author2author, Ep. 2—Jeff Friedman & Steven Wagner discuss American political history

3:41PM Oct 15, 2024

Speakers:

Jeffrey Friedman

Rebecca Brutus

Steven Wagner

Keywords:

Eisenhower balance

commander in chief

military experience

defense spending

missile gap

Kennedy campaign

Nixon challenges

Hidden Hand

NATO support

Vietnam War

Suez Crisis

nuclear deterrent

foreign policy

political polarization

bipartisan consensus

This is author2author presented by Cornell University Press. This episode, Jeff Friedman, author of The Commander-in-Chief Test, is in conversation with Steven Wagner, the author of Eisenhower for Our Time. author2author presented by Cornell University Press.

Hey, I'm Jeff Friedman. I'm an associate professor of government at Dartmouth College. My recent book is called The Commander-in-Chief Test: Public Opinion and the Politics of Image Making in US Foreign Policy. Briefly, the book examines how voters decide which leaders are fit to be commander in chief, and it argues that those debates skew US foreign policy in a direction that's more hawkish than what voters actually want. I'm delighted to be here and talking with Steve about his book today.

Thanks, Jeff. I really enjoyed your book as well. My name is Steve Wagner, and I'm professor of history at Missouri Southern State University, which is in Joplin, Missouri, and I'm here to talk about my new book, which is called Eisenhower for Our Time, not to give too much away, but the primary lesson that I believe we have to learn from Eisenhower for our time is his commitment to the idea of balance. And I go through a number of the major events and crises of the Eisenhower administration, and show how he attempted to find balance in his dealing with those issues. Why don't we talk about how Eisenhower might fit into your book's argument? You start pretty much with 1960 and as I was reading your book, I thought that some of the arguments that you make fit really well with Eisenhower, but in some ways, he's a different kind of person than the other presidents you talk about.

Yeah, one of the reasons I started the book in 1960 is that when Dwight Eisenhower ran for president in 1952 and 1956 he didn't really have to do much to convince Americans that he was fit to be commander in chief. I mean, he just had this unparalleled military record and was a war hero, and so it was just sort of obvious that he was qualified to hold that office. And I think starting in 1960 with John F Kennedy in running all the way up to the present day, you have most major party presidential nominees who lack military experience or just have very, very little in the way of high level strategic military records to draw on. And I think that that means that they face pressures and electoral incentives that are a lot different from what general and then President Eisenhower faced. So I think, for example, one of the things I found really compelling about your discussion of balance was that part of what made Eisenhower so distinctive was his ability to stay out of crises or to avoid escalating conflicts or to keep the defense budget from rising. There's just a lot of these accomplishments of his are in the negative realm of things he didn't feel pressured to do. And I think part of the reason he felt less pressured to do those things than subsequent presidents is that when his political rivals attacked him for being complacent or being weak in his response to those crises, those attacks, sort of deflected off his personality because he had such a well established record. And I just don't think that any President or presidential candidate since Eisenhower has been in a position where they have this rock solid reputational armor that can allow them to disagree with the Pentagon about how much money to spend on the military, or that can allow them to stay out of crises in the Suez or other places around the world. And I think part of the reason why other presidents feel compelled to do that is that they just don't have the reputational bedrock to draw. I would note, nevertheless, though, that when John F Kennedy ran for president in 1960 part of his main claim was that the Eisenhower administration had been complacent, and Nixon, who didn't have Eisenhower's record, wasn't able to stand up to that challenge. So even there, at the end, I think we saw a lot of those a lot of those challenges, just out of curiosity. How does that? How does that resonate, that resonate with your take on why Eisenhower was able to implement balance?

if I could, before I forget about it. Your last point there from the 1960 presidential election. And then I'll circle back that. I've always thought it was interesting that that election, in some ways, hinged on this idea that Eisenhower's penny pinching had put the United States in a weakened position compared to the Soviet Union, that there was this missile gap that needed to be closed, and it wasn't long. So after Kennedy became president that he realized that there was, in fact, no missile gap. And in some ways, there's not very many examples of me feeling sorry for Vice President Nixon or later President Nixon, but that 1960 debate is one example he simply couldn't say, you know, we've got these u2 planes, and they're flying missions over the Soviet Union, and we know that there's no missile gap. And it put in a really tough spot in those debates with President Kennedy.

Yeah. And part of the in the chapter which I discussed that campaign in my book, I showed from the archival record that the Kennedy campaign thought really carefully about the political logic of that attack, that as they were gearing up for the national campaign, they were trying out all sorts of issues on which they could potentially critique Eisenhower for one, one of them, they talk about komoy and Matsu, and Kennedy suggests he's he would be more dovish and not make as many threats with respect to defending Taiwan. But then that makes it look like he's backing down. And then in another time, he tries to say he'd be more hawkish on Cuba than Eisenhower and Nixon. Eisenhower and Nixon sort of disingenuously pretend they're not planning to try to oust Fidel Castro, and that makes Kennedy look bad. And part of the reason that Kennedy and his advisors landed on defense spending as the main thing they wanted to hammer the Eisenhower administration on is that they felt it allowed them to go on the offensive and make it as though Nixon and Eisenhower looked complacent. I think at one point, Kennedy called Eisenhower a bookkeeper who felt that his job was done when the numbers came out even. And part of why I think that's so interesting is that, according to Kennedy's own polling, less than a quarter of Americans thought the defense budget was too low. It was just like this very clear example, where Americans aren't asking for more defense spending, but Kennedy's able to leverage this issue as a way to make himself look tough and vigorous, that he's going to bear any burden to defend the United States, and it makes Nixon look weak. And I think Eisenhower just a rare guy who could hang it hang in against those attacks for eight years. But Nixon, his vice president, couldn't Sure.

Yeah, to go back to your to your original question about what made Eisenhower different. Why was he able to avoid that? You know, I think you're absolutely right. One of the questions that people have been asking me as I've been trying to promote the book, you know, if you could tell us one interesting fact about Eisenhower, what would it be? And I always like to throw out that bit about both parties. Both political parties wanted him to be their nominee for President, first in 48 and then in 52 and so he had that going for him. And of course, just no one's going to question whether Eisenhower would make a good commander in chief, five star general, sacure NATO, Supreme Commander. Everybody knew that he was viable commander in chief material, and I think that allowed him to maybe not take some of the hawkish positions that somebody trying to prove their worth as a commander in chief would have to take Now later on in his presidency, he did sort of cave after this butnik crisis and allow the defense spending to increase more than he thought was necessary, but he sort of split The difference. He didn't go as far as what many members of Congress wanted to do? Yeah,

I thought there was a great chapter in your book. I also thought it was interesting you had some data upfront about how when Eisenhower left office, he actually wasn't that well regarded, at least by historians. I think he was in the bottom third of presidents at the time, and then over time, his reputation just steadily grows to the point where he now almost always ends up in the top five or 10 historians list. And I suspect that's a similar dynamic, just the idea that you know, as you show when Eisenhower left office, his critics portrayed him as sort of out of touch and not in command of the details, and I thought your book had really careful and critical engagement with the Eisenhower revisionism thesis, saying that actually, behind the scenes, he was a lot more in command of at least most issues than we think. But even so, at the time, you know, when he left off his own it doesn't seem like Americans really appreciated the degree to which he worked to keep that balance that you talk about. Why do you think people missed that at the time? Or rather, what do you think causes the long term growth in Eisenhower's public standing? Yeah,

I love telling that story, and I that's why I put that in the introduction, that when Eisenhower was first ranked in the. Early rankings of his presidency. And he was pretty far down 22nd I think, and he rises up to about 11th by 1980 and then, yeah, regularly now number six or so and so, I think that's an important part of my argument, since I'm trying to talk about what lesson Eisenhower has for us. It's not just that he was a moderate, it's that he was a moderate, and we celebrate him as one of our best presidents for having been a moderate. So there must be something to it, right? It's what people want. Yeah, the historiographical trend is pretty standard. I think Presidents tend to be ranked fairly low right after they leave office, and then as more and more of the archival documents become available, historians get a better idea of of what they're up against, and as they see future presidents not able to handle some of the same problems that they struggled with, that sort of puts it into perspective. But as far as Eisenhower and in particular goes, I think his leadership style made people believe that he wasn't an active president. And the political science author Fred Greenstein made that famous thesis the Hidden Hand presidency, which was an important contribution to Eisenhower historiography, that behind the scenes, we can see it in the minutes of the cabinet meetings or the National Security Council meetings. He is the one making the decisions. He's given the go ahead. He's not real concerned with taking the credit for it after the fact, and so it gave people the idea that he spent most of his time playing golf or fishing or whatever. It seems kind of funny now to think about it, but he leaves the presidency at the age of 70, which was, at the time, the oldest active president, you know, in our history. And so people thought of him as kind of an old man. And so, yeah, it takes several generations for him to reach this level where he's at. Now,

I have a question about updating Eisenhower for the present day. And I guess the idea would be question is something like, to what extent do we think that this concept of balance would be sustainable now? And I guess that, I mean, the main thing that was on my mind in reading your book was that so much of Eisenhower's foreign policy doctrine, and especially the new look that he had for defense strategy, and his ability to use the new look to keep the costs of defense down relied on nuclear weapons and a nuclear deterrent and a promise to escalate to nuclear weapons, even if other states hadn't done that. And I just wonder, do we think that that kind of thing could survive the development of the Russian and Chinese arsenal. Do we think that something like Kennedy's flexible response was ultimately destined to happen? Or do so? Do we think that the 1950s were just a unique time to execute this kind of balance, or to what extent do we think that could have been sustained over the next several decades. Yeah,

in regard to the new look, I think it was a policy framework for its time. During the 1960s we start seeing communist insurgencies and what, at the time was referred to as the Third World, and the idea of you using nuclear weapons to put down a communist insurgency in the Congo or Guatemala or someplace like that, just no longer seen that. Policy no longer seemed viable. You had to have both the nuclear umbrella protecting North America and Western Europe, and then a sort of counter insurgency, Special Forces kind of set up for putting down communism in in the developing world. And so, yeah, the I think the maybe the new look had run its course. Also maybe the idea of having a sort of set foreign policy framework that could be applied to any situation that would run its course, I found it interesting while researching the new look that several different times in the process, Eisenhower. Say something along the lines of, you know, it was kind of like when his people got too deep into the details, he would encourage them to not think of how this new look would apply. Of course, they didn't call it the new look at the time, but how this foreign policy framework would apply to every last detail. But just consider it a broader framework. And he would say, it's not the plan that matters, it's the plan, the fact that they had thought this through so carefully would allow them to make decisions more quickly and more efficiently and with more information at their fingertips. And I just don't see us being able to do very many of those things today. We're we don't tend to have sort of named foreign policies, you know, beyond maybe something like the war on terror or something like that, that can be applied to any given situation. And I guess the cynic in me just says we're we're too partisan for there to be deference, even to a guy as well respected as Eisenhower, that the the opposite party, whatever that party might be, is going to disagree with whatever policy is proposed by their opponent, even if they might have have supported it had they come up with it themselves. So that's it's so partisan, so political, that that a guy like Eisenhower is hard to imagine. What was it back in 2008 when there was some talk about Colin Powell, and maybe he was a guy that could have tried to fill that role. I'm not sure what. Yeah. Think about him.

Yeah, I do think the idea that Eisenhower was actively courted by Democrats to succeed Truman, and I think there's a story I think you were accounting inyour book where Truman is riding in a car with Eisenhower and says, If you want, if you want, to replace me on the Democratic ticket, go ahead. Yeah,

serve as Vice President under Eisenhower. And that's hard to believe.

Yeah, inconceivable, inconceivable today. And I also thought another element of your book that seems like a very different time was Eisenhower's relationship with Congress and the way he's working with both parties in Congress to try to ensure that his foreign policy is sustainable. The chapter on Vietnam is probably the clearest example of that where he just, he tells his staff, we're not doing this if we can't get congressional buy in. And then Congress says, in order to get our buy in, you need allies buy in. And there's this just whole question of how to secure the REL all sorts of stakeholders that whereas today it just, it seems like presidents have a much more unilateral flavor to what they do. So I think, I think your book sustains all of that. The only thing I would say place I might differ a little bit is that I think many of the core Eisenhower commitments are still pretty popular in both parties today, defense spending is actually higher in real terms than it was in the 50s. Biden administration's defense budget is higher in real terms than Eisenhower's was. Both parties generally support NATO, and, in fact, expanded it, whereas I think Eisenhower, you said, thought of US troop commitments to NATO as a temporary emergency measure. Tariffs are less than half as high today as they were under Eisenhower. So and I do think that a lot of the core things Eisenhower believed in still get support from both parties, although I think the ability for presidents to do new things without getting checked by their opponents seems very hard to believe. The Iran nuclear deal will be the obvious example of that where President Obama had this initiative that every Republican member of the Senate just immediately said they weren't going to vote for. And that seems like a pretty far cry from the kind of hand in glove working with the legislature you describe in your book

The the President Trump's lack of commitment to the NATO collective security agreement, I think is a good example of something that you talk about in your book, that you can take a position that's not a popular position, but it still makes you appear strong, And that you might sort of gradually pull people to that position by restating it. I like that. I think you use the cognitive dissonance example there. And another example of that might be a lack of support for Ukraine from. Of former President Trump that that I can't imagine that having been a popular position in the past, but once he adopted that position, now, more and more people have come to that position. Yeah,

Part, Part of the way that I try to connect the my books logic to contemporary politics is through Trump's America first foreign policies, and if you look at the elements of America first, large scale, rises in tariffs, unilateral diplomacy, abrasive relations with NATO, every one of those things polls terribly among the public and even within the Republican Party, a majority of Republicans say they don't like the substance of what Trump is doing on a lot of those things, but I, as you say, I think Trump has been very effective at using those policies to create this image of himself as this deal maker, this hard charger who's going to put American interests first? And that's very much part of this strong leadership dynamic that voters want. And so I think, I think Trump is unusual in so many ways, and political scientists shouldn't be too disappointed if their theories can't explain him like he's just his own guy on so many dimensions. But I think America First is very much an example of where voters have to choose between the policies they like on the merits and the sort of personal traits of leaders that they admire. And I think is an example of how the latter tend to win out over the former in a lot of cases,

right? And I was impressed, you know, because I am not a political scientist, but I as a historian, kind of looking at it from the outside, I would, I would have assumed that no theories apply when it comes to Trump. He's just such a different person. But I was really impressed how you were able to share that. In fact, from fits into this, this alpha commander chief, to sort of circle back to the Vietnam chapters. I tried to be careful when writing about Vietnam in the 1950s so I didn't want to leave the impression Eisenhower's saved us from this, this terrible war. And in fact, in the 1960s that became kind of a popular argument that you know Eisenhower, that's when his his stock tends to begin growing up that people looked back and saw that he kept us out of Vietnam, or as Kennedy and Johnson are now stuck in this quagmire. But I really tried not to leave the impression that Eisenhower would never have committed. Some people thought, some historians have argued that he purposely set obstacles to us engagement in Vietnam that could never be met. But I don't think that's true. I think that if is his demands, and Congress's demands had been met, we would have gone if he could have gotten or if Dulles could have gotten Britain and France to commit. If Congress would have said, Okay, we probably would have done something, at least some kind of an air raid to try to save DNB and fu or whatever I thought of, George HW Bush in the first Gulf War went to a fair amount of trouble to get the same kind of commitments that Eisenhower was looking for. He got a UN resolution. He had pull American polls from the American people, which said that they supported it. He got Congress behind it. And so I think you're right about that, that that, I guess that goes all the way back to Aristotle and the just war and everything. There's always some, some conditions that need to be met, and in these cases, they kind of consistent.

Yeah, I think your chapter on Vietnam was great. I think it made me more sympathetic, in some ways, to later decision makers. So I mean, in my book, I talk about Johnson escalating the war and then Nixon prolonging it, and particularly for the that first period, 1964 1965 I think the documents show that Johnson felt pressured to go into Vietnam, partly to rebut challenges that he was soft on Communism, even though most voters were pretty. Skeptical of overt intervention in Vietnam at the time. So I think that evidence is all consistent with the idea that this pressure to demonstrate leadership strength steers US foreign policy in a hawkish direction. But I thought your book showed that even under Eisenhower, I mean, there seemed to be quite a quite a lot of folks who were trending in that direction. And he had some really vivid quotes from Eisenhower and his team, saying they thought Vietnam was even more important than Korea. And certainly Eisenhower was the administration that gave us the domino theory. And it did seem as though that that path was was was more one of continuity rather than change. By contrast, I thought I had the opposite reaction in reading your discussion of the Suez Crisis, which I found to be an interesting parallel to my book's discussion of President Obama and the Libya Civil War. In both of those cases, a US president is skeptical of intervening in North Africa, Middle East, and it's really Britain and France that are leading the charge on that. And in my book, I talk about how the Obama administration felt enormous pressure not to be left behind in this intervention that Britain and France were trying to lead. Whereas I think in your book, you just documented how Eisenhower wasn't having any of that. And I think that that's one of the examples of his success in maintaining foreign policy restraint under conditions where other others might not be able to maintain such balance.

Right? I think it's one of the few examples during his presidency when he was truly angry at our eyes for something that they had done, and the idea that they would go behind America's back and take this action without us being involved, even though he, I believe that he was in favor of the outcome that they wanted to achieve, Yeah, but just didn't want to do it in that way. Yeah, and it, you know, it makes me that the Suez Crisis definitely, when I think about how Eisenhower might respond to various foreign policy crises in today's world, it's definitely the Suez Crisis that I think about when I wonder how he might handle the Israeli war against Hamas today. Yeah. Well,

let me just start opening the question to you, what do you think if Eisenhower, if we replaced Biden with Eisenhower, what do you think or Trump with Eisenhower? What do you think are some of the main things we do differently? What are the ways in which we could feasibly restore balance that we've lost.

I think spending for sure. I think that the definitely the military industrial complex, which he spoke about in his farewell address. It's that term has definitely been used in ways that he didn't intend it, but I think his concerns would still be there, and I think to an even greater extent, members of Congress protecting bases and dependence industry in their districts, and the size of the industry and the pressure that it puts on the military to continue to spend so I think that's an obvious one. I think you would still be concerned with that as far as the various different foreign policy crises in the world right now, I can't help but think that he would want to support Ukraine, but do it through a sort of United NATO approach. You mentioned earlier that he saw you initially saw NATO as sort of a temporary post world war two sort of situation. But given that that Europe has never created a common defense or European defense community or anything like that, I think he would still be in support of collective security in the West, and I so I think that support for Ukraine would probably funnel through that Nadira. Would

you think he would have supported NATO enlargement, or would he have seen that as going beyond America's core interests?

Yeah, I think he might have seen it as being provocative to to include the the former Eastern Bloc countries, but it's hard to say. Since the Eastern Bloc was still there when he left, it's hard to say how his views might have changed in the post Cold War world. China, you mentioned China earlier, and definitely the Kimura Matsu. The offshore island crisis is our best way of trying to see what Eisenhower thought about China and how he might deal with it, definitely in his time, maybe even more so than today. Our commitments to Taiwan would have shaped his views there, but there's always that that struggle to find, where is our defense perimeter, right? Maybe it includes Taiwan. But does it include this island off the coast of mainland China that you can, you know, practically throw a rock and hit it from the mainland. I and I don't think we would have gone to war over those offshore islands into to respond to your early thing. Maybe we got

lucky there. Yeah, you think he was, he was bluffing with the nuclear threat in the straits crisis.

I think so.

Do that. I wonder. I mean, that's often described as a place where he was reckless, and it does seem particularly if you translate that scenario to today, it seems quite grave, though. I suspect today, now that China is nuclear armed and so much more capable and integrated with the global economy, I suspect he probably wouldn't have made the same threats. And so sort of a place where I find it particularly hard to know exactly how we translate his mindset to current policy concerns. Just so much is different, even though the proper nouns are the same,

yeah, the economic aspect of the foreign policy of China is, is the most important aspect of it today? I studied the history of American foreign policy from professors who were part of that Wisconsin School of economic determination as far as American foreign policy. And I'm just I'm not sure how, how he would have thought about it, dealing with a China that is the China of today. Yeah,

I get since we're probably nearing the end of our, of our time, I just wonder, as you've been promoting the book and talking to people about it, what are the most interesting reactions you've gotten from from your readers or other scholars or anyone

else? Yeah, so mainly, I've been talking to kind of the general public, or at least academics who aren't historians, yeah. And so I've been surprised that they're so surprised that Eisenhower is considered one of our great presidents because their knowledge of Him. But when you start talking about or when I start talking about the need for balance, I just lots of heads bobbing up and down in audiences, and it resonates with people, you know, we we really think about how politically divided our country is, but people who show up to a book talk about Eisenhower, you know, they tend to be moderates, you know, like almost 40% of the American public is, and so I think it resonates with them, yeah, but yeah, I'm super surprised at how little people tend to know about Eisenhower and how interested they are in hearing some of these things about him that they hadn't heard, that both parties wanted him to run. You know, they just they see VR next to his name and assume certain things about him, and they're interested to hear that some of those things aren't true. How about you? How have people been reacting to your arguments? Chief text, well, one of the

interesting things about this, this project, is that, you know, the book came out right as we were heading into presidential primaries. And it's quite, quite rare to have, you know, an academic book with some kind of timely release like that and and so a lot of the conversations I've been having about how this applies to the current race, lot of that has to do with understanding Donald Trump. And we talked a bit about that during the Republican primary. I thought there were all sorts of examples of the book's argument carried out most, most vividly the way that the top three GOP presidential contenders all endorsed attacking Mexico to deal with the fentanyl issue is just a very clear example of a hawkish policy being used to burnish candidates Leadership strength when President Biden was still in the race, his leadership strength as channeled through the age issue, obviously, was the centerpiece of concern about him, and now that he's withdrawn from the race, I suspect that Vice President Harris will also struggle to figure out how she can project an image of being a strong. Commander in Chief. So I think, I think part of what I've been thinking a lot about over the last eight months since the book came out, is just, is just all the ways in which you try to grapple with how the book does and doesn't line up with with current events. And again, it's just a new experience for an academic. You know, so much of what we write is, you know, is not current, contemporary, or at least immediately applicable to current events like that. So that's been fun, and it's been interesting, and it's a really evergreen subject, and it's been really fun talking to you today about

it. Thanks, Jeff, and I do appreciate that and the the applicability of our works to the current presidential race, I wish that there was, you know, historians don't often take sides. You know that there are the demand for us to be objective is so great that we often just let it, let it lay, let our readers decide whether something that we've written is applicable to the current situation. And it it was a bit of a struggle to me to include those sections in each chapter, trying to make an argument, to show how it applied to the current situation in the United States, and I do hope that it will resonate with some people in this election year. Unfortunately, you look at a book cover and it's got Eisenhower's picture on it and Eisenhower's name on it, and you think 1950s and you're not necessarily thinking about current politics, but I hope that, I hope that it does land on some people's nightstands as they think about this election. I'd love to send a copy to whoever's Kamala Harris's camp or something. Do you have a

project you're excited to work on next

as I was researching this book, I read a lot of Eisenhower's letters to his brothers, particularly his younger brother Milton, who was to Dwight's left politically, and his Older brother Edgar, who was to his right politically, and they talk about issues, and Eisen Dwight, Eisenhower, he's always in the middle. And I think it would be fun to publish a collection of these letters and annotate them as sort of a American political spectrum in the 20th century kind of thing. So yeah, I ended up spending a few extra days at the Eisenhower library taking notes on these letters that didn't really apply to this book. With that in mind, you working on something new already?

Yeah, I'm doing a project on political polarization and US foreign policy, why it's growing over time, how that will constrain America's global role. It's part of why I was interested in your mention of the difference between the Eisenhower administration and today on that. And actually, I have an article coming out in international security in two months that talks about the degree to which bipartisan consensus over Eisenhower's foreign policy, the degree to which that's held up over the last 75 years. So I look forward to seeing that, and hopefully that will become a book at some point in the not too distant future, but we're working on it.

Great. I look forward to that.

Hey, thanks very much.

This was this was awesome. I really enjoyed talking to you. I think it went really well. You.