You often read, in accounts by professional political scientists and historians, that the American people have come up with the leadership they needed when they have needed it the most. Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Q.E.D.
For however long it has been since I was first taught that I have remembered it and, consciously and subconsciously, I have tested it in the subsequent reading I have done in my life. I have made public here the doubts I have had that either of the two signal examples of proof of that nostrum actually prove it, particularly Lincoln.
Today, for some reason, I refreshed my recollection of some of the details concerning American leadership post-9/11/01, a day in which America came under surprise foreign attack and suffered a greater loss of life than it did the day, 12/7/41, it last had come under surprise foreign attack. The callow new president had surrounded himself with a foreign policy "Dream Team." George W. Bush had two former secretaries of defense working for him when the attacks came. Dick Cheney, his vice president, was the steady old hand. Donald Rumsfeld was the brilliant dazzling other who had been the youngest SecDef in history now back for a second stint burnished with shrewdness for the experience.
What portended Cheney, the old hand, going so dark, so quickly, so irrevocably? I had forgotten about the Revolt of the Generals, even of Rumsfeld's resignation; of McCain's criticism as, with Robert MacNamara, the worst defense secretaries in history. Who foresaw that? How could all this have happened under those guys? It was precisely the question former Rumsfeld aide and life-long friend Kenneth Adelman asked in a painful interview that I did remember:
"How could this happen to someone so good, so competent? This war made me doubt the past. Was I wrong all those years, or was he better back then? The Donald Rumsfeld of today is not the Donald Rumsfeld I knew, but maybe I was wrong about the old Donald Rumsfeld. It's a terrible way to end a career. It's hard to remember, but he was once the future."
Was it not real?
My thinking has been clouded by doubt since the September 11 attacks. Hasn't yours, too? I doubt the past, as Adelman does, I doubt myself, as he does, I doubt the present, the future, I doubt the American people. Right now, hours after I began this post, I am watching on my hotel TV live coverage on two networks, of a campaign rally of thousands of people in Mobile, Alabama for Donald Trump. Is that real?
Are we wrong about Abraham Lincoln? Have we always been wrong about Lincoln? Was he a creation of the peculiar American psyche, a callow people's need for her own legends, to legitimize our birth (?), martyrdom plus need producing myth? We needed a legend after the Civil War and we created one. Was it real? Is our doubt today, in our peculiar psyches, now producing myth in Donald Trump to meet some felt need?
However it stands with Lincoln or with FDR, however it turns out with Trump, the American people did not come up with, in George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, the leadership they needed after September 11. Q.E.D.
For however long it has been since I was first taught that I have remembered it and, consciously and subconsciously, I have tested it in the subsequent reading I have done in my life. I have made public here the doubts I have had that either of the two signal examples of proof of that nostrum actually prove it, particularly Lincoln.
Today, for some reason, I refreshed my recollection of some of the details concerning American leadership post-9/11/01, a day in which America came under surprise foreign attack and suffered a greater loss of life than it did the day, 12/7/41, it last had come under surprise foreign attack. The callow new president had surrounded himself with a foreign policy "Dream Team." George W. Bush had two former secretaries of defense working for him when the attacks came. Dick Cheney, his vice president, was the steady old hand. Donald Rumsfeld was the brilliant dazzling other who had been the youngest SecDef in history now back for a second stint burnished with shrewdness for the experience.
What portended Cheney, the old hand, going so dark, so quickly, so irrevocably? I had forgotten about the Revolt of the Generals, even of Rumsfeld's resignation; of McCain's criticism as, with Robert MacNamara, the worst defense secretaries in history. Who foresaw that? How could all this have happened under those guys? It was precisely the question former Rumsfeld aide and life-long friend Kenneth Adelman asked in a painful interview that I did remember:
"How could this happen to someone so good, so competent? This war made me doubt the past. Was I wrong all those years, or was he better back then? The Donald Rumsfeld of today is not the Donald Rumsfeld I knew, but maybe I was wrong about the old Donald Rumsfeld. It's a terrible way to end a career. It's hard to remember, but he was once the future."
Was it not real?
My thinking has been clouded by doubt since the September 11 attacks. Hasn't yours, too? I doubt the past, as Adelman does, I doubt myself, as he does, I doubt the present, the future, I doubt the American people. Right now, hours after I began this post, I am watching on my hotel TV live coverage on two networks, of a campaign rally of thousands of people in Mobile, Alabama for Donald Trump. Is that real?
Are we wrong about Abraham Lincoln? Have we always been wrong about Lincoln? Was he a creation of the peculiar American psyche, a callow people's need for her own legends, to legitimize our birth (?), martyrdom plus need producing myth? We needed a legend after the Civil War and we created one. Was it real? Is our doubt today, in our peculiar psyches, now producing myth in Donald Trump to meet some felt need?
However it stands with Lincoln or with FDR, however it turns out with Trump, the American people did not come up with, in George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, the leadership they needed after September 11. Q.E.D.
