My Amazon Review of Michael Beschloss' "Presdents of War"

Making War

Historian and media personality Michael Beschloss has written an important history of how and why presidents took us to war and of their wartime decision making process from Madison to Johnson. He is at is best in discussing the role of Lyndon Johnson during the Vietnam War. His “tick-tock” of how the Gulf of Tonkin resolution came to be is worth the price of the book. He is very clear that the Johnson administration was deceitful from Day One when they knew in their heart of hearts the war wasn’t winnable. Where I would fault him is that he does not lay enough of a predicate as to the role of John Kennedy in the lead up to the war. After all Johnson was continuing Kennedy’s very aggressive policy with respect to Vietnam.

Beschloss opens his book at the end of the Jefferson administration in 1807 and then fully discusses Madison’s role in the War of 1812. To me he is not critical enough of Madison and Jefferson. In my mind both were guilty of dereliction of duty in failing to maintain adequate naval strength while both Britain and France were raiding our ships and impressing our seaman. They both, having witnessed the Seven Years War that a generalized European conflict would sooner or later make its appearance in the Americas.  Although England was not directly threatening the U.S., Madison was egged on by the “war hawks” Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun to declare war. Be that as it may for the young trading nation that the U.S. was, the principle of freedom of the seas was worth going to war over.

He next is very critical of James K. Polk. To be sure Polk created an incident to trigger the Mexican War and lied to the American people about it, but to my mind Polk was the Bismarck of North America. Polk had the strategic vision that a war with Mexico would bring with it the entire southwest as well as California. He was fulfilling “manifest destiny,” a term that came into use during his administration. But before Polk could go to war with Mexico he had to settle up the Oregon dispute with Great Britain, which he did. Polk was smart enough to realize that U.S. could not fight a two front war against both Mexico and Britain.

Lincoln, of course, comes across as the great Civil War leader that he was. He does this not only by ultimate success on the battlefield, but by elevating the purpose of the war to give rise to “a new birth of freedom.” Unlike other presidents Lincoln was able to witness and agonize over battlefield casualties he was also able to be decisive.  Where I would be critical of Beschloss is that while the fighting was going on Lincoln pushed through Congress three great Hamiltonian projects, the Homestead Act, the Pacific Railway Act and the Morrill Act(land grant colleges), quite a domestic program. This distinguishes Lincoln from other presidents, where domestic engagements gave way to wartime exigencies.

Beschloss is kind to McKinley. After the sinking of the Maine (an accident) in Havana Harbor, he does not rush into war. However once engaged McKinley becomes an all-in imperialist by taking the Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico. Intended or not with the Spanish American War the U.S. enter the world stage.

Beschloss likes Wilsonian policies, but he doesn’t seem to like Woodrow Wilson. He comes across as an arrogant intellectual and where Wilson demonstrated great political acumen in passing his domestic program, he is a complete disaster on the world stage. Wilson’s thought process on entering the war is a “theme park” (my words) for executive indecision. In his discussion of Wilson, Beschloss leaves out a lot. He ignores the role of the March Revolution in Russia that made it easier for Wilson to argue that he was “making the world safe for democracy.” He also ignores the challenge that Lenin brings with the November Revolution. Many historians believe that his 14 Points were a response to Lenin. He also only skims through the wave of domestic repression that took place during the war and immediately thereafter. And he ignores Wilson’s hidden agenda, which he accomplished, of orchestrating the transfer of economic power from London to New York.

Roosevelt, on the other hand learns from Wilson’s mistakes. Instead of trying to keep the U.S. out of the Second World War, he molds public opinion into acceptance of the inevitability of a war against fascism. He also brings the Republicans on board, both before and after, something Wilson refused to do. Roosevelt learned what not to do when he was an assistant secretary of the navy in the Wilson Administration. He also brings in the American people, with his fireside chats, into the vast theater of the global war.

Truman does not come off well. He doesn’t bring Congress into the process and that with hostile opposition from the likes of Taft and McCarthy leads to huge problems when the Korean War stalemates on the battlefield. After he rightfully fires General MacArthur his popularity plummets. It is a sad ending for someone who so clearly understood the Soviet menace in the late 1940s to see him so pilloried.

As I said at the outset Beschloss has written an important book, but as I noted he left out quite a bit and in many cases, especially with the earlier presidents he was way too detailed and the average lay reader will likely get bogged down in the weeds. Hence four stars, not five.

The full Amazon Review appears at the following URL: https://www.amazon.com/review/R107WQR5NDUEBL/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

My Amazon Review of James Grant's "The Forgotten Depression: 1921: The Crash that Cured Itself"

“Liquidate Labor, Liquidate Stocks…”

I have known Jim Grant for about 25 years and he never ceases to amaze me with his lucid style of writing. As the proprietor of “Grant’s Interest Rate Observer” he continually demonstrates his ability to bring to life the most mundane of economic and financial topics. His “Forgotten Depression,” an account of the 1919-1922 boom, bust and recovery, is no exception.

Grant’s thesis is that left to its own devices an unfettered price system without the intervention of government policy gives the economy the ability to shake off the effects of a depression. In this case study Grant admires the stand-offish policies of Presidents Wilson and Harding. If anything fiscal policy was extremely contractionary and the nascent Federal Reserve was tightening credit well into the contraction. It is as if Grant is channeling his inner Andrew Mellon, the attributed author of my title quote.  And remember the 1920-21 decline was severe with wholesale prices dropping by an astounding 56% and unemployment rising well into the double-digits. As a side-bar Grant notes that a small haberdasher in Kansas City failed. The co-owner was one Harry S. Truman.

To Grant the key to the pricing mechanism working was the ability of wages to exhibit downward flexibility With wages falling with prices, businesses adjusted to find profitability with a much lower cost structure. Although the downward spiral did feed on itself for a while, a new equilibrium was quickly found, at least relative to the early 1930s and our recent experience this decade. By contrast in 1929 it was government policy to keep wages up, and hence all of the adjustment had to fall on the quantity of labor.

What Grant seems to undervalue is the role of the Fed in easing credit in 1921 that helped the economy find a bottom. To be sure the inflow of gold, responding to the U.S. economy’s improved competitive position, made their life much easier, but the fact remains that Fed policy became highly expansionary as 1921 progressed.

Grant is correct in arguing the recovery in 1922 laid the basis for the great boom that was to follow. It also made policy makers complacent about the recuperative powers of the economy. When the next crunch came in 1929 the outcome wasn't nearly as favorable. To Grant it was Hoover’s wage maintenance policies that were at fault; to the economic mainstream it was the workings of the gold standard. Nevertheless Grant tells a compelling story about a long forgotten episode in American history.

The Amazon URL is:

http://www.amazon.com/review/RXMERDGVNFAYN  

  

My Amazon Review of David Reynolds "The Long Shadow: The Legacies of the Great War in the Twentieth Century"

Cambridge history Professor David Reynolds has written a kaleidoscopic history of the influence of the Great War on the politics and culture of the twentieth century and early twenty first century. Although he discusses all of the major combatants, his primary focus is on the United Kingdom and Ireland. He goes well beyond the inter-war years that are covered very well by Richard Overy and Zara Steiner, and that is a major contribution. In my view his book is more of an academic history than a popular history and as a result I give it four stars, not five.

Reynolds covers the role of the anti-war poets (e.g. Sassoon, Owen and Blunden) and their impact in fermenting the anti-war sentiment that percolated through British society in the 1920s and 30s. Their views would be revived in America during the anti-war movements of the 1960s.

In economics he discusses the pressure to return to the pre-war gold standard the deflation it wrought on the global economy. But make no mistake he really doesn’t emphasize economics and he leaves out completely the London Economic Conference of 1933. He does cover the British economy well by highlighting the fact that the 1930s were far better for Britain than the 1920s and the adoption of a very aggressive housing policy by the Tory government. The Tory property owning society of the 1930s became the Republican ownership society in the early 2000s.

Most striking to me was the influence of the propaganda exaggerations of the German atrocities in 1914 Belgium anesthetized British and U.S. policy makers and public opinion to the reality of the 1942-45 extermination of European Jewry.  Simply put all too many policy makers refused to believe that the holocaust was taking place.

He also discusses the role of Wilsonian idealism in American foreign policy. America’s role in the world is far different in 1945 that it was in 1918. A lesson was learned.  The long shadow of the war shows up in George Bush’s democratization program in the middle-east earlier this century. It also shows up as the Wilson-Lenin rivalry of 1918 for global opinion that many believe to be at the origin of the Cold War.  

All told Professor Reynolds has taught us that we are truly products of our past and I highly recommend this book to serious students of the history of the 20th century.

The Amazon URL is:  http://www.amazon.com/review/R2T6T5HF6K9U0V