A shade of difference

One of my favorite comment threads of all time has developed on Thursday's post, In search of the basic tinker unit.  Plenty of good suggestions for the TU, some good home repair war stories, and lots of things that made me laugh, which is always a great gift from readers.  Thanks, folks.

But Middle Browser and sweatloaf are having an interesting back and forth in the comment thread on Friday's post, Warmongering as the measure of serious statecraft.

Their discussion takes off from what I wrote about the willingness to go to war being the first mark of tyrants and madmen.

Right off the bat, Middle Browser brings up FDR.

Not trying to start an argument here, and our politics are probably more similar than my comment may reflect, but just to be clear, I'm curious -- was FDR a madman or tyrant?

sweetloaf comes right back with the words "Pearl Harbor" and essentially points out that there's a difference between willingly going off to start a war and being willing to fight a war in defense of the nation.

Implicit, though, in Middle Browswer's initial point and his follow-ups is the fact that Roosevelt was preparing to take the country into war well before Pearl Harbor.

He was willing to go to war.

Two points I'd like to make, the first on Middle Browser's side, the second on sweetloaf's.

First, Abraham Lincoln.

Second: there's willing and then there's willing.

Lincoln and Roosevelt were willing to go to war because, finally, they had no other choice.  Neither wished for it.  Neither wanted it.  But the wars came.  And they were willing to fight them, at terrible costs.  They didn't like it.  They would have been willing not to fight, if they had that option.  They didn't, so they went to war, willingly, although it would be more accurate to say that what they were willing to do was save the nation and, in FDR's case, Europe and Asia.

Southerners who want to jump in here and argue that Lincoln was doing the opposite of saving the nation better be prepared to deal with the fact of Great Britain and what she was up to during the War of "Northern" Agression.

Anti-Rooseveltians who want to talk about the Iron Curtain and the Cold War need to take note that I'm talking about what FDR was willing to do and tried to do, not what he managed to do.

There is a difference between Lincoln's and FDR's willingness to go to war, and the willingness of a Greek cheiftan to drag all his allies off to a ten year long war because his brother couldn't hold onto his wife's affection.

There's a difference between what they did and the willingness of an English king to invade France just because he doesn't want to pay for the piece of prime real estate he covets, even if Shakespeare did get a good play out of it.

And there's a difference between what they did and what has been done by a man whose main reason for wanting to be President appears to have been to finish the job he believed his daddy was too timid to finish with his war.

Now, while this is an interesting and valuable discussion, what I'm really tempted to do is write an apology for myself.  I think the issue arose out of my failure to be precise.

My point yesterday wasn't that nations and Presidents should never be willing to go to war.  It wasn't even that George W. Bush is either a tyrant or a madman.

I happen to think that Bush is a would-be tyrant, that he definitely has a tryant's temperamant when it comes to getting his way, but his willingness to take the country to war in Iraq isn't the first piece evidence in the indictment.  Ahead of that, I'd submit all he's been willing to do in order to take the country to war and keep us there.

But, as I said, that wasn't my point yesterday.

My point was that measuring a leader's or a political party's toughness on issues of defense solely or even mainly on their willingness to go to war is stupid because by that measure madmen and tyrants are indistinguishable from the likes of FDR and Abraham Lincoln.

But this got me thinking along a different track.

Forget any special pleading on Lincoln’s and Roosevelt’s behalf.

In their time, both men were accused of being tyrants---They were also accused of being madmen, especially Lincoln and by Northerners!—and in fact they both did things that even today we who admire them have to admit look tryannical.  Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus is problematic, but there’s no looking away from FDR’s internment of Japanese-Americans.

And the truth is that great leaders have to have a touch of the tyrant.  "Your representative," said Edmund Burke,"owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment also; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion."  There are always times when it is necessary for leaders to impose their judgment of what’s in the nation’s good over the expressed will of the people.  There are always times when it is necessary for them to treat some of the people as expendable, to sacrifice their interests if not their lives for the greater good.

Truly great leaders—great as in being strong, wise, and good—keep that side of themselves in check and try never to have to act on it.  Roosevelt spent years trying to convince the country that war was inevitable and necessary.  No President since who has sent troops into harm’s way have shown either his reluctance or his respect for the American people.  And great leaders will do their best to be sure that what they want to do is the best thing to do before imposing their will on the country.

But having a personality trait that can be described as tyrannical doesn’t make a leader a tyrant any more than sharing a personality trait with your brother makes you him.

Conversely, and obviously, a tyrant can have personality traits, admirable traits even, in common with a great and benevolent democratic leader and still be a tyrant.

Hitler loved his dogs.

All of us are a mix of qualities that are neither good nor bad except in how we act upon them.

Consequently, we are often confusing ourselves by focusing on surface differences and skin-deep similarities.

“You’re just like your grandfather.  He loved baseball too.”

“I can’t stand her.  She’s a pack rat, just like my ex.”

“Truman was unpopular too.”

And we often give the wrong names to qualities, depending on whether or not we admire or disdain the person we're describing or on whether or not we're flattering or criticizing ourselves.

Stubbornness gets called tenacity, anger confused with toughness, vanity mistaken for confidence.

That kid back in high school?  The one who got straight A's, always had his homework done on time, studied three hours a night?  The one all the teachers loved?  Was he hard-working, conscientious, polite and respectful?  Or was he an overachieving brown-noser?

We all do this sort of thing, name things according to our prejudices, insist upon differences while dismissing points of similarity, embrace similarities while ignoring shades of difference.

Politicians and their spin doctors are especially adept at it.  They are eager to find similarities between themselves and our heroes, happy to mischaracterize their opponents, diligent in manipulating our perceptions, and George Bush has been far from the exception that proves the rule.

At various points throughout his Presidency Bush has been favorably compared, by himself and his apologists, to Truman, Churchill, Teddy Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, and even Abe Lincoln---people wanted Lincoln to cut and run from his war, too, you know, and many even had the audacity to vote for his opponent when he ran for re-election, as well.

I'm sure that right about now, with polls showing that 70 per cent of the people are opposed to sending more troops into Iraq, folks around the White House would take great comfort from that quote above from Burke.

And Bush, and Cheney, pretty much based his whole Presidency on making sure he had nothing in common with Bill Clinton, including sound policies on terrorism, North Korea, and the Middle East.

Since 9/11, Bush has been helped in this by the National Media, many of whose wise men and women, having decided that we are a nation of children who needed a hero-king to lead us through hard times and having decided that it was their job to provide us with one by pretending that we already had one, instead of demanding that man act like one, were all too willing to push the Churchill and Teddy Roosevelt comparisions.

But they'd been hard at work at selling us a Man Who Wasn't There for over a year before 9/11, finding, highlighting, and inventing differences between Bush and Al Gore and pushing those differences as virtues.  His lack of experience became a refreshing change from Gore's insider elitism.  His incuriosity, his intellectual laziness, his snap judgments based on nothing but his prejudices, preconceptions, and self-flattering faith in himself as God's favorite---proof of his down to earth, go with his gut regular guyness, much to be prefered to to Gore's show-offy know-it-all smartest kid in the class act.

That whole regular guyness, Bush as the fellow you'd want to have a beer with, his supposed likeability, all those distinctions without a difference, still gets harped on by many Beltway Insiders, as if Bush's alleged popularity was proof that he was doing a good job, as if it does and should excuse him from criticism, as if, even if it was true that we all liked the guy, we all don't know nice guys and nice gals we wouldn't let borrow our cars, trust to balance our checkbooks, or put in charge of the parish bazaar, let alone run the country, let alone start and manage a war.

For years the cynicism and viciousness of Bush's Rovian political style has been given a pass because, well, all politicians play dirty.

For years, his many and various lies have been left unexamined, even shrugged off, because, heck, all Presidents lie.

Which brings me to the end of this post and the beginning of another one and this article from the Atlantic, Untruth and Consequences, by Carl Cannon.

"Presidents have always lied," says the editors' tag line, "Here's how George W. Bush is different."

To be continued.  Unfortunately, Cannon's essay is only available to subscibers.  If you aren't a subscriber and would like to read it, drop me a note at [email protected] and I'll email it to you.

Comments

[EJ]

It's very unfortunate that the popular mythology about US involvement in WWII is that it all started with Pearl Harbor. (and it doesn't readily explain why we so eagerly jumped into war in Europe when we were already fighting the Japanese).

But the real problem is it leaves unexamined FDR's reasons and motivation for wanting the US in the war. Perhaps if Americans were more aware of the foreign policy debates in the US leading up to WWII we'd be better able to evaluate fatuous comparisons between FDR and contemporary leaders who want to lead us into foreign wars.

[burritoboy]

"There is a difference between Lincoln's and FDR's willingness to go to war, and the willingness of a Greek chieftan to drag all his allies off to a ten year long war because his brother couldn't hold onto his wife's affection.

There's a difference between what they did and the willingness of an English king to invade France just because he doesn't want to pay for the piece of prime real estate he covets, even if Shakespeare did get a good play out of it."

I wouldn't be quite as flip as this: while the public policy choices within an aristocracy (which equally applies to Homeric Greece and late medieval England) may seem strange to us, our reasoning would have seemed even more strange and unreasonable to them. We're not necessarily always more reasonable than they were. Numerous regimes of our time have been dominated by passions and irrationality, many on the flimsiest of evidences. And modern regimes have often showed themselves much less practical and pragmatic than many ancient aristocracies and monrachies.

Read John Kautsky's The Politics of Aristocratic Empires.

[burritoboy]

"And the truth is that great leaders have to have a touch of the tyrant. "Your representative," said Edmund Burke,"not his industry only, but his judgment also; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.""

I think the problem goes right back to the beginning of the modern democracy - the moment when Machiavelli lauded the modern mixed social contract republic as THE solution to the problem of Fortune (remember, the problem for Plato and Aristotle is that the perfect state does not last long due to inevitable changes in it's political fortunes).

Now, the ancient Greek democracy was a democracy - officials were selected by random not by elections (which was properly regarded as an aristocratic thing). Machiavelli's ideal republic, however, follows Rome in having elected leaders. Both in actual Rome, as well as in Machiavelli's histories of Rome and Florence, Machiavelli shows that WHOEVER leads (whether from high or low birth, or whether deriving support from the elite or the many) becomes a prince or princeps. All great leaders in Machiavelli are depicted as princes and usually also as tyrants, even though they conceal that from the population.

[chris y]

and it doesn't readily explain why we so eagerly jumped into war in Europe when we were already fighting the Japanese

Possibly the fact that Germany had declared war on you, and had an effective submarine fleet?

[Middle Browser]

Lance

Thanks for the follow-up. One day, perhaps, I'll be able to write a more thorough post on all of my thoughts on Bush, the Iraq war, and what the response of Americans should be. It will be thoughtful and provocative, deep and satisfying (for me at least), etc. etc. Until then, thanks for the posts.

Now I have to go read the comments to the Tinker post, which I didn't read before.

[Rasselas]

Maybe we ought to compare W. to a more competent tyrant, like Julius Caesar, who had sort of a populist, rabble-rousing appeal, and who defied an entrenched and sclerotic political establishment, and who rose to prominence as a successful war leader and winner of new territories.

[Middle Browser]

P.S. Coincidentally, Jane Galt (www.janegalt.net) has a post about Iraq today. Much of what she has to say reflect some of my own thinking. There are differences but until that thorough post I mentioned, this will have to do.

[burritoboy]

"Maybe we ought to compare W. to a more competent tyrant, like Julius Caesar, who had sort of a populist, rabble-rousing appeal, and who defied an entrenched and sclerotic political establishment, and who rose to prominence as a successful war leader and winner of new territories."

There's always a lot of problems comparing any politician from before the Enlightenment to any afterwards. It usually doesn't add a lot of value.

[Ed D.]

I just rewatched the Civil War PBS series and I believe the attack on Fort Sumpter and the secessions of multiple southern states actually preceeded Lincoln's inaugural which was in April I think. While the attack and secessions were no doubt triggered by Lincoln's election, he was not really for freeing the slaves although he thought it abominable. He was for preserving the union.

Ed

[Michael Bains]

Ummm... Am I the only one who notices one Spectacular difference between Jules and Georgie?

The former was successful in most of his endeavors. The latter? Well, not so much.

It's not my only problem with the comparison. Just the biggest quibble that I care to make.

All of us are a mix of qualities that are neither good nor bad except in how we act upon them.

The crux of all decisions boils down "which way do I go." Do I stand here thinking about my choices as the op passes by? Or do I have a thought and -pirn!- take off w/o considering the consequences. A balanced approach allows each option to be available to one when the situation is appropriate. That takes knowledge, humility and, perhaps more than just occasionally, courage.

What has Bush done which could possibly redeem the majority of his acts as President? Certainly there must be something.

No?

Excellent essay, Lance.