What Would Harry Truman Do?

Madeleine Albright just walked right in to one of my pet peeves, calling for the United States to adhere to a moderate (i.e., neither isolationist nor imperial) foreign policy, and then sets it up with the old "consider Harry Truman." Frankly, I think people should consider spending less time considering Harry Truman.

If there's some very specific thing Truman did that you want to do again, that's great, but overwhelmingly the only point Truman-invokers are making is that they want a foreign policy that's not too hot and also not too cold. This is nice, of course, and Goldilocks agrees, but it's really not an especially deep point or one that carries a ton of analytic bite.

It's telling, for example, that Peter Beinart was able to maintain his "liberals should emulate Truman" message in both his pro- and anti- phases on the Iraq War. Realistically, all we're seeing there is that "position yourself somewhere between two extremes" covers an extremely broad range of positions. I'm sure that Charles Krauthammer believes he, too, is inhabiting a wise middle ground in some sense. After all, he's not like Ann Coulter who wants to convert all Muslims to Christianity.

Comments

What would Truman do? The massacre at No Gun Ri was authorized from the top.

Let's have a little less beatification of Truman.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | June 12, 2007 9:28 AM

Absolutely. One of the real problems in the discussion of foreign affairs is to use personalities - Truman, Churchill, De Gaulle - as broad euphemisms. Keep the focus on the very specific thing you want the US to do, or even better, the very specific outcome that you want in international relations.

Keeping a focus on the specific outcomes avoids that other problem in discussion of foreign affairs - a drift into continual discussion of the design of international institutions and processes rather than the concrete policies and relationships between states advocated. So say exactly what you want to happen with the value of the dollar, those Jewish settlements on the land conquered in 1967, US troops in Iraq etc, don't engage in euphemistic bullshit about the G8, getting back to 'Camp David', and regional security institutions - or rather, bullshit about those all you want, only after making your substantive preferences unmistakable, since the substantive preferences and the institutions must be compatible.

Posted by otto | June 12, 2007 9:31 AM

Maybe an "Historical Analogy Moratorium" should be declared. Arguing what a particular dead guy would do or which of our past wars our current war is most like seems to be doing very little to aid in the formulation of actual foreign policy.

It's become the the first refuge of the intellectually lazy.

Posted by AJ | June 12, 2007 9:36 AM

this seems appropriate for the discussion, a solid critique of attempts on the left to claim Truman while slamming Bush. http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=13026

Posted by Anonymous | June 12, 2007 9:44 AM

I know Albright isn't running for office, so maybe this isn't the most relevant thought, but it strikes me that appeals to 'govern like X' have never, ever had any traction in American politics, and that when they have been pulled out, it is inevitably a sign of desperation. I'm thinking of recent and current cases like the Democratic obsession with finding the next Bill Clinton, or the Republican quest for the next Ronald Reagan; Dean's Harry Truman schtick; Democratic appeals to the success of the New Deal; lame Republican appeals to African-Americans based on the fact that they are 'the party of Lincoln'; and of course any appeal to 'the Founding Fathers' (a reliable marker of marginal discourse in this country).

The only exception to this rule that occurs to me is Bill Clinton as heir to JFK. Of course he had that video clip, so it wasn't merely a rhetorical conceit.

Posted by lampwick | June 12, 2007 9:47 AM

I don't understand how you know what invoking Truman signifies, or in other words, how you know that it means "not too hot, not too cold," as Goldilocks said. What if the point they're making is the necessity to override domestic pressure to do less internationally? You may have a point that these people invoke Truman too carelessly, but maybe they have good reasons (being politicians) to respect the balancing act Truman pulled off (or whatever). If you're saying "it's not useful to say, 'now leap like Michael Jordan and dunk the ball,' when you can't jump," that might be valid, but it sounds like you are saying there are specific drawbacks to Truman that people aren't considering, and until you actually mention those drawbacks, it's simply an argument unmade.

Posted by Martin | June 12, 2007 9:47 AM

Hmm, isn't calling for a "Historical Analogy Moratorium" pretty close to inviting us all to forget all about history and its lessons?

I for one think that, although clearly not an exact fit, the Vietnam analogy, for example, has a lot to teach us about the current choices we face in Iraq.

Isn't it more the case that some analogies are more likely to fit with your personal prejudices than others? E.g. 1975 good, 1939 bad?

Posted by Cerro | June 12, 2007 9:49 AM

I'm going to second Jeffrey here.

If the contemporaneous voting public overwhelmingly concluded that he had bungled his job as president at the time his term in office ended, I don't see why standing twenty paces forward we need to revise history to say the opposite. Really, all of this Truman hagiography out there is basically insulting of the democratic imperative: "If a vast majority of people believe you are doing a rotten job, the reason is that you are doing a rotten job."

Or, to put it succinctly, Truman sucked.

Posted by Monstertron | June 12, 2007 9:55 AM

Several weeks ago Time ran the headline "Looking for next Truman"
Truman left with the war still going on. Obviously if we are looking for some to get us out the war in a rational/ non-disasterious way it would be the next Eisenhower.

Posted by ChrisB | June 12, 2007 9:58 AM

Truman really handled China well during the Korean War, didn't he? I think people like Albright are engaging in a little historical revisionism. Does Albright think you can negotiate with Iran? Does she think war with Iran is a good or bad idea? Is it a bad idea only because Commander Guy is in charge?

Posted by Joe Klein's conscience | June 12, 2007 9:59 AM

Monstertron,
MacArthur would be your number one fan. ;-)

Posted by Joe Klein's conscience | June 12, 2007 10:01 AM

Between Chomsky and Ann,
There’s quite a distance to span,
Why stand for anything when you have the middle to share,
That way you could be here, there and everywhere,
And when the shit hits the fan,
You’ll have a readymade plan,
Blame the left, blame the right, all those partisan souls,
Or failing all else, its’ gotta be the fault of those netroots assholes

Posted by 2cynicalbyhalf | June 12, 2007 10:02 AM

Cerro- Historical Analogies are useful, if they are very carefully drawn and appopriate analysis is done to draw there similarities and differences. But, in contemporary Washington this is almost never done. Instead they get used to shortcut analysis instead of aiding it.

Since no one seems to know how to do it properly, maybe they should just stop for a while and try something else.

Posted by AJ | June 12, 2007 10:07 AM

"If the contemporaneous voting public overwhelmingly concluded that he had bungled his job as president at the time his term in office ended, I don't see why standing twenty paces forward we need to revise history to say the opposite."

'Cos sometimes it takes thirty years to evaluate the institutions that were created under a president's rule. Truman created *a lot*, and largely, they were successful, as was the policy of containment of communism.

Or the fact that the legacy, so to speak, of presidents in the foreign arena is more evident than the domestic or the economic prosperity at the time, which is irrelevant to us living in the present. (Truman's unpopularity was also linked with the wrenching post-War recession that the US experienced.)

Churchill got arsed out by the UK public in 1945 in favor of Atlee and the Labour Party. Does that mean that Churchill was a failure as a Prime Minister? No. (He did f**k up a lot of other things before that - Gallipoli, the partition of Ireland, staying on the Gold Standard [which caused a General Strike], Tonypandy)

Posted by Sock Puppet of the Great Satan. | June 12, 2007 10:10 AM

I don't think that when foreign policy establishment types say "Truman" do they mean Truman.

When they say "Reagan," they don't mean Reagan.

It's just a complicated signaling and dance act between the various nut squads, using biographical symbolism to indicate what nut squad tack is being taken at the moment.

So by "Reagan" they might be signaling "ultra macho standin' up to the foe all firm & strong, and rootin' out them Comnists where ever they's hidin'."

No one is saying "Reagan" so that there is any sort of scrupulous review of the realities of Reagan's actions, their contexts, or consequences.

By "Truman" they might mean no more than "less Bush Jr. purely ideological craziness."

In America it's against the law to use simple reason and evidence. It is required that you make complicated genuflections & invocations of cherished anecdotal and biographical myths in order to make any point.

If you cannot make an appeal for a policy by a shamanistic appeal to ancestor worship, no one 'serious' will listen to you.

You cannot simply say, "I think we should do X because of A, B, C, and the likely result Y."

You *must* say, instead, "I think we should do X, because Mr. Z whom we all love did something like Y in a similar situation."

Posted by El Cid | June 12, 2007 10:25 AM

Keep the focus on the very specific thing you want the US to do, or even better, the very specific outcome that you want in international relations.

Which is what Truman did. As did FDR, Churchill, basically everyone we're supposed to be idolizing. They actually thought for themselves.

Posted by Rick Massimo | June 12, 2007 10:40 AM

AJ,

Point taken, but we aren't talking about closely argued essay writing here, we're talking about politicians answering questions and making statements that probably are not pre-prepared.

Of course the historical analogies they use are often simplistic, but that doesn't mean they can't be useful. If someone says for example that what we need now is an Eisenhower to bring the war to an end, or if someone describes Bush's foreign policy as "Wilsonian", people understand what's being said.

Simplistic? Sure. But potentially useful? Also.

Posted by Cerro | June 12, 2007 10:46 AM

Truman would

DROP THE BOMB!'

cause

HE DA MAN!

Posted by Kevin | June 12, 2007 10:51 AM

We could all learn a lot from William Henry Harrison.

Posted by Max | June 12, 2007 10:52 AM

I vote "best line" to Max.

Posted by Brandon Claycomb | June 12, 2007 11:01 AM

Ann Coulter backed off the forcible conversion thing, saying it was a joke.

Michael Savage has advocated such a policy seriously and consistently.

Posted by David Tomlin | June 12, 2007 11:29 AM

I don't think that when foreign policy establishment types say "Truman" do they mean Truman. - El Cid

Indeed.

I happen to be something of a Trumanolatrist myself, and I find it very odd who invokes Truman in discussions of both foreign policy and domestic politics, considering that Truman's most successful foreign policy approach (containment, etc.), when some of us urged it to be applied in the "war on terror" was explicitly depricated by these wannabe Trumanolatrists as "un-serious", "tantamount to capitulation" and "tired realism"(*) and considering that many of the wanna-be Trumanolatrists are always going on and on about how we Dems. need to be moderate, bipartisan, etc., when Truman himself was hella partisan.

It seems that the Truman invoked by the wanna-be Trumanolatrists is exactly the opposite of the historical Truman -- their "Truman" is indeed a symbol (and isn't turning someone who was a living, flesh and blood human into a dead symbol like that tantamount to murder? are those who claim to idolize Truman metaphorically in fact murdering him? oh the sweet irony -- can someone write a Sci-Fi script about this?).

Unless it's all about dropping Da Bomb and No Gun Ri -- in which case, that says something about so many who are invoking Truman rather than saying anything about Truman himself per se, don't it?

I don't mind the historical comparisons -- if anything we do need to know our history better as others have pointed out here. I just wish our quasi-Gnostic/neo-Platonic (the adoption -- and misinterpretation -- by some of L. Strauss anyone?) punditocracy would stop thinking in terms of vain invocations of symbols carrying the names of dead people and would actually think in terms -- even if general and abstract rather than specific and concrete -- of the policies those actual people supported or opposed.

(*) OT: isn't it ironic how Bush & CO, who lumped us moonbats who didn't want to invade Iraq with "realists" who didn't understand the need to spread democracy in the Islamic world, are propping up Musharrif (sp?) against democratic stirrings?

Posted by DAS | June 12, 2007 11:30 AM

Some terrific commentary today, thanks.

ps. the new version of Safari has spellcheck. Which I'm loving.

Posted by judson | June 12, 2007 11:53 AM

Tippecanoe and Taylor too! I like it.

I think that the issue of historical analogies is unimportant if they stay within bounds.

It is a wide topic -- should analogies be used when they create more noise than signal? Perhaps yes. Speach is only partly about conveying thoughts and information, another function is to create or maintain a bond between the speaker/writer and listener/reader. There was a moment in history when a sonorous shout "Tippenanoe and Taylor too" was bonding the speaker and listeners, all supporting Harrison and his future good works as POTUS.

So when Albright says "Truman" she means "warm, fuzzy, Democrat, multilateral, making a war when necessary, having some restraint (did not use nukes in Korean War in spite of such advise)".

All of that is good, especially restraint in using nukes and warm and fuzzy, but surely, Albright should elaborate.

One thing is that there is a situation that is FUBAR, and we have to bite the bullet. And not a single politician simultaneously (a) wise enough to know what that means, and (b) stupid enough to tell what that means. So we have to look at broad hints.

In case of Mrs. Albright, I would appreciate a confession that some policies that she presided over should be reassessed. Kenneth Pollack argued somewhat convincingly that the decision to attack Iraq was a natural and logical extension of the policy of "containment", because we were about to loose the diplomatic cover for the piracy that the "containment" amounted to, so if we agreed that the "containment" was necessary, then we had to "finish the job".

Posted by piotr | June 12, 2007 11:53 AM

piotr,
So she also concurs with Bush's policy in Iraq right now? Listless and never leaving?

Posted by Joe Klein's conscience | June 12, 2007 12:03 PM

Madeline Albright is a member of the advisory board to the Truman National Security Project. At the project's web site, there is an entry on Our Name and Legacy which perhaps gives some insight into what these particular fans of Truman see in him.

Posted by Dan Kervick | June 12, 2007 1:12 PM

Tippecanoe and Taylor too!

Tyler, too? Taylor was in some respects Harrison's clone (Whig general, who died very early in his first term), but he wasn't Harrison's VP.

Posted by rea | June 12, 2007 1:27 PM

Perhaps the more accurate reading is not to view the Truman Love as a Goldilocks position per se, but to view at as the idealization of "The Fighting Liberal" archetype.

We're Liberals, but we're TOUGH. We bomb the shit out of people every once in a while just to remind you how tough we are. Just like Truman! We're not like those other nancy-boy liberals you don't trust on national security issues.

Of course, I need hardly remind anyone that "The Fighting Liberal" was the slogan of Charles Foster Kane. And, naturally, the good intentions of the Fighting Liberals tend to end up leaving our country mired in some godawful unwinnable land war somewhere in Asia, slumped against their desks, mumbling "Truman.... Truman..."

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | June 12, 2007 1:48 PM

Sock Puppet:

"Or the fact that the legacy, so to speak, of presidents in the foreign arena is more evident than the domestic or the economic prosperity at the time, which is irrelevant to us living in the present."

Economic prosperity at the time isn't the only measure of a domestic policy; and many of the effects of domestic policies by previous presidents are felt today. For example, much of the regulator apparatus of the securities industry still in use today was developed during the Great Depression by the Roosevelt administration, e.g., the Investment Company Act, establishment of the Securities and Exchange Commission, etc.

Posted by Fred | June 12, 2007 1:56 PM

Tippecanoe and T[a]yl(e|o)r too!

As neither Taylor nor Tyler belong to m_e_m_o_r_a_b_l_e presidents, I stand corrected but not ashamed.

Luckily, Truman is not a subject of a cult-like following, meaning, I never noticed discussion "what a true Truman policy should be", the way "true Reagan policies" are discussed.

Thinking about it, perhaps we need a "true conservative" approach to Iran that would combine Reagan and Marie Antoinette, "let them eat cake".

Posted by piotr | June 12, 2007 6:10 PM

As neither Taylor nor Tyler belong to m_e_m_o_r_a_b_l_e presidents, I stand corrected but not ashamed.

Old Rough and Ready, the victor of Monterrey and Buena Vista, Jefferson Davis' father-in-law who threatened to hang any would-be southern secessionists, unmemorable? Although, admittedly, not much happened during his presidency . . .

Posted by rea | June 12, 2007 6:35 PM

I liked that Taylor threatened to, as president, personally lead an army against anyone who seceded.

Too bad about those cherries, really.

Posted by witless chum | June 13, 2007 12:20 AM

"Let's have a little less beatification of Truman.
Posted by Jeffrey Davis "

OK but also remember it's so frequently a mixed bag.

The British came to Truman with a request to execute a coup against Mossadegh. Truman refused to overthrow a democratically elected government in Iran.

After the '52 elections Eisenhower agreed to carry British water (with a cut of course) and the rest as they say is history.

Posted by cal1942 | June 13, 2007 1:47 AM

""If a vast majority of people believe you are doing a rotten job, the reason is that you are doing a rotten job."

Or, to put it succinctly, Truman sucked.

Posted by Monstertron"

Well, a little history is appropriate here. Having distinct memories of that period, there are a couple of reasons that Truman's approval ratings were so low.

Not to be discounted is firing MacArthur. Although, without question, it was the right thing to do, and LONG OVERDUE (the joint chiefs urged Truman to move on MacArthur), a staggering majority of people were furious. Even my father, who was a devout Democrat, threw a fit.

The Korean War was unpopular, in part, because the concept of warfare with limited objectives was simply not understood, especially following on the heals of a magnificent victory in WWII. The world had changed and very, very few people recognized that fact.

Anti-communist fever, HUAC and the early McCarthy period were also contributing factors and the PRESS, especially Luce's Time Magazine, helped to spin the nation into a frenzy with their 'who lost China' gambit. The implication of 'who lost China' (as if it were ours to lose) was lost on few people. The press and the 101st Commie hunters (which included some Democrats) had people thinking that a Commie was under everyone's bed. Every effort by the right, aided by the press, tainted Truman and liberal Democrats as, if not fellow travellers, at least enablers. In those days people actually read newspapers, read editorials.

The statement "Truman sucked" is bullsh*t.

Posted by cal1942 | June 13, 2007 2:35 AM