To Err on Truman
June 14th, 2006“To err is Truman” was one of the Republican rallying cries during his Presidency. Today’s Republican Party believes in erring on the subject of Truman.
This is my reaction to this article, which argues that Harry Truman was less multilateral than assumed and Bush moreso than he’s given credit for being. This is something that’s undoubtedly true, but only technically, as most things are far more nuanced than what history textbooks tell us. The piece’s thesis is that, hey, Truman acted alone, too, and that Bush has acted with friends as well. This, they say, proves that Bush deserves none of the scorn given him by Liberals for his self-comparison to Truman. Of course, that’s not quite intellectually honest, but who needs that?
Harry Truman is closer to Bill Clinton than George W. Bush, as he and Clinton share the belief that we must act alone when we must and with others when we can. George W. Bush does not share that ideal. In Against All Enemies, Richard Clarke tells the story of his and Dick Cheney’s travels around the world to find allies for the Persian Gulf War, and that, after awhile, Cheney started saying, “We have too many allies, stop inviting them!” That is a kinder, gentler version of this Bush Administration’s stance on diplomatic relations. George Walker Bush is closer to Franklin D. Roosevelt than he’ll ever be to Truman, and that is not a good thing. Hell, Bush is closer to a rabid Jimmy Carter than he is to Truman.
The fact is, that President Truman believed in bowing to other countries needs and demands at times. George W. Bush doesn’t, and if there’s one sole thing I can point to that’ll prove this, it’s the Ambassadorship of John Bolton at the UN. Truman would have never nominated a man like this to the UN because he takes its role in the world seriously. Bush wants the UN to be our lapdog, and Truman understood that that wouldn’t always — or even often — be the case.