Gil Troy

Nasty, Brutish and Long: The Brilliance of the Modern Campaign

giltroy — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 22:44:59 +0000

OP-EDS & REVIEWS

By Gil Troy, New York Times, 11-6-11

There we go again. After nonstop headlines a year before Election Day and nine debates between the Republican candidates (number 10 is scheduled to take place on Wednesday in Michigan), Americans are already grumbling that the 2012 presidential campaign is ugly and interminable. But these quadrennial complaints about campaigning miss the point. Presidential campaigns are nasty, long and expensive because they should be. Many aspects of campaigns that Americans hate reflect democratic ideals we love.

The presidential campaign’s length and fury are proportional to the electorate’s size and the presidency’s importance. A new president should undergo a rigorous, countrywide, marathon job interview. Citizens need time to scrutinize the candidates. As David Axelrod, Barack Obama’s senior strategist, puts it: “Campaigns are like an MRI for the soul, whoever you are eventually people find out.” Already this year, “easy favorites” like Tim Pawlenty fizzled, while Rick Perry learned that years governing Texas do not provide as much political seasoning as weeks of presidential campaigning. Mitt Romney, his aides admit, worked out his campaigning “kinks” in 2008. That year, Sarah Palin’s popularity waned while Barack Obama’s soared, the more each campaigned.

These nationwide courting rituals should be long enough to let great politicians flourish and bond with the nation. John F. Kennedy became a better president and person by encountering Appalachian poverty during the 1960 West Virginia Democratic primary. During his 18,009 mile, 600-speech campaign in 1896, the Populist Democrat William Jennings Bryan insisted that voters “have a right to know where I stand on public questions.” Franklin D. Roosevelt’s strategist advised his candidate in 1932 in strikingly modern terms: “You are you,” he said, and “have the faculty of making friends on a campaign tour.” Traditionally, candidates repeated stump speeches so frequently that, as Herbert Hoover noted, “paragraphs could be polished up, epigrams used again and again, and eloquence invented by repeated tryouts.”

A campaign is the defining democratic exercise for a country founded on the consent of the governed. Since the Jacksonian Democratic revolution against elitism in the 1820s, each revolution democratizing American life further popularized the campaign. Democracy trumped dignity; mass politics required mass appeals that frequently became protracted, vulgar brawls.

Like automotive crash tests, nasty campaigns determine a potential president’s strength and durability.

Popular candidates stopped being passive kings-to-be, becoming active, articulate, prime-ministers-in-formation, introducing themselves to the people, who wanted to vet their leaders. Most Americans still yearned for George Washington’s dignified silence, even as they cheered candidates engaging in what Hubert Humphrey would later call “armpit politics,” intense and intimate. In 1840, William Henry Harrison explained that “appearing among my fellow citizens” was the “only way to disprove” rivals’ libels that he was a “caged simpleton.” Similarly, in 1948, a century later, President Harry Truman traveled to California to give the locals a chance to examine him in person. “I had better come out and let you look at me to see whether I am the kind of fellow they say I am,” he said.

Like automotive crash tests, nasty campaigns determine a potential president’s strength and durability. George H.W. Bush deflected ridicule in 1988 as a “wimp,” a “weenie” and “every woman’s first husband,” by mudslinging. “Two things voters have to know about you,” his aide Roger Ailes advised. “You can take a punch and you can throw a punch.”

Alternatively, a well-placed blow can pulverize a vulnerable candidacy. Franklin Roosevelt’s Secretary of the Interior, Harold Ickes, a ferociously partisan Democrat, twice devastated Republican contender Thomas Dewey. First, in 1940, Ickes said the 38-year-old New Yorker had “thrown his diaper into the ring.” Ickes was also popularly credited with suggesting four years later that the dapper, mustachioed Dewey looked “like the groom on the wedding cake.” Both barbs stuck, crystallizing concerns about Dewey.

Voters oversimplify, viewing presidential campaigns as presidential dress rehearsals. After Bill Clinton’s 1992 victory, the defeated Vice President Dan Quayle predicted: “If he runs the country as well as he ran the campaign, we’ll be all right.” Actually, campaigns are auditions for certain aspects of the job. Although the contrast between Barack Obama as candidate and as president suggests that great campaigners do not always make great presidents, every great president must now be a great campaigner first.

Campaign budgets reflect the time candidates require to capture attention across America’s continental expanse. Candidates compete against the din of modern life, not just against each other. Considering that Procter & Gamble spent $8.7 billion in 2008 peddling detergents and razors, spending $4.3 billion for the 2008 campaign appears a reasonable price to pay for democracy.

The time and money invested pay off because campaigns matter. The stakes in elections are high, the outcomes often in doubt. Despite frequently feeling powerless in modern America, voters can make history. The George W. Bush-Al Gore deadlock in 2000 reminded Americans that in close elections, old-fashioned civics teachers were proved right: every vote counts. When Truman upset Dewey in 1948, the St. Louis Star-Times saluted unpredictability as an “essential part of freedom.”

Ronald Reagan used his four presidential runs in 1968, 1976, 1980 and 1984 to become a better candidate – and the Great Communicator. He relished voters’ sweaty handshakes, sloppy kisses, hearty backslaps and soaring hopes, explaining simply, “I happen to like people.” Reagan instinctively understood the Progressive philosopher John Dewey’s teaching that “democracy begins in conversation.” That conversation can turn ridiculous, raucous or tedious, but it serves as both safety valve and social salve. Presidential campaigns historically have had happy endings, with America’s leader legitimized by the open, rollicking process.

So, yes, campaigns are excessive, part old-fashioned carnival and part modern reality show. But in these extraordinary, extended democratic conversations, a country of more than 300 million citizens chooses a leader peacefully, popularly and surprisingly efficiently. As Reagan told Iowans during his costly, nasty, lengthy – but successful – 1984 campaign, “It’s a good idea – and it’s the American way.”

  Gil Troy, professor of history at McGill University, is the editor, with Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and Fred Israel, of “History of American Presidential Elections, 1789-2008,” fourth edition, just released by Facts on File of Infobase Publishing.

Gil Troy: The Changing Presidential Campaign on Minnesota Public Radio

giltroy — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 06:42:41 +0000

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The changing presidential campaign
The 2012 presidential election is 15 months away, and campaign coverage is pervasive in the media. We know about Obama’s summer reading list and can look at pictures of Bachmann eating a corn dog. Has the level of scrutiny changed? What can we expect from the presidential campaigns in the coming months — 9:06 a.m.

Guests

Gil Troy: Professor of History at McGill University in Montreal, and a Visiting Scholar affiliated with the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington. His latest book, “The Reagan Revolution: A Very Short Introduction.”

Karen Tumulty: National political correspondent for The Washington Post. She joined the Post in 2010 from TIME Magazine, where she had held the same title.

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About Gil Troy

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President Barack Obama, Becoming a bully-in-chief

giltroy — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 22:14:47 +0000

OP-EDS & REVIEWS

By Gil Troy, The Montreal Gazette, 8-11-11

U.S. President Barack Obama is smart, eloquent and talented, but inexperienced as an executive. While he still needs more management experience, the presidency is not the right place for on-the-job training.

Photograph by: Alex Wong, Getty Images

The downgrading of America’s credit rating just days after the debt-ceiling fight ended – followed by wild stock market gyrations – risks branding Barack Obama’s presidency as a historic failure. The S & P analysts made it clear that they were passing political judgment on the United States, not just making an economic assessment. While Republicans clearly share the blame for U.S. political gridlock, Obama shoulders most of the burden as the person in charge.

The perception of American paralysis reflects deep ideological divisions in the country as well as disturbing management failures in the Oval Office. Barack Obama is smart, eloquent and talented, but inexperienced as an executive. As a community organizer, an academic and a senator on the state and national levels, he has led but not managed. The presidency is an executive position and not a place for on-the-job training, especially during times of economic catastrophe.

The debt-ceiling fight and the ensuing downgrade proved yet again that few politicians fear the current president. Obama seemingly skipped the section in Machiavelli that teaches “it is much safer to be feared than loved.” America’s president could learn from Canada’s current prime minister how to motivate in a muscular way, just as Stephen Harper could learn from Obama how to lighten a leader’s touch. Obama’s dainty presidency will continue drifting until both Democrats and Republicans, in Congress and in the executive branch, learn that crossing the president has a cost, and that this president, like other strong leaders, will wreak vengeance on errant allies as well as political enemies.

Petulance is not enough. Obama has repeatedly denounced the Republicans as obstructionist. But these displays of presidential pique backfired, legitimizing Tea Party claims to being independent troublemakers. Moreover, Obama’s denunciations risk becoming ritualized, more like the fulminations of a substitute teacher who cannot control the class rather than the commands of the disciplinarian assistant principal who restores order.

Obama has long struggled with this problem of presidential wimpiness. Rahm Emanuel swaggered into the Oval Office as White House chief of staff to be Obama’s enforcer. But years in the House leadership softened Emanuel, making him too deferential to Congress. Congressional Democrats acted with impunity during the two years they enjoyed a majority in both Houses. The result was the health-care bill, a bill so complex because it indulged so many legislative whims it is difficult for the president to explain clearly in popular terms.

Obama’s most successful predecessors cultivated reputations for toughness. Theodore Roosevelt conceptualized the White House as a bully pulpit for national leadership while understanding the need to bully the occasional critic. Franklin Roosevelt’s famous challenge, “Judge me by the enemies I have made,” today sounds like a wartime boast. In fact, Roosevelt made this defiant statement during his 1932 campaign visit to Portland, Ore., vowing to confront greedy public utilities. As president, Roosevelt perfected various techniques for rewarding friends and punishing enemies. He distributed federal goodies like a tyrannical father doles out love, attention and allowance, favouring the districts of loyal legislators such as Congressman Lyndon B. Johnson, whose constituents then prospered.

Conversely, while historians often emphasize Roosevelt’s failure to unseat the conservative Democratic congressmen he opposed in 1938, targeting some kept others in line.

Ronald Reagan, like Obama, was constitutionally unable to bully party members who strayed or opponents who obstructed. But Reagan knew he had to telegraph toughness, especially because many underestimated him as a mere actor and a political amateur. In August 1981, when members of the Air Traffic Controllers’ Union went on strike, Reagan gave the controllers 48 hours to return to work. Two days later, he fired those who continued striking.

“I’ve asked so many leading European financiers when and why they started pumping money into this country,” a British businessman based in Washington said years later, “and they all said the same thing: when Reagan broke the controllers’ strike.”

Obama, like all effective leaders, must remain authentic. Seeking to play the role of the moderate is natural for him, and commendable. But many of America’s most successful presidents understood they had to be muscular moderates, building consensus without playing the patsy.

Political scientist Richard Neustadt characterized the power of the presidency as the power to persuade. In fact, presidential power also comes from the ability to reward and punish, to create careers and destroy others – demanding a ruthlessness in domestic politics that Obama has rarely displayed.

Leaders, even muscular moderates, should be feared, respected and, if possible, as a bonus, loved.

Gil Troy teaches history at McGill University.

Obama at 50 Should Have More Faith in America

giltroy — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 17:28:03 +0000

OP-EDS & REVIEWS

By Gil Troy, 8-4-11

Barack Obama turns fifty today, August 4th. Both he and his country appear battered these days, as Obama’s White House recuperates from the bruising debt ceiling showdown and the United States remains stuck combating two wars along with one long-lasting recession. But the progress Obama and America have made since 1961 is extraordinary—and should remind Obama, along with other doubters, that it is premature to count out America.

The United States into which Barack Obama was born in 1961 was deeply segregated due to an endemic, seemingly unchangeable racism, and profoundly scared due to an implacable, seemingly indestructible foe, the Soviet Union. Just days before young Obama’s birth, on July 25, President John F. Kennedy addressed the nation about the growing showdown in Berlin, warning that the United States would go to war, even nuclear war if necessary, to stop the Soviets from overrunning West Berlin. Nine days after Obama’s birth, on August 13, the Soviets began building the Wall dividing Berlin which would symbolize the Cold War stalemate for the next three decades.

Obama was also born into a world still shellshocked by World War II and the Holocaust—in Israel, Adolph Eichmann’s trial for crimes against humanity was winding down. Demographers count Obama as a Baby Boomer, part of the population explosion and surge in family building that began in 1946 when more than 16 million American GIs began demobilizing. And it is sobering to compare America’s family stability, traditional values, and communal interconnectedness in 1961 with today’s age of disposable relationships, indulgent impulses, and self-involvement. Still, Obama is not a classic Baby Boomer, like Bill and Hillary Clinton. He was too young to watch Howdy Doody as a child, too young to draft-dodge or fight in Vietnam, too young to march for civil rights, too young to lie about having been at Woodstock—in 1969 when he was nine. Instead Obama, and his wife Michelle, watched the Brady Bunch when they were kids—it was Michelle’s favorite show—and came of age politically during Ronald Reagan’s 1980s.

Becoming an adult in the Reagan era—Reagan became president in 1981 when Obama was twenty—Obama learned from liberalism’s excesses in the 1960s. In his book Audacity of Hope, Obama shows a sensitivity to cultural forces that his politically-obsessed Baby Boomer elders lacked. He saw the failures of the Great Society, economically, politically, culturally. He learned the limits of liberalism and Big Government, discovering that politics cannot shape everything, that culture, tradition, patriotism, religion, community matter. Yet, as a product of the politically correct 1980s—and by the late 1980s Harvard Law School at the height of PC-mania—Obama absorbed a series of assumptions that continue to color his worldview. Domestically, the intense opposition to Ronald Reagan caricatured the Republican Party as the party of greed, corporate America as more irresponsible than innovative, and white male culture as bitter and bigoted. Regarding foreign policy, the fights against nuclear proliferation, South African apartheid, and Reagan’s policies in Central America, crystallized biases against American power and in favor of the Third World, even as Reagan’s military resurgence helped bankrupt the Soviet Union, leading to America’s victory in the once-seemingly unwinnable Cold War.

This mishmash of impulses, recoiling from classic Sixties liberalism and the Reagan counter-revolution, explains some of the paradoxes and blindspots in Obama’s presidency so far. He can infuriate his liberal allies by accepting budget cuts, and by championing moderation, because he saw in 1980, 1984, and 1988 how addictions to liberal orthodoxy killed Democratic presidential prospects. But by blaming the financial crash on corporate greed and Republican deregulation, without acknowledging Democratic culpability in demanding easy access to mortgages, he could fill his team with Clinton-era retreads who helped trigger the crisis, and, when pressured, resorts to a politics of petulance and finger-pointing that belies his more moderate impulses. In dealing with the world, his PC-politics explain his apologias for America’s alleged sins, his unconscionable preference for an illusory engagement with Mahmound Ahmadinejad rather than bravely endorsing freedom when Iranian dissidents first rebelled, his instinctive sympathy for the Palestinians, his inexplicable dithering on the Syrian file, and his penchant for disappointing American allies. At the same time, he learned enough from Reagan’s assertiveness, and was traumatized enough a decade ago during September 11th, that he has given the kill order when confronting pirates at sea, intensified the technique of assassination by drone aircraft, reinforced America’s presence in Afghanistan, and hunted down Osama Bin Laden unapologetically.

The poet T.S. Eliot called the years between fifty and seventy “the hardest” because “You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down.” For the next year and a half, and possibly for the next five and a half years, Barack Obama will be asked to do heroic things, daily, lacking the luxury of refusing most requests. When he started campaigning for the presidency, had he anticipated how devastated the U.S. economy would be, he would have shorted the market. Instead, he has had a much tougher slog in office than he ever anticipated. As he passes his personal milestone, and anticipates his re-election campaign, he should reflect on all the changes America has experienced in his brief lifetime. In particular, communism’s defeat, and racism’s retreat, along with the dazzling array of technological miracles Americans engineered, should remind him of America’s extraordinary adaptability, steering him toward a more Reaganite faith in the American people and American nationalism, and away from his current, Jimmy Carteresque doubts about Americans and their ability to continue to prosper and to lead the world.

Our Moral Conversation With Students

giltroy — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 14:05:47 +0000

OP-EDS & REVIEWS

By Gil Troy, Chronicle for Higher Education, 7-17-11

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Most Americans have not noticed, but Canadians are still reeling from the June 15 riots in Vancouver following the Canucks’ loss to the Boston Bruins for the National Hockey League’s Stanley Cup. Thousands of drunken fans trashed the city’s downtown, torching cars, breaking windows, looting stores. Canada’s trauma offers a modern morality tale, of particular interest to academics because it illustrates students’ malleable, situational, Matrix morality.

Vancouver’s leaders blamed anarchists. But thousands of online clips told a different story. These were probably the most posed for, photographed, videotaped, posted, and forwarded mass crimes in history. Unlike the balaclava-clad goons at G-8 protests, many of the rioters played to the ubiquitous cameras while burning, bullying, smashing, or grabbing. Alcohol, not ideology, stoked the rioters; they were looking for kicks, not playing politics.

Like so many drunken students who act foolishly Saturday night only to be embarrassed when their friends watch them forever after on YouTube, the rioters’ thuggery, however fleeting, went viral. As these vandals-for-a-night slept off their hangovers, the recriminations began. The Vancouver police received 600 gigabytes of data, comprising 15,000 images and 3,000 video files.

The mass postings exposed some heroes. Some citizens defended random stores, rare sentries choosing to stand for order against the epidemic disorder. Alas, sometimes footage showed annoyed rioters stomping good Samaritans.

On the Facebook page “Canucks Fans Against the 2011 Vancouver Riots,” thousands of outraged Facebookers named and shamed the rioters caught on video. Camille Cacnio, a student-athlete, was seen smiling while she looted two size-42 male tuxedo pants from a store. Outed, she posted an apology that is a document for our age, demonstrating what passes for moral reasoning among our students. Cacnio apologizes to her friends, family, school, and city, along with her teammates, employer, favorite hockey team, and the charity where she volunteers. Listed in her Facebook profile, all were implicated.

Cacnio takes “full responsibility” and is “sincerely” sorry. But, she adds, these actions were out of character. She was “influenced by mob mentality.” “I was,” she explains, “immature, intoxicated, full of adrenaline, disappointed in the loss, filled with young rage, and have a ‘go-out-and-do-it’ kind of personality. … It was a spur of the moment kind of thing and I just got caught up in the chaos.”

She admits: “As bad as it sounds, the stealing was pure fun for me.” Anyone who has watched students “party” should recognize the phenomenon. Many live an intense, hyperaccelerated cycle, working hard and partying harder. When they party, they let go. Studies estimate that more than 40 percent of college students have engaged in binge drinking.

Women have closed the once-considerable binge-drinking gender gap, and the impact is significant. In addition to abandoning their traditional role of restraining their male peers, many more drunk women now face predatory males. Inevitably, claims of sexual assault on campus have spiked—attracting White House attention this spring. One study linked two-thirds of unwanted pregnancies on campuses to alcohol abuse.

Cacnio claims to have a conscience, once the thrill and the buzz subside. “As soon as I left the riot I knew that what I did was wrong,” she wrote. “My levels of alcohol and adrenaline in my blood had seriously died down, and I was no longer surrounded by the mob.” Here, Cacnio’s Matrix morality emerges: It was not her fault. She blames the situation, and the stimulants. She is not in control, she simply responds to whatever she happens to be plugged into, much as the movie The Matrix suggests that humans in the future, plugged into simulated reality, will respond to stimuli rather than exercise free will.

Feeling absolved by her passivity, Cacnio turns her “apology” into an indignant attack against “this social media form of mob mentality” now targeting her. She denounces this “21st-century witch hunt,” echoing a blogger’s line. She characterizes herself as the victim of “this new social media court” that convicts, then publicly humiliates, without due process. Presto, chango: The looter becomes the martyr.

Cacnio and others who confessed epitomize this Matrix morality, insisting that they are good people who were seduced by the mania of the moment. More than 20 years ago, in The Closing of the American Mind, Allan Bloom said students were, in general, “nice, as distinct from being moral or noble.” But being nice at least was a consistent and benign lodestar. Today’s challenge is these moral shape-shifters, lacking core commitments.

We in the professoriate have failed our students by abdicating moral authority, even as our campuses steep in bacchanalian excess every weekend. The occasional anti-alcohol campaign, such as the Dartmouth-led Learning Collaborative on High-Risk Drinking, characteristically avoids moral language or ethical reasoning. It approaches binge drinking clinically as a public health problem. And it fails to mobilize the most powerful army of campus role models—the professors.

Yet to start taking responsibility would require a cultural counterrevolution. Many of us academic careerists, often teaching to fulfill course requirements rather than to nurture moral grandeur, are too overextended and too cautious to lead boldly. Tackling students’ binge drinking might risk our professorial popularity ratings. Anyone who can go from happy vandal to apologetic sinner to self-pitying victim so quickly is likely to turn on professors who start upholding standards, rather than saying, “Thank you for standing for something. Universities should build moral character, not just sharpen the mind.”

It is easier to ignore the problem or blame forces beyond the ivory tower. But college acceptance now offers admission to heavy drinking, drug abuse, and risky sexual behavior. We enjoy a rich intellectual tradition that could trigger valuable debate, favoring moderation and discipline over moral sloppiness and excess without preaching or imposing specific boundaries regarding alcohol, drugs, or sex.

Teaching is not just a job; it is a calling. Most of us who become scholars believe in learning’s redemptive power. We have a responsibility to help solve the problems plaguing our universities, and so we must accept the challenge of stretching our students—intellectually, morally, and psychologically. This fall we should begin a professor-driven moral conversation about binge drinking and the culture of campus partying. Cacnio’s non-apology and the dozens of YouTube clips from the Vancouver riots would be excellent catalysts, not just to start the conversation, but also to launch a revolution.

Gil Troy is a history professor at McGill University.

Betty Ford’s Candor Hurt Gerald Ford’s Presidency – but Enhanced his Historical Reputation

giltroy — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 03:52:39 +0000

OP-EDS & REVIEWS

By Gil Troy, 7-10-11

Betty Ford, who died on Friday at the age of 93, in the 1970s was the most controversial First Lady since Eleanor Roosevelt. During Gerald Ford’s brief presidency, from August 1974 through January, 1977, his wife Betty retrofitted the odd role she inherited to suit the modern media sensibility. Peddling the Ford marriage as a “normal” partnership struggling with the challenges of raising a modern family, Betty Ford inserted herself at the flashpoint of the country’s social upheavals. In so doing, she became an iconic American figure even though she may have cost her husband the Presidency in 1976.

Mrs. Ford’s acknowledgment that she had breast cancer and a mastectomy in September 1974 was heroic. As thousands of women rushed to get mammograms, the legend of Betty Ford the candid political wife was born. After enduring years of neglect while Gerry Ford politicked, sometimes left at home with the four children for over 250 days in a year, Betty Ford loved the attention.

Most reporters welcomed this refreshing, “normal,” First Lady. They tired of “Plastic Pat” Nixon, a selfless spouse who, they sneered, traveled with a hairdresser and an embalmer. Betty Ford brought controversy, fun, and a shot at the front page.

Most reporters, therefore, overlooked the fact that Betty Ford spent much of her husband’s tenure dazed by tranquilizers and alcohol. Her oldest son Michael would describe a typical evening in the White House study: “my dad will work in his chair” and “my mother will sit in her chair and she’ll read or maybe she’ll watch TV or she’ll just kind of reflect on things.” Barbara Walters recognized that “reflection” as the “zombie”-like state of a substance abuser exhausted by her efforts to maintain appearances.

When Betty Ford was active, she was too active. On “Sixty Minutes” in August 1975, she speculated that “all” four of her children had “probably tried marijuana,” and confessed that she “wouldn’t be surprised” if her eighteen-year-old daughter Susan had “an affair”—quaint language for premarital sex. More than thirty-thousand letters bombarded the White House, with 23,308 “con” letters, 10,512 “pro.” Betty Ford had provoked a nationwide symposium on sexual morality.

Mrs. Ford’s fans championed her as a new kind of First Lady, candid and “hip.” Most approving letters wished she were running for president or her husband were a Democrat — implying she earned their love not their votes. At best, Betty Ford neutralized some hostility to her husband, but few liberals were willing to cross party lines to support a president they disliked just because they liked his wife.

Mrs. Ford’s detractors, on the other hand, abandoned the President. “We think this error is much more serious than anything that President Nixon did,” a Southerner wrote. “Your statements on ’60 Minutes’ cost your husband my vote,” one woman added. “Until now I thought we had someone in the White House who thought along the same lines that I did.”

Nearly two weeks after the broadcast, Gerald Ford was still trying to clarify the “misunderstanding.” His popularity had dropped from 55.3 percent to 38.8 percent. The President said that “Betty meant we’re deeply concerned about the moral standards” in the family. Feminists snapped that husbands should not speak for their wives.

At a critical moment, when the conservative former governor of California Ronald Reagan was contemplating a direct challenge to an incumbent president of his own party, Betty Ford alienated President Ford’s right flank. Within a month Nancy Reagan criticized “the new morality” for young people. Mrs. Reagan’s talk had the desired effect, garnering headlines that “MRS. REAGAN, MRS. FORD DISAGREE ON SEX.”

The “60 Minutes” controversy helped encourage Reagan’s run, which crippled President Ford during the 1976 election against Jimmy Carter—the only presidents to lose re-election campaigns in the last fifty years first faced serious challenges for the nomination. Gerald Ford initially speculated that his wife’s remarks would cost him ten million votes—but quickly doubled that estimate. Ultimately, Carter won by less than two million votes out of eighty million cast. Despite the polls and the media adulation, Betty Ford cost Gerald Ford the presidency.

Mrs. Ford showed that in the modern era, First Ladies often do more harm than good, electorally. As a lightning rod for criticism, she personified one aspect of her husband’s character that some feared, in this case, that he was too soft. As with the Carters, the Reagans, and the Clintons, the stronger the wife appeared, the more popular she became, the weaker the husband seemed.

The political damage Betty Ford caused reveals the difficult balancing act facing First Couples. Reporters and voters often have conflicting needs. Popularity does not always translate into political success. In America’s mass-media popular-culture-drenched age, presidents and their wives cannot afford to alienate either their journalistic mouthpieces or their voting constituents.

A little more than a year after the Fords left the White House, the family staged the intervention that ultimately led to Betty Ford drying out, then establishing what became the “Betty Ford Center” in 1982. As with the breast cancer, Betty Ford’s frankness was pathbreaking and timely—Americans were ready for such openness. Her emergence as the iconic figure of America’s 12-step culture boosted her standing with the American public. Few remembered the backlash against her in the 1970s, the political harm she caused her husband. In fact, many assumed that she entered treatment during the Ford presidency, simply clumping all her candid moments into one appealing package.

As a result, for decades she was one of America’s most admired women. And, while it is difficult to prove, the adulation Betty Ford enjoyed in the post-presidential years probably did Gerald Ford a world of good. When he died in 2006, most of his most controversial moves, including his pardon of Richard Nixon, were hailed. Thus, while the evidence suggests that Betty Ford’s candor harmed Gerald Ford’s electoral chances, the evidence also suggests that, in the long run the Betty Ford legend enhanced Gerald Ford’s historical reputation.

Betty Ford was one, bold, sassy, classy lady, who successfully forded the huge divide between the traditional culture into which she was born and the modern, let-it-all-hang-out-culture she helped spawn. She will be missed.

Obama Should Own His Continuities with the Bush White House

giltroy — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 03:02:02 +0000

OP-EDS & REVIEWS

By Gil Troy, 7-10-11

Mr. Troy is Professor of History at McGill University, and the author, most recently, of The Reagan Revolution: A Very Short Introduction, (OUP) and Leading from the Center: Why Moderates Make the Best Presidents. His other books include: Hillary Rodham Clinton: Polarizing First Lady and Morning in America: How Ronald Reagan Invented the 1980s.

Do the Democrats have a double standard for Obama?

Of course they do.

So did the Republicans for George W. Bush—who tolerated much more idealistic national building and budget-busting spending than they would have from a Democrat. And so did the Democrats for Bill Clinton—who would have pilloried a Republican president for establishing the kind of sexist atmosphere Clinton created in his White House. This inconsistency is a fact of partisan life. As long as most partisans build their party-affiliations into an identity rather than simply a series of policy positions, they will view their leader’s compromises as statesmanlike, not hypocritical, given how confident they are in their opponents’ shortcomings.

Still, the Democratic turnaround this time is particularly whiplash-inducing. At the heart of the Bushophobia that consumed many Democrats since 2003 lay their disgust for George W. Bush’s national security policies. Moreover, Barack Obama’s own political identity and great success in defeating Hillary Clinton stemmed from his opposition to the Iraq War—which raised expectations among at least some Democrats that he would be a pacifist, Nobel Peace Prize-winning president.

President Obama’s behavior in prosecuting the war on terror suggests we should rethink our understanding of presidential performance. Most of us, historians, voters, and especially journalists, focus too much on the Three Ps of partisanship, personality, and promises. As a result, we expect a revolution when there is a party turnover in the White House, and a fresh, young politician calls for “Change We Can Believe In.” We forget the constitutional checks and balances which fragment power, making dramatic change more difficult in the American system. And we forget that the world looks very different when you sit in the Oval Office as opposed to when you dream about winning the keys to it.

My uncle learned during half a century in the advertising business that, in America, “the one constant is change.” But as citizens and observers, we should spend more time examining the presidency through a lens emphasizing convergence not divergence among administrations. The many cosmetic changes sometimes mask the necessary—and unfortunate—continuities. In Ronald Reagan’s administration, David Stockman was the most famous cabinet member frustrated by this convergence. In Bill Clinton’s administration, Robert Reich played that role. And under George W. Bush, the mantle was seized by Donald Rumsfeld, who could not impose on the military the sweeping changes he championed.

I confess, one of the best compliments I can give Barack Obama is that he responded to the challenges America faced, rather than sticking to the script he and his fans devised. His muscular approach to fighting the war on terror does partially vindicate George W. Bush. But, more importantly, Obama’s actions acknowledge the complicated challenges America faces abroad. When Obama has approached this tough situation ideologically rather than pragmatically—contemplating trying Khlalid Sheikh Mohammed in New York, or treating the Ford Hood terrorist as a mere criminal—he has stumbled. Obama’s use of unmanned drones to hunt down terrorists, his successful pursuit of Osama bin Laden, and his support for some of the aggressive Bush-era initiatives to eliminate domestic threats all reflect realistic judgment. That’s leadership. That’s good governance.

Obama’s challenge, our psychologist friends would suggest, is to “own” this convergence with Bush-era policies, rather than deny it. By acknowledging the continuities, Obama can then also show how he has put his own, Democratic, civil libertarian, more engagement-oriented, stamp on the policy, thus offering what he believes to be a mature alternative to George Bush and John McCain—while still imposing a reality-check on the too-pacifist, pie-in-the-sky idealists in his own part.

Mark Halpern’s Potty Mouth in Perspective: from the Bully Pulpit to the Public Toilet

giltroy — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 03:07:10 +0000

OP-EDS & REVIEWS

By Gil Troy, 6-30-11

On December 23, 1796, right after George Washington published his Farewell Address to the nation, the caustic editor Benjamin Franklin Bache, Benjamin Franklin’s grandson, published his farewell to America’s first president. “If ever a nation was debauched by a man, the American nation has been debauched by Washington,” Bache wrote. “If ever a nation has suffered from the improper influence of a man, the American nation has suffered from the influence of Washington. If ever a nation was deceived by a man, the American nation has been deceived by Washington. Let his conduct then be an example to future ages. Let it serve to be a warning that no man may be an idol… let the history of the Federal government instruct mankind, that the masque of patriotism may be worn to conceal the foulest designs against the liberties of the people.” Nearly 215 years later, on June 30, 2011, one of America’s leading political pundits, Mark Halpern, on live television, assessed President Barack Obama’s press conference performance by saying “I thought he was kind of a d**k” – using the four letter nickname for Richard, which also serves as a slang term for male genitalia.

Let us start with the good news. Then as now, the United States passed what the former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky calls the “public square test.” Having survived the Soviet gulag, Sharansky does not take for granted the freedom citizens in a true democracy like ours have to denounce their rulers publicly without being harmed. MSNBC suspended Halpern “indefinitely,” from one of his TV talking head gigs. And Halpern faces a wave of public indignation and ridicule but not, thank goodness, the firing squad.

And now, we offer the bad news. Benjamin Franklin Bache was a mean-spirited hatchet man. He loved making trouble and he badly abused the first President of the United States. But his diatribe is poetic, panoramic, and powerfully political. The rhythm is Biblical in its denunciation, and the sweeping condemnation of Washington – with an eye on “future ages” — gets the reader thinking about leadership, patriotism, liberty, celebrity, and posterity. By contrast, Halpern gets us thinking in soundbites and vulgarities. Rather than elevating politics from the street to the salon as Bache did – in all his ugliness – Halpern – like so many others today – reduces us with his potty mouth from the Bully Pulpit to the public toilet.

To me, this issue is less about civility and more about substance. Halpern delivered his comment with a morning anchor’s smile; one imagines Benjamin Franklin Bache writing his passage with spleen and a sneer. Halpern’s “gaffe,” the verbal equivalent of a burp, is the inevitable result of punditry by punchline in an age of infotainment, when commentators feel pressured to entertain rather than enlighten, when it is better to be breezy than boring, when political talk is more about handicapping political horse races than crusading for political ideas.

The word “campaign” originated in the seventeenth century from the French word for open field, campagne. With contemporary soldiers fighting sustained efforts, often on the wide country terrain, the term quickly acquired its military association. The political connotation emerged in seventeenth-century England to describe a lengthy legislative session. In nineteenth-century America, campaign was part of the barrage of military terms describing electioneering — as the party standard bearer, a war horse tapping into his war chest and hoping not to be a flash-in-the-pan – a cannon that misfires — mobilized the rank-and-file with a rallying cry in battleground states to vanquish their enemies. American politicians needed to conquer the people’s hearts because popular sovereignty has been modern Anglo-American government’s distinguishing anchor since colonial days. As with war, politics can ennoble or demean, but it is often epoch-making, historic. How pathetic it is, that with the entertainment imperative ruling us these days, we frequently experience politics simply as one more distraction, which is what the Halpern putdown was and the ensuing controversy about it in our media echo chamber inevitably will be.

Gil Troy: Questions America needs to ask itself

giltroy — Tue, 24 May 2011 22:15:24 +0000

OP-EDS & REVIEWS

By Gil Troy, National Post, 5-24-11

Reuters

Tim Pawlenty: Could be last man standing

Believe it or not, just as we finished with Canada’s mercifully brief -but far too frequent -national election campaign, the first American presidential debate for 2012 took place. Fox News and the South Carolina Republican Party hosted a candidates’ forum on May 5 in Greeneville, S.C., a mere 18 months before Election Day.

Former governor Tim Pawlenty was the only A-lister present; other participants included Rep. Ron Paul, tycoon Herman Cain, former senator Rick Santorum and former governor Gary Johnson. The Ronald Reagan Library postponed its debate, originally scheduled for May 2, until September, when presumably more candidates will have announced.

Of course, a Reagan debate on May 2 would have been better poetically, both because of its overlap with the Canadian contest, and because, more than 30 years after his inauguration, Ronald Reagan -or at least his iconic reputation -remains the standard by which Republicans judge their candidates.

On the Democratic side, it is safe to assume that some future historians will begin their account of the 2012 campaign with the death of Osama bin Laden. Whether it proves a boost to Obama’s campaign or not, it is a significant historic move that arrived just as the Republican party is beginning to prepare for the coming election.

We can, of course, expect that this campaign, like all the others, will feature high-minded calls to focus on substance -even as candidates, journalists and, let’s face it, voters, succumb to base appeals and debates. Such spectacles are a necessary part of democratic politics. But we should hope that the inevitable rhetorical fireworks don’t eclipse the important debates that should dominate the coming campaign.

Americans should be debating at least three fundamental questions: What kind of government do they want, what kind of military do they need and what kind of leadership have they been getting?

Although Obama and the leaders of the Tea Party do not agree on much, they have been addressing this first basic question for months. In a recent speech on deficit reduction at George Washington University, Obama spoke of two threads “running throughout our history” -one of rugged individualism, with a belief in free markets, and “a belief that we are all connected … that there are some things we can only do together, as a nation.”

It is too facile to caricature the Republicans as the individualists and the Democrats as the communitarians, but Republicans are individualists -who believe in a strong national defence. Democrats like Obama are communitarians -who understand that a strong economy must be free. How precisely to weave the two threads together is one of the central challenges of modern governance, and of the upcoming election.

Regarding the military, there are practical, tactical questions along with abstract ideological dilemmas. Especially in an age of cutbacks, the military must justify the huge chunk of the budget it devours. And America’s partial involvement in the attempt to dislodge Muammar Gaddafi is a suitable launching pad for wider-ranging discussions about when the United States should resort to military force, what kind of force the U.S. should engage in, and whether American foreign policy should be realist or idealistic. All these questions again feed into the broader issue of just what kind of country America will be.

Finally, this election will be a referendum on Obama. It is hard making a re-election campaign about anything else but the incumbent. And especially considering the tremendously high hopes Obama’s “Yes We Can” campaign stirred in 2008, the overwhelming challenges Obama has faced since winning and the continuing questions about just what are his core ideals, the election is likely to pivot around him and his job performance.

Amid all the predictions and speculation about the final result, candidates, commentators and voters have an opportunity to debate the serious issues facing the United States today. Whether any and all tackle these three key questions will be the true measure of the upcoming campaign’s success.

Gil Troy is professor of history at McGill University. His latest book is The Reagan Revolution: A Very Short Introduction.

The Reagan Revolution (A Brief Insight)

giltroy — Tue, 03 May 2011 10:29:14 +0000

The Reagan Revolution (A Brief Insight) [Hardcover] By Gil Troy

Available Now! Amazon.com — Barnes & Noble

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Product Description

Two decades after Reagan left office, debate continues to rage over just how revolutionary his presidency was. This book tackles the controversies and historical mysteries that continue to swirl around his legacy, while providing a look at some of the era’s defining personalities, ideas, and accomplishments. Today, Reagan remains the most influential president since Franklin D. Roosevelt, and his legacy continues to shape American politics, diplomacy, culture, and economics.

Product Details

Hardcover: 192 pages
Publisher: Sterling (May 3, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1402779046
ISBN-13: 978-1402779046