The Orbis

Photo courtesy of www.vanderbilt.edu/news/ [Click to enlarge]

Q: Is it fair for John Kerry to compare the George W. Bush administration with the Herbert Hoover administration?

A:“I think it may be fair. I am not sure it is terribly helpful since times have changed so enormously from the year 2004 to the Hoover administration, and I guess part of me as a historian finds the comparison a bit of a stretch. The reason I say that is not to criticize necessarily Senator Kerry but to suggest that the conditions in the Herbert Hoover period, the massive unemployment at 25 percent or more in the American workforce, is in no way really comparable to that of the United States today. It was a much more serious situation. I think a better comparison might be to the first George Bush administration where you also have fairly significant recession, significant economic problems with a lot of loss of jobs in 1990 and 1991, that recession, or to the Ronald Reagan administration that also had a significant loss of jobs. I guess I wouldn’t be as inclined to go as far back as Kerry is. Now the reason he is doing that is because it does serve to point out that there has been a net loss of jobs during the Bush administration compared to other administrations, and I understand the reason for making that comparison, but the degree to which the time periods are so different that even the scale of the loss and the size of the American economy and the size of the American workforce, the fact that we do have unemployment insurance and these sorts of things makes the comparison a bit of a stretch.”

Q: Historically, when a war is a factor in an election, is it an advantage for the incumbent?

A: “The normal and direct answer that most Americans would use is yes, it is an advantage. By that they go to the famous "don’t change horses in the middle of the stream," Franklin Roosevelt in World War II, Abraham Lincoln in the civil war, these types of analogies. But there is another way to look at this. There is the way to look at what happened to Lyndon Johnson and Harry Truman. Harry Truman in 1952 could have considered running for another term but the Korean War was so intensely unpopular as to make him leave office, and, in that sense, the war forced him to renounce any idea that he might or might not have had to go through the Democratic nomination. The same goes for Lyndon Johnson in 1968 with the unpopularity of the Vietnam War, also leading the incumbent in this case to take himself out of consideration. So, I think the idea of whether or not war is an advantage to a modern presidential incumbent is an open question, and it is not at all clear that George Bush is going to benefit from being at war in 2004. And, in fact, I think the historical evidence is disputed on that question.”

Q: Is the George W. Bush doctrine of preemptive war completely new to this country’s history?

A: “No, it is not, but here I’d make a distinction between the idea of articulating a preemptive doctrine, the idea of being able to say quite publicly and openly that the United States will take preemptive action and the fact that it has been reserved for an American President to take action. During the Cold War, I think American presidents reserved it, to their right, to take action if they saw necessary to deal with an impending nuclear strike. They may have acted in that way. No president ever completely renounced that idea. If it was necessary to take action if they saw an imminent attack, nuclear attack, conventional attack. So, I don’t think it is completely new. What is new is the public statement and the proclamation of this as a doctrine of the United States government as compared to the containment doctrine during the Cold War or previous statements of American policy which would have allowed that the United States would not attack first, would not be the aggressor. This does not mean though that American forces have not gone into action based on a perception of a threat before an actual attack took place. In some ways, some of our actions in the cold war are interventions into conflicts based and premised on the idea that if the United States didn’t act in either say Korea or Vietnam early enough, that aggression would develop and it would get to a point where attacks could be taken against the United States itself. So that is a different way of reading the idea of preemptive war but in some ways we had a doctrine in early times in our history of acting earlier than waiting until the attack was at our doorstep or was actually on American territory.”

Q: Have the administration’s actions over the past 4 years greatly affected our long-term relationship with our allies?

A:“There has been considerable damage done particularly to our alliances in Europe and particularly to our relationship with Germany and France. I think the German case is probably the more significant since France has a history of opposing American action and the French position in this particular conflict is not all that different from some of its other positions in American history. For example, France opposed American actions in Vietnam in the 1960s, so France has often put itself opposed to American actions. The German case is a little more significant. Germany’s stance very much in opposition to American policy is different, is unique in post-war relations between the United States and Germany, and is one that may take considerable action by a new administration to overcome or in a second term Bush administration if there is a will to overcome it. My sense is that’s been the more significant affect or most significant action with our relationship with our allies. There is also something that has affected American relationship with allies that is not as easy to quantify and that is the public perception of the United States among publics in our allies. Even in Britain, which has been supportive of the Iraq war, but has a public which is much more in opposition to that war. And to some extent, the image of the United States, the degree to which peoples in other countries will support a government that aligns itself with the United States, that’s also been damaged even if our relationship with that government itself has not been as affected.”

Q: What percentage of American presidents had military experience and did it help them to get elected?

A: This is an interesting question because Americans have elected a lot of generals and that actually flows more in the range of military experience because of General Washington, General Jackson, General Harrison, General Grant, lots of 19th century presidents who came up because of their experience with wars to be elected President of the United States. In more recent times, ever since Franklin Roosevelt, we’ve had presidents, with the exception of Bill Clinton, who have had some type of military experience. And this has seemed to be to many an important part. If someone was going to be Commander-in-Chief, it was important that they had military experience. A big exception to this was Bill Clinton, who defeated George Bush, a genuine World War II hero, defeated him in 1992 and then won reelection in ‘96 against another World War II hero. So, I think, if anything, if you wanted to make a case that the demand or insistence that military experience be there faded after the Cold War and may have come back now with the war on terror. But, even so, although John Kerry’s Vietnam experience has given him certain credibility on national security issues, it probably has cut just as equally against him, so I am not sure it would have made that much difference. In that sense, there may be a case that military experience is not a net gain for anyone actually in the Presidency these days.”

Article Tools