.53 It was established as an independent executive agency to protect and safeguard both the public health as well as the environment. Among modern presidents, Richard Nixon proved to be one of the most successful presidents in promoting environmental priorities. The environment as an important public policy issue, did not come easily for Richard Nixon, since he had doubts about it and his own party gave him little encouragement. While the Republican Party had an environmental plank in its 1968 party platform, what it did say was quite general in nature. Absent from the plank was any detail to give sufficient insights as to how the party was to proceed in implementing what it said it would do. Nixon’s environmental achievements during his first term in office, however, refashioned the 1972 Republican Party, making it, for the first time in years, a (short-lived) “eco-friendly” party. By 1972, the Republican Party was able to list, in its party platform, all of the environmental accomplishments of the president including the agencies he helped create, and his many other achievements. The agencies created included the Council on Environmental Quality, the EPA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Industrial Pollution Control Council, and the President’s Federal Property Review Board. In addition, the environmental budget for 1972 reached $2.4 billion – an all time high. The 1972 Republican platform would also list other activities and programs the administration had sponsored and/or engaged in including a greater use of low lead gasoline, the use of recycled paper, an increase in the prosecutions of polluting industries, assisting in the restoration of the Everglades, establishing cleaner air standards, creating urban parks, and initiating recreational trails in parks and outdoor areas. In the global arena, he signed an international agreement on water use with both Canada and the Soviet Union, supported a 10year moratorium on whaling, and worked toward the creating of a United Nations international environmental assistance program for those nations that needed help. Despite criticisms by Democrats, Nixon was not only able to make the environment a critically important election issue in 1972, but he was also able to refashion his party’s environmental plank in such a way that it erased any advantages that the Democrats might have had in making the environment a Democratic issue. Notwithstanding these achievements regarding environmental policy, Nixon’s second term in office was eventually dominated and cut short by the Watergate scandal.
William Jefferson (Bill) Clinton: The “Greening” of a President In 1992, Bill Clinton was seen by environmentalists as the “great green hope,” after enduring 12 years of Presidents Reagan and Bush. As a result, environmentalists voted in large numbers for the Democratic ticket,54 much as they had done 60 years before when they voted for Franklin Roosevelt. Clinton, like Roosevelt, remained involved with environmentalists' interests throughout his two terms and promised in his Earth Day Message of 1994 to make his new administration and government "the greenest in history." 55 Like FDR before him, Clinton had an environmental plan which stressed balance, equalizing the needs of the economy with the needs of the environment. Another part of his plan consisted of the concept of "environmental justice," assuring all citizens whether rich or poor, and regardless of what living conditions people found themselves in, that all were deserving of a healthy and secure environment.56
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At the heart of the Clinton environmental approach was what he called the "ecosystem" – a complex orderly design of relationships where humans, animals and plants would live in harmony with the soil, air, water, and climate.57 The ecosystem approach was first used to help save such species as the California gnatcatcher and the Spotted Owl in the Pacific Northwest.58 Clinton also staffed his Administration with a number of environmental activists. Mark Dowie estimated that the president brought into his first administration about "two dozen environmentalists."59 They were distributed throughout the administration, even in such unlikely departments and agencies as the State Department,60 the National Security Council and the Office of Management and Budget. In addition to bringing environmentalists to the Administration, part of the president's plan consisted of the creation of several environmental offices including the National Biological Service, the White House Office on Environmental Policy and the President's Council on Sustainable Development. He also tried to make the EPA a Cabinet level position, but failed as a result of a hostile Congress critical of both the President and the EPA. Clinton's interest in the environment carried over to his desire to educate the public on the environment through both his Earth Day speeches and in holding town meetings. He also made use of adult and children's town meetings, of TV talk shows, and of press conferences, here and overseas, to educate, and deliver his messages on the environment. In these settings, Clinton was quite effective. While Clinton effectively used his opinion/party leadership role to "sell" the environment to many citizens through his Earth Day speeches and his lobbying efforts, he ran into some real opposition to his environmental programs in the Western states. It was grazing fees on government lands as well as increased taxes on mining, that most irritated members of Congress in the West, leading to an overall resentment toward the administration.61 Clinton’s success with Congress had always been problematic in that first term. In the 103rd Congress, for example, Clinton’s focus was on land procurement in the states of Colorado, Idaho, Montana, and California.62 Yet he only had limited success with that Congress in securing the California Desert Protection Act that preserved some seven million acres of desert in that state. He also persuaded Congress to pass an Everglades waterflow bill to help maintain the Florida Everglades. Once Republicans became the majority party in 1994 during the 104th Congress, it was the Republicans that dominated the environmental agenda with their Contract with America that focused attention on undercutting many of the environmental achievements of the past. This political situation posed by the 104th Congress forced Clinton to "lead" by veto, with the veto becoming Clinton's primary instrument to protect previous environmental advancements. For example, six of Clinton's 15 vetoes by the last year of his first term in office, protected the environment from efforts of the congressional Republicans to undercut the advances that had been made. President Clinton's efforts internationally were also frustrated by this Congress. While the Senate approved the 1992 Earth Summit’s Global Warming Convention, it would not ratify the Biodiversity Treaty that Clinton had signed early in his administration, committing the United States to identify and conserve endangered species. Further defeats for Clinton were seen in the Senate's refusal to act on the 1995 Berlin Climate Conference where 115 other countries had signed with the U.S. agreeing to strict standards of emission by the year 200063 and the 1997 Kyoto Protocol Clinton had signed that year. The Senate also refused to approve
Spanning the Century: Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Richard Nixon … 311 the Montreal Protocol on Substances, which would reduce chloroflorocarbons (CFCs) by the year 1999. On the other hand, he signed a 1994 hemispheric accord with 33 other nations to structure policies affecting pesticides, forestry, agriculture, pollution and coastal management.64 In addition, he successfully lobbied for passage of both the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the 107 nation General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) that, even though the main agreements ignored the environment, side agreements covered some of those interests. Situations during Clinton’s first term had fallen to such a low point that conservative think tanks were suggesting that some of the national parks, troubled with overcrowding and expenses, should be sold and turned over to private interests. Moreover, three critical environmental acts – the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and the Endangered Species Act – were all under attack from the Republican Congress for going beyond the original intent. In 1995/1996, Utah’s wilderness assumed center stage in a federal versus state environmental confrontation. The conflict over Utah wilderness areas between the Utah Republican Congressional delegation and the federal government resulted in the president establishing a 1.8 million acre national monument – the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument – located in Southern Utah, to secure environmentalist support for his 1996 reelection efforts. In doing this, he managed to bolster environmental interests, while irritating the Utah delegation and Southern Utah residents. Most importantly, for his later second term environmental successes, Clinton discovered, in establishing this monument, the Antiquities Act of 1906 – the same act that Teddy Roosevelt had used to set aside all of the national forests. The advantage in using this Act, of course, is that both presidents could accomplish their goals without having to confront the Congressional opposition to their actions. In Clinton’s case, in creating the Grand Staircase, he had disrupted rich coal and oil reserves, as well as grazing interests. The effect of this acrimony in Utah, ironically, was the beginning of a very positive record that Clinton would leave as his environmental legacy during his second term. Moreover, the act of forcing the federal government to confront an antagonistic state government created a situation where both the state of Utah and the administration began to work together. The result was a pattern set for creating national monuments that has served other states as a model of how land can be so designated without excessive disruption to the state or the federal government. Once Clinton discovered the Antiquities Act, the president, in his second term, was able to bring about Teddy Roosevelt’s environmental vision. Clinton ended up establishing 22 national monuments which included some six million acres. 65 In addition there were 42 wildlife refuges created. In addition, Charles Levendosky reminds us there were also 84 million acres underwater set aside in the Hawaiian Islands. 66 This has made him the president who preserved more land in national monuments in the lower 48 states than another other president since Theodore Roosevelt.67 In addition, Clinton protected more than 58 million acres of forest land in 39 different states by banning the building of roads protecting this forest land from development. Clinton was also able to increase protective regulations over air and water, as well as restrict mining and grazing on public lands, allowing him to claim partial victories over some of the same environmental battles he had lost in his first term.68
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CONCLUSION The two Roosevelts, Nixon, and Clinton all played an important part in establishing a model of an “environmental” presidency (Table 1). Although each was concerned with other issues as they entered the White House, they represented, respectively, important periods in American environmental and conservation history. During Theodore Roosevelt’s term in office, the beginning of a national conservation policy began that evolved into the “golden age of conservation” under Franklin Roosevelt. Nixon proclaimed the 1970s as the “decade of the environment” while Bill Clinton left office with a public land legacy that rivaled that of Theodore Roosevelt almost a century earlier. Where the two Roosevelts and Clinton were influenced, in part, by individuals strongly committed to environmental protection, Nixon was the anomaly as he saw political benefits resulting from support for the environment arising from public opinion and the impact of the first Earth Day in April 1970. Gifford Pinchot the head of the U.S. Forest Service was closely associated with Theodore Roosevelt’s orientation toward the environment as Franklin Roosevelt was influenced by several individuals most importantly, his Secretary of the Interior, Harold Ickes. Bill Clinton selected as his Vice President, Al Gore, who was known as a strong environmentalist and he chose as Secretary of the Interior, Bruce Babbitt, a former governor of Arizona and environmentalist. We can also see attempts at balancing environmental interests with other concerns among these presidents. For Theodore Roosevelt, conservation was balanced with industrial development to compete with European powers while FDR integrated environmental values with economic recovery. Where Nixon remained personally neutral about the environment, Clinton was engaged primarily with economic and social issues. Although he arrived late to the environmental table, he balanced conservation with economic needs. Presidents have a variety of power resources and they have used them to further environmental progress because they are personally committed or they practice the politics of opportunism. For example, where Theodore Roosevelt and Bill Clinton used presidential authority to establish public land legacies and to circumvent a Congress that opposed their actions, Franklin Roosevelt and Richard Nixon used legislative and executive authority to establish agencies that promoted conservation (e.g., TVA, EPA). Where Richard Nixon worked with a Democratic Congress and signed more environmental legislation than any other president, Bill Clinton used Earth Day speeches to keep environmentalism on the public agenda. Where Theodore Roosevelt worked with the forest service and also established a framework for a network of wildlife refuges, FDR used the CCC as one way to make the connection between conservation and rebuilding the economy. Where Nixon used the State of the Union message to articulate an environmental agenda, Clinton signed several important international environmental agreements. In short, each president employed different instruments of power to achieve their environmental legacy including speeches, executive and legislative methods, as well as diplomatic efforts with other countries.
Spanning the Century: Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Richard Nixon … 313 Table 1: Overview of Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton Theodore Roosevelt
Franklin Roosevelt
Richard Nixon
Bill Clinton
Election
Predecessor assassinated
Great Depression
Foreign policy, Vietnam, law & order
Economy/jobs, health care
Theme
National conservation policy
Golden Age of conservation
Decade of the environment
Greening of a president
Philosophy
Conservation
Conservation
Pragmatism
Ecosystem
Influence on President
Gifford Pinchot, Head of Forest Service; James R. Garfield, Sec. of Interior
Harold Ickes, Sec. Political of Interior; Henry opportunism Wallace, Sec. of Agriculture
Balance Attitude conservation and Toward Environment industrial development Methods
Antiquities Act, bully pulpit
Achievements Public land legacy
Al Gore, Vice President; Bruce Babbitt, Sec. of Interior
Balance conservation and economic recovery
Political benefits Important but by supporting the secondary to environment economic and social issues
Fireside chats, legislation, executive agencies Civilian Conservation Corps, Tennessee Valley Authority, depression and wartime era conservation
State of the Union Antiquities Act, exec. and legis. Earth Day actions speeches Significant legis., Public land creation of new legacy agencies
Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton, each in their own way, used the presidency to advance environmental and conservation policies. The two Roosevelts exhibited a shared commitment to conservation. Nixon became environmentally involved in environmentalism by doing the “right thing” for the “wrong reason.” Although Clinton disappointed environmentalists during his first term, he moved aggressively during his second term to establish a public lands legacy. Two Democrats and two Republicans – each made major contributions for different reasons but with lasting effect.
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The presidents of the Twenty-first Century will be faced with difficult environmental and conservation challenges. It remains to be seen whether the American presidency will reflect the environmental achievements of these four Twentieth-Century presidents.
NOTES Author’s Note: We wish to thank our research assistants, David Buckner, Kristin Thurgood, and Leticia Adams (all at Brigham Young University) for their contributions to this study. 1
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See, for instance, Dennis L. Soden, The Environmental Presidency (Albany,NY: State University of New York Press, 1999). Byron W. Daynes and Glen Sussman are currently working on a book (The Greening of the Modern American Presidency, advance contract with State University of New York Press) that evaluates presidential involvement with the environment from Franklin Roosevelt to George W. Bush. Scott E. Yenor, Travis S. Cook, Raymond Tatalovich, “The Normative Study of the Presidency,” in Ryan J. Barilleaux, ed. Presidential Frontiers: Underexplored Issues in White House Politics (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998), 3. Paul Light, The President’s Agenda (Baltmore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), 233. Richard Neustadt, Presidential Power (New York: Free Press, 1990). Fred Greenstein, The Presidential Difference: Leadership Style from FDR to Clinton (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 189. Roy L. Behr and Shanto Iyengar, “Television News, Real-World Cues,and Changes in the Public Agenda,” Public Opinion Quarterly 49 (1985), 38-57; Shanto Iyengar and Donald R. Kinder, News That Matters: Television and American Opinion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987). Mary E. Stuckey, The President as Interpreter-in-Chief (Chatham, NJ: Chatham House, 1991), 134. Jeffrey E. Cohen, “Presidential Rhetoric and the Public Agenda,” American Journal of Political Science 39 (February 1995), 87-107. Samuel Kernell, Going Public, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1993). Edwin C. Corwin and Louis W. Koenig, The Presidency Today (New York: New York University Press, 1956), 83. Kenneth R. Mayer, With the Stroke of a Pen: Executive Orders and Presidential Power (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001); Terry M. Moe and Scott A. Wilson, “Presidents and the Politics of Structure,” Law and Contemporary Problems 57 (Winter/Spring 1994), 1-44. James P. Pfiffner, ed. The Managerial Presidency (Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole, 1991). Barbara Hinckley, Problems of the Presidency (Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman, 1985), 230.
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Marc Land and Sidney M. Milkis, Presidential Greatness (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000), 3. Raymond Tatalovich and Byron W. Daynes, Presidential Power in the United States (Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole, 1984). The strength of each of these roles depends on formal authority, a president’s ability to make unchecked decisions, the impact of public inputs, a president’s own expertise, and crisis conditions that may expand presidential power. See James D. Richardson, A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, vol. 10 (New York: Bureau of National Literature, 1911), 7598. Ibid., 7640-41. “An Act for the Preservation of American Antiquities,” U. S. Statutes at Large, vol. 34, pt. 2. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1907), 225. It was a Doctor Kelsey, then secretary of the Archaeological Institute of America, who in the Congressional hearings for the Act suggested that Congress persons should be willing to support the essential actions the Act would allow, while leaving the “unessential things for later consideration.” Congress. Senate. Hearing before the Subcommittee of the Committee on Public Lands, Preservation of Historic and Prehistoric Ruins, 58th Congress, 2nd Session, No. 314 (20 April 1904). Carl E. Hatch, The Big Stick and the Congressional Gavel: A Study of Theodore Roosevelt’s Relations with his last Congress, 1907-1909 (New York: Pageant Press, 1967), 8-9. Ibid., 12. The relationship between Roosevelt and Pinchot has been pointed out to be a “Damonand-Pythias” relationship wherein both “ . . . loved the outdoors, both preached and lived the strenuous life, both enjoyed the fight, and both were guided by high ideals of public service.” Samuel Dana, Forest and Range Policy: Its Development in the United States (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1956), 158. Stephen Skowronek, Building a New American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1879-1920 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 172. Department of Interior, Annual Report of the Secretary of the Interior, 12 (1908), 25. Robert A. Shanley, Presidential Influence and Environmental Policy (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1992),13. Ibid. In suggesting that the president’s legislative leadership was not fully developed until the election of FDR, is not to ignore the legislative leadership of Jefferson, but is to acknowledge the peculiar circumstances of Jefferson’s leadership. Given that for Jefferson to be a strong legislative leader he had to not only found his own party, but to control both the presidency and the Congress in 1800. This clearly has never been duplicated by another president, nor ever will be so duplicated. Stephen Ponder, “’Publicity in the Interest of the People’ Theodore Roosevelt’s Conservation Crusade,” Presidential Studies Quarterly, vol. 20 (Summer, 1990), 548, 551.
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Lewis L. Gould, The Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1991), 40. See Paul Russell Cartright, Theodore Roosevelt: The Making of a Conservatinist (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985), 223-224. “List of the Proclamations by the President,” U. S. Statutes at Large, vol. 35, pt. 2 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1909), xv-xvii. Other estimates put Roosevelt’s accomplishments much higher. Charles Levendosky claims that Roosevelt actually created 18 national monuments, spread over some 1.5 million acres. Moreover, the amount of land protected as national forests reached 100 million acres. In addition, Levendosky claims, some 50 wildlife refuges were established. See Charles Levendosky, “Clinton Left Us One of the Greatest Land Legacies,” Liberal Opinion Week, February 5, 2001, 6. Richard Lowitt, “Conservation, Policy on,” in the Encyclopedia of the American Presidency, ed. Leonard W. Levy and Louis Fisher, 4 vols.. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994), 1: 289. “Speech before the Troy, New York People’s Forum,” Franklin D. Roosevelt & Conservation, 1911-1945, Edgar B. Nixon, comp. 2 vols. (Washington, D. C.: Government Printing Office, 1957), vol. 1 (3 March 1912): 19. “Radio Address Delivered at Two Medicine Chalet,” Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt: The People Approve, Samuel I Roseman, comp., 5 vols. (New York: Random House, 1938), 3 (5 August 1934): 359. This reference from now on will be noted as Public Papers of FDR. “Radio Address on the Third Anniversary of the CCC, April 17, 1936,” in The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt: The People Approve, comp. Samuel I Rosenman, 5 vols ((New York: Random House, 1938), 5: 172; hereafter referred to as Public Papers. “Three Essentials for Unemployment Relief (CCC, FERA, PWA)” (March 21, 1933) in Public Papers, 2: 82. “A Suggestion for Legislation to Create the Tennessee Valley Authority,” The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt: The People Approve, Samuel I. Roseman, comp., 5 vols. (New York: Random House, 1938), 2 (April 10, 1933): 129. This practice ended in 1939 when Congress established the oversight procedures government reorganizations. See Raymond Tatalovich and Byron W. Daynes, Presidential Power in the United States (Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole, 1984), 203. See Shanley, Presidential Influence and Environmental Policy, 15. Ibid. Ibid., 16. See Harold W. Stanley and Richard G. Niemi, Vital Statistics on American Politics (Washington, D.C.: C. Q. press, 1988), 50; Clinton’s press conferences for his first term were obtained from Weekly Compilation of Presidential Papers during his years in office. Congressional Quarterly, Nixon: The First Year of His Presidency (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1970), 2. Ibid., 3.
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See The Harris Survey Yearbook of Public Opinion 1970 (New York: Louis Harris and Associates, 1971), 58. See The Harris Survey Yearbook of Public Opinion 1971 (New York: Louis Harris and Associates, 1975), 262. A number of scholars support the notion that Richard Nixon’s interest in the environment was a politically motivated response to public interest. These include Walter Rosenbaum, Environmental Politics and Policy, 3rd ed. (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 1995), 79-80; Jacqueline Vaughn Switzer, Environmental Politics: Domestic and Global Dimensions (New York: St. Martin’s, 1994), 16; and Mark K. Landy, Marc J. Roberts, and Stephen R. Thomas, The Environmental Protection Agency: Asking the Wrong Questions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 30-33; and Richard E. Cohen, Washington at Work: Back Rooms and Clean Air (New York: Macmillan, 1992), 15-16. Richard Nixon, “Annual Message to the Congress on the State of the Union, January 22, 1970,” Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Richard Nixon, (Washington, DC: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1971), 13. Michael E. Kraft, Environmental Policy and Politics (New York: Harper Collins College Publishers, 1996), 71-74. See Soden and Steel, “Evaluating the Environmental Presidency,” 315-316. Ibid. Also see Raymond Tatalovich and Mark J. Wattier, “Opinion Leadership: Elections, Campaigns, Agenda Setting, and Environmentalism,” in Dennis L. Soden, ed., The Environmental Presidency (Albany: State University of New York, 1999), 166-168 for a detailed look at the most important legislation that came out during Nixon’s years. U.S. President. “Special Message to the Congress About Reorganization Plans to Establish the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, July 9, 1970." Public papers of the presidents of the United States. (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Federal Register, National Archives and Records Service, 1971), Richard Nixon, 1970, 578-86.. News: How green is the White House? E: The Environmental Magazine, April 1994, available in NEXIS, NEWS Library, ALLNWS file. "Remarks on the Observance of Earth Day," Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Vol. 30, no. 16 (April 21, 1994), 868. See "Statement on the Executive Order on Environmental Justice" Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, vol. 30, no. 7, February 11, 1994, 283; and "Executive Order 12898--Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Mining Populations and Low-Income Populations," Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, vol. 30, no. 6 (February 11, 1994), 276. Brad Knickerbocker, "Clinton Plan Challenges 'Lords' of the U.S. Rural West," Christian Science Monitor, March 3, 1993, 4. "Issue: Old-Growth Forests and Spotted Owls," Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, vol. 52, no. 43 (November 5, 1994), 3171. Mark Dowie, "Friends of Earth--or Bill? The Selling (Out) of the Greens," The Nation, 18 April 1994, 514.
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"President Names Eileen Claussen to Serve as Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans, Environment, & International Scientific Affairs," Office of the Press Secretary, The White House, July 20, 1995, Almanac Information Server, 19: 45-0400, 2 pages. "Remarks in the 'CBS This Morning' Town Meeting," Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, vol. 29, no. 21 (May 27, 1993), 962. See Congressional Quarterly Almanac, 103rd Congress, 1st Session, 1993 (Washington,D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 1994), 49: 278-285; and Congressional Quarterly Almanac, 103rd Congress, 1st session, 1994, op.cit., 50: 254-267. News: U.S. House schedules oversight hearings on Climate Treaty, Global Warming Network Online Today, 17 May 1995, available in NEXIS, NEWS library, ALLNWS file. James Brooke, "U.S. and 33 Hemisphere Nations Agree to create Free-Trade Zone," New York times, 11 December 1994, 1, 4. Despite threats from President George W. Bush, Vice President Cheney and western Republican members of Congress, the legislative branch has rarely ever reversed a decision regarding national monuments, having done so on less than one percent of the national monuments. Moreover, the Supreme Court has been very supportive of allowing presidents a great deal of leeway when it has come to establishing monuments. See Charles Levendosky, “Clinton’s Actions to Preserve Land will Endure,” Liberal Opinion Week, January 22, 2001, 24. See Levendosky, “Clinton Left Us One of the Greatest Land Legacies,” 6. President Jimmy Carter, however, holds the record for setting aside the most land in monuments – some 56 million acres in Alaska - much of which was later converted by Congress to national parks and preserves. See William Booth, “A Slow Start Built to an Environmental End-Run: President Went Around Congress to Building Green Legacy,” Washington Post, January 13, 2001, @ wysiwyg://23http://washingtonpost.com/...ident/clintonbill/A54962-2001Jan12.html Accessed 1/20/01.
In: White House Studies Compendium, Volume 4 Editor: R. W. Watson, pp. 319-332
ISBN: 1-60021-541-6 © 2007 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
THE “FASHIONABLE” END TO DISCRIMINATION: THE DEVELOPMENT OF AFFIRMATIVE ACTION IN THE KENNEDY-JOHNSON WHITE HOUSE Stacy K. Sewell ABSTRACT This article examines the key actors and organizations involved in crafting a policy response to end discrimination, as well as the politics behind the birth of affirmative action during the presidencies of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.
INTRODUCTION I am distressed to read that [y]ou are to be Chairman of the Government Contracts Committee, James Rowe told his old friend Lyndon Johnson. Rowe feared that Johnson’s new responsibility as Chairman of the President’s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity (PCEEO) would be criticized by both advanced liberals and southerners for doing too little or too much in the area of equal employment. Rowe, an attorney who had represented the textile industry against charges of employment discrimination, believed he drew from his experience when he wrote, certainly the one person who should get out of this as soon as possible is a Texan named Lyndon Johnson.1 Rowe, who hailed from Montana, was not one to protect Johnson from southerners nor from advanced liberals. As an advisor to the 1960 presidential and vice-presidential campaigns, he urged Johnson to gain exposure among people he did not usually encounter. To Rowe, appearances before liberal groups were, in the words of Johnson’s biographers, the only way to shake off the thick layers of Texas politics. Rowe wanted the broadest possible exposure for Johnson, but he knew that Johnson’s chairmanship of the equal employment committee was a powder keg; anyone mildly familiar with previous such committees in the Truman and Eisenhower administrations knew this. The irony is that in later years and during his 1964 presidential campaign, Johnson would cite his equal employment work for civil rights credibility. Lyndon Johnson is a symbolic figure in the history of equal employment and affirmative action. He took a presumably impossible assignment – one that his closest friends and advisors warned him against – and transformed it into a political asset. Johnson’s enterprise communicates a transformation in the public and political consciousness about equal employment. Indeed, Johnson is typical of the bluster, as well as the smoothness, with which
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equal employment was pursued by the presidential committee he headed. Arguably his committee employed more style than substance, a result of the narrow line he and his aides walked; too much effort against discrimination, or too little, could become a tremendous political liability. Affirmative action was a political solution in 1961 when it was first mentioned by President Kennedy. Previous administration’s efforts to conciliate fair employment struggled against the tensions between civil rights leaders on the one side and business leaders on the other. As Chairman of the PCEEO, Johnson played both sides, appearing to especially mollify the latter group. Thus in its earliest incarnation, affirmative action was advanced as an employment policy that was more optional than obligatory, more carrot than stick. The President’s Committee headed by Johnson was one-part pageantry one-part persuasion and offered affirmative action as a voluntary social responsibility. Scarcely was it presented as a requirement for doing business with federal agencies. This article explores the development of affirmative action within the Kennedy-Johnson White House, and in particular, its earliest manifestation as Plans for Progress, a voluntary program the PCEEO promoted to its top federal contractors. Such soft enforcement provoked trenchant criticism from outside, and forced some from within the administration to rethink the role of the executive in managing affirmative action. This was an important departure from precedent, since it was only by way of executive order that “fair employment” was promulgated by the four previous presidential administrations. Lyndon Johnson would follow suit, but times had changed dramatically since President Eisenhower placed Vice President Richard Nixon in charge of his administration’s fair employment committee. The broad support expressed by the public for equal employment, the scrutiny of civil rights organizations, the nationwide boycotts of discriminatory manufacturers and the potential degree of embarrassment for the presidents administration all had multiplied in the last few years. And yet the PCEEO met its charge with ambivalence and trepidation. It promoted affirmative action rhetorically to a needy group of corporations who saw Plans for Progress as a way to protect themselves from the same civil rights forces that challenged and provoked the President’s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity.2
THE PRESIDENT’S COMMITTEE ACTS AFFIRMATIVELY As a presidential candidate, John F. Kennedy promised very little regarding equal employment. Little, however, seems to have been required to raise the expectations of civil rights groups. The Urban League furnished the president-elect with strenuous recommendations for beefing up the government's fair employment program. Job discrimination, asserted the League, is no longer publicly defensible. Government need not await the slowly dawning evidence of public enlightenment, but should initiate a forceful, if need be coercive program to confront job discrimination at every level.3 Even the mildest social service organization had become impatient with previous federal remedies. Before assuming office, Kennedy appointed future White House Counsel Abe Fortas and Secretary of Labor Arthur Goldberg to work on what would become Executive Order 10925. They revamped the previous, similar executive orders, created a committee comprised of representatives from the major federal agencies and the public, and included a new nondiscrimination clause for all government contracts. The nondiscrimination clause was the
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linchpin of the new order because it required compliance reports to be compiled and submitted by the contractor. The order empowered the President’s Committee to investigate a contractor’s employment policy, and presumably, it provided federal contracting agencies the ability to cancel contracts upon a finding of discrimination.4 As proposed chairman of the fair employment committee, Lyndon Johnson had tremendous reservations about Executive Order 10925. It’s got some things that you could drive a wagon through, he told White House aide Dick Goodwin in the days before it was signed.5 His advisors, too, were ambivalent, although consultation with a former Eisenhower aide might have comforted them with the determination that such an intelligent and effective committee... is the best means of heading off demands for more extreme measures.6 Like James Rowe, Johnson advisor George Reedy had concerns about the Vice President’s new position. Reedy, formerly a prominent Washington reporter, suggested the title for the new panel, the President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity. It was a cautious name which gives the group the tremendous prestige of the White House and at the same time gives you a certain amount of protection against having the blame for everything that goes wrong laid upon your shoulders. Johnson and his aides viewed the forthcoming executive order inauspiciously. They stonewalled. To avoid doing a merely showcase job, Johnson would need a large staff of compliance officers – incompatible with the Office of the Vice Presidency. . . a perversion of that office's Constitutional function.7 Johnson fully reconciled with the executive order after enlisting the assistance of Hobart Taylor, Jr., an attorney from Detroit who would advise the Vice President on numerous matters. Taylor had been a member of the National Lawyers’ Guild, a matter that concerned Reedy because it contained some Communists and could be used against [Taylor] by crackpots. But Taylor was no radical. He was African American, and since its inception, the Lawyers’ Guild served as an alternative network for African-American attorneys. Taylor’s father was a Houston banker who was active in civic affairs, state Democratic politics, and an ally of LBJ. Hobart Taylor, Jr., was only indirectly involved in Johnson's presidential campaign. He distinguished himself because he was upset with the treatment afforded Johnson campaigners by the Michigan State Democratic Party. While he did not come out ‘full-throated for Johnson in Michigan in 1960, one of Johnson's advisor-friends reminded him, I do know that he was not against us.8 I’ve been waiting to see you, said Johnson, eyeing Taylor at the Texas state inaugural ball. Upon the Vice President’s repeated requests, Taylor came to Johnson’s new Washington office. LBJ handed Taylor a draft of Executive Order 10925, and put him in a ceremonial office next to his own to peruse the document. After an hour Taylor emerged and said, Gosh, I’d do a lot of things differently. . . .There are no teeth in this thing. And where there are teeth, the teeth are too strong. Johnson invited him to write it the way you would write it. He got Taylor a room at the Willard Hotel where the lawyer rewrote that darned thing [a]ll that night. He continued to work on it the next morning with Fortas and Goldberg. Though the Kennedys receive credit for the historic Executive Order 10925, the initial draft, according to Taylor, was authored by some unknown assistant attorney general. From there, it was reworked by the office of the Vice President, not the President.9 Perhaps the order was much improved by Taylor, whose civil rights credentials went unquestioned by Johnson. Yet the Urban League expressed skepticism after studying the new draft. Richard Wells of the Washington Urban League, concluded that while far more sweeping than the ones which it replaces, the order contained a number of loopholes. For
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instance, it could exempt employers in the name of the national interest. Nowhere is national interest defined, Wells noted. Is it in the national interest to exempt the employer from compliance because possible racial tension may slow down the work? Thus any defense contractor could avoid compliance. Another Urban League official was concerned that the order had no bearing upon white collar employment. To what extent is the corporate or regional executive office of a contract-holder subject to Executive Order 10925? He reminded the PCEEO that under previous executive orders, contractors maintained the almost total absence of Negro workers in their office occupations. His misgivings were wellfounded, since the face of white collar employment would change very little over the course of the decade.10 The new executive order required government contractors to take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed without regard to race. The phrase raised few concerns, outlined no programs, and promoted no policies. The newspapers failed to pick up on this catch-phrase. Reporting on 10925, the New York Times quoted the phrase directly, but made no attempt to interpret its meaning.11 Should it have jolted anyone in 1961? Did commentators or compliance officers ask what it meant, where it came from, and whether it signified new fair employment requirements? Hobart Taylor claimed he coined the term in 1961. I was searching for something that would give a sense of positiveness to performance under that Executive Order, and I was torn between the words positive action and the words affirmative action. He opted for the latter simply because it was alliterative.12 Evidence suggests that the phrase had circulated in fair employment circles since the Truman administration, but the phrase was not widely used or published.13 In 1961, Taylor meant affirmative action casually. He admitted that the phrase had no rigid definition. There was no checklist--literal or metaphorical--that enumerated the deeds an employer could undertake to practice affirmative action. Nor was there mention of the types of actions which were, indeed, affirmative. For Taylor, the concept simply conveyed that people should do something, but the meaning would take shape with the passage of time....[it would] become clothed with meaning.14 That this concept was flexible, vague, and ill-defined was viewed by Taylor as an asset. It had very little to do with the investigative and enforcement aims of the committee, but rather it emphasized the soft, nonpreferential, noncompulsory steps employers could take. What were those steps and how would they be diagnosed? Federal employment would serve as a test, where the middle and upper grades of service were virtually all-white. In 1961, the President first ordered a survey of the executive agencies, a yardstick by which to ensure future progress. The results were distressing, but perhaps expected: of the top 255,000 jobs in the federal government, only 2,500--one percent--were held by African Americans. Predictably, the Departments of Labor and Housing, Education and Welfare had the best records in upgrading minorities, while Agriculture and the Interior were deficient.15 In the Justice Department, a Negro who has had an ambition to be a messenger or a chauffeur...seems to have had excellent job opportunities, quipped John Siegenthaler. While the federal agencies did change their hiring and promotion practices, black applicants were still subject to special treatment. They would run a black through four times as many procedures, Clifford Alexander later remarked. They’d sit down with the black and find out what [he] thought of Stokely Carmichael.16 We can almost visualize the panicked and appearance-oriented nature of the first affirmative action efforts in the Kennedy administration. Robert Kennedy was so hot on the
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Department heads, the cabinet officers, and agency heads that everyone was scrambling around trying to find himself a Negro in order to keep the President off his neck, wrote the NAACP’s Roy Wilkins.17 At one cabinet meeting, he went around the table, department by department, seeking information on each agency’s minority employment. He specifically asked why the Defense Department has so few people. (Negroes).18 One PCEEO staffer formulated a likely press question light of Kennedy’s efforts: There have been statements that the Administration is forcing the employment or upgrading of Negroes in government. Is such pressure being applied?19 While unprecedented, these first efforts to promote nonwhites were to display rapid and immediate change. They entailed no reevaluation off employment policies, but were instead a temporary showcase measure. It is a prescient illustration of the manner in which the administration would address discrimination outside of the government.
PLANNING FOR PROGRESS If the problem of fair employment within the federal government was difficult, it was staggering in private industry. To bring affirmative action to corporate America, the PCEEO inaugurated Plans for Progress, a program which worked closely with business leaders to bring African Americans into every echelon of the corporation. Plans appears to have been Hobart Taylor’s most complete expression of affirmative action.20 Plans for Progress was the brainchild of Robert Troutman of Atlanta, Georgia. Bobby" Troutman was a former college classmate and personal friend of the President’s. Troutman considered his ‘appointment’ to the PCEEO a controversial and not too inviting assignment, which he accepted, he told President Kennedy, because you asked.21 In fact, he had no official appointment, and it is astonishing the level at which this individual acted on behalf of the President’s Committee.22 Though officially a special project of the PCEEO, Troutman’s Plans for Progress remained oddly independent of the Committee’s authority and organization. Troutman was a politically-involved attorney and civic promoter who had practiced very little law. He recalled that after studying the problem of fair employment, he conceived of a voluntary-type program for conscientious corporate leaders who know much better than I could ever find out what their problem is, and what the problem of the Negro and others is. The program Troutman envisioned would not address businesses as would a civil rights organization or a federal agency. Instead, Plans for Progress would approach firms as if in a business relationship. Troutman figured if we could sit down and get them to talk sincerely and honestly about this [problem], as they really saw it, realizing that we had no hammer over their head and we were not trying to chisel them or anything else, maybe they would disclose a lot to us that would help us to get the facts.23 The lines between Troutman’s official role and private interest are obscure. He fronted a considerable amount of his own money – about $50,000 – to jump start Plans for Progress. Civil rights groups suspected that the motives of this close ally of Senator Richard Russell were related to his lobbying efforts for Georgia’s defense industry.24 Indeed, Troutman joined the President's Committee about the time at which the NAACP delivered 32 discrimination complaints, which cited segregated facilities at Lockheed Aircraft of Marietta, Georgia. The timing of Troutman’s appointment was more than a coincidence. If Lockheed, as the PCEEO’s test case, had its government contract revoked, it would be a tragic blow for
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Troutman the Atlanta promoter. Thus he joined the Committee with the hope of conciliating such complaints, particularly those which emanated from his home state. Plans for Progress was premised on the belief that employers would not – indeed could not – practice affirmative action unless they did so voluntarily. The PCEEO established Plans specially for the nation’s largest corporations with whom the federal government contracted. The project staff applied its expertise in the most noncompulsory manner; staff delicately surveyed firms to help employers analyze for themselves the employment situations in their own plants and determine where improvements need to be made.25 It was an odd mix of conscience and compliance. Foundational tenets of affirmative action were articulated in these first Plans, signed by the Lockheed Corporation, Boeing Airplane Company, and the Radio Corporation of America among other major contractors. Company presidents and CEOs voluntarily signed the individually-tailored contracts with the PCEEO. Basic Plans called for nondiscrimination, equal treatment and affirmative action, and stipulated a hybrid of procedures which might include equal treatment in layoffs, equal pay for equal work, and encouragement of minority group personnel to participate in company-sponsored training programs. The agreements outlined programs to ensure procedural equality in recruitment of employees. Affirmative actions could include instructions to recruiting agencies, racially-blind classified advertising, or consultations with schools and minority group agencies for referrals. But the agreements conceded nothing. In all of them, firms underscored that they have long had nondiscriminatory employment practices, yet some of the agreements – brokered after 1960 – stipulated the elimination of separate washrooms and recreational facilities.26 Richard Wells of the Urban League expressed sarcasm and doubt concerning the continuity featured in the Plans. So far as I have been able to determine from the agreements, there are no companies who have ever discriminated or have anything more to do in the way of compliance other than to reaffirm, reemphasize and continue to do what they are doing. Secretary of Labor Goldberg also criticized some of these Plans, which tell the committee that, we have always done well and we are going to continue to do well. That just flies in the face of the facts.27 The Plans were primarily a publicity venture, but this is not to say they were without substance. Social service organizations for years had used individual company-consultations as a means to promote fair employment. Since at least 1945, groups like the Urban League and the American Friends Service Committee urged companies to analyze their employment procedures. Under Plans for Progress, however, the self-examination was done with public exposure in mind. By the 1960s, a northern-based consumer goods manufacturer did stand to profit from enlightened hiring policies. Failure to publicize their policies or act upon them could result in boycott or pickets from activists. Johnson’s ceremonial function was key. Both American industry and the Vice President craved the public exposure that could be gleaned from Plans for Progress. Every batch of new Plans signers was invited to a ceremony presided over by Johnson in the Executive Office Building or perhaps the Fish Room of the White House.28 Speeches, handshakes, photographs, and a possible appearance by the President were orchestrated by Plans for Progress staff. Company publications duly printed photos and accompanying documents from the day's events. By the end of 1961, fewer than 25 companies had signed plans. Thereafter, the number snowballed, and signing ceremonies became a regular duty for Johnson. Two years later 115 companies had signed. That number doubled the following month, and by 1965, a total of 315 Plans for Progress firms existed – all major corporations. Indeed, Johnson
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had a publicity-oriented operating principle, which he shared with the PCEEO staff. Let's make it fashionable to end discrimination.29 Popularity and public appreciation eluded the President’s Committee for some time. [I]t is perhaps unkind to refer to the Plans for Progress as a hoax, Richard Wells opined, but it is surely not far from it. He charged that none of the Plans contain compliance procedures. Nor did they require periodic progress reports. Even more dubious was the fact that the PCEEO merely invites the company to report any difficulties encountered by it in achieving its plan. Public members of the PCEEO themselves asked questions. One African-American committee member, John Wheeler, President of the Mechanics and Farmers Bank of North Carolina, was critical at the direction Plans took. Wheeler referred to a great deal of concern around the country. . . that we may be being pushed into shifting the emphasis of the work of the [PCEEO] from compliance to something else. By something else, Wheeler referred to the technique used during the Eisenhower administration, which implied that we are not looking up any complaints.30 The criticism widened as the New York Times exposed developing divisions within the Committee. Troutman was profiled in the New York Times. Compulsion is not the thing, Troutman asserted. I’m a lawyer. I can show you how to get around the Executive Order. It's got to be voluntary. Whitney Young had no use for Troutman’s technique. We’ve tried the voluntary approach for years, and nothing happened. A New York radio commentator summarized the dispute for her listeners, adding the prevailing wisdom that Troutman is quite influential in Southern Democratic circles, and quite cheerfully admits he has been lobbying for defense contracts for southern industries. Troutman’s method, concluded a New York Times editorial, may appeal to persons who are not Negroes and are not discriminated against.31 Throughout the summer, Johnson and his committee were pelted with criticism. Telegrams and editorials in the African American press urged Troutman’s removal.32 At once, the Vice President registered his view against the gathering storm, I do not regard any of these programs as competing with each other.33 But it was a feeble rebuttal that revealed Johnson’s inability to move the Committee in the wake of public criticism. Troutman was disinclined to resign. I’m afraid that, summed up, my efforts have not really helped your difficult assignment, he wrote Johnson in self-righteous, paternalistic anguish. I doubt if a handful of humans would have tried and done what I have. And yet, after all the effort and all the expense, I may have harmed rather than helped the overall situation of our Negro people. By the end of that summer, Troutman did withdraw from the Committee, subsequently reorganized under the Executive Directorship of Hobart Taylor. Observers balked. Taylor’s coup was a weak and wicked piece of work, declared the AFL-CIO’s civil rights director.34 Under Taylor’s direction, the President’s Committee became more sophisticated, more polished, and better-funded. The number of federal contractors who signed Plans agreements swelled, and with Hobart Taylor’s leadership, the PCEEO began to secure agreements with private firms which did not hold government contracts.35 Taylor also touted suspicious statistical achievements frequently and vociferously. A 1964 memo to the President recorded a 47 percent increase of minority salaried employees at Plans companies in the past two years, a rate that is really encouraging and could not have been accomplished if you had not stood firm while all the controversy was going on.36 How many African Americans contributed to that employment increase we cannot know. The Commissioner of Labor Statistics, Ewan Clague, and his assistant Daniel Moynihan, feared that Taylor presented this data in a way that suggested, inaccurately, that all new jobs at Plans companies
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were filled by non-whites. Clague guessed that if the numbers were calculated, the actual quantity of new minority hirings was less than impressive. The stated increases in Negro employment were so startling that it will surely be closely questioned by outsiders. Clague and Moynihan warned Taylor not to play fast and loose with these statistics. The point they wished to stress was that unless history is changing rapidly, the Negroes’ share of employment is not being altered drastically....It may be a long-run disservice to the equal employment program to release partial data that implies that Negro employment is improving significantly. Indeed, Newsweek did analyze Plans data critically. A 17.4 percent increase in black salaried employment for 1963, still means only that the number of Negro white-collar workers inched ahead from 12 per 1,000 to 13.37
SCRUTINY AND SANCTION Perhaps affirmative action never received its fullest articulation during the Kennedy or Johnson administrations. Until federal courts ordered affirmative action to rectify past discrimination, it remained a voluntary concept, one that was preferred by the business leader more than it was by the civil rights organization. Hobart Taylor recognized this point as essential. Plans for Progress was a means of getting business to identify with this program as their program....and this is all the difference in the world.38 But with new legislation and the pending reorganization of the PCEEO, antidiscrimination enforcement would become more compulsory, not more voluntary. Taylor saw which way the wind blew and he took his leave in 1965 for an entirely new arena as the Director of the Export-Import Bank.39 New enforcement levers – and new methods for tabulating success on the equal employment front – were also on the horizon. After 1965, Plans for Progress data would no longer be tabulated by Plans for Progress but by the newly operational Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. This spelled trouble for Plans. One of Taylor’s final tasks was to “delicately inform contract holders of this change. It was not long until EEOC Chairman Steven Shulman, armed with this data, took Plans signers to task. At a National Plans for Progress Conference, Shulman revealed that one-fourth of the first signers had fewer than 3 percent minority employees. In a study comparing non-white employment in 100 major corporations, EEOC research further disclosed that non-Plans for Progress companies have a record of higher minority utilization in almost every occupational category than those who have made public pledges.40 It appeared that the hoax was up. The record for Plans for Progress corporations – the enlightened practitioners of affirmative action – was dismal not only to critics from the civil rights movement but to those within the federal establishment who appraised the numbers.41 After Clifford Alexander became EEOC chair in 1967 and analyzed the Plans results, he recalled sending the President a memo in which he called the program bull----. He described Plans for Progress as an organization of businessmen who try to gain Negro approval through cocktail parties--not by providing job opportunities. Citing employment figures, Alexander’s memo continued, The sad fact, however, is that over the years everyone else has been making progress and Plans seems to still be at the tokenism stage.42
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CONCLUSION Plans for Progress became an outmoded tool for fighting discrimination, but affirmative action did not. By 1965 new employment policies were drafted by business and industry, which perceived a climate change evident with the passage of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, prohibiting companies and labor unions with more than 50 employees from discriminating on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, or sex.43 The new EEOC did not oversee contract enforcement. That responsibility was moved to the Department of Labor, a shift which was unwelcome to the civil rights leaders who wanted to keep a public eye on the Committee which in the past had lampooned equal employment opportunity. They claimed the shift scuttled the PCEEO.44 After years of reproach, the only credibility the contract compliance effort retained was the prestige and authority of the White House. Now even this was gone. Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who had succeeded Johnson as Chairman of the PCEEO in 1964, lamented Johnson’s deed. We had just begun what I thought was a crucial program. The New York Times unimpeachable sources had no explanation for the restructuring.45 The former director of compliance for the Department of Defense, the largest source of federal contracts, rebuked Johnson for capitulating to those who supported a softer enforcement program. Johnson’s action replac[ed] men who wanted all-out enforcement with those who preached education and Plans for Progress, a program which acted to shield some of the worst employers from government review.46 In its 1969 report, the U.S. Civil Rights Commission singled out the OFCC for special reprobation, concluding that contract enforcement has been seriously deficient, at high cost to the Federal Civil Rights effort.47 From the viewpoint of civil rights proponents, the contracts program failed to take any kind of action that would demonstrate its power. The main reason for the long failure of such efforts, one expert observed, was that contractors have not felt seriously the threat of contract cancellation.48 By the end of Johnson’s presidency, observers from within and without the federal government deemed the federal contract compliance program a veritable ruin which proffered vague standards. The vague standards were of use to a corporate America that sought to keep its employment records under wraps while attempting to address egregious discrimination. Labor unions, building contractors and apprenticeship programs would bear the initial brunt of the more coercive and specific means of securing compliance. The newly reorganized compliance committee, now located in the Department of Labor, would begin its experiments with affirmative action in this area, even as it touted the corporate record, cajoled business leaders, and offered them incentives for minor actions.49 In so doing, the Committee protected the voluntary approach to affirmative action used by corporations. What was affirmative action in the Kennedy-Johnson White House? Contemporary denunciations of affirmative action as a rigid set of quotas which fosters preferential treatment suggest a policy which bears little resemblance to that proffered by the Kennedy administration in 1961. But at that time, it was a policy closely associated with presidential politics, and its close association with the White House perhaps contributed to it rhetorical and publicity-oriented nature. These qualities, which characterized Plans for Progress prevents affirmative action it from being counted among Kennedy and Johnson’s numerous civil rights achievements; the impulse behind the policy, initially, was the reluctance of Johnson and his aides to step on the toes of political allies and business leaders. In the end,
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affirmative action forestalled punitive antidiscrimination measures and preempted more radical solutions, such as greater federal involvement, to the problem of employment opportunity. With the encouragement of the Johnson administration, business leaders came to accommodate and even embrace the concept of affirmative action. Such irony James Rowe could not have projected in 1960.
NOTES 1
2
3
4
5
6 7
8
9
10
James Rowe to Lyndon Johnson, Dec. 22, 1960, Box 85, Vice Presidential Papers, Lyndon Baines Johnson Library [hereafter VPP, LBJL]; Paul K. Conkin, Big Daddy from the Pedernales: Lyndon Baines Johnson (Boston: Twayne, 1986), 162; Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, Lyndon B. Johnson: The Exercise of Power (New York: New American Library, 1966), 296. On the potential boycotts see John Perry, "Business--Next Target for Integration?" Harvard Business Review 41 (Mar.-Apr., 1963), 105; “The Negro Drive for Jobs,” Business Week, (Aug. 17, 1963), 66; “GM and the Negro,” Business Week, (Apr. 18, 1964), 36; Robert E. Weems, Jr. Desegregating the Dollar: African American Consumerism in the Twentieth Century (New York: New York University, 1998). National Urban League, “The Time is Now,” Nov. 29, 1960, Subject File, Box 85, VPP, LBJL. Executive Order 10925, printed in Public Papers of the Presidents: John F. Kennedy, 1961; Hugh Davis Graham, The Civil Rights Era: Origins and Development of National Policy 1960-1972 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 27-28; Carl M. Brauer, John F. Kennedy and the Second Reconstruction (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), 76-84; Ruth P. Morgan, The President and Civil Rights: Policy-Making by Executive Order (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1970), 47. Johnson cited the lack of federal power to enjoin labor unions, which “represents the biggest loophole” in all the proposals made thus far, and employers discriminatory actions may have been the fault of its union. (Telephone Transcript, LBJ and Richard Goodwin, n.d.; Memo, unsigned, n.d., file “Drafts of Executive Order and Related Memoranda,” both in Ex-LA2, Box 8, LBJL.) Memo, unsigned, n.d., Vice Presidential Papers, Subject Files, Box 8, LBJL Memo, GER to the Vice President, Feb. 28, 1961, Labor, Box 8, LBJL; Memo, GER and HB to the Vice President, Feb. 13, 1961, with attached letter, LBJ to the President, n.d., Ex LA 2, Box 8, LBJL; Evans and Novak, Lyndon B. Johnson, 252, n. 46. Memo, George E. Reedy to the Vice President, Feb. 16, 1961, Subject File, Box 8, VPP, LBJL; Obituary, Hobart Taylor, New York Times, Apr. 4, 1981, 20; Bob Herndon to Lyndon Johnson, Feb. 15, 1961, Subject File, Box 85, VPP, LBJL. Transcript, Hobart Taylor, Jr., Oral History Interview, Jan. 6, 1969, by Stephen Goodell, tape 1, p. 12, 14, LBJL. Richard C. Wells to Sterling Tucker, June 22, 196161; Julius A. Thomas to the PCEEO, June 27, 1961, both in Part II, Series 4, Box 31, Records of the National Urban League, Library of Congress (hereafter LC). NAACP News Release, Leadership Conference on
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13
14 15
16
17
18
19
20
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Civil Rights, Aug. 29, 1961, Box A109, Series III, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Papers, LC; Hearings Before the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on Discrimination in White Collar Employment, New York City, January 15-18, 1968. “Kennedy Orders Equal Jobs Rights In Federal Work,” New York Times, Mar. 7, 1961. Graham points out that the phrase had been used, but differently, in 1935, to define the obligation of the National Labor Relations Board to redress unfair labor practices. Graham, The Civil Rights Era, 33. On the meaning of affirmative action to the PCEEO in 1961, see Paul D. Moreno, From Direct Action to Affirmative Action: Fair Employment Law and Policy in America, 1933-1972 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1997), 189-90. Transcript, Taylor Interview, tape 1, p. 12-13, LBJL. David Niles to Doris Preisler and James E. Cook, June 11, 1945, OF 40, White House Central Files, Harry S. Truman Library; Committee on Government Contract Compliance, “Minutes,” Sep. 29, 1959, Box 19, Records of the Special Assistant to the President for Personnel Management, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library. Transcript, Taylor Interview, tape 1, p. 13-14, LBJL. Brauer, 79; “Memorandum,” n.d. (May, 1961?) VPP, Box 9, File 2, LBJL; Memo, “Frederick K. Dutton to the President,” with attached chart, June 22, 1961, reprinted in Civil Rights, the White House, and the Justice Department 1945-1968, Vol. 4, “Employment of Blacks by the Federal Government,” edited by Michael R. Belknap (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1991), 148-49. For an overview of blacks in federal employment, see Desmond King, Separate and Unequal: Black Americans and the US Federal Government (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp 105-7 specifically concern the PCEEO and government employment. “In the entire [Justice] Department there are 56 messengers and all are Negroes....There are 16 chauffeurs...all are Negroes,” John Siegenthaler to Frederick J. Dutton, Apr. 11, 1961, Civil Rights During the Kennedy Administration, 1961-1962: Part I: The White House Central Files (Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1986), Reel 5, frame 770; Transcript, Clifford Alexander Oral History Interview, Nov. 1, 1971, by Joe B. Frantz, tape 1, p. 20, LBJL. Quoted in James N. Giglio, The Presidency of John F. Kennedy, (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1992), 163. “Civil Rights Subcabinet Group Meeting, Friday, July 21, 1961,” in Belknap, ed., Civil Rights, The White House, and the Justice Department Volume 5, 63. John D. McCully to Jerry R. Holleman, Apr. 2, 1962, Box 156, Records of Secretary of Labor Arthur J. Goldberg, Records of the Secretary of Labor, RG 174, National Archives and Records Administration (hereafter NARA). Few historians have discussed the controversial nature Plans for Progress. Hugh Davis Graham saw in Plans a symbolic split between moderates and those who demanded a hard line in civil rights enforcement (p. 46, 51-59). Carl Brauer similarly discussed the tremendous presidential support for Plans for Progress alongside the prolonged criticism it received and its ultimate failure (p. 147-51). Robert Troutman, Jr. to the President, June 30, 1962, Belknap, Vol 5, 90. Brauer, 81.
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Memo, GER to the Vice President, Feb. 9, 1962, Box 425, Willie Day Taylor Papers (hereafter WDT), LBJL; Transcript, Meeting of the PCEEO, July 12, 1961, PCEEO Subject Files, Box 10, VPP, LBJL. After Troutman’s departure from the committee, he was able to recover $36,000 of his initial outlay. [Hobart Taylor to Lyndon Johnson and W. Willard Wirtz, Dec. 4, 1962, Box 15, Records of the Secretary of Labor, RG 174, NARA.] The NAACP noted that Troutman recently arranged a big affair in honor of Senator Richard Russell. [“NAACP Appraises the First Year of the PCEEO,” Apr. 6, 1962, Box 5, Philip R. Weightman Papers, Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, Tamiment Library, New York University.] Sterling Tucker to Richard C. Wells, Dec. 20, 1961, Part II, Series 4, Folder 31, NUL Records, LC. “Major Elements of Acceptable Plans for Progress,” n.d., Box 424, WDT, LBJL; Plans for Progress, “Pilot Program,’ n.d., Civil Rights During the Kennedy Administration, reel 16, frame 129. Richard C. Wells to Sterling Tucker, Dec. 20, 1961, Part II, Series 4, Box 31, National Urban League Records, LC; Transcript, Meeting of the PCEEO, Feb. 15, 1962, Box 420, WDT, LBJL. Called the Fish Room by Franklin Roosevelt because it was where he displayed an aquarium, this windowless room in the West Wing was renamed the Roosevelt Room by Richard Nixon in 1969 to honor Theodore Roosevelt. [www.whitehouse.gov/history/life/rooseveltroom.html] Memo, GER to the Vice President, July 24, 1961, Box 424, WDT, LBJL; “Remarks to New Participants in 'Plans for Progress’ Equal Opportunity Agreements,” Dec. 12, 1963; Jan. 16, 1964, Public Papers of the Presidents: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1963-1964 , 47, 140; Letter, G. William Miller to Bill Moyers, Aug. 5, 1965, Ex HU 2-1, Box 42, White House Central Files (hereafter WHCF), LBJL; Evans and Novak, Lyndon B. Johnson, 317. Richard C. Wells to Sterling Tucker, Dec. 20, 1961, Part II, Series 4, Box 31, National Urban League Records, LC; Transcript, PCEEO Meeting, Feb. 15, 1962, Box 420, WDT, LBJL; John Wheeler to Arthur Goldberg, Dec. 6, 1961, Box 43, RG 174, NARA. “U.S. Panel Split Over Negro Jobs: Johnson Committee Tries to Reconcile 'Voluntary' and 'Compulsory' Programs,” New York Times, June 18, 1962; Transcript, Estelle M. Sternberger, “Views on the News,” June 18, 1962, Box 139, Subject Files, Box 139, VPP, LBJL; “A Question of Method,” New York Times , June 19, 1962. John Anson Ford to Mr. Vice President, June 29, 1962, Subject Files, Box 139; George Schermer to Mr. Vice President, June 22, 1962, Subject Files, Box 140; Whitney M. Young to Lyndon Johnson, June 20, 1962, Subject Files, Box 140, above documents, VPP, LBJL; “Mr. Troutman Should Resign,” Aug. 4, 1962; “Troutman Should Go,” Aug. 11, 1962, both in the Washington Afro-American. Lester Granger, “Manhattan and Beyond,” July 7, 1962, New York Amsterdam News. “yndon B. Johnson to the Editor,” New York Times, June 20, 1962. Robert Troutman, Jr., to Lyndon Johnson, June 29, 1962, Subject Files, Box 140, VPP, LBJL; Boris Shiskin to William Schnitzler, Aug. 21, 1962; Ralph Showalter to Roy Wilkins, Aug. 11, 1962, Shiskin Papers, Box 5, folder 16, George Meany Memorial Archives.
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There is some indication that Taylor had thought about Plans for Progress becoming a “purely private venture” under the direction of Troutman. [Memo, Hobart Taylor to File, Nov. 15, 1962, Vice-Presidential Papers, Box 139, LBJL.] Hobart Taylor to George Reedy, Mar. 31, 1963, Box 65, RG 174, NARA; Transcript, PCEEO Meeting, July 18, 1963, p. 32, Vice President’s Papers, Box 11, LBJL. Reference is made to involving noncontract holders as early as September, 1962. Memo, Hobart Taylor, Jr. to Lyndon B. Johnson, Sept. 23, 1962, Box 427, WDT, LBJL; Memo, GER to the Vice President, Oct. 4, 1963, with attached memo, M.T. Puryear to National Urban League Executive Directors and Staff, Sep. 27, 1963, VPP, Box 199, LBJL. Memo, Hobart Taylor, Jr. to the President, May 11, 1964, FG, Box 402, WHCF, LBJL. Memo, Ewan Clague to Hobart Taylor, Sep. 27, 1963, (with attached memo, Daniel Moynihan to Ewan Clague, Sep. 16, 1963), Box 428, WDT, LBJL; “The Negro’s Search for a Better Job,” Newsweek, June 8, 1964, 81. Transcript, Taylor Interview, Jan. 6, 1969, by Stephen Goodell, Tape 1, p. 25, LBJL. With the consent of Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who assumed the Chairmanship of the President’s Committee in 1964, Taylor intended to continue to direct the contract compliance program and Plans for Progress after his resignation. Memo, N. Thompson Powers to W. Willard Wirtz, Sep. 7, 1965, Box 237, RG 174, NARA. N. Thompson Powers to W. Willard Wirtz, Sep. 7, 1965, Box 237; Report on PCEEO, [filed] Feb. 13, 1967, Box 480, RG 174, NARA; "Testimony of Charles B. Markham," Hearings Before the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on Discrimination in White Collar Employment, New York City, January 15-18, 1968, 167. This study is also discussed in Ulric Haynes, Jr., "Equal job opportunity: the credibility gap," Harvard Business Review (May-June, 1968): 113-20. The Director of the Bureau of the Budget compared the records of all employers covered by Title VII and other contract compliance provisions and found Plans members’ response “far less than anticipated.” [Memo, Charles J. Zwick to Harry McPherson, July 17, 1968, Ex HU 2-1, Box 42, WHCF, LBJL.] Transcript, Alexander Interview, Nov. 1, 1971, Interview 1, p. 42, LBJL; Memo, Clifford L. Alexander, Jr. to the President, May 25, 1967, HU 2-1, Box 43, WHCF, LBJL. In the words of the PCEEO’s Publicity Director, “It was a good publicity gimmick but wasn’t going to get the job done.” Transcript, John D. McCully Oral History Interview, Oct. 26, 1984, by Michael Gillette, p. 88, LBJL. On Title VII”s passage see Charles Whalen and Barbara Whalen, The Longest Debate: Legislative History of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Cabin John, MD: Seven Lock Press, 1985), 241. Clarence Mitchell called the shift of the PCEEO and its responsibilities “a very unwelcome move,” which “can only lead to confusion and bureaucratic rivalries.” NAACP Press Release, Nov. 13, 1965, Box A110, Series III, NAACP Papers, LC. See also "Rights Bloc Fear Easing of Enforcement by U.S.," Oct. 17, 1965, New York Times; “Slowdown on Civil Rights,” Oct.19, 1965, New York Post, (cited in Carl Solberg, Hubert Humphrey: A Biography (New York: W.W. Norton, 1984). Hubert H. Humphrey, The Education of a Public Man: My Life and Politics, edited by Norman Sherman (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1976) 408. See also Richard P. Nathan,
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47
48
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Jobs and Civil Rights (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1969), 89; Graham, 184; Joseph Califano, Jr., The Triumph and Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991), 85-6; Allen J. Matusow, The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s (New York: Harper, 1984), 210-11. Memo, George E. Reedy to George Christian, 12/191968, with attached clipping, “Johnson rapped on anti-bias effort,” Christian Science Monitor, Dec. 18,1968,, Ex HU 2-1, Box 44, WHCF, LBJL. Letter of Transmittal, Howard A. Glickstein to the President, April, 1969, and John A. Hannah to George P. Schultz, Feb. 4, 1969, compiled in U.S. Civil Rights Commission, Study on the Equal Employment Opportunity Programs and Activities of the Federal Government, (Washington, DC: GPO, 1969). Testimony of Martin E. Sloane, Special Assistant to the Staff Director, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights before an Ad Hoc Panel of U.S. Congressmen to investigate the Enforcement of Executive Order 11246, Dec. 4, 1968. Printed in U.S. Civil Rights Commission. Study on the Equal Employment Opportunity Programs and Activities of the Federal Government, April, 1969. Nathan, 92; on the Philadelphia Plan, which refocused compliance efforts see Dean J. Kotlowski, “Richard Nixon and the Origins of Affirmative Action,” The Historian 60:3 (1998): 523-541.
In: White House Studies Compendium, Volume 4 Editor: R. W. Watson, pp. 333-348
ISBN: 1-60021-541-6 © 2007 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
THE DYSFUNCTIONAL PRESIDENCY OF CALVIN COOLIDGE Robert E. Gilbert ABSTRACT Calvin Coolidge became president of the United States in August 1923 after the sudden death of Warren Harding. He was entirely comfortable in his new role as president and impressed the country with his hard work, political astuteness, and innovative leadership. However, after his nomination by the Republican Party for a term in his own right in the summer of 1924, Coolidge suffered a devastating personal loss that destroyed his presidency as well as his life. The death of his 16-year-old son brought on a deep depression from which he never recovered and which led his presidency – and his life – to become dysfunctional and unhappy. This article discusses various aspects of Coolidge’s aberrant behavior and links them to his psychological vulnerabilities.
INTRODUCTION Calvin Coolidge’s first eleven months in the White House were marked by a high level of presidential effectiveness. He took control of his new Administration with considerable aplomb, dazzled the press with his accessibility and knowledge of public policy issues, proposed an extensive and quite progressive agenda to Congress and worked hard to achieve its passage, distanced himself shrewdly from the Harding era scandals, showed interest and aptitude in foreign policy, and emerged as the undisputed leader of the Republican Party.1 However, in July, 1924, Coolidge encountered heartbreak when his 16-year-old son, Calvin Jr., died of blood poisoning. The boy had worn sneakers but no socks while playing tennis on the White House grounds and had developed a blister that became infected. No medical treatment was able to cure the ailment and he was gone within a week. This loss shattered Coolidge’s life and destroyed his presidency. Calvin Jr. had been the apple of his father’s eye. He had been a good student and a hard worker while at the same time having a fine sense of humor and a mischievous smile. He enjoyed practical jokes and had a way of endearing himself to everyone. Not only did he bear a strong resemblance to his father but also to his father’s beloved mother, Victoria Moor Coolidge, who had died when the future president was still in boyhood. The strong resemblance between young Calvin and Victoria created a bond between father and son that was both powerful and defining. Whenever Coolidge looked at the boy, he saw his beloved mother, a woman who was often in his thoughts. Throughout his long political career, he kept
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his mother’s picture on his desk and in a locket that he carried in his jacket pocket. In the White House, he spoke frequently of her with his chief Secret Service agent, Edmund Starling, who later revealed that Coolidge nourished his memories [of his mother] so that now they were living things. He communed with her, talked with her and took every problem to her.2 When his young son died, Coolidge lost his favorite child as well as an important bridge to his long-dead mother. The president was overwhelmed with grief and could not escape his profound depression. The remaining four and a half years of his presidency were characterized not only by presidential disinterest and disengagement but also by strikingly dysfunctional behavior. Coolidge’s affinity for sleep became more extreme, his disposition more explosive, his personal conduct more unusual, and his health more impaired. In addition to the frequent physical indispositions he experienced, his doctors feared a psychological breakdown as well. Also, the President suffered still another personal loss during this period when his father died in March 1926, two weeks short of turning 81. In light of the entire record, Coolidge’s decision to leave office in March, 1929 was not really surprising, even though it did surprise the many who had no knowledge of the president’s deep and enduring anguish.
LOSING HIMSELF IN SLEEP Among the most evident changes in Coolidge’s life style following the death of his young son was his greatly expanded proclivity for sleep. In the post-1924 period, it simply became overpowering. Earlier in his career, he had been accustomed to retire at 10 p.m., to rise at 6 or 7 a.m. and then sometimes to take a brief nap in mid-afternoon. However, in the period after July 1924, Coolidge typically would retire at 10 p.m. and rise as late as 9 a.m. This would give him some 11 hours of sleep each night. Additionally, he would sometimes take a prelunch nap and always took a post-lunch nap, ranging in length from two to four hours, beginning at 1:00 or 1:30 p.m. and extending to 3:30, 4:30, or even 5:00 p.m. Ike Hoover, Chief Usher at the White House for several decades, commented that none of the eight other presidents he served ever slept so much.3 Even this protracted amount of sleep would not always satisfy Calvin Coolidge. Sometimes still exhausted when he returned to his office after his afternoon siesta, he would rest his head on the desk and fall asleep once again. If he was awakened by a staff member for official business, he would show extreme irascibility. Dr. Joel Boone, one of Coolidge’s White House physicians, described one such episode in his diary entry for December 1, 1926: “the President was asleep in his office and was awakened by an aide so that he might speak with an official from the navy about arms limitations. Coolidge was furious at being awakened and refused to see the official, insisting that he would send for him in New London if he wished him to come for a talk.”4 The President’s heavy sleeping schedule and light workload became so obvious in the White House that one of his friends commented that Mrs. Coolidge bore 85 percent of the burdens of the office.5 After the summer of 1924, Coolidge’s work day shrank to approximately four and a half hours, a far lighter schedule than that typically followed by presidents.
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IRASCIBILITY AND RUDENESS TO SUBORDINATES Compounding the problem was that, while he was awake, the President displayed a disposition that was increasingly unpleasant and a pattern of personal behavior that was peculiar, if not downright bizarre. In his adult years, he had always been irritable and often became angry at his wife and two sons. These traits worsened and broadened after 1924. Earlier he had been kind and good-natured to subordinates6 but now they too became targets for his volatile disposition. The President’s explosions became more and more volcanic and his mistreatment of staff members, government officials, and members of his own family more and more severe. Chief Usher Ike Hoover later wrote that Coolidge shocked the household with sparks from his anger and that those who saw [him] in a rage were simply startled. The older employees about the White House who had known [Theodore] Roosevelt used to think he raved at times but in his worst temper he was calm compared with Coolidge. Although the cause for his anger would often be an inconsequential matter, the President would just work himself up to a real explosion. Moreover, Coolidge’s irascibility kept White House employees in a condition of fear and trembling over the safety of their jobs. Hoover explained that staff members regarded Coolidge as the hardest to please and the least thought of president. He was so unpleasant and so positively unkind that everyone tried to shun him whenever possible.7 While it might be reasonable to suspect that the Chief Usher disliked Coolidge and that his personal animosity may have colored the way he described him, the existence of supporting evidence is quite substantial. It is very clear that Coolidge was intensely irritable, that his temper was explosive and that his personal behavior in the 1925-1929 period was characterized by rudeness, spite, sarcasm, and even vindictiveness. For example, when his chief Secret Service agent, Edmund Starling, warned the President in March 1925, that Charles Warren, his nominee for appointment as Attorney General, had little chance of being confirmed by the Senate, Coolidge retorted angrily, Well, you’re such a good secret service man I guess you know more than anyone else .... Maybe you can tell me how everyone is going to vote. Not only was Starling correct in predicting the Senate’s rejection of Warren but it is easy to understand why he later said of the president that there were times I was glad to be away from him.8 It is equally easy to understand why John Meis, a White House barber, might have been glad to be away from Coolidge as well. On one occasion in early 1926, he had the misfortune of accidentally nicking the President’s ear. An enraged Coolidge gave Meis a mean-spirited tongue-lashing and told him to never again enter his room for any purpose unless he wore glasses. Meis had no other alternative than to acquiesce. Dr. Boone, a close observer of White House happenings, wrote in his diary that while the first lady was always gracious and thoughtful, the president could be curt, unkind and inconsiderate even at times to the point of cruelty. Boone’s diary includes several startling instances of this unfortunate behavior pattern. As an example, in September 1925, the President became so angry at one of his military aides, Colonel Sherwood Cheney, that he refused to allow him to ride on the presidential train, telling Cheney that he did not care how he got back to Washington. No doubt Boone assessed the situation accurately when he commented that this must have humiliated the Colonel.9
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Entries in Boone’s diary revealed that members of the White House Secret Service detail were offended and occasionally outraged by Coolidge’s rude and boorish behavior. On February 25, 1926, he wrote that Agent Haley found that Coolidge was certainly a selfish man who ought to consider [the First Lady] more. His entry for September 13, 1926 included the comment that Agent Ferguson thought the president was cruel, petty, and unappreciative of anyone’s services and that he likes to annoy people. On December 8, 1926, he shared with his diary that Agent Jervis did not like to travel with the president as he was so nervous, fussy and irritable.10 In Secret Service Agent Starling’s telling, Coolidge would sometimes behave like a spoiled child, even becoming furious when he went fishing and failed to catch any fish. At Yellowstone Park, for example, the president became so enraged when he thought that Starling had been more successful as a fisherman than he that: he jumped into the car and insisted that we go right back to the hotel. He would not wait for me to take the rods apart and I had to hold them out from the automobile as we bounced along. At the hotel he walked through the crowd in the lobby without speaking or looking to left or right, got into the elevator and went up to his room.11
During the president’s summer vacation in the Adirondacks in 1926, another Secret Service agent encountered similarly childish behavior. One day Coolidge was bitten by a mosquito. He was irritated and asked his bodyguard if he had seen the insect. When the agent answered that he had, the president snapped, Then why didn’t you kill it?12 Even the White House kitchen staff was unable to escape the president’s disdainful treatment. Once, after they had worked hard preparing the food that would be served at a large reception, Coolidge surveyed the results of their labors and said sarcastically, Looks like good cat and dog food to me.13 The kitchen staff undoubtedly was offended. Coolidge’s rudeness went beyond security personnel and low-level White House employees and even extended to high-ranking members of his Administration. He once so bitterly berated his personal secretary, Bascom Slemp, that the former Virginia congressman protested the poor treatment. He informed the president that no one had ever spoken to him in such a manner and pressed upon him that it must not recur. Taken aback at being rebuked by a subordinate, Coolidge apologized, explained that he had smoked too much the day before, and indicated that Slemp should not be overly sensitive to his outbursts. Despite the apology, it is doubtful that Slemp would have agreed with the assessment of Coolidge made by Henry Long, his secretary while he was Governor of Massachusetts. Long had described Governor Coolidge as the “kindest, most understanding man he ever met, deeply considerate of everyone around him.”14 To the contrary, Slemp found President Coolidge to be so unkind and so inconsiderate that he actually asked Dr. Boone to speak with the first lady about the matter.15 Alexander Moore, U.S. Ambassador to Spain, would almost certainly have disagreed with Long’s positive assessment as well. During lunch at the White House with the president and first lady, he confronted first-hand Coolidge’s lack of kindness and consideration. As Moore and the Coolidges sat at the dining table, the Ambassador regaled them with stories of his experiences in Spain and of his interactions with the royal family. After he recounted one particularly memorable exploit, he asked the president for his opinion. Coolidge simply looked at Grace and, gesturing toward one of their pets that was in the room at the time, said I
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believe that dog is sick.16 It would have been surprising if the Ambassador had not been offended by such extraordinarily condescending behavior.
TEMPER TANTRUMS WITHIN THE FAMILY As if the rudeness and frequent emotional outbursts visited on his subordinates were not bad enough, Coolidge’s wife often received treatment that was worse. In fact, she was a frequent target of his temper tantrums. The first lady explained to aides that whenever the president was writing one of his speeches, he was to be avoided. Speech writing was such a painful process for him that it made him highly tense and irritable. Grace saw herself as his safety valve and she sometimes tried to draw to herself the fury he might direct at others. She indicated that once he erupted at her, others might then be safe.17 Rarely was she safe from his anger and often the cause was difficult to comprehend. In September 1926, the president became irritated at his wife when she asked him about the results of primary elections in their home state of Massachusetts. On another occasion in 1927, the irritation exploded into rage. The First Lady was anxious to go horseback riding and so bought a complete riding outfit from boots to hat. Since the President had always taken an active interest in her clothing, even purchasing wearing apparel on her behalf, she decided to surprise him when he returned to the White House by modeling the outfit for him. Dr. Boone reported that she looked very cute as she strutted happily up the hall for the President’s inspection. When he saw her, however, his reaction shocked her and appalled the doctor. Boone wrote: ... he was furious. He really hit the roof and screamed in anger and told her to take off that apparel and never let him see it again. He strutted off in great dudgeon to his study. I was there. I felt terrible when all of a sudden Mrs. Coolidge seemed heartbroken and, of course, very disappointed. She went to her own dressing room, took off the riding habit .... she never appeared in it again and she never rode horseback while she was in the White House.18
One of the most serious instances of presidential irascibility involving the First Lady came in the summer, 1927, while they were vacationing in the Black Hills of South Dakota. This incident was so serious and versions of it so widely reported that rumors of impending divorce began to circulate. One morning the First Lady left the lodge with Secret Service agent James Haley for her daily walk along the trails of the state park. When she did not arrive back at the lodge for lunch, the President became agitated and irate, pacing impatiently back and forth on the porch. It would appear that Mrs. Coolidge and her bodyguard had gotten lost on a mountain path and had difficulty finding their way back home. When they finally did return more than an hour late, the president was fuming. Dr. Boone was present at the time and indicated that although he had no idea what was said between the president and first lady in private, the results were soon apparent. Haley was relieved of his duties as her bodyguard and sent back to Washington, without being given any opportunity to explain or defend himself.19 An interesting commentary about the president’s behavior in this instance was offered by Secret Service Agent Starling, who had recommended Haley for the assignment as Mrs. Coolidge’s bodyguard. In his account, Coolidge had a great fear of snakes and was worried
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that his wife may have been bitten by one while walking in the woods. However, Starling then went on to comment that Haley was a clean, honest boy who got down on his knees every night and said his prayers before going to bed and that he was engaged to be married and wrote every day to his fiancee.20 Of course, these assurances of Haley’s good character and steady romantic commitment have nothing whatever to do with snake-bite and strongly suggest that, like others, Starling suspected that the real reason for the President’s actions was either jealousy that the First Lady was spending so much time with Haley or his suspicion that a romance had developed between them. A family friend may well have fanned the flames of mistrust when she once suggested to the President that it might be wise to have a Secret Service agent other than Haley assigned to the First Lady.21 Coolidge’s behavior in this instance deeply troubled Dr. Boone because he saw it as a public rebuke of his devoted wife. He wrote in his diary that The President had conducted himself shamefully and brought upon himself a great deal of public condemnation. Boone then went on to complain that this disgraceful act of the President caused a mental scar on Mrs. Coolidge which, I believe, has never erased. It was one of the most deplorable instances of which I have ever known in my life and for which there was no reason whatsoever. After the Coolidges left South Dakota and returned to Washington, the First Lady’s friends thought that she was very unhappy, did not look well and was without her usual spontaneous gaiety. Dr. Boone was heartsick that such deep injury could be inflicted upon this very sweet, lovely, lonely character. Grace confided to him at the time that she only took occasional walks now because she did not enjoy walking with Haley’s Secret Service replacement, John Fitzgerald. She added that Haley was always a perfect gentleman and that he appreciated art galleries, concerts and various cultural activities in which she was interested. Fitzgerald, on the other hand, was too critical of everything he saw and she did not feel particularly compatible with him.22 Although the President had embarrassed his wife greatly, she claimed to Boone that she understood the reasons for his intemperate behavior. Despite the fact that her husband was president of the United States, he was still a human being and it was quite natural for [him] to dislike seeing and being aware that she was required to be in another man’s company. So that future explosions of the presidential temper might be minimized, the First Lady set out to avoid being alone again in the company of another man. When she journeyed to Northampton, Massachusetts in January 1928 to visit her mother, for example, Grace asked Dr. Boone to travel with her and her bodyguard because, as she explained, “she did not wish to travel alone with a secret service man.23 Because of Coolidge’s occasionally shabby treatment of his wife, it is not at all surprising that their surviving son John once confided to his mother that he simply did not understand how she could put up with the President. Apparently she did so only with considerable difficulty. Soon after she and Coolidge had married back in 1905, Grace had shared with a friend that she was uncertain that she could remain with her new husband.24 Even though she subsequently decided that she loved him deeply enough to tolerate his testy and unpleasant disposition, it was often quite difficult for her to do so. While she was first lady, a close family friend remarked that at times Grace could not bear him but refrained from criticizing his behavior because the President then would not speak to her for three days.25 John’s relationship with his father was also tempestuous and unpleasant. Whenever his son stayed at the White House, Coolidge criticized him almost without interruption, ridiculing his clothing, snapping at him when he turned on the radio, and accusing him of being lazy and
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irresponsible. So unrelentingly critical was the President’s treatment of his son that John once told a friend that he was damn glad to leave the White House and get away from his father.26 But even while away at college, John could not escape his father’s angry taunts. The President berated him on the friendships he made, lambasted him for his frivolous lifestyle, and threatened to take him out of college and send him to work. On one occasion, when John engaged in a campus boxing match, the President was wild at his son’s behavior, so much so that the First Lady, who had approved of the match, spoke unhappily to one of her confidants about it.27 In light of his father’s frequent foul moods, John actually feared that his own disposition might turn out to be similar. His fear was at least partly realized. Many years later, when he was in residence at the Coolidge family homestead at Plymouth, Vermont, and amid the tourists who visited the site, he explained that on some days, he would be friendly and gracious like his mother but on other days, unfriendly and unpleasant like his father.28 It could never be said that in his adult years, Calvin Coolidge was always even-tempered and tranquil. Instead, he was quick-tempered and irritable with Grace and the boys. However, in the post-1924 period as we have seen, his irritability often mushroomed into full-blown, and even public, explosions of rage at the first lady and their son, causing severe family strains. Significantly, the President’s explosive disposition now extended well beyond the family circle and was exposed all too frequently to his aides and other employees at the White House. Whereas subordinates had earlier praised Coolidge’s courtesy and consideration, after 1924, they were terrified at the mere thought of confronting his displeasure.
HIGHLY UNUSUAL BEHAVIOR PATTERNS Even worse, perhaps, than his increasingly nasty disposition and frequent acts of rudeness, Calvin Coolidge began to show an unusual quirkiness in his personal behavior that caused some of his associates to view him as quite odd – or even mentally unbalanced. Postmaster General Harry S. New, for example, described Coolidge as a strange person and Dr. Boone observed peculiar behavior on many occasions. For example, when he received inoculations, Coolidge complained that he was being poisoned. When Dr. Boone directed him to take his medicine just before going to bed, Coolidge would insist on taking it before dinner and would also demand a double dosage, even though this would cause some abdominal distress during the night.29 Although he knew little, if anything about the practice of medicine, the President insisted on his own unorthodox treatment for his various ailments. When he would send for Dr. Boone to treat his throat, he would insist that he spray it just as the President wished, thereby showing, according to Dr. Boone, strange ideas about medical treatment. Although Coolidge greatly enjoyed cruising aboard the presidential yacht, he was prone to seasickness and often became deathly ill while on the water. Whenever he suffered from this malady, he demanded that his doctor treat it by dropping cocaine into his ear. Dr. Boone later indicated that he had no idea where Coolidge had heard of this remedy and did not think it was efficacious in any way. Yet he complied with the President’s wishes since if the treatment helped him mentally, it would quiet his nervous system. Coolidge’s peculiarities even extended to the exercise regime in which he participated at the White House. After a Standard Oil executive gave him the gift of a mechanical horse in July 1926, the president refused to exercise on it before bathing and dressing for the evening
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but rather, for some unknown reason, used it after. The mechanical horse would cause him to perspire heavily and he would often dry off his face and hands with a towel and then go to the State Dining Room for a formal reception and dinner, his evening clothes soaked in perspiration. This upset Dr. Boone greatly until he realized that if he didn’t mind going to dinner all perspired in dress clothes, why should I worry about it?”30 There were other instances of unusual behavior as well. Once, while the First Lady was being fitted for an evening gown with a long white satin train, the President entered the room and deliberately walked up the length of the train in his dress shoes. He ignored the shrieks of his wife and the seamstress, then smiled and left the room.31 On another occasion, he was dining alone with Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover and suddenly pointed to a portrait of John Quincy Adams hanging on the wall. He asked, Mr. Hoover, don’t you think the light has been a little too shiny on Mr. Adams’ head? To Hoover’s amazement, the President then directed a servant to bring him a stepladder, rubbed a rag in some fireplace ashes and proceeded to blacken Adams’ head.32 These behavior patterns were odd and quirky; others were considerably more ominous. Sadistic tendencies showed themselves in the post-1924 period. As an example, when Coolidge went fishing, he demanded that his Secret Service agents bait his hook. One observer swore that on at least one occasion, just as the agent was baiting the hook, the President jerked the line sharply, trying to embed the fishhook in the agent’s hand. Apparently, he thought it was great sport if he could spear a bodyguard’s finger.33 On another occasion Mrs. Coolidge caught her finger on a fish hook as he stood beside her. Rather than attempting to help his distressed wife, the President simply stared in silence and then walked away. A Secret Service agent remarked that “this behavior made my blood boil.”34 Around the time the Republican Party nominated Herbert Hoover for president in June 1928, Coolidge seemed to experience a further emotional breakdown. In fact, Dr. Boone found that he was showing many signs of mental disturbance. Boone regarded the President’s behavior as a potentially serious instance of temperamental derangement which he hoped would be of a temporary nature rather than being deep seated. Around the same time, Coolidge’s secretary, Ted Clark, confided to both White House Physicians, Dr. Boone and Dr. James Coupal, that the President clearly was showing signs of mental illness.35 Ike Hoover later indicated that the White House employees who came into contact with the President at this time noticed that he was highly disturbed and were concerned lest his condition prove serious. He also commented that it was no secret that the physician in attendance was worried.36 This was something of an understatement since Boone feared a complete psychological breakdown. As they approached the end of their vacation that summer, the President, First Lady, and their son visited Yellowstone National Park. As part of their tour, they were brought to the Cody Dam. While Mrs. Coolidge and John were shown all around the site by a caretaker who enjoyed their enthusiasm and interest in everything they saw, the President stood with his back to the dam and adamantly refused to look at it.37 No wonder, then, that Coolidge’s behavior that summer was described by his physician as highly emotionally disturbed.38 This was in marked contrast to his earlier career when he had been seen widely as a model of probity and level-headedness.
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PHYSICAL AILMENTS In addition to the psychological disturbances of Coolidge’s post-1924 presidency, a number of physical indispositions were present as well. For years he suffered from a breathing difficulty that he described as pollen fever but this condition worsened in his latter presidential years. After his boy died, he also had trouble with his stomach and complained increasingly of indigestion. This might have been caused by his constant nibbling and by his over indulgences in eating quantities of fruit and other snacks shortly before going to dinner. Often his physicians would have to walk him up and down the White House corridors in an attempt to alleviate his distress.39 At other times, he would require enemas, purgatives, and sedatives. In May 1925, the President became ill at his office, suffering from severe abdominal pain. The cause was attributed to the eating of uncooked peanuts. Four months later, he complained about not feeling well and blamed his condition on hay fever.40 In February 1926, he suffered from a bad bout with the flu. During that spring, he experienced another severe attack of what was diagnosed as indigestion while at his desk and was compelled to go to bed after receiving medical treatment.41 Perhaps this episode was an early indication of cardiac difficulties. One day in mid-April 1927, Coolidge was confused about the correct date. He believed it was the 12th until being informed by Dr. Boone that it was the 13th. The 13th happened to be the date of his dead son’s birthday; he would have been 19 had he lived. On the next day, the President was very ill, suffering from abdominal distress that likely represented a severe stress reaction. In May 1927, Dr. Boone entered in his diary that intestinal parasites had been present in Coolidge’s body for some time – as confirmed by Naval Medical School laboratory tests – but had finally been eliminated. Boone was convinced that this led to improvement in his overall health.42 The following spring, however, the First Lady confided to a family friend that the President was exhausted and was having quite a lot of trouble with his asthma or whatever it is. She also described the strategy devised to keep his condition secret. When the President and First Lady attended church services in Brule, Wisconsin where they summered that year, Coolidge brought a nasal spray along in the limousine. He instructed an aide that if he had to leave the services early, an announcement should be made that Mrs. Coolidge was ill.43 A few weeks later, Grace informed Boone that the President had a hard time with the breathing apparatus for awhile but it is almost cleared up now. At a dinner for the Cabinet in late 1928, Coolidge became so ill that he had to leave the dining table and return to his quarters, exciting apprehension among the guests.44 Coolidge was something of a hypochondriac who took, according to his wife, various sorts of pills upon slight provocation.45 He was so concerned about the possibility of cardiovascular disease that he insisted on having a doctor check his pulse twice a day, once in the morning and then again in early evening. Dr. Boone explained that I usually found him when I went to make the morning and evening call upon him sitting in a high backed chair beside the marble fireplace. As soon as I would walk into the room, he would pull up the sleeve of his left coat, set his elbow on the armchair and indicate that he was ready for me to take his pulse. Boone also disclosed that the President would sometimes pull out his watch ... take a hold of his throat by his thumb and middle finger, one hand, and count the pulse
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himself....46 Mrs. Coolidge found as well that he took his own pulse from time to time while sitting at his desk.47
ABDICATION OF LEADERSHIP Beyond the peculiarities and even the cruelties of his personal behavior, Calvin Coolidge showed a marked disinterest in politics and the presidency after the death of his son in the summer of 1924. He sharply curtailed his interactions with Congress and even withdrew from regular association with officials of his own Administration.48 As a result of his decreased interactions with both legislative and executive branch officials in the period after July 1924, Coolidge’s knowledge of governmental affairs dwindled and his involvement in the policy process shrank sharply. The press conference performance of the President in the pre- and post-July 1924 periods is illuminating. Before the death of his son, Coolidge’s performance at press conferences was quite impressive, revealing a president who was engaged, knowledgeable and politically adroit. Several examples indicate his intimate familiarity with the issues confronting his administration and his comfort in addressing them. Concerning the banking problems that had arisen in the northwest, Coolidge indicated that he was well aware of the situation and was actively involved in trying to develop a solution. On January 18, 1924, he told reporters: The cabinet had engaged in considerable discussion about the difficulties that are arising in the northwest on account of the closing down of some banks up there and we are making plans to see what we could possibly do to relieve that situation.... The Federal Reserve Bank and the Federal Reserve Board are going to do what they can. I have been in conference with Comptroller Dawes about it and the War Finance Corporation stands ready to be of any possible assistance.
Eleven days later, he spoke to the same problem with assurance, explaining that: There are two plans under consideration. One is for relief by the Federal Reserve Banking System and the other is a relief measure by a combination of different moneyed interests to provide capital and a local organization for administering relief, and they, of course, could be assisted by the War Finance Corporation. That is the plan that the War Finance Corporation has adopted right along, of lending money through some local organization.
Concerning the nation’s ongoing agriculture problem, the President announced on March 13, 1924 that: Now that there has been a failure to pass the bill known as the Norbeck-Burtness bill, I am going to ask the Agricultural Credit Corporation to function in the same way that the provisions of the bill would have functioned. That is, to assist farmers in diversification. That organization was created as a result of a conference that I called here on the 4th of February and the bankers and businessmen of the northwest, mid-west and down as far as New York at once joined and raised a $10,000,000 Fund which of course can be supplemented by a loan from the War Finance Corporation, about $20,000,000 or $30,000,000 more, which ought to enable them to assist very materially in diversification.
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Two weeks later, on March 28, Coolidge addressed in some detail the question of Philippine independence: Our country is committed to the policy of ultimate independence so that the practical question which remains is the method by which it is to be put into effect and the time. I think the pending proposal is that it should go into effect in 1935, if the Filipino people about that time will vote for the proposal.... I think that under present arrangements they have an advantage in relation to their sugar crop of $12,000,000 to $15,000,000 and in relation to the tobacco crop about $5,000,000 which will undoubtedly be lost to them under the proposed independence.... There is a general feeling that if the Filipino people want independence that it is no material advantage to us or commercially to us to hold them under the present arrangements. The people ...say therefore why hold them? To my mind that doesn’t quite fulfill the requirement of our duties toward the Filipino people or toward the world in general.
On April 1, 1924, Coolidge commented about the business slowdown that had appeared in the country and used the occasion to criticize Congress. He told reporters that: When the building industry is good, it includes iron, steel, hardware and wood, all kinds of materials and all kinds of industries, and if that is good the basic industries are good and we can expect to go along fairly well.... My own theory is that if the tax bill had been passed as it was introduced by the administration within six weeks or two months after the coming in of Congress, the country would have seen a large increase in business, a stimulation in numerous activities.
As can be seen in these interchanges with the press, Coolidge showed that he was wellinformed, alert, and fully engaged in the activities of his administration during his first 11 months in office. All of this would change dramatically after young Calvin died. On November 24, 1924, for example, four months after the boy’s death, Coolidge demonstrated a remarkable level of ignorance and disinterest about affairs of state. Asked about conditions in Nicaragua where American troops had long been stationed in an effort to maintain the peace, the distracted Commander-in-chief announced: ...I haven’t any great detailed and precise information about {Nicaragua}. I know that there had been some trouble and it was my impression that we had sent some Marines in to guard the Legation, and that the difficulty was in relation to a presidential election. As I have heard nothing about it from the State Department for some time, I had taken it for granted that the situation was cleared up. I think this is the case, but I haven’t any definite information.
Two months later, Coolidge was asked again about the farm problem. This time, his response was quite different from what it had been ten months before when he had shown such concern. Now, passive and indifferent, he remarked that: The members of Congress, and especially the members of the House and Senate Committees on Agriculture come from the agricultural regions. They are much better informed than I am as to the necessity for present action. If they think that there is an emergency that requires immediate action, why those committees of course can draft legislation and present it for immediate action of the Congress.
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A few weeks later, the President revealed in rather surprising press conference remarks that he had no knowledge whatsoever about congressional legislation on agriculture. On February 27, 1925, he announced that: I don’t know as I can make any particular comment about the rejection of the conference agricultural bills. I don’t know enough about the details of those bills to discuss the details with any intelligence. I have been going more particularly on my confidence in people that have made recommendations and not on my particular knowledge of the recommendations that have been made....
Coolidge’s most serious lapses came as economic storm clouds were beginning to engulf the nation. To the press, he revealed a stunning degree of ignorance and indifference. On September 13, 1927, the President told reporters: I haven’t any information about the action of the Federal Reserve Board in lowering the rediscount rate in Chicago... This is a board that does function and ought to function entirely apart from the Executive... I have sometime made some comment on what they have done and the beneficial effect that I thought had accrued from it, but I do not recall that I have ever made any suggestion to the Board on any action that it ought to take.
Some four months later, as the Federal Reserve Board prepared to restrain unbridled stock speculation, Coolidge made a statement to the press that stopped the Board in its tracks. In a remark that was often described as the greatest single mistake of his presidency, Coolidge indicated that: I am not familiar enough with the exact workings and practices of the Federal Reserve System so that comments that I might make relative to the amount of brokers’ loans and so on would not be of very much value... Whether the amount at the present time is disproportionate to the resources of the country, I am not in a position to judge accurately, but so far as indicated by an inquiry I have made of the Treasury Department and so on, I haven’t had any indications that the discount was large enough to cause particularly unfavorable comment.
Coolidge’s words that day were rather remarkable for several reasons. First, although the president of the United States is responsible for executing the laws of the land, Coolidge publicly admitted that he knew so little about the Federal Reserve System that any comments he might make would essentially be worthless. Second, after making this embarrassing admission, he then went on to make comments on a subject about which he said he knew nothing. Third, rather than try to cool down stock speculation, the president actually heated it up, making a bad situation considerably worse. Fourth, although his comments were misinterpreted to mean that everything was satisfactory with regard the stock market, Coolidge failed to clarify them, thereby allowing the misinterpretation to persist and continue to do damage to the economy. The abdication of responsibility was almost complete and it would continue. On April 24, 1928, Coolidge announced to the press that no information has come to me concerning the increase in discount rates except that which I have seen in the press. That is a matter entirely for the Federal Reserve Board, a matter I wouldn’t happen to know anything about. A few days later, on May 1, the President embarrassed himself further by stating: that I
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have no information relative to proposed legislation about loans on securities. I saw by the press there was a bill pending in the House or the Senate. I don’t know what it is or what the provisions of it are or what the discussion of it has been.49 These words reveal a poorly informed and deleterious chief executive who knew nothing about economic policy and who had not shown enough interest to look into possible congressional legislation in an area of pressing importance to the nation. The president who in early 1924 had expressed deep personal concern about bank failures in one region of the country now announced that the responsibility for handling national economic problems was not his. Moreover, the president who in early 1924 had contacted the Federal Reserve Bank, the Federal Reserve Board, the War Finance Commission, and the Comptroller of the United States in an effort to provide federal assistance to the northwest now announced that he knew little about the Federal Reserve System, saw the Federal Reserve Board as wholly independent of the Executive, refrained from making suggestions or recommendations to it, and was ignorant of and disinterested in pending legislation about loans on securities. The change could not be more complete – or more dangerous.
PSYCHOLOGICAL VULNERABILITIES Calvin Coolidge’s boyhood experiences made him vulnerable to the severe loss he suffered as president. His father was away from home frequently because of his service in the Vermont state legislature and his various business activities; his mother was frail and died when he was only 12; his only sibling, a sister, died just short of five years later, when he was 17. These losses affected the future president greatly and made him susceptible to depression later in life.50 When his young son and namesake died in July 1924, the death coincided almost perfectly with Coolidge’s nomination by the Republican Party for a presidential term in his own right. It is no wonder, then, that the boy’s death became inextricably intertwined with his presidency. Although his image in public was that of taciturnity and calmness, in private Coolidge’s eruptions at family members and staff were volcanic. This is not particularly surprising since irritability and bereavement are often close companions.51 In his boyhood, he had been taught to repress his emotions and might well have suffered from unresolved grief.52 Coolidge’s series of devastating losses heightened his tendency toward impatience and irritability and now, in adulthood, these were no longer repressed. The outbursts that so stunned White House personnel almost certainly represented a method of externalizing inner anger and the deep depression brought about by the death of Coolidge’s loved ones. A second method of externalizing rage is to concentrate on bodily disorders.53 As noted earlier, Coolidge suffered a range of physical indispositions while in the White House. He had trouble breathing – similar to his mother who apparently suffered from tuberculosis – and had frequent troubles with his stomach, complaining often of indigestion. Since such symptoms are often associated with stress, Coolidge’s physical ailments may well have been outward manifestations of his inner turmoil. He seemed older and more frail than his years, wanted to be examined frequently by his physicians and took medications of various sorts, some selfprescribed, to correct his maladies. Coolidge blamed himself and his political ambitions for his young son’s death and could not reconcile himself to the tragic loss. The President’s behavior corresponds to many of the
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criteria identified by the American Psychiatric Association for major depressive episodes: loss of interest in usual activities, insomnia or hypersomnia, persistent fatigue, indecisiveness, and feelings of guilt.54 More specifically, whereas earlier Coolidge had been politically astute and deeply involved in his political career, now he lost interest in politics and in all or almost all of his usual activities. Politics became for him a painful exercise. He even confided in his autobiography that when his son died, the power and glory of the presidency went with him. Whereas earlier he had followed a more traditional pattern of sleep and rest, now he suffered from hypersomnia, often sleeping more than fifteen hours a day. Whereas earlier he had been hard-working and had insisted that his colleagues work hard as well, now he was consistently fatigued and debilitated by a severe and persistent lack of energy, even though he was still relatively young. Whereas earlier he had been an assertive and able leader, now he became indecisive and delegated to subordinates the bulk of his executive responsibilities, refusing even to consider in advance the actions they proposed to take in his name. Moreover, he now experienced feelings of guilt, blaming himself for his boy’s death. The president even went so far as to write in his autobiography that, if he had not been president, young Calvin would not have raised a blister on his toe, which resulted in blood poisoning, playing lawn tennis on the South Grounds.55 In other words, he saw his ambitions and his successful political career as resulting in the loss of his favorite child. Not only were these thoughts and behavior patterns symptomatic of clinical depression but they were also unrelenting and remained with Coolidge for the remainder of his presidency, rendering him a distracted and disabled chief executive. In a very tragic sense, then, when Calvin Coolidge lost his son, the nation lost its president.
CONCLUSIONS Historians and political scientists have long derided and devalued the presidency of Calvin Coolidge. In presidential surveys, he typically ranks among the least effective presidents in American history, being commonly viewed as having been a lazy, unsuccessful, and even incompetent Chief Executive.56 It is important to understand, however, that Coolidge had been an able, hard working, and accomplished political leader prior to the death of his son. It was only after the boy died that he lost interest in the presidency, withdrew from active interaction with Congress and even his own administration, and served out his term as a broken man. Coolidge, then, must be viewed as a sick rather than an incompetent leader after July 1924 and evaluations of his years in office must always reflect the devastating impact of depressive illness on both his life and his presidency.
NOTES 1
2
See Robert E. Gilbert, The Tormented President: Calvin Coolidge, Death and Clinical Depression, Westport, CT.: Praeger Publishers, 2003, pp. 116-137. Edmund Starling, Starling of the White House, Chicago: People’s Book Club, 1946, p. 212.
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9
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14 15
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23 24
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Irwin Hood Hoover, Forty-Two Years in the White House, Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1934, p. 268. Papers of Joel Boone, Diary, Box 40, December 1, 1926, Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress. Papers of Joel Boone, Autobiography, Box 46, p. 499, Library of Congress. Sheldon M. Stern, AWilliam Allen White and the Origins of the Coolidge Stereotype@, The New England Journal of History, Vol. 55, Fall, 1998, p. 66. Hoover, Forty-Two Years in The White House, pp. 233, 132, 323. Edmund W. Starling, Starling of the White House, Chicago: People=s Book Club, 1946, pp. 228, 272. Papers of Joel Boone, Autobiography, Box 47, p. 563; Diary, Box 40, September 7, 1925, Autobiography, Box 47, p. 708, Library of Congress. Papers of Joel Boone, Diary, Box 40, September 13, 1925, February 25, 1926, December 8, 1926, Library of Congress. Starling, Starling of the White House, p. 255. Hoover, Forty-Two Years in the White House, p. 132. Jane and Will Curtis and Frank L. Lieberman, Return to These Hills: The Vermont Years of Calvin Coolidge, Woodstock, VT.: Curtis-Lieberman Books, 1985, p. 72. Claude M. Fuess, Calvin Coolidge, Boston: Little Brown, 1940, p. 198. Papers of Joel Boone, Autobiography, Box 47, p. 727; Box 46, p. 48, Library of Congress. Papers of Calvin Coolidge, MS9/1A-1D/39, Grace Coolidge Manuscript, Northampton, MA.: Forbes Library. Papers of Joel Boone, Autobiography, Box 46, p. 50, Library of Congress. Papers of Joel Boone, Autobiography, Box 47, pp. 621, 895-896, Library of Congress. William Allen White, A Puritan in Babylon, New York: Macmillan, 1938, p. 354; Papers of Joel Boone, Diary, Box 47, p. 839, Library of Congress. Starling, Starling of The White House, p. 253. Papers of Joel Boone, Autobiography, Box 47, pp. 847-848, Library of Congress. Papers of Joel Boone, Autobiography, Box 47, pp. 839-841, 846-847, Library of Congress. Papers of Joel Boone, Autobiography, Box 47, pp. 847, 906, Library of Congress. Robert H. Ferrell, The Presidency of Calvin Coolidge, Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998, p. 22 Papers of Joel Boone, Diary, Box 40, August 13, 1926; Autobiography, Box 47, p. 975, Library of Congress. Papers of Joel Boone, Autobiography, Box 47, p. 604, Library of Congress. Papers of Joel Boone, Diaries, Box 40, Library of Congress. Lydia Coolidge Sayles, interview with the author, September 28, 2000, Plymouth Vermont. Papers of Joel Boone, Autobiography, Box 47, p. 890; Diary, Box 30, Grace Coolidge to Joel Boone, July 9, 1928; Box 47, p. 646, Library of Congress. Papers of Joel Boone, Diary, Box 40, December 15, 1927; Autobiography, Box 46, p. 186; Box 47, p. 646, Library of Congress.
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34 35 36 37 38 39 40
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52 53 54
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Curtis and Lieberman, Return the These Hills, p. 74. Richard Norton Smith, An Uncommon Man, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984, p. 36. Frank Cormier, Presidents are People Too, Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1966, p. 119. Papers of Joel Boone, Diary, Box 40, October 12, 1927, Library of Congress.. Papers of Joel Boone, Autobiography, Box 47, p. 1006, Library of Congress. Hoover, Forty-Two Years in The White House, p. 179. White, A Puritan in Babylon, p. 363. Papers of Joel Boone, Autobiography, Box 47, p. 1009, Library of Congress. Ishbel Ross, Grace Coolidge and Her Era, New York: Dodd, Mead, 1962, p. 241. Papers of Joel Boone, Diary, Box 40, May 23, 1925; September 19, 1925; Autobiography, Box 46, p. 497, Library of Congress. Washington Star, April 26, 1926, Hanney Scrapbooks, Vol. 1, Forbes Library. Papers of Joel Boone, Autobiography, Box 47, pp. 720, 755, Library of Congress. Donald McCoy, Calvin Coolidge, New York: Macmillan, 1967, p. 390. Papers of Joel Boone, Diary, Box 30, Grace Coolidge to Joel Boone, July 9, 1928, Library of Congress; Fuess, Calvin Coolidge, p. 430. McCoy, Calvin Coolidge, p. 390. Papers of Joel Boone, Autobiography, Box 46, p. 34, Library of Congress. Guy Fair Goodfellow, Calvin Coolidge: A Study of Presidential Inaction, Ann Arbor, Michigan: University Microfilms, 1969, p. 69. Gilbert, The Tormented President, pp. 179-190. Howard Quint and Robert Ferrell, The Talkative President, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1964, pp. 117, 118, 119, 178, 121, 231, 124, 125, 135, 137-138, 142. Dr. Jerrold M. Post, M.D., personal communication with the author, February 18, 2002. Erich Lindemann, ASymptomatology and Management of Acute Grief@, American Journal of Psychiatry, Vol. 101, 1944, p. 142. Catherine Sanders, Grief: The Mourning After, New York: John Wiley, 1999, p. 128. Karen Horney, Our Inner Conflicts, New York; W.W. Norton, 1945, p. 121-122. American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition, Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Association, 2000, p. 349. Calvin Coolidge, The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge, New York: Cosmopolitan Book Corporation, 1929, pp. 112, 115. See, for example, the Ridings-McIver survey which ranks him 31st out of the 39 presidents evaluated (Presidential Studies Quarterly, Vol. XXV, Spring, 1995, p. 376).
In: White House Studies Compendium, Volume 4 Editor: R. W. Watson, pp. 349-364
ISBN: 1-60021-541-6 © 2007 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
THE CASE FOR THE STUDY OF PRESIDENTIAL CHILDREN: JULIE NIXON EISENHOWER’S ROLE IN THE NIXON WHITE HOUSE Tabitha Alissa Warters ABSTRACT This article seeks to expand the literature on the institution of the presidency to include presidential children. Arguing that presidential children are theoretically relevant is a difficult task; not because presidential children do not perform significant roles within the institution of the presidency but because they have been treated as superficial backdrops to the more “important” work being done in the Oval Office. The article shows that presidential children do influence the president and in many cases have held positions in the administration and directly influenced decisions made by the president. It is easy to disregard their influence because they have no constitutional standing. But that would be a mistake. The article displays that the study of presidential children is theoretically relevant and provides a greater understanding of the institution of the presidency. An overview of the institutional literature is provided and discusses how presidential children fit into the study of the presidency. Finally, a case study of the political roles and activities of Julie Nixon Eisenhower during the Nixon administration is provided. The case study illustrates that her role was prolific, profound, and worthy of examination to come to a greater understanding of Nixon the man and the Nixon administration.
INTRODUCTION This article expands the literature on the institution of the presidency to include presidential children.1 Arguing that presidential children are theoretically relevant is a difficult task; not because presidential children do not perform significant roles within the institution of the presidency but because they have been treated as superficial backdrops to the more “important” work being done in the Oval Office. This article shows that presidential children do influence the president and in many cases have held positions in the administration and directly influenced decisions made by the president. It is easy to disregard their influence because they have no constitutional standing. But that would be a mistake. This article also suggests that the study of presidential children is theoretically relevant and provides a greater understanding of the institution of the presidency. It is taken for granted that all presidential children perform important roles based on their repetitive or characteristic behaviors toward, or on behalf of the president, both in the electoral and the governing processes. Previous research on this subject matter shows that
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presidential children in the modern era have executed clearly defined roles that have influenced the presidency in one way or another.2 Not only do presidential children perform political roles, but in some cases these roles have become institutionalized. Now they are an integral component of the institution of the presidency. The following offers an overview of the institutional literature and discusses how presidential children fit into the study of the presidency. A case study follows which elucidates the political roles and activities of Julie Nixon Eisenhower during the Nixon administration. Their roles in the Nixon White House were prolific, profound, and worthy of examination to help come to a greater understanding of Nixon the man and the Nixon administration.
THE CASE FOR THE STUDY OF PRESIDENTIAL CHILDREN Some scholars have argued for both personal and institutional approaches to the study of the presidency. “The common notion is that relevant (personal) variables help explain presidential behavior to the extent that, via causal chains…they ultimately affect the thinking of the man who is president.”3 Essentially then, presidential scholarship can treat the presidency as an institution, but the activities performed in that institution must be filtered through a very personal president-centered environment. One does not exist without the other. Terry Moe observes: Most aspects of the modern institutional presidency…are doubly personalized. Not only are their effects realized through the president’s personal filter, but the institution itself is taken to be highly malleable, its form intricately shaped and reshaped as presidents come and go. Each president, as an individual with a unique personality, background, and style, builds his own system of operation inside the White House and throughout the executive branch, fashioning an institutional presidency in his own image—a personal institutional presidency, as it were.4
Erwin Hargrove also concludes that studying individuals is essential. According to Hargrove, “the task of scholarship…is to integrate the study of individuals with the web of social and institutional forces that move them and which they in turn, may influence.”5 Samuel Kernell displays how the personal strategy of “going public,” or a modern style of presidential leadership in which presidents seek out the public to promote themselves and their policies, can affect the outcomes of the institution.6 Therefore, president-centered and presidencycentered research does not have to be mutually exclusive.7 Presidential children are no doubt personal aspects of the presidency. But are they personal or institutional powers? Presidential children can indeed be considered part of the personal power of presidents because they can have affects on what happens inside the institution of the presidency. Presidential children are quite often surrogates for their father. They can advocate policy positions and influence decision-making. They can also “perform crucial advisory and support service for the president.”8 As symbols, presidents can use their children as another tool for “going public.” Presidential children can affect a president’s public approval, which in turn can influence the level of political capital a president has at his disposal to compromise with Congress. Therefore, presidential children are another personal power available to presidents. The key is that just like the power to persuade,9 some presidents may in fact have an advantage if they have active children.
The Case for the Study of Presidential Children: Julie Nixon Eisenhower’s Role… 351 The research on first ladies is a good basis to start to make the case for the study of presidential children. Research on the “unknown institution”10 of the first lady had been highly disregarded because there is no constitutional grounding for the position. First ladies have also been treated historically as just anecdotal backdrops to what is going on in the Oval Office. The study of first ladies has also “lacked anything approaching systematic inquiry, a conceptual framework, the development of theory, or the development of models by which to test theories.”11 The reason for this is that first ladies have no “statutory legitimacy, electoral mandate, or clearly defined roles and responsibilities.”12 But the study of first ladies is expanding and recent literature has argued that they have become part of the institution of the presidency. The same cannot be said for presidential children. They too have no constitutional standing. But they should be a scholarly concern. They have influence on presidential power, perceptions, popularity, and performance. They may provide advice that influences the president’s decisions, or attitudes. They may affect public perceptions, thereby making the job either easier or more difficult. They may affect decision-making. They can also provide a greater understanding of the president’s goals and ideals.13 Therefore, the political influence of presidential children is real and needs to be studied in order to offer a more complete picture of the personal tools available to the president. Robert Dahl noted that it is hard at times to measure political influence. Dahl cautions that “indirect influence on political or governmental decisions is even more difficult to ‘observe and weigh’ than is the influence of elected and appointed officials.”14 Therefore, indirect influence is just as powerful, or more powerful, than direct influence. A study of the direct and indirect influence of presidential children on the institution of the presidency will bring a greater understanding of the resources available to presidents. An example of indirect political influence is the use of symbolism. “If symbolism is central to politics, it is clearly also central to the office of the President as we understand it.”15 Presidential children are frequently used on the campaign trail as symbols. They are symbolic representatives of the type of person the candidate is. As Doris Graber highlights, “citizens perceive the president as a person, rather than in terms of his policy commitments or his skills in the specialized tasks of leadership.”16 Therefore, even if presidents do “go public” the American public tends to view the president in personal terms. Indeed, as George Edwards states, “[t]he fact that Americans pay relatively little detailed attention to politics and policy adds further support for the view that the president’s personality plays a large role in his approval.”17 Therefore, through their children, the candidate can control their symbolic message to the public. The same can be done once in the White House. As Lori Cox Han argues, even though the presidency has become more institutionalized over the past few decades, it has also become more politicized.18 Because of this, there has developed an emphasis on the personal aspects of the presidency, due to a shift in approaches to advocating a public policy agenda. The modern presidency is reliant upon public support and one of the keys to this is to personalize the office. Presidential power is no longer tied only to his ability to persuade his fellow politicians in the beltway, but he must persuade the public as well. As George Edwards points out, the “greatest source of influence for the (modern) president is public approval.”19 Thus, public appeals, or “going public,” have become a more powerful tool in garnering support and exacting influence than more traditional approaches of using only the Constitution as a basis for presidential power.20 Therefore, “much of the modern presidency does in fact, involve the projection of images whose purpose is to shape public understanding and gain public support.”21 The end result has
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been “the extreme personalization of the modern presidency, the excessive expectations of the president that most Americans possess, and the voluminous media coverage that fixes on presidents and treats American politics largely as a report of their adventures.”22 Presidential children are key components to this new personalization of the office and presidents can utilize them as symbols or surrogates as part of their “going public” strategy. A popular president is often more successful than an unpopular president. Presidents and their staffs know that they need to monitor public opinion in order to “effectively mobilize the president’s audience toward the president’s policy concerns, ideology, and goals.”23 The president’s audience may include the citizenry of the United States, Congress, or his own party. He needs to be able to work with, and influence, all his constituents in order to be an effective leader. “Using public opinion (also) enables president’s to bridge the gap of understanding between elites and masses, and to create rhetoric which appeal to a supportive audience for proposed policies.”24 Studies have shown that the greater the public support for a president, the more influence he has with Congress and the support that he receives for his policy programs.25 Relying totally on public approval to move presidential programs will not work. Presidents do have to use the institutionalized powers as well. But public approval is a factor that can influence presidential leadership. Therefore, any variable, including the use of presidential children as surrogates that make public appeals on behalf of the president or as symbolic image-makers, needs to be considered and given its proper weight and concern.26
DATA AND METHODOLOGY Research on the presidency has been beset by the fact that there is no consensus on the best methodological tools and approaches that should be used.27 This paper does not seek to add any new revelations to this debate. As Gary King points out: We require systematic descriptive work to provide the basis for more parsimonious explanations of presidential behavior and its consequences. The traditional literature emphasizing history and thick description, is most useful…for mining what needs to be explained by theory-driven research and for providing texture to more austere explanations and theories.28
The research for this paper is exploratory rather than explanatory. As such, it contributes to the foundation of descriptive inference.29 For this article, the author chose to utilize a case study as the major methodological tool. Although highly criticized, some have argued that the best way to study the personal power of presidents is “to study its occupants and the best way to study the occupant is to rely on a series of case studies examining the president’s use of personal power.”30 The case study of Julie Nixon Eisenhower is theoretically relevant to the discipline because her role in her father’s administration exemplifies the impact that presidential children can have. There are limitations to this form of research. There is little academic literature on the subject; therefore there is a heavy reliance on secondary sources. Accounts from official biographies were used as well as biographies/auto-biographies written by family members. Other accounts came from contemporary observers. In Julie Nixon Eisenhower’s case,
The Case for the Study of Presidential Children: Julie Nixon Eisenhower’s Role… 353 accounts from advisers of Richard Nixon and official Nixon biographers were the primary sources.
JULIE NIXON EISENHOWER’S ROLE IN THE NIXON WHITE HOUSE31 William Safire has described Julie Nixon Eisenhower as “…like her father without a dark side – that is, she is loyal, alert, considerate, virtuous, intelligent, and sensibly impulsive.”32 Safire continues “…if part of judging a man’s life is to examine the sum of his human relationships, young Mrs. Eisenhower is one who speaks eloquently in Richard Nixon’s favor.”33 These words of acclaim would be hard for anyone to live up to, especially in the spotlight of the presidency. But Julie Nixon Eisenhower earned her wings in the tumultuous political arena in which she chose to participate. This case study attempts to put in perspective Julie Nixon Eisenhower’s experience as “first daughter.” It seeks to elucidate Julie’s behavior as a surrogate, symbol, advisor, and confidante for her father, Richard Nixon. The study will attempt to display the multiple levels of influence that Julie Nixon Eisenhower had, not only in the Nixon White House, but on the campaign trail as well. As will be seen, her influence on the presidency was profound and exemplifies the argument that presidential children can, and do, wield powers that may not be constitutionally granted but profound nonetheless.
1968 Election The world came to know Julie Nixon Eisenhower best during the Watergate debacle. But her influence on, and work for, her father began much earlier. When her father decided to give the presidency another shot in 1968, Julie was a sophomore at Smith College in Massachusetts. Julie and her fiancé David Eisenhower both dove head first into a campaign schedule that became so demanding that in the fall of 1968 she, from Smith, and David, from Amherst, took the semester off in order to be available for the full onslaught of political campaigning around the country. At the age of 19 she proceeded to campaign in 33 states for her father. Richard Nixon himself knew how valuable Julie, David and her sister, Tricia, were to the campaign: In the 1968 campaign he(RN) told Bob Haldeman at length how Pat and the girls should be scheduled, where they should appear, how they should be introduced. Special aides and advance men were recruited for them. With Julie’s fiancé, David Eisenhower, the family was a potent factor in the election campaign, and Nixon didn’t miss a single opportunity to employ them to advantage.34
Julie’s work stumping on the campaign trail as a surrogate for her father was invaluable. She traveled across the country, stopping in as many small towns as possible to communicate the name of her father to the American voters. Although her surrogate work was tireless and undeniably beneficial, one action in particular boosted her father’s campaign. Unbeknownst to her when Julie and David Eisenhower, the only grandson of former president Dwight D. Eisenhower, decided to marry, a political coup had taken place. Julie and David presented the “image…of a wholesome, all-American couple, recalling the traditional values in a time when these were being bitterly contested, that was considered so valuable to the Nixon ticket.”35
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Nixon himself even referred to Julie and David as “front-line troops in the battle to reestablish the traditional virtues.”36 Thus, these two individuals were counted on to carry out a symbolic role as well as being surrogates on the campaign trail. David Eisenhower’s presence in the family was also crucial for Nixon in a second way. When Julie and David decided to marry, there was a joining of two of the most powerful political families in the nation. The engagement and marriage in December of 1968 was not only symbolically important for Nixon, but it was also instrumental in garnering a very important endorsement that was essential for his success in 1968. Former President Dwight D. Eisenhower wanted to wait until the convention to give his endorsement to Nixon, but “David Eisenhower was assuming a role of liaison between his grandfather and his father-inlaw-to-be. David very much wanted a clear pre-convention endorsement of Nixon.”37 David and Nixon both got their wish. Up to this stage, both Julie and David seem to have performed two different political roles. First, Julie and David became symbols of the younger generation of Americans during the 1968 campaign. They also served the purpose of helping to show that Richard Nixon was a good family man who had a daughter and son-in-law who were politically aware and active. They also performed the role of surrogates. The need for extra members of the candidate’s family to travel and make speeches on the candidate’s behalf is imperative to success. Julie describes her activities for her father as “second string,” traveling to areas her father did not have time to go.38
The White House Years: 1968-1972 In the years directly after the election, Julie continued making speeches across the nation and granted interviews to the press. During this time Julie and David became symbols of the new administration. …Julie performed as the perfect team player. On the one hand, she was a typical young married: finishing college, keeping a house in a cheap apartment just off campus, and having her parents to dinner on Daddy’s birthday. On the other, she was the energetic and outspoken defender of the traditional virtues that her father’s administration was presumably elected to defend, but that were nonetheless under constant attack by the nation’s young.39
Julie’s outspoken nature set her apart from her sister Tricia. Tricia preferred to stay out of the limelight and speak publicly only when she and her father deemed it necessary (particularly on the campaign trail). Julie, on the other hand, took to the bully pulpit and “bore the brunt of the dissidents’ anger. And it was Julie who fought back.”40 Julie did not speak on issues that could be labeled as “fluff.” Instead she tackled the more substantive issues of the day. Julie became “a semi-official defender of and spokesman for Mr. Nixon’s Vietnam policy.”41 She made speeches all across the nation for causes such as health care, the environment, and educational programs for the young and elderly. Julie also became a champion of placing a woman on the Supreme Court as well as of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) and pressed her father on both of these issues. After one meeting with her father on the issue, Nixon’s secretary alerted John Ehrlichman to the results of the discussion: “Last night the President asked that I again send you a note saying ‘we absolutely must push this Women’s Rights Amendment.’ This was after a discussion with Mrs. Nixon and Julie.42
The Case for the Study of Presidential Children: Julie Nixon Eisenhower’s Role… 355 This example not only displays Julie’s verve to undertake and discuss policy issues but also her father’s deep respect for her opinions as well as her role as an informal advisor. Nixon liked to engage Julie in dialogue and used these discussions as a “spring board” for ideas.43 Julie’s appeal to her father on the ERA reflected the Nixon daughters’ intense involvement in their father’s administration…The Nixon children were particularly important in an administration with a shy President and a reserved First Lady. By proving that they had not been reduced to ‘appendages to his career,’ they rehabilitated the President.44
Julie has admitted that from time to time she would have rather been as far away from the political world as possible, but she remained a resolute defender of the president.45 For Julie, her defense can be categorized as a blind faith, one that is constant and could not and cannot even now be swayed. UPI reporter Helen Thomas simply called her at the time, “ a believer.”46 Julie not only acted as a surrogate for the President but whenever possible would help fill in for her mother. Plenty of opportunities developed when Julie lived in the White House during the summer of 1969 when she was asked to represent the First Lady at luncheons and teas as well as to show visitors around Washington, D.C .47 The fall of 1970 brought Julie to the White House to live temporarily. David had begun Officers Candidate School (OCS) in Rhode Island where he was training for his three-year navy duty. During this time Julie moved into the White House while she began work on her master’s degree in elementary education at Catholic University of America. Julie had to quickly become accustomed to the ever-present White House press corps. Julie found herself being barraged with requests for interviews. Julie, unlike her sister and mother, often relented and granted interviews. Pat Nixon did not care about publicity, but Julie had a good public-relations sense and understood the necessity to make herself available to the media.48 H. R. Haldeman wrote: “Julie had an exceptionally good sense of the value of her public activities and the need to get maximum benefit from them.”49 Julie herself may be the reason that she was sought out by reporters. Helen Thomas stated: “I enjoyed interviewing Julie immensely…because she was honest, and like a mirror, reflected her own feelings of her family. She called them as she saw them, fearlessly.”50 It seems that Julie was a breath of fresh air for reporters covering the White House. It was not business as usual with Julie. She did not tote the “party line” but rather spoke her heart and that seemed appealing to the press. “When Julie took up the cudgels and became her father’s Number One Public Defender, she did it on her own initiative.”51 Knowing that they were political assets, the Nixon White House had a strong need to publicly use the Nixon daughters. In addition to mobilizing White House resources to advance the daughters when they traveled, Nixon had his best men trying to figure out what kinds of jobs his daughters should take. Such official concern illustrated a new level of politicization of the presidential family. In the White House and in the press, the daughters were treated as extensions of the President himself.52
President Nixon weighed everything that was done with one question: “Does this help us politically?”53 In most cases where Julie was concerned, the answer was a resounding “yes.”
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Even though Julie was in school, she continued her touring schedule, making speeches across the nation. Because the touring was on a limited schedule, she and the White House had to take full advantage of every outing. The White House’s concern over this issue can be seen in an excerpt from H.R. Haldeman’s diary on November 13, 1971: We got into quite a thing late in the afternoon because he (RN) discovered that Julie didn’t have adequate preparation material for her trip. He wants me now to put (speechwriter John) Andrews on it, and get some really good Q&A things worked out for her and some talking points on Administration programs and achievements, the kind of points that we want her to get across such as we would give a Cabinet officer.54
Nixon also was counting on his family to make him appear warm and loving, “calculating that his family’s love made him lovable.”55 The key here was to make sure that the family’s close-knit loving environment be shown to the rest of the world. Thus, Nixon was counting on his family to be symbols. He was looking for his daughters and wife to portray him as a family man. Part of the plan culminated in Julie doing what the White House called “The Julie Show,” which CBS entitled “Christmas at the White House with Julie Nixon Eisenhower.” The show was aired on Christmas Eve 1971. Julie took viewers to the living quarters of the White House where Nixon was “sporting a colorful smoking jacket he only wore ‘at Christmas’…the President was jocular… Here was Nixon as the head of a cozy, devoted family…”56 Nixon wanted to carry this family-centered atmosphere through the next year so as to make it beneficial in the upcoming election. “Special Counsel to the President Charles Colson told the President that ‘image of the First Family as it has recently emerged — warm and appealing— may be one of the most important political developments of your Presidency’”57 As Nixon would soon find out, his family was going to be extremely important in the 1972 election and during the difficult times surrounding the Watergate scandal.
1972 Election Part of the Nixon campaign strategy in 1972 was to minimize Nixon’s campaign appearances. Therefore, pressure was placed upon his family members. Pat and Tricia did what they needed to do in order to support their husband and father but tended to shy away from doing anymore than was necessary; that was left up to Julie. “In the ensuing months, Julie threw herself into her father’s reelection campaign and was much in demand as a speaker at rallies and Republican fund raising. She worked closely with the Committee to Reelect the President and was on the road more than her father.”58 By her own account, Julie did the most in 1972 visiting 77 cities in 37 states during the general election. 59 Nixon took it upon himself to make sure that he was getting as much mileage out of his daughter’s campaign activities as he possibly could. Nixon did not trust the speech material that Ray Price was providing for Julie and Tricia. So on occasion he would send memos to Julie and Tricia, giving them talking points and suggesting particular anecdotes he felt were more appealing than those provided by Price. Once again, as he did in 1968, Nixon made up the campaigning schedule for his children himself.
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Watergate The Nixon family’s elation over the landslide victory of 1972 began to fade rapidly as the weight of Watergate began to bear down on the White House. Each member had to deal with the rapidly changing circumstances as best they could. Pat and Tricia tended to retreat from the public in order to avoid the pressures of what was happening around them. Julie took another route. Julie never relented to the pressures surrounding her or her father. If Julie Nixon Eisenhower is going to be remembered for one thing that she has done in her life, it will probably be how stolidly she stood beside her father during such difficult times. By the end of 1972, it was obvious to those in the White House that Julie was an asset that they did not want to lose. She had finished her graduate work and the Nixon Administration decided that the best place for her was to stay in the White House. Around Christmas of that year discussions began on how Julie could be utilized most appropriately and the idea of her taking an East Wing staff job was overwhelmingly supported. H.R. Haldeman dictated in his diary on Tuesday, December 12, 1972: The P(resident) had me over to talk about the Julie job… he wanted to consider what she could do over here(the West Wing). She’s good for the P, well organized…It’s good to have her around, so he wants to see what she can do at the White House.60
It is unclear from this discussion what the primary reason for having Julie in the White House really was. It might have been her ability to handle one person in particular that made her presence in the White House mandatory. Nixon was always a private person who fought with his decisions within himself and often closed himself off to others. But Julie was one person who could break through the barriers. Julie, thus, began to perform a new role of protector as well as informal advisor/confidante. Nixon’s need to rely on Julie’s advice and companionship was paramount for not only his political survival but also his own personal and psychological survival. As 1973 progressed most of Julie’s activities became increasingly intertwined with Watergate. During this time Julie continued her speaking engagements making over 150 trips, but as Julie notes: When the questions in May 1973 started to be more on Watergate than on the purpose of my visits, I did not dodge them. I believed the programs I was involved with…and was not going to stop my activities because of Watergate. Although I never gave a speech on Watergate or embarked on any kind of “campaign,” the news I now generated was almost all Watergaterelated. …Consequently, in contrast to Tricia’s infrequent appearances and Mother’s reluctance at hers to get entangled in Watergate questions, my activities took on added significance in the eyes of the media, and I found myself in the unwanted and unsought role of the one “unafraid to speak out on Watergate.”61
Julie felt that she was the only one who could tell the world who her father really was. Admittedly, Julie has denied that the White House put her on the front lines during Watergate. Julie noted in her mother’s biography: “…my father never asked me to be out front.”62 But it is also interesting to note that he also never asked her to stop.63 According to John Anthony Maltese, Julie was indeed pinpointed to act as surrogate during Watergate.
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Maltese highlights in his book, Spin Control, that the Office of Communications decided during the Watergate period to break themselves into two divisions; the “Government as Usual” division and the “Watergate” division. The latter was designed to defend Nixon. One part of the Watergate division was a PR counteroffensive that included surrogate speakers traveling the country in defense of Nixon.64 Julie was on the top of the list of speakers used by the Office of Communications. With Julie taking such an open position and talking to the public and the press about Watergate, she was essentially acting as a surrogate for her father. Julie’s role as surrogate in this situation is much different from the surrogate role that she performed in the past. Julie was no longer acting as a surrogate during a campaign. Instead, Julie was answering for the White House on a matter that involved possible constitutional violations that Nixon himself should have been answering. There is some question whether or not it is true that the President did not specifically send Julie to speak on his behalf. When Pat Nixon biographer Lester David interviewed Helen Smith for his book, Smith, Pat Nixon’s press secretary, confirmed the speculation that Julie was chosen by the family to be the one to take the brunt of the media heat.65 Many saw Julie defending her father and felt that “Richard Nixon could not be as bad a man as they say if he inspires so much love from his daughter.”66 This is one view, but as time elapsed it became obvious that Julie was not being told the truth by her father and was still being sent out to answer the press. Julie was defenseless because she was not being told the whole truth, thus eliciting thoughts from the public such as “What sort of man would hide things from his daughters and let them go out and defend him?”67 Whether Julie was strategically sent out to talk to the press or whether she did it on her own accord, there is no doubt that she gained a vast amount of respect from the American public as well as the White House press corps who called her “the only credible Nixon.”68 A friend at the time was watching all of this play out with the rest of the world and remarked: “It was as if they were one person, Nixon and Julie, and she was defending herself.”69 Others noted that it seemed as if during this period that Julie had “become her father’s…First Lady in practice if not in fact.”70 Just days after the transcripts proving Nixon’s involvement in the Watergate cover-up were released on April 29, 1974, the White House was bombarded with requests for interviews, and it was left up to Julie to take the brunt of their insistence. On May 11, 1974, Julie and David met the press in the East Garden of the White House in an unprecedented press conference to address questions about the Watergate investigation. As the months progressed the press became accustomed to Julie being the go-between between the press and the Nixon family, especially Richard Nixon. She became the official surrogate for Nixon himself. Julie was in constant contact with her father, listening and offering advice as well as keeping up to date on the movements of the investigations, or at least Richard Nixon’s interpretations of these events. Thus, Julie had the double advantage of being both the most accessible and the most knowledgeable Nixon insider. Julie also had the invaluable asset of being the most appealing member of the Nixon family. She and David were so earnest and energetic in their support of the president that even diehard Nixon haters found it hard to extend their distaste to his most ardent ally.71 Even when there was no doubt from the transcripts that Nixon was indeed deeply involved; Julie intensified her resolve against resignation. Up until the last minute Julie hung on. On August 6, 1974, the night that Nixon wrote his resignation speech, Julie entered the
The Case for the Study of Presidential Children: Julie Nixon Eisenhower’s Role… 359 White House late in the evening and slipped a note on her father’s pillow trying to convince him to wait another week or so.72 Barbara Kellerman in her book All the President’s Kin asks how useful to Nixon Julie’s exaggerated will to win really was. One Nixon aide suggested that it had a disadvantage: “Julie was the fighter. She was so much like her father — a real, tough, little battler — that at times that week I think she lost touch with reality. And that just fed her father’s illusions.”73 It also can be said that the opposite was true: that Nixon’s illusions fed on Julie’s. But whatever the case, Julie fought until the very last minute for her father. She placed herself in front of a ruthless White House press corps time and time again as a surrogate for her father. After Nixon left office, Julie continued to stand firm in her support of her father and still does to this day. Julie was not just a surrogate; she was also a symbol of the youth of America, a confidante to the President and provided him informal advice. In the end she was perhaps the most valuable asset that Richard Nixon had. William Safire in his book Before the Fall includes a discussion on Julie. He concludes: Julie’s significance in the Nixon story,…,is this: here is a young woman whose good sense, grace, and goodness were not acquired in a vacuum. She was, at least in part, the product of an environment dominated by Richard Nixon. Julie is evidence that the Nixon’s ideas of family life help to develop good children and fine young adults. She is a glimpse of what her father could have been to others if he did not indulge himself in narrowing his own circle to the trusted, distrusting few. Julie Eisenhower herself is everything a man could want in a daughter: not just a girl to be produced and strengthened against partisan blasts, but one to become a source of strength when an inner circle crumbles…74
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION The case study of Julie Nixon Eisenhower’s role in the Nixon White House is significant for several reasons. To begin with, it seems as if the notion of “going public” might have been conceptualized too narrowly. Going public may also include activities such as sending surrogates out to interact with the public. Julie Nixon Eisenhower acted in this manner on many occasions, filling in for the president. At times she was actually the sole representative of the White House, especially on the campaign trail in 1972 and during the final months and days of Watergate. As was shown, the White House staff and the president himself recognized how beneficial Julie's public activities were to the White House and the took measures to increase her role and make her a public as possible. Second, presidential children can be seen as extensions of the president himself. This is extremely significant because it means that presidents with children, or more specifically, active children, may in fact have an advantage over presidents without children. If presidential power is personal, then having active children may increase the total sum of personal power. It is like being in two or more places at once; which all presidents would love to be able to do. Nixon recognized the advantage that he had in Julie and used it at every opportunity. Third, as mentioned earlier, symbolic politics is extremely important to presidential power. Having children can increase a president’s ability to manipulate or mold public
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perceptions of himself. “Symbols can be used politically to shape attitudes, build support, persuade to action, or in one widely accepted definition of political power, to help A get B to do what A wants done.”75 Symbols are important to the presidency and “have power because people would like to believe in the possibility of the good life and the honesty of American presidents.”76 Political symbols can take many different forms and presidential children play a large role in the symbolic image a president portrays to the nation. Julie executed this role throughout her father's tenure in office. She was used as a symbol of the "real" American youth as those involved in the anti-war movement. She was also used as a symbol of the family life of the Nixon's. She performed the task of humanizing President Nixon and displaying him as a good family man. Finally, presidential children can impact the decision making process. Just as formal staff and advisers influence the decisions presidents make, so too do presidential children. “If we understand what politicians believe and give no special attention to the arena in which they make their policy choices, you will wildly overestimate how easy it is for them to reach conclusions on issues.”77 This is true in the case of Richard Nixon. Whether or not Nixon always took Julie's advice, she was an informal advisor and confidante who influenced the environment in which he made decisions. Julie performed multiple roles that did have an affect on the institution of the president. She was a physical surrogate, a symbolic personification, a mouthpiece for administrative policies, protector of the president, Ambassador overseas for the president, public defender, and an extension of the president himself. Julie’s presence in the White House was profoundly felt. She was a useful tool to be used during the campaigns and was sent out to garner public and congressional support for administrative policies. As the White House days began to wane she was one of Nixon’s closest advisers and was the only one at times who could communicate with the president. The results of this study only examine one presidential child and her influence. Therefore, further research on the role of presidential children is called for. Preliminary research indicates that Julie Nixon Eisenhower was not the only presidential child to become actively involved in the political landscape during their father’s administration. For instance, Maureen Reagan was active politically during her father’s campaigns and administrations. Maureen toured the country and the world speaking on behalf of policies she supported. During her father’s eight years in the White House, Maureen also served as the co-chair of the Republican National Committee, chair of the United States delegation to the 1985 World Conference of the United Nations Decade for Women in Nairobi, Kenya, and was a United States representative to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. Another Reagan child highlights the fact that at times presidents must take action to protect their public image against the actions of their children. Patti Davis, the Reagan’s youngest daughter, for the eight years of the Reagan administration, actively made it known that she was in disagreement with almost all of her father’s policy choices. Patti was also open about her distant relationship with her parents, contradicting the public image the White House was trying to portray. As these two examples highlight, research on other presidential children would be beneficial to developing a greater understanding of their political functions. The final conclusion here is that Julie Nixon Eisenhower did perform methods of formal and informal influence on the institution of the presidency. Therefore, it is seen that presidential children
The Case for the Study of Presidential Children: Julie Nixon Eisenhower’s Role… 361 may not be formal players in the institution, but through personal influence they impact the institution nonetheless.
NOTES Author’s Note: I thank Charles Walcott, Karen Hult, and Anthony Nownes for their helpful comments and assistance. 1
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It should be noted that when the term “children” is used, it is to denote that each individual being studied is a direct offspring of the president in office at the time. It does not necessarily mean that the individual is under the age of eighteen. A 1998 study (Warters; Masters Thesis, Virginia Tech) displayed that presidential children are categorized into five different roles: symbols, surrogates, informal advisors/confidant(e)s, skeletons, and hybrids of the above. The study displayed that the roles varied by the age and sex of the presidential child, as well as the time period. The roles were not mutually exclusive and could be developmental as a person aged. Thus, as a child ages they can move from a symbol to an advisor as was seen in the case of Chelsea Clinton. Terry M. Moe, “Presidents, Institutions, and Theory,” Researching the Presidency, eds., George C. Edwards, John H. Kessel, and Bert A. Rockman (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993), 346. Ibid. Erwin Hargrove, quoted in Researching the Presidency, 8. See Samuel Kernell, Going Public: New Strategies of Presidential Leadership, 3rd ed. (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 1997). Gregory L. Hager and Terry Sullivan, “President-centered and Presidency-centered Explanations of Presidential Public Activity,” American Journal of Political Science 38, No. 4, (November 1994): 1079-1103. Betty Glad and Michael W. Link. “President Nixon’s Inner Circle of Advisers,” Presidential Studies Quarterly, Volume 26, 1996, 16. See Richard Neustadt’s Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents for a discussion on the need for modern presidents to use personal powers, especially the power to persuade. Robert P. Watson. The President’s Wives: Reassessing the Office of the First Lady (Boulder” Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2000). Robert P. Watson, “Toward the Study of the First Lady: The State of Scholarship,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 33, no. 2 (June 2003), 434-435. Ibid., 434. Pamela J. Zwaluwenburg, “First Partner: First Ladies and Their Roles,” Presidential Frontiers: Unexplored Issues in White House Politics. Ryan J. Barilleaux ed. (Westport, Conn: Praeger, 1998), 196. Karen O’Connor, Bernadette Nye, and Laura Ban Assendelft, “Wives in the White House: The Political Influence of First Ladies,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 26 no. 3 (1996), 836.
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Barbara Hinckley, The Symbolic Presidency: How Presidents Portray Themselves (New York: Routledge, 1990), 1. Doris A. Graber, “Personal Qualities in Presidential Images: The Contribution of the Press,” Midwest Journal of Political Science 16, no. 1 (February 1972), 46. George C. Edwards III. The Public Presidency: The Pursuit of Popular Support (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1983), 222-223. Lori Cox Han, Governing From Center Stage: White House Communication Strategies During the Television Age (Creskill, NJ: Hampton Press, Inc.), 2 Edwards, 1. See Jeffrey Tulis. “The Two Constitutional Presidencies,” in The Presidency and the Political System, 6th edition, ed. Michael Nelson (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2000): 91-123. Bruce Miroff, “The Presidency and the Public: Leadership as Spectacle,” in The Presidency and the Political System, 4th edition, ed. Michael Nelson (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 1995), 274. Ibid., 294. Quoted in Diane J. Heith, “Presidential Polling and the Potential for Leadership,” in Presidential Powers, eds., Shaprio, Kumar and Jacobs. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 400. Ibid., 399. See George C. Edwards III, The Public Presidency and Samuel Kernell, Going Public. For a discussion on the effect of media coverage of presidential children on the public approval of presidents see Mandi L. Bates and Tabitha Alissa Warters, “New Perspectives on the Public Relations Presidency: The News Media and the Influence of First Families,” originally presented at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association Meeting. April 25-28, 2002. Chicago, Illinois. Edwards, Kessel, and Rockman. Researching the Presidency, 11. Ibid., 12. Gary King, Robert Keohane, Sidney Verba. Designing Social Inquiry (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994). Lyn Ragsdale, “Personal Power and Presidents,” Presidential Power: Forging the Presidency for the Twenty-first Century. Robert Y. Shapiro, Martha Joynt Kumar, and Lawrence R. Jacobs eds. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 33. Some of the following material and evidence has been cited before in a Conference paper delivered by the author at the 1998 Southern Political Science Association Conference. William Safire. Before the Fall (Garden City, NY: Double Day and Co. Inc., 1975), 626. Ibid. John Ehrlichman. Witness to Power (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982), 55. Barbara Kellerman. All the President’s Kin (New York: The Free Press, 1981), 155. Stephen Ambrose. Nixon: Volume II 1962-1972, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989), 317. Ibid., 152. Julie Nixon Eisenhower, Interview with the author, February 3, 2002. Kellerman, 156.
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Kellerman, 157. Kellerman, 156. Gil Troy. Affairs of State (New York: The Free Press, 1997), 192. Julie Nixon Eisenhower, Interview with author, February 3, 2002. Ibid. Eisenhower, 227. Helen Thomas. Dateline: White House (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co. Inc., 1975), 185. Carl S. Anthony. First Ladies Volume II (New York: William Morrow and Co. Inc., 1991), 175-176. Julie Nixon Eisenhower, Interview with author, February 3, 2002. H.R. Haldeman, The Haldeman Diaries (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1994), 71. Thomas, 185. Ibid. Troy, 193. Haldeman, 298. Haldeman, 373. Troy, 194. Ibid. Ibid. Troy, 190. Richard M. Nixon. The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (Norwalk, Conn: Easton Press, 1978), 686-687. Haldeman, 554. Eisenhower, 408. Ibid. Madeleine Edmonson and Alden Cohen, Women of Watergate (New York: Stein and Day, 1975), 120. John Anthony Maltese. Spin Control: The White House Office of Communications and the Management of Presidential News, 2nd ed. (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 105. Lester David, The Lonely Lady of San Clemente (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Pub., 1978), 175. “Julie: Her Father’s Daughter,” Newsweek, 14 October 1974, 39. Time 19 August 1974, 36. “Julie: Her Father’s Daughter,” 39. Thomas, 204. David, 172. Ibid. Eisenhower, 422-423. Kellerman, 165. Safire, 626. Hinckley, 1. Hinckley, 5.
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Charles Stewart III, Analyzing Congress (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2001), 45.
In: White House Studies Compendium, Volume 4 Editor: R. W. Watson, pp. 365-375
ISBN: 1-60021-541-6 © 2007 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
TREATMENT OF THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE IN AMERICAN GOVERNMENT AND PRESIDENCY TEXTBOOKS Robert P. Watson, Anthony J. Eksterowicz, Charles Gleek and Sarah Brendel Andrews ABSTRACT Interest in the electoral college was renewed after the controversial presidential election of 2000. A number of scholars have debated the merits of the Framer’s creative invention for deciding presidential elections and the 2000 election controversy has received its fair share of attention, but it became clear that the nation – including the media and “expert” political pundits – needed a civics lesson on the workings of the electoral college. As part of a larger examination of how much Americans know about how the country elects a president, this article explores the manner in which leading textbooks on American government and the American presidency present the electoral college.
INTRODUCTION: DATELINE, NOVEMBER 7, 2000 November 7, 2000 was supposed to produce a president for the nation. What the controversial election initiated, among other things, was a national civics lesson. The postelection morass featured political pundits and even polished network anchors awkwardly trying to explain recounts, spoiled ballots, and chads changing, dimpled, pregnant, and the like. But, perhaps the story of the election, told by reporters over red and blue electoral maps and, at times, inaccurately, was the electoral college. Voters learned that Al Gore, the candidate with over one half million more popular votes than George W. Bush, was not the winner. The national civics lesson that accompanied the controversial presidential election revealed just how little the press, public, and experts knew about the electoral college. The mistakes by the Voter News Service, a consortium of major news organizations, in reading the exit polls were just the start. All five networks called Florida and the overall election prematurely not once but twice, prompting NBC’s Tom Brokaw to quip, We [the networks] don’t just have egg on our face, we have omelet. From there, questions began to arise: What was the electoral college? How does it work? Why was it invented and why is it still used? The media struggled to find commentators capable of answering these questions accurately.
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The political scientist and political commentator, Larry J. Sabato, ultimately summed up the fiasco as “political bloopers.” [1] Americans know little about the mechanics of the electoral college, and perhaps less about its origins. [2] This was apparent in the aftermath of the 2000 election and is probably well known by those teaching courses in political science or working in election administration. At the same time, public opinion polls reveal that the majority of citizens favor eliminating the electoral college, and many continue to state concerns about why it still exists and why it cannot be improved. Scholars, on the other hand, are bitterly divided on whether it works and whether it needs to be reformed. [3] Countless reforms have been advanced, but the electoral college remains intact. In fact, electoral college reform was not part of the election reform bill signed by President Bush in late 2002. Before a constructive dialog on the matter can take place, it is necessary to determine how much Americans know about the electoral college and how it is being presented in, among other places, university classrooms. The former endeavor is quite ambitious and is beyond the focus of this paper, which examines and evaluates the treatment of the electoral college in leading college textbooks in the fields of American government and the presidency.
FLUNKING THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE? The process by which the United States elects its president is different from the way every other elected official in the country is chosen. That much is clear. But, as to just how this process works, and whether or not it does work is quite another matter. Prominent scholars note that, Over the years, no other provision has drawn so much criticism or provoked so many constitutional amendments as has the electoral college clause [4]; and Few aspects of the American political system are more regularly or bitterly assailed than the electoral college. [5] One such assailant is the late political scientist and former presidential elector, Lawrence Longley, who called the electoral college deplorable. [6] The American Bar Association described it as nothing less than archaic, undemocratic, complex, ambiguous, indirect and dangerous. [7] Clearly, there is another side to the debate [8], but the controversy and questions surrounding the electoral college are undeniable. And this dates to its invention. In fact, in the two century-plus history of the electoral college, roughly 700 proposals to reform it have been introduced to Congress. James Wilson, a delegate to the Constitutional Convention from Pennsylvania, referred to the task of determining how to select a president as the most difficult issue of all on which we have to decide. [9] Indeed, the Framers struggled with the matter of choosing a president, pondering whether to give such a task to the Congress or directly to the people, or whether to develop some other means for electing the president. Various proposals were voted down at one point or another during the Convention. The resulting electoral college was the byproduct of compromise and the actions of a special committee charged with hammering out such unresolved concerns. Less an ideological invention, the electoral college was seen by the Framers as a practical solution to practical problems, an instrument adhering to the tenets of federalism, and a compromise between large and small states and other interests. [10] In fact, most Framers could not envision a presidential candidate besides Washington who could command a majority of votes. Under
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the electoral college scheme presidential selections by the Congress were expected to be somewhat normal. Of course, the development of a two-party system altered this expectation.
The Mechanics of the Electoral College It is perhaps easier to say what the electoral college is not rather than what it is. The electoral college is not a direct, popular election. When voters cast a vote for the president on Tuesday after the first Monday every fourth November, they are technically casting that vote for other people. These people - party leaders and loyalists, state and local officials - are known as electors and are selected according to means determined by the states. Technically, the state legislatures have the power to appoint electors directly, but in practice, this undertaking is given to the people through a variety of methods. The most common means found among the states for determining electors is for state conventions of the parties to nominate electors. In a few states the nomination of electors is made by state political committees, and, less rarely, the nomination of electors occurs in primary elections. Thus, the method of selecting electors varies from political party control to a small percentage of states that allow for voter control. The Constitution mandates that electors cannot be senators or representatives or any person holding an office of trust or profit under the United States. Most are party loyalists who remain virtually unknown to the average voter. The number of electoral votes each states receives is equal to the size of the state’s congressional delegation: the number of representatives plus two senators. Or, as is stated in the Constitution, each state shall appoint, in such manner as the legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the state may be entitled in Congress. “These electors then assemble in their respective state capitals to cast their vote for president. This date was originally set as the first Wednesday in December, but was changed by Congress in 1877 to the second Monday in January so as to allow for more time to reconcile electoral problems. The present arrangement calling for electors to cast their votes on Monday after the second Wednesday in December was set by Congress in 1934, after the ratification of Amendment XX, which moved the presidential inauguration from March 4 to January 20. Making things more confusing, some states require electors to cast their votes according to how the state voted, while others do not. This remains a contentious legal issue, as under the Constitution electors function as free agents, with the right to break with their states to cast a vote for another candidate. This has occurred historically, but there have been fewer than ten faithless electors in the post-World War II era. [11] Some states have enacted specific statutory provisions requiring electors to vote for the ticket of the party that nominated them while other states require electors to pledge that they will support their party’s candidate. The electoral college is often described as a winner-take-all system, whereby the candidate winning the most popular votes receives all the state’s electoral votes. The only exceptions to this are the states of Maine, which adopted in 1969 (it went into effect in 1972), and Nebraska, which adopted in 1992, a district system of granting their electoral votes. To win the presidency, a candidate needs to secure a majority - or 270 - of the 538 electors. In the event no candidate achieves this threshold, the House of Representatives selects the president among the top three candidates, with each state delegation casting one vote. A
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majority vote (26) in the House is therefore needed to win. Although the District of Columbia was granted electoral votes (not to exceed the amount held by the least populous state) by Amendment XXIII (1961), it has no role in this tie breaker mechanism.
Controversy and Complexity The election of 2000 was not the first time the outcome of the electoral college resulted in controversy. It has happened four times before. The election of 1800 produced a tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, who ran as a team. The tie had to be broken in the House of Representatives and required three-dozen ballots to reconcile. Even though Amendment XXII to the Constitution (1804) was designed to resolve such problems, only two decades would pass before another controversy. The 1824 election between John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson failed to produce a clear winner and, even though Jackson carried the popular vote, Adams won a majority in the House of Representatives. The winner of the popular vote would again lose the presidency in 1876, when a commission appointed to rectify an electoral controversy decided on behalf of Rutherford B. Hayes, who had fewer votes than his opponent Samuel Tilden. The controversy involved three southern states Louisiana, South Carolina, and, as fate would have it, Florida - all of whom had sent more than one slate of electors to Washington. For instance, in Florida the state high court had certified the Democratic contingent, while the governor had approved the Republican slate. The outcome of the electoral college hung in the balance over the votes of these three states, all of whom were awarded under suspicious circumstances to Hayes, the Republican candidate. Yet another discrepancy occurred in 1888 when Benjamin Harrison defeated Grover Cleveland despite winning fewer popular votes. The system the Framers created for determining a president has been criticized for being undemocratic, archaic, and advantageous for, to some critics, large states and, to other critics, small states. [12] It may not come as a surprise that the system has also been criticized for being too complex and misunderstood by the electorate.
METHODOLOGY To address the issue of how the electoral college is being presented in political science textbooks, two types of books were selected for analysis: general textbooks in American government/politics; and textbooks on the U.S. presidency. The American government texts are typically used in lower-division (freshman), introductory courses on the topic, whereas the presidency texts are typically used in upper-division (junior/senior) courses on the presidency, allowing us to examine texts at both levels. Leading texts in the field were selected. These are, for the most part, comprehensive texts, ranging from 600 to 700-plus pages for American government texts and from 300 to 400-plus pages for presidency texts. All are written by prominent scholars, recognized as experts in the field. As such, they represent the finest texts available for undergraduate students. A list of the textbooks used appears in Tables 1 and 2. Ten comprehensive, general American government texts and ten presidency texts were selected. Because books on the presidency are by definition specific to the presidency, an array was selected by the authors in an effort to diversify the type of books under analysis and
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gauge the treatment of the electoral college across the sub-field of presidential studies. This includes best sellers in the field (DiClerico; Pika et al), leading, comprehensive texts (Edwards and Wayne), shorter, concise volumes (Pfiffner), edited texts (Shapiro et al), and texts that focus on specific issues and themes in the presidency (Cronin and Genovese; Rose). Nonetheless, all of the presidency books selected are written or edited by respected scholars, are adopted as texts for classroom use, are well known books in the field, and, in our opinion, are excellent texts. So too are an array of publishers represented, including such leaders in the field as Allyn & Bacon, Congressional Quarterly, McGraw-Hill, Prentice Hall, Bedford/St. Martin’s, and so on. The texts are all recent publications, with most being released since the 2000 election. Table 1. American Government Textbooks Analyzed Barbour, Christine, and Gerald C. Wright. Keeping the Republic: Power and Citizenship in American Politics. 2001. New York: Houghton Mifflin. Burns, James MacGregor, J. W. Peltason, Thomas Cronin, and David B. Magleby.. 2001. Government by the People. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall. Edwards, George C. III, Martin Wattenberg, and Robert Lineberry. 2002. Government in America: People, Politics, and Policy. New York: Addison-Wesley. Fiorina, Morris P., and Paul E. Peterson. 2001. The New American Democracy. New York: Longman Publishers. Ginsberg, Benjamin, Theodore J. Lowi, and Margaret Weir. 1997. We the People: An Introduction to American Politics. New York: W.W. Norton. Greenberg, Edward S., and Benjamin I. Page. 2002. The Struggle for Democracy. New York: Longman Publishers. Kernell, Samuel, and Gary C. Jacobson. 2003. The Logic of American Politics. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Press. Schmidt, Steffen W., Mack C. Shelley II, and Barbara A. Bardes. 1997. American Government and Politics Today. Belmont, Calif.: Wasdworth Publishing. Sidlow, Edward, and Beth Henschen. 2000. America at Odds. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth. Wilson, James Q., and John J. DiIulio, Jr. 2001. American Government. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. These texts were analyzed for content by more than one of us in an effort to get as many eyes on the texts as possible and reduce any potential bias from one evaluator. Detailed notes were developed for each text concerning the data. Two levels of analysis were employed [13], both recognized as viable methods for performing content analysis. [14] The first level was manifest content analysis, which involved counting the total number of references to the electoral college, both general and specific. The authors also counted the number of paragraphs and pages where the topic was discussed, as well as any photographs, cartoons, figures, graphs, tables, footnotes, references, resources, and other materials devoted to the electoral college. The results are listed in Tables 3 and 4. The second level of analysis was latent content analysis, which involved assessing the depth and quality of coverage devoted to the electoral college. After reading the text, each was assigned to one of three categories of treatment: minimum; moderate; and maximum
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Cohen, Jeffrey, and David Nice. 2003. The Presidency. New York: McGraw-Hill. Cronin, Thomas E., and Michael A. Genovese. 1998. The Paradoxes of the American Presidency. New York: Oxford University Press. Daynes, Byron W., Raymond Tatalovich, and Dennis L. Soden. 1998. To Govern a Nation: Presidential Power and Politics. New York: St. Martin’s Press. DiClerico, Robert. 2000. The American President. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall. Edwards, George C. III, and Stephen J. Wayne. 2003. Presidential Leadership: Politics and Policy Making. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth. Pfiffner, James P.. The Modern Presidency. 2000. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s. Pika, Joseph A., John Anthony Maltese, and Norman C. Thomas. 2002. The Politics of the Presidency. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Press. Pious, Richard M.. 1996. The Presidency. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Rose, Richard. 1991. The Postmodern President: George Bush Meets the World. Chatham, N.J.: Chatham House Publishers. Shapiro, Robert Y., Martha Joynt Kumar, and Lawrence R. Jacobs, eds. 2000. Presidential Power: Forging the Presidency for the Twenty-First Century. New York: Columbia University Press. Table 3. References to the Electoral College (American Government Texts)
Text Barbour & Wright Burns et al Edwards et al Ginsberg et al Greenberg & Page Fiorina & Peterson Kernell & Jacobson Schmidt et al Sidlow & Henschen Wilson & DiIulio Averages
Refs. 39 67 41 21 39 75 23 36 28 17 38.6
Para. 15 30 14 12 15 22 12 24 12 18 17.4
Pages 3 5 3 3 3 3.7 2.5 5 2 3 3.32
Misc. 8 4 3 4 4 7 2 9 2 7
Key: Refs=Total references on the Electoral College Para=Total paragraphs on the Electoral College Pages=Total pages on the Electoral College Misc=Miscellaneous material on the Electoral College Text Size=Total number of pages in the book % of Text=Percentage of pages in book devoted to Electoral College Const=Does book include copy of Constitution?
Text Pages 880 584 769 854 647 784 622 762 640 703
% of Text 0.34 0.86 0.39 0.35 0.46 0.47 0.40 0.66 0.31 0.43
Const. Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
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Table 4. References to the Electoral College (Presidency Texts)
Text Cohen & Nice Cronin & Genovese Daynes et al DiClerico Edwards & Wayne Pfiffner Pika et al Pious Rose Shapiro et al Averages
Refs. 47 54 37 7 38 14 48 49 9 2 30.5
Para. 21 24 20 6 25 23 28 24 3 0 17.4
Pages 5.25 4.8 5 1.5 5 5.75 8 6 1 1 4.23
Misc. 2 5 3 2 3 0 5 5 2 0
Text Pages 482 446 367 414 576 242 458 544 397 541
% of Text 1.09 1.08 1.36 0.36 0.87 2.11 1.75 1.10 0.25 0.01
Const. Yes No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No
Key: Refs=Total references on the Electoral College Para=Total paragraphs on the Electoral College Pages=Total pages on the Electoral College Misc=Miscellaneous material on the Electoral College Text Size=Total number of pages in the book % of Text=Percentage of pages in book devoted to Electoral College Const=Does book include copy of Constitution?
ANALYSIS The results of manifest content analysis are listed in Tables 3 and 4. Four categories of information are analyzed by the authors: references; paragraphs, pages, and miscellaneous. The miscellaneous category includes photographs, cartoons, figures, graphs, tables, footnotes, references, resources, and other materials devoted to the electoral college. Because the electoral college has been the focus of and has been altered by numerous constitutional amendments, the authors felt that the inclusion of the Constitution (or at least the pertinent amendments and articles) in the book would assist students in learning about the electoral college. Whether or not the book includes a copy of the Constitution is also listed in the tables below. Because the length of the books under analysis varied, the total number of pages was also listed in the table. In order to compare books of varying size, the percentage of pages devoted to the electoral college was calculated and listed in the tables. What constitutes sufficient treatment of the electoral college? In order to adequately treat the electoral college, the authors believe it is necessary to present its basic mechanics and characteristics, design and important developments, and central debates and controversies. [14] Accordingly, the authors developed four criteria for the latent content analysis to determine the adequacy, depth, and quality of coverage: 1) the design by the Framers and continued development of the electoral college, with consideration to the reasons why it was invented; 2) the mechanics of how the electoral college works; 3) the real impact of the electoral college on presidential campaign strategies; and 4) the strengths and weaknesses of the electoral college, its controversies and contested elections, and proposed reforms.
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To be assigned to the maximum category, the text had to treat the topic in a systematic, sustained manner, providing examples and historical discussion of the electoral college, and meet all four criteria. Those texts meeting some of the four criteria or barely addressing each of the four without a sustained or systematic assessment were placed in the “moderate” category. This amount of coverage marks the threshold used to determine adequate treatment of the electoral college. Those failing to meet the criteria were placed in the “minimum” category. The results appear in Tables 5 and 6. Arrows listed next to the rating indicate that, in the judgment of the authors, a category is leaning in one direction or another toward the next category. For instance, a moderate classification could be leaning toward maximum and would be indicated by a forward (>) arrow. Table 5. Coverage of Electoral College (American Government Texts)
Text Barbour & Wright Burns et al Edwards et al Ginsberg et al Greenberg & Page Fiorina & Peterson Kernell & Jacobson Schmidt et al Sidlow & Henschen Wilson & DiIulio
Minimum
Levels of Treatment Moderate <X X> X> <X <X
Maximum
X <X X> X X
Note. Arrows indicate high (>) and low (<) scores within the three levels
Table 6. Coverage of Electoral College (Presidency Texts)
Text Cohen & Nice Cronin & Genovese Daynes et al DiClerico Edwards & Wayne Pfiffner Pika et al Pious Rose Shapiro et al
Minimum
Levels of Treatment Moderate
Maximum X
X> X> X X> X X X> X X
Note. Arrows indicate high (>) and low (low) scores within the three levels
The manifest content analysis indicates that, on average, the amount of references, paragraphs, and pages of the presidency texts devoted to the electoral college are quite similar to those found in the American government texts. American government texts have, on
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average, roughly eight more references than American presidency texts. This is quite remarkable (even discounting the somewhat larger size of the American government texts) considering the primary focus of the presidency texts on the presidency and the wide array of topics needing to be addressed in the American government texts. The latent content analysis indicates that very few texts in either category make the maximum designation. Only one American government and three presidency texts were assigned to the maximum category. In addition, more presidency texts than American government texts were leaning toward the maximum category, which would meet our expectation that the higher-division presidency texts would offer more sophisticated coverage to the topic. Also, very few texts were assigned to the minimum category. In general, it can be suggested that the leading texts in the fields treat the electoral college in a manner sufficient for it to be adequately understood by university students.
RECOMMENDATIONS Although it is beyond the scope of this article, the failure of government, educators, (some) textbooks, and the media to provide accurate and helpful information on the electoral college might be contributing to the growing distrust Americans demonstrate for politics and government in general, and the electoral system in particular. [16] It is possible that public attitudes toward the electoral college would be influenced by the nature and extent of coverage in textbooks (at least among those individuals educated in college, directly, and indirectly through the dissemination of more accurate and comprehensive information on the electoral college by those exposed to the texts). If so, from the sample of leading texts analyzed in this article one would anticipate an adequate understanding of the electoral college. Moreover, the textbooks are neither overtly critical nor supportive of the electoral college; rather, the coverage is fair and balanced. An exception is that textbooks tend to emphasize the Framers’ distrust of the public to a degree that distorts the other pressing concerns they had regarding the question of how to select a president. Overall, the authors of the texts under analysis do an admirable job in presenting the electoral college. A few do an outstanding job (those in the maximum category and those in the moderate category designated as leaning to maximum), especially and perhaps not surprisingly some of the presidency texts. It is a challenge for general American government texts to cover the topic thoroughly, given their charge of presenting such a wide array of topics for an introductory readership. However, most of them cover other topics in the field in great detail and in considerable length. Moreover, all students - not just the political science majors enrolled in presidency courses are prospective voters and need to be educated about how presidents are chosen. Accordingly, we believe these American government texts could increase the extent and depth of their treatment of the electoral college. The coverage was impressive for such presidency texts as Cohen and Nice (The Presidency), Pfiffner (The Modern Presidency), and Pika, Maltese, and Thomas (The Politics of the Presidency). So too do the DiClerico (The American President), Edwards and Wayne (Presidential Leadership), and Pious (The Presidency) books do a worthy job of presenting the electoral college to students. All these books also present the material in an easy to understand manner that is suitable for undergraduates. Students reading them would be well
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educated about the electoral college. Given the fact that the Cronin and Genovese (The Paradoxes of the American Presidency) and Daynes, Tatalovich, and Soden (To Govern a Nation) books focused on a specific facet of the presidency (which was not the electoral college), they do a most admirable and thorough job in covering the topic. While we admit that it is difficult to compare books on the presidency - edited volumes and those with a more narrow focus on an area of the presidency - it is nonetheless worth consideration. This is the case with the edited volume by Shapiro, Kumar, and Jacobs and the book by Rose, books that otherwise present worthy studies of their subject at hand but do not discuss the electoral college. The electoral college would appear to be beyond their scope and objectives. Given the interest in and significance of the electoral college’s misfire in 2000, one might expect an even more detailed treatment of it in forthcoming presidency (and perhaps American government) texts, including updated editions of the books under analysis. Moreover, even those books with narrower topics and audiences might find it necessary to incorporate some discussion of the topic. The subject, after all, lends itself to being treated in numerous places within the text, as it touches upon many topics beyond elections and even the presidency. For instance, it pertains to the nation’s founding, the Constitution, civil liberties and the expansion of suffrage rights, Supreme Court politics, presidential campaigns, elections, and so on. We recommend the electoral college be integrated within a broader range of topics in American government and American presidency texts, and college curricula, due to its importance. In addition, we would suggest coupling this treatment of the electoral college with the philosophy that founded the institution and the historical misfires. The misfired elections would also lend themselves well to case studies. It is likely that many instructors have witnessed an increased interest by students in the electoral college. From an obscure topic, seemingly more applicable for a trivia contest from a student’s perspective, it has, for better or for worse, captured the world’s attention. We admit to being pleased with the growing interest in the wake of the 2000 election controversy in the electoral college by students. The election controversy not only provides textbook authors and instructors with a host of important and interesting examples that touch upon many topics, but an opportunity to speak to an attentive audience. Indeed, one would expect and should demand that coverage on the electoral college improve after 2000, as students, instructors, and textbook publishers respond to the applicability of the topic.
NOTES 1
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3
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Larry J. Sabato. Overtime! The Election 2000 Thriller. New York: Longman Publishers, 2002, p. 111. Thomas E. Cronin. “Forward: The Electoral College Controversy,” in Judith A. Best, ed., The Choice of the People? Debating the Electoral College. Lanham, M.d.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996, p. viii. Judith A. Best. The Choice of the People? Debating the Electoral College. Lanham, M.d.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996; Lawrence D. Longley and Neal R. Peirce. The Electoral College Primer 2000. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1999. Shlomo Slomin. “Designing the Electoral College,” in Thomas E. Cronin, ed, Inventing the American Presidency. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1989, p. 3.
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Richard J. Ellis, ed. Founding the American Presidency. Lanham, M.d.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999, p. 110. Lawrence D. Longley. “The Electoral College Should Be Abolished,” in Robert E. DiClerico and Allan S. Hammock, eds., Points of View: Readings in American Government and Politics. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 1998, p. 93. As quoted in Judith Best, The Choice of the People? p. 5. See Best, The Choice of the People? The James Wilson quote comes from the Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, at 501, edited by Max Farrand. The Records of the Federal Convention, 4 vols. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1937. Cronin, “Forward”; Abner Greene. Understanding the 2000 Election. New York: New York University Press, 2001; Longley and Pierce, The Electoral College Primer. For instance, in 1988 an elector from West Virginia switched the order of the Democratic ticket by voting for Lloyd Bensten/Michael Dukakis. Best, The Choice of the People? This methodology has been used before by the authors to examine textbooks. See Anthony J. Eksterowicz and Robert P. Watson. “Treatment of First Ladies in American Government and Presidency Textbooks: Overlooked, Yet Influential Voices,” PS: Political Science & Politics 23, 3 (September 2000): 589-595. Earl Babbie. The Practice of Social Research. Belmont, Calif: Wadsworth, 1983. There were many useful sources consulted by the authors in developing a list of the most important characteristics of the electoral college. These include Best, 1996; Cronin, Thomas E., ed. 1989. Inventing the American Presidency. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas; Ellis, 1999; Farrand, 1937; Longley and Peirce, 1999; Slonin, Shlomo. 1986. “The Electoral College at Philadelphia,” Journal of American History 73 (June): 35-38; as well as the Constitution and amendments to the Constitution. Wilson Carey McWilliams. “The Meaning of the Election,” in Gerald M. Pomper, ed., The Election of 2000. New York: Chatham House, 2001.
In: White House Studies Compendium, Volume 4 Editor: R. W. Watson, pp. 377-392
ISBN: 1-60021-541-6 © 2007 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
BUREAUS IN MOTION: CIVIL SERVANTS COMPARE THE CLINTON, G.H.W. BUSH, AND REAGAN PRESIDENTIAL TRANSITIONS Robert Maranto ABSTRACT Much has been written about presidential transitions, but none have studied presidential transitions in the bureaucracy while a transition was under way. To study the 1993 William Clinton transition in the permanent bureaucracy, this paper presents insights from 55 interviews conducted in 1993, followed with data from a 1993-1994 mail survey of 1472 GM 15 and Senior Executive Service (SES) level career officials serving in the Washington offices of 20 federal agencies. Despite high personnel turnover in the study period, a 42 percent (n=612) response rate was achieved. Interviews and survey data suggest that relations between career bureaucrats and political appointees in the bureaucracy are determined by an agency's goal congruence/conflict with a presidential administration (and political party); thus defense careerists report smooth transitions under Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, but a rockier Clinton transition. Career executives from traditionally liberal social welfare and regulatory agencies, in contrast, report relatively good career-noncareer relations under Clinton, with more conflict in the first Bush administration and far more conflict with the Reagan administration. Still, all career executives saw the Clinton transition as disorganized.
INTRODUCTION For so long as a tenured civil service has existed, presidential transitions have concerned federal bureaucrats, particularly after one political party dominated the White House for a long period. The 1913 transition ended 16 years of Republican rule, leading to Democratic calls for patronage from and control of the heavily GOP civil service. In the 1933 transition, President Franklin Roosevelt distrusted tenured careerists, few of whom had served Democrats, and accordingly created his own agencies staffed outside the merit system to implement the New Deal. As the first post - New Deal presidential transition, the 1953 Dwight D. Eisenhower transition was even more traumatic. The administration imposed the first reductions in force (RIFs) on domestic agencies and inaugurated the "Schedule C" personnel category to increase the number of formal political appointees. For the first time, many appointees not only distrusted the civil service, but also opposed the very missions of some agencies. Since the Roosevelt and Eisenhower transitions, Republicans have often opposed activist domestic agencies, pruning staffs, cutting budgets, and empowering political appointees. Democrats have never opposed agencies, but have not always trusted old-line
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agencies to carry out innovative policies. Accordingly, they create new organizations (initially outside the merit system) to implement new policies.1 Save perhaps in 1981, recent transitions have been more sedate, in part since from 1952 until 1988 no political party won three consecutive presidential elections. Alternating the presidency each four or eight years reduces pent - up demand for patronage and gives each party a store of "in-and-outers" with experience in the U.S. executive. In-and-outers tend to trust career bureaucrats more than Washington newcomers do, since they have worked with careerists.2 In addition, when one party dominates any branch of government for long, party conflict becomes institutional conflict with partisans supporting the branch they dominate and opposing the structural power of the other.3 Much has been written about presidential transitions, but the most prominent works focus on the macro politics of managing the White House and relations with Congress, political parties, the media, and the public.4 There is now a substantial literature on the ever-growing difficulties of making political appointments5 and on presidential appointment strategies.6 Only a few works, however, discuss relations between political appointees and career bureaucrats during a presidential transition, and these studies depend on subjects’ ability to recall career-noncareer relations long after the fact.7 This paper furthers our understanding of presidential transitions by comparing the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton transitions in the federal executive, with a particular focus on the role of political ideology in determining how career government executives view a given White House and its political appointees. The analysis took two parts. First, I conducted 55 Washington interviews from February to August 1993, including 46 with career civil servants, political appointees, and military officers familiar with the functioning of 27 federal agencies. (See Appendix.) The interviews and the scholarly literature suggest a number of propositions, which are then tested with data from a 1993-1994 survey of 1,472 federal 1
See, for example C. M. Brauer, Presidential Transitions: Eisenhower through Reagan (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986); P.P. Van Riper, History of the United States Civil Service (Evanston: Row, Peterson, 1959). For Republican presidents in particular, see R. Maranto, “The administrative strategies of Republican presidencies from Eisenhower to Reagan,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 23 (1993): 683-697. 2 J.E. Michaels, The President’s Call (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997); J.P. Pfiffner, The Strategic Presidency: hitting the ground running (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1996); D. Schultz and R. Maranto, The Politics of Civil Service Reform (New York: Peter Lang, 1998). Regarding pent-up demands for patronage, the author found many Democrats in Washington in spring 1993 anxiously awaiting “the call” to join the Clinton administration. With Republicans holding the White House for 20 of the previous 24 years, some Democrats feared this might be their last chance to join the executive branch. 3 T.M. Moe, “The Politicized Presidency,” p. 235-71 In J. Chubb & P. Peterson (Eds.) The New Direction in American Politics (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1985); R. Maranto, Politics and Bureaucracy in the Modern Presidency: careerists and appointees in the Reagan administration (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993). 4 See, for example Brauer, op.cit., Pfiffner, op.cit., L.L. Henry, Presidential Transitions (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1960); P. C. Light, The President’s Agenda (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983). 5
S.L. Carter, The Confirmation Mess (New York: Basic Books, 1994); G.C. Mackenzie & R.L. Shogun, Obstacle Course (New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1996); G.C. Mackenzie with M. Hafken, Scandal Proof: Do Ethics Laws Make Government Ethical? (Washington: Brookings Institution, 2002). 6 R.G. Brown, “Party and Bureaucracy: from Kennedy to Reagan,” Political Science Quarterly 97: 2, 279-94 (1982); R. P. Nathan, The Administrative Presidency (New York: John Wiley, 1983); G.C. Mackenzie, The In-and-Outers (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987); R. Rector and M. Sanera, (eds.) Steering the Elephant: How Washington Really Works (New York: Universe Books, 1987); T.J, Weko, The Politicizing Presidency (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995). 7 H. Heclo, A Government of Strangers (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1977); P. Lorentzin, “Stress in CareerPolitical Executive Relations,” Public Administration Review 45; 3: 411-14 (1985); Pfiffner, op.cit.; R. Maranto, “Coping with your political boss,” Government Executive (November 1997) 29: 11; p. 72-3.
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executives. Survey data indicate that the Clinton transition was less organized than those of its Republican predecessors, and that ideological goal conflict determines the tone of presidential transitions in individual bureaucracies.
COMPARING THE REAGAN, BUSH, AND CLINTON TRANSITIONS Considerable research suggests that career-noncareer relations in the U.S. executive are at least partly determined by the goal conflict/congruence between an administration and sectors of federal agencies,8 and this was particularly true for the Reagan administration. Despite the President’s anti-government reputation, evidence suggests that in defense agencies careernoncareer relations started well and stayed that way during both Reagan terms. Career and noncareer officials in the Reagan Pentagon agreed on agency goals and had fairly similar ideologies. Most Pentagon careerists voted for Reagan, and a vast majority considered themselves moderate or conservative. In domestic agencies, in contrast, relations started badly. By 1983, political appointees perceived improved relations and came to trust their career subordinates, perhaps since the most liberal careerists left or were marginalized. In addition, the most controversial Reagan appointees were forced out of the administration by 1985, improving career-noncareer relations in the affected agencies. In most domestic agencies, however, careerists perceived career-noncareer relations as starting badly and staying that way.9 Interviews and published sources suggested that the Bush transition in most agencies was smooth because the administration did relatively little to change government, and respected the civil service. About one-third of Reagan appointees (mostly those with Bush credentials) stayed on in the new administration, though sometimes in different jobs. President Bush lacked an activist agenda, so bureaucrats faced a fairly stable policy climate. Perhaps most important, President Bush respected the civil service, praising the high level career Senior Executive Service (SES) in particular, and signing a law to raise pay and reform federal compensation. Indeed, Bush’s first official speech as president was before an audience of career SES, a sharp contrast with the Reagan administration.10 In contrast, observers have noted a rocky Clinton transition in the bureaucracy. The president himself, one aid remarked, was someone who could “have a 10-minute meeting in two hours.” This translated into a presidential transition which presidential scholar James P. Pfiffner characterized as “hitting the ground walking.”11 Similarly, Aberbach and Rockman
8 J.D. Aberbach and B.A. Rockman, In the Web of Politics (Washington: Brookings Institution, 2000). 9
Regarding regulatory agencies, see R.A. Harris and S.M. Milkis, The Politics of Regulatory Change (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); for regulatory and social welfare agencies see I.S. Rubin, Shrinking the Federal Government (New York: Longman, 1985); for natural resources agencies see R. Durant, The Administrative Presidency Revisited (Albany: SUNY Press, 1992); for a broad range of organizations, including defense agencies, see Maranto, Politics and Bureaucracy, op.cit. 10 See, for example, R. Maranto, “Government Service is a Noble Calling: President Bush and the U.S. Civil Service,” p. 97-108 in L.D. Feldman and R. Perotti Honor and Loyalty: Inside the Politics of the George H.W. Bush White House (Westport: Greenwood, 2002), as well as J.E. Michaels op.cit. and Michaels’ “George Bush’s People in Washington---or, How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love (or at least respect) the Government,” p. 109-27 in Feldman and Perotti. Notably, Bush’s speech before the SES was widely criticized by conservatives, including some in his own administration. See J. Podhoretz, Hell of a Ride: Backstage at the White House Follies, 1989-1993 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993). 11 J.P. Pfiffner, op.cit. p. 148-49.
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write that in contrast to the Bush administration, the Clinton administration “wanted to spring into action, but could articulate neither where nor how to do so.”12 Given his party's long absence from the presidency, President Clinton had relatively few experienced Democrats to call on for appointments.13 Not surprisingly, interviews suggest that those who were appointed did not always know how to relate to their predecessors, nor to careerists. Relations in the pre - inauguration period were unusually difficult in one agency key to Clinton policy - making, since designated appointees had orders from Arkansas not to interact with careerists or Bush appointees in the transition period, an unusual degree of distrust. Unlike President Bush, President Clinton had very little Washington experience. In fact, since the Arkansas state government has only a handful of appointed positions, Bill Clinton had never before appointed numbers of officials, and had difficulty making appointment decisions. As one Arkansan “Friend of Bill” said in an interview: In policy decisions, you can go on reforming, revising, adding to, taking from, before, during and after you submit it. After all, the legislature is going to change it anyway. Whereas once you put a person in place, well, you can remove them, but it has a different kind of permanence to it. If you look at every president over time its taking longer and longer to make appointments. If you add to that Clinton's absolute determination to achieve diversity in appointments, it means you can't appoint people one at a time, you have to appoint a team to make it look like America...because he is a policy wonk he has worked personally with hundreds of policy experts in education, welfare, health, and other policy areas. He personally knows people in every network, think tank, and state, and this is a very personal administration. It's not so much trouble identifying expertise as having to collect all those who might be good and clearing all the hoops and figuring out who to actually appoint.
President Clinton was determined to appoint a diverse team, and indeed his appointees were 15 percent African American, 6 percent Hispanic, and 46 percent female.14 Interviews suggest that Clinton's emphasis on ethnic, gender, and geographic (or "EGG") diversity grated many high level careerists – the vast majority of whom remain white males.15 This seemed particularly true in the Pentagon, where many questioned the competence of Clinton appointees. A number of other factors slowed the pace of appointments. President Clinton appointed his personnel chief, former South Carolina governor Richard Riley, Secretary of Education. Clinton took more than a month before replacing him with Arkansan Bruce Lindsay in the week before the inauguration, a key time. The economic summit and the controversies over the Attorney General appointment and gays in the military also distracted the administration from making appointments.16 The slow pace of appointments was not entirely a function of Clinton's party, decisions, and style, however. As the above interview notes, each recent president has taken longer than his predecessor to finish appointments, in part due to a more skeptical media and Congress, and to ever growing ethics regulations. While John Kennedy took only two months to get
12 13 14 15
16
Aberbach and Rockman, op.cit., p. 40. J.A. Barnes, “Changing Company Town,” National Journal, February 4, 1989, 278-82. Schultz and Maranto, op.cit., p. 202. J. Dolan, “The Senior Executive Service: Gender, Attitudes, and Representative Bureaucracy,” Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 10 (2000):3, 513-29. Schultz and Maranto, op.cit. pp. 199-203.
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nearly all of his administrative team on board, for Bill Clinton nine months barely sufficed.17 Indeed, numerous modern political appointees have written books about the horror of the Washington appointment process and government service, books whose titles say it all: Are You Tough Enough? (by Reagan Environmental Protection Agency chief Anne Burford), Leaving Town Alive (by Bush National Endowment for the Arts Chair John Frohnmayer), and Locked in the Cabinet (by Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich).18 Of course, bureaucratic habits may also explain transition difficulties. Career bureaucrats value stability and predictability, and presidential transitions offer neither. As two longtime SES explained in interviews: It's been twelve years since we've had a real transition because one Reagan term to another was nothing and from Reagan to Bush was not radical...Who was around back in 1980? For the SES, there's nothing to compare it with unless they have very good memories...In [a regulatory agency] literally there were people who went out the day after the election and changed their voting registration. It was amazing! The naiveté! Did they really think that would protect them? This transition, I think, is more comparable to the Reagan transition in `81 than to the Bush transition. These folks come in with an ax to grind... Personally, I think the Bush appointees supported the civil service. The Reagan and Clinton people just wanted change no matter what.
Finally, simple goal conflict-congruence might explain the nature of career-noncareer relations in the Clinton transition.19 Interviews suggest that in activist social welfare and regulatory agencies, many officials seemed pleased to serve a Democratic administration likely to support enhanced roles for their agencies. In contrast, some defense careerists (and military officers) were disturbed to serve a president seen as a former draft - dodger opposing military missions and budgets. In the early Cold War years both parties supported the Pentagon, indeed the Democrats often supported defense budgets more than Republicans. Vietnam undermined that support among liberal Democrats, though this was not reflected in Carter administration defense policies. The 1992 election, however, brought the first "1960's Democrat" to the White House, along with relatively young appointees more likely to have protested Vietnam than to have served there. The eruption of the gays in the military issue in the first weeks of the administration underscored these tensions. The slowness of Clinton defense appointments was a factor; during the Cold War the Pentagon was of such importance that its appointments were put on board quickly. The off - again, on - again Bosnia and Somalia policies also undermined Pentagon morale. The above discussions suggest the following hypotheses, which are tested below: H1: In all agencies, the Clinton transition will be seen as less organized than the Republican transitions.
17
See Carter, op.cit.; Mackenzie and Shogun, op.cit. R. Maranto, “Coping With Your Political Boss,” op.cit. 19 There is a substantial literature on how ideological goal conflict influences career-non-career relations in the bureaucracy, including Aberbach and Rockman op.cit., Maranto, Politics and Bureaucracy, op.cit.; M.M. Golden, What Motivates Bureaucrats? (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000). 18
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H2: Defense careerists are ideologically closer to Republican appointees than to Clinton appointees. H3: Social welfare and regulatory careerists are ideologically closer to the Clinton appointees than to the Republican appointees, particularly the Reagan appointees. H4: Defense careerists see the Clinton transition as having more conflict than either the Republican transitions. H5: Social welfare and regulatory careerists see the Clinton transition as having less conflict than the Republican transitions.
METHOD From April through October 1993, I requested (often repeatedly) lists of career GM-15 and SES level officials serving in the Washington offices of 22 federal agencies. These agencies were chosen to represent regulatory, defense, social welfare, and miscellaneous policy areas, and to represent organizations whose personnel slots were notably increased, decreased, and kept stable in the relatively tumultuous early Reagan years – a good measure of accordance with Reagan administration goals. (See Maranto 1993, pp. 159-61 for details.) Notably, this sample is not representative of the federal service for a number of reasons. Agencies with controversial social welfare and regulatory missions are over-represented. Second, since officials are at executive levels (GM-15 and SES) and serve in Washington, their jobs are typically more "political" and less "technical" than are lower level positions and those in field offices. From November 1993 through January 1994, a first wave of surveys with stamped, return envelopes were sent; with a second round following from February to May 1994. Where large numbers of GM-15 and SES officials served in the Washington offices of an agency, a random sample of 120 was sampled. Not counting returned surveys sent to officials no longer serving in government, the sample totaled 1472 career SES and GM-15's. A 42 percent return rate was achieved (n=612), somewhat above the 36 percent typical for mail surveys.20 Notably, high turnover in the higher civil service in the study period, estimated at 11 percent, suggests that the actual return rate exceeds 45 percent. Turnover occurred since civil servants received a large pay-raise under President Bush in 1991, providing incentives to retire in 1994 on reaching the “high threes.”21
20 21
D.A. Dillman, Mail and Telephone Surveys: The Total Design Method. (New York: John Wiley, 1978). T. Shoop, “Exodus,” Government Executive. 26 (1994): 42-47.
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Table 1. Return rates by agency Defense ARPA OSD NAVY TOTAL Social Welfare HUD HRSA FNS ACF TOTAL Regulatory OSM IRS CPSC NHTSA OSHA FWS TOTAL Other NSF FTA USFS NPS SCS OPM FEMA TOTAL GRAND TOTAL
Sent 67 129 90 286
Returned 19 74 44 137
Percent 28 57 49 48
114 77 26 67 284
49 23 16 26 114
43 30 62 39 40
23 60 43 114 55 69 364
10 24 17 52 13 38 154
43 40 40 46 24* 55 44
120 57 21 49 63 108 120 538 1472
21 18 7 23 34 44 60 207 612
18** 32 33 47 54 41 50 39 42
*OSHA had internal distribution problems which delayed delivery of surveys for over two months. **NSF was moving to new offices and was unable to furnish updated addresses.
TESTING THE HYPOTHESES Problems Particular to the Clinton Transition H1 suggests that the Clinton transition was less organized than the 1981 and 1989 versions. As Table 2 suggests, bureaucrats did indeed believe this true. In defense and to a lesser degree other agency types, the
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Robert Maranto Table 2. "The transition in my agency was well organized" by agency type A. Reagan Administration 1. DEF. OTHER agree 50% 43 disagree 23 30 B. Bush Administration. DEF. OTHER agree 55% 43 disagree 20 25 C. Clinton Administration. DEF. OTHER agree 12% 19 disagree 70 57
ACTIVIST 41 30
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ACTIVIST 37 31
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D.F 8
ACTIVIST 8 71
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Reagan and Bush agency level transitions were seen as fairly well organized. In contrast, overwhelming majorities in all agencies saw the Clinton transition as poorly organized on the agency level. Of course, the relatively low grades given the Clinton administration may reflect its recency; quite possibly, the Bush and Reagan administrations would have rated no better in their first year. Notably, as interviews suggest, the mainly white male higher civil service did indeed believe that the Clinton administration strongly emphasized diversity in appointments. By 5313 percent, career officials disagreed that the Reagan White House “emphasized gender or ethnic diversity in making appointments; a narrow 38-31 percent plurality agreed that the Bush administration did emphasize diversity. In sharp contrast, by an 82-7 percent margin career officials saw the Clinton administration as emphasizing diversity. Indeed, many careerists wrote comments to the effect that the Clinton administration put too much emphasis on diversity. A 57-22 percent majority of defense officials, a 39-38 percent plurality in other agencies, and a 44-31 percent plurality even in activist agencies supported “less stress on diversity in appointments." The survey did not ask race or gender in order to safeguard the anonymity of respondents, an omission necessary since the high level civil service is in many agencies overwhelmingly white and male; thus we cannot know how opinions vary by race or gender.
Goal Congruence H2 and H3 suggest that domestic careerists, particularly those in social welfare and regulatory agencies (henceforth referred to as activist agencies), are ideologically closer to the Clinton administration than to the GOP administrations, particularly the Reagan administration. Self - reported 1992 presidential voting suggests this, with President Bush outpolling Governor Clinton and Ross Perot among defense careerists by 48-32-10 percent (with others choosing no answer). In contrast, Bush lost among career executives in activist agencies, winning only 14 percent compared to Clinton’s 67 percent and 8 percent for Perot. Bush also lost in miscellaneous (other) agencies, by 20-69-4 percent.
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Self-reported ideology tells the same story. Careerists were asked to rate their own ideology on a scale from 1 (very conservative) to 7 (very liberal), and to do the same for Reagan, Bush, and Clinton political appointees. IDDIF for each administration was calculated by subtracting the ideology rating of each set of political appointees from the self-rating for careerists: thus a 0 IDDIF means no difference between political appointees and higher numbers mean careerists are more liberal than appointees. Table 2 shows that for each Reagan administration, defense officials saw themselves as having ideals fairly close to those of Table 3. IDDIF across administrations and agencies: Percentage of careerists who consider their ideals within one unit of political appointee ideals
REAGAN1 REAGAN2 BUSH CLINTON
DEF. 53% 58 69 39
OTHER 33 38 55 44
ACTIVIST 25 27 43 58
SIGN. .00082 .00052 .02283 .22653
CHI. SQ 51.83365 50.41495 34.51693 26.61154
D.F 24 22 20 22
Reagan appointees; for the Bush administration the figure rose further to 69 percent, but for the Clinton administration this plummeted to 39 percent. In contrast, only about a quarter of those in activist domestic agencies and a third of those in other domestic agencies rated their ideals as close to those of Reagan appointees. For the Bush administration this was true of 55 percent of other careerists and 43 percent of activist careerists. For the Clinton administration only 44 percent of other officials saw themselves as ideologically close to appointees, but for activist agencies the figure was 58 percent. Ideological divisions across agency types were highly statistically significant for the ideological Reagan administration, and particularly weak for the Clinton administration, perhaps since ideological divisions with Clinton appointees were not completely apparent by the time of the survey. Similar findings come from answers to "Political appointees and career executives agreed on agency goals." As Table 4 shows, large majorities of defense careerists saw career noncareer goal agreement in the Reagan years; slightly smaller majorities agreed for the Bush administration, perhaps because of the strains of developing a post-Cold War foreign policy, and because of the Gulf War, Somalia, and Bosnia. (I say this since, as is noted above, Bush political appointees were actually seen as ideologically closer to defense bureaucrats than were Reagan appointees.) Still, a two-thirds majority saw relative goal congruence under Bush, compared with a two-to-one plurality of defense careerists who saw discord with Clinton appointees. Domestic careerists tell a very different story. More than two-thirds of those in other agencies saw perceived goal conflict with Reagan appointees. A slight plurality saw goal agreement with Bush appointees. A slightly larger plurality saw agreement with Clinton appointees. Most dramatically, in activist agencies large majorities saw discord with the Reagan administrations and a plurality saw discord with the Bush administration. In contrast, pluralities saw agreement with Clinton appointees. Of course, for all agencies it was difficult for officials to rate the still new Clinton administration. Not surprisingly, 35 percent of officials chose the neutral position (3) on this question for the Clinton administration, as compared to 25 percent for the Bush administration and 15 percent for the first Reagan administration.
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Robert Maranto Table 4. "Political appointees and career executives agreed on agency goals" by agency type A. Reagan Administration 1 DEF. OTHER agree 78% 28 disagree 9 57 B. Reagan Administration 2 DEF. OTHER agree 81% 29 disagree 7 49 C. Bush Administration DEF. OTHER agree 66% 40 disagree 14 35 D. Clinton Administration DEF. OTHER agree 20% 43 disagree 43 24
ACTIVIST 20 65
SIGN. .00000
CHI. SQ 128.95511
D.F 8
ACTIVIST 20 59
SIGN. .00000
CHI. SQ 128.95511
D.F 8
ACTIVIST 30 42
SIGN. .00000
CHI. SQ 60.11916
D.F 8
ACTIVIST 39 24
SIGN. .00047
CHI. SQ 28.04303
D.F 8
In short, H2 and H3 are confirmed. There was relatively high ideological congruence and goal agreement between defense careerists and Republican administrations, but not with the Clinton administration. Activist domestic agencies, on the other hand, had greater ideological and goal agreement with Clinton appointees. Interestingly, other domestic agencies had greater ideological accord with the relatively moderate and experienced Bush administration appointees than with either Clinton or (especially) Reagan appointees, though they saw slightly more career-noncareer agreement on agency missions with the Clinton appointees.
Career-Noncareer Relations Across Transitions H4 and H5 suggest that defense careerists perceive the Clinton transition as more difficult than the 1981 and 1989 versions; domestic careerists, particularly in activist agencies, are expected to find relations easier under Clinton appointees than under the Republicans. A number of variables can be used to measure this, including simple ratings of career-noncareer relations, perceptions of trust and respect, and whether appointees seemed to represent the White House to the agency or the other way round. Table 5 tends to confirm H4 and H5. Three quarters of defense careerists perceive good relations in the last two years of the Reagan administration. These figures fall to two-thirds in the first year of the Bush administration, recover, then again dip again in 1992, and tumble in 1993. While two-thirds to three-fourths of defense careerists perceive good relations under the GOP, only a 35-32 percent plurality sees good career-noncareer relations under Clinton. For other domestic agencies, small pluralities saw relations as good or excellent in the last two years of the Reagan administration; these pluralities increased slightly in each of the first three years of the Bush administration, and in the first year of the Clinton administration.
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Table 5. Percentage of careerists rating career-noncareer relations as good/excellentfair/poor, across agency types. Missing cases not included.
1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993
DEF 77-6 75-7 65-6 69-6 73-4 64-12 35-32
Other 41-30 39-31 46-26 50-23 57-22 54-23 57-16
Activist 30-39 29-34 44-23 44-17 44-23 44-24 43-23
In activist agencies, results were comparable. Pluralities saw relations as poor in the Reagan administration. In each year of the Bush administration roughly two-to-one pluralities saw relations as good, and this did not change in the Clinton administration. In short, in domestic agencies from year one of the Bush administration career-noncareer relations seemed sound. The same was true in the first year of the Clinton administration. In contrast, defense career-noncareer relations were sound throughout the Republican administrations, but poor under Clinton. As Table 6 shows, measures of career-noncareer trust tell a similar story. Solid majorities of defense careerists trusted GOP appointees, but solid pluralities did not trust Clinton appointees. Domestic agencies are very different. Especially in activist agencies, pluralities or majorities did not trust Reagan appointees. A majority of other careerists trusted Bush appointees, and a comparable plurality trusted Clinton appointees as well. For activist agencies, equal numbers trusted and distrusted Bush appointees, but a plurality trusted Clinton appointees. Table 6. "I trusted the appointees in my agency" by agency type A. Reagan Administration 1 DEF. OTHER agree 61% 33 disagree 17 51 B. Reagan Administration 2 DEF. OTHER agree 59% 37 disagree 14 43 C. Bush Administration DEF. OTHER agree 60% 54 disagree 16 30 D. Clinton Administration DEF. OTHER agree 33% 47 disagree 41 24
ACTIVIST 26 62
SIGN. .00000
CHI. SQ 69.03221
D.F 8
ACTIVIST 25 58
SIGN. .00000
CHI. SQ 69.28156
D.F 8
ACTIVIST 40 41
SIGN. .00000
CHI. SQ 42.56532
D.F 8
ACTIVIST 38 23
SIGN. .00048
CHI. SQ 27.98103
D.F 8
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Cross agency differences were particularly notable in the Reagan administration, somewhat less so for the Bush administration, and still less so for the first year of the Clinton administration. Table 7. "When first appointed, noncareer executives did not trust agency careerists" by agency type A. Reagan Administration 1 DEF. OTHER agree 54% 66 disagree 14 13 B. Reagan Administration 2 DEF. OTHER agree 39% 62 disagree 22 13 C. Bush Administration DEF. OTHER agree 41% 45 disagree 23 27 D. Clinton Administration DEF. OTHER agree 66% 40 disagree 10 27
ACTIVIST 75 7
SIGN. .00000
CHI. SQ 36.29990
D.F 8
ACTIVIST 71 9
SIGN. .00000
CHI. SQ 45.79372
D.F 8
ACTIVIST 55 19
SIGN. .02991
CHI. SQ 17.01886
D.F 8
ACTIVIST 54 17
SIGN. .00030
CHI. SQ 29.10478
D.F 8
Table 7 shows that in all administrations, newly appointed officials are thought to distrust careerists. Yet again we find relationships across agency type. Defense careerists are least likely to agree with the statement for the Reagan and Bush administrations, but most likely to agree for the Clinton administration. Activist agency careerists are most likely to see appointee distrust as a problem for both GOP administrations. Interestingly, however, they also saw distrust as more of a problem for the Clinton administration than do other domestic appointees, perhaps because of the controversies of regulatory and social welfare politics. As Heclo, Pfiffner, Maranto, Aberbach and Rockman, and other scholars note, political appointees have a tough job in part since they must both represent their agency to the White House, and the White House to their agency, leading to role complexity. Presumably, career officials might find it easier to work with non-career officials seen as representing their view to the White House rather than the president’s agenda to the agency. As Table 8 shows, all domestic careerists tend to see political appointees as representing the White House view to the agency rather than the agency view to the White House. Table 8. "Appointees represented the White House view to the agency rather than the agency view to White House" by agency type A. Reagan Administration 1 DEF. OTHER agree 30% 57 disagree 37 20
ACTIVIST 70 12
SIGN. .00000
CHI. SQ 59.98866
D.F 8
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Table 8. (Continued). B. Reagan Administration 2 DEF. OTHER agree 24% 53 disagree 44 20 C. Bush Administration DEF. OTHER agree 19% 36 disagree 47 26 D. Clinton Administration DEF. OTHER agree 48% 43 disagree 22 22
ACTIVIST 68 11
SIGN. .00000
CHI. SQ 74.07930
D.F 8
ACTIVIST 49 22
SIGN. .00000
CHI. SQ 41.69476
D.F 8
ACTIVIST 41 15
SIGN. .07891
CHI. SQ 14.11146
D.F 8
This was particularly true of the Reagan administration, and relatively untrue of the more centrist Bush administration. Save for the Clinton administration, activist agencies are more likely than other domestic agencies to see appointees as toeing the White House line. Among Pentagon careerists, on the other hand, pluralities felt that appointees represented the agency to the White House. Notably, defense careerists did not see the Clinton administration this way. Whatever relations between careerists and political appointees, in all administrations careerists seem to prefer their own appointees to the White House. As Table 9 shows, careerists feel that only the Bush White House has respected the civil service. Solid pluralities of defense careerists and large majorities of domestic careerists (particularly in activist agencies), feel that the Reagan administration did not respect the civil service. Table 9. "The White House respected the civil service" by agency type A. Reagan Administration 1 DEF. OTHER agree 26% 15 disagree 48 69 B. Reagan Administration 2 DEF. OTHER agree 27% 16 disagree 44 66 C. Bush Administration DEF. OTHER agree 47% 42 disagree 30 22 D. Clinton Administration DEF. OTHER agree 9% 25 disagree 60 43
ACTIVIST 7 77
SIGN. .00000
CHI. SQ 46.61150
D.F 8
ACTIVIST 9 75
SIGN. .00000
CHI. SQ 42.68220
D.F 8
ACTIVIST 26 42
SIGN. .01269
CHI. SQ 19.43665
D.F 8
ACTIVIST 19 48
SIGN. .01240
CHI. SQ 19.50080
D.F 8
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A solid plurality of defense careerists and a small plurality of other domestic careerists, however, saw the Bush administration as respecting the civil service. A plurality of activist careerists disagrees. For the Clinton administration, a large majority of defense careerists and solid pluralities of domestic careerists felt that the Clinton administration did not respect them. To summarize, H4 and H5 are supported. Defense careerists saw career-noncareer relations in the Reagan and Bush administrations as good, even in the first year of the Bush administration. Careerists trusted Republican political appointees, and saw appointees as representing the Pentagon to the White House rather than the other way round. None of this characterizes how defense careerists view Clinton appointees. Domestic careerists, on the other hand, saw relatively poor career-noncareer relations in the Reagan years, but solid relations in the Bush years and in the first year of the Clinton administration. Careerists did not trust Reagan appointees, but did trust Bush appointees (save in activist agencies) and Clinton appointees. Particularly in activist agencies, careerists saw appointees as representing the White House rather than the agency. This was especially true in the Reagan administration. Interestingly, careerists agree that the Reagan and Clinton White Houses distrusted careerists. Save in activist agencies, careerists agree that the Bush White House did respect them. This probably reflects the Bush administration's pay raises, as well as the President's praise of the civil service and the relative experience of Bush appointees.
CONCLUSION: TRANSITIONS IN CONFLICT A small, but growing literature advises new and prospective political appointees about how to manage their own transitions into positions of leadership within the U.S. executive branch. In particular, new political appointees are to do their homework, and to consult and respect their career executives.22 While such advice is useful, findings here suggest that the tone and coherence of overall White House personnel and policy actions may do as much to shape the tone of executive transitions within agencies as do the actions of individual political appointees. For the three administrations, in the bureaucracy as a whole surveys find the Bush administration having the most kind and gentle executive transitions. This makes sense given President Bush’s long government experience, and deep respect for the career civil service. In contrast President Clinton was judged disorganized, while President Reagan and his appointees, at least for non-defense career executives, were seen as overly conservative. Even more important, findings show that a presidential transition in the U.S. executive cannot be considered a single transition. Rather, different parts of government view the same presidential transition in very different ways. The Republican oriented defense bureaucracies, not surprisingly, see incoming GOP presidents and their appointees as more akin to them ideologically, and view them more favorably than they do Democrats. In contrast, the relatively liberal career officials from social welfare and regulatory agencies feel closer to and report better relations with Democratic administrations. In miscellaneous agencies, the views
22
See, for example J.H. Trattner, A Survivor’s Guide for Government Executives (Lanham: University Press of America, 1989); J. Martino, A Case for the Orientation of Political Appointees (Penn State/Harrisburg: M.A. Thesis, 1994). For a more nuanced view, see R.P. Nathan, So You Want to be in Government (Albany: SUNY Press, 2000).
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of officials vary. In short, just as interest groups win and lose presidential elections, so too do federal agencies. In 1992, perhaps for the first time, the Pentagon lost. The notion that goal conflict largely determines transition relations is not from a public administration standpoint a happy one. It suggests that to a considerable degree careernoncareer conflict is an inevitable part of executive branch politics, which is, after all, political. Even for bureaucrats democracy is political, and politics is not always for the faint of heart.
APPENDIX All interviews were in 1993, and all are in-person unless otherwise noted. Interviews included 35 current or former career civil servants, including 27 at high (GM-15 or SES) levels: eight were in foreign policy/defense agencies (seven high-level); seven in social welfare agencies (six high-level); seven in regulatory agencies (four); and 13 in other domestic agencies (10). In addition, six former Reagan or Bush political appointees were interviewed, as well as a number of military officers, think tankers, academics, and journalists. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.
A former Bush domestic appointee, February 2; follow - up on February 16. A former Reagan Administration defense appointee, February 3; follow up June 2. Senior Executive Association officer, February 3; follow - up May 13. Phone interview with a U.S. Housing and Urban Development (HUD) career SES, February 19. National Park Service career SES, February 23. Heritage Foundation analyst, March 1. Navy officer, March 4. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) career SES, March 11; phone follow - up August 13. Public administration/political science academic and former New Deal political appointee, early March, exact date not recorded. Phone interview with former military officer and current academic, March 15. Army officer, March 15. Air Force civilian careerist, March 18, follow - up on May 6 and periodic follow ups thereafter. Phone interview with National Science Foundation (NSF) career SES, March 25. Former Bush domestic appointee, March 29. Internal Revenue Service career SES, March 29, phone follow - up on August 9. A Transportation Dept. career SES, April 7. Agriculture Dept., career SES, April 8. Phone interview with Office of Secretary of Defense (OSD) career SES, April 15. National Academy of Public Administration analyst, April 15. Air Force career officer, April 15. Think tank member and former foreign policy/defense career bureaucrat, April 20. Defense analyst and former military officer, April 21. Resolution Trust Corporation career executive, April 21, with follow - ups later.
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Robert Maranto 24. Public Administration academic, April 29. 25. Health Resources and Services Administration high level careerist, exact date not recorded. 26. Former Reagan domestic appointee, May 4. 27. General Services Administration career SES, May 6. 28. Marine career officer, May 7. 29. OSD career SES, May 9. 30. Washington journalist, May 13. 31. NSF high level careerist, May 18. 32. U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) careerist, May 20. 33. OPM careerist, May 20. 34. HUD high level careerist, May 21. 35. Air Force career SES, June 3, follow - up on 36. Public Administration academic and former careerist, June 4. 37. Commerce Dept. career SES, June 9. 38. SEA officer, June 10. 39. Phone interview with OSD career SES, early June, exact date not recorded. 40. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration career SES, June 11. 41. Heritage Foundation analyst, June 16. 42. Phone interview, U.S. Army career SES, June 21. 43. Former Bush domestic appointee, June 22. 44. Political Science academic, June 23 45. Washington Journalist, June 24. 46. Phone interview with EPA careerist, July 2. 47. Health and Human Services (HHS) career SES, July 15. 48. Phone interview with OSD high level careerist, July 28. 49. Phone interview with Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation (PBGC) careerist, August 1. 50. Former Bush domestic appointee, August 3. 51. Phone interview with HUD careerist, August 4. 52. Phone interview with Office of Management and Budget careerist, August 9. 53. Phone interview with PBGC careerist, August 10. 54. Phone interview with HUD executive level careerist, August 11. 55. Phone interview with Labor Dept. career SES, August 16.
ACKNOWLEGDEMENTS *I wish to thank the Brookings Institution, Lafayette College, Villanova University, the Federal Executive Institute, James P. Pfiffner, Charles Walcott, Jason Price Everett, and Andrea Costello for their assistance during various phases of this project, as well as two anonymous reviewers. The usual caveats apply.
In: White House Studies Compendium, Volume 4 Editor: R. W. Watson, pp. 393-405
ISBN: 1-60021-541-6 © 2007 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
UNEARTHING THE BURIED FOUNDATIONS OF THE AMERICAN PRESIDENCY: WHAT THE NATIVE AMERICANS TAUGHT THE FRAMERS ABOUT POLITICAL LEADERSHIP, AND WHAT THEY CAN TEACH US1 Michael A. Genovese ABSTRACT A great deal has been written about the European intellectual and politics roots of the American presidency but little has been done regarding the role of Native American Tribes/Nations in the development of the Constitution and the presidency. This oversight neglects the important contribution made by Native Americans to the invention of the American presidency. As this paper demonstrates, the Framers of the Constitution drew on their knowledge of the Iroquois Confederacy for guidance in the development of a separation of powers system, as well as selected aspects of the American presidential office. “We know you highly esteem the kind of Learning taught in these Colleges, and the maintenance of our young Men, while with you, would be very expensive to you. We are convinced, therefore, that you mean to do us good by your Proposal; and we thank you heartily. But you who are so wise must know that different Nations have different Conceptions of things; and you will not therefore take it amiss, if our Ideas of this kind of Education happens not to be the same with yours. We have had some experience of it. Several of our young People were formerly brought up in the College of the northern Provinces; they were instructed in all your Sciences; but, when they came back to us, they were bad Runners, ignorant of every means of living in the Woods, unable to bear either cold or Hunger, knew neither how to build a Cabin, take a deer, or kill an enemy, spoke our language imperfectly, were therefore neither fit for Hunters, Warriors, or Counselors; they were totally good for nothing. We are however not the less obliged for your kind Offer, tho’ we decline accepting it; and to show our grateful Sense of it, if the Gentlemen of Virginia shall send us a Dozen of their Sons, we will take care of their Education, instruct them in all we know, and make Men of them.” Conassatego, of the Iroquois League, replying to an offer by the Virginia Legislature to the Six Nations, inviting them to send six youths to be educated at the College of William and Mary, Williamsburg (1744)
1
Special thanks go to Seth Thompson for his thoughtful suggestions on an early draft of this paper.
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INTRODUCTION On July 27, 1787, the drafting committee of the Constitutional Convention met at the Indian Queen Tavern to agree on a draft of the Constitution to submit to the entire convention. The committee’s chair, John Rutledge, of South Carolina (James Wilson of Pennsylvania was also a member of the Committee of Detail) opened the meeting by reading aloud an English translation of the Iroquois’ tale of the founding of the Iroquois Confederacy. Rudledge’s purpose was to underscore the importance, for the new nation, of a concept embedded in the Tradition of the Iroquois Confederacy: “We” the people, from whence all power derives.2 While this concept also has European roots, nowhere in the old world was it being practiced. The neighbors of the Constitution’s framers, however, had, for decades, been living under a Constitution that brought this concept to life, and that had an impact on the men who met in Philadelphia in that hot summer of 1787. The Framers of the U.S. Constitution drew insight and inspiration from a number of sources: European philosophers, the lessons of ancient Athenian democracy and the Roman Republics, the experience of state governments, and the native-American forms of government with which they were very familiar. No one would argue that the Native Americans provided the primary impetus, but (although usually lost in the history books) it is clear that they did provide some examples which the framers sought to emulate and incorporate into the new government. As was the case with European influences, so too did the framers engage in “selective borrowing” from the governments of many native nations. As George F. Carter writes: No civilization arose in isolation, as the flowing genius of a single people. Great civilizations illustrate that genius lies in the ability of a group of persons to assemble ideas borrowed from far and wide into some new pattern suited to their needs, tastes, and opportunities.3
That this revelation seems surprising to some merely reflects the skewed history handed down from generation to generation: After all, we should not confuse “the past” (what actually happened) with “history” (the accepted version of what happened). The winners, as we know, usually write the history books in what Daniel J. Boorstin calls “survival of the victorious point of view.” Thus, a part of history is “hidden” from view.4 Native Americans were the primary resisters to European conquest, and ultimately became the losers in the battle for control of the nation. The myth of frontier conquest, progress, the taming of the West, became a cultural icon, an epic tale that helped define the American identity. Thus, major elements of the defeated group’s history were “simply repressed – sometimes deliberately and sometimes by apparent inadvertence.”5 It should not surprise us then, because history has been written from a Eurocentric perspective, that significant portions of Native history have been lost, stolen, or ignored. This is particularly the case when we examine Native-American influence on the founding of the American republic. 2
Richard Barry, Mr. Rutledge of South Carolina (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1942). George F. Carter, “Cultural, Historical Diffusion,” Transfer and Transformation of Ideas, ed. Peter Hugill and D. Bruce Dickson (College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 1988), p. 19. 4 Daniel J. Boorstin, Hidden History (New York: Random House, 1987), p. 11. 5 Michael Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991), pp. 184-188. 3
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One of the early challenges to the Eurocentric dominance regarding the contributions made by Native Americans to the development of the United States was Francis Jennings’s The Invasion of America.6 Other works followed, opening the doors for new interpretations of American history.7 Our task then, is to uncover the hidden influence of Native Americans on the creation of American constitutional democracy, and on the invention of the presidency. History books teach that the first of the modern democracies was established in the United States in the aftermath of the American Revolution. Yet, there is ample evidence to conclude – contrary to the received wisdom handed down by most historians – that the Iroquois League was a fully functioning and complex democracy – a truly representative form of democracy – that pre-dated the U.S. Constitution and influenced the American Framers as they wrote their Constitution. The Framers looked to Greek Democracy and Roman Republican forms of government for guidance and inspiration. Ironically, nearly two thousand years after the decline of Athens and Rome, Europeans practiced decidedly anti-democratic forms of governing. Yet the Iroquois had a sophisticated representative democracy already in place when the Framers contemplated how to animate the ideas of the Revolution into a government. Indian democracies were working democracies that colonists could observe and emulate. Theoretical uncertainties will naturally affect a study such as this. To what extent, for example, are the leadership patterns visible among Native Americans a function of group size, homogeneity, proximity (i.e., to what extent do the leadership patterns of Native Americans resemble other small groups whose interaction is characterized by face-to-face interaction and a pre-industrial society) and to what extent are these patterns peculiar to the groups under examination? Is there something unique, distinctive about Native-American cultures that pushes them towards a particular pattern of leader-follower interaction, or is their leadership style fairly common across small groups in different cultures under similar circumstances? Is the style of interaction and governing a function of small group interaction? To what extent did culture influence politics? Also, we must break out of our mental blinders that see Native Americans in stereotypical ways. Fashioned by movies and television images, we tend to see Native Americans as either brave/strong/hostile warriors, or as weak/submissive/backward victims. Our cultural blinders make it difficult for us to see. Likewise, there is no one monolithic “Native American.” The nations that inhabited the United States were and are diverse, and vary –sometimes quite dramatically – from region to region. In the Fifteenth Century, when Europeans came to the Americas, literally hundreds of distinct native cultures and languages were practiced. The Native Americans were many different peoples, many different nations. Their political organizations varied widely also.8
6
Francis Jennings, The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of Conquest (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975). 7 Robert Berkhofer, The White Man’s Indian (New York: Knopf, 1978). 8 James Adair, The History of the American Indians (London, 1775), reprinted by Samuel C. Williams (Johnson City, Tennessee, 1930).
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Native-American Styles of Governing Given the hundreds of tribes/nations that populated the Americas, it should come as no surprise that the styles and structures of government varied widely. Yet, having said this, one is also struck by certain common themes or styles that seem to cross most regions and tribes.
The Iroquois Confederacy One of the most advanced and sophisticated of the native governing systems was the Iroquois Confederacy. Made up of the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca tribes (in the early Eighteenth Century the Tuscarora joined the confederacy), what is most striking about this confederacy is the way it practiced a form of egalitarian, democratic politics, while uniting disparate tribes.9 “In an age of European monarchies and absolutism, the Indians’ constitution . . . was based on principles of individual freedom and government by consent of the governed that white men themselves did not enjoy.”10 The confederacy was a kind of kinship state, bound together by a clan and chieftain system. This kinship system began with the "hearth,” where ancestry was traced through the mother. Each hearth was a part of a larger “otiinanor,” and larger still “clan.” This matrilineal system was headed by a clan mother. A group of clans made up a tribe, and several tribes formed the confederacy. The clan trained young people to enter into an egalitarian society, a collaborative society in which power was distributed roughly equally between men and women. Few formal instruments of authority existed. Behavior was governed primarily by a sense of pride, belonging, and connectedness to the group via common rituals and, if necessary, the shame of ostracism. “Each nation,” Colden wrote in 1727, “is an absolute Republick by its self, govern’d in all Publick Affairs of War and Peace by the Sachems (Chiefs). . . whose Authority and power is gain’d by and consists wholly in the Opinion the rest of the Nation have of their Wisdom and Integrity.”11 Governed by Ne Gayaneshagowa (the Great Binding Law), the Iroquois League’s higher law or “Constitution”, these nations/tribes already had a constitutional system of government prior to the founding of the United States. The basis of governmental legitimacy came from the community and flowed upwards to the chiefs and council, and was grounded in a concept of natural rights, consensus oriented decision making, consent not coercion, a sophisticated system of checks and balances, public debate, discussion and deliberation, and the protection of individual rights and liberties (although the individual was secondary, the tribe primary). In all important decisions, the Great Law required that chiefs of the league submit the issue to the tribe for approval.12 The Great Law contained provisions for impeachment and 9
This paper focuses on the Iroquois Confederacy because of its impact on the framers of the U.S. Constitution, but other large confederacies, such as the Creek in the Southeast, also had highly developed and complex governing systems. 10 Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., The Patriot Chiefs (New York: Penguin Books, 1978), p. 8. 11 Quoted in Josephy, The Patriot Chiefs, pp. 8-9. 12 Oren Lyons, John Mohawk, Vine Deloria, Jr., Lawrence Hauptman, Howard Berman, Donald Grinde, Jr., Curtis Berkey, and Robert Venables, Exiled in the Land of the Free: Democracy, Indian Nations and the U.S. Constitution (Santa Fe, New Mexico: Clear Light Publishers, 1992).
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removal of Sechens (chiefs), and upon the death of a chief, the title revolved to the women of the clan whose task it was to determine who would assume the title. Their nomination of a new chief then went to the entire clan for approval, then to a governing council for final approval. The Ne Gayaneshagowa describes the leadership selection process as follows: When a Lordship title becomes vacant through death or other cause, The Royaneh women of the clan in which the title is hereditary shall hold a council and shall choose one from among their sons to fill the office made vacant. Such a candidate shall not be the father of any Confederate Lord. If the choice is unanimous the name is referred to the men relatives of the clan. If they should disapprove it shall be their duty to select a candidate from among their number. If then the men and women are unable to decide which of the two candidates shall be named, then the matter shall be referred to the Confederate Lords in the Clan. They shall decide which candidate shall be named. If the men and women agree to a candidate his name shall be referred to the sister clans for confirmation. If the sister clans confirm the choice, they shall then refer their action to their Confederate Lords who shall ratify the choice ad present it to their cousin Lords, and if the cousin Lords confirm the name then the candidate shall be installed by the proper ceremony for the conferring of Lordship titles. - Ne Gayaneshagowa, “The Great Binding Law” (Constitution of the Iroquois League)
Women thus played a prominent role in leadership selection as well as the daily life of the tribe. The lineal descent of the people of the Five Nations shall run in the female line. Women shall be considered the progenitors of the nation. They shall own the land and the soil. Men and women shall follows the status of the mother. - Ne Gayaneshagowa, “The Great Binding Law” (Constitution of the Iroquois League)
The Great Law contained a number of elements that would later appear in different form in the U.S. Constitution. This excerpt from the Great Law demonstrates how the constitution of the Iroquois League dealt with checks and balances in decision making: In all cases the procedure must be as follows: when the Mohawk and Seneca Lords have unanimously agreed upon a question, they shall report their decision to the Cayuga and Oneida Lords who shall deliberate upon the question and report a unanimous decision to the Mohawk Lords. The Mohawk Lords will then report the standing of the case to the Firekeepers, who shall render a decision . . . as they see fit in case of a disagreement by the two bodies, or confirm the decisions of the two bodies if they are identical. The Firekeepers shall then report their decision to the Mohawk Loads who shall announce it to the open council. - Ne Gayaneshagowa, “The Great Binding Law” (Constitution of the Iroquois League)
A European observer noted, they (the Iroquois) were “governed by the plain and honest law of nature, their whole constitution breathes nothing but liberty.”13 A bit overstated perhaps, yet this captures an element of truth of which the framers of the U.S. Constitution 13
Adair, The History of the American Indians, p. 406.
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were well aware. Clearly, “. . . many Indian nations . . . practiced a very high form of participatory democracy for thousands of years; and many nations continue to do so.”14 Not all tribes were democratic, but as Mander notes “. . . it seems abundantly clear the that majority of native nations on this continent . . . were small, non-imperial, non-hierarchical, usually matriarchal and democratic societies.”15 And he added: “. . . virtually all traditional tribal people share three primary political principles: 1) all land, water, and forest is communally owned by the tribe . . . 2) all tribal decisions are made by consensus, in which every tribal member participates; and 3) chiefs are not coercive, authoritarian rulers . . .they are more like teachers or facilitators, and their duties are confined to specific realms (medicine, planting, war . . ).”16
RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY In most native cultures, religion and spirituality play a significant role and are closely linked to politics and government. The Concept of separation of church and state was inconceivable to the native communities, as they made little distinction between the spiritual and the political; the one fed into and was nourished by the other. While there were as many distinct religions as there were independent tribes, almost all tribes shared broad common agreement on key religious fundamentals. Belief was linked to land, environment, and founding myth. The supernatural played a significant role in shaping their beliefs, the keys of which include: a) belief in a universal force; b) the social imposition of taboos; c) the force of spirits on everyday life; d) visions as a guide to behavior; the significant role of Shaman as religious leader; (f) communal ceremonies; and g) belief in an afterlife.17 Shamans held sway over religious life and the interpretation of visions. As such they exerted considerable influence over the daily life of the tribe. But rarely did religious leadership cross over into secular power. The Shaman, or medicine man, was a functional area leader, widely respected and followed within his sphere of influence, but only marginally influential in non-spiritual concerns. The primary role of native spirituality and government aimed at the development of harmony between humans, animals, the earth and the spirit world. This interconnectedness also embraced a belief in the equal dignity of all these elements. Humans were not thought superior to nature, but an equal part in a balanced universe. Harmony with nature led to community in politics. Individual rights gave way to community interests, and all rights came with responsibilities.
LEADERSHIP Georgia Governor, James Oglethorpe, speaking in 1764 of the role the Muscogee Tribe said:
14 15 16
Jerry Mander, In the Absence of the Sacred (San Francisco: Sierra Club books, 1991), p. 226. Mander, In the Absence of the Sacred, p. 227. Mander, In the Absence of the Sacred, p. 227.
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. . . there is no coercive power . . . Their Kings can do no more than persuade. All the power they have is no more than to call their old men and captains and to propound to them the measures they think proper. After they have done speaking, all the others have liberty to give their opinions also; and they reason together with great temper and modesty, till they have brought each other into some unanimous resolution. They call in the young men and recommend the putting in execution the resolution with their strongest and most lively eloquence. In speaking to their young men they generally address to the passions: in speaking to their old men they apply to reason only.
Most Native-American nations had not one but several chiefs. Determined by the consent of the people and based on a functional view of power, the tribe had different chiefs for different tasks: one chief in war, another for diplomacy, another for planting, etc. In comparison to European political leaders, both peace and war chiefs exercised only limited control over their followers. Unlike that of Old World sovereigns who held a mortal power over their people, a peace chief’s authority was limited primarily to persuasion and his ability to reflect the attitudes and values on his tribesmen. He led because he epitomized the will of his people. If a significant number of the people in his village disagreed with him, they turned to another leader and his power diminished. Most Indian villages were rife with factionalism, a problem that greatly limited the influence of any particular peace chief. He could not force those tribesmen who disagreed with him to accept his decisions. If the factionalism became too intense, villages split and opposing factions formed new villages. Similarly, war chiefs did not “command” the tribesmen in their war parties. They led only because their followers had confidence in them. If the war chief insisted upon policies opposed by individual warriors, those individuals were free to leave the war party and return to their homes.18
The chiefs had little “power” in the conventional sense. As French anthropologist Pierre Clastres writes, “The chief has no authority at his disposal, no power of coercion, no means of giving order. The chief is not a commander; the people of the tribe are under no obligation to obey . . .”19 According to Parker, the duties of chief were spelled out in great detail: [They] shall be mentors of the people for all time. The thickness of their skin shall be seven spans, which is to say that they shall be proof against anger, offensive actions and criticism. Their hearts shall be full of peace and good will and their minds filled with a yearning for the welfare of the people of the confederacy. With endless patience they shall carry out their duty and their firmness shall be tempered with a tenderness for the people. Neither anger nor fury shall find lodgement in their minds, and all their words and actions shall be marked with calm deliberation . . . [They] must be honest in all things . . . self interest must be cast into oblivion . . . [They shall] look and listen for the welfare of the whole people, and have always in view not only the present but also the coming generations, even those whose faces are yet beneath the surface of the ground . . .20
17
Ruth Underhill, Red Man’s Religion: Beliefs and Practices of the Indians North of Mexico (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 1965. 18 David R. Edmunds, ed. Americana Indian Leaders (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1980), pp. viii-ix. 19 Pierre Clastres, Society Against the State (New York: Urizen Books, 1977), p. 228. 20 Arthur H. Parker, Parker on the Iroquois, ed., William Fenton (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1968).
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Unlike Europe of the time, rights of birth were generally inconsequential. Chiefs were generally selected for ability in a given task. They were expected to devote themselves to the tribe, and govern by persuasion, not command. In general, Native-American governments were democratic, decentralized, and egalitarian. Leaders lacked coercive power and their role depended upon maintaining the support of the tribe. Consensus, not individual rights, predominated. There was no inherent right to leadership. While leadership often fell to elders, even they governed only with the support of the community. When support was withheld, the leader fell from his position. Most leaders were men, but on rare occasion a woman assumed a chief’s role. (In recent years Wilma Mankiller [what a great name!] was elected Chief of the Cherokee nation.)21 While chiefs exercised power/influence in different ways, depending on the tribe and circumstances, several characteristics apply to almost all tribes. Chiefs were generally expected to: • • • • • • •
Practice Self Denial Bear the Traditions of the Tribe Serve the Community Practice Persuasion not Coercion Develop Consensus Work Collaboratively Link Spiritual Life to Governing
There were, of course, regional differences in leadership. In the Southwest, especially among the Pueblo tribe, the chief was usually a religious leader. In the region from what is today Northern California up the coast to southern Alaska, the wealthy ruling families governed in most tribes (they were to throw a huge religious celebration, part feast, part gift giving ceremony, called a potlatch). In parts of the Great Lakes region leadership was reserved for certain clans that traced their ancestry to the tribes’ common spiritual forbearers (usually an animal or mystical best). In the Great Plains region, military power was greatly respected. In the Western Interior, tribes tended to be nomadic and had several chiefs. Many of these concepts seem alien to us, and to an extent, those in the West may see these elements of leadership as a sign of weakness. In this sense, the native styles of leadership may have more in common with Zen conceptions of leadership than with those in the West. The Industrial Model of leadership, so prevalent in the West, is hierarchical and power oriented. It seeks to give the leader control. The Native-American style is more compatible with the emerging Post Industrial Model of leadership, which is more open, democratic, and collegial.22
21 22
Sharon O’Brien, American Indian Tribal Governments (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989), p. 16. See: Kenneth Culp III and Kathryn J. Cox, “Leadership Styles for the New Millennium: Creating New Paradigms,” The Journal of Leadership Studies, Vol. 4, No. 1, Winter 1997, pp. 3-17; and Daniel C. Kielson, “Leadership: Creating a New Reality,” The Journal of Leadership Studies, Vol. 3, No. 4,Fall, 1996, pp. 104116.
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IMPACT ON THE FRAMERS Ample evidence exists to support the view that Native-American forms of government, most especially the Iroquois Confederacy, had an impact on the views of the framers of the U.S. Constitution. While the Native-American legacy is still disputed in some academic circles,23 many historians and anthropologists now argue that indeed, the Framers drew a good deal from the native peoples. Historian Donald A. Grinde argues that “the United States Constitution owes much of its emphasis on unity, federalism, and balance of power to Iroquois concepts.”24 And while the evidence is to some slightly speculative, even the U.S. Senate has paid tribute to the native influences.25 The Iroquois insist they had a significant influence on the Framers, and many historians agree.26 Many of the framers were familiar with the styles of government practiced by the Native Americans. Benjamin Franklin was well versed in Native traditions. Franklin, commenting on the government of the Iroquois, wrote The Indian Men, when young are Hunters and Warriors; when old, Counsellors; for all their Government is by the Counsel or Advice of the Sages; there is no Force, there are no prisons, no Officers to compel Obedience, or inflict Punishment. Hence they generally study Oratory; the best Speaker having the most influence. The Indian Women till the Ground, dress the Food, nurse and bring up the Children, and preserve and hand down to Posterity the Memory of Public Transactions. . . . Having frequent Occasions to hold public Councils, they have acquired great Order and Decency in conducting them. The old Men sit in the foremost Ranks, the Warriors in the next, and the Women and Children in the hindmost. The Business of the Women is to take exact notice of what passes, imprint it in their Memories, for they have no Writing, and communicate it to their Children. They are the Records of the Council, and they preserve Tradition of the Stipulations in Treaties a hundred Years back, which when we compare with our Writings we always find exact. He that would speak, rises. The rest observe a profound Silence. When he has finished and sits down, they leave him five or six Minutes to recollect, that if he has omitted any thing he intended to say, or has any thing to add, he may rise again and deliver it. To interrupt another, evening common Conversation is reckoned highly indecent. How different it is from the Conduct of a polite British House of Commons, where scarce a Day passes without some Confusion that makes the speaker hoarse in calling to order; and how different from the mode of Conversation in many polite Companies of Europe, where if you do not deliver your Sentence with great Rapidity, you are cut off in the middle of it by the impatient Loquacity of those you converse with, & never suffer’d to finish it.27
Franklin’s 1754 Albany Plan of Union called for the colonists to model their confederation after the Iroquois Confederacy. “It would be a strange thing,” he wrote, “if Six Nations of ignorant savages should be capable of forming a scheme for such a union and be 23
Laurence Haupton, Tribes and Tribulations (Albuquerque, New Mexico: University of New Mexico Press, 1995). Ch. 3, “Speculations on the Constitution.” 24 Donald Grinde, Exiles, p. 240. 25 United States Congress, Senate Resolution No. 76 (Washington, D.C., Government Printing Office, 1988). 26 Michael Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture (New York, Knopf, 1991). 27 Exiled, pp. 103-04.
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able to executive it in such a manner as that it has subsisted ages and appears indissoluble; and yet that a like union should be impracticable for ten or a dozen English colonies, to whom it is more necessary to be supposed to want an equal understanding of their interests.”28 According to Grinde, Franklin met with Iroquois chiefs and delegates of the Continental Congress to “hammer out a plan that he acknowledged to be similar to the Iroquois Confederacy;” and that Franklin’s work “is resplendent with stories about Indians and Indian ideas of personal freedom and structures of government.”29 Franklin was quite knowledgeable of Iroquois and Native-American customs and government. Thomas Jefferson’s papers refer on several occasions to “the forms of Iroquois governance.” Even James Madison made trips to study and speak with Iroquois leaders.30 John Adams wrote about the separation of powers of the American Indians as a model for the colonists.31 And James Wilson, arguing for confederation 1776, stated that “Indians know the striking benefits of Confederation [and they] have an example of it in the union of the Six Nations.”32 De Witt Clinton called the Iroquois “the Romans of the Western World.”33 And John Adams, in his influential Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States, published in 1787, included an analysis of American Indian traditions and governments, acknowledging that some of the “great philosophers and politicians of the age [want to] set up governments of . . . modern Indians.”34 As Grinde writes: Adams felt that instead of attempting to implement Indian governments as Franklin saw them it would be more helpful to have “a more accurate investigation of the form of governments of the . . . Indians.” In addition, Adams believed that it would be “well worth the pains . . . to collect . . . the legislation of the Indians” while developing a new constitution for the United States. Adams urged leaders of the time to investigate the “government of . . . modern Indians,” since the separation of powers in their government “is marked with a precision that excludes all controversy.” Indeed, Adams remarked that the legislative branch in modern Indian governments is so democratic that the “real sovereignty resided in the body of the people.” Personal liberty was so important to American Indians, according to Adams, that Mohawks have “complete individual independence.” Moreover, Adams also pointed out that every American Indian nation in North America had three distinct branches of government.
In the early part of the twentieth century, the Encyclopedia Americana, in its article on the “Six Nations,” noted that the founding fathers “in framing a Constitution for the United States honored these people by the adoption of their general constitutional system.”35 And more recently, legal scholar Felix Cohen wrote that: It is out of rich Indian democratic tradition that the distinctive political ideals of American life emerged. Universal suffrage for women as for men, the pattern of states that we call 28
Josephy, The Patriot Chiefs, pp. 28-29. Mander, In the Absence of the Sacred, p. 233. 30 Donald Grinde, The Iroquois and the Founding of the American Nation (SF: The Indian Historical Press, 1977). 31 Exiled, p. 254. 32 Exiled, p. 256. 33 William B. Campbell, ed., The Life and Writings of De Witt Clinton (New York: Baker & Schibner, 1849). 34 Quoted in Exiled, p. 262. 35 Exiled, p. 274. 29
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federalism, the habit of treating chiefs as servants of the people instead of their masters, the insistence that the community must respect the diversity of men and the diversity of their dreams – all these things were part of the American way of life before Columbus landed.36
The Iroquois Confederacy served the framers as a profound example of self-governance, proof that monarchy was not inevitable, and proof that a republic could survive and flourish. Given that there is no comparable example in Europe at the time of the framers, the living example of the Iroquois Confederacy gave the framers some reason for hope.
IMPACT ON THE PRESIDENCY In some ways, the inventors of the presidency eschewed the most literal model of leadership practiced by the Native-American example. Under the Articles of Confederation, no Chief Executive Officer existed. But the absence of what the Iroquois called someone to “kindle the fire” soon became a major obstacle to good government. The inventors of the presidency recognized the need to create a chief executive officer, but what type of executive? With what powers? What limitations? How many executives, one or several? It is very likely that the framers of the Constitution drew in part on the lessons of the Iroquois League in the establishment of the Separation-of-Powers. It is less clear what direct inspiration they drew in the creation of the presidency. Several authorities argue that the Framers rejected the Iroquois model in inventing the presidency. But while the Constitution did create a government of more central cohesion than the Iroquois Confederacy, they did – as Richard Neustadt would note nearly two centuries later – create a presidency with very limited formal powers but with the potential to persuade.37 Thus the style of leadership to be practiced by this new president was not altogether dissimilar form the style practiced in the Iroquois Confederacy. Words such as persuasion, consensus, coalition-building, were not alien to the Iroquois; they are vital necessities for effective presidential leadership. But as Robert W. Venables writes: At many levels, the Constitution composed at Philadelphia – that is, prior to two centuries of amendments – was a betrayal of values held in esteem by the Iroquois. Women were originally omitted from the United States’ political system. Black human life was valued at three-fifths the value of white human life. The Constitution separated government into branches intended more to check than to balance each other, because the checks and balances were achieved through tension. Moreover, the Constitution specifically rejected the Iroquois idea that government is by consensus. Instead, the Constitution mandates the rule of the majority. And under the Constitution, church and state are separate whereas the Iroquois integrate religion and politics. Finally, the Constitution was defined in terms of private, individual property rights, not communal property rights. Despite these differences, it must be emphasized that replication should not be the only standard by which the twentieth century should seek to understand how the Iroquois and other Indian people influenced the Founding Fathers and the Constitution. This is seen in a 36 37
Felix Cohen, “Americanizing the White man, The American Scholar, 21, no 2, 1952, pp. 179-180. Richard Neustadt, President Power (New York: Wiley, 1960).
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If structurally, the presidency bears only marginal similarity to the Chiefs of the Iroquois Confederacy, there may be a closer connection to the mode of operation or style of politics practiced in both systems. Presidents, like Chiefs, were dependent upon others for their authority and power. If a president’s (chief’s) acts are to be legitimate, they must gain the consent of the Congress (Council) and ultimately of the voting public (tribe). The president has few “powers” but, like the Chiefs, is well positioned to exert influence. While originally the president was removed as much as possible from the pressures of public opinion, the Chiefs depended on popular support. Today, of course, presidents often seem slaves to the popular will.39 Presidents are expected to practice a brand of politics that is coalition oriented and consensus-building in nature. They have little independent authority to act and therefore must build bridges to other political actors. Likewise, Iroquois Chiefs had to build bridges to the community, never losing sight of their core constituency. The presidency which emerged from the Philadelphia convention did not in itself resemble the position of chief(s) as practiced by the Iroquois. However, the separation-ofpowers and other elements of the Iroquois confederacy did find comparable institutional provisions written into the U.S. Constitution. If the lessons of the Iroquois were somewhat lost in the invention of the presidency, are there lessons which may be relevant to us today in their style of leadership?
CONCLUSION Clearly the Native-American nations/tribes had some impact on the Framers of the U.S. Constitution. Precisely how much influence is difficult to determine. What, if anything, can we learn from the styles of governing and leadership practiced by the first Americans? The literature in the field of Leadership Studies suggests that we are currently going through a transformation in the understanding and practice of leadership. The Industrial Model of leadership (hierarchical, power oriented, “male”) is giving way to a Post-Industrial Model (cooperative, collegial, influence oriented, “androgenous”).40 In this transformation, we can learn much form the styles of leadership practiced by Native Americans. In many ways, these Native-American styles are a precursor to the Post Industrial models of leadership with their emphasis on: • • • • 38
Service Persuasion, not Coercion Influence, not Power Consensus-building
Robert W. Venables, “American Indian Influences on the America of the Founding Fathers,” Ch. 3 of Exiles, pp. 116-17. 39 Michael A. Genovese and Matthew Streb, Polls and Politics (Albany: SUNY Press, 2004). 40 Michael A. Genovese, ed., Women as National Leaders (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage, 1995).
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Collaborative Coalition-building Situational Styles of Leadership Style-Flexing
The emerging style of leadership practiced in the West corresponds with much for what was practiced in the Iroquois Confederacy. It may be a lesson late incoming, but there are things we can yet learn from the Iroquois. The Iroquois were a pre-industrial people living in relatively small groups who were required to work collaboratively in order to survive. What possible relevance can their understanding of political authority and leader-follower relations have for us? During the rise of industrialism, the example of the Iroquois may have been of only limited utility to us. But today – as we enter a post-industrial era, an age of Globalism – the Iroquois present us with some attractive, even tantalizing, opportunities. In many respects, globalization and advances in communications technology give us at least pseudo face-to-face interactions with a vast network of people in far places. Also, we are increasingly forced – especially in the workplace – to work collaboratively in order to survive. The relevance then, of Native-American patterns is perhaps just as important to us as it was to the framers of the Constitution: a demonstration of what is possible. Thus, while the Native Americans had some impact on the Framers of the U.S. Constitution, but perhaps less on the creation of the presidency, the lessons of leadership they can teach us seem more relevant today than they perhaps were 200 years ago. As we attempt to determine which styles of leadership best fit the United States in the Twenty-first century, we would do well to study the Iroquois Confederacy, and other Native-American nations, to better understand the components of democratic leadership.
In: White House Studies Compendium, Volume 4 Editor: R. W. Watson, pp. 407-427
ISBN: 1-60021-541-6 © 2007 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
THE CLINTON FACTOR: THE EFFECTS OF CLINTON’S PERSONAL IMAGE IN 2000 PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARIES AND IN THE GENERAL ELECTION Mark J. Wattier ABSTRACT This article examines the effect of the Clinton Factor on candidate choice in 2000 in both presidential primaries and the November general election. The Clinton Factor – negative personal feelings about President Clinton – is examined with Voter News Service exit polls for 11 Democratic primaries and with National Election Study data for the presidential election. The predictors are Clinton's job performance, candidate images, Clinton's image, party identification, ideology, and electability. The results suggest that Clinton's image had a significant effect on primary voters and, in the battleground states, on general-election voters.
INTRODUCTION During the administration’s darkest hours Vice President Al Gore publicly defended President Bill Clinton. The steady flow of news and talk of Clinton’s inappropriate relationship with Monica Lewinsky, from the time it became public knowledge through the impeachment process, surely took its toll on Clinton’s personal popularity. But, was Gore’s reputation tarnished, too? Did evaluations of President Clinton as a person affect Gore’s electoral fortunes? Bob Edwards, the host of National Public Radio’s Morning Edition, put this question to Gore most succinctly: “Are [voters] blaming you for the scandals of the last eight years” and are they “getting back at [Clinton] through you?”1 The purpose of this research is to examine whether, and to what extent, evaluations of Clinton as a person (the “Clinton Factor”) influenced how citizens decided for whom to vote. Gore had to compete in 43 states with presidential primaries to win the Democratic Party’s nomination.2 Since Gore won every contest, it might be assumed that the Clinton Factor was insignificant. The analysis reported here will demonstrate that these primary-election results 1
Bob Edwards and Al Gore, Al Gore Interview Transcript from Morning Edition July 19, 2000 [World Wide Web] (National Public Radio, 2000 [cited October 1 2001]); available from http://www.npr.org/news/national/election2000/bios/gorepop.html. 2 William G. Mayer, "The Presidential Nominations," in The Election of 2000, ed. Gerald M. Pomper (New York: Chatham House, 2001).
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essentially concealed some politically significant effects. Because election forecasters had projected Gore as the November winner through the use of historically accurate methods and techniques, it is possible that some unique, election-specific factors might have had an effect.3 Various authors have suggested that the Clinton Factor and the Gore campaign’s response to it contributed to Gore’s defeat.4 The analysis reported here will investigate those arguments. This article examines several specific questions: Why did Democratic primary voters prefer Gore or New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley? Did these voters’ evaluations of President Clinton as a person affect their votes? Why did voters in the November general election prefer Gore or Texas Governor George Bush? Did the Clinton Factor sway general-election voters one way or another? Since presidential primaries are state elections and since “battleground” states are vital to winning the Electoral College vote, this work also examines where (i.e., in what states) the Clinton Factor made a difference.5 The results reported here are of interest for several reasons. First, the nomination process determines “the kind of person who [will] occupy the White House.”6 Because presidential primaries are central to that process, how primary voters decide warrants greater attention than it has received. Second, the 2000 election cycle posed several unusual problems, including how Gore would cope with the Clinton Factor and how Senator Bradley’s health would affect the race. Third, voting specialists who may have regarded retrospective voting as a universal phenomenon may find the null findings of this study surprising.7 And, finally, since this study examines the same decision factors for Spring presidential primaries and for the Fall general election, it is possible to compare the decision dynamic of primary voters and general election voters. We know from studies of their social and demographic traits that “spring voters” are not like “fall voters.”8 We do not know whether their decision dynamic also differs.
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See the March 2001 symposium on “Election 2000 Coverage” in PS: Political Science and Politics 34, no. 1.
Alan I. Abramowitz, "Why Joe Lieberman Is Not in a Secret Secure Location: Explaining the Failure of the Presidential Election Forecasting Models" (paper presented at the Annual Meeting, Southern Political Science Association, Atlanta, 2001); James W. Ceaser and Andrew E. Busch, The Perfect Tie (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001); Gerald M. Pomper, "The 2000 Presidential Election: Why Gore Lost," Political Science Quarterly 116 (2001); John Sides, "The Presidential Campaigns of 2000" (paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, 2002); Margaret Tseng, "The Clinton Effect: How a Lame-Duck President Impacted His Vice President's Election Prospects," in The Election of the Century, ed. Clyde Wilcox (Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2002); Herbert Weisberg and Timothy Hill, "The Succession Presidential Election of 2000: The Battle of the Legacies" (paper presented at the Annual Meeting, American Political Science Association, San Francisco, 2001). 5 Sides, "The Presidential Campaigns of 2000." 6 Austin Ranney, Participation in American Presidential Nominations, 1976 (Washington: American Enterprise Institute, 1977). 7 For another study with null findings, see Weisberg and Hill, "The Succession Presidential Election of 2000: The Battle of the Legacies." 8 H. M. Kritzer, "The Representativeness of the 1972 Presidential Primaries," in The Party Symbol, ed. W. Crotty (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1980); J. I. Lengle, Representation and Presidential Primaries (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981); Austin Ranney, "The Representativeness of Primary Electorates," Midwest Journal of Political Science 12 (1968); Austin Ranney, "Turnout and Representation in Presidential Primary Elections," American Political Science Review 66 (1972); Austin Ranney and Leon D. Epstein, "The Two Electorates: Voters and Non-Voters in a Wisconsin Primary," Journal of Politics 28 (1966).
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DECISION FACTORS FOR PRIMARY AND GENERAL ELECTION VOTERS This analysis examines not only Clinton’s personal image, but also several factors that could have affected the choices of primary and general-election voters. These additional decision factors include Clinton’s job performance, candidate images, electability, ideology, and party identification.9
Clinton’s Job Performance Incumbent office holders typically are voted out of office only when there is widespread dissatisfaction with their performance. If Vice President Gore were viewed as a surrogate for President Clinton, primary voters could have based their choice of Gore or Bradley on their evaluation of Clinton’s job performance.10 Prior research also suggests that general election voters could have based their choice of Gore or Bush on Clinton’s job performance.11 In the 2000 election cycle Vice President Gore had a difficult choice — whether and to what extent to run as a “surrogate” incumbent.12 If Gore ran as a surrogate for President Clinton, he would have tried to link his campaign to the positive accomplishments of the administration. That strategy, though, might have invited his rivals to associate him with Clinton’s personal scandals (i.e., the Clinton Factor). Running as a non-incumbent would have provided Gore an opportunity to escape the Clinton Factor. However, that approach might have broken the linkage to Clinton’s performance.13
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Specific policy issues are not examined. Policy issues have not mattered to primary voters. The exit-poll questionnaires include only a few policy issues. Ideology might capture, to some extent, the effects of policy issues. See Weisberg and Hill, "The Succession Presidential Election of 2000: The Battle of the Legacies" for the effects of policy issues in the general election. 10 See Fred M. Monardi, "Primary Voters as Retrospective Voters," American Politics Quarterly 22 (1994); Mark J. Wattier, "Retrospective Voting in Presidential Primaries," Midsouth Political Science Journal 11 (1990). For a study of other kinds of contextual factors, see T. Wayne Parent, Calvin C. Jillson, and Ronald E. Weber, "Voting Outcomes in the 1984 Democratic Party Primaries and Caucuses," American Political Science Review 81 (1987). 11 See Morris P. Fiorina, Retrospective Voting in American National Elections (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981); V. O. Key, Jr., The Responsible Electorate (New York: Vintage Books, 1966); Arthur H. Miller and Martin P. Wattenberg, "Throwing the Rascals Out: Policy and Performance Evaluations of Presidential Candidates, 1952-1980," American Political Science Review 79 (1985). 12 Primary voters also had a choice—whether, and to what extent, to give Gore credit for the accomplishments of the Clinton administration. 13 Vice Presidents sometimes run as surrogate incumbents, as did George Herbert Walker Bush in 1988; but they sometimes attempt to run as non-incumbents, especially under unfavorable political conditions (e.g., Hubert H. Humphrey in 1968). Some analysts have suggested that surrogate incumbency is not a realistic possibility— the electoral fortunes of Vice Presidents are not enriched by a good economy. This thesis has been advanced recently by Helmut Norpoth, "Bush v. Gore: The Invisible Economy." (paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, 2001). Other analysts have asserted that Gore would have won the general election if only he had campaigned more effectively as a surrogate incumbent. For an example of this view, see Pomper, "The 2000 Presidential Election: Why Gore Lost." In Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Paul Waldman, eds., Electing the President 2000: The Insider's View (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001) Gore’s consultants expressed a great deal of concern as to how to spin the “Clinton Factor” (i.e., popular evaluations of Clinton as a person). Presenting Gore as only a surrogate incumbent, with nothing else to offer, was not a viable option.
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It is assumed, albeit tentatively, that Gore campaigned, and perhaps was viewed by many voters, as a surrogate incumbent.14 Ceaser and Busch substantially agree with this assumption: “Potential candidates on the Democrat side did … face what was probably the closest approximation of incumbency ever witnessed in the person of Al Gore.”15
Candidate Images and Image Liabilities In 1974, as states began to adopt presidential primaries, Malcolm Jewell opined that candidate images would emerge as important determinants of choice: The structure of the presidential primary system makes it possible for a candidate to win primaries if he has a strong organization, plenty of funds, shrewd advisers, an appealing campaign style, and a good image on television.16
Subsequent research has shown that images of candidates have had a stronger effect than electability, ideology, or issues.17 It is essential that images of candidates be controlled. Perhaps the most interesting image factors in the 2000 election cycle were the image liabilities: the Clinton Factor and Senator Bradley’s heart problem. The Clinton Factor: Citizens tend to vote for the same party or candidate over time. Continuity in voting behavior is especially strong if the incumbent’s job performance is rated favorably.18 In 2000 the public rated President Clinton favorably on various measures of presidential performance. Vice President Gore was positioned to win the party nomination and the presidency if only he could sustain the coalition that had twice elected the ClintonGore team. The main problem for Vice President Gore was the fact that the public also gave President Clinton very unfavorable personal ratings.19 Did this personal aspect affect the choices of primary voters and general-election voters? Was its effect stronger than Clinton’s job performance? If so, then Vice President Gore’s defeat could be attributed to the Clinton Factor.20
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Mayer, “The Presidential Nominations,” labeled Vice President Gore “a candidate . . . thoroughly identified with the incumbent administration,” p. 33. Ceaser and Busch, The Perfect Tie, p. 57. Malcolm E. Jewell, "A Caveat on the Expanding Use of Presidential Primaries," Policy Studies 2 (1974), p. 282. Alan I. Abramowitz, "Candidate Choice before the Convention," Political Behavior 9 (1987); Alan I. Abramowitz, "Viability, Electability, and Candidate Choice in a Primary Election," Journal of Politics 51 (1989); Thomas R. Marshall, "Issues, Personalities, and Presidential Primary Voters," Social Science Quarterly 65 (1984); Barbara Norrander, "Correlates of Vote Choice in the 1980 Presidential Primaries," Journal of Politics 48 (1986); Mark J. Wattier, "Ideological Voting in 1980 Republican Presidential Primaries," Journal of Politics 45 (1983); Daniel C. Williams et al., "Voter Decisionmaking in a Primary Election: An Evaluation of Three Models of Choice," American Journal of Political Science 20 (1976). Jesse F. Marquette and Katherine A. Hinckley, “Voter Turnout and Candidate Choice: A Merged Theory,” Political Behavior 10 (1988); Monardi, “Primary Voters as Retrospective Voters”; Wattier, “Retrospective Voting in Presidential Primaries.” Regina G. Lawrence and W. Lance Bennett, “Rethinking Media Politics and Public Opinion: Reactions to the Clinton-Lewinsky Scandal,” Political Science Quarterly 116 (2001). Tseng, “The Clinton Effect: How a Lame-Duck President Impacted His Vice President’s Election Prospects.” Vice President Gore believed President Clinton’s “sex scandal and low personal approval were a major impediment to his presidential campaign.” This quote is from John F. Harris, “Clinton and Gore Clashed Over Blame for Election,” Washington Post, February 7, 2001.
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Bradley’s Heart Problem: During 1999 Senator Bradley emerged as the only viable alternative to Vice President Gore.21 Bradley’s fundraising efforts kept pace with Gore’s. Bradley’s poll standings improved both nationally and in key states. Gore’s lead in Iowa narrowed, and some polls had Bradley leading in New Hampshire and in New York. Gore’s campaign lacked momentum just as Bradley’s train picked up steam.22 However, on December 10, 1999, Bradley left the campaign trail for treatment of a recurring health problem, an irregular heart beat.23 News reports of this condition appeared and January 2000 tracking polls showed Gore leading in New Hampshire.24 What effect, if any, did news of Bradley’s heart problem have upon primary voters in New Hampshire?25 Ceaser and Busch have speculated: “Bradley’s heart problem (and seeming lack of candor surrounding it) may have swayed enough voters to cost him New Hampshire.”26
Electability Voters may support the candidate they perceive as having the best chance of winning an election.27 A successful campaign raises a great deal of money, gains endorsements of party and group leaders, discourages rivals from running, leads in the public opinion polls, attracts more news coverage, and receives the Fourth Estate’s imprimatur, “front runner.”28 The frontrunner label provides a powerful cue: “Vote for me because I can win!” Voters might respond to that winning message for instrumental and expressive reasons. Electability might function as an instrumental factor.29 Voters not only evaluate candidates in terms of expected benefits, but also know that a candidate must have a realistic chance of winning before “fairer income taxes” can be delivered. Electability might also
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Other Democrats mentioned as possible candidates were Warren Beatty, Dick Gephardt, Jesse Jackson, Bob Kerrey, John Kerry, and Paul Wellstone. All but Beatty announced in late 1998 or early 1999 that they would not seek the nomination. Beatty’s candidacy was probably just another way to promote his movie career and his recent movie, Bullworth. See the chronology compiled by Mattie J. Germer, The Road to the Presidency: A Timeline of the 2000 Presidential Campaign [World Wide Web] (2001 [cited October 1 2001]); available from http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/iop/campaign-timeline.pdf. Ibid. James Dao, "Bradley Misses Event for Check of Heart Beat," New York Times, December 11, 1999. Lawrence K. Altman, "Bradley's Doctors Say He Is in Excellent Shape," New York Times, January 30, 2000; James Dao, "Bradley and Doctor Say Bouts Are No Worry," New York Times, January 22, 2000; John Harwood, "Bradley Has Had Heartbeat Episodes since Christmas," New York Times, January 21, 2000. Our analysis of this question is limited by the fact that Voter News Service asked about Bradley’s heart problem in only two states, New Hampshire and Delaware. Ceaser and Busch, The Perfect Tie, p. 83. Abramowitz, "Viability, Electability, and Candidate Choice in a Primary Election"; Paul R. Abramson et al., "`Sophisticated' Voting in the 1988 Presidential Primaries," American Political Science Review 86 (1992); John H. Aldrich, "A Dynamic Model of Presidential Nomination Campaigns," American Political Science Review 74 (1980); Larry M. Bartels, Presidential Primaries and the Dynamics of Public Choice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988); Norrander, "Correlates of Vote Choice in the 1980 Presidential Primaries." William Crotty and John S. Jackson, III, Presidential Primaries and Nominations (Washington: CQ Press, 1985); Paul-Henri Gurian, "Resource Allocation Strategies in Presidential Nomination Campaigns," American Journal of Political Science 30 (1986); Paul-Henri Gurian and Audrey A. Haynes, "Campaign Strategy in Presidential Primaries," American Journal of Political Science 37 (1993); William R. Keech and Donald R. Matthews, The Party's Choice (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1977). Abramowitz, "Viability, Electability, and Candidate Choice in a Primary Election"; Abramson et al., "`Sophisticated' Voting in the 1988 Presidential Primaries"; Walter J. Stone, Ronald B. Rapoport, and Lonna Rae Atkeson, "A Simulation Model of Presidential Nomination Choice," American Journal of Political Science 39 (1995).
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function as a form of expressive behavior — citizens might support a candidate because they wish to be associated with a winner.30 They might observe that one candidate has the “Big Mo,” causing them to act as political lemmings, jumping on the bandwagon along the way to victory.31
Ideology Election campaigns are usually contests among candidates representing various ideological factions of a party.32 Those candidates frequently make ideological appeals, and voters seem to respond to those appeals.33 It seems prudent to control voter ideology. But why does ideology affect candidate choice? Downs was probably the first to suggest that voters use political ideologies to make decisions. A voter simply “compares [candidate] ideologies and supports the one most like his own.”34 Downs assumes that an ideological identification represents a general political philosophy or belief system that organizes perceptions of political issues. An ideological vote is a form of instrumental political behavior; citizens use their vote (“means”) to affect the philosophical direction (“end”) of public policy.35 According to Downs, voting on an ideological basis is an alternative mode of action when voters are uncertain about the issue positions of candidates.
Party Identification A person’s identification with a political party has been viewed as a fundamental decision factor in practically every kind of electoral contest in which candidates from rival parties compete for popular support.36 Studies of primary elections have not examined the effects of 30
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34 35
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Students of nomination politics have used the term electability to refer to voting for the expected winner by primary voters. Electability is similar to the bandwagon effect, a phrase commonly used to refer to voting for the expected winner by general-election voters. See, for example, R Schmitt-Beck, "Mass Media, the Electorate, and the Bandwagon. A Study of Communication Effects on Vote Choice in Germany," International Journal of Public Opinion Research 8 (1996). Abramowitz, "Candidate Choice before the Convention"; George Gallup, "Is There a Bandwagon Vote?," Public Opinion Quarterly 4 (1940); Schmitt-Beck, "Mass Media, the Electorate, and the Bandwagon. A Study of Communication Effects on Vote Choice in Germany." Nelson W. Polsby, "Coalition and Faction in American Politics: An Institutional View," in Party Coalitions in the 1980s, ed. Seymour M. Lipset (San Francisco: Institute for Contemporary Studies, 1981). Ronald D. Hedlund, "Cross-over Voting in a 1976 Open Presidential Primary," Public Opinion Quarterly 41 (1977-78); John S. Holm and John P. Robinson, "Ideological Identification and the American Voter," Public Opinion Quarterly 42 (1978); Lengle, Representation and Presidential Primaries; T. E. Levitin and W. E. Miller, "Ideological Interpretations of Presidential Elections," American Political Science Review 73 (1979); Barbara Norrander, "The Role of Ideology in Presidential Nominations" (paper presented at the Annual Meeting of Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, 1988); Wattier, "Ideological Voting in 1980 Republican Presidential Primaries." Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy, (New York: Harper and Row, 1957), p. 99. See Pamela J. Conover and Stanley Feldman, "The Origins and Meaning of Liberal/Conservative SelfIdentification," American Journal of Political Science 25 (1981). They argue that an ideological identification might represent a mutual bond of identification among leaders and followers of a particular group. An ideological vote may simply indicate group support; the electoral outcome, which group should rule. Larry M. Bartels, "Partisanship and Voting Behavior, 1952-1996," American Journal of Political Science 44 (2000); David Butler and Donald Stokes, Political Change in Britain, 2nd College Edition (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1976); Campbell et al., The American Voter (New York: John Wiley, 1960); Philip E.
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party identification, focusing, instead, on other decision factors.37 There are at least two plausible reasons to exclude party identification from “models” of candidate choice in presidential primaries: 1) since primaries are intramural contests, candidates would not, under normal circumstances, employ partisan cues to win support; and 2) since primaries are party affairs, only loyal party members would attend them. Some anecdotal evidence, recalled from observations of nomination contests for some 30 years, suggests that candidates frequently make partisan appeals by raising questions about a rival’s party loyalty.38 An example is Walter Mondale’s use of rhetorical terms such as “real Democrats” and “anti-Democrats” to suggest that he was a Democrat and that his principal rival, Gary Hart, was not.39 Republican candidates often claim that they are “Reagan Republicans.” In the 2000 election cycle Gore and his surrogates attacked Bradley for leaving the U.S. Senate, suggesting that Gore had “stayed to fight” while Bradley had quit the partisan fight.40 In short, it seems that partisan cues are present in nomination contests. The presumption that partisanship does not vary among primary voters is also questionable. Most states, as Carr and Scott have noted, “require voters to state a party affiliation on registration to be eligible to vote in a party primary election.”41 However, variation in partisanship could emerge for any number of reasons. Polling precincts are notoriously under staffed, which might give rise to lax administration of closed primaries. Some states enforce partisan affiliation by requiring voters to make a public request for a primary ballot, a procedure that could transform a de jure closed primary into a de facto open primary.42 Even with partisan registration, if state law permits someone to engage in sameday registration, a great deal of mischief is possible.43 Finally, Geer’s analysis suggests that
37
Converse and Roy Pierce, Political Representation in France (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1986); Barbara Hinckley, "The American Voter in Congressional Elections," American Political Science Review 74 (1980); Warren E. Miller, "One-Party Politics and the Voter," American Political Science Review 50 (1956); Warren E. Miller, "Party Identification, Realignment, and Party Voting: Back to the Basics," American Political Science Review 85 (1991). See Stone, Rapoport, and Atkeson, "A Simulation Model of Presidential Nomination Choice." They propose a two-stage model in which party identification is one of the criteria used in the first stage to reduce the large, initial pool of candidates to a smaller set that is evaluated in terms of utility. It would seem that the first stage they have proposed is unnecessary when winnowing of candidates occurs before Iowa and New Hampshire. 38
Although made during a debate in the 1980 general-election campaign, Reagan’s quip to John Anderson (“John, do you really prefer Carter to me?”) is, perhaps, the best example of a partisan-loyalty appeal. 39
Richard Reeves, "The Campaign for Page One," in Frontline (PBS Video, 1984). James Dao, "Bradley Defends Himself against Gore's Attacks on Party Loyalty," New York Times, October 16 1999. 41 Craig L. Carr and Gary L. Scott, "The Logic of State Primary Classification Schemes," American Politics Quarterly 12 (1984), p. 470. 42 Malcolm E. Jewell, "Democrat or Republican?: Voters' Choice of a Primary" (paper presented at the Annual Meeting, Southern Political Science Association, Birmingham, Alabama, 1983). 43 See Shawne K. Wickham, "Independents in the Driver's Seat," Union Leader, January 23, 2000. Comments made by William Gardner, Secretary of State for New Hampshire, to this Union Leader reporter reveal how much mischief is possible: New Hampshire’s own voter registration process is a mix of open and closed systems, Gardner explained. “We require the person to declare a party affiliation, but then we allow the person on the way out to undeclare,” he said. Technically, he said, when someone declares a party affiliation, you are agreeing to support the “principals and candidates” of that party. “But no one really asks that question,” Garner admitted. So independents are permitted to vote in either primary, by walking in on election day and asking to be switched from “undeclared” to a particular party. “Then on the way out you can say, “`I’d like to go back to being an independent; I’ve been a party member long enough’,” Gardner said. 40
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“even in closed primaries … self-identified independents and partisans of the opposition party still constitute a sizable segment of the electorate.”44 Estimating the effects of party identification seems necessary because variation from partisan to non-partisan is possible in primary elections. Controlling for party identification in the general election is important because the effects of the Clinton Factor could be spurious. A “false” effect might emerge if partisanship had a strong effect on both President Clinton’s personal evaluations and candidate choice.
DATA AND MEASURES An analysis of exit-poll data originally collected by Voter News Service (VNS) was performed to study the effect of the Clinton Factor on primary voters. Its effect on generalelection voters was analyzed with survey data collected in the 2000 National Election Study (NES). VNS collected these data for a consortium of news organizations (ABC, AP, CBS, CNN, Fox News, and NBC). Primary voters, chosen randomly just after they had voted, were given self-administered questionnaires.45 NES data were collected for a consortium of academic institutions (i.e., ICPSR). Eligible citizens, also chosen randomly, were interviewed in person or by telephone before and after the presidential election.46 VNS data serve the practical interests of journalists who provide immediate, electionnight forecasts and interpretations. The VNS data collection process is driven by news judgments and deadlines, and, apparently, these concerns are best served by a simple, selfadministered questionnaire. The NES data collection process is driven by the theoretical and methodological interests of scholars, and these concerns have created--over some 50 years – a complex, interviewer-administered questionnaire. Even though these studies have different populations, designs, and questionnaires, both data sets include survey items for the decision factors that are hypothesized to affect candidate choice in primary and general elections. The VNS questionnaires were reviewed for relevant survey questions. Eleven exit polls for Democratic primaries included questions on Clinton’s job performance; party identification; ideology; and images of Gore, Bradley, and Clinton. In these exit polls respondents were asked, “Which of these qualities best describes why you voted for your candidate today?” This question was followed by a list of traits. One of the traits respondents could choose was: “He has the best chance to win in November.” This item is an electability criterion: the format of the question implies that electability was a basis for choosing between candidates, not a measure of any one candidate’s perceived chance of winning.47 The exit polls for New Hampshire and Delaware included a question about Bradley’s heart problem.
Of the 64,000 independents who voted in the 1996 Republican primary, he said, “41,000 on the way out filed a card and said ‘I want to go back’.” 44 John G. Geer, "Rules Governing Presidential Primaries," Journal of Politics 48 (1986), p.1019. 45 On the development of exit polling, visit Mitofsky International Election and Public Opinion Research at http://www.mitofskyinternational.com/. For more results from 2000 VNS exit polls, visit http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2000/primaries/. For a news story based on exit poll data, see R. W. Apple, Jr., "Independents' Ballots Hold Promise for McCain and Bradley in Future Primaries," New York Times, February 3, 2000. 46 Visit http://www.umich.edu/~nes/studyres/nes2000/nes2000.htm for a detailed description of this national, pre-and-post election study. 47 For a similar measurement strategy, see Wattier, "Retrospective Voting in Presidential Primaries."
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The Delaware questionnaire did not have measures of many of the other variables needed, so it was not analyzed.48 Since the NES questionnaire has multiple items for each decision criteria, items were selected that closely parallel the VNS items. The questions on Clinton’s job performance (the traditional Gallup item), ideology, and party identification are either identical or very similar. The VNS “image” items for Bradley, Clinton, and Gore have only favorable and unfavorable as the possible responses. Therefore, NES feeling thermometers for Clinton, Bush, and Gore were recoded into positive (51 to 100) and negative (0 to 49) categories. An NES item on the expected winner was selected as a measure of electability. The analytical task was to determine whether the Clinton Factor affects candidate choice, controlling for other decision criteria. This task was approached with two multivariate techniques: ordinary least squares (OLS) regression and logistic regression. Although OLS regression has some well-known limitations,49 its principal analytical power — its capacity to estimate the relative effects of predictor variables — was required. Since the measure (R2) of overall model performance in OLS regression is of limited value, the summary measure produced by logistic regression, the percentage of cases correctly predicted, was used.50 Results from these multivariate analyses are discussed in the next section; some raw statistical results also are presented in Appendix C. The prescribed coding requirements for binary logistic regression were followed, and Appendices A and B provide a detailed listing of concepts, question items, and variable codes for the VNS and NES studies, respectively.
RESULTS The 11 Democratic primaries were held on two dates, February 1 for the New Hampshire primary and March 7 (“Titanic Tuesday”) for the other 10 primaries. Table 1 presents the popular vote and the VNS exit poll percentages for Gore and Bradley. The popular vote seems to indicate that the Clinton Factor did not adversely affect Gore’s bid for the nomination. Vice President Gore won every contest. The closest contest was in New Hampshire, where Gore won by 49.7 percent to Bradley’s 45.6 percent. In several March 7 contests — Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, New York, and Ohio — Gore won by substantial margins. The Bradley-Gore contest was more evenly matched in New England (the “Yankee” primaries), but it was not really competitive after New Hampshire.
48
Exit-poll questionnaires have a dynamic quality unlike NES or GSS questionnaires. The content of the VNS questionnaire seems to respond to breaking events in the campaign. For example, after Bradley ended his nomination campaign on March 9, the measure of his image (see Appendix A) was dropped from the questionnaire. See Mark R. Levy, "The Methodology and Performance of Election Day Polls," Public Opinion Quarterly 47 (1983); Warren J. Mitofsky, "Voter News Service after the Fall," Public Opinion Quarterly 67 (2003).
49 John H. Aldrich and Forrest D. Nelson, Linear Probability, Logit, and Probit Models (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1984). 50
Logistic regression has its own limitations, especially the inherent difficulty of interpreting its coefficients. Since the logistic regression model is nonlinear, to quote J. Scott Long (Regression Models for Categorical and Limited Dependent Variables, Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, Inc., 1977, p. 61), “no single approach to interpretation can fully describe the relationship between a variable and the outcome probability.”
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Mark J. Wattier Table 1. 2000 Democratic Primaries Gore’s Percent Date State 1 February NH 7 March CT 7 March GA 7 March ME 7 March MD 7 March MA 7 March MO 7 March NY 7 March OH 7 March RI 7 March VT
Vote 49.7 55.4 83.8 54.0 67.3 59.9 64.6 65.6 73.6 57.2 54.3
Exit Poll 52.0 55.0 84.0 54.6 66.9 60.4 64.7 65.0 71.8 56.5 55.0
Bradley’s Percenta Vote Exit Poll 45.6 47.0 41.5 42.2 16.2 16.0 41.3 41.3 28.5 28.8 37.3 36.8 33.6 33.0 33.5 34.0 24.7 24.2 40.6 41.2 43.9 44.0
Popular Vote Source: Mayer, “The Presidential Nominations,” p. 32. a Bradley ended his campaign on March 9 with Gore having 33% of the delegates needed to win the nomination .
The VNS exit polls accurately represent the popular vote in each primary. The exit-poll percentages track the popular-vote results fairly closely. The only possible exception is in New Hampshire, where the exit poll overestimates Gore’s vote by 2.3 points and Bradley’s vote by 1.4 points.
The Clinton Factor in Democratic Primaries How well do personal evaluations of Clinton predict candidate choice in 2000 Democratic primaries? Figure 1 graphs the percent correctly predicted from three logisticregression analyses: two analyses with only one predictor variable (line with triangles for Clinton’s image; line with squares for performance) and a multivariate analysis with seven predictors (black line with circles). The effectiveness of Clinton’s image as a predictor of candidate choice is quite erratic. It varies from a high of 83.9 percent in Georgia to a low of 62.0 percent in Connecticut and Massachusetts. The prediction rate averages 67.3 percent, but this measure is somewhat misleading (standard deviation, 6.8). The prediction rates in New England primaries are especially low. Consider how well Clinton’s performance predicts choice. Since performance seems to predict choice as well as personal image, instant election-night analyses may have focused more on performance, surely the more traditional and perhaps also the more acceptable basis for choosing between Gore and Bradley. The statistical similarities between performance and personal image may have concealed the effects of the Clinton Factor. The addition of other predictors dramatically increases the overall prediction rate to 81.6 percent. These prediction rates are less erratic (standard deviation, 3.7), and vary from a low of 77.5 percent in Vermont to a high of 88.8 percent in Georgia. The gaps between the lines (percentage point differences) visually indicate how much improvement the seven-variable model makes over the simple one-variable models. Comparing the image and fully specified
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models reveals some large percentage-point improvements in New England primaries: 16.4, 16.3, 19.7, and 14.3 in New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Vermont, respectively. The prediction rates observed for the fully specified model of candidate choice tend to affirm that relevant predictors have been included.
Figure 1. Predicting Choice
95
Percent Correctly Predicted
90 85 80 75 70 65 60 55 50 NH
CT
GA
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MD
MA
MO
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Democratic Primary
Clinton Image
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Note: The variables for the Seven-Variable Model are: Gore Image, Bradley Image, Clinton Image, Clinton Popularity, Party Identification, Ideology, and Electability Criterion (see Appendix A for measures and Appendix C for the multivariate statistics). The model for New Hampshire also included Bradley’s Health.
Figure 2 clearly depicts the effects of the Clinton Factor. Gore’s exit-poll percentages are graphed for primary voters who approved of Clinton’s job performance. High percentages, in the high 80s or low 90s, were expected.51 When primary voters liked Clinton (line with triangles), a high percentage of them supported Gore in only three primaries — 92.0, 85.6, and 82.8 in Georgia, Maryland, and Ohio, respectively. Consider what happened to Gore’s vote when primary voters disliked Clinton (line with squares). In two primaries, New Hampshire and Vermont, Gore’s percentage of the vote actually fell below 50 percent. In three primaries — Maine (51.7), New York (52.9), and Rhode Island (50.8) — Gore’s percentage was only slightly above the 50 percent mark. In Georgia and Ohio Clinton’s image suppressed Gore’s expected vote, but not to the same extent. Clinton’s image seems to depress Gore’s expected vote by approximately 19 points (18.9) among voters who approved of Clinton’s job performance, but personally disliked him.
51
This expectation is based on prior research and the fact that ninety-two percent (91.6%) of partisans (strongs, weaks, and leaners) who approved of their party’s incumbent president voted for the incumbent in presidential elections from 1972 to 2000 (Author’s analysis, American National Election Studies Cumulative Data File, 1948-2000, Study No. 8475).
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Figure 2. The Clinton Factor 100
Gore Percent
90 80 70 60 50 40 NH
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GA
ME MD MA MO NY
OH
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VT
Democratic Primary DisLike Clinton
Like Clinton
Table 2 displays selected results from logistic-regression analyses that included all hypothesized decision factors (i.e., the seven-variable model). Only the results for Clinton’s image and performance are presented in order to examine, in greater detail, the effects of the Clinton Factor. Table 2. Odds Ratios for Clinton’s Image and Performance State
Clinton Image
Performance
NH CT GA ME MD MA MO NY OH RI VT
0.636* 0.652 0.505* 0.646 0.468* 0.793 0.451* 0.560* 0.537* 0.382 0.639
3.263* 2.085 2.004* 1.369 1.559 2.573* 0.980 1.896* 1.272 2.627* 1.787
p ≤ .05 testing Ho: Odds Ratio = 1.00. Note: An Odds Ratio > 1.00 indicates that a factor increases the odds of voting for Gore; an Odds Ratio < 1.00 indicates that a factor decreases the odds of voting for Gore. Clinton’s image is coded 1, unfavorable, and 0, favorable; performance is coded 1, approve, and 0, disapprove (see Appendix A).
*
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The cell entries in Table 2 represent the odds ratios for Clinton’s image and performance.52 These variables were coded with the following expectations: voters who approved of Clinton’s performance (coded 1) would be more likely to support Gore; those who personally disliked the President (coded 1) would be less likely to support the Vice President. I expected odds ratios greater than 1.00 for performance and odds ratios less than 1.00 for Clinton’s image. As the results in Table 2 indicate, performance is statistically significant in five of the 11 primaries and Clinton’s image is significant in six of them. All significant odds ratios are in the hypothesized directions. These results indicate how the Clinton Factor produced mixed political consequences for Vice President Gore. In three primaries — New Hampshire, Georgia, and New York — both Clinton variables are significant, which suggests that Clinton’s performance helped Gore (odds ratios > 1.00) about as much as Clinton’s image (odds ratios < 1.00) hurt him, politically. In three primaries — Maryland, Missouri, and Ohio — Clinton’s image is significant, but performance is not. In these primaries Clinton’s negative personal image decreases the odds of voting for Gore, as expected, but this negative effect is not offset by a positive effect from performance. In only two primaries, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, does it seem that Clinton’s performance helps the Vice President without a negative effect from Clinton’s image. Finally, in three primaries — Connecticut, Maine, and Vermont — both Clinton variables are not statistically significant.
Figure 3. Relative Effects .50 Absolute Value [Beta Weight]
.45 .40 .35 .30 .25 .20 .15 .10 .05 .00 NH
CT
GA
ME
MD
MA
MO
NY
OH
RI
VT
Democratic Primary Gore Image
Performance
Bradley Image
Clinton Image
Figure 3 displays selected results from the OLS regression analyses. It displays the beta weights (standardized regression coefficients) for Gore’s image, Bradley’s image, Clinton’s 52
The complete results of the logistic-regression analyses are available from the author upon request.
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image, and Clinton’s job performance.53 Clinton’s personal image has a statistically significant effect in eight of the 11 primaries; it affects whether primary voters selected Gore or Bradley in all but Georgia, Maine, and Massachusetts. Its overall effect is stronger than performance, party identification, and ideology (see pooled results in Appendix C). In Ohio and Missouri its effect is also stronger than electability. These results also indicate that performance is the least important decision factor. In only three primaries — New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Massachusetts — is Clinton’s job performance statistically significant. In every primary except Massachusetts, Clinton’s image has a stronger effect than Clinton’s performance. Images of the candidates, especially Gore’s image, are considerably more important than Clinton’s image and performance. Gore’s image is the most important factor in eight of the 11 primaries. In Maine and Rhode Island the two candidate image variables have similar effects. Bradley’s image has its strongest effect in Missouri where he was born and reared.54 Bradley’s health is a significant factor in New Hampshire; voters who viewed Bradley’s health as a consideration tended to support Gore, a beta weight of .16 (see Appendix C). This factor is not as important as the two candidate image factors, but it has a somewhat stronger effect than either Clinton’s image or performance. This finding raises an intriguing question: What if Bradley’s heart problem had not become an issue? This hypothetical question was addressed with CLARIFY, a software program that estimates what a model would predict under different, user-specified conditions.55 After estimating coefficients with only statistically significant factors (i.e., excluding ideology and party identification), I set Bradley’s health to “0.” This arbitrary action statistically removes health as a consideration for New Hampshire voters. The predicted values for Gore’s percentage are 45.5 percent (OLS regression) and 39.8 percent (logistic regression). If the statistical assumptions and techniques of CLARIFY are reasonable, we would have to conclude that Bradley might have won the New Hampshire primary.
The Clinton Factor in the 2000 General Election Why did voters in the November general election prefer Gore or Bush? Did the Clinton Factor sway general-election voters one way or another? Where was the Clinton Factor important? Sides has demonstrated that voters experienced the 2000 presidential campaign differently depending on whether they lived in one of the “battleground” states (see note to Table 3).56 The Gore and Bush campaigns vigorously competed in these states because the outcome was in question. As Sides has stated: 53
54
55
56
This analysis assumes that the relative magnitudes of the beta weights indicate the relative effects of the predictor variables. The results for ideology, electability criterion, and party identification are reported in Appendix C. Bill Bradley was born in Crystal City, Missouri. He announced his bid for the presidency there. He first gained national attention with his skills with a basketball. See Barton Gellman and Dale Russakoff, “Big Hopes for a Small Town-Boy,” Washington Post, December 12, 1999. CLARIFY is described in Gary King, Michael Tomz, and Jason Wittenberg, "Making the Most of Statistical Analyses: Improving Interpretation and Presentation," American Journal of Political Science 44 (2000). This program is available at King’s web site, http://Gking.Harvard.Edu. Sides, "The Presidential Campaigns of 2000."
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A higher percentage of voters in battleground states report reading about the campaign in the newspaper as well as seeing campaign advertisements and programming, though here the [difference] in exposure to advertising is most substantively meaningful: in battleground states 84.6 percent of respondents report seeing campaign advertisements, compared to 69.2 percent in non-battleground states. Similarly, voters in battleground states are more likely to be contacted or receive mail from a party. For example, 44.8 percent of respondents in battleground states were contacted, as opposed to 34.8 percent of those in non-battleground states. Finally, there is evidence that respondents in battleground states were themselves more active in the campaign, in that more tried to influence others’ vote and participated in a campaign activity of some sort.57
Such dramatic differences in campaign experiences and behaviors clearly suggest that the battleground states are where to test for Clinton-Factor effects. While some groups (e.g., Democratic Leadership Council) were quick to criticize Gore for not using President Clinton more effectively, Thomas Mann opined: “Clinton would have done more harm than good . . . in battleground states.”58 Was Clinton’s personal image a significant factor in the battleground states? Results of separate logistic-regression analyses for voters on “safe” ground and for those on “battle” ground, displayed in Table 3, indicate that Clinton’s image had a significant effect on whether voters in battleground states supported Gore or Bush. In battleground states voters who disliked the President were more likely to support Bush than Gore (odds ratio, 0.54). Evidently, Clinton’s image did not significantly affect voters on “safe” ground. Three factors seemed to affect voters on “safe” ground — Gore’s image, Bush’s image, and party identification.59 Clinton’s job performance, though significant in Democratic primaries, seemed to have no effect in the presidential election . In some presidential primaries positive effects from Clinton’s performance tended to balance negative effects from Clinton’s image. This “balancing” effect was not so evident in the general election. Table 3. The Clinton Factor in the General Election Predictor Gore Image Bush/Bradley Image Clinton Image Performance Party Identification Ideology Electability Correctly Predicted N 57 58 59
“Safe” Ground 20.991* .021* .254 1.642 9.467* 1.617 1.010 92.9% 356
“Battle” Ground 7.029* .009* .054* 1.256 7.491* 1.841 1.550* 91.1% 343
Democratic Primaries 27.974* .037* .563* 1.748* 1.465* .621* 7.685* 80.1% 8298
Ibid., p. 17. Quoted by Ceaser and Busch, A Perfect Tie, p. 31. Stanley Kelley, Jr., and Thad W. Mirer, "The Simple Act of Voting," American Political Science Review 68 (1974); Mark J. Wattier, “The Simple Act of Voting in 1980 Democratic Presidential Primaries,” American Politics Quarterly 11 (1983).
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Note: States were divided into “safe” and “battle” areas following Sides (see note 4), who relied upon The Cook Political Report and CNN. The battleground states were: AR, AZ, DE, FL, IL, IA, LA, ME, MI, MN, MO, NV, NH, NM, OH, OR, PA, TN, WA, WV, and WI. Results for 2000 Democratic primaries were created by merging all cases into a single data file. * p ≤ .05 testing Ho: Odds Ratio = 1.00.
As expected, candidate images are important decision criteria in both the spring primaries and the fall presidential election. Party identification is also important in both election seasons. Perhaps under “normal” political conditions, with more consistency in performance and personal evaluations, performance would emerge as a general decision criterion.
DISCUSSION The 2000 Democratic nomination contest appears to fit the consensual nomination pattern.60 An early favorite (Al Gore) faced a weak opponent (Bill Bradley), and the early favorite easily won the nomination. This characterization only fits the primary and caucus results; it does not fit the political-resources profile. Bradley was not necessarily a weak opponent. At the end of 1999 Gore was reported to have $5.7 million cash-on-hand; Bradley actually had more money to spend, about $8.3 million. Bradley also had more cash-on-hand at the end of the third quarter reporting period, $10.7 million to Gore’s $10.3 million.61 From August 1999 to December 1999, Gore remained the first choice of registered Democrats surveyed by the Gallup Organization, but Gore’s lead seemed to be evaporating. Although general-election, trial-heat polls showed both Democrats losing to Bush, Bradley seemed to be a stronger general-election candidate than Gore. By January 2000, after the news of Bradley’s heart problem, Gore’s lead in the first-choice poll of registered Democrats increased considerably.62 It seems that news of Bradley’s heart problem damaged his perceived electability, making him a weaker candidate. Some observers have suggested that Bradley was not a very effective campaigner.63 However, the results reported here have suggested that Bradley would have won the New Hampshire primary had his health not become an issue. Bradley might have faired better in other states, especially in New England primaries (Connecticut, Maine, Rhode Island, and Vermont) where his image was as favorable as Gore’s. New Hampshire voters actually had a more favorable image of Bradley, 80.3 percent favorable to Gore’s 72.5 percent. Another political factor made Bradley’s bid for the nomination more difficult — Gore switched from running as an incumbent to running as a non-incumbent. Several signs indicated that Gore campaigned as a non-incumbent. Gore distanced himself from the administration’s policy toward Elian Gonzalez.64 He moved the campaign headquarters from Washington, D.C., to Nashville, Tennessee, making him a Washington outsider.65 His announcement speech repeatedly emphasized “family,” creating a stark 60
Keech and Matthews, The Party's Choice. These figures are from the Political Money Line web site. 62 Frank Newport, Bush and Gore Maintain Leads for Their Party's Nomination [World Wide Web] (Gallup News Service, 2000 [cited October 1 2001]); available from http://www.gallup.com/poll/releases/pr000113.asp. 63 Ceaser and Busch, The Perfect Tie; Mayer, "The Presidential Nominations." 64 Lizette Alvarez, "Senate Will Hold Hearings on Raid on House in Miami," New York Times, April 26, 2000; Katharine Q. Seelye, "Gore Supporting Residency Status for Cuban Child," New York Times, March 31, 2000. 65 Dennis W. Johnson, No Place for Amateurs (New York: Routledge, 2001). 61
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contrast to the Clinton family.66 His acceptance speech contained a politically significant line: “This election is not a reward for past performance.”67 Two of his resume advertisements omitted his eight years as Vice President.68 He selected Joseph Lieberman, a Clinton administration critic, as his vice-presidential running mate. With few exceptions (e.g., a New York fundraiser), Gore and President Clinton never campaigned together, a clear break from their teamwork in 1992 and 1996. In keeping with the maxim, “actions speak louder than words,” recall how passionately the Gores kissed before the Democratic nominee delivered his acceptance speech. Was this a sign that their marriage was a different kind of relationship than what the country had observed in the Clintons the previous eight years? Finally, as Tseng (2002, 206) has noted, “Gore did not mention Clinton’s name on the campaign trail or even in the debates.”69 Gore’s campaign consultants also argued for non-incumbency. In Electing the President 2000: An Insider’s View, Gore’s consultants stated the following strategic consideration that applied to both the nomination and the general-election campaigns: We couldn’t just run on the Clinton record. We couldn’t say that this election, to quote the convention speech, is “a reward for past performance.” We had to make it about the future: what to do with the prosperity, especially in a situation where voters had cognitive dissonance about Clinton.70
It seems that the 2000 Democratic nomination contest was fought under unusual circumstances. Gore’s electability was limited by his ties to Clinton; Bradley’s electability, by his health. It seems that a tacit agreement governed their contest: Gore would not attack Bradley’s health, Bradley would not use Clinton’s scandals to attack Gore, and they both would focus the debate on the few policy issues that divided them. It was neither necessary to attack the Clinton administration, nor vital that it be defended. No such implicit norm of electoral combat limited Republicans from launching various versions of the Clinton-Factor attack. Bush’s campaign advisors were well aware of the unique politics of the 2000 presidential campaign — a popular incumbent, with whom the Democratic nominee was associated, was personally disliked by potential swing voters.71 Linking Clinton and Gore might be a way of moving some swing voters to Bush. Recall, for example, Bush’s frequent refrain, “I pledge to uphold the dignity of the office,” made with his right hand raised in the air. Two remarks by his running mate are worth quoting: On the first hour of the first day, [George W. Bush] will restore decency and integrity to the Oval Office. 66
Al Gore, Announcement Speech (1999 [cited October 1 2001]); available from
http://www1.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/06/16/president.2000/gore/transcript.html. 67
Al Gore, Acceptance Speech (Cnn) (2000 [cited October 1 2001]); available from http://www11.cnn.com/ELECTION/2000/conventions/democratic/transcripts/gore.html. 68 Candice Berry, Getting to Know Gore (Campaign Ad) [World Wide Web] (2000 [cited October 1 2001]); available from http://cbsnews.cbs.com/now/story/0,1597,227267-412,00.shtml; Sean Richardson, Gore Trots out His Resume (Campaign Ad) [World Wide Web] (2000 [cited October 1 2001]); available from http://cbsnews.cbs.com/now/story/0,1597,144543-412,00.shtml. 69 Tseng, “"The Clinton Effect: How a Lame-Duck President Impacted His Vice President's Election Prospects," p. 206. 70 Bob Shrum quoted in Jamieson and Waldman, Electing the President 2000: An Insider’s View, p. 57. 71 See Matthew Dowd’s remarks in Ibid., p. 25.
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Mark J. Wattier Mr. Gore will try to separate himself from his leader’s shadow. But somehow we will never see one without thinking of the other.72
The Republican attack argued: “Vice President Gore can’t restore honesty and dignity to the Oval Office because of his close (guilt by) association with President Clinton.”73 It seems as if the Gore-Bradley nomination contest de-activated the Clinton Factor. Its effect was minimized, in part, by the Gore campaign acting as if there were no connection whatsoever. Despite this attempt to attenuate its effect, the exit-poll results reported here demonstrate that the Clinton Factor did have a significant effect on primary voters. On the other hand, the general election contest seemed to activate the Clinton Factor. Arguably, both camps helped this factor emerge (e.g., Gore’s debate performances and Republican attacks). The effect of the Clinton Factor was concealed in the spring by Gore’s unbroken string of victories in party caucuses and primaries. Its effect was revealed in the fall by Bush’s victory, a contest decided, in part, by voters in battleground states whose choice of Gore or Bush the Clinton Factor affected. The evidence clearly suggests that Vice President Gore’s defeat can be attributed to the Clinton Factor.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author wishes to thank the students in his class (Fall, 2001) on political behavior for their many contributions to this work. Murray State University’s Committee on Institutional Studies and Research and Dr. Dannie Harrison, Dean of the College of Business and Public Affairs, are thanked for providing the funds to purchase the exit-poll data. The author thanks the National Election Studies for the 2000 National Election Study (Study Number 3131). The contributions of Hal Bass, John Geer, Paul-Henri Gurian, John S. Jackson, III, David Kimball, Chris Owens, and the anonymous reviewers are appreciated. Appendix A: Concepts, VNS Questions, and Variable Codes Concept VNS Questio Variable Cod Candidate Choice In today’s Democratic presidential 1= Gore; 0 = Bradley primary did you just vote for: * Bill Bradley * Al Gore Gore Image Is your opinion of Al Gore: 1 = favorable; 0 = unfavorable * Favorable * Unfavorable Appendix A (Continued) 72
Richard B. Cheney, Richard B. Cheney Address Accepting the GOP Nomination for Vice President (2000 [cited August 1 2002]); available from
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2000/conventions/republican/transcripts/cheney.html. 73
The billboard the Republican Party placed next to Vice President Gore’s Nashville headquarters illustrates how Republicans made sure potential voters would “never see one without thinking of the other.” According to the Republican Party press release issued on November 29, 1999: The billboard will show Bill Clinton hugging Al Gore along with Gore's famous quote, "One of our Greatest Presidents," made at Clinton's post-impeachment pep rally. The advertisement is intended to emphasize the drag that Al Gore's support of Bill Clinton has had on his presidential campaign. Source: Tennessee Republican Party.
The Clinton Factor: The Effects of Clinton’s Personal Image…
Bradley Image Clinton Image
Clinton Performance
Party Identification
Ideology
Electability Criterion
Bradley’s Health
Is your opinion of Bill Bradley * Favorable * Unfavorable Is your opinion of Bill Clinton as a person: * Favorable * Unfavorable Do you approve or disapprove of the way Bill Clinton is handling his job as President? * Approve * Disapprove No matter how you voted today, do you usually think of yourself as a: * Democrat * Independent * Republican * Something else On most political matters, do you consider yourself: * Very liberal * Somewhat liberal * Moderate * Somewhat conservative * Very conservative Which one candidate quality mattered most in deciding how you voted? (Check only one) * He is a strong and decisive leader * He has new ideas * He is not a typical politician * He has the right experience * He has the best chance to win in November * He stands up for what he believes * He is a loyal Democrat Regardless of how you voted today, are you concerned that Bill Bradley’s health would interfere with his ability to serve effectively as President? * Yes * No
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1 = favorable; 0 = unfavorable 1 = unfavorable; 0 = favorable
1 = approve; 0 = disapprove
1 = Democrat; 0 = all other
1 = liberal; 0 = all other
1 = best chance; 0 = all other
1 = yes; 0 = no
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Mark J. Wattier APPENDIX B: CONCEPTS, NES QUESTIONS, AND VARIABLE CODES
Concept Candidate Choice Gore Image
Bush Image
Clinton Image
Clinton Performance
Party Identification
Ideology
Electability
NES Question Who did you vote for? (v001249 Gore Feeling Thermometer (v000360) Note: Valid responses range from 0 degrees to 100 degrees; 50 is neutral Bush Feeling Thermometer (v000361) Note: Valid responses range from 0 degrees to 100 degrees; 50 is neutral Clinton Feeling Thermometer (v000359) Note: Valid responses range from 0 degrees to 100 degrees; 50 is neutral Do you approve or disapprove of the way Bill Clinton is handling his job as President? (v000339) Generally speaking, do you think of yourself as a Republican, a Democrat, an independent, or what? (v000519) Where would you place yourself on this scale, or haven’t you thought much about this? (v000447) Who do you think will be elected President in November? (v000485)
Source: The 2000 National Election Study, http://www.umich.edu/~nes/studyres/nes2000/nes2000.htm
Variable Code 1= Gore; 0 = Bush; all other = missing 1 = favorable (51 - 100); 0 = unfavorable (0 – 49); all other = missing
1 = favorable (51 - 100); 0 = unfavorable (0 – 49); all other = missing
1 = unfavorable (0 - 49); 0 = favorable (51 – 100); all other = missing
1 = approve; 0 = disapprove; DK/NA/RF = missing
1 = Democrat; 0 = other valid responses; DK/NA/RF = missing
1 = liberal; 0 = mo DK/NA/RF = missing derate and conservative;
1 = Gore; 0 = Bush; all other = missing
Study
Number
3131,
available
at
Appendix C. Multivariate Analyses for 2000 Democratic Presidential Primaries
Gore Image Bradley Image
NH .43* -.27*
CT .44* -.27*
GA .40* -.25*
ME .37* -.36*
MD .42* -.29*
MA .46* -.25*
MO .29* -.40*
NY .43* -.28*
OH .49* -.32*
RI .35* -.35*
VT .43* -.31*
Pooled .42* -.31*
Clinton Image Clinton Performance Party Identification Ideology Electability Bradley’s Health R2 S.E. est. N Percent Predicted
-.07* .06* -.03 -.03 .12* .16* .46 .37 732 79.4
-.10* .06* .04 -.03 .17* NA .44 .37 860 78.3
-.07 .05 .10* -.06 .14* NA .35 .30 604 88.8
-.06 .05 .04 -.06 .17* NA .43 .38 581 78.6
-.11* .04 .07* -.06* .10* NA .44 .35 881 82.5
-.03 .09* .01 -.11* .22* NA .46 .36 883 81.7
-.13* .00 .05 -.01 .10* NA .34 .39 566 79.2
-.09* .03 .07* -.06* .16* NA .45 .36 1317 80.3
-.06* .02 .07* .01 .03 NA .52 .31 704 87.3
-.11* .07 .07* -.12* .17* NA .48 .36 538 83.6
-.07* .04 .00 -.04 .13* NA .42 .38 621 77.5
-.08* .04* .04* -.06* .14* NA .44 .36 8298 80.1
Notes: NA = variable not available. Pooled results were created by merging all cases into a single data file. *p ≤ .05
In: White House Studies Compendium, Volume 4 Editor: R. W. Watson, pp. 429-443
ISBN: 1-60021-541-6 © 2007 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
EXECUTIVE POWER AND THE CONSTITUTION IN TIMES OF CRISIS Robert P. Saldin ABSTRACT Following September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush issued an Executive Order establishing military tribunals to try suspected terrorists. Previous presidents have taken similar extra-constitutional action during periods of crisis. Most prominently, Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War and Franklin Roosevelt interned Japanese descendents during World War II. Relying on the work of prominent constitutional scholars, this paper analyzes Bush’s actions in light of these historical examples and pertinent Supreme Court cases. The paper concludes that, despite the lack of a formal declaration of war and the uncertain duration of the “War on Terrorism,” the Supreme Court would likely approve of Bush’s use of military tribunals at this time. However, if the tribunals are perceived as becoming a permanent fixture of government they would likely be overturned.
INTRODUCTION Presidents have invoked war powers to justify extra-constitutional actions on several occasions in United States history. Areas of tension inherently emerge, however, when such actions are taken. Under what conditions is a president justified in operating outside constitutional bounds? What are the checks upon such executive action? What is of greater import – public safety and preservation of the country, or individual fairness and preservation of fundamental civil liberties? Might constitutional exceptions during times of crisis pave the road for further constitutional breeches in calmer periods by a despotic executive? These are among the difficult questions that arise in any discussion of war powers. Exactly what constitutes “war powers” has long been a subject of debate. At one end of the spectrum, President Abraham Lincoln articulated the view that “[a]s commander-in-chief of the army and navy, in time of war I suppose I have a right to take any measure which may best subdue the enemy.”1 At the other end, Justice David Davis wrote in Ex parte Milligan (1866) that:
1
Joseph E. Kallenbach, The American Chief Executive: The Presidency and the Governorship (New York: Harper and Row, 1966) 533.
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Robert P. Saldin The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times, and under all circumstances. No doctrine involving more pernicious consequences was ever invented by the wit of man than that any of its provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government. Such a doctrine leads directly to anarchy or despotism, but the theory of necessity on which it is based is false; for the government, within the Constitution, has all the powers granted to it, which are necessary to preserve its existence…2
For the purposes of this paper, “war powers” can be thought of as those extraconstitutional powers the government (usually the executive) assumes in a time of crisis that, under normal circumstances, would not be permissible. In the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, President George W. Bush invoked extra-constitutional measures, notably the establishment of military tribunals. There is historic precedent for such extra-constitutional action including (among other cases) Abraham Lincoln’s suspension of the writ of habeas corpus during the Civil War and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s internment of Japanese descendents during World War II. These actions were justified by the presidents involved on various grounds; were subject to criticism either immediately or with the benefit of hindsight; and, in the two historical examples, were ultimately reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court. This paper considers these three aspects of the two historical examples and examines the interpretations of these incidents made by constitutional scholars. The paper then analyzes Bush’s actions and goes on to discuss what the historical examples and the work of scholars can tell us about the current debate and what the Supreme Court might do if it eventually addresses military tribunals.
LINCOLN AND HABEAS CORPUS President Lincoln suspended the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus on several occasions during the Civil War. The writ of habeas corpus is designed to protect personal liberty by ensuring that anyone charged with a crime or put in jail is allowed to argue his or her case in a court before a judge in a timely manner and win release if insufficient incriminating evidence is presented. Lincoln’s suspensions, in essence, allowed the military to arrest and detain indefinitely and without trial, anyone suspected of aiding the Confederacy. Lincoln first issued a suspension of habeas corpus several days after Fort Sumpter’s fall in April 1861. Additional suspensions occurred throughout the war in regions Lincoln thought were in danger of seceding from the Union and, on two occasions, throughout the country. While most of those imprisoned under the suspensions were Southern spies, smugglers, or other criminals seeking to harm the United States, a handful of people were also arrested for political reasons.3 Lincoln argued that his authority to suspend the writ of habeas corpus came from the Constitution and from the necessity of saving the country. Initially the President offered little justification or reasoning for the suspension. The proclamation declaring the first nation-wide suspension asserted only that “it [had] become necessary” to suspend the writ during the war because “disloyal persons are not adequately restrained by the ordinary processes of 2 3
Ex parte Milligan, 71 U.S. 2, 18 L.Ed. 281 (1866). David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Touchstone, 1995) 304.
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law…from giving aid and comfort in various ways to the insurrection.”4 Lincoln did not elaborate on these statements or cite the specific powers he was relying on for months. It can be inferred, however, that the President was relying on the Constitution’s commander-in-chief clause, given his assertion that the suspension was necessary and permissible only in the context of the war. There were two primary criticisms of Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus. The first was that only Congress had the right to suspend the writ. The power to suspend habeas corpus is addressed in Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution – the section dealing with Congress. There is disagreement, however, whether the power was mentioned in this part of the document because the Founders saw it as a congressional power or merely because it did not fit anywhere else.5 Although Lincoln’s initial suspension was met with little immediate dissent, the May 1861 arrest of Lieutenant John Merryman, a Confederate-sympathizer, ended the period of calm. Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Roger B. Taney issued a writ of habeas corpus based on his assessment that only Congress had the power to suspend this right. Lincoln, however, ignored Taney. Subsequently, the Chief Justice, in Ex parte Merryman (1861), deemed the President’s actions unconstitutional.6 Lincoln was silent on the issue until July 4, 1861 when he gave a message to Congress. In the address, Lincoln argued that suspending the writ was an emergency power and, therefore, not solely a congressional prerogative: It was decided that we have a case of rebellion, and that the public safety does require the qualified suspension of the privilege of the writ which was authorized to be made. Now it is insisted that Congress, and not the Executive, is vested with this power. But the Constitution itself, is silent as to which, or who, is to exercise the power; and as the provision was plainly made for a dangerous emergency, it cannot be believed the framers of the instrument intended, that in every case, the danger should run its course, until Congress could be called together; the very assembling of which might be prevented, as was intended in this case, by the rebellion.7
Although there was some dissent in each house on the matter of the suspension of habeas corpus, Congress largely agreed with the President. Ohio Senator John Sherman expressed the sentiments of many of his colleagues when he stated: “I approve of the action of the President…. He did precisely what I would have done if I had been in his place – no more, no less; but I cannot here, in my place, as a Senator, under oath, declare that what he did do was…strictly legal, and in consonance with the provisions of the Constitution.”8 Ultimately, such concerns were set aside in the interests of dealing with the crisis at hand when Congress passed retroactive bills providing Lincoln with the necessary power to act as he had. The second criticism of Lincoln’s action was a broader claim that the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus was unconstitutional because citizens were being stripped of basic civil liberties. Dissent among Democrats was particularly strong. Delaware Senator James Bayard, 4
Abraham Lincoln, “Proclamation Suspending the Writ of Habeas Corpus,” Lincoln Selected Speeches and Writings (New York: Vintage Books, 1992) 348. 5 Donald, 303. 6 Ex parte Merryman, 17 Fed. Cases 144 (1861). 7 Lincoln, “Special Message to Congress,” Lincoln: Selected Speeches and Writings (New York: Vintage Books, 1992) 307. 8 Donald, 305.
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for example, argued that in suspending the writ, Lincoln was “declaring himself a Dictator.”9 The Democratic Illinois State Register articulated the concern in more detail, claiming that Lincoln was “seeking to inaugurate a reign of terror in the loyal states by military arrests…of citizens, without a trial, to browbeat all opposition by villainous and false charges of disloyalty against whole classes of patriotic citizens, to destroy all constitutional guarantees of free speech, a free press, and the writ of ‘habeas corpus.’”10 Lincoln, in his 1861 message to Congress, addressed this line of criticism by arguing that, given the danger facing the country, to have done anything other than suspend the writ would itself have been unconstitutional: This authority has purposely been exercised but very sparingly. Nevertheless, the legality and propriety of what has been done under it, are questioned… Of course some consideration was given to the questions of power, and propriety, before this matter was acted upon. The whole of the laws which were required to be faithfully executed, were being resisted, and failing of execution, in nearly one-third of the States… Are all the laws, but one, to go unexecuted, and the government itself go to pieces, lest that one be violated? Even in such a case, would not the official oath [to see that the laws are “faithfully executed”] be broken, if the government should be overthrown, when it was believed that disregarding the single law, would tend to preserve it?11
The most controversial and dramatic incident regarding these general constitutional criticisms occurred in 1863 when former United States Representative Clement L. Vallandigham, an Ohio Peace Democrat, directly challenged an order that prohibited a declaration of sympathy for the South. In a speech Vallandigham and his followers publicized in advance for the purpose of alerting Lincoln supporters to the act of defiance, the former Congressman attacked the President and his “wicked, cruel and unnecessary war” fought “for the purpose of crushing out liberty and erecting a despotism…a war for the freedom of the blacks and the enslavement of the whites.”12 Vallandigham was arrested four days after the speech and sentenced to prison for the remainder of the war by a military tribunal. The public outcry over the arrest and imprisonment was loud and sustained. The criticisms, once again, centered around infringements of civil liberties. A new specific criticism leveled at Lincoln was that so long as the civil courts were available, it was unconstitutional to use military tribunals. Many loyal Republicans in addition to the Democrats were united in their outrage over the Vallandigham incident.13 Lincoln addressed these concerns in a letter he sent to a New York group opposed to his policies. In explaining the arrest, the President wrote that in times of war, when the nation’s continued existence is at stake, the government must have greater flexibility to arrest people who desire to harm it. Lincoln argued that Vallandigham sought to harm the Union Army upon which the nation relied for its survival. The President used an effective example to reinforce his point:
9
Donald, 380. Donald, 382. 11 Lincoln, “Special Message to Congress,” 306-7. 12 James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988) 596. 13 Ibid, 596-7. 10
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Of how little value the constitutional provisions I have quoted will be rendered, if arrests shall never be made until defined crimes shall have been committed may be illustrated by a few notable examples. Gen. John C. Breckinridge, Gen. Robert E. Lee, [and others]…now occupying the very highest places in the Rebel war service, were all within the power of the Government since the Rebellion began, and were nearly as well known to be traitors then as now. Unquestionably if we had seized and held them, the insurgent cause would be much weaker. But no one of them had then committed any crime defined in the law. Every one of them, if arrested, would have been discharged on habeas corpus were the writ allowed to operate. In view of these and similar cases, I think the time not unlikely to come when I shall be blamed for having made too few arrests rather than too many.14
In addition to the Merryman case, two other Supreme Court decisions addressed Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus. The first, Ex parte Vallandigham (1864), saw the high court defer judgment on the constitutionality of Lincoln’s suspension of the writ. Asserting that it had no jurisdiction over military tribunals because they are not courts, the justices said they could not rule on the larger issues presented in the case.15 Two years later, however, after the war had concluded, the Supreme Court heard Ex parte Milligan (1866) and came to a different conclusion.16 In a stunning rebuke of Lincoln’s actions, the Court ruled Milligan was unconstitutionally denied his right to trial in a civilian court. Justice Davis’ opinion also chastised Lincoln’s use of military trials in areas where the civilian courts were still functioning.17
ROOSEVELT AND JAPANESE INTERNMENT On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order No. 9066 which conferred on the Secretary of War the authority to “prescribe military areas…from which any or all persons may be excluded.” In addition, the Order provided the authority to restrict “the right of any person to enter, remain in, or leave” these areas.18 While the Order made no explicit reference to Japanese descendents, Roosevelt, along with virtually everyone in the country, knew who the Order was referring to. Eventually 120,000 people of Japanese descent, American citizens and non-citizens alike, were removed from their homes on the West Coast and placed in internment camps.19 Internment was necessary, according to the Executive Order, because “the successful prosecution of the war requires every possible protection against espionage and against sabotage to national-defense material, national-defense premises, and national-defense
14
Lincoln, “To Erastus Corning and Others,” Lincoln: Selected Speeches and Writings (New York: Vintage Books, 1992) 377-8. Due to public disapproval, Lincoln banished Vallandigham to the Confederacy rather than keep him in jail in the spring of 1863. As a measure of the Representative’s popularity, and of the extent of displeasure over Lincoln’s encroachment on civil liberties, Vallandigham won the 1863 Democratic nomination for Ohio governor. By the time the general election was held, however, the tide of the war had shifted towards the Union; thus, undercutting Vallandigham’s anti-war position. He lost the election in a landslide. 15 Ex parte Vallandigham, 68 US 243 (1864). 16 Ex parte Milligan. 17 Ibid. 18 Franklin D. Roosevelt, Executive Order 9066,19 Feb. 1942. 19 Kenneth S. Davis, FDR: The War President: 1940-1943 (New York: Random House, 2000) 421.
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utilities.”20 The concern was that people of Japanese descent might have divided loyalties if the Empire of Japan were to launch an invasion of the United States. Roosevelt based his authority to issue the Executive Order on his powers as commander-in-chief, federal laws already in existence, and a new congressional bill establishing penalties for non-compliance. Biographer Kenneth S. Davis writes that “[f]or Roosevelt, this decision was easy, made so by the priorities that the war imposed…[T]he achievement of war victory had top priority, and ‘victory’ had for him a single simple meaning: the destruction by armed force of Nazifascism and of Japan’s military dictatorship. This was prerequisite to all else, and between it and all else he made quite sharp distinctions.”21 Following the President’s Executive Order, the House, after a mere ten-minute discussion, passed a bill to establish penalties for those who did not comply with the Order. When the Senate received the bill only Robert Taft spoke against it.22 The decision to intern the Japanese, then, was surprisingly easy and, once made, free of opposition. Despite initial calls for calm immediately following the Pearl Harbor attack, fears of a Japanese invasion were high and were reinforced by several false alarms. Concern abounded that Japanese descendents living in the United States might be involved in espionage. As a result, nearly unanimous agreement emerged that internment was necessary. Republicans and Democrats at the national level, most politicians and leading officials in the three West Coast states (including then California Attorney General and future Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Earl Warren), the United States military, and virtually all West Coast newspapers were vocal proponents of internment.23 For most, there was little concern over the rights of those being removed. Walter Lippmann, for example, wrote that “there is plenty of room elsewhere” for those of Japanese descent “to exercise [their] rights.”24 It was not until 1943, when the Japanese threat had significantly lessened that an “influential minority of the general public” urged the release of the Japanese descendants.25 Several Supreme Court cases addressed this issue. The first, Hirabayahsi v. United States, occurred in 1943.26 This ruling ignored the larger question of the constitutionality of internment but upheld a curfew on Japanese descendants. Ex parte Endo (1944) also avoided the concern over civil liberties, focusing instead on a technical matter.27 The Court finally addressed the constitutionality of internment in Korematsu v. United States (1944).28 Despite three dissenting Justices, internment was found to be constitutional in an opinion by Justice Hugo Black who wrote: [Korematsu] was excluded because we are at war with the Japanese Empire, because the properly constituted military authorities feared an invasion of our West Coast and felt constrained to take proper security measures, because they decided that the military urgency of the situation demanded [action]…, and finally, because Congress, reposing its confidence in the time of war in our military leaders – as inevitably it must – determined that they should have the power to do just this…[T]he military authorities considered that the need for action 20
Ibid. Davis, 424. 22 Ibid, 426. 23 Davis, 423. 24 Eric L. Muller, Free to Die for Their Country (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001) 25. 25 Ibid. 26 Hirabayahsi v. United States 320U.S. 91 (1943). 27 Ex parte Endo 323 U.S. 283 (1944). 21
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was great, and time was short. We cannot – by availing ourselves of the calm perspective of hindsight – now say that at that time these actions were unjustified.29
In 1973 Justice William O. Douglas, without apology, explained these decisions, writing that they “were extreme and went to the verge of wartime power; and they have been severely criticized. It is, however, easy in retrospect to denounce what was done, as there actually was no invasion of our country…But those making plans for defense of the nation had no such knowledge and were planning for the worst.”30 In recent decades, however, both scholarly review and public opinion have been highly critical of the internment decision. Virtually all scholars who have subsequently studied the issue go to great lengths to condemn Roosevelt as well as the country and courts that supported him.31 In addition, and most notably, President Ronald Reagan signed a bill in 1988 expressing regret on the part of the United States and providing reparations to those Japanese descendents who lived through the ordeal.
CONCLUSIONS OF CONSTITUTIONAL SCHOLARS ON LINCOLN AND ROOSEVELT Clinton L. Rossiter calls the use of war powers that exceed the government’s ordinary authority a “constitutional dictatorship.” The goal of a constitutional dictatorship, Rossiter says, is to end a crisis and restore normalcy. A constitutional dictatorship requires the government to be “temporarily altered to whatever degree is necessary to overcome the peril and restore normal conditions.”32 Rossiter gives Lincoln credit for establishing the executive’s authority to create a constitutional dictatorship. In his view, Lincoln’s assessment that his utmost duty was to preserve the Union led him necessarily to violate the Constitution to ensure the nation’s survival. In the process, he established a precedent for future presidents. By refusing to undermine presidential authority while the crisis was occurring, the Supreme Court’s Vallandigham decision lent further support to this constitutional dictatorship. Rossiter, then, sees the executive’s war powers as an evolving and adaptable concept. The combination of Lincoln’s assertion that the Executive possessed such powers and the Court’s ambivalence resulted in a general acknowledgment that the President had at least some war powers to use at his own discretion. Rossiter, however, is quick to point out the dangers associated with Lincoln’s precedent. [Lincoln’s action] is the precedent of the Constitution in the matter of presidential emergency power. Lincoln’s actions form history’s most illustrious precedent for constitutional dictatorship. There is, however, this disturbing fact to remember: he set a precedent for bad 28
Korematsu v. United States 323 U.S. 214, 65 S.Ct. 193 (1944). Ibid. 30 David M. O’Brien, Constitutional Law and Politics: Volume One: Struggles for Power and Governmental Accountability (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2000) 255-6. 31 See for example, Muller; Greg Robinson, By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001); Michi Weglyn, Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America’s Concentration Camps (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1976); Audrie Girdner and Anne Loftis, The Great Betrayal: The Evacuation of the Japanese-Americans During World War II (London: The Macmillan Company, 1969). 32 Clinton Rossiter, Constitutional Dictatorship (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1948) 5-7. 29
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Robert P. Saldin men as well as good…. If Lincoln could calmly assert: “I conceive that I may, in any emergency, do things on a military ground which cannot constitutionally be done by Congress,” then some future President less democratic and less patriotic might assert the same thing. The only check upon such a man would be the normal constitutional and popular limitations of the American system.33
Rossiter sees Roosevelt as moving beyond the precedent established by Lincoln. Whereas Rossiter views Lincoln’s assumption of power as a necessary (if dangerous) precedent, he has no difficulty condemning Roosevelt’s actions as “extremely disturbing.” Rossiter argues that Roosevelt assumed war powers, as Lincoln had, with no prior input from Congress or the courts. The difference between the two cases, Rossiter asserts, is that Lincoln used his power to detain specific individuals seeking to harm the United States, whereas under Roosevelt “the basic rights of a large [and largely innocent] group of American citizens were grossly flouted under conditions considerably less than desperate…”34 In addition to his assessments of Lincoln and Roosevelt, Rossiter, following the thesis of Edward S. Corwin, notes the Supreme Court’s tendency to be guarded when addressing war powers.35 Opinions regarding war powers have often been general and avoided the larger issues at hand. In the midst of crises, the Court has frequently ruled on a minor, technical aspect of a case, thereby upholding the president’s specific actions but, at the same time, avoiding the larger questions of where and how to limit the executive’s war powers. Indeed, the Court’s most straight-forward pronouncements have usually come after crises have ended, when it is safe to reassert constitutional limits. In short, then, Corwin and Rossiter assert that the Court generally avoids decisive rulings during emergencies and then attempts to correct itself and address the broader issues once the immediate threat has passed.36 Joseph E. Kallenbach makes a similar but more extensive argument with regard to the 1866 Milligan decision. The majority opinion, Kallenbach writes, “stands as a monument dedicated to the proposition that the presidential war power is not unlimited and that under the American system of government the military is subordinate to the civil authority.”37 Though Milligan provided a substantial check on presidential war powers, its practical impact was considerably less. Kallenbach argues that because this decision came after the emergency had ended, it carried significantly less weight than if it had come during the conflict or, presumably, if the 1864 Vallandigham decision had been consistent with it.38 Daniel P. Franklin, in synthesizing the work of these scholars, concludes that presidents have almost unlimited power during emergencies. However, some form of approval from one of the other branches of government is necessary for the use of such power to be deemed legitimate in the eyes of the law.39 Such support, in essence, provides a review and concurrence that the emergency is genuine and the Executive response is both necessary and reasonable under the circumstances. Franklin argues that the actions of Lincoln and Roosevelt 33
Rossiter, 238-9. Ibid, 283. See Edward S. Corwin, The President: Office and Powers 1787-1984 (New York: New York University Press, 1984) 290-1. 36 Rossiter, The Supreme Court and the Commander in Chief (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1976) 2-10. 37 Kallenbach, 549. 38 Ibid, 547-9. 39 Daniel P. Franklin, Extraordinary Powers: The Exercise of Prerogative Powers in the United States (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991) 67. 34 35
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were constitutional because Congress indicated its support (albeit after the fact). If this condition is met, “the president’s power is almost absolute, up to and including the suspension of civil liberties. The only real protection against the abuse of power in times of emergency is the consistent judgment of the courts that states of emergency are limited in their duration and initiation.”40 Franklin seems to imply that, given the support of Congress, the only real potential for difficulty from the Court lies in the duration of the emergency and the resulting duration of extra-constitutional measures. An indefinite and permanent crisis, then, is perhaps the one area in which the President and the Court could come into conflict.
GEORGE W. BUSH AND MILITARY TRIBUNALS In response to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, George W. Bush proclaimed a “War on Terror” with a special focus on Al-Qaeda. Within days, Congress overwhelmingly passed the Patriot Act providing the President with increased law enforcement capabilities to carry out the War on Terror. Several weeks after the attacks on New York and Washington, an American-led international coalition began a military campaign to oust the Al-Qaeda-linked Taliban regime in Afghanistan. There was little initial opposition in the United States to any of these measures. On the other hand, military tribunals have been subjected to more scrutiny. President Bush issued an Executive Order on November 13, 2001 providing for the establishment of military tribunals to try non-U.S. citizens charged with terrorism-related crimes. The Order begins by assessing the situation. The September 11 attacks, Bush’s Order says, resulted in an “armed conflict” requiring the use of the U.S. military. Further, those who launched the attacks have the means and intention to engage in subsequent attacks on the United States and its allies. To prevent further terrorist incidents, the Order continues, it is imperative to identify the perpetrators and their supporters, thwart their plans, and prosecute them. Military tribunals are necessary for these prosecutions, the President argues, because of the danger terrorism poses. Explaining his rationale, Bush writes: Having fully considered the magnitude of the potential deaths, injuries, and property destruction that would result from potential acts of terrorism against the United States, and the probability that such acts will occur, I have determined that an extraordinary emergency exists for national defense purposes, that this emergency constitutes an urgent and compelling government interest, and that issuance of this order is necessary to meet the emergency.41
The rest of the Executive Order details trial rules, who is subject to the military tribunals, and how these suspects will be treated. Bush’s Order specifies that any non-citizen who is or has been involved in international terrorism, seeks to harm the United States, or has aided others in achieving this aim is subject to trial under a military tribunal. In addition, any noncitizen can be tried by a military tribunal if the President determines that such a trial “is in the interest of the United States.”42 Next, Bush lists a number of stipulations to ensure that these 40
Ibid, 67. George W. Bush, “President Issues Military Order: Detention, Treatment, and Trial of Certain Non-Citizens in the War Against Terrorism,” www.whitehouse.gov, 13 Nov. 2001. 42 Ibid. 41
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individuals are treated humanely. Finally, Bush specifies how the trials will be conducted and the ways in which they differ from normal trials. First, conviction and sentencing require only a two-thirds vote of the members of a commission rather than a unanimous decision by a civilian jury. Second, all convictions and sentences can be reviewed by the president or the Secretary of Defense. Finally, there is no formal appeals process.43 Bush and his administration, like Lincoln and Roosevelt, have justified the President’s Executive Order on Constitutional and legal grounds, as well as on practical grounds designed to convince the American people of the necessity for military tribunals. The President states at the beginning of the Order that he is establishing the military tribunals based on “the authority vested in me as President and as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States by the Constitution and the laws of the Unites States of America, including the Authorization for Use of Military Force Joint Resolution . . . and sections 821 and 836 of title 10, United States Code.”44 These sections of the U.S. Code state that military tribunals can have authority in cases of courts-martial and that the president can set the rules governing military tribunals.45 The congressional resolution Bush refers to was passed on September 18, 2001 and states: Whereas, such acts continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the Unites States; and Whereas, the President has authority under the Constitution to take action to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism against the United States: Now, therefore, be it resolved . . . that the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force . . . to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States.46
In short, Bush’s constitutional and legal arguments, have sought to demonstrate that presidents have the authority to use military tribunals in times of national emergency. By asserting an emergency exists and citing the Constitution, the U.S. Code, and the congressional resolution, the Administration has laid a broad foundation for Bush’s authority. However, even if one accepts that the President has the authority to order military tribunals, it does not necessarily follow that they ought be ordered. As a result, the Administration has also sought to convince the public that military tribunals are desirable and necessary. In making this case to the American people, the Administration has cited practical reasons and historic precedent rather than Constitutional and legal arguments. These arguments emphasize the unique situation confronting the United States and the ongoing national danger. One week after issuing the Executive Order, Bush defended his decision to the press, arguing that secret military tribunals are necessary because gaining a conviction in a public trial could force the government to divulge information that would compromise national security. In addition, Bush said that he feared jurors could be singled out for harm if terrorists are tried in a regular criminal court. The President also reiterated in plain terms a key point made in the Executive Order:
43
Ibid. Ibid. 45 Legal Information Institute, US Code Collection, Title 10 > Subtitle A > Part II > Chapter 47 > Subchapter VII > Sec. 821 and 836. 46 “Authorization for Use of Military Force,” One Hundred Seventh Congress of the United States of America, Thomas: Legislative Information on the Internet, http://thomas.loc.gov. 44
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The option to use a military tribunal in a time of war makes a lot of sense. We’re fighting a war . . . against the most evil kinds of people. And I need to have that extraordinary power at my fingertips. . . These are extraordinary times . . . (and) this government will do everything we can to defend the American people within the confines of the Constitution.47
Bush has made other public appeals, again appealing to common sense and practicality, that have attempted to highlight the difference between terrorists and Americans. “If I determine,” the President said on November 29, 2001, “that it is in the national security interest of our great land to try by military commission those who make war on America, then we will do so. We will act with fairness, and we will deliver justice, which is far more than the terrorists ever grant to their innocent victims.”48 While this kind of contrast would have little or no merit as a legal matter, it is a persuasive distinction to make in appealing to the average American. Ari Fleischer, the President’s former Press Secretary, sought to further reassure the public. Fleischer took care to note that military tribunals would not necessarily be the norm, and might not occur at all, depending on what Bush decides on a case-by-case basis. The President will “use his judgment about what best protects the national security for those limited cases, if any develop, where he chooses to exercise the option of convening a military tribunal.”49 Other members of the Administration have made similar statements that appeal more to the public than to legal or constitutional experts. Shortly after the Executive Order was issued, Attorney General John Ashcroft appeared on the national television program Fox News Sunday and appealed to Americans by forecasting what he thought could happen in a civilian trial of Osama bin Laden or other high ranking Al-Qaeda terrorists. “Can you image,” Ashcroft asked, “apprehending a terrorist, either in the deserts of Afghanistan or on the way to the United States to commit a crime, and having to take them through the traditional justice system – reading them the Miranda rights, hiring a flamboyant lawyer at public expense, having sort of Osama television . . . ?”50 Ashcroft, in a sense, was asking the public whether it thinks bin Laden deserves a circus-like trial and draws on public distaste for past high-profile trials such as the O.J. Simpson murder case. This line of argumentation, then, stands in stark contrast to the legal and constitutional arguments made to establish the President’s authority to order the military tribunals. The Bush administration has also used historic precedent in the effort to convince the public that the President’s Executive Order was justified. Military tribunals have been used since the American Revolution and have been deemed acceptable by the Supreme Court in emergency situations. Citing Roosevelt’s use of similar military tribunals in World War II, the Bush Administration has argued that it is adhering to long-standing precedent. During World War II a group of eight Nazis came to the United States on a sabotage mission. Upon capture, Roosevelt used military tribunals to try the men, six of whom were executed. The Supreme Court later upheld these actions in Ex parte Quirin (1942).51 The administration used this example in an attempt to show that Bush is not acting blindly and rashly but, rather, 47
“Bush Defends Military Tribunal Decision,” CNN.com, 19 Nov. 2001. Stephen Kaufman, “Debate on Military Tribunals Intensifies,” U.S. Department of State: International Information Programs, http://uninfo.gov, 29 Nov. 2001. 49 Kaufman. 50 “Ashcroft: FBI May Get More Surveillance Power,” CNN.com, 3 Dec. 2001. 48
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in concurrence with one of the country’s most respected war-time presidents. Democratic Senator Zell Miller of Georgia has made the same case in defense of the President. “Military tribunals have been used throughout history. The Supreme Court has twice upheld them as constitutional. Now we’re at war, and we’re talking about using military tribunals only for non-citizens. Why in the world would we try our own soldiers with this system of justice but not some foreigner who is trying to kill us? It’s crazy.”52 Despite these arguments in favor of the tribunals, opposition has been widespread and vocal. Bush’s Executive Order has been attacked from both the left and the right.53 There have been three major criticisms. The first is that the military tribunals are an unnecessary infringement on civil liberties. The second is that it is an unlawful assumption of power on the part of the executive branch. And finally, it is argued that the tribunals are unwise for international reasons. The first and perhaps most common complaint about Bush’s Order is that it is a violation of Constitutionally guaranteed civil rights and civil liberties. An assortment of critics, ranging from Senator Edward Kennedy on the left to then-Representative Bob Barr on the right, have voiced displeasure in this regard. One concern is that a suspect’s fate might be determined before the military tribunal even begins. Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz argues that the military operates under a system in which one does not question an order from a superior. President Bush, as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, is the highest authority in the military. This relationship is problematic because every case put before a military commission is one in which the “President will have already ‘determined’ that there is reason to believe that the suspect is a terrorist.” As a result, Dershowitz contends, “command influence . . . will be inevitable.” This problem will be compounded because defendants, under the rules of military tribunals, will not be able to mount a legitimate defense. Dershowitz claims that the trials would make use of “any evidence that would ‘have probative value to a reasonable person.’ Translated from legalese, this means that hearsay, coerced confessions, and fruits of illegal searches can be considered, and that cross-examination will not always be allowed.” 54 Finally, Gore Vidal worries about setting a bad precedent. If, as Bush has posited, the September 11 terrorists sought to force the United States to destroy it’s own liberty in order to protect itself, Vidal says they are succeeding beyond even their dreams, as each day, with each extension of “emergency powers,” our Bill of Rights is shredded more and more. Once alienated, an “unalienable right” is apt to be forever lost, in which case we are no longer even remotely the last best hope on earth but merely a seedy imperial state whose citizens are kept in line by SWAT teams and whose way of death, not life, is universally imitated.55
Another civil liberty concern is that the Executive Order is dangerously broad. Laurence Tribe and Ronald Dworkin, Harvard and New York University law professors respectively, argue that the wording of Bush’s Order is so non-specific that it could be used against law51
Ex parte Quirin 317 U.S. 1 (1942). “Ashcroft Defends Military Tribunals,” MSNBC.com, 6 Dec. 2001. 53 For a sampling of Patriot Act criticism see Ronald Dworkin, “The Threat to Patriotism,” The New York Review of Books 28 Feb. 2001. 54 Alan M. Dershowitz, “Military Justice is to Justice as Military Music is to Music,” The Village Voice, on-line edition, 21-27 Nov. 2001. 55 Gore Vidal, “The New War on Freedom,” San Francisco Chronicle, online edition, 9 April 2002. 52
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abiding resident aliens in addition to terrorists.56 Dworkin writes that the definition of terrorism in Bush’s Order would include someone who collects “money for or even contributes to a charity which supports the general aims of any organization abroad – the IRA, for example, or foreign anti-abortion groups, or, in the days of apartheid, the African National Congress . . .”57 The concern, then, is that there is an inherent over-breadth to the Executive Order that could lead to innocent people being subjected to, and convicted by, military tribunals. While the Executive Order was pronounced with the best of intentions, Tribe and Dworkin argue, it could be used to oppress individuals that ought not be targeted. The second major criticism of the military tribunals also concerns the Constitution but is focused on a jurisdictional issue. Advocates of this position claim the military tribunals are unconstitutional under present conditions because Congress has not declared war and because the civilian courts are capable of trying the accused. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), in addressing the first facet of this argument, argues “the move to establish a military tribunal when Congress has not declared war is unprecedented.”58 Tribe goes even farther in saying that the President does not have the authority to create military tribunals. His argument is not that military tribunals are, in and of themselves, unconstitutional, but that they are unconstitutional under current conditions; specifically, the absence of a formal declaration of war. Some members of Congress have also been critical of the President’s unilateral move. Democrat Patrick Leahy, then-Chairman (and current ranking member) of the Judiciary Committee, said these “ad hoc, outside-the-justice system methods” go beyond the measures approved by Congress and that the Administration “owes the country – certainly owes the Congress – an explanation.”59 The pivotal question raised, then, is whether a formal declaration of war is necessary for military tribunals or whether proclaiming a situation to be a state of war is sufficient. The second facet of this argument, reminiscent of Ex parte Milligan, is that the United States civilian courts are perfectly capable of hearing cases against alleged terrorists, thus rendering the military tribunals unnecessary. The ACLU stated: We do not believe that the Administration has shown that the constitutional jury trial system does not allow for the prosecution of those accused of terrorist activities. Absent such a compelling justification, the President’s decision is further evidence that the Administration is totally unwilling to abide by the checks and balances that are so central to our democracy. 60
To support its argument, the ACLU cites the successful civilian court prosecutions of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers and Timothy McVeigh. Both cases managed to deal successfully with concerns over juror safety and the protection of sensitive governmental information. Absent a compelling need, then, the military tribunals are simply an unconstitutional infringement on civil rights and civil liberties. The third major complaint against the military tribunals is that they will damage our international image and make us appear hypocritical. By using military tribunals, it is argued, 56
Laurence H. Tribe, “Trial by Fury: Why Congress Must Curb Bush’s Military Courts,” The New Republic, online edition, 10 Dec. 2001. 57 Dworkin. 58 Laura W. Murphy, “Bush Order on Military Tribunals is Further Evidence That Government is Abandoning Democracy’s Checks and Balances,” American Civil Liberties Union 14 Nov. 2001. 59 “Leahy: Ashcroft ‘owes explanation’ about tribunals, other measures,” CNN.com, 25 Nov. 2001. 60 Murphy.
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the United States is abandoning that which gives us our greatest strength – the Constitution and our respect for human rights. America ought to be a model for other countries to follow. If the United States uses military tribunals instead of the constitutionally established civilian courts, it would harm our reputation in the international arena and damage our image as a defender of human rights.61 Further, it is suggested that military tribunals would be hypocritical based on U.S. objections in previous cases. Senator Kennedy made this point, arguing that “We’ve criticized Burma, China, Colombia, Malaysia, Nigeria, Russia, Turkey, on similar grounds. Yet now we’re calling for the use of military tribunals. The concern is: aren’t we doing exactly what we’ve criticized other nations for doing?”62 Beyond this point of hypocrisy, some observers have also expressed concern for the fate of U.S. citizens who, in the future, are detained in other countries.63
BUSH AND THE SUPREME COURT The trauma of September 11 and the War on Terror probably meet the implied criteria for emergencies as described by the constitutional scholars discussed earlier. In contrast to the Lincoln and Roosevelt cases, though, war has not been formally declared and the United States is faced with an unconventional war without a clearly definable end. Despite these differences and potential areas of concern, however, Congress’ Patriot Act certainly provided sufficient justification for the President to take extra-constitutional action. Furthermore, in at least one respect Bush actually has a stronger mandate to assume war powers than did Lincoln or Roosevelt because, unlike the other two cases, he gained congressional approval prior to assuming any emergency powers. Bush, then, seems to have met the “emergency” threshold established by previous presidents. As a result, the criticisms regarding violations of civil liberties would probably be rebuffed by the Court under current conditions. As noted by constitutional scholars, a president, given the assent of Congress, has been able to compromise or ignore certain civil liberties during crises. Bush received the support of Congress so he has surpassed the line set by historic precedent. It would seem that Bush is on even firmer ground when one considers the details of his case. Seeking to use military tribunals in only extreme instances and only against non-citizens seeking to harm the United States, Bush’s use of war powers appears almost benign compared to Roosevelt’s actions. Like Lincoln, Bush is not using war powers against people known to be innocent. On the other hand, Roosevelt (and the Court) knew the vast majority of the Japanese descendants he interned were innocent. The Bush and Roosevelt cases are even further dissimilar when one considers the threat of attack. Immediately after Pearl Harbor there was significant fear of further attacks on the West Coast. Such fears, however, quickly abated. In the current instance, by contrast, the chance of further attacks is high and seems likely to remain high for the foreseeable future because terrorism is so difficult to eliminate. Given that Roosevelt’s actions were upheld by the Court in Korematsu, it seems likely that Bush’s less extreme stance would pass muster with the Supreme Court. 61
62
See, for example, Dworkin or Anupam Chander, “Guantanamo and the Rule of Law: Why We Should Not Use Guantanamo Bay to Avoid the Constitution,” Find Law’s Legal Commentary, http://writ.findlaw.com/ commentary/20020307_chander.html, 7 Mar. 2002. Nataliya Khyzhnyak and Andrew F. Tully, “U.S. Senators Question Wisdom of Military Courts,” Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, www.rferl.org, 29 Nov. 2001.
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Those who argue that the military tribunals are unconstitutional without a declaration of war clash with the writings of Rossiter and Franklin. These scholars argue that consent from one of the other branches is sufficient for the president to move outside the normal bounds of the Constitution in times of emergency. Such consent does not necessarily mean a formal declaration of war. While the critics could launch a challenge against Bush on these grounds, it does not seem compelling given historic precedent. The one area of serious concern the Bush Administration should be aware of is the uncertain duration of the War on Terrorism. As an unconventional military engagement, it will be very difficult to determine when the war is over. In fact, it can even be suggested that the current war is a new version of normalcy. In other words, perhaps life and law enforcement in America have changed permanently since September 11. Such a conclusion, however, could pose problems for the use of the military tribunals. If the tribunals are justified, as the Administration argues, because of the current post-September 11 crisis, it follows that they are not justified once the emergency is over. Franklin says “[T]he only real protection against the abuse of power in times of emergency is the consistent judgment of the courts that states of emergency are limited in their duration.”64 Of course, the exact limit is not known. But, whatever the limit is, it is certainly less than forever. In short, a problem could arise if the hazy notion of the “War on Terror” is perceived as going on indefinitely. It seems unlikely that the Court would allow breeches of the Constitution to become permanent. If history is any guide, Bush can assume that the Court will not cause him problems in the short term – especially because he stands on much more solid ground than did Roosevelt whose internment policy was upheld. The Administration could open itself up to problems, however, if the military tribunals become the new permanent status-quo in an unending fight to eradicate terrorism. Of course, nothing is certain until the Court rules on it. The justices were split in many of the cases discussed in this paper, suggesting that a slightly altered composition of the Court could have significantly changed the decisions. As a result of these unknowns, the answers to the questions raised in the first paragraph of this paper are unclear and constantly subject to alteration. Historic precedent, however, offers the best available indication of how the Supreme Court might view the current situation. The distinguishing features of the Bush case – the lack of a formal war declaration and the uncertainty regarding when, or if, the war will end – are probably not significant enough for the Court to strike down the military tribunals at this time. However, should Bush’s extra-constitutional powers be viewed as becoming a permanent fixture of government, the tribunals would probably be thrown out. The President, then, needs to be aware that the undefined nature, goals, and duration of the War on Terror could ultimately detract from the legitimacy of his war powers.
63 64
See, for example, Chander. Franklin, 67.
In: White House Studies Compendium, Volume 4 Editor: R. W. Watson, pp. 445-453
ISBN: 1-60021-541-6 © 2007 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
DOES THE SIZE OF MIDTERM ELECTION LOSS MATTER? Kevin R. Spiker ABSTRACT This study will sample data from the midterm elections of 1954-1998 and will examine how large midterm election defeats for the President’s party effects his legislative success rate in the House of Representatives during the legislative year immediately following the midterm election. In all, the hope of this article is to add to the vast literatures dealing with the Executive and Legislative branches.
INTRODUCTION A well-established norm of American electoral politics is the fact that the party of the president will usually lose seats in the House of Representatives during midterm elections. Perhaps the most extreme example of this was seen in the midterm elections of 1994 that turned over control of both the Senate and House of Representatives to the Republicans for the first time since the administration of Dwight Eisenhower. While much attention has been given to the reason why a president’s party loses seats in midterm, little attention has been given to how these losses affect presidential success in the following legislative session.1 Such a question is important to the study of the presidency because legislative success is a crucial factor in the success of any administration.
THEORETICAL UNDERPINNINGS: CHIEF LEGISLATOR AND THE MIDTERM PHENOMENON Perhaps the most demanding role that any president must play is that of Chief Legislator. Chief Legislator can be defined as the role of the president in influencing the making of laws. Constitutionally, presidents must recommend to Congress legislation that they judge 1
See: Abramowitz, Alan I. 1985. “Economic Conditions, Presidential Popularity, and Voting Behavior in Midterm Congressional Elections.” The Journal of Politics. Vol. 47, No. 1; Campbell, James E. 1991. “The Presidential Surge and its Midterm Decline in Congressional Elections, 1869-1988.” The Journal of Politics. Vol. 53, No. 2; Campbell, James E. 1985. “Explaining Presidential Losses in Midterm Congressional Elections.” The Journal of Politics. Vol. 47, No. 4; Kernell, Samuel. 1977. “Presidential Popularity and Negative Voting: An Alternative Evaluation of the Midterm Congressional Decline of the President’s Party.” TheAmerican Political Science Review. Vol 71., No. 1.
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necessary and expedient.2 Congress has further involved the president in designing legislation by enlarging the list of messages required, such as the annual budget or economic reports. Crises, partisan considerations, and public expectations all make the president an important participant in congressional decision-making. When these factors are added to the president’s constitutional veto power, it ensures that White House views will be listened to, if not always heeded, in Congress. The importance of the president in legislative politics has increased considerably over time. For much of the Nineteenth Century the federal government could be characterized as one of congressional dominance, with very little guidance coming from the President. The Great Depression changed the role of the president in domestic policy making. This crisis allowed President Franklin Roosevelt to lead and direct national policy making like no other president before. As a result of this increased activity, Roosevelt founded a tradition of presidential leadership that all succeeding presidents would have to live with. Both Congress and the public now expect more from their president in terms of domestic policy making. Given the increased amount of attention contemporary president’s must give to the legislative arena, the president’s partisan support in Congress is most crucial to ensuring success in the legislative arena.3 Despite the need to retain members of his party in Congress, the president’s party has experienced defeat in all but two midterm elections in the Twentieth century (1934 & 1998.) In some elections the number of seats lost has been modest. In 1962 the Democrats lost only four seats, and in 1986 the Republicans lost only five. In other elections, loses have been far worse. The midterm election of 1894, under the tenure of President Grover Cleveland, saw the Democrats loose 116 seats in the House, more than half the seats in the whole chamber.4 Clearly there are some factors that will influence whether the loss is large or small. Presidential popularity, economic conditions, and scandal are but a handful of variables that may influence the outcome of the election.
THEORIES OF MIDTERM LOSS A large number of political scientists, producing a large literature, have tried to address the midterm loss question. According to Campbell, there are two types of theories that can explain midterm loss.5 One set of theories attributes midterm loses to the political conditions at the midterm itself. In other words, variables such as economic conditions, scandals, or war, would have an influence on voters. The second school explains midterm elections as a consequence of the prior presidential election. According to Campbell, this second group can be described as follows, “the argument is that the circumstances of the presidential election produce regularity in the inter-election change and the systemic nature of this effect is stronger than the non-systemic effects of the midterm.”6 In sum, the outcome of the midterm election is related to circumstances surrounding the previous presidential election.
2 3
4 5
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Article II, Section III, United States Constitution. Edwards, III. George C. 1989. At The Margins, Presidential Leadership of Congress. New Haven: Yale University Press; Light, Paul C. 1991. The President’s Agenda. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. King, Gary., and Lyn Ragsdale. 1988. The Elusive Executive. Washington D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Press. Campbell, James E. 1993. The Presidential Pulse of Congressional Elections. Lexington: The University of Kentucky Press. Campbell, 1993.
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The theory of surge and decline is perhaps the most well known theory of midterms that is centered on presidential elections. Surge and decline theory states that during the 7 presidential election turnout is higher among those who identify with the party of the winner. Moreover, independents disproportionately vote for the winning presidential candidate and for congressional candidates of the president’s party.8 As a consequence candidates from the president’s party win a number of close elections. This high turnout and winning of close elections would represent the surge. In the following midterm election, the advantage of the president’s party will be negated or even reversed (the decline.) This is due to many factors most important being the fact that the president is not on the ballot and because of a general lack of interest among voters. In addition to, but not excluding Campbell, there has been much research dealing with testing the two theories of why a president’s party loses seats at midterm. Piereson conducted research on the 1970 midterm elections and found that evaluations of President Nixon had little impact upon the voting decisions of those who identified with one or the other major parties.9 Most useful is the findings that show that for independent voters, the link between personal evaluations of Nixon and vote choice were quite strong. Abramowitz, Cover, and Norpoth argue that another variable, short-term party evaluation should also be included in the analysis of midterm voting change.10 Abramowitz also suggests that the salience of national issues, economic issues in particular, were a factor in explaining the midterm loss, and that economic evaluations affecting midterm elections is best seen in the losses of 1974 and 1982.11 Finally, Campbell has contributed several articles that address the midterm theories. In the first article, Campbell states that there is some merit to both sets of theories, but that the surge and decline theories offer somewhat more accurate predictions of seat losses, and that an integrated model of both theories is most appropriate in explaining midterm behavior.12 This is further backed up by a second article where Campbell accepts the surge-and-decline theory but states that other variables, including evaluations of the economy and president’s party during the midterm year, are also important in explaining midterm seat loss.13
THEORIES OF PRESIDENTIAL LEGISLATIVE SUCCESS There are many variables that affect successful passage of a president’s agenda. Perhaps most important is the amount of party support that the president has in Congress. Paul Light lists party support in Congress as the most important piece of capital that a president has while in office.14 Others have also suggested that the partisan makeup of Congress is 7
A full discussion of Agnus Campbell’s theory discussing Surge and Decline can be found at: Campbell, Agnus. 1964. “Voters and Elections: Past and Present.” The Journal of Politics, 26: 745-57. 8 Jacobson, Gary C. 1990. “Does the Economy Matter in Midterm Elections?” American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 34, No. 2. 9 Piereson, James E. 1975. “Presidential Popularity and Midterm Voting at Different Electoral Levels.” American Journal of Political Science. Vol. 19, No. 4. 10 Abramowitz, Alan I., Albert D. Cover, and Helmut Norpoth. 1986. “The President’s Party in Midterm Elections: Going from Bad to Worse.” American Journal of Political Science. Vol. 30, No. 3. 11 Abramowitz, 1985. 12 Campbell, 1985. 13 Campbell, 1991. 14 Light, 1991.
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important to the success of a president’s legislative record, for members of a president’s party consistently give him strong support in Congress.15 Any loss of a member of the president’s party will reduce a key ingredient of presidential capital and create additional difficulty in passing the president’s agenda. Others have studied the relationship between public opinion and presidential influence in Congress. Rivers and Rose have shown that a one percent increase in public opinion approval leads to a one percent increase in legislative success.16 Economic conditions have also been shown to affect the amount of legislative success a president has in Congress.17 The theory argues that as the economy become worse, members of Congress are less likely to support the administration, and in times of economic prosperity, Congress is likely to support the administration more often.
WHY SHOULD A “LARGE LOSS” MATTER? It has been shown that the party controlling the White House will loose seats in the House at midterm. Only twice in the Twentieth Century, in 1934 and 1998, and in the midterm elections of 2002, has this fact not held true. Why then should a large loss be any different than a small loss of seats in influencing presidential legislative success? A large midterm election loss, which is defined as being larger than twenty seats, will resonate louder in the media than a smaller loss will. The mere fact that the president’s party has lost a great number of seats will present the press with a story of an administration in peril, being best illustrated in the political atmosphere following the midterm elections of 1994. The election of 1994 is worth further discussion. The results of this election were described as a “landslide” and “revolution”.18 While President Clinton would have less success in the House simply because his party controlled less than a majority, the fact that he was portrayed as a pseudo lame-duck, as a president sure to be beaten in 1996, should have also contributed to his lack of success in the following year. A small loss should have a smaller effect on presidential success in the House primarily because this event represents a desire among the voters to keep the status quo. A small midterm election loss is less of a media event than an election where control of the House is changed, or a large number of members are defeated. For this reason, the president should appear less like damaged goods. He simply has fallen victim to the fact that every president must face loss at midterm. It should follow then that in years following a small midterm election loss, presidential legislative success should not be harmed significantly.
15
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Kingdon, 1973; Edwards, III. George C. 1976. “Presidential Influence in the House: Presidential Prestige as a Source of Presidential Power.” The American Political Science Review. Vol. 70. No. 1; Edwards, III. George C. 1985. “Measuring Presidential Success in Congress: Alternative Approaches.” The Journal of Politics.Vol 47. No. 2. Rivers, Douglas., and Nancy L. Rose. 1985. “Passing the President’s Program: Public Opinion and Presidential Influence in Congress.” American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 29. No. 2. 17
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Jacobson, 1990.
Wilcox, Clyde. 1995. The Latest American Revolution? New York: St. Martin’s Press.
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METHODOLOGY Once again, the purpose of this study is to examine how a large midterm election defeat in the House of Representatives for the presidents party affects presidential legislative success in the following year. The dependent variables in this study are Presidential Support Scores calculated by Congressional Quarterly (henceforth, CQ.) CQ analyzes all statements and messages of the president to determine what legislation he personally supports and only issues that the president took a position on are included in the measure. Once these items are identified, CQ calculates the percent of items that successfully passed the House. The exact same criteria for determining the average have been used since 1953, suggesting sound validity in measurement.19 Scholars have used the CQ score extensively. Cohen uses the measure in his examination of the impact of the modern presidency on presidential success in Congress, and Shull makes use of this measure in his study of legislative adoption of presidents’ domestic policy initiatives.20 The first independent variable is the measure of change in presidential popularity from one year to the next. This was taken from The Gallup Poll. Gallup has been examining presidential popularity since the Harry Truman administration, asking the same exact question: “Do you approve of the way President _________ is handling his job?”21 Because the question is asked many times a year, the average of all the polls taken in the year following the midterm was calculated. This new measure will show the average change in popularity of the president during the years under investigation. The slope coefficient of the popularity variable is hypothesized to be positive; suggesting as popularity increases the legislative success rate of a president also increases. To control for economic conditions, a measure of the change in rate of unemployment was included into the model. The data, showing the average annual change, was obtained from the Department of Labor. It is hypothesized that the reported coefficient will be negative, suggesting that an increase in the change of unemployment will result in less legislative success for the president. To assess and control for the term of office that the president is in during the year following the midterm election, a dummy variable was created. A first term president was assigned a value of 0, while second term presidents were given a score of 1. It is hypothesized that the coefficient of the term of office variable will be negative, suggesting that second term president’s will have less legislative success than first term president’s. Finally, to assess the influence of large midterm loss on presidential legislative success, a dummy variable was created. A value of 1 was assigned for the year in which a large midterm loss of the president’s party was experienced.22 For all other midterm elections (when a nonlarge loss was experienced) a value of 0 was coded. It is hypothesized that the reported coefficient will be negative, suggesting that the change from small to large loss results in less presidential legislative success. 19
A good discussion of the better points of the CQ measure can be found in George C. Edwards III., 1976 “Presidential Influence in the House: Presidential Prestige as a Source of Presidential Power.” American Political Science Review, Vol. 70. No. 1. 20 Cohen, Jeffrey E. 1982. “The Impact of the Modern Presidency on Presidential Success in the U.S. Congress.” Legislative Studies Quarterly. VII:513-532; Shull, Steven A. 1983. “Legislative Adoption of Presidents’ Domestic Policy Initiatives.” Presidential Studies Quarterly. 21 Taken from the Gallup Organization Website, (http://www.gallup.com) 22 As noted earlier, a “large” midterm election loss for the president’s party was set at greater than 20 seats.
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The statistical method to be utilized in this study is time-series OLS regression analysis. Such a method will allow an examination of the effect that each independent variable has upon the dependent variable, while controlling for all other independent variables. The equation for the model to be estimated is: Yi = β1 + β2(POP)I+β3(TERM)I+β4(UNEM)I+β5(LOSSES)I+εI Where, POP = the average change in popularity of the President from one year to the next as measured by Gallup; TERM = A dummy variable representing the term of office the president is in. The first term coded as (0) and the second term coded as (1); UNEM = the percent change in rate of unemployment; LOSSES = A dummy variable for the size of loss. Coded (0) for a small loss, (1) for a large loss.
RESULTS The results of the fitted model are shown in the following table. The results of the OLS regression analysis show that in a year following the midterm election, the size of the loss itself is most significant in explaining legislative success in the House of Representatives. The LOSSES variable is shown to be statistically significant. This confirms the research hypothesis that in a legislative year following a large midterm election loss for the president’s party, he can expect to succeed far less than in years following a typical, meaning small, midterm loss. Table 1. OLS Regression23 Independent Variable: Change in Presidential Legislative Success Independent Variable Change in Popularity Term ‘Large’ Midterm Loss Change in Unemployment Constant ** = significant at the .001 level R² /(adjusted) = .313 / .239 N = 42; F = 4.23
23
Estimation of the model was conducted with Stata V. 6.0.
β (std error) .0979 (.1239) -.6623 (2.878) -15.432 (3.797) -.6712 (1.127) 1.848 (1.505)
T-Ratio .7900 -.2300 -4.064** -.5950 1.228
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The other control variables, while failing to achieve statistical significance, all report the correct coefficients as hypothesized. The variable for change in popularity has a positive slope coefficient, suggesting that as the popularity of a president increases, so does his legislative success rate in the House. This finding supports the work of Rivers and Rose who also showed a positive relationship between popularity and legislative success.24 The reported slope coefficients for the unemployment and term variables were negative. This suggests that as unemployment increases, the legislative success rate of the president decreases, as was hypothesized. The negative coefficient for the term of office variable suggests that second term presidents will achieve less legislative success than do first term presidents, as was hypothesized.
DISCUSSION The previous section has shown through statistical analysis that large midterm election defeat affects the president’s ability to succeed in the House of Representatives during the following year. The focus of attention now shifts to examining how presidents can lead effectively given the existence of this condition. Paul Light described party support in Congress as “the chief ingredient in presidential capital.”25 Light’s study shows that according to the majority of presidential aides, presidential capital is defined as the number of votes that the President can generate in Congress on any given issue. Clearly if the president’s party is subject to losses in midterm elections, then it presents the President with less opportunity to achieve his goals, and lessens one other crucial resource, time. Time is an important variable that deserves further discussion. Light further argues that presidents should act within their first year, even within the first months, to set the agenda. The midterm election loss phenomenon clearly diminishes the amount of time a president has to act. Midterm loss robs the president of two important resources, time and party support. Time is lost because the president must rush to advance his agenda before a midterm election that is almost sure to see his party lose seats in the House. The results of the midterm election will leave him with less party support that is needed for the remaining two years of the term, and may hurt his chances for reelection. Perhaps the most dramatic midterm election in recent years was the election of 1994 where the Republicans won control of both houses of Congress. This presented President Bill Clinton with an uneasy task of governing. Clearly his presidential capital was low at the beginning of the third year of his presidency. However, despite the fact that his party did not control Congress, he easily won reelection in 1996. Putting President Clinton’s reelection aside for the moment, the results of the midterm election did influence his style of governing. In the first two years of his administration, Clinton enjoyed the advantage of having his party being the majority in Congress. Tough battles were fought on key pieces of his legislative agenda, such as his first budget, but he at least had some chance of success, more so than his predecessor President George H.W. Bush. The important point is that after the defeat Clinton recognized the fact that he could no longer 24 25
Rivers and Rose, 1985. Light, 1991.
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govern in the same way as he did in the first two years of his administration. He moved closer to the center of the political spectrum, where most Americans’ identify themselves, and portrayed the Republican-controlled Congress as extreme. Other presidents have taken a different road than Clinton. After the 1946 midterm election, it was observed of Harry Truman, Far from being downcast or tentative about his new role as a ‘minority’ President, he had returned from Florida tanned, rested, eager to get going. He had accepted the verdict of the people in the spirit, he said, that ‘all good citizens accept the results of any fair election.’ The change in Congress did not alter the country’s domestic or foreign problems . . . Of course, conflicts would arise between a Republican Congress and a Democratic President. That was to be expected. But he, Harry Truman, would be guided by a simple idea: ‘to do in all cases . . . without regard to political considerations, what seems to be for the welfare of all our people. . . .26
Midterm elections may also damage the relationship with the president and his party after the election. For example, it was well documented that in 1994 some Democrats expressed their opinion that they did not wish for President Clinton to visit their district.27 This lack of enthusiasm for the leader of the party has potential negative side effects. First of all, it would greatly weaken party loyalty. A member of the House in a marginal district may be less willing to support a President on a close vote if he or she knows it will be an issue in the next election.
IS THE MIDTERM PHENOMENON ENDING? Prior to 1998, few presidents could claim to have seen their party win seats in the House at midterm. The House elections of 1998 and 2002 signaled a change from previous midterm elections in that Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush saw their respective parties win seats. Such a reversal in the midterm phenomenon warrants a brief, but necessary, discussion. The Democratic party was successful in gaining a total of five seats in the 1998 midterm elections, leaving them six seats short of majority status. Explanations for this extraordinary win by the president’s party focused on several explanations. One explanation was the tremendous popularity of President Clinton, which never faltered below 60 percent at any time during 1998.28 An explanation closely correlated with the approval of President Clinton was the general well-being of the economy. Most, if not all, objective economic indicators remained positive throughout all of 1998, adding to the belief that the administration was successfully managing the economy.29 An additional explanation for the success of the Democratic party in 1998 focuses upon the Monica Lewinsky scandal and the several congressional and independent counsel investigations of the president. While Republicans assumed that the scandal would negatively 26
McCullough, David. 1992. Truman. New York: Simon and Schuster. p. 529. Klinkner, Philip A. 1994. “Court and Country in American Politics: The Democratic Party and the 1994 Election” in Midterm: The Elections of 1994 in Context, Philip A. Klinkner, ed. Boulder: WestviewPress. 28 Abramson, Paul R., John H. Aldrich, and David W. Rohde. 1999. Change and Continuity in the 1996 and 1998 Elections. Washington D.C.: CQ Press. 29 Abramson, Aldrich, and Rhode, 1999. 27
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affect the approval rating of President Clinton, thereby also negatively effecting Democratic candidates, the assumption never came to fruition. The popular perception of a bitterly partisan impeachment created an impression of an unfair, zealous, Republican majority in Congress. The midterm elections of 2002 provided the Republican party with gain of two seats in the House of Representatives. While it is too soon to speculate as to the exact cause of these wins, one plausible explanation for the Republican triumphs exists. The tremendous popularity of President George W. Bush following the September 11, 2001 attacks created a situation where few Democrats were willing to publicly criticize the administration. President Bush was also quite willing, and eager, to personally campaign for Republican candidates for both House and Senate seats. This fact, coupled with the fact that many voters felt the Democratic party offered little in comparison to Republicans, is the most plausible explanation for the Republican successes in 2002.30 The outcomes of the midterm elections of 1998 and 2002 can be best summarized as being influenced by extreme events; the impeachment of a president, and the enormous popularity of a president as a result of the worst terrorist attack on America. In all likelihood, the outcomes do not necessarily signal a changing nature in midterm elections.
CONCLUSION This paper has shown that presidential success in the House is significantly lower in years following a large midterm election defeat. In all, these finding suggest that the size of the midterm loss for a president’s party does in fact matter. While any loss reduces a key ingredient of presidential capital, large losses have drastic political consequences that will affect the remainder of any presidential administration.
30
Adding support to this contention is a rather detailed set of exit polling at: http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2002/pages/epolls/index.html.
In: White House Studies Compendium, Volume 4 Editor: R. W. Watson, pp. 455-467
ISBN: 1-60021-541-6 © 2007 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT AS AN ENTREPRENEUR Maurine H. Beasley and Henry R. Beasley ABSTRACT Eleanor Roosevelt’s income tax returns and related papers, examined in detail in this article, show how she made money over the course of her lifetime. Although she obviously benefited from her public position, first as the wife and then as the widow of Franklin D. Roosevelt, her financial records illuminate her efforts to earn income to validate her own self-worth. They also testify to the fact that she both earned and used money in ways that fit within the boundaries of acceptable roles for women of her time.
INTRODUCTION Eleanor Roosevelt, often called ER, who lived from 1884 to 1962, is notable in different ways. As the highly visible wife of U.S. president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, frequently referred to as FDR, she was first lady from 1933 to 1945 and later U.S. representative to the United Nations. She is remembered as a world traveler, political activist, supporter of liberal and social causes, and advocate for woman, minorities, youth, and human rights. What has been overlooked, however, is that she also was an excellent example of a woman who was an American entrepreneur. The niece of one U.S. president, Theodore Roosevelt, as well as the wife of another, Eleanor Roosevelt was accustomed by birth and marriage to a world of wealth and privilege. Nevertheless, in midlife she began to earn her own money for the fulfillment of personal goals. This article endeavors to explain why she was interested in paid work and how she was able to obtain it in spite of social conventions that restricted the income-producing activities of American women of her social class during the middle decades of the twentieth century. Based on research into her income tax records, which were not available to the public for many years, this article sheds new light on ER’s career by showing to what degree she was a money-maker in addition to being an humanitarian. Clearly, ER believed women, as well as men should be allowed to pursue economic independence, no matter what the financial standing of their spouses or their family might be. She took this position even during the Depression when a public opinion poll showed that 82 percent of the population thought women should not work if their husbands also were employed, on the premise that married women were taking jobs that ought to go to men.1 1
William H. Chafe, The American Woman: Her Changing Social, Economic and Political Roles, 1920-1970 (New York, Oxford, 1974 paperback), p. 108.
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Although ER herself had inherited income, she demonstrated through her example that women, married or not, had a right to make money to benefit themselves and others. Documentation of ER’s money-making activities yields insights into women’s history. It adds to biographical study of ER by illustrating her tremendous need for recognition and achievement in her own right. Yet, it has a larger significance. Her endeavors illuminated the changing role of American women after they received the vote in 1920. As a paid public communicator, she showed that a woman in the political spotlight could take a stand on current issues while fulfilling a traditional role. In her career ER stressed a feminine perspective that appealed to a wide audience of varying opinions and served to enlarge horizons for women without undercutting their positions as wives and mothers.
INCOME The result of her enterprise was reflected in her income tax returns. From 1917 to 1920, her income was entirely from inherited trusts and investments, averaging about $8,000 a year.2 By the year 1932, however, she was reporting earned taxable income of $25,000 from teaching, writing, editing, speaking, and broadcasting work.3 Her earned income increased to an average amount, after expenses were deducted, of $73,000 yearly from 1937 to 1939 and $65,800 yearly from 1941 to 1944.4 From the beginning of World War II until the end of her life, taxes took close to half of her earned income and she gave away a large portion of the rest, leaving a estate valued at only $340,000.5 Yet, she never relaxed the diligence with which she pursued her career as an enterprising American woman. While her income was not as great as that of notable movie stars, it reflected her prominence as a public figure and surpassed those of most Americans of her era, male or female. (In 1960, for example, a husband’s income of $7,000 to $10,000 annually gave a family solid middle-class status, although an increasing number of wives were choosing to work.6)
Business Ventures ER’s business ventures started before her White House years in partnership with women friends. In 1927, a year before FDR was elected governor of New York, she became one of the founders and part owner of the Val-Kill furniture factory on the Roosevelt estate at Hyde Park, New York. The factory produced reproductions of antique American furniture. Both ER and FDR wanted to use it to provide jobs for unemployed neighborhood men, but this plan 2
3
4
5
Income tax returns, Eleanor Roosevelt, 1917-1920, Business and Financial Material, Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York, hereafter referred to as FDRL. Income tax return, Eleanor Roosevelt, 1932, Income Tax Matters, 1932-36, Business and Financial Material, Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, FDRL. Eleanor Roosevelt’s tax records for the years 1921 to 1931 are missing. Income tax returns, Eleanor Roosevelt, 1937-1939, and 1941-1944, Business and Financial Material, Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, FDRL. See also E.R. Fund Report of American Friends Service Committee, year ending Dec. 31, 1977, Correspondence with Government Departments, 1938 Clarence Pickett folder, Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, FDRL. Income tax returns, Eleanor Roosevelt, 1942-1950, 1951, 1953-1961, Business and Financial Material, Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, FDRL. See also Anna R. Halsted Trust under will of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt: Miscellaneous, Anna R. Halsted Papers, FDRL.
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proved impractical and skilled Italian and Norwegian craftsmen were hired instead.7 In 1927, ER also became a part owner of, as well as a teacher in, the Todhunter School, an exclusive girls’ school in New York City that had been established 20 years earlier. As businesses, neither the furniture factory nor the private school could be termed a financial success. Each enterprise ended in disagreements between ER and the two women who were her associates in both endeavors, Nancy Cook and Marion Dickerman.8 Still, her involvement in the factory and the school demonstrated ER’s interest in business ventures by women. What was far more striking about ER’s commercial enterprise, however, was the zeal and determination with which she marketed herself as a journalist, lecturer and public figure immediately prior to, during, and after her White House years. Doubtlessly her success depended in large measure on her celebrity status as FDR’s activist wife. Nevertheless, ER found her own professional forte in public communication. She was able to make substantial amounts of money while writing and speaking on topics of particular interest to women. In studying ER we find a clue to the American character – the desire for personal economic success as a manifestation of personal worth. Her life showed the symbolic – and practical – value of money-making as a representation of individual achievement.
MOTIVATION What motivated ER to emerge from her role as a conventional upper class matron to become a highly-paid woman for her times and how did she accomplish the transition? Her biographers cite the marital crisis over FDR’s World War I romance with Lucy Mercer, who had been ER’s social secretary, as a precipitating factor in ER’s eventual transformation from dutiful wife to enterprising money-maker. 9 While the marriage survived ER’s discovery of the affair in 1918, it turned increasingly into a political partnership, and ER began to move outside her domestic role as a wife and mother of five children. As she sought career opportunities for herself, she demonstrated the tremendous energy and organizational talents she had displayed during World War I, when she did volunteer work in Washington hospitals and Red Cross canteens.10 While psychological factors apparently prompted ER to seek opportunities to make money, economic concerns also played a part, although neither she nor her husband lacked financial resources. Both ER and FDR, her fifth cousin to whom she was married in 1905, were members of the aristocracy that represented New York society. Individuals in their social strata lived on inherited wealth, dividing their time between town houses in New York City and estates in the Hudson River Valley. FDR’s own income from the practice of law, however, was relatively small in relation to the expense of providing an upper-class life style for his wife and five children. He needed, 6
Chafe, The American Woman, p. 219. “Val Kill Industries: Furniture – Pewter – Homespun,” Val Kill Founding & Dissolution, 1924-1947, Box 12, Marion Dickerman Papers, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, FDRL. 8 Eleanor Roosevelt to Marion [Dickerman] and Nancy [Cook], Nov. 9, 1938, and reply, Marion [Dickerman] to Eleanor Roosevelt, Nov.14, 1938, Correspondence Regarding Todhunter, Val Kill and Cottage, Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, FDRL. 9 Blanche Wiesen Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt: 1884-1933 vol. 1 (New York: Viking, 1992), p. 232-236. 10 Cook, pp. 224-225; 338-341. 7
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and received, financial assistance from his mother, Sara Delano Roosevelt, a rich widow.11 His financial prospects were uncertain after he contracted infantile paralysis in 1921, although he continued to receive $25,000 annually from an insurance company of which he was vicepresident.12 From the earliest days of her marriage, ER contributed her inherited income to cover part of her family’s expenses.13 As she moved into the public arena, she used the money she made as a symbol of personal and financial independence from her husband and motherin-law as well as an economic boon for causes in which she believed.
Social Influences In her desire to earn money, ER, no doubt, was influenced by widened horizons for women in general in the early twentieth century. Her own formal education had ended in 1902 when she returned to the United States after three years at an English finishing school, but she formed close ties with well-educated business and professional women during the 1920s in New York State. During this period the proportion of women workers classified as professionals rose from 11.9 percent in 1920 to 14.2 percent in 1930.14 Although professional women generally chose careers in female-dominated fields like teaching and nursing, some moved into journalism, an area that was to attract ER, possibly because it not require formal credentials. Unlike other professions there were no licensing or entrance requirements. The number of women reporters and editors doubled from 7,105 in 1920 to 14,786 in 1930 due to available jobs on newspaper women’s pages and in magazine and book publishing.15
Early Efforts Earning on her own initially was not easy for ER. In the 1920s she spent a long apprenticeship in public life that eventually paid off in terms of monetary rewards as a public communicator. She joined the League of Women Voters and other organizations that brought together educated women interested in making constructive use of the right to vote, which American women finally had obtained in 1920 after decades of struggle.16 In spite of the strains in the Roosevelt marriage, after FDR was stricken with infantile paralysis, she overcame her own shyness and stage fright to speak at Democratic Party fundraisers and political rallies. With the guidance of FDR’s chief political advisor, Louis Howe, who wanted to keep the Roosevelt name before the public, she learned how to handle herself before an audience.17 She began to write articles related to women and politics, at first on a volunteer basis for publications of the League of Women Voters and the Democratic Party,
11
Cook, p. 228. Income tax returns, Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1922-24, Family, Business, and Personal Financial Matters, Franklin D. Roosevelt Papers, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, FDRL. 13 Eleanor Roosevelt, This I Remember (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1949), pp. 14-15. 14 Chafe, The American Woman, pp. 89-90. 15 Susan Ware, Holding Their Own: American Women in the 1930s (Boston: Twayne, 1982), p. 75. 16 Hilda R. Watrous, In League with Eleanor: Eleanor Roosevelt and the League of Women Voters, 1921-1962 (New York: Foundation for Citizen Education, 1984), p. 3. 17 Susan Ware, “ER and Democratic Politics: Women in the Postsuffrage Era,” in Joan Hoff-Wilson and Marjorie Lightman, eds. Without Precedent (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), pp. 46-60. 12
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but eventually as a paid contributor to national magazines.18 These activities eventually transformed her into a professional speaker and writer. During this same period she joined Dickerman and Cook, two professional women trained as teachers, in ownership of the Val-Kill furniture factory and Todhunter School. The furniture factory was closed in 1936. There is no record of ER making any money from it, but the experience increased her understanding of business matters.
TEACHING CAREER Todhunder provided ER a monthly stipend for teaching.19 Since it was a private school, she could teach there without the college education needed for public school employment. Teaching was so important to her that after FDR was inaugurated as governor of New York in 1929, she continued to instruct classes at Todhunter three days a week. Commuting by train from Albany to New York City every Sunday evening, she returned on Wednesday afternoon to resume her official duties as the first lady of the state. Determined to do the same work expected of any teacher, she graded papers diligently on her train trips and wrote lesson plans. During FDR’s Presidential campaign in 1932, ER confided to her intimate friend, Lorena Hickok, the Associated Press reporter assigned to cover her, that unhappiness at leaving Todhunter was one of the reasons she was reluctant to become first lady.20 Fearing she could not fulfill her school responsibilities while in the White House, she announced shortly after FDR’s election that she would resign from teaching regular classes in 1933.21 Until 1938, however, when her close relationship with Dickerman and Cook dissolved and their financial partnership ended, she continued to be associated with the school.22 Without her involvement, Todhunter merged in 1939 for financial reasons with the Dalton School, another elite New York City private school. In ER’s autobiography she wrote of her mother-in-law’s dislike of her growing financial independence, noting that “when I began to earn money it was a real grief to her.”23 Yet, she continued, “I think she eventually became reconciled to it, realizing that it enabled me to do many things for which my own income was insufficient and which would have been too great a financial drain on my husband.” 24
18
19
20 21 22
23
24
See, for example, Eleanor Roosevelt, “Women Must Learn to Play the Game as Men Do,” Redbook Magazine 50 (April 1928): 78-79, 141-142. See Eleanor Roosevelt’s income tax material, 1933, which shows $250 in monthly salary and $3195.99 in profits from Todhunter, Business and Financial Material, Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, FDRL. Lorena A. Hickok, Reluctant First Lady (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1962), pp. 1-3. Associated Press news copy, New York, Nov. 11, 1932, Lorena Hickok Papers, Box 14, FDRL. Eleanor Roosevelt to Marion [Dickerman] and Nancy [Cook], Nov. 9, 1938, and reply, Marion Dickerman to Eleanor [Roosevelt], Nov. 14, 1938, Correspondence regarding Todhunter, Val-Kill and Cottage, Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, FDRL. Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961) pp. 135. Ibid., p. 136.
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DEVELOPMENT OF MONEY-MAKING ABILITY While ER gave up teaching in adapting to her new role as first lady, she continued to pursue a career as a writer that was well underway before FDR’s election as President. From 1928 to l932, the four years that FDR was governor of New York, ER wrote more than 20 articles for mass periodicals, mainly women’s magazines, and for the rest of her life she continued to be a prolific contributor to periodicals.25 Generally written in the first person, her articles exemplified personal journalism, making use of her name as a symbol of social and political prominence. Coached by Howe in journalistic techniques, ER drew heavily on her own experiences. Her topics – marriage, housekeeping, preparation for careers, wives of great men and her own philosophy of usefulness to others – avoided controversial issues, although they echoed the ideas of social feminists who wanted to broaden women’s opportunities without altering their roles in the family.26 Even though ER called for women to be more active politically, she urged them to put the home first; for example, telling readers of Good Housekeeping in 1930 that “until all my children were away at school, I stayed at home.”27 Sometimes she attempted to incorporate vignettes of her own sad childhood, marred by an absent father and the death of both parents before she was ten years old.28 Her efforts did not always meet with editorial approval. Collier’s, then one of the largest and best-paying publications, returned an article on “The Ethics of Parents,” and criticized her unwieldy writing style in attempting to tell a poorly disguised version of her childish love for her father.29 Similarly, in 1929 Vogue rejected a fictionalized account of her life story.30 Perhaps her writing was motivated by a need for emotional catharsis as well as for monetary reward, or perhaps she simply mined the material she had most readily at hand – her own life story. According to her son, Elliott Roosevelt, the money ER made served as “necessary evidence to her that she could go it alone,” without being dependent on a husband who had proven unfaithful.31 At times she seemed somewhat oblivious to the fact that her career stemmed in large measure from her celebrity status as FDR’s wife.
25
For a listing of Eleanor Roosevelt’s magazine articles from 1927 to 1932, see John A. Edens, Eleanor Roosevelt: A Comprehensive Bibliography (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994): pp. 13-19. See also Kathleen L. Endres, entries on “Ladies’ Home Journal,” “McCall’s,” and “Woman’s Home Companion,” in Maurine H. Beasley, Holly C. Shulman and Henry Beasley, eds. The Eleanor Roosevelt Encyclopedia (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001), pp. 298-301, 333-335, 569-570. 26 Maurine H. Beasley, Eleanor Roosevelt and the Media: A Public Quest for Self-Fulfillment (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987), pp. 16-18. 27 Eleanor Roosevelt, “What Is a Wife’s Job Today? An Interview with M. K. Wisehart,” Good Housekeeping 91 (Aug. 1930): 166, 169. 28 Beasley, Eleanor Roosevelt and the Media, p. 18. 29 Eleanor Roosevelt, unpublished manuscript, “The Ethics of Parents,” Speech and Article File, Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, FDRL. 30 Eleanor Roosevelt, untitled manuscript for Vogue, 1929, Speech and Article File, Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, FDRL. 31 Elliott Roosevelt and James Brough, The Roosevelts of Hyde Park: An Untold Story (New York: Putnam, 1973), p. 33.
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First Lady as Public Communicator and Entrepreneur After FDR was inaugurated as President in 1933, ER turned the vaguely defined position of first lady into a launching pad for an unprecedented paid career in public communication. During a tumultuous period in U.S. history, marked first by the Great Depression and second by World War II, her visibility made her a political and social role model for America’s women. She enhanced her stature by holding weekly White House press conferences with friendly women reporters to publicize her own activities and those of other women. Her first press conference, held at Hickok’s urging, took place on March 6, 1933, only two days after FDR’s inauguration as President.32 The last one was held a few hours before he died unexpectedly on April 12, 1945. ER as first lady quickly attained commercial success in three areas of public communication: writing, broadcasting and lecturing.
WRITING From August 1933 to July 1935, ER wrote a column, “I Want You to Write to Me,” for which she was paid $1,000 a month to comment on letters to her from readers of the Woman's Home Companion, a leading women’s publication of the day.33 When some accused her of taking advantage of her position for financial gain, she responded that she hoped her “name” was not the sole reason for writing offers and that she always tried to do the best work she could.34 In one of her most outspoken columns she upheld the right of married women to work. She argued, “The right to work seems to me as vital a part of our freedom as any right which we may have,” even though she noted that either men or women might be called on to give up their jobs to needier persons during the Depression.35 In her first seven years in the White House, ER sold at least 51 articles, mainly to women's magazines. During World War II she frequently sold articles to the Ladies’ Home Journal, which also carried her question-and-answer column, "If You Ask Me," begun in 1941, for which she received $2,500 a month.36 Subjects ranged from advice on etiquette to her own views on public issues such as her unpopular advocacy of drafting women along with men for compulsory government service (a proposal firmly rejected).37 Magazine work represented only part of her activity as a writer. In April 1933 she started a weekly syndicated newspaper column that brought her $500 for each 750-word article on subjects such as White House life or the work of federal agencies.38 Becoming what she 32 33
34 35 36
37 38
Blanche Wiesen Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt: 1933-1938 vol. 2 (New York: Viking, 1999), p. 40. Joseph P. Lash, Eleanor and Franklin (New York: Signet, 1973 paperback), pp. 494; Gertrude B. Lane to Eleanor Roosevelt, May, 10, 1933, Speech and Article File, Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, FDRL. Eleanor Roosevelt to Aron Mathieu, May 9 1933, as quoted in Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, p., 495. “Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Page,” Woman’s Home Companion 60 (Nov. 1933): 4. Income from the Ladies’ Home Journal column is referred to in Joseph P. Lash, Eleanor: The Years Alone (New York: Signet, 1972 paperback), p. 182. Eleanor Roosevelt, “Defense and Girls,” Ladies’ Home Journal 58 (May 1941): 25, 54. Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, p. 494; North American Newspaper Alliance article, “White House Home to Mrs. Roosevelt,” clipping, New York Times [April 2, 1933], Box 51, Bess Furman Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; typescript marked for “Northern Newspaper Alliance” [April 25, 1933], Speech and Article File, Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, FDRL. See also file of McNaught Syndicate articles, Speech and Article File, Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, FDRL..
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herself called a “very dull affair,” the weekly column ended in the fall of 1935. This cleared the way for a livelier and more personal offering.39 On December 30, 1935, ER began her daily syndicated "My Day" newspaper column, a first-person account of her activities, which reached hundreds of thousands of readers and ran in scores of newspapers. In 1938, for instance, it appeared in 62 newspapers with a total circulation of 4,034,552 readers.40 The column continued until her death in 1962, providing her with a steady source of revenue. Her syndicate, United Features, promised her $1,000 a month from it, but the income fluctuated depending on the number of and size of the newspapers that bought it, with smaller papers paying less than larger ones.41 Even before she entered the White House, she started writing books, beginning in 1932 with an edited version of her father’s letters written while hunting big game before his marriage.42 As first lady she published one children’s book and three books aimed at women readers on topics related to political activity, peace and democracy.43 Her biggest success occurred in 1937 when her agent, George Bye, sold serialization rights for the autobiography of her early life, “This is My Story,” to the Ladies’ Home Journal for $75,000 (which matched FDR's salary as President). Delighted with the sale and resultant publicity, she told the magazine’s editors, “I can’t tell you how happy this makes me, to receive all this attention for something I have done by myself and not because of Franklin.” 44 The autobiography sold well as a book and received critical acclaim for charm and frankness.45
Broadcasting Activities In the pre-inaugural period following FDR’s election as President in 1932, ER delivered a series of 12 commentaries over network radio sponsored by Pond's, a cold cream manufacturer, who paid her $1,800 per broadcast.46 Her topics chiefly were child rearing and family relations. After criticism that the future first lady was using her name "for commercial purposes," she announced that she intended to accept no more radio contracts.47 In 1934, nevertheless, ER resumed commercial broadcasting. She received $500 per minute, the same amount given the highest-paid radio stars.48
39
Roosevelt, This I Remember, p. 177. Margaret Marshall, “Columnists on Parade,” Nation 137 (Feb. 26, 1938): 14-15. 41 Beasley, Eleanor Roosevelt and the Media, p. 86. 42 Eleanor Roosevelt, ed., Hunting Big Game in the Eighties: The Letters of Elliott Roosevelt (New York: Scribner’s, 1932). 43 Eleanor Roosevelt, A Trip to Washington with Bobby and Betty (New York: Dodge, 1935); It’s Up to the Women (New York: Stokes, 1933); This Troubled World (New York: Kinsey, 1938), and The Moral Basis of Democracy (New York: Howell, Soskin, 1940). 44 Transcript of interview with Bruce and Beatrice Gould, Oct. 7, 1975, vol. 3, Oral History Collection, Columbia University, p. 304. 45 Reviews of the book, This Is My Story (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1937) are described in Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt, vol. 1, p. 480. 46 Income tax matters, 1933, Business and Financial Material, Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, FDRL. 47 Maurine H. Beasley and Paul Belgrade, “Eleanor Roosevelt: First Lady as Radio Pioneer,” Journalism History 11(Autumn/Winter 1984), p. 42. 48 Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, p. 552. 40
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Going off the record at one of her women-only press conferences, she expressed her determination to "get the money for a good cause [charity] and take the gaff."49 She had her sponsors pay her net radio broadcast earnings, $36,000 in 1934, $29,832 in 1935, and $32,535 in 1937, directly to a special ER Transit Fund set up by the American Friends Service Committee.50 The fund helped start a school and handicraft program at Arthurdale, a resettlement project in West Virginia for unemployed miners, and in later years was used to assist various schools, organizations and individuals. The U.S. Treasury Department, headed by Henry Morgenthau, a close friend of the Roosevelt family, advised ER on July 4, 1934, that she did not have to pay taxes on such assigned earnings.51 The arrangement brought criticism spearheaded by Rep. Hamilton Fish Sr., a Republican who represented the Roosevelts’ Hyde Park district.52 He argued that the first lady was not paying her fair share of taxes since fifteen percent of income was the maximum permitted for charitable contributions. This led ER to include radio earnings as part of her taxable income after 1937.53 These earnings varied from year to year, dropping to zero in 1938 and only $3,583 in 1939, before increasing again in 1940-1942. In 1937, broadcast earnings accounted for 31 percent of her total earnings, writing 49 percent, and lecturing 20 percent; in 1939 by contrast, these earning ratios were broadcasting 5 percent, writing 58 percent and lecturing 37 percent.54 Her various radio sponsors included producers of soap, shoes, mattresses, typewriters, and a group of Latin American coffee exporting countries. They seemed well satisfied with the size of the audience she attracted. In 1940 Time magazine reported that Sweetheart soap gave ER $3,000 for each of her 15-minute afternoon radio talks in a 26-week series, explaining she drew celebrity pay based both on her husband’s position and her own achievements.55 ER spoke generally on non-controversial themes such as life in Washington, but she also commented on public issues concerning women and youth. Her last commercial broadcasting as first lady was another series of 26 programs presented on Sunday evening in the period immediately before and after U.S. entry into World War II. In these programs ER focused on preparing American women for war, praising homemakers as "the first line of defense."56
Lecturer ER gave an estimated 1,400 speeches during her years as first lady. For many of her speeches she received no compensation, but in the spring of 1936 she contracted with the W. 49
Ibid. E. R. Fund Reports of American Friends Service Committee, May 14 to Dec. 31, 1934, year ending Dec. 31, 1935, and year ending Dec. 31, 1937, Correspondence with Government Departments, 1935 PhillipsReedsville folder, 1936 Perkins-Ret folder and 1938 Clarence Pickett folder, Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, FDRL. 51 Henrietta S. Klotz [private secretary to Henry Morgenthau Jr.] to Mrs. [Eleanor] Roosevelt, July 5, 1934, Income tax matters, 1932-1936, Business and Financial Records, Eleanor Roosevelt Papers. 52 James R. Kearney, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1968), pp. 224-25. 53 Malvina Thompson to Clarence Pickett, June 24, 1939, Correspondence with Government Departments, Jan-July 1939, Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, FDRL. 54 Income tax returns, Eleanor Roosevelt, 1937 and 1939, Business and Financial Material, Eleanor Roosevelt papers, FDRL. See also E.R. Fund Report of American Friends Service Committee, Correspondence with Government Departments, 1938 Clarence Pickett folder, Eleanor Roosevelt papers, FDRL 55 Time, April 15, 1940, p. 17. 56 Beasley and Belgrade, op. cit., p. 43. 50
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Colston Leigh agency for two lecture tours a year at $1,000 a lecture.57 She undertook her lectures, ER wrote, because they afforded her a "wonderful opportunity to visit all kinds of places and to get to know a good cross section of people" as well as to tour federal projects of various kinds.58 Yet, she admitted that both monetary and political gain figured in too. As ER explained it, the lectures "gave me more money for things I wanted to do than my husband could afford to give me" and also provided information that FDR used "as a check against the many official reports he received".59 Sponsoring groups were offered a choice of hearing her speak on any one of six general topics: "Relationship of the Individual to the Community," "Problems of Youth," "The Outlook for America," "The Mail of a President's Wife," "Peace," and "A Typical Day at the White House." ER ceased giving paid lectures in 1941 for the duration of World War II.
ON HER OWN After her husband's death on April 12, 1945, ER announced her intention to pursue a career as a journalist, although FDR left the income from his estate, valued at about $1.4 million after taxes, in trust for her.60 Therefore, she was assured of receiving about $30,000 to $40,000 a year.61 This hardly led ER to retire to a quiet life as a widow. Instead, she achieved even greater fame as “the first lady of the world,” the U.S. representative to the United Nations who led the world organization in accepting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.62 She met with world leaders and counseled presidents, but she remained a hardworking entrepreneur. ER continued her “My Day” column, receiving a stable income from it until she lost a number of subscribing newspapers as a result of her partisanship in the 1956 presidential campaign on behalf of Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic candidate. This cut her "My Day" income from $28,000 in 1956 to $9,600 in 1957.63 Income from her other writing remained steady in the initial post-White House years, and then jumped dramatically in 1949 and 1950 with the serialization of the second volume of her autobiography, This I Remember, in McCall’s magazine.64 She offered the autobiography first to the Ladies’ Home Journal, but after Journal editors wanted the manuscript rewritten, she sold it sight unseen for $150,000 to McCall’s, a rival publication.65 In 1949, her total earned income was $198,865 ($175,957
57
58 59 60
61
62 63
64
65
Malvina Thompson Scheider to George T. Bye, Dec. 17, 1935, Box 313, James Oliver Brown Papers, Special Manuscript Collections, Columbia University. Eleanor Roosevelt, This I Remember (New York: Harper, 1949), p. 152. Roosevelt, Autobiography, p. 131. Basil O’Connor, Press Release [on the Estate of Franklin D. Roosevelt], June 6, 1947, O’Connor-Farber Papers, FDRL. Accounting of the Trustees, April, 1 1950 to Nov. 30, 1962, Trust Created under Article Eight of the Last Will and Testament of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Estate of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt: Miscellaneous Papers, 1961-1968, Anna Roosevelt Halsted Papers, FDRL. Elizabeth Janeway, “First Lady of the U.N.,” New York Times Magazine, Oct. 22, 1950, p. 12. Income tax returns, Eleanor Roosevelt, 1956, 1957, Business and Financial Material, Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, FDRL. Lash, Eleanor: The Years Alone, p. 162. This I Remember subsequently appeared in book form (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1949). Gould interview, May 12, 1976, vol.5, Oral History Collection, Columbia University, pp. 591-593.
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after expenses) and her total taxable income $206,542, of which a hefty 66 percent went for taxes due to the high rates of her era.66
HIGH INCOME CONTINUES While such a peak was not sustained, her earnings continued at a high level for the rest of her life. In 1949, she increased the income from her question-and-answer page $500 a month (from $2,500 to $3,000) by moving it from the Ladies’ Home Journal to McCall's.67 She also continued writing for other magazines. The third volume of her autobiography, On My Own, was published in 1958 after portions had appeared in the Saturday Evening Post.68 She subsequently published other works: A self-help book based on her own experiences and her one-volume autobiography (a condensation of the three earlier volumes) both appeared in 1960.69 When she resigned from the United Nations due to the election of Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1953, she increased her paid speaking engagements, averaging about $31,000 a year in payments from the Colston Leigh agency in 1954-1961.70 She also appeared frequently on radio and television broadcasts from 1948 to 1951, in collaboration with her daughter, Anna Roosevelt Halsted, and son, Elliott Roosevelt, both of whom needed the income her shows produced. From 1953 through 1961, her yearly taxable income averaged slightly over $97,000, of which 47 percent went for taxes and about 25 percent for charitable contributions.71 During this period, distributions to ER from FDR's estate included both taxable and nontaxable income, with the amount not subject to Federal taxes averaging about $20,000 a year.72 In 1961, the last full year of ER’s life, at the age of 77 she reported earnings of $135,552 ($75,874 after expenses).73 Included were $7,794 from "My Day" (now a three-day-a-week feature), $59,000 from other writing, $6,500 from Brandeis University where she was a visiting lecturer, $33,477 from lectures, and $8,430 from her appearances on radio and television.74 She received $20,000 from American Broadcasting-Paramount Theaters, which were preparing a documentary series on FDR.75 With such income, ER was able to travel extensively and maintain a residence in New York City as well as her Val-Kill cottage at Hyde Park, which once had housed the furniture 66
Income tax returns, Eleanor Roosevelt, 1949, 1950, Business and Financial Material, Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, FDRL.
Gould interview, pp. 592-593.; Lash, Eleanor: The Years Alone, p. 182. On My Own appeared in book form (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1958). 69 You Learn by Living and The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt both were published in New York by Harper & Brothers in 1960. 70 Income tax returns, Eleanor Roosevelt, 1954-1961. Business and Financial Material, Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, FDRL. 71 Income tax returns, Eleanor Roosevelt, 1953-1961, Business and Financial Material, Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, FDRL. 72 Ibid. See also Accounting of the Trustees, April 1, 1950 to Nov. 30, 1962, Trust Created under Article Eight of the Last Will and Testament of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Estate of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt: Miscellaneous Papers, 1961-1968, Anna Roosevelt Halsted Papers, FDRL. 73 Income tax return, Eleanor Roosevelt, 1961, Business and Financial Material, Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, FDRL. 74 Ibid. 75 Ibid. 67 68
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factory of which she had been part-owner. She gave substantial sums to the American Association for the United Nations, and to various schools, colleges, and charities.76 She also tried to help her children. In 1947 she bought 842 acres of land at Hyde Park from FDR’s estate for $85,000 to establish a farming venture in partnership with her son, Elliott, to whom she deeded the property.77 She also loaned $100,000 to her son, James Roosevelt.78 Taxes, however, took the largest portion of her income, even though her secretaries submitted detailed records of expenses to her tax accountant so she could take all allowable deductions. Her financial records show how hard she worked pursuing her career as a writer, speaker and media personality. They also show how much she gave away and how relatively little she herself profited from her earnings, which were in striking contrast to the limited incomes of most working women of her day. When she died on November 7, 1962, she left a relatively modest estate of $340,000 before taxes, mainly to her children.79
CONCLUSION ER’s entrepreneurship stemmed from complex factors. In the opinion of her family, she sought a career to justify her own existence. Her son Elliott said she needed “power and influence, provided it was in her own right and her own name.”80 The making of money provided a tangible symbol of her own worth and dignity. Her son-in-law, Dr. James A. Halsted, believed that her career enabled her to deal “wisely and intelligently” with the emotional problems resulting from discovery of her husband’s infidelity.81 Her grandson, John R. Boettiger, saw it as a part of ER’s struggle “to be as full a human being as she was.”82 Obviously, ER participated in entrepreneurship for much more than simple financial reward. In keeping with ideas ingrained in American culture, she saw earning money as evidence of personal achievement. As she told a press conference friend, money was “a token which represents real things.”83 Earned income symbolized what she could gain for herself that also would benefit others. While detractors criticized her for capitalizing on her role as, first, the wife and, then, the widow of a beloved President, most Americans apparently did not begrudge ER the income she made. According to public opinion polls, ER was the nation’s most admired woman in her lifetime and continued to be the highest-rated woman for three decades after her death.84 76
Income tax returns, Eleanor Roosevelt, 1951, 1953-1961, Business and Financial Material, Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, FDRL. 77 Eleanor Roosevelt to “Children,” Aug. 28, 1947, Estate Matters: Franklin D. Roosevelt – Correspondence with Children, Business and Financial Material, Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, FDRL. 78 Eleanor Roosevelt to James Roosevelt, Feb. 3, 1954, Roosevelt Family: Clippings and Correspondence, 19461975 - James Roosevelt, Anna Roosevelt Halsted Papers, FDRL. 79 Estate of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt: Miscellaneous Papers, 1961-1968, Anna Roosevelt Halsted Papers, FDRL. 80 Roosevelt and Brough, op. cit., p. 299. 81 Oral history interview with James A. Halsted by Emily Williams, May 17, 1979, Eleanor Roosevelt Oral History Archives, FDRL, p. 7. 82 Oral history interview with John R. Boettiger by Emily Williams, Aug. 1, 1979, Eleanor Roosevelt Oral History Archives, FDRL, p. 58. 83 Bess Furman, proof of article titled “Life and Manners,” distributed by Associated Press, May 1, 1935, enclosed with memo to E[leanor] R[oosevelt], Personal Correspondence, Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, FDRL. 84 Tracey A. Johnson, entry on “Opinion Polls,” in Beasley, et al., eds., The Eleanor Roosevelt Encyclopedia, pp. 391-395.
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At the peak of her income-producing powers, ER lived modestly in her Val-Kill cottage. She generally was pictured in the media engaged in activities to aid various causes, including the political careers of her sons, and serving as an elder stateswoman in the Democratic Party. If she had appeared to be selfish, greedy or personally ambitious, the public could have been expected to react quite differently. Fortunately, for ER, she projected the kind of image that won public acceptance because her money-making activities fit the social norm for women in the United States during the middle decades of the twentieth century. As an entrepreneur, ER still fulfilled the womanly role of helping others by giving away much of what she made, but she also met her own personal needs. In her 1933 book, It’s Up to the Women, ER articulated a philosophy that she practiced in her own life. She called on women to play a more active part in the world, including the pursuit of business and professional opportunities, noting, “I think the position of women and their usefulness is increasing constantly.” 85 Displaying an iron will to make herself socially useful, she kept on with a demanding schedule of paid writing and speaking activities. Monetary recognition of her accomplishments gave her the reinforcement she needed to continue her efforts as well as the practical ability to demonstrate her commitments to her family and the causes in which she believed. Money was a means to an end for her but an end that made her a role model for other women seeking some measure of financial independence. ER’s money–making symbolized the ability of American women to bridge the gap between the private, domestic realm and the commercial public sphere in a socially acceptable way. By giving substantial sums to charity and to her children, ER fulfilled the traditional ideal of the woman as a benefactor to her family and to society at large. Her career gave tacit approval to other women to earn money, even if not necessary for economic survival, provided their motivation did not appear as entirely selfish.
85
Eleanor Roosevelt, It’s Up to the Women (New York: Frederick Stokes, 1933), p. 259.
In: White House Studies Compendium, Volume 4 Editor: R. W. Watson, pp. 469-482
ISBN: 1-60021-541-6 © 2007 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT: THE PATH TO EQUALITY Susan Abrams Beck ABSTRACT Eleanor Roosevelt played a major role in American politics for a half century. Actively pursuing liberal goals, she was a woman who took her place in a man’s world, and showed how to make a difference. Yet, her view of women’s rights derived from the model of the Progressive Era, which rejected an equal rights amendment and supported protectionism, and influenced how she viewed the everyday experiences of women. She did not want women to be forced to give up who they were and their place in the family, and she wanted to prevent the exploitation of women workers. Women and men were different, and she was willing to take steps towards political and economic equality that recognized that difference. At the end of her life, she began to moderate her position, although she never vigorously advocated an equal rights amendment.
INTRODUCTION The most prominent woman of her generation, Eleanor Roosevelt helped to define the Twentieth Century for women. She is remembered not only for the work she did for women’s rights throughout her life, but as the template against which the modern view of women has been forged. A woman of independence, she came to speak out and to act for the full measure of women in American society. However, this idea of her as the model of modern woman belies some contradictions in her own understanding of equality. Her view of woman in society changed over her many years of experience, and the development of that view serves as a metaphor for the women’s movement of the last 100 years. Born in the Victorian Era, she moved from a perception of equality based on difference, very much in the progressive mode of the early reformers, to an acceptance of an equal rights amendment that was premised on an understanding of equality that did not recognize difference. Her journey to that place provides insight into the evolution of the women’s movement as the Second Wave was poised to erupt just as her lifetime came to a close.
YOUNG ELEANOR ER was born into privilege, but quickly encountered difficulties. Her mother belittled the shy, homely child, calling her “granny,” and met an unfortunate death when ER was eight. Her father, brother of President Theodore Roosevelt, was adored by ER, but was an alcoholic
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and exiled from the family, making rare visits home to see her. By the time she was 10, he died also. This left ER an orphan, sent to live with her maternal grandmother and alcoholic uncles. If there were the comforts of affluence, it would not be an exaggeration to say that her life was emotionally impoverished. Her alcoholic uncles actually provided her passage out of this misery, as her grandmother became increasingly worried about her living in the same house, and so packed her off to Allenswood, a private girls’ school in England, run by Marie Souvestre, a Frenchwoman who embraced radical causes and provided ER with warmth and confidence and exposed her to new ideas. Mlle. Souvestre toured the continent with ER, providing her young ward with an entirely new outlook on life. When she returned to the United States three years later, just as the new century turned, she had a love of serious topics and the foundation to be intellectually independent, even though she never received any further formal training. Mlle. Souvestre imparted to her a passion for life and a passion for social causes that became the hallmarks of ER’s adulthood.1 By 1901 ER began working at Rivington House, a settlement house on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, teaching calisthenics and dancing to immigrant women. She became a social reformer, one of the wealthy class who saw an obligation to reach out to those less fortunate. The scenes of poverty that she witnessed at Rivington House certainly served as an education, and there she came to observe the misery of poverty for herself, which led to her life long commitment to legislative action to mitigate such horrendous conditions. The need for a limit on hours and better wages, central tenets of the progressive tradition, made their first impressions on her at Rivington House, and she attended her classes at the settlement house faithfully, becoming devoted to her students and deriving enormous satisfaction from her work there. Her settlement house experience led to her enrollment in the National Consumers’ League, headed by Florence Kelley, a group devoted to improving conditions for women who worked in factories. It had an activist agenda and “operated by means of a ‘white list’ that named the retail establishments which dealt ‘justly’ with their employees and which the League’s members and friends were urged to patronize.”2 Practices that would justify gaining a positive recommendation included equal pay for equal work, a minimum wage, a ten hour day, and exclusion of child labor, particularly in sweat shops. ER worked on the committee that monitored compliance with the standards. Hesitant at first, she saw first hand the misery of the sweatshop.3 From that time forward she was firmly committed to social justice. But her view of how to achieve that justice began with the reformers, and so her sense of what gave people an equal stake in society derived from those initial experiences. As a member of a privileged elite, she at first took tentative steps towards reform as part of her sense of noblesse oblige, the common charity work done by others of her class. But she was clearly touched by the lives she observed at Rivington House and through her work in the Consumers’ League, and at this point she moved beyond the concept of charity to an understanding of more fundamental change. What was this view? For the women activists of the progressive era, American society had been permanently altered. The domestic private sphere, previously the place where women had been fully in control, had to a large extent moved into the public space. 1
Joseph P. Lash, ER and FDR, (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1971), 98. Lash, 99-100. 3 Lash, 100. 2
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Residential life had been separated from the workplace, and what little control women had over domestic production, education, and family life had been transformed. The early women’s rights activists of the Nineteenth Century had come from the small towns of New England, particularly upstate New York, but now women activists began to direct their efforts to the urban space, where they concerned themselves with the negative consequences of industrialization. They paid more attention to working class women and the political and economic issues that their exploitation exposed. Religiosity was less central to their thinking; protecting women was. As Jane Addams wrote, the city, originally a stronghold of militarism, and therefore a male responsibility, had become a wasteland, and it was woman who was required to deal with “unsanitary housing, poisonous sewage, contaminated water, infant mortality, the spread of contagion, adulterated food, impure milk, smoke-laden air, illventilated factories, dangerous occupations, juvenile crime, unwholesome crowding, prostitution, and drunkenness,” a lengthy list indeed.4 This was, as she put it, “enlarged housekeeping,” the idea that women had to clean up the city, just as they had cleaned up the home. This thinking derived from an understanding of difference: women are housekeepers; men are soldiers. For women to assume a public role did not make them the same as men, yet certainly equal to them. “Most of the departments in a modern city can be traced to woman’s traditional activity,” Addams wrote and their “minds accustomed to detail and variety of work” were natural to them, and to not assume responsibility for them would mean “they are losing what they have always had.”5 Not only did the social reformers want to clean up the cities, they also fought for protective legislation for women and children. The minimum wage and maximum hours were part of a larger movement to protect the large industrial class, but for women and children in particular they were more successful. This thinking prevailed in the Muller v. Oregon6 case, where the argument that women were different, that they were uniquely able to bear children, provided the Supreme Court with the logic that they needed to accept an Oregon law that limited the hours worked by women, whereas they had rejected such legislation for men. This set a standard that remained in place for decades, and as ER entered the civic world, she came to accept, and later to fight for, these ideas. Women, she thought, were different, and as such had to be protected. The fight that later erupted which saw such a distinction as preventing women’s equality was at odds with her view. Difference became the focal point around which equal rights was debated. After marrying FDR, and starting their family, they moved to Washington during World War I when FDR became Assistant Secretary of the Navy. ER became active in the Red Cross and worked for improved conditions in the mental institutions for returning World War I soldiers. Increasingly activist, she got the Secretary of the Interior Frank Lane to investigate conditions, which led to increased appropriations by Congress. She traveled to Europe after the armistice, where she was deeply moved by the devastation she witnessed. Yet, although she was becoming increasingly confident and taking on more reform challenges, she did not become involved in the suffrage movement, although these were the final years of the push towards the vote. Unlike Jane Addams, who saw the vote as the instrument through which women would be able to implement civic housekeeping, ER opposed women’s suffrage. She 4
Jane Addams, “Utilization of Women in City Government,” in Alice Rossi, ed. The Feminist Papers: From Adams to de Beauvoir (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1988), 604. 5 Addams, 606-607. 6 208 U.S. 412 (1908).
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held the traditional view that women’s place was in the home (although she did not even have control within her own home because of her very overbearing mother-in-law), and although she was involved in reforms, which took her into the public space, she did not fight for the vote. During these early years she became increasingly involved in the movement to remedy society’s ills, but she did so without any ideological imperative or partisan connection. She was driven by issues, learned from other women activists, and worked primarily through voluntary associations. Her participation was directed at a series of causes, many of them important to the lives of women, although she did not perceive her commitments as part of a “women’s movement.” When the war was over, FDR made an unsuccessful bid for the vice-presidential nomination on the Democratic ticket. They returned to New York City to live in a house bought and furnished by FDR’s mother, who had her own home adjacent to theirs. After FDR contracted polio, it was then that her real education about public life began.
A Political Education ER took on, with some hesitation at first, the position of chair of the legislative committee of the New York State League of Women Voters. This organization had emerged from the National American Women’s Suffrage Association, which was the coalition that directed the final campaign for suffrage, and it became the heir to the reformist wing of the movement. It was intentionally nonpartisan, in part out of the reaction to the view that the parties were corrupt, and it held the view that newly won suffrage should not look to integrate women into such a corrupted system. In the League, ER had the opportunity to work with Elizabeth Read, a lawyer who became her mentor and life long friend. Still active in the Consumers’ League, Florence Kelley, also a lawyer, exposed her to the importance of a powerful, well-articulated argument as they made the rounds to politicians and legislators attempting to win reform legislation. Through the Women’s Trade Union League, yet another reformist group, she met Rose Schneiderman, a self-taught union organizer who taught ER about the theory and power of unions, and ER became a fierce supporter of unionization. ER accepted the idea of the living wage, for women as well as men. Viewed from the perspective of the turn of the Twenty-first Century, the resistance of all these groups to an Equal Rights Amendment makes them seem conservative. However, their fight for women derived from the left, and they were in the vanguard of fundamental challenges to a free market system that was terribly exploitive. Many years later, when ER thought that unions had perhaps become sufficiently strong to speak for women, when she became less concerned about the powerlessness of working women, she finally supported the Equal Rights Amendment. In the 1920s, encouraged by Louis Howe, FDR’s political advisor who wanted to keep FDR’s political prospects alive after he contracted polio, she was introduced into the world of party politics, which was, at the time, very much a male bastion. Whereas the reform groups and the women she met through them articulated the legacy of the progressive era, it was the party politics of New York State that provided her with an education in the reality of the partisan world. She had first met Howe in the 1912 presidential campaign, but after polio had pretty much grounded FDR, he began to tutor her on the ins and outs of New York politics. He made her read and critique her husband’s speeches, and he encouraged her to join the Women’s Division of the New York Democratic Party, where she worked on fundraising,
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gave speeches, and learned about the issues. In her work for the party, particularly when she became chair of the Finance Committee, she met Nancy Cook and Marion Dickerman, who also became friends (and they ultimately went into business together in Dutchess County and lived on Val-Kill, ER’s home separate from Hyde Park). But it was Howe who taught her how to craft and deliver a speech. By the mid-1920’s she had become her own person, not just a substitute for her husband; “She went beyond assisting her husband and embarked on political activity in her own right. This was due to her conviction that politics was the handmaiden of reform. It was also her response to the new rights and responsibilities extended to women in the Nineteenth Amendment.” 7 By the Twenties she had assumed an activist role, but still, even as she took on more and more responsibilities and addressed an ever-widening number of problems, she made a distinction between men and women. She continued to work for the protection of women, and moreover, she wanted to avoid a politics of women that attached them to the city bosses or developed into another interest group. Her activism was aimed at their lives, and her intention was not to make women like men. The “women’s view” had to be preserved, not submerged in the male paradigm. Legislative reform would only be realized if women articulated their vision of what society should be, and in her efforts to have women assume an equal place was not to be like men, but to be able to influence policy as women. Women were different and there was no need to pretend otherwise. The political world did not welcome her endeavors, however, and as she became more active in the New York Democratic Party, she experienced first hand how women were frozen out. Good intentions, diligent homework, and powerful arguments turned out to be insufficient. At the 1924 Democratic National Convention, although she began to make headway on the selection of women delegates to the Convention, stating that women needed a place of “real equality,” 8 working with men, not for them, she met with less success on questions of substance. She served as the chair of the committee that developed planks of interest to women, including a additional funding for the Sheppard-Towner Act, the right of workers to organize and bargain, criticism of groups (directed at the Ku Klux Klan) that engender “prejudice against groups of citizens because of race, creed or religion,” equal pay for women, and state ratification of the child-labor constitutional amendment. When the full committee met, she was locked out of the meeting, and waited unsuccessfully throughout the night to present to the committee the planks that the women had voted for. The 1924 Convention was important in other ways also. In debating and voting for the women’s planks, deep divisions emerged within the women’s ranks. It was here that ER’s views became most evident. In 1923 Alice Paul, flush on the heels of the victory over suffrage, began to argue for an equal rights amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Amendment immediately precipitated deep divisions within the women’s movement between those who wanted women to be treated like men and those who still favored recognizing difference. The cleavage erupted at the national convention when Paul’s National Woman’s Party (NWP) presented a plank calling for the Democratic Party to take steps to “establish Equal Rights for men and women” and to work for an equal rights amendment. This argument over an equal rights amendment would persist for the rest of the century. From the view of the proponents, such an amendment would not prevent protective legislation from passage, if 7 8
Tamara K. Hareven, Eleanor Roosevelt: An American Conscience (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1968), 27. Lash, 289.
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such legislation covered both men and women. But labor, including the Trade Union League, the Consumers’ League and ER, were opposed, because they thought that without focusing on women and children, much would be lost. Women were not viewed as the same as men, and to treat them as if they were, would not help them make strides politically or economically. As Joseph Lash notes, “she thought the Woman’s party opposition to protective legislation for women on the basis of equal rights was downright reactionary.” 9 Although her views prevailed over the National Woman’s Party, she was not even able to voice the planks her group supported to the platform committee. These two fronts would continue to dog her for many years to come. ER was not one to walk away, even with defeat, and she remained active in the Women’s Division of the Democratic Party, working tirelessly for the legislation she favored as well as to be accepted within the structure of the party itself. But the lines were drawn, both between the men and their female challengers, as well as between the two groups of women. ER fought for women’s rights and representation within the Democratic Party, but she did so as a reformer, rejecting the NWP model. In her mind women and men were different, and she feared the fate of women under the guise of an equal rights amendment. By the late Twenties, some progress was achieved and women were absorbed into the general committee. Their presence, however, did not signal the incorporation of their views. There is no doubt that she had shed some of her idealism, and in contrast to her worry about how suffrage might cause women to lose their special perspective by being absorbed by male dominated parties and practices, she worked tirelessly to get women into the inner circle of the party and ultimately to run for office. She accepted that women had to operate in a culture designed by men, but she wanted women to have an equal place within that culture. The protectionism she espoused on questions of economic equality and her rejection of an equal rights amendment did not carry over to her thoughts on intraparty power. There, she wanted women to be fully integrated into the organization and to be heard.
FIRST LADY OF THE STATE AND NATION When FDR became governor of New York and then president of the United States, ER’s access to power increased significantly. She worked, although did not admit as much, for women’s appointment to offices, such as Frances Perkins’ appointment at the state and then national level to the top labor post. And certainly the widespread changes enacted under the New Deal were a reflection of the efforts of the reformers of the earlier progressive era. Labor unionization, limitations on hours, minimum wages, social security, and the elimination of child labor codified their efforts. ER welcomed these strides for women and men. To have women take an equal place along men was part of her understanding, but it was to include women within the existing system, not to transform its foundations. In real terms this meant taking steps to get women included within the New Deal, such as camps within the Conservation Corps or jobs which closed wage differences between men and women; the priority, however, was on getting the programs enacted and implemented, not making women the center of the basic reform package. Including women was very important to her, but still with understanding of difference, and sometimes without full participation. 9
Lash, 290.
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What ER was not, at this time, an advocate for the Equal Rights Amendment. She was pleased when the New Deal ultimately legislated for the right of both men and women to unionize, without making any distinction between them, and she celebrated the passage of minimum wages and maximum hours for both male and female workers. But the very success of that kind of equal treatment put the schism between the social reformers and the more radical egalitarian feminists into relief. ER, of course, belonged to the former, and she continued to believe that “[women] should still have special legislation…. [I]t is necessary in the interests of the state, which must concern itself with the health of women because the future of the race depends upon their ability to produce healthy children.”10 It was to marriage and the home that she saw as the arc of a woman’s life. “I am old-fashioned enough to believe that every girl ought to marry and have a family. I am also modern enough and progressive enough to believe that it is as much the function of the school to prepare her for that job as it is to prepare her for the expression of other phases of her life.”11 She also saw that women in politics would bring a different perspective to the public space, echoing the earlier statements by Jane Addams. “Women are not interested in laws,” she wrote in 1932, and “often come into politics because of certain ills they see must be remedied….Women generally are more interested in reforms than in tax laws.” She understood how this might lead to different political outcomes, and that women would, when they entered politics, “seize upon the side of life they knew,” so that their consideration of tariffs, state and local organization, and budgeting, would be “nothing but group housekeeping; and that foreign relations are nothing but relations between neighbors.” 12 She specifically rejected the NWP’s position, writing in 1933, I have often thought about women being on an equal footing with men and sometimes when I have listened to the arguments of the National Woman’s Party and they have complained that they could not compete in the labor market because restrictions were laid upon women’s work which were not laid upon men’s, I have been almost inclined to agree with them, until I came to realize that when all is said and done, women are different from men. They are equals in many ways, but they cannot refuse to acknowledge their differences.13
Thus, she accepted a fuller role for women in public life, but it was premised on the difference between men and women. The workplace was not kind to women, and their work was considered to be less essential than the work of men. Therefore, she thought, without special consideration – protection – their physical exploitation would have social consequences that men, at least in general, did not suffer. During the early days of the New Deal her antipathy for the National Woman’s Party and their advocacy of equal rights often erupted. Pfeffer describes how ER refused to assist the NWP when they fought Section 213 of the Economy Act of 1932, which included a clause that with reductions in government personnel, married persons whose spouses also worked for the government would be dismissed first. The understanding was that women would take 10
Eleanor Roosevelt, It’s Up to the Women (New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1933), 231-232. Eleanor Roosevelt, “Today’s Girl and Tomorrow’s Job,” Woman’s Home Companion, June 1932 in Allida M. Black, ed., What I Hope to Leave Behind: The Essential Essays of ER Roosevelt (Brooklyn, New York, Carlson Publishing, 1995), 226-227. 12 Eleanor Roosevelt, “Wives of Great Men,” Liberty, October 1, 1932 in Allida M. Black, ed., What I Hope to Leave Behind: The Essential Essays of ER Roosevelt, Brooklyn, New York: Carlson Publishing, 1995 218-19. 13 Roosevelt, It’s Up to the Women, 199-200. 11
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the brunt of the dismissals, and it was not until 1937 that the act was finally repealed. Declining an invitation to a conference sponsored by the NWP, she noted how she was opposed to their tactics.14 And in 1933 she wrote that “during an emergency…it may be necessary for a woman to relinquish voluntarily her work,” a view that reflected her traditional understanding of gender roles.15 She was also less assertive on the behalf of women’s inclusion in the National Industrial Recovery Act’s industrial codes than the NWP thought she should be. The New York Times reported that she “expressed concern” about equal pay, but that the government could not remedy the inequities already written into some codes. “I have no right to interfere,” the Times quoted, “but I have a very great interest in social conditions, and I hope that any such discrepancies may be only temporary….[and that they] will be adjusted finally as individual codes come up for settlement.”16 However, her work on behalf on women’s employment was indefatigable. She looked out for the “forgotten woman” and pressed Harry Hopkins to get them jobs and meet their emergency needs. She saw the man as the primary breadwinner, but at the same time she was sensitive to the desperation of women during the Depression and fought ferociously to have them included in relief efforts. These differences began to be discussed in public, as arguments for an equal rights amendment became part of the quadrennial partisan platforms in presidential election years. At the 1940 Republican Convention, the ERA achieved limited approval in a plank that called for it to be submitted to the states. An unsuccessful effort to have the Democrats embrace it was made by Emma Guffey Miller, a Democratic National Committeewoman from Pennsylvania and speaking for the NWP. However, by 1939 ER had begun to recognize some progress for women, and there was some evidence that she would gradually shift her position. She stated at a news conference that the time was “getting nearer”17 but in 1940, the Democrats reflected ER’s strong opposition. Her statement to the Platform Committee was unequivocal: “I feel about the equal rights amendment just as I have always felt, namely, that until women are unionized to a far greater extent than they are at present, an equal rights amendment will work great hardship on the industrial group of wage-earning women.” Calling the adoption of such a plank “a grave mistake,” the idea was put to rest. Indeed, once she had spoken, the chair of the committee, New York’s Senator Robert Wagner, “choked off an attempted rebuttal.”18 She remained on the side of the working women, and although there were increasing numbers of professional women who found themselves frozen out of higher level positions, and therefore more supportive of the ERA, ER insisted, as did many other women who came out of the labor movement, that protection had to remain in place. In 1941 Miller again wrote her asking for her support for the ERA, citing the many changes that had taken place. ER rejected her request, sending her a copy of a letter written by Rose Schneiderman which pointed to the “intra-state industries” which federal legislation did not cover, and “which are usually unorganized and where women are terribly exploited.” 19
14 15 16
Paula Pfeffer, “ER Roosevelt and the National and World Woman’s Party,” The Historian 59 (1996), 43-44. Roosevelt, It’s Up to the Women, 149.
“Équal Pay Step Seen by Mrs. Roosevelt,” New York Times, August 11, 1933.
17 Winifred Mallon, “First Lady Denies Nominations Aid,” New York Times, February 28, 1939. 18 Kathleen McLaughlin, “Equal Rights Pleas Hit By First Lady,” New York Times, July 16, 1940. 19 Emma Guffey Miller to ER, September 19, 1941 and Rose Schneiderman to ER, September 25, 1941, in “The Papers of Eleanor Roosevelt,” Research Collections of Women’s Studies, University Publications of America. Reel 6.
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However, although ER still publicly rejected an ERA, her views were moderating somewhat. Again, in early 1944 she rejected Miller, who had asked her to reconsider her stand in light of Vice-President Henry Wallace coming out in favor of equal rights. She wrote a tentative brief note back to Miller, stating “I am making no statement on the Equal Rights Amendment since I cannot decide what to think in peace time, and in war all restrictions seem to be off.” 20 The press reported that she suggested a review of “discriminatory laws,” stating “Perhaps it might be possible to have a federal law which would wipe out some discrimination generally. But I would not be for a constitutional amendment which would wipe out the good with the bad with one sweep.” She went on to express her view that the elimination of protective legislation “would be a mistake…until we are quite sure standards as good have been established for both men and women.”21 Making a stronger point the following month, she gave a press conference condemning the ERA, and held something of a debate in her apartment on the issue. The New York Times reported that at the end of the evening she declared, “appeal not granted,” rejecting the arguments put forth by the Amendment’s supporters,22 but in her correspondence to Rose Schneiderman, she indicated that she was inching towards a more sympathetic view. She suggested that a survey be done, through the Department of Labor, to assess legislation in each state to determine “if the time has come when some of them are obsolete,” and it was necessary to “get rid of them even if they were once needed.” She saw this as a tactical move, writing “If we do not do this, we are not in a good position to fight the amendment.” She was willing to admit that progress had been made, writing to Schneiderman women “are more highly organized, they are becoming more active as citizens, and better able to protect themselves, and they should in all but certain very specific cases which are justified by their physical and functional differences, have the same rights as men.” 23 But even with this admission that protection had become less compelling as a policy, she still was not prepared to embrace an ERA. By 1944 the Democrats had shifted and included the ERA in their platform. But in 1945 she reiterated her opposition, writing in her “My Day” column that although she recognized both sides of the arguments, she thought that to “remove from our statute books those laws which discriminate against women today…might accomplish more and do it in shorter time” than passing an amendment.24 In 1946, when the ERA finally came up for congressional vote and was defeated, ER signed onto a public statement with other opponents who were concerned about the consequences of such an amendment.25
20
ER to Emma Guffey Miller, January 29, 1944 in “The Papers of Eleanor Roosevelt,” Reel 6. “First Lady Fights Equal Rights Plan,” New York Times, February 1, 1944. “Friends, Foes of Equal Rights for Women Get Hearing in First Lady’s Apartment,” New York Times, February 12, 1944. 23 ER to Rose Schneiderman, February 11, 1944 in “The Papers of Eleanor Roosevelt,” Research Collections of Women’s Studies, University Publications of America, Reel 17. 24 Roosevelt, “My Day,” May 14, 1945. 25 Lois Scharf, “ER and Feminism,” in Joan Hoff-Wilson and Marjorie Lightman, eds., Without Precedent (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 239. 21 22
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EQUAL RIGHTS AND THE WORLD ER’s views on social reform as opposed to equal rights were also reflected in the international arena. Even before the war, she had worked against the adoption of an international equal rights treaty. The NWP, through the leadership of Alice Paul, had worked towards that goal in the Thirties, which involved getting representation at world forums and getting those groups to adopt an equal rights plank The split between the social reformers and the egalitarians that emerged in these efforts were a precursor to the divisions that would later erupt at the framing of the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights. International activism on behalf of women’s rights had begun early in the century, addressing marriage, divorce, child custody and traffic in women for prostitution.26 In 1923 a conference of the International Women’s Suffrage Alliance was held in Rome, attended by American representatives from the League of Women Voters. The NWP had tried to gain representation, but was defeated by Carrie Chapman Catt. At a 1923 meeting of the Pan American Union in Santiago, Chile, a resolution was passed that supported the equal rights of women, calling for future study of the legal obstacles to women’s rights. The NWP did attend that conference, and when no representatives were appointed to a subsequent Pan American Conference in Cuba in 1928, the NWP paid for and sent their own representatives, including Doris Stevens. That conference directed that an Inter-American Commission on Women (IACW) be established to “take up the consideration of the civil and political equality of women in the continent.” Doris Stevens became head of the IACW, which met in 1930 and adopted a resolution calling for a treaty where there would be “no distinction based on sex” in the laws of the signatory nations. They worked to get their treaty onto the agenda of the League of Nations, but a committee formed to investigate women’s status throughout the world met only a few times before the League itself ultimately collapsed in 1938. It did complete a survey of the status of women under domestic laws, which served as a template for future work by the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women.27 A 1933 meeting of the Pan American Union resulted in the Montevideo Treaty, which adopted a Convention on the Nationality of Women. That treaty permitted women to keep their nationality upon marriage, even if their husbands were of a different nationality. At first, the Roosevelt Administration planned to reject the treaty, but in response to pressure brought by members of the NWP, it reversed its position and finally did sign. The press reported involvement by ER, although she made no explicit statements. The League of Women Voters did publicly announce their opposition; they feared any law that adopted the equality position, even one that was not as far reaching as a blanket equal rights amendment, would set a precedent for going outside the protective paradigm. Once the camel’s nose was in the tent, there was concern about what would follow. At the 1938 meeting of the Pan-American Conference in Lima the tension between the egalitarians and the social reformers became more public. The reformers wanted to eliminate the IACW and replace the NWP’s Doris Stevens as chair. Following the conference, early in 1939, Mary Anderson of the Woman’s Bureau passed the idea along to the Administration, and the instructions sent to the delegates included abandonment of equal rights goals and their 26
Felice D. Gaer, “And Never the Twain Shall Meet? The Struggle to Establish Women’s Right as International Human Rights,” in Carol E. Lockwood, et. al., eds., The International Human Rights of Women: Instruments of Change (American Bar Association, 1998), 5. 27 Gaer, 7.
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replacement with resolutions protecting women in industry. Mary Winslow, who had crafted the plan, was appointed as the IACW delegate, replacing Doris Stevens. The NWP was outraged and there followed an enormous public row. The New York Times reported that ER was responsible, along with Secretary Frances Perkins and Mary Dewson, a long time friend of ER’s who had worked with her in the Women’s Division of the Democratic Party. ER’s role in this “coup” is not clear, but the NWP certainly believed that she was the one who had orchestrated the deal. ER denied that she had ever sent messages to the Lima conference calling for the inclusion of protective legislation in their resolution or that she had engineered the appointment. In her statement to the press, she did admit that she sympathized with organizations in opposition to the NWP and her satisfaction with the appointment of Mary Winslow, an officer of the Woman’s Trade Union League.28 Emma Guffey Miller denounced the move, and the equal rights supporters tried, unsuccessfully, to have the President change his mind. The Times reported that the Republicans were “gleeful over the controversy…precipitated”29 by Winslow’s appointment.
ER: ON HER OWN After FDR died, ER established herself as an independent political figure. Truman appointed her to the United Nations, and she became the seminal player in the crafting of the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights. She remained steadfast in her opposition to using the declaration as a vehicle for an equal rights clause, and as each article was discussed she tended to back away from any specific mention of women, and instead to support general language that did not point to women or any other particular group. This was in clear distinction to the U.N.’s Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), whose very existence she originally had fought against in the opening days of the United Nations. The CSW constantly reminded the drafters of the Declaration that, left unmentioned, women would be denied equality, whether in marriage, in the workplace, or in the political sphere. A different tactic, adopted by the representatives from the Communist states, was to advocate the inclusion of a list at every stop along the way, with women one of many specifically enumerated groups who needed to be protected. Construction of such lists often served to undermine their adoption, because if any vulnerable group was left out, even unintentionally, that group might not be covered. In addition, if such a list were used in some places, but not in other articles, there was the possibility that the absence of such enumeration might lead to a narrow interpretation of that provision. As each article was debated, these themes repeatedly configured the debate. The argument over whether or not to mention women actually contained an ironic twist. Previously, ER had argued in favor of singling out women in order to protect them. In this case, however, the CSW wanted the specific mention of women in order to assure that they were treated like men. The final document did include particular references to women, although the inclusion of a general “equal rights” clause was not. ER did support, and brought the US State Department along, economic and social rights as well as political rights, going much further than the US Constitution. But the Declaration was just that – a declaration and not an enforceable treaty. However, it did set a precedent for many 28 29
Scharf, 242. Winifred Mallon, “MAP Party Backing for Doris Stevens,” The New York Times, February 17, 1939.
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future efforts towards full equality, and ER is widely considered to be the driving force responsible for its success. Since the Declaration was not a covenant, the actual implementation of its principles continued to constitute important work for the United Nations. ER worked for some of these new treaties, particularly the covenant on political rights for women. And she began to see some of the advantages of thinking in terms of equal rights, not just protectionism. In 1951 she wrote that she “could see that perhaps it does add a little to the position of women to be declared equal before law and equal politically and in whatever work a woman chooses to undertake.” 30
EQUALITY WITHOUT PROTECTIONISM ER had long placed her faith in unionization as a substitute for protection. Working protections were extended to both men and women, initially through the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act. However, by the 1950s the unions had become leading opponents of an ERA and the inclusion of women, as they sought to protect union jobs for men. They became the agents of discrimination, not equalization. Furthermore, the Democratic Party responded to union pressure, and the 1960 platform reverted to protection, not equal status. Once the Kennedy Administration was in place, few women were appointed to office. Esther Peterson, a notable exception but the union’s advocate for the reversal, was appointed as head of the Women’s Bureau in the Labor Department. ER voiced her concern about the paucity of women appointments. Under mounting pressure from those who were disappointed with the abandonment of the support for the ERA in the Women’s Bureau and Kennedy’s poor record on appointments, Peterson convinced Kennedy to appoint a study commission, the President’s Commission on the Status of Women. ER was made honorary chair, but her work was brought to a halt by illness that led to her death the following year. She did have a hand in the original reports, however, which did not come out in favor of the ERA. Although she had begun to give tepid support to the idea of equality, she did not lend all her political weight to its forward movement. During her life, her opponents accused her of living in a way that was in contradiction to what she espoused. Her work was all consuming, and yet protective legislation for working women, although well intentioned, had the consequence of freezing them out of certain jobs, and inhibiting their full integration into the workplace. For ER, of course, she felt, like all social reformers, that work was not what she wanted to deny women, but she wanted to protect them from exploitation. Both sides thought they knew “best” what was right for working women. The opponents and the proponents of the ERA recognized that there were obstacles anchored deep in the social fabric that no legislation could easily address. They both wanted to improve the lot of women, but they were unable to reconcile their differences. ER was schooled in a tradition that called for upper class women to take on public roles and responsibilities, but her view of the working woman derived from a perspective more typical of the left in the pre-war years. To protect the worker, a cause for which she worked as hard as anyone else during her entire lifetime, was the way to achieve a decent life for women, for all workers. It was the way to address the gross inequities of a capitalist system. 30
As quoted in Scharf, 245.
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The arc of her life, however, follows the arc of the feminist struggles throughout the last century. She was Victorian, patrician, but gradually became reformist and then egalitarian. In her personal life, she was able to connect and often help those of lower station, but she could never fully imagine a world of women without the domestic obligations that had been ingrained in her sense of self. This is yet another irony, because she had significant personal problems with her family throughout her life. In that way her life was a triumph for equality if not her views. Even with all that she accomplished on a personal level, her work, her autonomy, what she symbolized, she still was hesitant to translate that experience to call for a remedy based on an egalitarian template. Her friend Trude Lash, and the wife of Joseph Lash, the great friend of ER’s and her biographer, has indicated that ultimately she did accept the idea of equality without protectionism.31 That her public statements were lukewarm at best probably is not a true indicator of where she would have ultimately ended up in the turbulent years that were to shortly follow. Politics makes strange bedfellows, and one cannot imagine that she would have persisted in watching women left standing outside the door, as she had been in the early days of her work for the Democratic Party. But if she was slow to embrace an egalitarian form of women’s rights, it was because she was interested in policies that were directed to the practicalities of the discrimination they faced. She thought women were not like men, and therefore they needed to be treated for what life handed them, not for what life handed men. Protection in hindsight seems old fashioned and even conservative, as it did to the National Woman’s Party or to the UN Commission on the Status of Women, but it would be wrong to dismiss her efforts on those grounds. She had a firm commitment to women, and personally made important contributions to their ability to be included in the public weal, and that she chose protection over what today would be seen as a more radical alternative should be attributed to her enormous sense of realpolitik. She supported causes and policies that understood the complicated texture of women’s lives, and her resistance to the broad brush of the ERA was part of that understanding. Moreover, her views against the ERA were, by her standards, more radical than those who favored the amendment. Social reformers, in the years just after suffrage, saw protection as intrinsically linked to the oppression of the lower working classes, and to achieve protection for women was to begin a process whereby all workers would be covered. The thought of equal rights where no rights existed, where male or female workers could be exploited, was not a strategy worth pursuing. Gaining coverage for women might serve as a first step towards more equity in a conservative, capitalist society. Thus, ER’s support for protection and her efforts against equal rights derived from a starting point based on her understanding of class rather than specifically gender. To her the key to equal rights might alternatively come through unionization, but until that occurred, the protection of women was essential. At the time this was a leftist position, although through a current lens it would be seen as conservative. ER did make a distinction between economic and political rights. Once she became involved in the Democratic Party, particularly by her experiences at the 1924 national convention, she was firmly committed to equal political rights. She relentlessly urged women to use the vote; she pushed hard and long to get women have equal standing within the party; she called for women to run for office. In the political sphere she did not hesitate to embrace full equality. But the economic sphere posed another set of issues, and it was there that she 31
Trude Lash, Personal Interview, July 3, 1998.
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thought women’s difference needed to be recognized. Having a political voice did not mean voicing a preference for the same policies for women whose lives were not the same as men. Her views have a particular resonance today, as the “second shift” has persisted despite all the “liberation” that took place after her time. ER understood how the social norms would resist any such transformation, and she was extremely cautious in embracing an ERA if it meant in practice a meaner life for women. In her life, she made a difference, not just as a woman who was powerful, but also in changing the political landscape for women. She had the rare ability to combine principle and the political. That is an accomplishment few can emulate.
In: White House Studies Compendium, Volume 4 Editor: R. W. Watson, pp. 483-485
ISBN: 1-60021-541-6 © 2007 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
ROOSEVELT CAMPOBELLO INTERNATIONAL PARK Morgan Reichek OVERVIEW The Franklin D. Roosevelt Campobello International Park is located on 2,600 acres of land in New Brunswick, Canada. It is currently the only international park in the world. It is best known today as FDR’s former summer cottage. The Canadian island was settled in 1770 and the summer home was originally built for Mrs. Hartman Kuhn in 1897. Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt vacationed next door to Mrs. Kuhn and, when she passed away, the late Mrs. Kuhn established in her will that Franklin’s mother, Sara, could have the cottage for an extremely low price of only $5,000. Sara Roosevelt purchased the furnished five acres in 1909; but when she passed away, the cottage became the property of FDR. Roosevelt and his family summered there from 1909 to 1921. The island began to become a popular place for wealthy people to vacation in the 1880s. It was a time of long summers for those wealthy enough to enjoy them in their entirety. From the time when Franklin was just a boy up to the time when he was stricken with polio, he spent almost all his summers in Campobello. When FDR became a father, he loved to take his children to Campobello and teach them the various activities he enjoyed so much – these included such outdoor activities as hiking, tennis, swimming, and golfing. One of Roosevelt’s favorite pleasures at Campobello was sailing. He and the family would frequently go on daylong cruises as well as the occasional multi-day trips. On days with not so favorable weather, FDR spent much of his time working on his stamp collection, while Eleanor typically knitted, wrote letters, and read to the children. The evenings often found the Roosevelts dancing at the island’s clubhouse or attending parties for the kids. He and the family adored the island; however as FDR’s political duties increased they made less and less trips to Campobello. The Roosevelt family’s cherished summers at Campobello were further limited after 1921, when the 39-year old Roosevelt contracted polio, the first symptoms of which occurred while on vacation in Campobello. In later years, visits to Campobello had to contend with FDR’s successful political career in the New York governor’s office, Department of the Navy, and, after defeating Herbert Hoover in 1932, the White House. During FDR’s presidency, he was only able to visit Campobello three times, although Eleanor and the children continued to spend their summers on the island.
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THE COTTAGE The cottage is quite large. It is 175 feet long and 35 feet in width. The cottage has a total of 34 rooms, of which 18 are bedrooms and six are bathrooms. It has 26 windows and a total of seven fireplaces. Back when the Roosevelt’s escaped to their cottage there was no telephone or electricity, so they employed candles and kerosene lamps for light. When visitors first enter the cottage the primary room on the initial floor was originally a playroom and schoolroom for the children. It was, however, changed during FDR’s presidency to a receptionist’s office area. This room today is a small museum with pictures of FDR’s four terms as president and articles form his family’s summer vacations. Items that remain in this room include the remnants of all sorts of summer activities: a fishing rod, oars, games, toys, and model ship-making tools and supplies. Remaining in this room is the chair that was used by FDR in presiding over his first Cabinet. Replicas of the original flags gifted to him by Congress, which contain stars, stripes, and the presidential emblem, sit on either side of the chair. Down the hall was their son James’s room, a site that was later utilized by the Secret Service. Across from James’s room was the room where the children were tutored. The living room and dining room contain primarily original Roosevelt furnishings reflecting the wicker style that was very popular for country homes of the time. The living room also boasts a spectacular view across the bay to Eastport, Maine. Before entering the kitchen is a food pantry, which contains items such as a cake mixer, meat press, muffin pans, and molds for boiled cakes or pudding. For cooking convenience there were built in storage containers made for large flour and sugar bags. The roomy kitchen is where servants prepared the meals with a large wood-burning stove (Every summer the Roosevelts would bring along a governess, nurse, and servants, who aided in the children’s education and kept the cottage in healthy working order). Alongside the stove is a storage tank where warm water was supplied. The kitchen also contained a wooden ice chest that was used as a refrigerator. Adjoining the kitchen, the laundry room sits at the northernmost end of the cottage. The laundry room is equipped with washing utensils from that age. For instance, a wooden washing machine, washboards, a mangle that ironed wrinkles out of wet clothes, and wooden racks where the clothes would be hung out to dry were part of this room. The second floor has the master bedroom of Mr. and Mrs. Roosevelt, used until 1921 when FDR came down with polio. This is also the room where Franklin, Jr. was born. To the left of the master bedroom was a guest room, and down the hall was Anna’s room. The former nursery at the southern most end of the hall became a room for Franklin, Jr. and John. Outside the boys’ room is a veranda that one can view the bay. Elliot’s room is next door as well. Today, the third floor is off limits due to fire regulations, but when the Roosevelts visited there were two servants’ rooms, two guest rooms, a full size bath, and storage tanks. The storage tanks were for running bath water, cooking, and cleaning. Water in the house was distributed through a plumbing system using only gravity as its force. In order for the water to get to the third floor it was pumped through a windmill which was located outside. The windmill operated by a single-cylinder gas engine when there was no wind.
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THE PARK Many individuals are misled into believing that there was and is little to do on the island. There are five walking trails throughout the park, ranging from all levels of difficulty and with walks and trails of various lengths. In 1885, Mulholland Point Lighthouse was created to serve as guide for freighters coming through the narrow Lubec Channel. Today the inside of the lighthouse is not open to the public, but from the Mulholland Point visitors can see the FDR Memorial Bridge, the islands and waters of Johnson’s Bay, and the Channel Lighthouse. The environs around the Roosevelt cottage contain a plethora of scenic vistas, forest trails, rocky coves, balsam-scented forests, and other lovely natural surroundings.
Roosevelt Campobello International Park 459 Route 774 Welshpool, New Brunswick Canada E5E 1A4 Phone: 506-752-2922 Email: [email protected] Web: www.fdr.net/ The Park is open only during its season, which begins the Saturday prior to Memorial Day and remains open through Columbus Day. The Visitor Centre remains open through October for the convenience of fall travelers and the parks natural area is opened year round. Hours: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., seven days a week Tours: Periodically throughout the day, last tour begins at 5:45 p.m. Admission: Free
In: White House Studies Compendium, Volume 4 Editor: R. W. Watson, pp. 487-518
ISBN: 1-60021-541-6 © 2007 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
BOOK REVIEWS Considering the Bush Presidency. Edited by Gary L. Gregg II and Mark J. Rozell. 2004. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Reviewed by: Gary Aguiar, South Dakota State University In the popular ritual of appraising the sitting president, Gregg and Rozell present an informative collection of essays on George W. Bush’s presidency at its’ midpoint. Besides the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, this period includes many significant events in American politics, such as the 2000 presidential election, the subsequent Florida recount, the midterm congressional elections of 2002, and the eve of war with Iraq in 2003. The obvious audience for this slim volume is students in upper-division university courses; it is particularly suited as a supplemental text for presidency courses. The authors blend several writing styles, including empirical research, normative scholarship, and a bit of journalism. Most chapters are tightly focused bite-size chunks that present well-developed theories of the presidency. The chapters, written primarily by established scholars, cover the standard topics in a presidency course. However, two fascinating chapters introduce the “symbolic presidency” (by Gregg) and executive privilege (by Rozell). Two other invaluable chapters are warmaking powers by Louis Fisher and the evolving role of the vice presidency by Paul Kengor. Fisher’s powerful critique of the expansion of presidential war-making abilities highlights congressional weakness in its “declaration of war” against Iraq. In transferring these important foreign policy decisions to the presidency, he argues that the contemporary Congress has abdicated its role in making war. Fisher implies that America’s republican efforts to build a democracy may be a pure façade. The historical and legal framework in this essay is a substantial contribution to the literature. This essay alone makes the volume a valuable addition to any political science library. In an essay on Bush’s use of symbolism, Gregg argues that the presidency serves an essential role in instructing Americans about the meaning of political events. He characterizes Bush’s reaction to the terrorist attacks as “dignified authenticity.” The chapter bolsters the classic position that the president should be a strong executive, which reflects the subfield’s bias that presidents should play a large role in the American polity. In a chapter on executive privilege, Rozell characterizes his topic as a battle between the Congress and the president. He develops a reasonable (and well-reasoned) middling position
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on whether presidents should be able to conceal some facts from the American public. Contrary to existing law, Rozell argues that Bush used an Executive Order to give sitting presidents the power to control access to former presidents’ papers. Moreover, he details the Bush administration’s actions to fight congressional efforts to learn about Dick Cheney’s controversial Energy Task Force and to examine long-closed FBI cases on organized crime. Rozell concludes that these efforts to broaden executive privilege probably diminished future presidents’ ability to withhold information. Other chapters offer new empirical insights unavailable elsewhere. For example, the chapter on presidential staffing by Charles E. Walcott and Karen M. Hult presents new demographic data on high-level staffers (including age, turnover, and home state) that challenges conventional wisdom. In an essay on public opinion, Michael A. Dimock analyzes the “rally effect” and presciently explains that Bush’s once-stratospheric approval ratings were returning to normal by March 2003. In the context of a closely divided electorate, Andrew E. Busch details how President Bush’s political skills allowed him to snatch victory from a favored Al Gore in 2000 and assemble narrow majorities in the 2002 congressional elections. Kengor shows how Cheney completely revamped the vice presidential model by drawing on previous traditions and his own expertise. The chapters comprise a mix of styles and perspectives, which collectively provide a balanced view of the Bush administration. Undoubtedly, the up-to-date analysis will excite and intrigue younger audiences. However, the shortened hindsight means the insights are time-sensitive and likely to expire quickly. As is often the case in edited volumes, several chapters rehash the same set of facts. Nevertheless, the text applies scholarly political analysis to current events in a fashion undergraduates can comprehend. This approach will assist students in understanding the recent past; thus, the volume serves its upper-division audience well. It could even be used in an introductory course in American politics with a roster of engaged lower-division students.
From Munich to Pearl Harbor: Roosevelt’s America and the Origins of the Second World War. By David Reynolds. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2002, 209 pages. Reviewed by: Ahrar Ahmad, Black Hills State University At a time when America is seeking a new identity for itself in the world, embarking on a role that is still being defined, and pursuing what appears to be a wholly different set of “strategic interests,” Dr. Reynolds’ study of the last time such a radical turn of events had occurred is both timely and interesting. Obviously, the diplomatic, moral, doctrinal, and economic environment is profoundly different and the objectives, allies, instruments, and modalities are not comparable. But, there are some subtle yet obvious similarities emerging from America’s “isolationist” cocoon in a final and decisive rupture during the Second World War to become leader of the free world later, and getting out of the timidities and introspections of the “Vietnam syndrome” to settle into its hegemonic posture today. If one looks for continuities, then it is possible to argue that America’s current position of exclusive leadership in a unipolar world is a logical, though not inevitable, culmination of the process that began during the tumultuous experience of the earlier period. Dr. Reynolds himself does not extend that argument since his book was written before the explosive events that ushered
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in – what the neo-cons call – the New American Century. But, his analysis and judgments easily evoke such comparisons. There are three main objectives the book tries to explore. They are: 1) “to provide a succinct narrative of the twisting road from Munich to Pearl Harbor”; 2) “to analyze how Roosevelt led Americans into a new global perspective on international relations … (which) involved both geopolitics and ideology”; and 3) “to spotlight developments in the period 1938-41 that were later important for US foreign and defense policy in the cold war ear.” Dr. Reynolds is eminently successful in meeting all his goals. He identifies the early part of the Twentieth Century as one consumed by three issues – empire, ideology, and economics. Even though America was not involved in these imperial machinations and ambitions (after all, it was a late and a most reluctant imperialist), was not engaged in the ideological debates and challenges that Europe was reeling from (given its ideological innocence and pragmatic orientations), and did not initially suffer from worldwide economic decline (in fact, the 1920s was a period of extraordinary buoyancy), it could not fully escape the impact of these universal forces. However, as the world hurtled towards war in the 1930s, Roosevelt’s America remained locked in some ambivalence and stasis, preoccupied more with domestic economic concerns than with the international catastrophe looming in the horizon. The President could neither convince the country nor secure the support of Congress in responding to the dangers and threats being demonstrated in Europe. His policy of “un-neutral rearmament” (i.e., promoting a weapons build-up at home and providing military hardware to friends) was turned down by Congress in 1939. Not even the “dramatic shifts in the international balance” that occurred in 1940 with Germany advancing swiftly in Europe, and securing the support of Italy and Japan through the Tripartite Act, could provoke any radical change in policy direction. Roosevelt’s decisive victory over Wendell Willkie in the election of 1940 (in which Roosevelt easily deflected and neutralized charges that he was hawkish) allowed him to be a bit bolder. He outlined his liberal internationalism in the famous “four freedoms” speech in January 1941, maneuvered Congressional support for the Lend Lease act critical to the Allies, began to use the phrase “the second world war” by May, signed the Atlantic Charter signaling substantive cooperation with Britain in August, promised loans to the beleaguered Soviet Union in September, and gradually chipped away at the Neutrality Act which limited his authority. At the same time, talks with Japan centering around the economic sanctions imposed on it, and its occupation of China, gradually ground down into a diplomatic stalemate. Pearl Harbor changed everything. In this context, there are lively debates that still resonate in this country. Would the United States have entered the Second World War if the Japanese had not attacked? Did Pearl Harbor “cause” our entry into the War, or merely determine the time and the theatre? Was the attack a surprise (we had already broken their cryptographic code) or did Roosevelt merely manipulate Japan to fire the first shot so that he could retaliate in righteous indignation? In the currency of today’s language, what did the President know and when did he know it? Reynolds does not address those issues, but discusses the outcomes of that fateful event in some detail. Reynolds suggests that the American entry into the Second World War generated three principles. First, it solidified presidential supremacy in foreign policy. Roosevelt’s policy innovations from 1941 significantly, and permanently, altered the traditional power-sharing
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balances in the president’s favor. Second, the President was able to successfully “educate” the public into a new globalist conception of international affairs, both at the geo-political and ideological levels. The expansion of the concept of national security, and the projection of American values into the world, became the pre-eminent compulsions of American foreign policy. And finally, the period set powerful precedents. Thus, the president’s ability to circumvent Congress through executive agreements, the gradual consolidation of a militaryindustrial complex, the self-conscious acceptance of America as the antithesis of dominant and threatening totalitarian ideologies which it was destined to confront and defeat, and a sense of optimism and omnipotence that has defined America since, are all derived from the experiences of that fateful period. We can easily see some of those lessons and reflections clearly impressed upon our collective unconscious today. Dr. Reynolds’ slim book is model of clarity and organization. His deconstruction of Roosevelt’s method (where the President is shown to be careful, patient, and realistic, crafty without being manipulative, and instinctive and impeccable in his sense of timing, opportunity, and language) is astute and insightful. But, it is in his analysis of the changes in the military and the international role of the United States that he is most prescient and persuasive. The historical narrative is deftly structured, crisply written, and cogently argued. The book should have wide appeal both among scholars and lay people.
The Presidency & the Law: The Clinton Legacy. Edited by David Gray Adler and Michael A. Genovese. Foreword by Thomas E. Cronin. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2002, 234 pages. Reviewed by: Timothy O. Lenz, Florida Atlantic University This book consists of a series of essays “examining the American presidency and the law, with special attention to how recent presidents, including Bill Clinton, have exercised presidential power.” The common theme of the essays is that presidential power has proven extraordinarily difficult to limit by law, which is a political problem because the Constitution granted government enough power to be effective but also limited power so that it could be held accountable by the rule of law. Each of the essays examines a different area of law, and most of the essays are critical of President Clinton’s legacy. The first essay describes the overall impact of Clinton’s legacy for the scope of presidential power and concludes that Clinton’s record is of both expansion and contraction of appointment powers, presidential privileges, and immunity from civil liability. However, the author’s conclusion that Clinton’s legacy includes diminished executive privilege power is not supported by the experiences of his successor, President Bush, who has made strong claims of executive privilege. Presidential scholars have long noted that the nature of the presidency makes predicting the immediate legacy of a particular incumbent a risky business because changed circumstances have a dramatic impact on presidential power. The second essay, which examines war powers, is a strong indictment of Clinton, who “frequently engaged in unilateral acts of executive war making in defiance of the war clause of the Constitution, which vests in Congress the sole and exclusive authority to initiate hostilities on behalf of the American people.” The spring 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia “may well have been justified on moral and policy grounds” but was nonetheless “one of the most
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flagrant acts of usurpation of the war power in the history of the Republic.” Clinton’s actions - which are compared to Truman’s seizure of the steel mills and Nixon’s claims to absolute executive privilege - “disfigured” the war clause. After noting that the Framers’ “stunning” rejection of the monarchical foreign policy making practices of their day was based on actual experiences with the temptations of projecting power abroad, the author concludes that Clinton’s legacy of “absolutist” pretensions continued the trend toward eroding accountability by replacing law with power and constitutionalism with executive fiat. The third essay on executive privilege argues that Clinton’s misuse of this implied power was an integral element of the efforts to impeachment him. Clinton, who made elaborate “and mostly bogus” claims of executive privilege, is linked with Nixon, who made absolutist claims, as presidents who gave executive privilege a bad name. The author defends the concept of executive privilege as an unwritten presidential power, and concludes that Congress and the courts are the keys to policing presidential actions. The fourth essay is a brief description of the nature of the pardon powers and a measured analysis of Clinton’s use of them. (Clinton pushed the envelop; his opponents overreached.) The fifth essay on the independent counsel law is interesting because it describes the various reasons why the law expired after having “lived a precarious political existence,” and predicts that some version of an independent counsel will return because of the structural problems associated with the executive branch investigating itself. The sixth essay examines executive immunity, one of the more complicated impacts to assess. It traces the history of the concept and assesses the impact of the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Paula Jones case, where the Court held that the president did not have constitutional protection against civil damages litigation arising from events that occurred prior to taking office. The Court rejected the absolute model of immunity and accepted the functional model, which considers claims to immunity based on the nature of the actions performed, not the identity of the actor. Finally, the author concludes that Clinton’s legacy for the long-standing struggle between executive prerogative and judicial authority is that the boundaries between these positions will remain set by politics as much as by law. The seventh essay on campaign finance concludes that the Clinton legacy is consistent with the recent experience of reform efforts to regulate money in politics: “...the problems that haunt current presidential campaign financing are not new, nor are they Bill Clinton’s doings.” While politicians can be expected to continue to manipulate the rules of the game, including fund raising rules, the author does argue that perpetual campaigning has important policy costs and the role of the president as “fundraiser in chief” sends clear messages about priorities. The eighth essay on the legacy of the Clinton impeachment provides a very informative overview of impeachment - from the creation of impeachment as a way to rein in the executive to the complicated ways that politics and law have historically been interwoven in ways that make the business of impeachment “a torturous and tumultuous process.” The final essay on the condition of the presidency includes a brief assessment of the effects of the war on terrorism, particularly the continuation of the trend toward presidential power unrestrained by law in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. This is a timely book primarily because of its description and analysis of the nature of presidential power in foreign affairs, defined broadly to include the use of military force as an instrument of foreign policy. Most of the essays are strongly critical of President Clinton’s actions as part of the ongoing struggle to hold presidential power accountable. Some of the essays suffer from the problem of assessing a president’s legacy soon after he leaves office,
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and serve as a reminder that waiting for a decent interval provides valuable perspective, particularly when the president is a polarizing figure. Nevertheless, the essays are clearly written and forcefully argued, which means informative and lively reading. The book is intended primarily for undergraduate students of American government, not just the presidency or public law. The book makes an important contribution to the understanding of contemporary American presidential government and the political problems presented by the rise of the personal presidency, particularly in the exercise of war and foreign affairs powers. Presidential claims to inherent, prerogative, and emergency powers create problems for a constitutional democracy committed to the rule of law. This book is written in the tradition of scholars who put their finger on the pulse of the presidency to determine the overall health of the American system of government.
The Presidency, Congress, and Divided Government: A Postwar Assessment. By Richard S. Conley. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2003. Reviewed by: Melody Rose, Portland State University Richard S. Conley has made a fine contribution to the area of divided government studies that will surely impact the direction of future research in that area. The central contribution of this book is its premise: that, while divided governments in the Twentieth Century have some features in common, broad institutional and political shifts at mid-century changed the context within which divided government occurs. In a word, not all divided governments are created equal. The dominant methods in divided government studies have lent scholars to look at divided government and its affects in the aggregate: most studies of importance have aggregated data from a 45- or 50-year time span, and have subsequently made conclusions based on broad trends in those data sets. This process of analysis has been very useful in identifying overall tendencies in terms of quantity of legislation enacted, type of policy debated, and so forth. But, these analytic frames have also come up wanting, for what they potentially miss when critiquing 50-year periods of time are time-sensitive, micro-level trends. Conley’s book is a bold effort to correct this oversight. Conley starts with the assumption that divided governments have more built-in incentives for policy conflict that unified ones. This assumption itself has come under recent challenges, of course. Still, we see most divided government scholars making this assertion and proceeding from there. What Conley seeks to uncover is whether, within a 50-year span of divided governments, we can see differentiation in their modus operendi that are related not to party control itself but to other relevant institutional factors. Conley convincingly argues that divided governments at mid-century operated under very different conditions than contemporary divided governments. As a result, contemporary iterations of divided government will have distinctive behavioral features. Implicit in this observation is the fact that the behavior of divided governments might be molded by future institutional reforms; in other words, if we do not like what we see in divided government behavior, institutional reforms, rather than appeals to voters for unified government, might best mitigate against their effects.
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Conley brings a unique method to bear upon his subject. An interesting combination of time-series statistical analyses is supported by case studies, which have long been neglected by divided government scholars. The author has also applied Skowronek’s concept of “political time” to party control arrangements to good affect. He argues that, in general, divided government is predisposed toward a contested agenda, but that a host of electoral and institutional variables alter the context in which divided government occurs, leaving some presidents better able to find policy agenda success than others. More specifically, Conley argues that post-war presidents enjoyed greater opportunities for forging inter-party coalitions due to both their robust electoral margins and coattails in Congress, and to an internally weak legislature. In contrast, presidents facing divided government in the post-Watergate period enjoy less political capital in Congress as a result of narrower victories, smaller marginal coattails, more frequent outsider status, and the increased rate of legislative incumbency and enhanced legislative organization and agenda control. In short, divided government proves a greater challenge to presidential policy leadership than unified government, but divided government has taken a greater toll on presidentialcongressional relations over time. The impact of party control on the legislative president is therefore understandably uneven. When faced with a divided government, presidents must choose a strategy that reflects both the fact of split control and the other relevant electoral and institutional variables as well. Conley’s is a smart, readable application of Skowronek’s theory of political time. It adds nuance to the divided government literature, which has tended toward bold generalizations and hyperbole, due mostly to its over-reliance on large quantitative studies. The addition of a time-sensitive analysis that includes case studies allows for a more balanced interpretation of divided government’s affects. Conley’s book sets a new standard for divided government scholars; the devil is truly in the details.
Living History. By Hillary Rodham Clinton. Simon & Schuster, New York, 2003, 562 pages. Reviewed by: Jerome Short, George Mason University, and Colleen Shogan, George Mason University In 1992, Francis Fukuyama wrote The End of History and the Last Man that described the triumph of democracy and capitalism as the dominant political and economic systems over communism. These macrosystem victories laid the groundwork for individual freedom and opportunity, especially opportunities for women. A longer struggle than how we will govern ourselves is the struggle over the roles of men and women. The next chapter of history will focus on the greater sharing of power between men and women and Living History provides a microcosm and inside look at how the world’s most powerful couple shared power. Perhaps the best-kept secret of Hillary Clinton’s new, carefully worded autobiography Living History is that the reader can glean more insight from its title than anything else. What becomes evident in the book is that Hillary has learned from her past political mistakes, and has attempted to correct them. For example, in an early chapter, we learn about Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s opposition to Mrs. Clinton’s health care plan, and his stinging
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statement that the whole proposal was based upon “fantasy numbers.” By the end of the book, the same man that had publicly criticized Hillary years earlier opened up his farmhouse for her announcement that she would run for his Senate seat. Moynihan’s altered opinion of Hillary Clinton is evidence that Hillary has chosen to learn about history, and also committed herself to not repeating its mistakes. The achievement of the book is Clinton’s ability to present herself as a more reflective and introspective than the woman who interjected herself on the national scene over a decade ago. This quality is worthy of further discussion if the “Hillary for President in 2008” mantras have any truth to them. Although many presidents have been fans of American history, none have had the ability, opportunity, or wherewithal to improve their political situations during their terms of office. In fact, even our most renowned presidents left weakened coalitions upon their exit from power. Mrs. Clinton’s most attractive leadership qualities are her demonstrated ability to stand against the grain, redefine her roles, and transform former critics into supporters. In this light, Hillary stands head and shoulders above her husband, in that Bill Clinton remained essentially the same throughout his time in the White House. The Bill Clinton we got in 1992 remained the same Bill Clinton who left office in 2000: he still talked too much, stayed up way too late, suffered from a lack of organization and discipline, and had a damaging weakness for flashy women with big hair. Hillary, however, stands apart from her husband in this regard. During her stint as first lady, Hillary changed from a polarizing figure to an effective political voice focused on more traditional “women’s issues.” Her deliberateness in this transforming decision is marked in the book; she writes that as she looked to Bill’s second term, she “planned to speak out publicly to help shape White House policy on issues affecting women, children and families.” Living History also addresses the criticisms of her earlier book, It Takes A Village, which had no index and no acknowledgements. Hillary mentions hundreds of contributors to the book, including her staff from the 2000 Senate campaign. She also includes a 28-page index. These extra pages add to an already long book that suffers from too much foreign travelogue and excessive namedropping. While most of the lessons Hillary learned throughout her tenure as first lady were decidedly positive, there is another side to the coin. Mrs. Clinton has also become a master at blurring the lines between campaigning and governance. She has become more media savvy, and it shows. Hillary knows that the American public views the presidency as a combination of politics and entertainment. The fact of the matter is that George W. and Laura Bush are, for the most part, rather boring people. While the nation breathed a collective sigh of relief when the Clintons finally departed from the airplane hanger in 2001, Americans are now hungry for the next installment of the Clinton saga. Political scientist Bruce Miroff describes the contemporary presidential leadership as a titillating “spectacle” that numbs and awes its audience. Hillary writes about her Christophe haircuts and Oscar de la Renta dresses as signs of her increased concerns about her feminine appearance. She understands Miroff’s thesis better than anyone since she was part of the spectacle for eight long years. By writing her own book, Mrs. Clinton has embraced the spectacle of American public leadership, but in a way in which she controls her present and future political scripts. From her traditional Midwestern upbringing as a devout Methodist, Girl Scout, and Goldwater Girl to her adult roles as attorney, wife, mother, first lady, and senator, Hillary has adapted to her environment and redefined roles with a mixture of tradition and progressivism. One common theme is running for office. Hillary ran for president in high school in Illinois
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(she lost), and at Wellesley College (she was president of the College Republicans and the student body), assisted Bill in many campaigns from Attorney General to governor to president, and most recently won election as senator. In each of these episodes of public service, controversy surely followed, but Hillary faced her greatest organized opposition when she took on healthcare reform as first lady. Hillary was a different first lady than her predecessors. In the book she describes several contacts with previous first ladies, including Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (advice about protecting Chelsea), Lady Bird Johnson (appreciation for mobilizing Democrats to support Bill), and even Eleanor Roosevelt, if you count her visualization and conversations with Eleanor in the White House, an exercise from Jean Houston who helped console and motivate Hillary after healthcare reform died. Hillary is the first first lady to enter office expecting to share power and have the public acknowledge her importance. Interestingly, this public acceptance comes from her many foreign trips focused on women’s rights and stories of those trips fill up a large part of the book. The former First Couple demonstrated the blurring of social roles, in that Hillary often displayed more stereotypical masculine traits of being a protector, competitor, economic provider, and private person. Bill displayed the more traditional feminine traits of empathy, cooperation, financial dependence, emotional expression, and public revelations of his private behaviors. These reversed characteristics may be particularly jarring and annoying to traditionalists. The revelations about Monica Lewinsky drive the First Couple to marital counseling. She resists divorce for a variety of reasons: her mother’s experience as a child of divorce and protecting Chelsea from that outcome, her sense that Bill is the man who understands her, and her opportunities to exert political power. After all, the political strategy of Living History is to extend her existing political coalition. The book is long and detailed, and the goal is to include something for everyone in her story. She already has the support of Democratic, college-educated women and racial minorities. The key to her continued political success, whether it includes more terms in the Senate or a run for the White House, is to expand her repertoire. First, she must win back the full support of feminists, who are wary of her after her decision to remain married to her husband. Most importantly, she needs to appeal to moderate voters of both sexes, who may have traditional values and concerns. By emphasizing her religious beliefs, her intergenerational connection with her mother, her strong relationship with Chelsea, and her willingness to stick it out with Bill, Hillary aims to tap into this vast reservoir of the electorate. Mrs. Clinton sees herself for what she is: an enduring American icon. There is much more to Senator Clinton than symbolism, but it is clear from Living History that she understands high-stake contemporary politics is about knowing how to produce results like a workhorse and play to the cameras like a show pony. As Bill Clinton designs his presidential library for opening in 2004, his presidency may become best known as the apprenticeship for the first female president, his wife Hillary. It might behoove Bill to dedicate some library rooms to Hillary and, if he is lucky, maybe she will do the same for him.
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Lyndon Baines Johnson. By Thomas S. Langston. Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2002, 328 pages. Reviewed by: Richard M. Yon, Florida Atlantic University Lyndon Baines Johnson by Thomas Langston is a wonderfully informative book about the life of our nation’s thirty-sixth president. While providing biographical information and offering insights into his personality and career, the author provides a brilliant summary of Lyndon Johnson’s dedication to public service and ascendance to the country’s highest office. This is a great supplement to the biographies that already exist on Johnson. It provides supportive documents and a biographical review in a concise format which assists the reader in understanding the life and times of Lyndon Johnson. Students, researchers, and teachers will find Langston’s book to be an excellent reference to utilize in order to study Johnson. It is a great addition to the American Presidents Reference Series. Langston organizes the book into six chapters, with each chapter concluded by supportive documents which further reveal the accomplishments and character of the President. These documents consist of letters, speeches, remarks, graphs, and maps which represent important stages in his life and career. Chapter one offers general biographical information which documents his rise from the Hill country of Texas to president of the United States and his eventual retirement to his ranch in 1970. In chapter two, the reader follows each of Johnson’s campaigns and elections for the House of Representatives, Senate, as a vice presidential running mate to John F. Kennedy in 1960, and his own election as president in 1964. Administrative policies are examined in chapter three. In this chapter, Langston looks at the continued policies of the Kennedy administration as well as Johnson’s war on poverty, “The Great Society,” and his actions in foreign affairs. The crisis that elevated Johnson to the presidency (the assassination of John F. Kennedy) as well as his transition to power is documented in chapter four. In addition, Langston discusses the Vietnam War and its tragic and deteriorating affects on Johnson’s presidency and his ability to lead the nation. Chapter five informs the reader of Johnson’s relationship with officials and organizations throughout his career. For instance, Langston provides insight into relationships with such key people and groups as: Congress, civil rights leaders, military, media, the public, intellectuals, dissenters, protesters, the government bureaucracy, and the courts. In chapter six, Johnson’s return to civilian life and his retirement years are highlighted. Lastly, the book ends with an appendix which provides the reader with a list of the notable figures of the Johnson presidency as well as key events that occurred in his life. Presidential autobiographies and biographies in general can be a cumbersome and time consuming read for many. With biographies reaching into the thousands of pages as well as encompassing multiple volumes, Langston’s contribution to the American Presidents Reference Series is a refreshing addition to such scholarly work. The reader is supplied with the important facets of Lyndon Johnson’s life and career in a format which is easily understood and highly effective. It is a must read for the researcher, the student, and the general public.
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I Do Solemnly Swear: The President’s Constitutional Oath. It’s Meaning and Importance in the History of Oaths. By Matthew A. Pauley. New York: University Press of America, 2000, 260 pages. Reviewed by: Erin O'Brien, Kent State University “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of the President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” This oath, according to Matthew Pauley, has been unduly ignored in studies of the American presidency. He argues that examining the presidential oath is key to understanding how the American presidency has endured historical challenges, remaining relatively stable and secure. In fact, Pauley contends that the “swearing in of a President of the United States may be said to provide, figuratively, the keystone of that nation’s governing arch… the President is the keystone because he is sworn to ‘preserve, protect, and defend’ the whole. Only he must stand before the American people and solemnly swear to safeguard the Constitution.” Scholars of the presidency thus do their subject a disservice when they consider the oath a pure formality devoid of historical relevance and modern importance. Pauley blames this view on pluralist notions of government that he believes so dominate modern political science that constitutionally prescribed mandates, like the oath of office, are understood as irrelevant. To rectify this omission, Pauley asks two main research questions: Is the presidential oath important enough to be taken seriously?; and, What does the presidential oath mean? The answers are garnered from the book’s three main parts. The first section provides a review of various social contract theorists’ considerations of oaths. It goes on to describe how oaths were used in ancient Greece and Rome. Each are presented to illustrate the importance of oaths in Western political thought and state building. Part two embarks on a comparative case study of the American and French revolutions, or “social contract moments,” designed to demonstrate the importance of the American presidential oath in securing the office’s durability and peaceful transfer of power. The review of the Founders’ considerations on a presidential oath is a highlight of the book. Pauley convincingly argues that many — particularly George Washington — considered the oath much more than a formality. Both the importance many Founders placed on taking the oath publicly, and how it instills in each president’s conscience a duty to uphold and defend the Constitution, is discussed. The fact that the presidential oath is the only one included in the Constitution, and has remained the same over the country’s existence, is also presented as testament to its importance. By comparison, the French prescribed a multitude of ever changing oaths with different locus of legitimacy and this is argued to have undermined governmental stability. The final section examines three potential crises of American political development — nullification, succession, and post-reconstruction — and how presidents relied on, and felt bound by, the oath for particular courses of action. In each case the oath is argued to serve the president well — from Jackson’s rather uncharacteristic rejection of state’s supreme rights to Lincoln’s suspension of certain liberties in order to preserve the Union. Discussion of oaths by political scientists of the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries is also presented. These sections allow Pauley to answer his research questions in the affirmative. Based on the historical review of oaths in ancient nation state building, more modern times, and
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philosophical considerations of oaths, he concludes the presidential oath is not only to be taken seriously, but is necessary to understand the continued success of the American presidency. The oath engenders commitment to a government’s form and principles amongst citizens. Thus, it is key to state building. Based on the discussion of the oath at critical times in American political development, Pauley concludes that it effectively ties the presidential conscious to upholding and defending the Constitution. Here, he makes what is the book’s most provocative argument. He contends that the oath sets up a dual function for the president: perfecter and defender. In the perfecter role the president is bound to exercise no more than his given powers to make the country more free, more just, and thus more perfect. In the defender role, the oath places preservation of the Union above all other duties. In this role, he argues, the oath allows the president near absolute power. This book has significant strengths. The discussion of the Framers and the necessity many of them placed on a presidential oath is a convincing piece of historical analysis. Similarly, the inquiry into how various presidents understood and employed the oath at times of national crisis is of considerable interest. This treatment left me convinced that many presidents’ view the oath of office as much more than a formality and, like the book argues, the oath imparts or reinforces a personalized conscience in American presidents. The questions posed in the text surrounding presidential obligation are also meaningful contributions. Pauley uses the literature to ask whether a president violates the oath when he enforces a law he believes unconstitutional and whether the president violates the oath when he breaks international law. Both questions have been asked before but, in the context of a text examining the American presidential oath, the questions take on different nuances. How oaths foster loyalty towards newly created democratic governments following revolutionary periods is also worth pursuing. Despite these strengths, and the convincing case made that presidential oath merits scholarly attention, some of the book’s conclusions are overstated. I am not convinced that the oath is the causal agent in our relatively stable and adaptive executive. A contributing factor YES, but causal agent NO. Political culture, strategic decision-making, institutional form, historical precedent, and political activism are all too important here for the oath of office to be assigned such a definitive role. Too little attention is also paid to the symbolic nature of the oath. This differs from “mere formality” argument Pauley rightfully, and convincingly, rejects. Considering the symbolic nature of taking the oath of office recognizes how it bestows legitimacy and, as our most recent national election attests, has the effect of quelling or at least partly silencing debate over electoral results. This role strikes me as important and suggests that the modern view Americans take of the oath would have been an informative addition to the text. Methodologically, some discussion of why particular periods, societies, or philosophers were chosen also would have aided the discussion. The same decisions for inclusion or rejection may have been made but, without a clear rubric for inclusion, we are left to wonder why only those who considered oaths important in state building, or societies that actually relied upon them, are included. How has non-reliance on oaths influence state building or the success of the executive? Finally, the conclusion that the oath allows the president to abandon various checks and balances to preserve the Union, indeed that handing the Union over intact to the next president is of such primacy that particular checks and balances may be abandoned, needs considerably more examination. Nowhere does the Constitution allow the president to abandon the checks and balances that it
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outlines and this presentation did not convince me that the oath afforded the president this luxury. These issues merit attention but it is important to make clear that Pauley’s book is worth consideration. He makes a true contribution by engaging the presidential oath of office on analytic terms and demanding that serious scholars of the presidency and state development give it more sustained attention. Both upper-level undergraduate classes or master’s courses on the American presidency or the American political tradition would benefit from the arguments and discussion presented in this book.
Reassessing the Reagan Presidency. By Richard S. Conley, ed. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2003, 284 pages. Reviewed by: John P. Burke, The University of Vermont Reassessing the Reagan Presidency is a welcome addition to the scholarly literature on the 40th president and his presidency. Contributors to the volume include both political scientists and historians, and a number of the essays stemmed from research presented at a March 2002 conference on the Reagan presidency sponsored by the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The opening essay by Tim H. Blessing and Anne A. Skelder offers a thorough overview of scholarly and non-scholarly writing on the Reagan presidency. Of particular note is their analysis of works that were roughly contemporary with it and more recent, “second generation” research, which is often more favorable in its treatment and conclusions. This presidency, they conclude, fits neither liberal nor conservative stereotypes, but on balance they deem it hard to see how its significance can be denied. They conclude with reference to the Murray-Blessing and Blessing-Skelder polls on presidential greatness, noting that Reagan has moved from “below average” to the borderline of “average” and “above average.” The second and third sets of essays focus on Reagan’s relationship with the public and the conservative movement. John K White explores the public presentation of the Reagan persona, especially the “win one for the Gipper” and other “stories” that sought to create an embodiment with American values. Randall E. Adkins and Gary L. Gregg III present an important addendum to the discussion of Reagan’s leadership with their analysis of the role of presidential “healing” and the space shuttle Challenger disaster. Gregory Schnieder explores Reagan’s particular brand of conservatism within the diverse strands and camps of the conservative movement and the difficulties in creating a unified conservative movement; post-Reagan conservatives faced many of the same difficulties as post-FDR liberals he notes. Bruce J. Schulman’s essay moves the focus to the international arena with analysis of both the similarities and (more importantly) differences of developments in the United States with those in other Western democracies where conservative governments rose to power in the late 1970s and through the 1980s. Perhaps the strongest set of essays is in the fourth part of the book, which takes up more than one-half of its pages, and encompasses the broad themes of presidential decision-making and relations with Congress. Several of them are usefully comparative in nature: John W. Sloan on decision-making style (Reagan and FDR), Richard Conley on legislative success and congressional support (Reagan and Eisenhower), and Samuel B. Hoff on veto use and
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strategy (Reagan and George H.W. Bush). For Sloan, Stephen Skowronek's schema of presidential regimes and the place of “reconstructive” presidents within it provide the comparative link between FDR and Reagan. Neither was overburdened by their reconstruction tasks, although they did use different patterns of decision making and White House organization. Reconstruction can occur through different deliberative organizational paths Sloan concludes. It would have been interesting to see a further essay on how presidents with similar organizational styles (i.e. other more formal, hierarchical staff systems) but not regime reconstructors fare compared with Reagan (Eisenhower would be the likely candidate). Andrew Rudalevige’s research is a particularly well-crafted analysis of the degree of policy-making centralization in the Reagan White House and its effects on legislative success. Rudalevige’s general theme is that Reagan employed the centralization that conventional wisdom attributes to his presidency but only to a degree; there were also significant decentralized efforts, most notably the cabinet council system and a variety of other interagency structures, as well as combinations of both. Moreover, according to Rudalevige, centralization was contingent — consistent with the managerial environment surrounding a policy area — rather than ad hoc. Drawing both on quantitative and qualitative (including archival sources) methods and his own hypotheses about when centralization or decentralized approaches are likely to occur, he finds that centralization is most likely to occur when policies items are new, cut across jurisdictions, or are reorganizational in nature. Technically complex proposals, by contrast, were less centralized. Turning to legislative success, Rudalevige finds that centralization had, on balance, a negative impact on success with Congress. Casey B.K. Dominguez’s essay on the Reagan’s first hundred days offers an important addendum to Rudalevige: not all proposals or periods during a president’s term are created equal. For Reagan, the success of the budget reconciliation instructions in the Senate (and, slightly after the hundred day mark, in the House) were a critical ingredient in establishing the administration’s political acumen and clout and vital to assembling the political coalitions that would eventually pass his economic program. Furthermore, as Richard S. Conley argues in his comparative analysis of Reagan and Eisenhower, Reagan faced a much tougher row to hoe throughout his presidency. Despite some similarities in their initial political circumstances – strong electoral victories, personal popularity, and change in party control of one (Reagan) or both (Eisenhower) houses of Congress, divided government proved less problematic to Ike than to Reagan. Reagan’s adverse situation is even more notable given that the GOP lost control of both the House and the Senate after 1954, while it was not until 1986 that they lost control of the Senate. By the 1980’s, the bipartisanship that Eisenhower could sometimes rely upon had begun to dry up. How “divided government” has evolved through political time is clearly consequential. So too are the reassessments of the Reagan presidency in this collection.
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Presidential Elections, 1789-2000. Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 250 pages. Reviewed by: Matthew J. Streb, Loyola Marymount University As with most of CQ Press’s reference books, Presidential Elections, 1789-2000 is an excellent source for professors and libraries to have on their bookshelves. The book not only provides written background on various aspects of the presidential selection process, but also includes helpful tables, charts, and boxes on voting data and a variety of other information. The book is divided into seven chapters. The first chapter provides a broad overview of the presidential selection process. The most useful information in the chapter is found in boxes. A list of public jobs held by each person before coming president is the subject of one box. Another particularly useful box is titled “In Wake of 2000 Election ‘News Disaster,’ Pressure Mounts for Voting, Coverage Reforms.” The box does a nice job explaining the various voting systems used in the United States and examines the problems with Voter News Service’s (VNS) Florida exit poll and the media’s efforts to reform its coverage. While the discussion of what went wrong in Florida on election night is informative, it is already somewhat dated. There is no discussion, for instance, of the dismantling of VNS or how the major media outlets plan to cover election night 2004. Chapter 2 provides a brief description of each presidential election. Scholars of these individual elections will find little new material, but the chapter will serve as an excellent resource for those less familiar with particular elections who need a strong summary of the major issues and events during the election. The box titled “Countdown in Florida” provides a helpful day-by-day chronology of the events in Florida during the 2000 election. Chapter 3 gives a background of the evolution of the presidential nominating process. The information is a basic overview that will be familiar to anyone who teaches presidential elections, although I did find a few new interesting tidbits of information. Chapter 4 is simply a listing of the popular vote for each presidential election. Chapter 5 presents an in-depth discussion of the history of the Electoral College. Again, for someone who has studied the Electoral College there is little new information, but the section is quite strong at explaining how the Electoral College works and has changed over time, as well as examining constitutional amendments that have been proposed to either reform or abolish it. Chapter 6 provides an electoral map for each presidential election and Chapter 7 gives the reader a brief biography of every candidate that has received an electoral vote since 1789. While this book is an excellent reference for both teachers and students, like many reference books, it faces tough competition from the Internet. For example, the electoral maps in Chapter 6 are great to use in class to help explain the results of a certain election. The problem is that the book, unlike the Internet, is restricted in the amount of information it can cover. In contrast, Dave Leip’s Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections not only provides the electoral maps for each election (in color), but far more detailed information as well. For example, by looking at the electoral map for each election on Leip’s web page one can tell which states went strongly Republican, weakly Republican, strongly Democratic, or weakly Democratic. One can also see an electoral map broken down by congressional district or county, voter turnout in each state, and tables indicating the states where the candidates (including third party candidates) were strongest and weakest as only a few examples. Not only can one find the popular vote totals by state (as is in Presidential Elections, 1789-2000),
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but s/he can see the vote broken down by county as well. As the Internet continues to expand, I think books like Presidential Elections, 1789-2000 will become less relevant. The book might also benefit from more data since this is where, I believe, it is most useful. It runs the gamut, at least briefly, on the major topics in presidential elections courses, but could do more to provide additional facts and figures. For example, after discussing the conventions a figure comparing the post-convention bounce received by each candidate would be useful. When discussing the primaries, a table showing candidate spending would be interesting. These are only a few examples. While this information is available in other books, it would make Presidential Elections, 1789-2000 an even stronger reference source. Nevertheless, Presidential Elections, 1789-2000 is a book that scholars and students of presidential elections will find quite useful. It provides important information in an easily accessible manner. Those without backgrounds on presidential election will learn the “basics” of the presidential selection process in the written chapters. Those with more advanced backgrounds in presidential elections will find the data, tables, figures, and boxes to be useful, especially for class lectures. It is a book that every library should own.
Power to Destroy: The Political Uses of the IRS from Kennedy to Nixon. By John A. Andrew III. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2002, 385 pages. Reviewed by: Stephen J. Wayne, Georgetown University This book is a multifaceted indictment. It is an indictment of presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon who used the IRS to hunt their ideological, political, and personal opponents. It is an indictment of the IRS which allowed itself to be victimized by the White House and then covered over its illegal activities. It is an indictment of various law enforcement agencies, particularly the Justice Department, the FBI, and the CIA which egged the IRS on as an ancillary to their own efforts to collect intelligence and hunt down so called “enemies of the state.’ Researched and written by John A. Andrew III, a professor of history at Franklin and Marshall College, and completed after his death by colleagues, friends, and family, the book represents years of archival research, Freedom of Information Act searches, and interviews with agency officials, all needed to penetrate the veil of secrecy which the IRS has shrouded itself over the years, ostensibly to protect taxpayer privacy, but also to obfuscate its clandestine activities as a evidentiary and enforcement agency. In his Introduction, Andrew describes the pervasive culture of secrecy at the IRS; its failure to maintain an effective records management program, its routine destruction of records after three years, and its inadequate and inept compliance with FOIA requests, much less cooperation with outside scholars and even congressional oversight committees. It is not a pretty picture, nor one that is consistent with the public’s right to know how its government is functioning. The presidential chronology of abuses begins with Kennedy. Ideological opponents of the administration, such as the Christian Echoes Ministry, the Christian Anti-Communist Crusade, and the Cardinal Mindszenty Foundation, were initially targeted to see whether their tax-exempt status as religious institutions should be revoked because of their strong ideological perspective and the political activities that flowed from it. IRS involvement in the
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administration’s investigation of the Teamster’s Union and the activities of its president James Hoffa was also apparent. The use of the IRS to collect information on people and organizations continued and expanded during the Johnson presidency. Andrew writes, …“the IRS would open a Sensitive Case file on any taxpayer if a “major political figure” showed “substantial” interest in that individual’s dealing with the IRS.” He adds, that over 130 investigations involving more than 1,000 cases were underway in 1968. Johnson, himself, was reputed to have obtained tax files on a variety of individuals to use, if necessary, to cajole, threaten, or otherwise persuade them of the merits of Johnson’s wants and actions. Although the IRS denies having made such files available to the White House, much less the president, Andrew maintains that Johnson had the information although he used indirect methods to gain it and to hide his direct involvement. Nixon violations were even more egregious and extensive. He sought to have the White House exercise control over the IRS and used the agency to gain information about his enemies and go easy on his friends. Although the IRS denied that audits were conducted at the behest of the White House, Andrew concludes that they were and cites much evidence to support his position. Additionally, the IRS created a Special Service Staff to gather intelligence on activists who opposed the Vietnam War and the domestic policies of the Nixon administration. Although the work of this staff did not receive the attention that surrounded other government efforts to collect information on Nixon’s enemies, it did amass comprehensive records at the request of and shared with other intelligence agencies. The Security Staff, designed by the IRS to counter criticisms that the agency was not sufficiently diligent in investigating the activities of dissidents, operated until 1973 although Andrew notes that entries were made to its files “at least through 1990.” The author presents a record of deceit, disingenuous behavior, and intrigue – a flagrant misuse of the taxing authority to further the political ambitions and partisan goals of those in power. In doing so, he presents an agency out of control, one that uses its charge to protect the privacy of taxpayers and the integrity of the tax system as a shield to prevent to those very taxpayers from finding out all the nefarious operations that the agency has conducted in the name of tax enforcement. The account is obviously one sided in its presentation of evidence, the inferences drawn from that evidence, and the conclusions about the behavior of some IRS officials, unfortunately many of those at the top. Nonetheless, the case is also overwhelming. It is not a political diatribe but rather a painstaking effort to document abuses of an agency intended to perform a vital though unpleasant function, to monitor and collect taxes in accordance with the law, and do so in as efficient, equitable, and responsible way as possible. Instead, Andrew’s illustrates persuasively an agency gone astray, one that has abused its authority to satisfy the political predilections and paranoia of the power elite. In doing so, he points to the dangers that politicization can reap on a democratic society in general and on minorities in particular, thereby undermining justice under law. Power to Destroy is not an easy or fun read. But it tells an important and scary story. One hopes that the author’s portray of the IRS from Kennedy to Nixon is not in vain.
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Debating the Kennedy Presidency. By James N. Giglio and Stephen G. Rabe. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2003, 211 pages. Reviewed by Steven A. Shull, University of New Orleans Giglio and Rabe provide an interesting point of view book, taking largely opposite positions: Rabe providing a negative position on Kennedy’s foreign policies and Giglio offering a hesitantly positive view of his domestic policies. Both authors write extensive essays making their cases with numerous examples in both broad policy spheres. They supplement their chapters with seven-eight documents that they believe are important in the respective foreign and domestic policies of the Kennedy administration. Overall, this presentation is effective but it would been more so had there been shorter essays by the two authors and perhaps opposing positions taken in both policy areas. In short, other writers could have provided the positive counter point for foreign policy and the negative position for domestic policy. I think students would find such an approach more interesting and useful. The Rabe chapter is organized differently than the one by Giglio. Rabe begins with background and experience before focusing on numerous sub-issues: the arms race; Berlin; USSR; Cuba; Latin America; and the Alliance for Progress. He provides a good comparison of why the latter was not as successful as the Marshall plan that preceded it. Rabe then discusses how Kennedy committed many more advisers into Vietnam and largely set the stage for what was to follow. Giglio’s chapter seems less satisfying because he provides less clear basis for his arguments. He begins with very brief discussions of such minor issues as agriculture, the environment, and Native Americans. Giglio credits Kennedy for major improvements in the economy, including a major tax cut during his presidency. He discusses the steel crisis and mending business fences. Kennedy is also given credit for considering an anti-poverty program but much more major recognition for the space program and the Peace Corps. The final section is the chapter’s longest and covers civil rights policy. Obviously sitins, riots, and other events moved Kennedy faster toward a civil rights position by the summer of 1963 than he might have moved on his own. It is true that major civil rights legislation was submitted to Congress then, but to that point, virtually all Kennedy’s support for civil rights had been rhetorical and symbolic rather than consisting of substantive action. As characterizes historical works more than those of political scientists, no theories or methodological approaches drive this work unless one wants to argue that the authors are comparing two policy areas, albeit indirectly. I find this atheoretical examination a bit surprising given that theoretical works exist for both foreign and domestic policymaking (e.g., Janis and Allison on the Cuban Missile Crisis, Hacker on civil rights, and Light on numerous domestic issues). Indeed, considerable debate occurs in the political science literature about whether the foreign-domestic distinction, usually called the “two presidencies,” is a useful one for analytical research. At a minimum, a brief concluding chapter could bring the two themes together and demonstrate the interrelationship of domestic and foreign policy. The authors’ use of documents are purely illustrative rather than definitive. Although they are interesting, they are almost all policy statements (speeches) rather than tangible policy actions (proposals for legislation or executive orders). I find this an interesting tact because Rabe discusses how we must judge presidents on their actions “what they did, not what might have been.” So if actions matter more, why so much attention to rhetoric or intentions? Even though short, students likely would find these documents uninteresting. The
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authors do provide one of the latest “greatness” rankings by historians provided by the Chicago Sun Times in 2000 and students invariably find such surveys interesting if perhaps suspect in reliability. An interesting element is that neither author fully explores all of the positives and negatives in either policy area, which would come from fuller documentation. Perhaps as a result they generally agree that the Cold War was the administration’s highest priority overall but that the administration also set the tone for major policy changes. Kennedy moved much more quickly into foreign affairs early in his administration than have most presidents. The fact that the administration was cut short is indicative that Kennedy planned to push many domestic issues into a second term of office that did not reach fruition during his first three years. These were mostly social programs such as health care, poverty, and civil rights. Unlike Rabe, Giglio gives Kennedy much credit for promise and admits that performance often was lacking. All in all, this volume is well written and fascinating. It does not make any real contribution to the field or to our knowledge of the Kennedy administration. This is largely because no new line of inquiry is developed nor is any original evidence presented. This volume would make a useful supplemental text in an undergraduate course on the presidency but it is simply not analytical enough for graduate students. Part of the reason for this is the shockingly poor documentation in this volume. Each of the two main essays are quite long (66-70 pages) and they contain very few endnotes (17 for foreign and 11 for domestic respectively). I find it shocking that McConnell’s Steel and the Presidency was not cited for the steel crisis, nor was Allison’s Essence of Decision for the Cuban Missile crisis. We find a lot of cites to journalists and to Kennedy’s loyalist staff as biographers but not many to more scholarly and presumably more objective evaluations. On a related note, this book contains undocumented assertions by both authors (e.g. pages 54, 100, 118) and lots of quotes without attribution (e.g., pages 63, 145, 147). I found a strange charge that “Republican congressional partisanship was intense” when we know that party line voting (where a majority of Republicans vote against a majority of Democrats) was relatively low in the 1960s and 1970s compared to the mid-1980s and beyond. Giglio claims that “no domestic issue occupied Kennedy’s presidency more or over a longer duration than civil rights,” but I have my doubts about this statement without some evidence. One would need to content analyze the Public Papers of the Presidency or legislation supported by the administration to be certain of the accuracy of this statement Giglio seems to discuss Kennedy’s domestic policy in more a negative than positive light for most of his lengthy chapter but then seems to conclude that the promise was greater than the performance. This is the opposite tact of Rabe and one would think that at least the authors’ could agree on their evaluative criteria. This is an interesting and very well written book with lots of factual information what will be interesting to undergraduates with no knowledge of the Kennedy administration. Given its very limited base of evidence, I am less sanguine about what graduate scholars and scholars can learn from this volume.
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George Washington: Uniting a Nation. By Don Higginbotham. Lanham, MD: Madison House/Rowman and Littlefield, 2002, 175 pages. Reviewed by: Thomas S. Langston, Tulane University Don Higginbotham, a highly regarded military historian, has written a tightly focused essay on George Washington and American national unity. This slender book is composed of roughly one-half narrative and one-half primary documents that support the narrative’s theme. It will appeal to a wide variety of readers, including historians and political scientists interested in the finer points of Washington’s contribution to national unity. To scholarly audiences, Higginbotham’s general thesis is so familiar as to be a cliché. Washington, Higginbotham tells us, deserves to be remembered as, above all else, the great unifier of early American history. The author’s major contribution is his deft analysis of the myriad ways in which Washington seems to have consciously set out to promote unity. Unity did not merely happen, and Washington did not merely happen to promote it. Unity was, at least in great part, the result of the choices that American statesmen made, Washington foremost among them. “We have not been sufficiently mindful,” Higginbotham believes, “of the extent to which Washington recognized both his symbolic importance for his countrymen and his need to exploit that symbolism.” Higginbotham acknowledges that his evidence that Washington consciously exploited his symbolic value to promote unity is in many instances speculative. Washington had despairingly little to write or, apparently, to say, that would help modern-minded readers divine what it was that Washington thought he was doing when he made the choices he made. On a number of occasions, no psychological detective work is needed to interpret Washington’s intent. His positions of responsibility gave him opportunities to speak to the people of the nation, opportunities which he made the most of both as a soldier and as a president. Washington’s major formal papers in support of national unity, including his “Sentiments on a Peace Establishment” written at the end of the Revolutionary War, his First Inaugural, and his Farewell Address, are reprinted here. In these addresses, the writer’s concern for the nation, and his careful arguments in favor of unity and against an interpretation of state’s rights and regional interests that might damage unity, are plain enough. On other occasions, however, as when he agreed to sit for over a dozen portraits while president, or when he instituted the levee as president, Washington left for posterity no interpretation of how we might best interpret his intentions. Was Washington really thinking of the nation and its unity when he made even such small decisions? Perhaps, but Higginbotham too often substitutes for argument regarding such points words such as “surely” and “clearly.” Nevertheless, readers willing to entertain speculation from historical authorities will find this work richly rewarding. This book, as one might expect given its narrow focus and its brevity, began as a lecture, but Higginbotham has done much more than write up his lecture notes here. The book contains some impressive detail and the author’s endnotes are mindful of both classic works on the subject and more recent scholarship. Higginbotham is at his best in this book in exploring the public’s reaction to Washington and the steps he took towards national unity. Washington, as everyone familiar with the man’s life knows, was reluctant to risk his fame by coming out in favor of a constitutional overhaul after the Revolutionary War. What everyone does not know, but Higginbotham tells us, is the ways in which the popular accounts of the
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1787 convention and its work referred to Washington’s presence at the events. The proconvention gazettes reprinted war-time accolades to Washington, and in launching the contest for ratification, the conventioneers forwarded their handiwork to the public by associating their handiwork with the authoritative name of Washington. They did so by reprinting “as a kind of preface or introduction to the parchment” with the text of the new Constitution, a document signed by Washington advocating “the Necessity of a different Organization….that it may promote the lasting Welfare of a Country so dear to us all.” There are, naturally, some gaps in Higginbotham’s account. Washington’s second term, the author notes, was “something of a nightmare.” True enough, but there is little discussion of the events that gave rise to Washington’s fright. This is a missed opportunity on Higginbotham’s part, as the president’s perseverance in the face of adversity in his second term could have served as an excellent example of Washington’s perseverance and magnanimity, qualities that enabled the president to be as effective as he was in promoting national unity under circumstances that might have led other men into fractious disputations. Washington knew, as he wrote to several of his associates in 1787, that “the People must feel before they will see or act” in a democracy. This, he thought, was one of the “evils perhaps not the smallest, of democratical Governments.” Higginbotham’s essay on Washington shows the many ways in which Washington influenced the feelings of the citizenry of early America in favor of national unity.
Choosing a President: The Electoral College and Beyond. Edited by Paul D. Schumaker and Burdett A. Loomis. New York: Chatham House Publishers/Seven Bridges Press, 2002. 227 pages. Reviewed by: R. Sam Garrett, American University Paul Schumaker and Burdett Loomis offer a unique and masterful edited volume which makes at least two main contributions to the field. First, the sheer size of the project is impressive. The editors bring together 37 prominent political scientists to explore every facet of the U.S. Electoral College, both from historical and contemporary perspectives. However, despite the contributors’ achievements, they were selected largely because of their neutrality on the Electoral College and reform prospects. (Given the unusually large number of contributors, I will avoid citing individuals, although this should not detract from what is an exceptionally thorough, well-written, and readable volume.) Second, the approach is creative. The contributors note that although previous works identify the Electoral College as being central to the American system of government and political life, none “integrate these studies into an overall evaluation of the institution.” Choosing a President does just that. The contributors evaluate how the Electoral College originated, has been transformed, and how it affects every aspect of modern political life, from representation to campaigning and political parties. Within this framework, each chapter considers six reform options in addition to retaining the current system. A brief review of these options is essential to understanding the book, since the discussion of these reform options unifies the entire volume. Three proposals would alter the present Electoral College, and three that would abolish it. (Although the editors explain that these boundaries make the project more “manageable,” it is less clear why these proposals were selected.) The “district plan” would
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nationalize the system now employed by Nebraska and Maine, which awards electors based on a winner-take-all system within congressional districts. The “proportional allocation plan” would award electors based on the vote percentage candidates receive in each state. The “national bonus plan” retains the present Electoral College but awards 102 bonus votes to the popular vote winner, virtually guaranteeing that candidate the presidency. The “popular plurality” method abolishes the Electoral College altogether, awarding the presidency to the winner of the national popular election, as the name suggests. The “popular majority” system works similarly but requires that the winner receive a majority. A runoff determines the winner if no candidate receives a majority in the first round. The “instant runoff” system allows voters to rank-order their preferences for multiple candidates. Computer analysis eliminates outliers and determines the most-preferred choice. The concluding chapter briefly considers an “automatic elector” system and revising the House contingency process. The first two chapters frame the debate, including setting boundaries such as avoiding questions of counting accuracy and voting accessibility. These chapters also explain the criticisms and support for the College and various reform options, and public ambivalence toward both. Although here the editors argue that their key concern is “aggregate[ing] the votes of all citizens who want to express their preferences,” some later chapters seem more concerned with issues such as identifying which systems convey legitimacy on the presidentelect (chapter 5 on College reform and executive-congressional relations) or provides the broadest representation (chapter 11 on the Electoral College and social cleavages). Chapter three examines the Electoral College from a historical and philosophical perspective, concluding with several important lessons that explain why the Electoral College is unique to U.S. political life. The rest of the book is organized around the how College and various alternatives impact eight broad categories of analysis: federalism (chapter 4); governing institutions (chapter 5); parties and interest groups (chapter 6); campaigning (chapter 7); media coverage of campaigns (chapter 8); citizen participation, social stability, and diverse representation (chapters 9, 10, and 11). In an interesting and unique conclusion (chapter 12), the editors review the results of a several contributor votes (using various counting methods) to determine the preferred presidential-selection method. The conclusion summarizes the contributors’ preferences for the Electoral College and six reforms using eight different voting schemes, ranging from the Borda count to adaptations of the various options the book considers. For example, preferences are considered under adaptations of the instant runoff and national bonus plans. Schumaker and Loomis’ talents are especially evident here because the conclusion not only summarizes the previous chapters in an unusually illuminating fashion, but also puts the previous chapters to work by testing the reform proposals under consideration. In the end, the contributors demonstrate why the Electoral College survives despite occasional public and scholarly outcry: because it has deep historical and theoretical ties to the U.S. system of government; because reform benefits do not necessarily outweigh costs; because although none believe the Electoral College is perfect, the group could not agree on an acceptable alternative; and because in stable and unified democracies like the United States, selection method makes little difference in the final outcome. Perhaps more importantly, they demonstrate that many of the criticisms levied against the Electoral College (i.e. that it discriminates against small states) are either unfounded or are due to forces outside the College.
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Although the book features extensive references to existing scholarship, Schumaker makes clear that the book’s purpose is not to critique existing literature (chapter 1). The book’s core contribution is most evident in its original approach to addressing important questions about how the Electoral College (or alternatives) is intended to operate, how they actually operate and what broader political consequences emerge from those factors. Although some contributors conclude more directly that one system or another would be most appropriate for presidential selection, most of the book is evaluative, not normative or even explanatory. The contributors are more concerned about the Electoral College’s implications for American democracy than with why the Electoral College exists or whether it should. In addition, although the controversy surrounding the 2000 presidential election prompted the book, the editors argue that their main purpose is to prepare for future elections by evaluating which system for presidential elections is best, not to rehash the results of Bush-Gore race. In a volume that includes so many accomplished scholars and so much detailed analysis, isolating stand-outs is almost as difficult as finding criticisms. The entire volume’s versatility is one of its greatest strengths. The thorough yet readable explanations of the Electoral College’s role in federalism (chapter 4) or campaign strategy (chapter 7), for example, could complement an undergraduate course; chapter nine on citizen participation would fit nicely into graduate and Ph.D. courses. Indeed, the volume is well-written and readable enough that it could simultaneously introduce undergraduates to basic concepts and (through extensive footnoting) prepare graduate students for advanced research or comprehensive exams. Some of the arguments for and against the Electoral College become repetitive by the end of the book. However, the fact that each chapter explores those pros and cons from a different perspective makes the repetition worthwhile. Similarly, chapter 10 on electoral systems and social stability, at first seems a bit awkward. As the contributors demonstrate, the United States is immune from many of the political-stability concerns many other democracies endure. Nonetheless, the chapter serves as an interesting basis for comparing the Electoral College to other systems. Overall, all the contributors and editors should be commended for an exceptionally well-researched, well-written, readable and interesting work that advances our understanding of why the Electoral College endures and affects every aspect of modern political life.
Reflections: Life After the White House. By Barbara Bush. New York: Scribner’s, 2003, 432 pages. Reviewed by: Colleen Shogan and Jerome Short, George Mason University In her latest book, Reflections: Life After the White House, Barbara Bush provides the opening Republican salvo in the battle with Democrats to win the 2004 presidential election. Although the book has the appearance of a family holiday letter or a small town newspaper column replete with descriptions of the latest family travels, favorite recipes, book suggestions, and family pictures, there are reminders of her husband's and sons' political accomplishments, praise for past and future campaign donors, and preemptive strikes against Bush family critics. The conventional wisdom about the book is that it covers less ground than her previous memoirs, and contains fewer noteworthy revelations. While these observations are accurate, it
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is remiss to minimize an important overriding theme of the book: well-heeled tradition matters in American politics. The book is innocuous enough and mostly describes the endless number of family visitors and fundraisers the former president and Barbara participated in during the eight years of the Clinton administration. However, what will stick out to most Twenty-first Century readers is Mrs. Bush’s frustrating acceptance of her accommodating status as wife and mother of two presidents. Barbara Bush is a product of an earlier generation, and that fact is glaring throughout her most recent book. In the first chapter, she remarks, “So many great things have happened because I married well.” She consistently subordinates her own accomplishments, confessing that her success stems from her marital and maternal status. Her view of the world is wrought with gender stereotypes, evidenced by the fact that even though she makes many political observations, she feels the need to include family recipes in every chapter of the book. Mrs. Bush relishes in her role as a supportive spouse, and praises other women (such as her daughter-in-law Laura) who follow in her footsteps. She manages to praise Hillary Clinton near the end of the book, but not after taking a jab at her participation at the Women’s Conference in Beijing. At another point in the book, in the midst of discussing George W’s run for the Texas governorship in 1994, Barbara observes that it is “hard to debate a woman if you’re a man” running for political office. Mrs. Bush’s one-sided sympathy for male political candidates is slightly disconcerting, and we must wonder what she thinks is the remedy for such a problem. At least part of the explanation for why the book adopts such a traditionalist tone is its targeted readership. It is evident that Mrs. Bush wrote the second installation of her memoirs for women who share many of her life experiences as an obliging wife and stay-at-home mother. It is unlikely that many contemporary women in their twenties and thirties will find much in common with Mrs. Bush. After her husband’s defeat in 1992, Mrs. Bush was faced with the prospect of hitting the speaking tour to generate some cash flow. She confesses that, “Everyone knew I had never earned any money, as I had never seriously worked in the 48 years we had been married. So besides losing the election, now at 68 I was going to have to work?” At another point, Mrs. Bush writes about finishing her first autobiography, and describes her two-week spa retreat to finish up the project with her editor. In other words, this is not an autobiography written to inspire the female working class or struggling authors. It may not be ludicrous to suggest that Mrs. Bush’s granddaughters might find more of a kinship with Hillary Clinton’s Living History than their own matriarch’s musings. For those who admire the candor of the “Silver Fox,” Reflections does not disappoint. Mrs. Bush lives up to her reputation as a quick-witted, opinionated political observer, and no one is absolved from scrutiny. One of the harshest condemnations is her disdain for former White House staffer David Gergen. Mrs. Bush recalls that Gergen abandoned the Bush campaign in 1980 after it became clear that her husband would not win the GOP nomination. After the 1992 election, the lifelong Republican Gergen admitted that he voted for Clinton rather than Bush. In an anecdote, Mrs. Bush recalls that she and Gergen were both being considered for a paid speaking engagement, and Gergen ultimately got the gig because his fee was less than hers. Mrs. Bush commented wryly that if given the opportunity, she would have given the speech “for free.” Of course, Gergen’s decisions were partially strategic. In politics, one follows the action. But the broader lesson we learn about the Bush clan is clear: loyalty is paramount, and no one forgets transgressions. She describes Bush family critic and New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd as sounding bitter, clever, and straining to be different when
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she snidely attacks the president. Further she states that Vanity Fair writer Gail Sheehy's criticism of family friend Elizabeth Dole is well written, very ugly, and filled with half-truths. Mrs. Bush's book does not reveal any family tensions. She notes that, "If ever again a minister asks those of us who have perfect families to please raise their hands, mine will go up in a minute." She praises every family member and every family interaction. The descriptions of family members are superficial. She notes, "Laura Bush continues to be George's greatest asset. She had on a heavenly lavender suit with the tiniest fringe and covered by a truly beautifully fitted lavender coat." Mrs. Bush's role as wife and mother of a president and the continuous presence of Secret Service agents creates a world of seeing most people on their best behavior. She comments to her neighbors, "I don't find this or that person difficult." They answer, "Of course – nice to YOU." In the end, the book provides an escape into a world of luxury and blissful family gatherings and replaces the Kennedy family myth of Camelot with the Bush family myth of compassionate conservatism.
Reaganism and the Death of Representative Democracy. By Walter Williams. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2003, 270 pages Reviewed by: Charles E. Walcott, Virginia Tech Walter Williams is the Cassandra of U.S. politics and policy analysis. In previous books (most recently Mismanaging America [1990], and Honest Numbers and Democracy [1998]), he has challenged the adequacy of policy analytic technique, the ability of the political system to seriously utilize “honest numbers,” and the trend since the 1980s toward crippling the federal bureaucracy through underfunding. In the ominously-titled Reagan and the Death of Representative Democracy, Williams revisits these themes in the context of a comprehensive critique of contemporary American politics and government. This is a polemic, a cri de coeur, not a dispassionate analysis. It is intended to awaken and provoke the citizenry to action while there is still time. Alas, it could easily have an opposite effect on readers, convincing many that it is already too late. As the title suggests, Williams argues that the capacity of the federal government to carry out public policy efficiently took a quantum leap downward during the administration of Ronald Reagan, which he characterizes as both ideologically anti-government and hostile to objective data and analysis. The result, he asserts, is a government whose regulatory ineptitude gave us, e.g., the Enron scandal, and whose overall lack of capacity has been exposed in the aftermath of the events of September 11, 2001. But Williams’s arguments go well beyond government efficiency, and well beyond Reagan, also. His is a comprehensive critique, summarizing and decrying changes that have occurred across the U.S. political system since the 1960s, and suggesting strongly that representative democracy in this country no longer works in any meaningful sense. Williams’s criticism of the system is comprehensive, and centered in large part on the idea of democratic representation. Though a brief summary cannot do justice to either the nuance or the intensity of Williams’s arguments, his major contentions can be outlined briefly. Beginning in the early 1960s, the United States experienced a confluence of trends and events in the political environmental and within the government itself. Interacting and reinforcing one another, they combined to fundamentally change the system for the worse.
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The external forces included the growing influence of interest group money in politics, profitdriven and less-than-responsible mass media, an information explosion that has overloaded citizens and made them vulnerable to all manner of deception, resultant citizen apathy, and, of course, the ideology of Reaganism. The latter enshrined deregulated market capitalism and thus increasing inequality of wealth, while touting America’s proclaimed virtues so effectively as to obscure any problems. Within the government itself, Williams identifies such problems as self-starting and electiondriven representatives who thus become beholden to big money, polarized parties incapable of true deliberation, and the elevation of official lying (under the rubric of “spin”) to a fine and accepted political art. In all, Williams contends, such developments have transformed the United States from a representative democracy with a reasonable balance between popular rule and the influence of wealth into an “early-stage plutocracy” dominated by wealthy and selfish interests. Of course, none of this is entirely new. Williams’s main contribution is to present these factors comprehensively, and to show their interrelationships. In his telling, for instance, the deregulation and tax reforms of the Reagan era led to inequalities of wealth that fed the power of money in politics, which keeps politicians subservient to the status quo. That status quo includes a federal government establishment that has been “starved” to the point where it cannot function efficiently even in a crisis, and a gutted regulatory landscape. The country’s dire situation is not improving, Williams argues, in large part because the politicians who benefit from it are capable of misleading a passive populace that would, in any case, be largely unable to cope with the details of public policy issues in this technologically complex era. Reagan’s successors receive no praise. George H.W. Bush was, like Reagan, “antianalytic” and uninterested in domestic policy. Bill Clinton’s centrism “validated” Reaganism, while the President and his staff indulged in “routinized lying.” And finally, “George W. Bush is the full bitter fruit of Reaganism – the truest of true believers in its core principles.” The current President Bush’s arguments for tax cuts are singled out more than once as exemplifying the way politicians can mislead the public and serve the plutocracy. Clearly, not all readers will agree with all, or most, of Williams’s arguments. For instance, one can easily accuse Williams of idealizing American politics from FDR through Eisenhower, not only the presidencies but also the “get along, go along” Congresses of those years, where the Conservative Coalition frequently reigned supreme. Williams’s contention that Reaganism crippled the bureaucracy conflicts with studies showing that some parts of the executive branch – the Defense Department, for instance – thrived under Reagan. Williams’s analysis of Reagan’s impact is a formidable, backhanded compliment to that leader, but it may both exaggerate his conservativism in practice (many commentators have called him a “pragmatist,” at least in part) and his contribution. On the latter point, one might note that deregulation began under Carter, not Reagan. Moreover, the combined force of the factors other than Reaganism that Williams identifies could be seen as making something like the Reagan presidency and its successors almost inevitable. Thus, ironically, Williams’s own analysis tends to call into question his central claim about Reagan’s unique impact. Williams might say, and I would agree, that such reservations are essentially quibbles. His central point, that a healthy version of Madisonian representative democracy in the United States is dead or dying, is powerfully argued. It is, of course, a judgment call. We have no objective standard by which to judge when the levels of income equality, public apathy, or
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neglect of the machinery of government are sufficient to create a crisis. Williams himself concedes that “I may have gone too far in making the case…” in an effort to be heard above the din of politics as usual. His arguments, nonetheless, are powerful. This book, aimed more at an informed public (or perhaps a relatively sophisticated undergraduate audience) than a scholarly readership, is an effective call to arms on behalf of the Republic. But there is a final irony here. In demanding change, Williams provides plenty of reasons why it cannot or will not happen, and virtually no strategy to overcome them. An occasional reference to “transformational leadership” will not do. How an apathetic and necessarily uninformed public can be made to demand that its co-opted, self-interested leaders overturn the plutocrats who sustain them is not made clear. Still, perhaps it is enough to have that question raised. This book should be widely read and debated.
Forged In War: Roosevelt, Churchill, and the Second World War. By Warren F. Kimball. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee Publisher, 1997. Reviewed by Dr. Chris J. Dolan, University of Central Florida The following scenario seems like deja vu: An American president and a British prime minister stand at the center of a conflict in which both leaders are committed to using military force to topple a threatening regime and a dangerous tyrant. While this was the case with respect to the United States and the United Kingdom in March 2003 on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair were playing parts first written by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill over 60 years ago. Today, the American Empire and its powerful British junior partner are bounded together by an alliance that was sown at the initiation of the Second World War, when these roles were reversed. Indeed, Churchill’s last words to his last Cabinet, “Never be separated from the Americans,” still hold true today, as Bush declared on September 20, 2001 that “Once again, we are joined together in a great cause so honored the British Prime Minister has crossed an ocean to show his unity of purpose with America. Thank you for coming, friend.” While the international political landscape may be different today, Warren Kimball’s recently published Forged in War: Roosevelt, Churchill, and the Second World War sheds light on how the FDR-Churchill relationship was the epitome of the art of leadership and served as the foundation for the Anglo-American alliance. As Kimball informs us, at Yalta, Casablanca, Dumbarton Oaks, Argentia, and countless other places, Roosevelt and Churchill met to discuss the conduct of the Allied war effort and the postwar global environment. The strength of Forged in War is in is focus on how the political and economic landscape of the world after the war demanded bold American leadership with British support. However, as Kimball cautions us, America’s post-WWII commitments to internationalism and multilateralism were driven to a great extent by Churchill, who was well aware of how the United States retreated from globalism in the past, as demonstrated in the League of Nations following World War I. These issues are played out the chapter, “I am Not a Wilsonian Idealist,” in which Kimball convincingly asserts that FDR and Churchill “hoped to turn the Grand Alliance in to a postwar relationship ‘for the organization and maintenance of peace and security.” However, as Warren Kimball describes
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in detail, Churchill’s horror at FDR’s declining physical condition almost led him to not contemplate life after Roosevelt. Thus, it is Kimball’s ability to capture the close personal friendship between FDR and Churchill during the war that makes this is a significant contribution to the presidency and American history literature. FDR and Churchill shared a remarkable comradeship that was “forged in the fire of war.” From 1939 to 1945, the two carried on a correspondence that produced nearly 2,000 messages. By war’s end Roosevelt and Churchill would over one hundred days together, sharing holidays and birthdays in one another’s personal company. In smoked-filled rooms they often met secretly, talking to each other about war, politics, and the burden of command, their health, their wives, and their children. We learn from Kimball several other illuminating points. For example, Churchill was at times dissatisfied with Roosevelt and his advisers and was perpetually frustrated and undermined by Charles De Gaulle and the French. Roosevelt understood Churchill’s frustration with him and responded by setting U.S. foreign policy on a new multilateral course. In his last inaugural address, FDR said: “We have learned that we cannot live alone, at peace; that our own well-being is dependent upon the well-being of other nations, far away ... We have learned the simple truth, as Emerson said, that ‘the only way to have a friend is to be one.’” When FDR died, Churchill uttered: “I feel a very painful personal loss, quite apart from the ties of public action which bound us so closely together. I had true affection for Franklin.” Probably one of the most engaging aspects of Forged in War is that Kimball’s ability to connect the reader to the highly controversial debate as to whether or not FDR caved in to Stalin at Yalta. As Kimball emphasizes, the public components of the Yalta agreements received a warm welcome in the United States, as they did in the United Kingdom. By early 1945, American and British publics agreed that it was possible to work with Stalin and the Soviets. The only real disagreement was in the joint US-UK decision to approve the USSR of holding a seat in the proposed assembly of the United Nations Organization. According to Kimball this led many to assume that other shady deals had been struck by Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin in private. While the revelation had provoked an outcry, it was not critical enough to question the general approval and satisfaction with the Yalta accords. However, a noticeable drawback is Kimball’s downplaying of the political necessity of Churchill’s decision to tie the future of the United Kingdom to that of the United States and how this ultimately contributed to the Cold War. At the end of the Second World War, political realities demonstrated that America and the Soviet Union were rising global powers came at the expense of Great Britain. Churchill believed the future of the United Kingdom should depend on its “Holy Alliance” with the United States. Nowhere in the analysis is this present. Its exclusion results in a loss of historical significance, a significance that helps to explain why the Anglo-American “Holy Alliance” has stood the test of time and history. Of course, it is always tempting for the present to disparage the leaders of the moment by idolizing the heroes of the past. Roosevelt told Churchill: “It is fun to be in the same decade with you.” It was a decade in which the two men confronted totalitarianism, struggled to build a postwar environment with a questionable ally in the USSR, and triumphed together. Kimball’s work is grand because it links the wartime accomplishments of the western alliance not to FDR or Churchill, but FDR and Churchill. Why Kimball did not engage in a long term historical impact of the wartime Anglo-American alliance is apparent. However, taken all in
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all, the two men and their friendship can help guide us all forward, through war, terrorism, and an increasingly unstable world.
Honor and Loyalty: Inside The Politics of the George H. W. Bush White House. Edited by Leslie D. Feldman and Rosanna Perotti. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002. Reviewed by: Russell L. Mahan, Independent presidential historian Today it is very difficult to look at the presidential administration of George Herbert Walker Bush without the intruding thought that his son, George Walker Bush, is now president. Somehow, looking at either, we see both. The association of father and son is inevitable, particularly now with their respective wars with Iraq. Perhaps in the future historians and political scientists will able to look back at them with greater individual clarity that we can now do, much as we can now examine John Adams and John Quincy Adams on their own merits. The first Bush administration, that of George H. W. Bush from 1989 to 1993, was the subject of a three-day conference at Hofstra in April of 1997. More than 200 scholars and alumni of that administration gathered to participate in the presentation of papers and remarks. The significance of the undertaking was underscored by the presence of the political luminaries of that era, President George H. W. Bush, Vice President Dan Quayle, First Lady Barbara Bush, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, and Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, plus numerous administration officials. The conference resulted in a series of four volumes of the proceedings. This is one of those four. It consists of the presentations of panels on the presidential campaigns of 1988 and 1992, White House staffing, relations with the Democratic Congress, administration rhetoric, the media and public relations, and the role of the First Lady, and a one person presentation on the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court nomination. It also contains the conference address given by Dan Quayle, talks by key Bush administration officials, and a question and answer session with Barbara Bush. This conference took place in that narrow space of time (1993 to 2001) in which there was no second Bush presidency. It is subject to the generalized criticism that it was held too soon, just four years after the close of the term in 1993. Being so close in time, one could reason, gave the proceedings an unavailability to presidential documents and a lack of historical perspective Perhaps this was so, but it also had the advantage of being a grand discussion held when the principals were still alive, and memories were still fresh. It is a situation far superior to that where the last lingering survivors write the history decades later, without opportunity of response from the other (now deceased) participants. The recent past will be history soon enough, yet we need not postpone our deliberations until then. The book is well balanced in that it has a mix of scholarly presentations, rebuttals by administration officials, talks by leading figures, and question and answer sessions. An application of science to politics is accomplished in several of the scholarly presentations. One is a dissection of the 1988 and 1992 presidential campaign advertisements, ad by ad, for content. It finds that although Bush is remembered for his negative advertising, he was in fact exceeded in that department by Bill Clinton. It then contrasts the 1992 campaign advertising with that of the first campaign, finding a loss of direction in the re-election battle. Another
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was a study of the spontaneous speech patterns of the presidential candidates, resulting in unintended personality disclosures by George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Ross Perot. There are interesting scholarly inquiries into the internal workings of the Bush presidency, with emphasis on competency and loyalty. One particularly interesting paper establishes the various styles of the modern chiefs of staff. Then we hear from the men who filled key administration positions, and in their remarks they essentially validate the analyses given. As seems inevitable in a conference of this nature, the presentations of political science and history range in quality from insightful commentaries to a simple and bitter political denunciation. A presentation on the nomination of Clarence Thomas is all politics without a shred of science. It is merely a one-sided diatribe against President Bush and Thomas, having no discernable objectivity or balance of any kind. The paper itself plays its own race card in criticizing every motive and aspect of the Thomas nomination. The astonished former administration officials who were the discussants put the presentation into its proper perspective. “Only liberals can say that an appointment of a black is racist,” said C. Boyden Gray. David Brock remarked that “the paper does a disservice to history, a disservice to the truth.” Taken together, the paper and the discussant responses do illustrate the depths of feelings the nomination battle generated. Taken in its totality, this volume is an excellent contribution to the political science and history of the era. Its mixed approach of scholarly analysis with commentary from administration principals is especially appreciated. Assuming that the other three volumes of this series are of equal merit with this one, the series forms an essential informational foundation for future understanding of the presidential administration of George Herbert Walker Bush.
Thomas Jefferson: A Chronology of His Thoughts. Edited by Jerry Holmes. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002. Reviewed by: Will R. Jordan, Mercer University Confronted by a steady stream of books on the American founding, all claiming to provide an authoritative account of their subject, we do well to return periodically to the original writings and speeches of the founding generation. Jerry Holmes allows us to do just that in this collection of original material from Thomas Jefferson. Although the collection includes passages from Jefferson’s most significant public papers and his Notes on the State of Virginia, it is Jefferson’s voluminous private correspondence that comprises the bulk of the work. In making this editorial choice, Holmes draws upon Jefferson’s own observation that “the letters of a person, especially of one whose business has been chiefly transacted in letters, form the only full and genuine journal of his life.” Indeed, the book reads much like a journal, as all of the writings are organized chronologically. Holmes begins each year with a brief summary of the major events affecting Jefferson during the year, and then gives way to a survey of illuminating passages from Jefferson’s pen. By including Jefferson’s most intimate letters to family and friends alongside the statements intended for public consumption, Holmes offers his reader a collection that serves as both biography and intellectual history. Holmes suggests that the book “is intended to give the reader a glimpse
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into the inner workings of Jefferson’s mind, his philosophy, his views of events as they unfolded during his life, as well as his hopes and dreams for the future.” The reader cannot help but be impressed by the glimpse afforded by this book. While participating in political events sufficient to fill three lives, Jefferson pursued a seemingly endless range of intellectual interests. Jefferson’s “canine appetite for reading” and boundless curiosity allowed him to study “nearly every subject worthy of human contemplation.” Fully accepting the Enlightenment’s faith in human progress, Jefferson branded “cowardly the idea that the human mind is incapable of further advance.” Whether he was designing a better plow, introducing a new plant species, or sending Lewis and Clark to the Pacific, Jefferson dedicated himself to ameliorating the condition of man. At the center of Jefferson’s plan for human improvement was the concept of liberty. Repulsed by the feudal tendency to divide “nations into two classes, wolves and sheep,” Jefferson pledged “eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” This commitment to liberty is reflected in each of the three accomplishments Jefferson claimed as his legacy - the Declaration of Independence, the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and the founding of the University of Virginia. In the Declaration, Jefferson articulated a natural rights philosophy that repudiated tyrannical rule and “laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately.” In the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, Jefferson sought to free men from what he saw as state, and clerical, tyranny over conscience. For Jefferson, religion was essentially a private matter, and he maintained that “it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” Included in the book are passages describing Jefferson’s deism as well as his famous letter advocating the “wall of separation” between church and state. Finally, by founding the University of Virginia, Jefferson completed one part of a lifelong plan to provide an education appropriate for a free people. Jefferson never wavered from the following conviction: “Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.” Envisioning a system of public education, which included public elementary schools, grammar schools, and a university, Jefferson contented himself with founding a university on a new model. The flexible curriculum and innovative architecture of the university were vintage Jeffersonian touches. In this as in all of his educational plans, Jefferson was guided by the idea that the broad purpose of education was to “enable every man to judge for himself what will secure or endanger his freedom.” Jefferson’s ardent love of liberty led him to a take a few positions which were more idealistic, and perhaps less prudent, than those of his peers. Rejecting the Federalists’ more pessimistic view of human nature - a view which relied upon ambition to check ambition and representatives to “refine and enlarge” the public view - Jefferson maintained his faith in the native good sense of democratic majorities. He suggested that “they may be led astray for a moment, but will soon correct themselves. The people are the only censors of their governors: and even their errors will tend to keep these to the true principles of their institution.” It was this democratic faith that kept Jefferson from fearing popular revolutions. At times, Jefferson’s fearless dedication to democratic liberty led him to astonishing conclusions. When the French Revolution began to turn bloody, Jefferson suggested that “rather than it should have failed, I would have seen half the earth desolated. Were there but an Adam & Eve left in
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every country, and left free, it would be better than it is now.” It is difficult to imagine a more complete devotion to the idea of freedom. This devotion makes it all the more difficult to explain Jefferson’s accommodation with the institution of slavery. Although he recognized that slavery was incompatible with the principles of the Declaration and served to corrupt the morals of both master and slave, Jefferson lived and died a slaveholder. Holmes suggests that Jefferson’s early hopes for abolition (he proposed fourteen pieces of anti-slavery legislation during his political career) eventually gave way to a feeling that the right time and circumstances were “somewhere in the future, subject to no man’s timetable.” Indeed, the few examples of pessimism in the book occur when an older Jefferson reflects on his dimming hopes for emancipation. Yet even in his brighter days Jefferson’s thoughts are clouded on this subject. It is impossible, for example, to reconcile Jefferson’s sincere commitment to the principle of natural equality in the Declaration with the serious attention he gives to the latest theories of scientific racism. Unable to resolve this question, we are left with the pathos of Jefferson’s own words: “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever.” Holmes’s volume serves as an excellent introduction to both the thought and the life of Jefferson. Not limiting himself to the majestic public statements, Holmes gives us a glimpse of the private Jefferson, enjoying the company of his family and his books. The range of subjects considered is truly awe-inspiring, although it is occasionally disconcerting to move from one letter to the next (as when a letter from Governor Jefferson warning of the impending British attack on Richmond is followed by a letter, written a week later, ordering Gloucester hickory nuts for an orchard at Monticello). One limitation of the book is that a great many of the entries are only a sentence or two long. While this is a necessary compromise for a book that includes almost 800 excerpts in one volume, some passages suffer for being shorn from their context. The book gives us much to admire in the third President of the United States. The reader may well conclude, as did Abraham Lincoln, that Jefferson deserves all the honor we can bestow, and that the “principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society.” Yet given Jefferson’s fondness for the pleasures of home and family, the following reminiscence by one of his granddaughters seems even more fitting as a conclusion: “He took pains to correct our errors and false ideas, checked the bold, encouraged the timid, and tried to teach us to reason soundly and feel rightly.”
In: White House Studies Compendium, Volume 4 Editor: R. W. Watson, pp. 519-525
ISBN: 1-60021-541-6 © 2007 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS Michael R. Chambers, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Indiana State University, and a visiting scholar at the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research at Harvard University during the 2003-2004 academic year. He is the editor of South Asia 2020: Strategic Balances and Alliances (Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 2002). Anthony J. Eksterowicz, Ph.D. is Professor of Political Science at James Madison University in Virginia. He has published numerous articles and chapters on such topics as the presidency, first ladies, and U.S. foreign policy. His recent books include Public Journalism and Political Knowledge (Rowman and Littlefield, 2000) and The Presidential Companion: Readings on the First Ladies (University of South Carolina Press, 2003) Robert K. Goidel, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Mass Communication in the Manship School of Mass Communication at Louisiana State University, where he serves as the Director of Public Policy Research in the Reilly Center for Media & Public Affairs and as CoDirector of the Public Policy Research Lab. His publications include Money Matters: Consequences of Campaign Finance Reform in the U.S. House Elections (Rowman & Littlefield, 1999) and The States of Campaign Finance Reform (Ohio State University Press, 2003). Glenn P. Hastedt, Ph.D. is Professor of Political Science and department head at James Madison University in Virginia. He received his Ph.D. from Indiana University. He is the author of American Foreign Policy: Past, Present, Future (5th ed.), co-author of International Politics in a Changing World, and numerous articles on intelligence and American foreign policy. Arthur S. Hulnick is Associate Professor of International Relations at Boston University. Hulnick is a veteran of 35 years of intelligence service, including seven years in U.S. Air Force intelligence and 28 years in the CIA. He is the author of the book Fixing the Spy Machine (Greenwood Press, 2000) and numerous articles on intelligence matters. He is a member of the editorial boards of the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence. He may be reached at [email protected].
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Mark J. Miller, Ph.D. is Professor of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Delaware, where he has taught since 1978. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin, Miller has long edited the International Migration Review and formerly served as the U.S. correspondent on international migration at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris. Miller has testified before Congress and various U.S. commissions on immigration questions, especially concerning European policies. The third edition of his book, co-authored with Stephen Castles and entitled The Age of Migration, was published by Palgrave and, in North America, by Guilford Publications in 2003. James K. Oliver, Ph.D. teaches political science at the University of Delaware. Robert A. Strong, Ph.D. is William Lyne Wilson Professor of Politics at Washington and Lee University in Virginia. Earlier in his career he taught at Tulane University and the University College of Wales. His most recent book is titled Working in the World: Jimmy Carter and the Making of American Foreign Policy. Jack M. Beard is Visiting Professor of Political Science at the U.S. Naval Academy, on detail from the Office of the General Counsel, U.S. Department of Defense. He is also a Professorial Lecturer at the Johns Hopkins University School for Advanced International Studies and an Adjunct Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center. He writes on international security issues and international law. The views presented are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of Defense or the United States government. Douglas M. Brattebo, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the U.S. Naval Academy, where he teaches Honors Introduction to American Government, The American Presidency and Executive Branch, and Seminar on the Democratic Peace. In 2002, he was the winner of the Naval Academy’s campus-wide Apgar Award for Teaching Excellence. Brattebo’s recent publications have focused on Truman and the Marshall Plan, the Clinton administration’s organization, the Bush administration’s steel tariff policy, and the war on terror. Stephen E. Frantzich, Ph.D. is Professor of Political Science at the U.S. Naval Academy. The other of over a dozen books, he has been one of the leaders in adapting new technology to teaching and research. He authored one of the first computer-based teaching modules for the American Political Science Association that provided students with the opportunity to empirically analyze presidential popularity. He teaches in the areas of the legislative process, politics and the media, and campaigns and elections. Commander Jeffrey R. Macris is a Permanent Military Professor of History at the U.S. Naval Academy. A native of Olney, Maryland, CDR Macris spent the majority of his active duty career as a naval aviator in the P-3 Orion anti-submarine warfare and patrol community. During his career, CDR Macris tracked Soviet submarines during deployments to Sicily, Spain, and Iceland; conducted counter-drug operations throughout the Caribbean; and led patrol and intelligence-gathering missions throughout the Pacific Ocean and Persian Gulf. CDR Macris completed his undergraduate education at James Madison University and earned
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his MA from the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, at which he is currently pursuing his doctorate. He has also graduated from the U.S. Defense Department’s Language Institute in Monterey, California and holds a linguist certificate in Arabic. George H. Quester, Ph.D. was the John M. Olin Professor at the U.S. Naval Academy from 1991-1993 and is currently Professor of Government at the University of Maryland at College Park. His publications include American Foreign Policy: The Lost Consensus and Nuclear Monopoly. Lewis S. Ringel, Ph.D. was Visiting Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the U.S. Naval Academy from 1995-1997. He currently teaches in the Political Science Department at California State University at Long Beach. In 1998, while at Louisiana State University, he was a finalist for the Tiger Athletic Foundation Teaching Excellence Award. Ringel is a coauthor of How to Please the Court: A Moot Court Handbook (New York: Peter Lang Press, 2004). He had published in Political Behavior, Law and Courts, and PS: Political Science & Politics and has a forthcoming publication commemorating the 50th Anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education (1954) for the College Board. His teaching and research interests include constitutional law, the judicial process, and the media and politics. Craig L. Symonds, Ph.D. is Professor of History at the U.S. Naval Academy, where he has taught naval history and Civil War history since 1976. Prior to his association with the Naval Academy, he taught Strategy and Policy at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, R.I., both as an officer (1972-74) and a civilian professor (1974-75). He is the author of nine books, including biographies of Confederate generals Joseph E. Johnston (1992) and Patrick Cleburne (1997), and Confederate admiral Franklin Buchanan (1999). His most recent work is The American Heritage History of the Battle of Gettysburg (2001). A two-time winner of the John Lyman Book Award (1995 and 1999), he was also a finalist for the Lincoln Prize (1993) and twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize (1993 and 1997). The first person ever to win both the Naval Academy’s “Excellence in Teaching” Award (1988) and its “Excellence in Research” Award (1998), he also served as History department chair from 1988-1992. Ernest S. Tucker, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of History at the U.S. Naval Academy. He writes on the early modern history of Iran, the Caucasus, and the Persian Gulf. Stephen D. Wrage, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Political Science at the U.S. Naval Academy. He writes on the formulation of American foreign policy and on ethics in international relations. Sarah Brendel Andrews completed her master’s degree in Public Administration at James Madison University. Ryan J. Barilleaux, Ph.D. is Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He earned his doctorate in Government from the University of Texas in Austin (1983), and was on the staff of the U.S. Senate. He is the author of seven books and many articles and book chapters on the presidency, American political
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institutions, and religion and politics. He is editor-in-chief of the Catholic Social Science Review, and his most recent book is Power and Prudence: The Incremental Presidency of George H.W. Bush (with Mark Rozell). Jody Baumgartner, Ph.D. is on the faculty of East Carolina University. He received his Ph.D. from Miami University (Ohio) in 1998, specializing in American and comparative politics. He is co-editor (with Naoko Kada) of Checking Executive Power: Presidential Impeachment in Comparative Perspective. Bryon W. Daynes, Ph.D. is Professor of Political Science at Brigham Young University. He is the author of numerous works on the presidency, including Presidential Power in the United States (Brooks/Cole, 1984), with Raymond Tatalovich, and the forthcoming book The Greening of the Modern Presidency (SUNY Press), with Glen Sussman. David Dulio, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Oakland University. He is the author of For Better or Worse? How Political Consultants are Changing Elections in the United States (SUNY Press). Anthony J. Eksterowicz, Ph.D. is Professor of Political Science at James Madison University. He has published numerous articles and chapters on such topics as the presidency, first ladies, and U.S. foreign policy. His recent books include Public Journalism and Political Knowledge (Rowman & Littlefield, 2001) and The Presidential Companion: Readings on the First Ladies (University of South Carolina Press, 2003). Robert E. Gilbert, Ph.D. is Professor of Political Science at Northeastern University. A specialist on the American presidency, his articles have appeared in numerous journals in the United States and abroad. His most recent books are The Tormented President: Calvin Coolidge, Death and Clinical Depression (Praeger, 2003) and Managing Crisis: Presidential Disability and the 25th Amendment (Fordham University Press, 2000).
Charles Gleek completed his M.A. degree in Political Science at Florida Atlantic University and is currently pursuing his Ph.D. His research interests and publications are in world politics, international law, peace and conflict, and American foreign policy. Ryan C. Hendrickson, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Political Science at Eastern Illinois University, and is the author of The Clinton Wars: The Constitution, Congress and War Powers (Vanderbilt University Press, 2002). Karl F. (Rick) Inderfurth, Ph.D. is Professor of the Practice of International Affairs in the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. He is the editor (with Loch K. Johnson) of Fateful Decisions: Inside the NSC (Oxford University Press, 2004). Loch K. Johnson, Ph.D. is Regents Professor in the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Georgia. He is the editor of the journal Intelligence and National
About the Contributors
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Security and his most recent book is Bombs, Bugs, Drugs, and Thugs: Intelligence and America’s Quest for Security (NYU Press, 2002). Stephen Medvic, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor of Government at Franklin & Marshall College. He is the author of Political Consultants in U.S. Congressional Elections (Ohio State University Press). Kristina Spohr Readman, Ph.D. is a lecturer in International History at the London School of Economics and served previously as Junior Research Fellow in History at Christs College, Cambridge. After completion of her Ph.D. is 2000, she worked as a research fellow in the Private Office at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium in 2001. She has published several articles on German reunification and NATO’s eastern enlargement, and is the author of Germany and the Baltic Problem After the Cold War. Stacey K. Sewell is Assistant Professor of History at St. Thomas Aquinas College in Sparkill, New York. Glenn Sussman, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Political Science and Department Chair at Old Dominion University in Virginia. He is the author of numerous works on the presidency and environmental policy including and the forthcoming book The Greening of the Modern Presidency (SUNY Press), with Byron W. Daynes. Tabitha Alissa Warters, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Francis Marion University in South Carolina. She earned her Ph.D. at the University of Tennessee – Knoxville. Her research interests and publications are in such areas as the presidency, first ladies, presidential families, and public law. Robert P. Watson, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Political Science at Florida Atlantic University. He is the author or editor of 20 books and has published over 100 scholarly articles, chapters, and essays on such topics as the presidency, first ladies, civil rights, bureaucracy, environmental policy, and elections. A frequent media commentator, he has been interviewed by CNN, MSNBC, USA Today, and dozens of other media outlets, appeared on C-SPAN’s Book TV program, and directed the first-ever Report to the First Lady, which was presented to the White House after the 2001 inauguration. Watson serves on the boards of several scholarly journals and presidential foundations, and has served as a visiting scholar/fellow with many universities and presidential sites. Henry R. Beasley served as Director of International Affairs for the National Marine Fisheries Service, an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce. He is the coeditor (with Maurine H. Beasley and Holly Cowan Shulman) of The Eleanor Roosevelt Encyclopedia (Greenwood Press, 2001) and holds a law degree from Emory University. Maurine H. Beasley, Ph.D. is Professor of Journalism at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is the coeditor (with Henry R. Beasley and Holly Cowan Shulman) of The Eleanor Roosevelt Encyclopedia (Greenwood Press, 2001) and author of Eleanor Roosevelt
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and the Media: A Public Quest for Self-Fulfillment (University of Illinois Press, 1987). She has a Ph.D. in American Civilization from George Washington University. Susan Abrams Beck, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Political Science at Fordham University. She has published articles on the American presidency and women in politics, including “Acting as Women: The Effects and Limitations of Gender in Local Governance” in Susan J. Carroll, ed., The Impact of Women in Office (2001). Her current research examines the role of Eleanor Roosevelt in the framing of the UN Declaration on Human Rights. Michael A. Genovese, Ph.D. received his doctorate from the University of Southern California. He currently holds the Loyola Chair of Leadership Studies, is Professor of Political Science, and is the Director of the Institute for Leadership Studies at Loyola Marymount University. Genovese has written 14 books, including The Paradoxes of the American Presidency (with Thomas E. Cronin; Oxford University Press, 1998), The Presidency and Domestic Policy (with William W. Lammers; CQ Press, 2000), The Power of the American Presidency, 1789-2000 (Oxford University Press, 2001), and The Encyclopedia of the American Presidency for Facts-on-File, 2004. He has won over a dozen university and national teaching awards and currently serves as President of the Presidency Research Group of the American Political Science Association. Genovese frequently appears as a political commentator on local and national television. Robert Maranto, Ph.D. teaches political science and public administration at Villanova University, and previously taught at Penn, James Madison, and Southern Mississippi, and served in government. He has done extensive research on political appointees in government, civil service reform, and school reform, producing more than 40 scholarly publications. In concert with others, he has written or edited books (which have sold dozens of copies and are so boring that his own mother refuses to read them!). These include Politics and Bureaucracy in the Modern Presidency (Greenwood, 1993), The Politics of Civil Service Reform (Peter Lang, 1998), School Choice in the Real World: Lessons from Arizona Charter Schools (Westview, 2001), and Radical Reform of the Civil Service (Lexington, 2001). His op-eds have appeared in newspapers including the Washington Post, Washington Times, Baltimore Sun, and Hartford Courant. His B.S. is from the University of Maryland and his Ph.D. is from the University of Minnesota. Morgan Reichek earned her B.A. in Political Science at Florida Atlantic University, where she served as an editorial assistant with White House Studies. Robert P. Saldin is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Virginia. Kevin Spiker, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Frostburg State University in Maryland. He earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from West Virginia University. His areas of teaching and research include political behavior, elections and political parties, and research methodology. Mark J. Wattier, Ph.D. is Professor of Political Science at Murray State University, where he has taught since 1980. Wattier teaches courses on political behavior, political
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parties, interest groups, and campaigns and elections, and his research focuses on voting in presidential primaries. His Ph.D. and M.A. are from the University of Tennessee and his B.A. is from Baylor University.
INDEX
A abortion, 76, 274, 441 AC, 179 academics, 85, 87, 391 access, 62, 78, 86, 89, 90, 135, 136, 137, 158, 159, 218, 219, 474, 488 accessibility, 333, 508 accommodation, 518 accountability, 491 accounting, 60 accuracy, 19, 23, 71, 156, 194, 195, 505, 508 achievement, 63, 294, 434, 456, 457, 466, 494 activism, 473, 478, 498 Adams, John Quincy, 102, 106, 340, 368, 402, 404, 515 adjustment, 122 administrators, 48 adulthood, 345, 470 advertisements, 276, 421, 423, 515 advertising, 118, 119, 267, 268, 270, 274, 275, 324, 421, 515 advocacy, 52, 57, 75, 77, 229, 231, 237, 238, 239, 461, 475 affirmative action, 274, 319, 320, 322, 323, 324, 326, 327, 329 Afghanistan, 2, 6, 7, 8, 32, 40, 49, 55, 63, 66, 88, 89, 96, 98, 118, 129, 133, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 144, 145, 146, 147, 149, 150, 181, 183, 184, 190, 218, 289, 291, 437, 439 Africa, 34, 40, 75, 101, 126, 136, 138, 141, 151, 180 African American, 321, 322, 323, 325, 328, 380 African Americans, 322, 323, 325 African National Congress, 441 afternoon, 334, 356, 459, 463
age, 17, 18, 19, 20, 23, 25, 115, 116, 141, 177, 254, 278, 301, 312, 353, 361, 396, 402, 405, 465, 484, 488 agenda-setting, 271, 272, 274 agent, 84, 94, 129, 237, 238, 334, 335, 336, 337, 338, 340, 462, 498 aggregation, 214 aggression, 11, 48 aggressiveness, 239 aging, 157 agriculture, 74, 311, 342, 344, 504 airlines, 78 Al Qaeda, 6, 7, 49, 54, 57, 58, 61, 63, 85, 88, 92, 96, 100, 133, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 147, 149, 150, 151, 183, 207, 210, 217, 218, 219 Alaska, 318, 400 Albania(ns), 53, 144, 189, 286, 290 alcohol, 254, 255 Algeria, 77, 137 alternative, 23, 24, 25, 56, 58, 196, 321, 335, 411, 412, 481, 508 alternatives, 104, 111, 184, 233, 272, 276, 277, 508, 509 ambassadors, 91, 182 ambivalence, 320, 435, 489, 508 ambivalent, 321 amendments, 239, 366, 371, 375, 403, 501 American Civil Liberties Union, 217, 441 American culture, 395, 466 American History, 375 American Indian, 395, 397, 400, 402, 404 American Indians, 395, 397, 402 American Presidency, 14, 97, 280, 314, 316, 370, 374, 375, 393, 520, 524 American Psychiatric Association, 346, 348 anger, 335, 337, 345, 354, 399 animals, 310, 398 annihilation, 19, 20 antagonism, 214
528
Index
anthrax, 197 anti-terrorism, 9, 31, 39, 220, 221 antithesis, 490 anxiety, 23, 46, 179, 212 AP, 414 apartheid, 441 apathy, 35, 512 APEC, 31, 32 apparel, 337 appendix, 174, 280, 496 appetite, 517 appointees, 69, 377, 378, 379, 380, 381, 382, 385, 386, 387, 388, 389, 390, 391, 524 appointment process, 381 aptitude, 333 Arab world, 61 argument, 8, 18, 44, 56, 63, 64, 67, 84, 102, 112, 114, 115, 116, 119, 120, 147, 353, 436, 439, 441, 446, 471, 472, 473, 479, 488, 498, 506 arithmetic, 21 Arizona, 312, 524 armed conflict, 437 armed forces, 11, 84, 179, 207, 210, 214 arms control, 17, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 27, 52, 90, 231, 260 arms trafficking,, 57 arrest, 77, 140, 209, 210, 212, 216, 430, 431, 432 articulation, 44, 266, 326 Asia, 31, 49, 52, 55, 136, 161, 163 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, 31, 52 aspiration, 238 assassination, 38, 138, 147, 195, 303, 496 assault, 100, 103, 109, 130, 136, 154, 159, 167, 177 assertiveness, 185, 239 assessment, 9, 24, 30, 47, 51, 60, 65, 141, 166, 167, 207, 238, 302, 303, 336, 372, 431, 435, 491 assets, 48, 49, 92, 101, 135, 143, 157, 158, 159, 160, 165, 182, 184, 220, 225, 355 assignment, 213, 319, 323, 325, 337 assumptions, 12, 54, 118, 420 asthma, 341 asylum, 71, 77 asymmetry, 54 Athens, 395 Atoms for Peace, 17, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26 atrocities, 33 attachment, 301 attacker, 116, 118 attacks, 6, 10, 35, 38, 40, 41, 48, 49, 53, 55, 63, 67, 78, 88, 96, 104, 111, 112, 116, 118, 119, 120, 121, 124, 133, 134, 137, 138, 139, 140, 144, 147, 149, 154, 156, 159, 173, 180, 183, 185, 186, 190,
191, 202, 207, 209, 217, 219, 220, 260, 291, 292, 297, 424, 437, 442, 453, 511 attention, 25, 29, 33, 41, 44, 45, 52, 62, 101, 120, 125, 141, 174, 180, 200, 208, 213, 231, 259, 265, 271, 275, 285, 301, 302, 303, 306, 307, 310, 351, 360, 365, 374, 408, 420, 445, 446, 451, 462, 471, 490, 498, 499, 503, 504, 518 attitudes, 34, 35, 104, 121, 290, 351, 360, 373, 399 Attorney General, 217, 335, 380, 434, 439, 495 attribution, 505 aura, 261 Australia, 136, 145, 146, 154, 165 Austria, 22 authenticity, 487 authority, 126, 139, 163, 175, 176, 177, 179, 181, 185, 186, 209, 210, 211, 214, 215, 220, 223, 233, 237, 302, 304, 312, 315, 323, 327, 396, 399, 404, 405, 430, 432, 433, 434, 435, 436, 438, 439, 440, 441, 489, 490, 491, 503 autonomy, 49, 53, 131, 481 availability, 296 averaging, 456, 465 aversion, 118 awareness, 71 Azerbaijan, 145
B backlash, 53, 54, 55 baggage, 254 Bahrain, 123, 126, 127, 129, 130, 131, 137, 145, 146, 153, 159, 161, 162, 163, 166, 167 balanced budget, 274 Balkan Wars, 53 Balkans, 48, 49, 51, 53, 54 ballistic missile, 3, 5, 6, 47 Baltic states, 288, 291, 292, 298 bandwidth, 162 bank failure, 345 bankers, 342 banking, 135, 342 banks, 225, 342 Barbary Pirates, 99 bargaining, 24, 27, 107 barriers, 75, 357 basketball, 420 beautification, 303 behavior, 3, 19, 100, 147, 185, 204, 247, 250, 265, 266, 290, 333, 334, 335, 336, 337, 338, 339, 340, 342, 345, 346, 350, 352, 353, 398, 410, 412, 424, 447, 492, 503, 511, 524 Beijing, 52, 510 Belgium, 523
Index belief systems, 39 beliefs, 29, 33, 43, 398 beneficial effect, 344 benefits, 47, 56, 61, 71, 312, 313, 402, 411, 508 benign, 54, 271, 442 betrayal, 403 bias, 332, 369, 487 Big Bang, 298 bilateral relations, 61, 79 binding, 135 biological weapons, 47, 57, 115 birth, 256, 274, 319, 400, 455 birth rate, 256 birth rates, 256 Black Sea, 283, 286, 290 Blacks, 329 Blair, Tony, 50, 60, 133, 134, 142, 149, 288, 289, 513 blame, 179, 321 blood, 333, 340, 346 Border Patrol, 77 Boris Yeltsin, 54, 245, 248, 251, 259, 260, 263 borrowing, 394 Bosnia, 2, 4, 5, 40, 49, 53, 173, 175, 181, 183, 184, 185, 274, 381, 385 Botswana, 144 bounds, 197, 214, 252, 429, 443 boys, 339, 484 brain, 89 brain tumor, 89 brass, 179, 181 Brazil, 222 breakdown, 262, 334, 340 breathing, 156, 341, 345 bribes, 7 Britain, 60, 61, 100, 103, 106, 109, 112, 113, 115, 116, 117, 119, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 136, 286, 412, 489 Bulgaria, 144, 284, 286, 288, 290, 294 bureaucracy, 25, 26, 29, 106, 231, 233, 235, 307, 377, 379, 381, 390, 496, 511, 512, 523 Burma, 442 burn, 11 burning, 112, 117, 484 Burr, Aaron, 368 Bush Doctrine, 152 Bush, Barbara, 509, 510, 515 Bush, George Herbert Walker, 409, Bush, George Walker, 2, 42, 45, 48, 69, 88, 92, 94, 96, 120, 124, 194, 195, 198, 199, 204, 216, 217, 235, 275, 283, 318, 429, 430, 453, 512, 513, 515 Bush, Laura, 494, 511
529
C cabinet members, 69 cable television, 196 calculus, 76, 249 California, 24, 26, 71, 121, 128, 132, 144, 208, 221, 227, 238, 241, 242, 272, 310, 400, 434, 499, 521, 524 Cambodia, 145 Cameroon, 144 Camp David, 14 campaign strategies, 371 campaigns, 24, 112, 129, 183, 184, 185, 265, 266, 267, 319, 360, 412, 420, 423, 495, 496, 508, 520, 525 Canada, 65, 70, 72, 73, 75, 77, 78, 84, 113, 115, 136, 219, 227, 296, 309, 483, 485 candidates, 13, 19, 32, 71, 72, 76, 185, 202, 204, 266, 275, 292, 298, 367, 397, 410, 411, 412, 413, 414, 420, 447, 453, 501, 508, 510, 516 capitalism, 55, 114, 493, 512 capitalist system, 118, 480 Capitol Hill, 24, 232 cardiovascular disease, 341 Caribbean, 114, 176, 520 carrier, 52, 153, 155, 156, 157, 158, 160, 161, 165, 166, 167, 179 case law, 218, 224 case study, 349, 350, 352, 353, 359, 497 cash flow, 510 cast, 367, 399 casting, 266, 367 catalyst, 13, 159 catalysts, 197 catharsis, 460 Caucasus, 521 CBO, 15 CBS, 318, 356, 414 CCC, 306, 307, 312, 316 cell, 55, 139, 140, 419 cell phones, 55 censorship, 210, 223 Central Asia, 40, 137, 149, 150 Central Europe, 144 certainty, 109, 223 certificate, 521 chain of command, 164, 236 channels, 233, 234 chaos, 159 charities, 209, 220, 225, 466 charm, 462 Chechnya, 251, 256, 289 chemical weapons, 138, 147, 148
530
Index
Cheney, Dick, 8, 12, 55, 56, 237, 488 Chicago, 35, 38, 40, 41, 43, 44, 115, 142, 143, 150, 151, 152, 205, 218, 223, 224, 227, 261, 279, 314, 344, 346, 347, 362, 399, 408, 412, 434, 473, 488, 502, 505, 513 chicken, 118 Chief Justice, 210, 211, 213, 217, 223, 224, 246, 431, 434 Chief of Staff, 12, 56, 169, 189, 278 child labor, 470, 474 child rearing, 462 childhood, 460 children, 54, 71, 303, 304, 310, 349, 350, 351, 352, 353, 355, 356, 359, 360, 361, 362, 457, 460, 462, 466, 467, 471, 474, 475, 483, 484, 494, 514 Chile, 95, 478 chimera, 63 China, 2, 5, 30, 39, 41, 52, 55, 56, 61, 66, 145, 197, 216, 274, 442, 489 Chinese, 5, 14, 22, 52, 54, 87 CIA, 7, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 98, 129, 140, 150, 151, 184, 190, 226, 502, 519 circulation, 462 citizenship, 78, 214 civil law, 215, 216 civil liberties, 208, 211, 213, 217, 220, 221, 226, 227, 374, 429, 431, 432, 433, 434, 437, 440, 441, 442 civil rights, 214, 319, 320, 321, 323, 325, 326, 327, 329, 440, 441, 496, 504, 505, 523 civil servants, 378, 382, 391 civil service, 77, 377, 379, 381, 382, 384, 389, 390, 524 civil service reform, 524 civil war, 101, 209, 260 Civil War, 62, 84, 207, 208, 259, 429, 430, 432, 521 classes, 211, 430, 432, 459, 470, 481, 499, 517 classification, 237, 238, 372 classroom, 369 classrooms, 366 clean air, 308 Clean Air Act, 302, 311 cleaning, 176, 484 cleavage, 104, 473 cleavages, 60, 508 Cleveland, Grover, 368, 446 clients, 219, 226 climate change, 327 clinical depression, 346 Clinton, Hillary Rodham, 493 Clinton, William Jefferson, 4, 5, 6, 9, 14, 24, 30, 31, 32, 34, 40, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 70, 71,
88, 89, 90, 94, 96, 120, 124, 173, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 188, 189, 191, 197, 230, 231, 235, 237, 239, 245, 246, 248, 249, 250, 252, 254, 255, 256, 257, 258, 259, 260, 261, 262, 265, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271, 272, 273, 274, 275, 276, 277, 279, 280, 283, 285, 288, 291, 301, 302, 303, 307, 309, 310, 311, 312, 313, 314, 316, 317, 318, 361, 377, 378, 379, 380, 381, 382, 383, 384, 385, 386, 387, 388, 389, 390, 402, 407, 408, 409, 410, 414, 415, 416, 417, 418, 419, 420, 421, 423, 424, 425, 426, 427, 435, 451, 452, 490, 491, 493, 494, 495, 510, 512, 515, 516, 520, 522 closure, 12 CNN, 32, 202, 414, 422, 439, 441, 523 coal, 304, 308, 311 Coast Guard, 116 coastal management, 311 coattails, 4, 493 cocaine, 339 cocoon, 488 codes, 415, 476 coding, 415 coercion, 181, 396, 399 coffee, 222, 463 cognitive dissonance, 423 coherence, 390 cohesion, 248, 403 Cold War, 3, 7, 17, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 26, 29, 30, 31, 32, 34, 35, 36, 39, 40, 44, 45, 46, 47, 52, 53, 54, 56, 58, 59, 62, 64, 65, 66, 67, 77, 83, 85, 91, 94, 95, 96, 97, 115, 118, 120, 123, 124, 134, 147, 155, 159, 160, 163, 166, 173, 183, 186, 240, 241, 284, 294, 295, 297, 381, 385, 489, 505, 514, 523 collaboration, 465 collateral (damage), 57 collective unconscious, 490 College Station, 394, 492 colleges, 466 Colombia, 442 colonial rule, 113 commander-in-chief, 256, 429, 431, 434 commerce, 103, 107, 113, 115, 116, 118, 120, 126, 127, 131 commercials, 266 Committee on Armed Services, 168, 169, 170 commodities, 254 commodity, 104 common law, 247 communication, 163, 184, 233, 265, 267, 269, 307, 457, 461 communism, 10, 29, 52, 86, 493 Communist Party, 86, 95, 248, 253
Index community, 10, 11, 12, 32, 47, 49, 56, 83, 90, 91, 92, 93, 247, 289, 306, 396, 398, 400, 403, 404, 520 compensation, 214, 379, 463 competence, 380 competency, 516 competition, 17, 29, 101, 103, 114, 116, 196, 204, 205, 501 competitor, 255, 495 complement, 50, 509 complexity, 69, 75, 76, 388 compliance, 21, 60, 321, 322, 324, 325, 327, 331, 332, 434, 470, 502 components, 39, 73, 124, 277, 352, 405, 514 composition, 193, 196, 223, 443 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, 31, 57 concentration, 18 conception, 53, 222, 490 concrete, 6, 18, 166 condensation, 465 confessions, 440 confidence, 4, 17, 77, 235, 247, 259, 261, 344, 399, 434, 470 confidentiality, 12 conflict, 6, 8, 9, 10, 13, 33, 38, 47, 53, 55, 58, 63, 84, 99, 103, 111, 113, 118, 123, 125, 153, 156, 157, 160, 161, 162, 164, 165, 166, 175, 177, 207, 235, 286, 304, 311, 377, 378, 379, 381, 382, 385, 391, 436, 437, 492, 513, 522 confrontation, 24, 52, 93, 118, 212, 311 confusion, 153, 161, 167, 196, 221, 331 Congressional Budget Office, 11 congruence, 377, 379, 381, 385, 386 Connecticut, 104, 416, 417, 419, 420, 422 connectivity, 162 consciousness, 193, 319 consensus, 9, 19, 34, 35, 39, 40, 41, 44, 59, 70, 73, 75, 124, 182, 183, 237, 256, 276, 284, 294, 295, 352, 396, 398, 403, 404 consent, 292, 331, 396, 399, 404, 443 conservation, 301, 302, 303, 304, 305, 306, 312, 313, 314 consolidation, 51, 490 Constitution, 103, 127, 175, 176, 183, 211, 212, 214, 215, 216, 217, 219, 223, 246, 247, 248, 249, 252, 256, 258, 262, 297, 303, 351, 367, 368, 370, 371, 374, 375, 393, 394, 395, 396, 397, 401, 402, 403, 404, 405, 429, 430, 431, 435, 438, 439, 441, 442, 443, 446, 473, 479, 490, 497, 498, 507, 522 constitutional law, 521 constraints, 17, 25, 64, 163, 277, 301, 302 construction, 32, 49, 54, 64, 103, 104, 105, 214, 306, 307 consultants, 267, 269, 409, 423
531
consulting, 13 consumer goods, 324 consumers, 83, 97, 196 consumption, 196, 255, 516 content analysis, 369, 371, 372 contingency, 166, 508 continuity, 6, 130, 193, 324 contract enforcement, 327 control, 10, 11, 17, 21, 23, 48, 49, 59, 86, 92, 95, 96, 97, 130, 146, 153, 154, 156, 157, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 165, 167, 176, 178, 180, 182, 184, 187, 188, 196, 197, 210, 221, 232, 239, 255, 259, 260, 276, 277, 307, 308, 315, 333, 351, 367, 377, 394, 399, 400, 412, 445, 448, 449, 451, 470, 472, 488, 492, 493, 500, 503 convergence, 75 conviction, 13, 105, 119, 214, 218, 220, 246, 258, 260, 438, 473, 517 cooking, 484 Coolidge, Calvin, 333, 334, 339, 342, 345, 346, 347, 348, 522 Coolidge, Grace, 347, 348 Copenhagen, 113, 289 corporations, 320, 324, 326, 327 correlation, 156 corruption, 77, 254, 259, 288 costs, 11, 13, 42, 63, 64, 67, 91, 280, 491, 508 counsel, 183, 212, 218, 452, 491 counseling, 495 coupling, 374 Court of Appeals, 218, 219, 220 coverage, 76, 201, 202, 205, 250, 267, 274, 275, 352, 362, 369, 371, 372, 373, 374, 481, 501, 508 covering, 145, 196, 355, 374 crack, 135 credentials, 74, 321, 379, 458 credibility, 53, 273, 288, 319, 327, 331 credit, 7, 85, 105, 121, 127, 217, 321, 409, 435, 504, 505 credit card fraud, 217 crime, 212, 216, 220, 247, 249, 256, 273, 430, 433, 439, 488 criminal behavior, 260 criminals, 223, 430 crisis management, 231 criticism, 57, 63, 90, 133, 136, 147, 198, 203, 271, 320, 325, 329, 366, 399, 430, 431, 432, 440, 441, 462, 463, 473, 511, 515 Croatia, 144, 286, 290 cruise missiles, 138, 153, 154, 156, 166 crystallization, 200 Cuba, 30, 53, 218, 246, 478, 504 Cuban government, 69
532
Index
cues, 413 culture, 63, 395, 474, 498, 502 curiosity, 84, 517 currency, 62, 489 current balance, 186 curriculum, 517 customers, 225 cyberterrorism, 225 cycles, 1, 2 Cyprus, 144 Czech Republic, 54, 284, 291, 295, 298
D danger, 3, 10, 13, 56, 57, 59, 106, 181, 185, 210, 214, 223, 247, 430, 431, 432, 437, 438 data collection, 414 data set, 414, 492 database, 205, 219 dating, 86, 220, 272 Davis, Jefferson, 211 DCI, 85, 87, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 97, 232 death, 22, 25, 76, 77, 85, 86, 106, 181, 210, 219, 223, 333, 334, 342, 343, 345, 346, 397, 440, 460, 462, 464, 466, 469, 480, 502 death penalty, 76, 77 deaths, 48, 140, 147, 177, 191, 218, 437 debts, 13 decision makers, 29, 87 decision making, 12, 33, 34, 35, 360, 396, 397, 500 decision-making process, 231, 232, 284 decisions, 12, 17, 20, 21, 30, 33, 34, 39, 111, 119, 136, 161, 175, 194, 195, 209, 212, 221, 223, 231, 235, 236, 274, 290, 302, 315, 349, 351, 357, 360, 380, 396, 397, 398, 399, 412, 433, 435, 443, 447, 487, 498, 506, 510 deconstruction, 490 defects, 10, 114 defendants, 219, 440 defense, 3, 5, 6, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 27, 32, 40, 47, 48, 57, 58, 61, 62, 77, 83, 106, 111, 112, 115, 119, 133, 134, 138, 142, 143, 146, 147, 153, 156, 160, 163, 177, 184, 186, 187, 190, 229, 230, 235, 237, 242, 258, 284, 285, 287, 291, 293, 297, 322, 323, 325, 355, 358, 377, 379, 381, 382, 383, 384, 385, 386, 387, 389, 390, 391, 433, 435, 437, 440, 463, 489 defensiveness, 54 deficit, 11 definition, 7, 63, 83, 111, 112, 201, 208, 217, 322, 360, 368, 441 Delaware, 110, 414, 431 delivery, 9, 17, 19, 23, 158, 383
demand, 60, 64, 232, 240, 339, 356, 374, 378, 513 democracy, 11, 35, 41, 46, 47, 54, 64, 127, 181, 265, 278, 391, 394, 395, 441, 462, 487, 492, 493, 507, 509, 511, 512 Democrat, 11, 95, 116, 248, 381, 410, 413, 425, 426, 432, 441 Democratic Party, 59, 70, 94, 187, 248, 288, 321, 407, 409, 452, 458, 467, 472, 473, 474, 479, 480, 481 democratization, 63, 123 Democrats, 4, 95, 116, 134, 200, 201, 202, 204, 258, 275, 276, 309, 313, 377, 378, 380, 381, 390, 411, 413, 422, 431, 432, 434, 446, 452, 453, 476, 477, 495, 505, 509 demographic change, 125 demographic data, 488 denial, 48, 251, 258 Denmark, 146, 289, 297 Department of Agriculture, 304 Department of Commerce, 523 Department of Defense, 66, 92, 170, 178, 218, 284, 291, 327, 520 Department of Homeland Security, 78, 93, 191, 220 Department of Justice, 219 dependent variable, 449, 450 deposition, 249, 250 depression, 313, 333, 334, 345 deregulation, 302, 512 desire, 40, 48, 61, 73, 103, 159, 183, 184, 221, 286, 287, 292, 310, 432, 448, 457, 458 desires, 287 destruction, 18, 25, 53, 60, 113, 148, 195, 210, 216, 305, 434, 437, 502 detainees, 218, 219 detention, 69 deterrence, 8, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 56, 57, 58, 59 developing countries, 22 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 348 differentiation, 492 dignity, 398, 423, 424, 466 disappointment, 105, 107, 291 disaster, 53, 79, 88, 89, 90, 107, 119, 175, 499 discipline, 352, 494 discount rate, 344 discounting, 39, 373 discourse, 62, 78 discrimination, 214, 319, 320, 321, 323, 325, 326, 327, 477, 480, 481 disposition, 255, 334, 335, 338, 339 dissatisfaction, 160, 409 distress, 256, 339, 341
Index distribution, 221, 383 District of Columbia, 219, 368 diversification, 342 diversity, 380, 384, 403 division, 307, 358, 368, 373, 487, 488 divorce, 337, 478, 495 DNA, 219 doctors, 334 dogs, 93 Dole, Elizabeth, 511 domestic economy, 52 domestic factors, 29, 30, 114 domestic laws, 478 domestic policy, 2, 4, 51, 115, 203, 303, 446, 449, 504, 505, 512 dominance, 13, 18, 34, 62, 124, 125, 128, 173, 174, 239, 288, 395, 446 donations, 209 donors, 509 doors, 395 dosage, 339 draft, 20, 61, 223, 248, 321, 343, 381, 393, 394 drug use, 254 drying, 135 due process, 207, 208, 210, 214, 217, 220, 221, 222 Duma, 248, 249, 251, 252, 253, 256, 257, 258, 259, 263 dumping, 109, 308 durability, 497 duration, 8, 196, 199, 203, 429, 437, 443, 464, 505 duties, 95, 124, 135, 145, 161, 163, 209, 231, 232, 238, 337, 343, 398, 399, 459, 483, 498
E early warning, 160, 232 earnings, 463, 465, 466 ears, 26, 108, 227, 354, 456, 457, 464 earth, 106, 137, 398, 440, 517 East Asia, 519 Eastern Europe, 52, 95, 136, 284, 287, 294 eating, 341 echoing, 475 economic assistance, 77, 288 economic growth, 51 economic indicator, 452 economic institutions, 31 economic losses, 77 economic policy, 51, 301, 345 economic problem, 345 economic reform, 290 economic systems, 493 economics, 41, 54, 55, 65, 489
533
ecosystem, 310 educated women, 458, 495 education, 1, 2, 3, 5, 13, 71, 327, 355, 380, 459, 470, 471, 472, 484, 517 Education, 1, 322, 331, 380, 393, 458, 472, 521 educational programs, 354 educators, 373 egg, 365 ego, 193 Egypt, 9, 107, 137, 145, 219 Eisenhower, Dwight, 3, 85, 86, 187, 445 Eisenhower, Julie Nixon, 349, 350, 352, 353, 356, 357, 359, 360, 362, 363 elderly, 87, 354 elders, 127, 400 election, 4, 14, 20, 56, 63, 69, 71, 72, 80, 95, 106, 116, 195, 198, 202, 204, 212, 247, 248, 251, 255, 256, 258, 265, 266, 268, 270, 273, 275, 279, 309, 315, 343, 353, 354, 356, 365, 366, 367, 368, 369, 374, 381, 407, 408, 409, 410, 411, 412, 413, 414, 416, 420, 421, 422, 423, 433, 445, 446, 447, 448, 449, 450, 451, 452, 453, 459, 460, 462, 465, 476, 487, 489, 495, 496, 498, 501, 502, 508, 509, 510, 512, 515 electoral college, 365, 366, 367, 368, 369, 371, 372, 373, 374, 375 electrical power, 21 electricity, 484 elementary school, 517 email, 55, 217 emancipation, 518 embargo, 48 emigration, 75, 77 emission, 310 emotions, 345 empathy, 495 employees, 70, 183, 216, 220, 306, 324, 325, 326, 327, 335, 336, 339, 340, 470 employment, 72, 73, 74, 76, 78, 207, 306, 319, 320, 321, 322, 323, 324, 325, 326, 327, 328, 329, 459, 476 encouragement, 286, 309, 324, 328 endorsements, 176, 411 endurance, 36, 118 enemas, 341 enemy combatants, 216, 217, 218 energy, 1, 4, 59, 120, 128, 233, 266, 303, 306, 346, 457 engagement, 5, 38, 47, 49, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 124, 128, 130, 176, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 354, 443, 510 England, 101, 127, 222, 470
534
Index
enlargement, 31, 47, 49, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 61, 62, 283, 284, 285, 286, 287, 288, 289, 290, 291, 292, 293, 294, 295, 296, 298, 523 Enlightenment, 517 enrollment, 470 enslavement, 432 entanglements, 5, 107 enthusiasm, 48, 54, 60, 137, 257, 340, 452 entrepreneurship, 466 environment, 12, 46, 54, 56, 62, 72, 79, 276, 278, 284, 294, 295, 301, 302, 303, 304, 305, 306, 307, 308, 309, 310, 311, 312, 313, 314, 317, 350, 354, 356, 359, 360, 398, 488, 494, 500, 504, 513, 514 environmental issues, 5, 306, 308 environmental policy, 51, 302, 307, 308, 309, 523 environmental protection, 312 Environmental Protection Agency, 308, 317, 381, 391 environmentalism, 35, 302, 312, 313 EPA, 308, 309, 310, 312, 391, 392 Equal Rights Amendment, 354, 472, 475, 477 equality, 324, 469, 471, 473, 474, 478, 479, 480, 481, 512, 518 equilibrium, 166 equipment, 136, 137, 144, 164, 189 equity, 481 ERA, 354, 355, 476, 477, 480, 481, 482 Eritrea, 141 erosion, 208 ESDP, 287 espionage, 52, 85, 96, 225, 433, 434 estimating, 420 Estonia, 144, 284, 286, 292, 294 ethics, 380, 521 ethnic diversity, 384 etiquette, 461 EU, 134, 136, 144, 287, 288, 290, 297, 298 Euphrates River, 154 Eurasia, 34 Euro, 295, 297 Europe, 23, 57, 59, 75, 77, 84, 100, 102, 104, 106, 107, 116, 117, 118, 129, 134, 142, 147, 149, 163, 183, 185, 222, 253, 262, 283, 286, 287, 288, 294, 296, 297, 298, 299, 400, 401, 403, 442, 471, 489 European Union, 41, 74, 75, 77, 134, 285, 287, 295 evacuation, 213 evening, 196, 274, 339, 340, 341, 359, 401, 459, 463, 477 evening news, 196, 274 Everglades, 309, 310 evidence, 17, 25, 44, 60, 63, 76, 127, 128, 138, 141, 146, 147, 148, 149, 194, 217, 226, 247, 249, 250, 254, 257, 267, 269, 274, 289, 291, 292, 320, 335,
359, 362, 379, 395, 401, 413, 421, 424, 430, 440, 441, 460, 466, 476, 494, 503, 505, 506 evil, 9, 32, 57, 58, 61, 210, 439, 517 evolution, 1, 3, 111, 112, 121, 158, 284, 469, 501 Ex parte Quirin, 439, 440 exaggeration, 470 exclusion, 47, 214, 470, 514 excuse, 175 execution, 399, 432 Executive Branch, 84, 520 executive function, 83 Executive Order, 314, 317, 320, 321, 322, 325, 328, 332, 429, 433, 434, 437, 438, 439, 440, 488 exercise, 23, 50, 73, 143, 147, 176, 217, 223, 233, 301, 302, 339, 346, 431, 434, 439, 492, 495, 498, 503 exertion, 63, 120 exit poll, 365, 407, 414, 415, 416, 453, 501 expanded trade, 128 expenditures, 23, 115, 121 expertise, 185, 271, 315, 324, 380, 488 exploitation, 469, 471, 475, 480 explosives, 20 exposure, 117, 205, 319, 324, 421 expulsion, 53, 255 extroversion, 114 eyes, 39, 161, 227, 273, 357, 369, 436
F face-to-face interaction, 395, 405 facilitators, 398 failure, 4, 5, 13, 14, 23, 42, 48, 75, 85, 87, 88, 93, 107, 126, 148, 157, 216, 327, 329, 342, 373, 502 fairness, 208, 429, 439 faith, 135, 203, 355, 480, 517 Faith Based Initiative, 2, 4 false alarms, 434 family, 157, 181, 335, 336, 338, 339, 341, 345, 352, 353, 354, 355, 356, 357, 358, 359, 360, 422, 455, 456, 458, 460, 462, 463, 466, 467, 469, 470, 471, 475, 481, 483, 484, 502, 509, 510, 511, 516, 518 family life, 359, 360, 471 family members, 345, 352, 356, 511 farmers, 342 fatigue, 346 fear(s), 25, 107, 112, 115, 117, 120, 121, 122, 181, 197, 209, 219, 220, 225, 335, 337, 339, 434, 442 Federal Convention, 247, 375 federal courts, 208, 212, 221, 223, 326 federal government, 11, 117, 311, 322, 323, 324, 327, 446, 511, 512 federal judiciary, 207
Index federal law, 215, 220, 222, 434, 477 Federal Register, 317 Federal Reserve Board, 342, 344, 345 federalism, 366, 401, 403, 508, 509 feedback, 90, 267 feelings, 4, 119, 121, 127, 273, 308, 346, 355, 407, 507, 516 feet, 164, 181, 484 FEMA, 383 fever, 341 Filipino, 343 finance, 12, 135, 148, 308, 491 financial crisis, 52 financial institutions, 225 financial resources, 3, 135, 149, 457 financial support, 64 financial system, 6, 49 financing, 79, 491 Finland, 149, 297 firms, 2, 3, 323, 324, 325 First Amendment, 219 first dimension, 45 first lady, 335, 336, 337, 338, 339, 351, 455, 459, 460, 461, 462, 463, 464, 494, 495 First World, 122 fish, 103, 104, 336, 340 fishing, 336, 340, 484 fixation, 60 flexibility, 155, 156, 432 flight, 50, 145, 155, 156, 157, 158 float, 107, 164, 284 flood, 307 fluid, 233, 288 focus groups, 280 focusing, 39, 141, 149, 198, 301, 413, 434, 474, 504 food, 208, 336, 471, 484 Ford, Gerald,48, 123, 129, 177, 183, 188, 230, 233, 234, 235, 237, 239, 242, 247, 260, 268, 270, 278, 280, 330 forecasting, 439 foreign affairs, 29, 30, 31, 34, 35, 40, 114, 235, 238, 491, 496, 505 foreign banks, 143 foreign nationals, 117 foreign policy, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 17, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 45, 46, 47, 49, 51, 55, 56, 57, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 65, 71, 72, 73, 74, 79, 83, 111, 114, 115, 116, 120, 123, 124, 129, 133, 142, 173, 174, 195, 197, 229, 230, 231, 232, 233, 234, 235, 240, 242, 283, 286, 293, 295, 301, 303, 333, 385, 391, 438, 487, 489, 491, 504, 514, 519, 521, 522 foreign policymaking, 33, 40, 234
535
Forest Service, 304, 306, 312, 313 forests, 303, 304, 305, 306, 311, 316, 485 formal education, 458 Fortas, Abe, 320 Fox Administration, 69 fragmentation, 10, 196, 204 framing, 50, 201, 202, 204, 271, 272, 402, 478, 524 France, 40, 95, 100, 102, 103, 104, 106, 109, 112, 114, 118, 119, 136, 138, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 149, 261, 288, 290, 294, 295, 297, 413 fraud, 73, 76, 78 free trade, 41, 56, 61, 70, 73, 75 free trade agreement, 70, 75 freedom, 35, 39, 56, 72, 74, 75, 112, 115, 124, 125, 130, 135, 207, 208, 209, 286, 287, 396, 402, 432, 461, 493, 517, 518 freezing, 135, 149, 480 friction, 160, 184 friendship, 224, 514, 515 fruits, 165, 440 frustration, 25, 77, 117, 160, 514 fuel, 124, 127 fulfillment, 455 full employment, 76 funding, 23, 30, 77, 83, 91, 95, 105, 164, 178, 182, 307, 473 fundraising, 79, 411, 472 funds, 40, 84, 135, 149, 227, 410, 424 furniture, 456, 457, 459, 465 fusion, 20 futures, 266
G Gallup Poll, 37, 188, 194, 197, 199, 200, 201, 205, 449 gambling, 76 GAO, 4 gasoline, 309 gender, 380, 384, 476, 481, 510 gender role, 476 gene, 493 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, (GATT) 52, 311 general election, 356, 407, 408, 409, 414, 420, 421, 424, 433 generation, 21, 106, 160, 212, 254, 304, 354, 394, 469, 510, 516 Geneva, 22 genocide, 33, 179, 180, 252, 258 geography, 113, 122, 156 Georgia, 89, 145, 323, 398, 415, 416, 417, 419, 420, 440, 522
536
Index
Germany, 22, 40, 112, 114, 117, 118, 119, 140, 163, 190, 215, 216, 284, 286, 287, 288, 290, 294, 295, 296, 297, 298, 412, 489, 523 Gibraltar, 103 gift, 339, 400 gift giving, 400 gifted, 484 girls, 353, 457, 470 glass, 25, 201 glasses, 335 global terrorism, 10, 11, 79 Global Warming, 310, 318 globalization, 45, 46, 47, 51, 54, 55, 62, 71, 405 Globalization, 14, 15 goals, 4, 10, 12, 30, 34, 40, 41, 46, 64, 73, 108, 119, 124, 139, 272, 304, 311, 351, 352, 379, 382, 385, 386, 443, 451, 469, 478, 489, 503 God, 101, 518 Gore, Al, 120, 312, 313, 365, 407, 410, 422, 423, 424, 488 governance, 50, 402, 403, 494 government budget, 258 GPS, 156, 158, 167, 170 grades, 322, 384 graduate students, 505, 509 grand jury, 248, 250, 251, 256, 257 grassroots, 23 gravity, 51, 57, 158, 260, 484 grazing, 304, 310, 311 Great Britain, 21, 84, 123, 128, 514 Great Depression, 446, 461 Greece, 95, 290, 497 greed, 9, 215 grief, 260, 334, 345, 459 grounding, 351 group size, 395 grouping, 85 groups, 13, 31, 33, 35, 135, 143, 160, 165, 193, 210, 214, 217, 220, 227, 229, 271, 291, 293, 302, 319, 320, 323, 324, 395, 405, 421, 441, 464, 472, 473, 474, 478, 479, 496 growth, 55, 113, 114, 115, 116, 128, 129, 158, 177, 204, 252, 260 Guantanamo, 218, 226, 442 Guantanamo Bay, 218, 442 guardian, 33 guidance, 9, 12, 156, 158, 163, 164, 167, 221, 227, 238, 393, 395, 446, 458 guidelines, 32 guilt, 118, 149, 247, 346, 424 guilty, 90, 148, 223, 258, 261 guns, 100, 102, 107
H habeas corpus, 207, 209, 210, 211, 212, 215, 216, 218, 222, 223, 429, 430, 431, 433 hacking, 225 Haiti, 38, 173, 180, 181, 184, 185, 189 Hamilton, Alexander, 86, 247 handedness, 103 hands, 19, 22, 155, 175, 177, 184, 234, 292, 340, 511 happiness, 304 harassment, 79, 209 Harding, Warren, 333 harm, 175, 177, 197, 310, 398, 421, 430, 432, 436, 437, 438, 442 harmonization, 77, 79 harmony, 175, 310, 398 Harrison, Benjamin, 368 Harvard, 122, 148, 222, 227, 233, 261, 328, 331, 413, 420, 435, 440, 519 Hawaii, 84, 114, 161, 215 hay fever, 341 hazardous materials, 308 hazards, 155 healing, 499 health, 104, 218, 251, 255, 268, 272, 273, 276, 277, 308, 313, 334, 341, 354, 380, 408, 411, 420, 422, 423, 425, 475, 492, 493, 505, 514 Health and Human Services (HHS), 392 health care, 268, 272, 273, 276, 277, 313, 354, 493, 505 health problems, 255 heat, 63, 275, 358, 422 Heath, Edward, 123, 128 hegemony, 84, 114, 117 height, 12, 196 helplessness, 25 high school, 176, 494 hip, 180 hiring, 70, 322, 324, 439 Hispanic(s), 70, 72, 79, 380 homeland security, 112, 119, 285 Homeland Security Act, 220 homework, 390, 473 homogeneity, 395 honesty, 94, 360, 424 Hoover, Herbert, 340, 483 hopelessness, 25 Hormuz, Strait of, 155, 162, 165 hospitals, 457 host, 35, 146, 159, 163, 223, 231, 268, 283, 374, 407, 493 hostile acts, 216 hostility, 255, 517
Index housing, 471 human condition, 24 human nature, 517 human rights, 9, 30, 35, 52, 53, 63, 90, 181, 442, 455 humanitarian aid, 144 humanitarian crises, 173 humanitarian intervention, 54 humanity, 56 humility, 123 Humphrey, Hubert, 327, 331 Hungary, 54, 284, 291, 296, 298 hunting, 153, 154, 167, 462 husband, 216, 232, 338, 356, 456, 457, 458, 459, 460, 463, 464, 466, 472, 494, 495, 509, 510 hybrid, 248, 260, 324 hydrogen, 18, 20 hydrogen bomb, 18, 20 hypersomnia, 346 hypocrisy, 442 hypothesis, 450
I IAEA, 22 idealism, 474 identification, 70, 71, 204, 407, 409, 412, 413, 414, 415, 420, 421, 422 identity, 78, 182, 220, 394, 488, 491 ideologies of hate, 10 ideology, 39, 103, 260, 352, 378, 385, 407, 409, 410, 412, 414, 415, 420, 489, 512 illegal aliens, 76 illumination, 158 illusion, 13, 39, 259 illusions, 359 imagery, 92 images, 13, 40, 157, 195, 196, 198, 275, 351, 395, 407, 409, 410, 414, 422 imitation, 190 immediate situation, 207 immigrants, 77, 78, 79, 176, 209 immigration, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 77, 78, 79, 80, 219, 220, 520 Immigration Act, 70 immunity, 490, 491 impeachment, 245, 246, 247, 248, 249, 250, 251, 252, 253, 254, 255, 256, 257, 258, 259, 260, 261, 262, 396, 407, 424, 453, 491 imperialism, 114, 116, 118, 119 implementation, 3, 9, 11, 33, 53, 61, 71, 75, 77, 129, 130, 231, 275, 277, 307, 480 imprisonment, 432 impulsive, 353
537
inauguration, 4, 71, 195, 367, 380, 461, 523 incarceration, 219 incentives, 77, 249, 265, 287, 327, 382, 492 inclusion, 287, 288, 289, 292, 371, 476, 479, 480, 498 income, 411, 455, 456, 457, 459, 462, 463, 464, 465, 466, 467, 512 income tax, 411, 455, 456, 459 incumbents, 20, 231, 409 indecisiveness, 346 independence, 84, 85, 99, 123, 125, 126, 129, 131, 132, 207, 288, 343, 402, 455, 458, 459, 467, 469 independent variable, 449, 450 India, 11, 15, 22, 30, 39, 50, 61, 125, 126, 127, 145 Indian Ocean, 131, 136, 165 Indians, 395, 396, 399, 402, 404 indication, 139, 178, 286, 331, 341, 443 indigenous, 93 individual rights, 396, 400 industrial democracies, 80 industry, 70, 276, 287, 319, 323, 324, 327, 343, 479 inequality, 512 inertia, 88 inertial navigation system, 158 infancy, 21 infant mortality, 471 inferences, 503 inferiority, 2 information sharing, 135 information technology, 268 infrastructure, 57, 61, 63, 77, 141, 159, 162, 163 initiation, 239, 256, 437, 513 injuries, 437 injury, 338, 517 inmates, 219 innocence, 247, 489 innovation, 184 INS, 78 insecurity, 50, 79 insight, 70, 270, 394, 469, 493, 496 insomnia, 346 inspections, 60, 61 inspectors, 8, 59, 60, 181 inspiration, 394, 395, 403 instability, 40 instinct, 101 institutional reforms, 492 institutions, 2, 35, 51, 52, 55, 56, 61, 127, 193, 199, 214, 246, 260, 286, 290, 301, 414, 471, 502, 508, 522 instruction, 181 instructors, 374 instruments, 57, 260, 301, 312, 396, 488
538
Index
insurance, 101, 276, 458 integration, 61, 62, 73, 75, 79, 160, 161, 480 integrity, 64, 131, 240, 261, 423, 503 intelligence, 10, 12, 49, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 96, 97, 129, 133, 135, 136, 141, 144, 145, 149, 157, 163, 179, 189, 190, 207, 217, 218, 222, 231, 232, 237, 344, 502, 503, 519, 520 intelligence estimates, 87, 88 intelligence gathering, 97, 207, 217, 218 intensity, 35, 53, 276, 511 intentions, 3, 9, 60, 117, 120, 238, 441, 473, 504, 506 interaction, 112, 196, 346, 395, 511 interactions, 29, 336, 342 interagency committees, 236 interdependence, 54, 55, 62, 72, 75 interest groups, 29, 271, 301, 391, 508, 525 interference, 52, 119 Internal Revenue Service, 391 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), 22, 60 international law, 49, 65, 133, 216, 498, 520, 522 international migration, 70, 71, 520 international relations, 29, 40, 47, 61, 130, 489, 521 international terrorism, 38, 41, 135, 291, 437, 438 international trade, 117 internationalism, 9, 35, 489, 513 Internet, 55, 191, 196, 218, 438, 501 interpretation, 24, 69, 73, 111, 115, 201, 208, 221, 222, 233, 234, 269, 271, 304, 398, 415, 479, 493, 506 interrelationships, 512 interval, 492 intervention, 4, 49, 53, 124, 126, 127, 130, 180, 184, 185, 293 interview, 5, 60, 67, 140, 168, 170, 242, 269, 280, 295, 347, 380, 391, 392, 462, 464, 465, 466 inventions, 102 inventiveness, 22 inventors, 403 investment, 77, 113, 115, 117, 119, 164 investors, 218 invitation to participate, 221, 227 Iran, 8, 11, 30, 32, 34, 39, 53, 57, 88, 89, 124, 127, 129, 130, 155, 159, 167, 186, 187, 218, 234, 236, 238, 239, 242, 521 Iraq, 1, 2, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 32, 33, 36, 37, 38, 39, 41, 44, 45, 49, 50, 53, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 65, 67, 88, 96, 99, 120, 123, 124, 125, 127, 130, 131, 141, 147, 153, 155, 156, 158, 159, 162, 165, 166, 167, 170, 173, 176, 179, 184, 186, 190, 191, 200, 202, 203, 289, 291, 293, 294, 295, 487, 513, 515
Iraq War, 1, 10, 63, 130, 155, 159, 176 iron, 304, 343, 467 Iroquois Confederacy, 393, 394, 396, 401, 402, 403, 404, 405 irritability, 339, 345 Islam, 101, 124 Islamic, 75, 77, 209, 227 isolation, 109, 113, 197, 394 isolationism, 35 Israel, 5, 9, 13, 60, 145 Italy, 95, 290, 489
J Jackson, Andrew, 84, 368 Japan, 29, 41, 52, 114, 136, 161, 163, 212, 216, 434, 489 Jefferson, Thomas, 84, 99, 102, 106, 109, 110, 368, 402, 516 jihad, 219 job performance, 407, 409, 410, 414, 415, 417, 420, 421 jobs, 32, 86, 306, 313, 322, 325, 335, 355, 379, 382, 455, 456, 458, 461, 474, 476, 480, 501 Johnson, Andrew, 212, 246, 247, 260, 261 Johnson, Lady Bird, 495 Johnson, Lyndon, Baines, 89, 93, 114, 187, 204, 233, 319, 320, 321, 328, 330, 331, 332, 496 Joint Chiefs, 7, 24, 60, 85, 159, 161, 173, 176, 178, 180, 182, 183, 184, 186, 229 Jordan, 137, 516 journalism, 458, 460, 487 journalists, 202, 203, 245, 267, 391, 414, 505 judges, 207, 208, 220, 221, 261 judgment, 87, 174, 175, 181, 233, 237, 372, 433, 437, 439, 443, 512 judicial branch, 69 judicial power, 215 Judiciary, 208, 210, 212, 217, 223, 224, 246, 248, 249, 250, 257, 258, 441 Judiciary Committee, 246, 248, 249, 250, 257, 258, 441 juries, 220 jurisdiction, 210, 211, 212, 219, 223, 433 juror, 441 justice, 55, 117, 210, 221, 249, 250, 251, 309, 439, 440, 441, 470, 503, 511, 518 justification, 10, 19, 46, 61, 63, 103, 182, 430, 441, 442 juvenile crime, 471
Index
K Kashmir, 33, 39 Kennedy family, 511 Kennedy, Jacqueline, 495 Kennedy, John F., 196, 199, 233, 246, 319, 320, 328, 329, 380, 496 Kenya, 138, 144, 147, 173, 181, 197, 360 kerosene, 484 killing, 8 knees, 338 knots, 167 Korea, 9, 11, 15, 19, 22, 118, 163, 175, 176 Kosovo, 2, 4, 33, 35, 38, 40, 49, 53, 54, 136, 173, 175, 178, 180, 181, 184, 189, 190, 274, 285, 289, 291, 297, 298 Kurds, 159 Kuwait, 50, 88, 118, 120, 124, 126, 127, 130, 137, 138, 141, 154, 155, 159, 161, 165, 178 Kyrgyzstan, 137, 145
L labor, 69, 72, 74, 75, 78, 79, 101, 156, 271, 327, 328, 329, 473, 474, 475, 476 labor markets, 75 land, 18, 21, 23, 46, 51, 53, 57, 153, 154, 155, 156, 158, 160, 162, 167, 186, 210, 235, 250, 254, 274, 294, 304, 305, 306, 310, 311, 312, 313, 316, 318, 344, 397, 398, 439, 466, 483 language, 18, 24, 40, 53, 72, 102, 105, 216, 218, 249, 273, 292, 393, 479, 489, 490 lasers, 24 latent content, 369, 371, 373 Latin America, 85, 263, 463, 504 Latvia, 144, 284, 286, 292, 294, 296 laundry, 484 law enforcement, 79, 133, 135, 139, 207, 217, 220, 437, 443, 502 laws, 75, 79, 135, 198, 220, 222, 250, 344, 432, 438, 445, 475, 477, 478 lawyers, 217, 219, 220, 226 layoffs, 78, 324 leadership, 3, 6, 9, 11, 41, 47, 48, 49, 50, 52, 86, 93, 94, 97, 107, 112, 113, 115, 173, 174, 179, 180, 181, 182, 184, 185, 187, 189, 196, 198, 203, 239, 278, 284, 294, 305, 307, 310, 315, 325, 333, 350, 351, 352, 390, 395, 397, 398, 400, 403, 404, 405, 446, 478, 488, 493, 494, 499, 513 leadership style, 3, 395 League of Nations, 113, 114, 119, 120, 478, 513 leaks, 67
539
learning, 1, 2, 5, 13, 84, 229, 240, 371 Lebanon, 137, 177 legality, 65, 138, 208, 212, 213, 432 legislation, 70, 71, 73, 76, 104, 271, 273, 275, 276, 277, 301, 307, 308, 312, 313, 317, 326, 343, 344, 345, 402, 445, 449, 471, 472, 473, 474, 475, 476, 477, 479, 480, 492, 504, 505, 518 legislative proposals, 71 lending, 222, 342 lens, 481 lesson plan, 459 liberation, 63, 482 Liberia, 40, 63, 144 licenses, 78 life experiences, 510 life style, 334, 457 lifestyle, 339 lifetime, 455, 466, 469, 480 likelihood, 205, 226, 453 limitation, 518 Lincoln, Abraham, 113, 156, 167, 207, 208, 429, 430, 431, 518 linkage, 51, 65, 409 links, 122, 135, 137, 149, 161, 184, 333, 514 listening, 141, 358 literature, 29, 77, 91, 205, 239, 302, 349, 350, 351, 352, 378, 381, 390, 404, 446, 487, 493, 498, 499, 504, 509, 514 Lithuania, 144, 284, 286, 291, 292, 294, 297 litigation, 216, 221, 491 living conditions, 309 living standard, 256 living standards, 256 loans, 253, 287, 344, 345, 489 lobbying, 285, 310, 323, 325 lobbyists, 287 local government, 93, 127 location, 19, 137, 146, 158, 284 locus, 497 logistics, 154, 198 Los Angeles, 66, 77, 142, 144, 145, 146, 150, 227, 278, 280, 297 Lott, Trent, 293 Louisiana, 208, 329, 368, 519, 521 love, 198, 356, 358, 359, 460, 470, 517 loyalty, 208, 413, 452, 498, 510, 516 luggage, 220 lying, 217, 218, 248, 256, 512
M MacArthur, Douglas, 85 Macedonia, 53, 286, 290
540
Index
machinery, 513 Madison, James, 84, 105, 110, 402, 519, 520, 521, 522, 524 magazines, 459, 460, 461, 465 magnet, 13 magnets, 196 Malaysia, 442 males, 380 management, 33, 86, 91, 92, 93, 126, 132, 183, 208, 306, 502 mandates, 367, 403, 497 mantle, 123, 261 manufacturer, 324, 462 mapping, 184 market, 31, 32, 41, 46, 47, 51, 54, 55, 72, 79, 104, 344, 472, 475, 512 market economics, 46, 47, 54 market-based economies, 41 markets, 29, 52, 56 marriage, 354, 423, 455, 457, 458, 460, 462, 475, 478, 479 married women, 455, 461 martial law, 207, 210, 211, 215, 216 Maryland, 106, 168, 170, 241, 415, 417, 419, 520, 521, 523, 524 mass media, 512 Massachusetts, 26, 227, 336, 337, 338, 348, 353, 415, 416, 419, 420 maturation, 268 McKinley, William, 303 meals, 484 measurement, 194, 414, 449 measures, 61, 71, 73, 96, 136, 180, 201, 203, 269, 321, 328, 359, 387, 399, 410, 415, 417, 430, 434, 437, 441 meat, 99, 484 media, 26, 29, 44, 74, 86, 90, 96, 97, 184, 193, 196, 198, 201, 203, 204, 232, 234, 240, 252, 266, 267, 268, 270, 274, 275, 277, 278, 289, 301, 352, 355, 357, 358, 362, 365, 373, 378, 380, 448, 466, 467, 494, 496, 501, 508, 515, 520, 521, 523 medicine, 339, 398 Mediterranean, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 154, 163 membership, 75, 141, 224, 248, 284, 285, 286, 287, 289, 290, 292, 294, 295, 297 memory, 113, 121, 156, 269 men, 22, 62, 100, 176, 186, 211, 215, 218, 220, 225, 231, 234, 266, 327, 353, 355, 394, 396, 397, 399, 400, 402, 430, 436, 439, 455, 456, 460, 461, 469, 471, 472, 473, 474, 475, 477, 479, 480, 481, 482, 493, 507, 514, 516, 517 mental illness, 340
mentor, 472 merchandise, 72 messages, 87, 140, 217, 219, 267, 272, 274, 277, 307, 310, 446, 449, 479, 491, 514 messengers, 329 metamorphosis, 230 metaphor, 1, 2, 3, 13, 469 Mexican-Americans, 76 Mexico, 69, 70, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 84, 307, 399, 401 Mexico migration, 69, 72, 74, 76, 79 Miami, 422, 521, 522 Middle East, 2, 5, 10, 11, 14, 15, 31, 39, 40, 41, 53, 54, 56, 58, 63, 77, 123, 124, 125, 127, 128, 129, 151, 157, 159, 161, 162, 169 midterm elections, 204, 445, 446, 447, 448, 449, 451, 452, 453 migrants, 79 migration, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 76, 77, 78, 79 militarism, 116, 122, 471 military aid, 335 military dictatorship, 434 military government, 215 Military Order, 437 military pressure, 109 military tribunals, 209, 212, 215, 216, 217, 218, 429, 430, 432, 433, 437, 438, 439, 440, 441, 442, 443 militias, 210, 225 Millennium, 400 minimum wage, 470, 471, 474, 475 mining, 310, 311, 352 Minnesota, 524 minorities, 291, 322, 455, 503 minority, 8, 35, 79, 252, 260, 276, 293, 323, 324, 325, 326, 434, 452 missions, 31, 38, 48, 141, 151, 154, 155, 156, 157, 162, 167, 175, 182, 183, 186, 189, 242, 377, 381, 382, 386, 520 Mississippi River, 305 Missouri, 79, 415, 419, 420 mobility, 72, 74, 75 modeling, 337 models, 31, 127, 156, 289, 351, 404, 413, 416 moderates, 257, 329 modernization, 125, 129 modules, 520 mold, 9, 31, 359 momentum, 7, 60, 283, 411 money, 55, 100, 105, 128, 209, 217, 232, 323, 342, 411, 422, 441, 455, 456, 457, 458, 459, 460, 463, 464, 466, 467, 491, 510, 512 monopoly, 114, 115 Montana, 304, 310, 319
Index mood, 6 morale, 94, 381 morality, 24, 254 moratorium, 23, 292, 309 morning, 183, 196, 321, 337, 341 Morocco, 75, 137 Moscow, 255, 284, 287, 289 mothers, 456 motion, 19, 52, 104, 247, 249, 251, 276, 294 motivation, 116, 117, 121, 122, 235, 467 motives, 105, 147, 212, 214, 294, 323 mountains, 33 movement, 6, 23, 25, 52, 72, 75, 80, 93, 146, 154, 162, 163, 287, 326, 360, 469, 471, 472, 473, 476, 480, 499 MSNBC.com, 440 multidimensional, 54 multilateralism, 41, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 53, 54, 61, 135, 141, 513 multinational corporations, 34 multiplier, 205 multiplier effect, 205 multivariate, 415, 416, 417 multivariate statistics, 417 murder, 147, 439 Muslim, 39, 79, 81, 100, 137, 181, 219, 222, 227 Muslims, 39, 79, 100, 101 mutual annihilation, 17, 19
N NAFTA, 31, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 77, 79, 277, 311 nation, 1, 5, 6, 11, 18, 19, 21, 25, 39, 40, 49, 57, 58, 59, 63, 72, 83, 99, 100, 102, 103, 104, 107, 112, 123, 125, 127, 128, 135, 154, 159, 162, 163, 165, 185, 196, 207, 210, 220, 221, 234, 239, 275, 293, 306, 307, 311, 324, 342, 344, 345, 346, 354, 356, 360, 365, 374, 394, 396, 397, 400, 402, 430, 432, 435, 466, 494, 496, 497, 506 nation building, 5, 6, 40, 63, 185 nation state building, 497 national emergency, 438 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 392 national identity, 78 national interests, 55, 131, 173, 284, 287, 290 national origin, 327 National Park Service, 306, 391 national parks, 306, 307, 308, 311, 318 national parties, 1 National Public Radio, 407 National Science Foundation, 391
541
national security, 8, 11, 48, 55, 56, 57, 71, 83, 124, 174, 203, 213, 219, 229, 230, 231, 232, 233, 234, 235, 236, 237, 238, 240, 242, 303, 438, 439, 490 National Security Council, 8, 52, 56, 66, 70, 75, 91, 95, 180, 229, 235, 236, 241, 242, 243, 310 nationality, 478 nation-building, 49 Native Americans, 84, 393, 394, 395, 401, 404, 405, 504 NATO, 2, 10, 23, 32, 40, 49, 53, 54, 65, 134, 136, 138, 139, 142, 143, 144, 149, 150, 181, 182, 184, 189, 191, 283, 284, 285, 286, 287, 288, 289, 290, 291, 292, 293, 294, 295, 296, 297, 298, 299, 523 natural disasters, 176 natural resources, 287, 303, 304, 305, 306, 307, 308, 379 Nebraska, 367, 399, 508 negative consequences, 39, 471 neglect, 35, 513 negotiating, 50, 52, 74, 109, 188, 290 negotiation, 178, 179 nervous system, 339 Netherlands, 144 network, 135, 139, 141, 147, 149, 196, 207, 227, 312, 321, 365, 380, 405, 462 New England, 347, 415, 416, 417, 422, 471 New Hampshire primary, 255, 415, 420, 422 New Jersey, 10, 111, 222, 223, 224, 227, 241, 408 New Mexico, 396, 401 New Orleans, 222, 504 New Zealand, 136 news coverage, 250, 411 newspapers, 22, 71, 124, 196, 201, 202, 227, 254, 322, 434, 462, 464, 524 NHTSA, 383 Nicaragua, 88, 89, 234, 239, 343 Nigeria, 132, 442 Nixon, Pat, 355, 358 Nixon, Richard, 32, 63, 93, 129, 233, 246, 248, 257, 259, 260, 301, 308, 309, 312, 313, 317, 320, 330, 353, 354, 358, 359, 360, 363 noise, 308 non-citizens, 77, 208, 217, 218, 433, 440, 442 nonproliferation, 52 North Africa, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 106, 107, 109 North America, 51, 52, 70, 72, 74, 75, 80, 121, 134, 305, 311, 402, 461, 520 North American Free Trade Agreement, 52, 70, 72, 311 North Atlantic Treaty Organization, 134 North Carolina, 110, 122, 222, 325, 363, 395
542
Index
North Korea, 8, 9, 10, 11, 32, 39, 53, 56, 57, 62, 85, 87, 186 Northern Ireland, 31 Norway, 289 NPR, 57 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, 31 nuclear weapons, 11, 17, 18, 19, 21, 24, 26, 27, 30, 57, 185, 208, 291 nucleus, 18, 251 nursing, 458 nuts, 518
O OAS, 134, 136 obedience, 187 objectivity, 516 obligation, 232, 233, 329, 399, 470, 498 observations, 169, 170, 239, 413, 509, 510 obstruction, 249, 250, 251 OECD, 73, 80 offenders, 176 Office of Management and Budget, 67, 232, 310, 392 oil, 11, 12, 58, 59, 104, 124, 127, 128, 129, 159, 178, 304, 308, 311 oil production, 13 oil revenues, 12, 13, 127 oil spill, 308 Oklahoma, 77, 197, 400 olive oil, 104 Oman, 126, 128, 137, 145, 159 OMB, 232 omission, 384, 497 Operation Enduring Freedom, 136, 139 opium, 104 opportunism, 64, 312, 313 opposition parties, 248 oppression, 481 optics, 167 optimism, 12, 24, 490 orbit, 163 organ, 412, 496 organization, 22, 85, 93, 135, 141, 223, 236, 237, 283, 285, 288, 320, 323, 326, 342, 410, 441, 464, 472, 474, 475, 490, 493, 494, 500, 513, 520 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 520 Organization of American States, 134 organizations, 29, 34, 55, 61, 79, 86, 134, 135, 139, 142, 248, 319, 320, 324, 365, 378, 379, 382, 395, 414, 458, 463, 479, 496, 503 orientation, 8, 129, 312
Osama bin Laden, 7, 8, 49, 57, 88, 96, 112, 118, 135, 139, 140, 149, 150, 181, 195, 439 oscillation, 239 Our Home is Russia, 248 outliers, 508 oversight, 125, 128, 292, 307, 316, 318, 393, 492, 502 ownership, 459
P Pacific, 84, 85, 136, 161, 163, 238, 241, 242, 305, 310, 314, 517, 520 pacification, 200 pacing, 337 pain, 115, 118, 341 Pakistan, 9, 22, 30, 39, 50, 137, 138, 140, 144, 145, 146, 147 Panama, 84 paralysis, 458 paranoia, 503 parasites, 341 parental consent, 274 parents, 354, 360, 460 Paris, 23, 80, 119, 288, 520 Parliament, 149, 247, 262 participatory democracy, 398 partnership, 54, 76, 232, 284, 287, 289, 456, 457, 459, 466 partnerships, 61 party system, 266, 367 passive, 57, 148, 196, 229, 239, 240, 343, 512 patriotism, 35, 42, 182, 196, 197, 203, 204, 213 peacekeeping, 11, 31, 47, 48, 50, 53, 180, 189, 283 peacekeeping forces, 11, 50 peers, 517 penalties, 225, 434 Pentagon, 6, 9, 19, 38, 111, 151, 169, 170, 173, 180, 182, 183, 191, 195, 198, 218, 226, 285, 290, 291, 292, 293, 295, 297, 379, 380, 381, 389, 390, 391 perception, 1, 2, 77, 88, 189, 254, 287, 453, 469 perceptions, 29, 38, 44, 120, 351, 360, 386, 412 performance, 7, 10, 71, 157, 167, 195, 198, 203, 239, 243, 254, 291, 301, 322, 342, 351, 409, 410, 415, 416, 418, 419, 420, 421, 422, 423, 505 permit, 21, 87, 138, 156, 278 perseverance, 507 Persian Gulf, 7, 8, 12, 123, 127, 128, 130, 131, 132, 137, 141, 151, 153, 154, 155, 156, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 168, 169, 170, 176, 235, 520, 521 Persian Gulf War, 7, 12, 165, 170
Index personal, 3, 49, 50, 54, 89, 94, 168, 170, 194, 199, 204, 209, 227, 235, 238, 254, 257, 258, 301, 323, 333, 334, 335, 336, 339, 342, 345, 348, 350, 351, 352, 357, 359, 361, 380, 402, 407, 409, 410, 414, 416, 419, 420, 421, 422, 430, 447, 455, 457, 458, 460, 462, 466, 467, 481, 492, 500, 502, 514 personal benefit, 94 personal communication, 348 personal goals, 455 personal life, 254, 481 personal problems, 254, 481 personal relations, 235 personal relationship, 235 personality, 3, 234, 267, 350, 351, 466, 496, 516 persuasion, 272, 302, 320, 399, 400, 403 pessimism, 518 pesticides, 308, 311 phalanx, 189 Philippines, 114, 136, 141, 144, 151 philosophers, 394, 402, 498 photographs, 324, 369, 371 Physicians, 340 piracy, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 126 planning, 19, 64, 91, 95, 158, 184, 238, 435 plants, 111, 112, 310, 324 pleasure, 260 pluralism, 35 plurality, 257, 266, 384, 385, 386, 387, 390, 508 plutonium, 21 PM, 253 Poland, 54, 154, 284, 291, 298 police, 77, 85, 151, 181 policy choice, 239, 360 policy initiative, 25, 32, 34, 73, 234, 238, 239, 266, 271, 276 policy makers, 12, 100, 104, 107, 109, 159, 174, 179 policy making, 45, 52, 83, 293, 446 policymakers, 84 polio, 472, 483, 484 political appointments, 378 political ideologies, 412 political leaders, 38, 97, 164, 176, 180, 193, 198, 399 political opposition, 78 political parties, 248, 378, 507, 524, 525 political power, 360, 495 political stability, 131 politics, 5, 9, 10, 11, 35, 55, 87, 102, 104, 106, 116, 117, 120, 122, 124, 125, 147, 175, 176, 184, 193, 198, 201, 232, 255, 259, 260, 262, 265, 276, 283, 288, 312, 319, 321, 342, 346, 351, 352, 359, 368, 373, 374, 378, 388, 391, 393, 395, 396, 398, 403, 404, 412, 423, 445, 446, 458, 469, 472, 473, 475,
543
487, 488, 491, 494, 495, 510, 511, 512, 513, 514, 515, 516, 520, 521, 522, 524 Polk, James, 84 pollen, 341 polling, 195, 199, 201, 266, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271, 272, 273, 274, 276, 277, 280 pollution, 302, 307, 308, 311 poor, 105, 153, 154, 167, 180, 195, 291, 309, 336, 387, 390, 480, 505 popular vote, 63, 198, 365, 367, 368, 415, 416, 501, 508 population, 47, 79, 125, 198, 212, 214, 304, 455 ports, 118, 136, 159, 184, 209, 222 Portugal, 103 positive relation, 451 positive relationship, 451 posture, 49, 56, 57, 74, 125, 184, 488 poverty, 47, 470, 496, 504, 505 Powell, Colin , 47, 59, 67, 133, 134, 144, 173, 176, 177, 230, 235, 236, 241, 285, 286, 287, 296 pragmatism, 64 prayer, 274 predictability, 381 prediction, 416 predictor variables, 415, 420 predictors, 407, 416 pre-emptive attacks, 31 preference, 204, 285, 482 preferential treatment, 327 prejudice, 473 preparedness, 74, 116 President Bush, 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 31, 32, 33, 35, 37, 39, 71, 72, 74, 76, 79, 93, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 142, 147, 173, 179, 186, 202, 205, 217, 220, 222, 236, 237, 284, 286, 287, 289, 290, 293, 294, 296, 366, 379, 380, 382, 384, 390, 437, 440, 453, 488, 490, 512, 516 President Clinton, 2, 31, 32, 33, 35, 38, 71, 72, 90, 94, 197, 235, 245, 250, 251, 261, 267, 268, 271, 273, 278, 292, 310, 380, 390, 407, 408, 409, 410, 414, 421, 423, 424, 448, 451, 452, 453, 490, 491 presidential advisors, 272 presidential campaigns, 374, 515 presidential elections, 2, 120, 365, 378, 391, 417, 447, 501, 502, 509 presidential performance, 193, 410 presidential politics, 17, 327 presidential travel, 275 press conferences, 307, 310, 316, 342, 461, 463 pressure, 6, 76, 130, 140, 205, 250, 258, 259, 260, 284, 286, 301, 323, 356, 478, 480 prestige, 76, 163, 321, 327 prevention, 59, 75, 78, 307
544
Index
primacy, 45, 47, 51, 56, 57, 62, 63, 237, 498 priming, 267 prior knowledge, 147 prisoners, 100, 101, 107, 108, 210, 215, 216, 218 prisoners of war, 107, 215, 216, 218 prisons, 401 privacy, 217, 220, 257, 502, 503 probability, 47, 72, 415, 437 producers, 463 production, 26, 57, 148, 158, 306, 471 profession, 221 professionalism, 175, 182, 183 professions, 191, 458 profit, 324, 367, 512 profits, 100, 234, 459 program, 7, 24, 70, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 119, 156, 164, 165, 201, 218, 226, 276, 307, 308, 309, 320, 323, 326, 327, 331, 420, 439, 463, 500, 502, 504, 523 programming, 421 progress reports, 325 Progressive Era, 469 proliferation, 17, 22, 23, 83, 153, 220 promote, 23, 31, 55, 56, 61, 64, 125, 129, 289, 323, 324, 350, 411, 506, 507 promoter, 323, 324 propaganda, 23, 118 property rights, 220, 403 proportionality, 147 proposition, 436 prosperity, 51, 55, 125, 127, 252, 423, 448 protectionism, 469, 474, 480, 481 protocol, 269, 292 provocation, 120, 181, 341 pruning, 377 psychiatrist, 231 public administration, 391, 524 public affairs, 60, 175 public awareness, 195, 286 public education, 71, 517 public health, 309 public interest, 305, 317 public opinion, 29, 30, 33, 36, 38, 43, 44, 137, 159, 193, 194, 258, 267, 271, 272, 273, 275, 302, 303, 308, 312, 352, 366, 404, 411, 435, 448, 455, 466, 488 public policy, 1, 35, 73, 76, 273, 301, 302, 303, 309, 333, 351, 412, 511, 512 public safety, 429, 431 public schools, 71 public service, 315, 495, 496 public support, 13, 24, 33, 34, 35, 36, 38, 44, 76, 193, 254, 260, 266, 271, 273, 276, 351, 352 publishers, 369, 374
Puerto Rican, 293 pulse, 46, 341, 492 punishment, 119 purification, 307 Putin, 60, 137, 145, 256, 289, 290, 297, 298 Pyongyang, 186
Q questioning, 24, 217, 219, 293 questionnaires, 409, 414, 415 quotas, 327
R race, 1, 18, 22, 72, 214, 322, 327, 384, 408, 473, 475, 504, 509, 516 racial minorities, 495 racism, 47, 212, 518 radar, 35, 201 radio, 95, 180, 274, 307, 325, 338, 462, 463, 465 range, 23, 47, 87, 115, 116, 161, 165, 190, 193, 196, 231, 234, 246, 345, 374, 379, 426, 516, 517, 518 ratings, 13, 44, 63, 193, 195, 203, 204, 256, 386, 410, 488 readership, 373, 510, 513 reading, 33, 89, 187, 231, 270, 304, 365, 369, 373, 394, 421, 439, 492, 517 Reagan, Ronald, 3, 19, 23, 27, 32, 33, 63, 70, 89, 105, 195, 231, 236, 268, 272, 377, 435, 511 real terms, 474 reality, 2, 3, 17, 38, 47, 74, 76, 91, 129, 160, 193, 195, 203, 204, 284, 293, 294, 359, 472 reasoning, 214, 430 recall, 125, 185, 344, 378, 423 recalling, 130, 353 reception, 336, 340 recession, 78 recognition, 13, 456, 467, 504 reconcile, 196, 345, 367, 368, 480, 518 reconciliation, 500 reconstruction, 7, 11, 12, 13, 29, 50, 63, 123, 497, 500 recovery, 51, 312, 313 recruiting, 35, 88, 90, 324 recurrence, 75, 78 Red Cross, 457, 471 Red Sea, 156 redevelopment, 29 reduction, 11, 19, 22, 71, 110, 283 reelection, 114, 266, 268, 273, 275, 311, 356, 451 reflection, 474
Index reforms, 6, 174, 183, 185, 288, 297, 366, 371, 472, 475, 492, 508 refugees, 53, 78 regional, 2, 13, 47, 48, 50, 59, 69, 72, 74, 75, 116, 124, 125, 129, 130, 131, 141, 178, 182, 301, 322, 400, 506 regional integration, 69, 72, 74, 75 regression, 74, 415, 416, 418, 419, 420, 421, 450 regression analysis, 450 regulation, 71 regulations, 311, 380, 484 reinforcement, 119, 467 rejection, 21, 23, 57, 113, 114, 335, 344, 474, 491, 497, 498 relationship, 5, 52, 66, 72, 74, 79, 90, 91, 93, 94, 104, 128, 160, 161, 186, 203, 233, 251, 254, 275, 288, 289, 290, 293, 298, 303, 315, 323, 338, 360, 407, 415, 423, 440, 448, 452, 459, 495, 496, 499, 513 relationships, 41, 56, 93, 182, 187, 310, 353, 388, 496 relatives, 397 relevance, 17, 293, 405, 497 reliability, 184, 270, 505 religion, 103, 327, 398, 403, 473, 517, 522 religious beliefs, 495 rent, 80 repair, 33, 190, 234, 295 replication, 403 Republican (s), 4, 11, 24, 46, 52, 56, 59, 62, 64, 71, 75, 76, 116, 118, 176, 178, 183, 185, 187, 204, 242, 254, 255, 257, 258, 260, 268, 270, 273, 275, 276, 278, 280, 293, 304, 309, 310, 311, 313, 318, 333, 340, 345, 356, 360, 368, 377, 378, 379, 381, 382, 386, 387, 390, 395, 410, 412, 413, 414, 423, 424, 425, 426, 432, 434, 445, 446, 451, 452, 453, 463, 465, 476, 479, 495, 501, 505, 509, 510 Republican Party, 4, 62, 309, 333, 340, 345, 424 reputation, 89, 94, 113, 213, 379, 407, 442, 510 resentment, 119, 124, 310 reserves, 12, 58, 197, 304, 311 resettlement, 463 resistance, 63, 138, 173, 175, 183, 184, 190, 209, 217, 285, 472, 481 resolution, 10, 50, 60, 61, 103, 130, 133, 134, 137, 139, 146, 179, 249, 250, 256, 294, 399, 438, 478, 479 resources, 10, 11, 71, 86, 88, 89, 94, 95, 96, 97, 128, 141, 156, 177, 178, 182, 266, 276, 277, 285, 302, 303, 304, 305, 306, 307, 312, 344, 351, 355, 369, 371, 422, 451 responsiveness, 265, 267, 278 restructuring, 52, 92, 179, 327
545
retail, 470 retaliation, 19, 58 retirement, 185, 496 retribution, 40 returns, 455, 456, 458, 463, 464, 465, 466 revenue, 462 Revolutionary, 262, 506 rewards, 42, 76, 458 RF, 426 rhetoric, 3, 6, 7, 8, 24, 25, 39, 48, 286, 352, 504, 515 Rhode Island, 355, 417, 419, 420, 422 rice, 104 right to life, 304 risk, 3, 13, 18, 22, 42, 51, 76, 112, 113, 181, 208, 213, 219, 222, 506 risk aversion, 181 rods, 336 rolling, 61, 184, 202 Romania, 50, 144, 284, 286, 288, 290, 294, 297, 298 Roosevelt, Eleanor, 455, 456, 457, 458, 459, 460, 461, 462, 463, 464, 465, 466, 467, 469, 473, 475, 476, 477, 483, 495, 523, 524 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 84, 207, 212, 215, 217, 301, 305, 306, 307, 309, 312, 313, 314, 316, 330, 377, 429, 430, 433, 446, 455, 456, 457, 458, 461, 464, 465, 466, 483, 513 Roosevelt, Theodore, 113, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 301, 303, 304, 311, 312, 313, 315, 316, 330, 455, 469 routines, 197 rule of law, 49, 61, 75, 127, 490, 492 runoff, 508 Russia, 2, 4, 41, 46, 50, 52, 55, 56, 61, 66, 137, 145, 147, 248, 251, 252, 255, 256, 257, 261, 262, 263, 274, 284, 285, 287, 288, 289, 290, 293, 294, 295, 296, 297, 298, 299, 442 Rwanda, 33, 43, 49, 51, 173, 175, 179, 180, 184, 189
S sabotage, 111, 112, 117, 118, 119, 121, 212, 215, 225, 433, 439 sacrifice, 185, 208 Saddam Hussein, 8, 32, 33, 37, 50, 58, 59, 60, 88, 96, 99, 107, 118, 123, 125, 130, 156, 157, 179, 181, 294 safety, 19, 20, 21, 58, 104, 113, 114, 116, 119, 181, 183, 247, 308, 335, 337, 441 sales, 112, 182 sample, 43, 148, 194, 373, 382, 445 sampling, 195, 440 sanctions, 30, 53, 70, 71, 72, 79, 135, 149, 179, 214, 489
546
Index
Sarajevo, 53, 112, 181 sarcasm, 324, 335 SAS, 144 satisfaction, 60, 238, 257, 470, 479, 514 Saudi Arabia, 9, 124, 127, 128, 129, 131, 137, 146, 159, 161, 164 scaling, 239 scandal, 34, 94, 234, 239, 250, 254, 256, 257, 262, 308, 309, 356, 410, 446, 452, 511 scattering, 258 schema, 500 scholarship, 245, 350, 487, 506, 509 school, 176, 196, 222, 274, 277, 324, 356, 446, 457, 458, 459, 460, 463, 466, 470, 475, 517, 524 science, 17, 18, 176, 366, 368, 373, 391, 487, 497, 504, 515, 516, 520, 524 scientific community, 24 scores, 70, 191, 209, 210, 372, 462 SEA, 392 search, 2, 7, 11, 25, 160, 174, 184, 193, 201, 217, 218, 220, 233, 288 searches, 205, 217, 225, 440, 502 searching, 63, 322 SEC, 149 second generation, 499 Second World, 17, 18, 55, 488, 489, 513, 514 Secretary of Agriculture, 306 Secretary of Commerce, 340 Secretary of Defense, 11, 12, 55, 56, 58, 66, 67, 85, 92, 93, 136, 139, 140, 141, 160, 169, 178, 179, 182, 187, 189, 217, 234, 391, 438 securities, 345 security, 7, 8, 20, 25, 29, 31, 32, 41, 48, 49, 51, 54, 55, 57, 58, 59, 65, 71, 73, 75, 77, 79, 88, 94, 95, 112, 114, 119, 120, 123, 124, 125, 128, 129, 130, 131, 145, 182, 183, 191, 198, 212, 214, 220, 226, 229, 230, 231, 232, 234, 235, 236, 237, 240, 247, 284, 285, 286, 287, 288, 292, 293, 294, 295, 303, 336, 434, 513, 520 sedatives, 341 seed, 24 seizure, 22, 100, 101, 209, 491 selecting, 3, 25, 367 self-confidence, 306 self-interest, 106, 203, 513 self-worth, 455 senate, 293, 299 Senate, 4, 11, 30, 35, 48, 52, 59, 65, 67, 86, 90, 96, 149, 158, 168, 169, 170, 218, 226, 246, 247, 249, 250, 257, 258, 260, 271, 273, 284, 285, 286, 290, 292, 293, 295, 296, 297, 298, 299, 304, 310, 315, 335, 343, 345, 401, 413, 422, 434, 445, 453, 494, 495, 496, 500, 521
Senate approval, 284, 292 Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 11, 35, 48, 65, 67, 286, 292 Senegal, 144 sentencing, 438 separation, 176, 207, 211, 393, 398, 402, 404, 517 separation of powers, 207, 211, 393, 402 September 11, 6, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 29, 31, 32, 38, 42, 43, 44, 55, 69, 73, 76, 77, 79, 85, 111, 120, 124, 133, 134, 136, 137, 139, 144, 145, 152, 173, 183, 190, 191, 193, 196, 197, 198, 199, 201, 202, 209, 217, 220, 225, 253, 284, 285, 287, 289, 291, 292, 293, 297, 429, 430, 437, 440, 442, 443, 453, 487, 491, 511 sequencing, 272, 274 Serbia, 53 Serbs, 48, 53, 191 series, 7, 50, 75, 81, 85, 92, 118, 120, 123, 126, 137, 183, 232, 251, 345, 352, 450, 462, 463, 465, 472, 490, 493, 515, 516 SES, 377, 379, 381, 382, 391, 392 settlements, 10 severe stress, 341 sewage, 307, 471 sex, 327, 361, 410, 478 sexual harassment, 249, 250, 254 shame, 248, 396 shape, 30, 33, 47, 56, 273, 286, 305, 322, 351, 360, 390, 494 shaping, 153, 154, 167, 180, 269, 302, 398 shares, 248 sharing, 22, 136, 240, 489, 493, 514 sheep, 517 shock, 84, 112 shoot, 24 shores, 118, 120, 160, 180, 214, 215 shoulders, 97, 174, 321, 494 shy, 189, 355, 356, 469 shyness, 458 sibling, 345 side effects, 452 Sierra Leone, 144 sign, 7, 8, 96, 103, 113, 191, 273, 284, 302, 400, 423, 478 signaling, 72, 177, 489 signals, 118, 177 signs, 202, 340, 422, 494 silver, 79 similarity, 245, 404 Singapore, 145 sites, 32, 124, 165, 196, 523 skills, 137, 174, 267, 351, 420, 488 skin, 399
Index slavery, 100, 126, 518 slaves, 126, 212, 404 Slovakia, 144, 284, 286, 288, 292, 294, 297 smoke, 471 smoking, 356 smoothness, 319 snakes, 337 social change, 179 social class, 455 social contract, 497 social costs, 255 social fabric, 480 social justice, 470 social norms, 482 social responsibility, 320 social roles, 495 social security, 474 social welfare, 377, 379, 381, 382, 384, 388, 390, 391 socialism, 288 society, 46, 54, 77, 176, 195, 208, 221, 395, 396, 457, 467, 469, 470, 472, 473, 481, 503, 518 software, 420 soil, 62, 122, 148, 156, 306, 307, 310, 397 soil erosion, 306, 307 solidarity, 60, 80, 134, 289 Somalia, 33, 38, 44, 48, 65, 141, 151, 173, 178, 179, 180, 185, 186, 189, 381, 385 South Africa, 132 South Asia, 56, 519 South Carolina, 104, 217, 218, 368, 380, 394, 519, 522, 523 South Dakota, 337, 338, 487 South Korea, 85, 136 South Pacific, 20 Southeast Asia, 129 sovereignty, 6, 100, 402 Soviet Union, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 29, 34, 35, 39, 45, 83, 86, 88, 94, 96, 129, 160, 248, 251, 252, 255, 256, 309, 489, 514 Spain, 101, 114, 136, 144, 154, 336, 520 species, 305, 308, 310, 517 specter, 10, 119 spectrum, 76, 175, 233, 429, 452 speculation, 72, 74, 75, 123, 237, 250, 288, 344, 358, 506 speech, 11, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 37, 49, 51, 58, 65, 149, 177, 184, 217, 274, 275, 285, 288, 296, 302, 356, 357, 358, 379, 422, 423, 432, 473, 489, 510, 516 speed, 164, 167, 203 spin, 189, 203, 235, 274, 409, 512 spirituality, 398
547
Srebrenica, 53 Sri Lanka, 77 St. Louis, 151 stability, 11, 19, 24, 53, 89, 124, 125, 131, 163, 261, 284, 381, 497, 508, 509 staffing, 302, 488, 515 stages, 139, 186, 272, 496 standard deviation, 416 standard of living, 304 standards, 76, 125, 208, 220, 247, 285, 291, 309, 310, 327, 470, 477, 481 Star Wars, 3, 17, 23, 24, 25, 26 stars, 99, 176, 456, 462, 484 stasis, 489 State of the Union address, 8, 308 statistical analysis, 451 statistics, 326 steel, 114, 116, 343, 491, 504, 505, 520 stereotypes, 499, 510 stimulus, 277 stock, 344 stomach, 103, 341, 345 storage, 106, 144, 484 Strait of Hormuz, 155, 162, 165 strategic planning, 56 strategies, 2, 58, 59, 91, 258, 259, 265, 267, 270, 274, 277, 378 strategy use, 164 strength, 102, 106, 116, 133, 193, 202, 247, 275, 276, 315, 359, 442, 513 stress, 326, 345, 384 strikes, 7, 38, 39, 53, 61, 136, 137, 139, 146, 157, 166, 183, 278, 498, 509 students, 77, 78, 113, 296, 368, 371, 373, 374, 424, 470, 487, 488, 492, 501, 502, 504, 520 subgroups, 237 submarines, 6, 18, 117, 136, 156, 520 Sub-Saharan Africa, 80 subscribers, 202 substitutes, 506 success rate, 445, 449, 451 Sudan, 38, 44, 137, 138, 149, 186 suffering, 90, 118, 184, 341 sugar, 343, 484 suicide, 5, 124, 147, 224 summer, 13, 33, 48, 53, 57, 58, 63, 118, 163, 250, 253, 266, 284, 285, 286, 290, 325, 333, 334, 336, 337, 340, 342, 355, 394, 483, 484, 504 Sun, 142, 145, 202, 505, 524 superiority, 56, 62, 116 supernatural, 398 supervision, 238 suppliers, 167
548
Index
supply, 21, 70, 148, 154, 163, 167, 185, 239 suppression, 73, 126 Supreme Court, 4, 63, 71, 198, 207, 210, 212, 213, 214, 215, 219, 221, 223, 224, 246, 249, 318, 354, 374, 429, 430, 431, 433, 434, 435, 436, 439, 442, 443, 471, 491, 515 surprise, 22, 84, 85, 87, 115, 213, 247, 266, 283, 294, 334, 337, 368, 394, 396, 489 surrogates, 350, 352, 354, 359, 361, 413 surveillance, 49, 141, 167, 217, 219, 220, 225 survival, 19, 20, 210, 213, 357, 394, 432, 435, 467 survivors, 214, 515 suspects, 79, 150, 220, 437 suspensions, 430 suspicious activity reports, 225 sweat, 470 Sweden, 134 symbols, 350, 351, 352, 354, 356, 360, 361 sympathy, 42, 135, 137, 432, 510 symptoms, 345, 483 syndrome, 179, 183, 488 Syria, 39, 186 systems, 17, 19, 23, 91, 102, 131, 396, 404, 413, 500, 501, 508, 509
T tactics, 7, 37, 141, 174, 185, 265, 266, 267, 270, 272, 275, 276, 277, 476 Taft, William Howard, 115 Taiwan, 5, 14, 52, 145 Tajikistan, 137, 145 Taliban, 6, 7, 8, 50, 63, 96, 133, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 143, 145, 146, 147, 149, 183, 218, 437 tanks, 18, 158, 190, 311, 484 Tanzania, 138, 147, 173, 181, 197 targets, 6, 7, 136, 137, 138, 139, 155, 156, 157, 158, 165, 182, 184, 188, 191, 335 tariff, 520 tax cuts, 5, 40, 512 tax policy, 275 tax reform, 512 tax reforms, 512 tax system, 503 teachers, 398, 459, 496, 501 teaching, 176, 177, 366, 456, 458, 459, 460, 470, 520, 521, 524 technical assistance, 221, 227 technology, 17, 18, 21, 22, 23, 25, 52, 114, 157, 158, 166, 183, 267, 405, 520 teeth, 321 telephone, 231, 269, 278, 414, 484
television, 24, 141, 195, 196, 201, 231, 233, 251, 255, 257, 268, 274, 275, 395, 410, 439, 465, 524 television ads, 275 television advertisements, 275 Tennessee, 306, 307, 313, 316, 395, 422, 424, 523, 525 tension, 13, 52, 125, 174, 179, 182, 278, 322, 403, 429, 478 tenure, 53, 245, 248, 271, 274, 302, 303, 305, 360, 446, 494 territory, 58, 83, 125, 136, 137, 138, 145, 147, 149, 216, 218 terrorism, 6, 7, 8, 9, 17, 38, 39, 40, 41, 45, 57, 61, 77, 79, 83, 92, 93, 96, 99, 100, 112, 124, 133, 134, 137, 138, 141, 144, 145, 148, 151, 197, 207, 209, 217, 218, 219, 220, 221, 225, 284, 291, 293, 294, 295, 437, 438, 441, 442, 443, 515 terrorist acts, 139, 147, 148, 219 terrorist attack, 6, 31, 34, 38, 40, 41, 46, 49, 88, 94, 96, 111, 115, 118, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 149, 183, 284, 287, 289, 430, 437, 453, 487, 491 terrorist groups, 13, 135, 137, 148 terrorist organization, 38, 133, 138, 217, 225 terrorists attacks, 85 Texas, 4, 71, 75, 84, 166, 242, 283, 319, 321, 394, 408, 492, 496, 510, 521 textbooks, 365, 366, 368, 373, 375 The Economist, 145 theft, 220 theory, 70, 92, 176, 193, 211, 343, 351, 352, 430, 447, 448, 472, 493 thinking, 20, 51, 58, 62, 66, 73, 122, 214, 273, 350, 424, 471, 480, 506 Third Reich, 216 threat(s), 8, 17, 19, 24, 25, 33, 39, 41, 42, 46, 47, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 62, 63, 77, 83, 99, 101, 103, 106, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 122, 124, 134, 146, 151, 155, 156, 166, 178, 180, 182, 183, 197, 198, 208, 209, 210, 220, 232, 246, 257, 289, 292, 293, 294, 318, 327, 434, 436, 438, 442, 489 threshold, 199, 248, 249, 367, 372, 442 Tigris River, 154 timber, 105, 304 time frame, 2 timing, 8, 114, 323, 490 tobacco, 222, 343 tokenism, 326 Tokyo, 26, 114 torture, 184, 218 toys, 484 tracking, 58, 135, 176, 411
Index trade, 30, 51, 52, 54, 55, 61, 62, 65, 70, 99, 104, 105, 109, 117, 126 trade liberalization, 70 trading, 29, 112, 126, 254 trading partners, 29 tradition, 86, 112, 187, 221, 402, 446, 470, 480, 492, 494, 499, 510 traditional paradigm, 57 traffic, 231, 478 training, 38, 138, 141, 147, 149, 151, 160, 166, 182, 324, 355, 470 training programs, 324 traits, 335, 408, 414, 495 trajectory, 47 transactions, 49, 225 transcripts, 148, 201, 358, 423, 424 transformation(s) 10, 63, 76, 85, 128, 133, 183, 185, 294, 319, 404, 457, 482 transition(s), 54, 62, 75, 89, 158, 288, 377, 378, 379, 380, 381, 382, 383, 384, 386, 390, 391, 457, 496 transition period, 75, 380 translation, 394 transport, 159, 180, 288 trauma, 109, 203, 442 treaties, 5, 126, 218, 480 Treaty of Rome, 72, 75 trees, 306 trend, 195, 239, 491, 511 trial, 207, 211, 215, 216, 217, 219, 220, 226, 239, 246, 247, 249, 250, 259, 422, 430, 432, 433, 437, 438, 439, 441 trial and error, 239 tribes, 84, 396, 398, 400, 404 Truman, Harry S., 2, 26, 329 trust, 161, 175, 232, 356, 367, 378, 379, 386, 387, 388, 390, 464 tuberculosis, 345 turbulence, 51 Turkey, 50, 75, 136, 144, 184, 290, 442 turnout, 447 turnover, 377, 382, 488 twinning, 191
U U.N. Security Council, 133, 134, 135, 137, 138, 139, 146, 147, 148 U.S. economy, 51, 200 U.S. history, 83, 212, 461 U.S. military, 7, 40, 47, 48, 63, 119, 134, 136, 137, 146, 156, 165, 166, 167, 173, 180, 181, 291, 437 U.S. Treasury, 463 U-boat, 111, 118, 119
549
uncertainty, 34, 87, 99, 252, 253, 443 undergraduate, 368, 492, 499, 505, 509, 513, 520 undergraduate education, 520 unemployment, 74, 114, 449, 450, 451 unhappiness, 40, 182, 233, 459 uniform, 85, 175, 182 unilateralism, 13, 31, 41, 45, 47, 48, 49, 51, 56, 57, 79, 124, 286 unions, 70, 327, 328, 472, 480 United Kingdom (UK), 60, 67, 126, 127, 128, 138, 139, 154, 165, 170, 262, 288, 295, 298, 513, 514 United Nations (UN), 1, 2, 8, 10, 11, 21, 22, 23, 24, 26, 27, 30, 38, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 53, 54, 59, 60, 61, 65, 67, 120, 133, 134, 138, 143, 146, 147, 179, 187, 274, 294, 309, 360, 455, 464, 465, 466, 479, 480, 481, 514, 524 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 464, 479 universe, 398 universities, 523 university students, 373 unknown institution, 351 uranium, 21 Uruguay Round, 52 users, 93 USSR, 504, 514 Uzbekistan, 137, 145
V vacancies, 211 vacuum, 12, 180, 182, 359 validation, 193 validity, 8, 213, 270, 449 values, 12, 29, 32, 41, 47, 55, 61, 117, 119, 312, 353, 399, 403, 420, 490, 495, 499 variable(s), 3, 277, 350, 352, 386, 415, 416, 417, 418, 419, 420, 427, 446, 447, 449, 450, 451, 493 variance, 208 variation, 38, 413, 414 vehicles, 166, 181, 190 vein, 12, 292 Venezuela, 146 ventilation, 157 venue, 232 Vermont, 339, 345, 347, 416, 417, 419, 422, 499 versatility, 509 vessels, 99, 100, 102, 103, 112, 119, 136, 154, 156, 162, 164, 165 veterans, 157, 176, 183 vice-president, 251, 319, 423, 458, 472 victims, 180, 197, 260, 395, 439 videotape, 250
550
Index
Vietnam, 34, 40, 43, 87, 89, 93, 114, 118, 124, 129, 159, 176, 179, 183, 184, 185, 187, 188, 260, 313, 354, 381, 488, 496, 503, 504 village, 399 violence, 10, 13, 50, 73, 79, 124, 141 Virginia, 27, 147, 168, 218, 219, 222, 336, 361, 375, 393, 463, 511, 516, 517, 519, 520, 523, 524 visas, 73, 78 vision, 2, 3, 5, 7, 10, 29, 30, 31, 32, 34, 35, 40, 41, 42, 54, 56, 63, 69, 71, 73, 74, 75, 106, 174, 286, 287, 290, 294, 302, 311, 473 visualization, 495 voice, 59, 60, 177, 184, 233, 287, 288, 474, 482, 494 voicing, 482 volunteer work, 457 volunteerism, 32 voter turnout, 501 voters, 70, 76, 116, 204, 254, 266, 270, 272, 277, 353, 367, 373, 407, 408, 409, 410, 411, 412, 413, 414, 417, 419, 420, 421, 422, 423, 424, 446, 447, 448, 453, 492, 495, 508 voting, 204, 208, 256, 290, 308, 375, 381, 384, 404, 408, 410, 412, 418, 419, 447, 473, 501, 505, 508, 525 vouchers, 277 vulnerability, 19, 23, 25, 79, 113, 117, 120, 260
W wages, 470 Wales, 520 walking, 338, 379, 413, 485 Wall Street Journal, 80, 146, 170, 297, 299 War on Terror, 9, 32, 39, 40, 57, 58, 59, 60, 62, 63, 69, 79, 139, 140, 144, 145, 146, 148, 149, 151, 152, 173, 174, 183, 185, 186, 190, 200, 205, 206, 207, 208, 217, 218, 220, 221, 227, 285, 287, 291, 293, 299, 429, 437, 442, 443, 491, 520 war years, 158, 480 warlords, 190 warrants, 408, 452 Warren, Earl, 434 Warsaw, 284, 286, 296 Washington, George, 83, 103, 497, 506, 522, 524 water quality, 308 waterways, 305 weakness, 4, 10, 13, 113, 181, 200, 400, 487, 494 wealth, 12, 59, 124, 455, 457, 512 weapons, 8, 11, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 26, 31, 32, 39, 41, 48, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 62, 63, 83, 88, 95, 96, 117, 148, 153, 157, 158, 167, 174, 177, 179, 181, 183, 184, 185, 186, 292, 294, 489
weapons of mass destruction (WMD), 11, 18, 19, 31, 32, 39, 41, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 62, 63, 83, 88, 96, 153, 185, 186, 292 wear, 216 wearing apparel, 337 web, 44, 72, 139, 149, 350, 420, 422, 501 welfare, 120, 272, 273, 380, 382, 399, 452 welfare reform, 272, 273 well-being, 181, 452, 514 Wellesley College, 495 West Bank, 33, 60 West Wing, 231, 235, 330, 357 Western Europe, 29, 142, 147, 159, 287 Western Hemisphere, 134 wheat, 104 white-collar workers, 326 wholesale, 18, 78 wilderness, 311 wildlife, 305, 306, 311, 312, 316 Wilson, Woodrow, 84, 113, 115, 116, 117, 119, 120, 121, 122, 241 wind, 103, 116, 271, 272, 326, 330, 484 windows, 484 winning, 116, 117, 213, 254, 267, 273, 276, 305, 367, 368, 384, 408, 411, 414, 447 winter, 60, 63, 255 Wisconsin, 341, 408, 520 withdrawal, 32, 48, 111, 126, 127, 179 witnesses, 219 wives, 456, 460, 514 women, 54, 62, 266, 396, 397, 402, 455, 456, 457, 458, 459, 460, 461, 462, 463, 467, 469, 470, 471, 472, 473, 474, 475, 476, 477, 478, 479, 480, 481, 482, 493, 494, 495, 510, 524 wood, 343, 484 workers, 70, 71, 72, 74, 75, 76, 149, 191, 322, 458, 469, 473, 475, 480, 481 working women, 466, 472, 476, 480 workload, 78, 334 workplace, 166, 405, 471, 475, 479, 480 world policy, 5 World Trade Center, 6, 38, 46, 54, 77, 111, 195, 196, 198, 441 World Trade Organization (WTO), 31, 52 World War I, 2, 3, 9, 18, 21, 29, 84, 93, 95, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 124, 127, 128, 129, 163, 175, 176, 207, 212, 367, 429, 430, 435, 439, 456, 457, 461, 463, 464, 471, 513 World War II, 2, 3, 9, 18, 21, 29, 93, 95, 116, 127, 128, 129, 163, 175, 207, 212, 367, 429, 430, 435, 439, 456, 461, 463, 464 World Wide Web, 407, 411, 422, 423 worldview, 120
Index worry, 89, 340, 474 writing, 11, 13, 66, 217, 262, 293, 337, 435, 456, 457, 460, 461, 462, 463, 464, 465, 467, 475, 477, 487, 494, 499
551
Y Yabloko, 248, 258 Yemen, 9, 137, 140, 141, 150, 151, 197 yield, 236 young adults, 359 young men, 306, 399 Yugoslavia, 31, 34, 490
