These fickle and reversing politicos and press, then and now
I’m reading a fascinating book by Robert Kagan entitled Dangerous Nation: America’s place in the world from its earliest days to the dawn of the twentieth century. A mouthful, I know–and that’s only Part I, which goes up to the beginning of the Spanish-American war.
I haven’t finished it. But I wanted to point out the following passage about the build-up to that war:
Republican newspapers that had been excoriating [Democratic President] Cleveland for his inaction on Cuba right up until the last days of the Democrat’s term now reversed themselves [after the election of McKinley, a Republican] and backed McKinley’s inaction. The small group of Republican barons who directed affairs in the House and Senate were dead set against intervention in Cuba and war with Spain. When Cleveland had been in office, they had let party members loose to criticize the Democrats for betraying the cause of Cuban freedom. But once in power they preferred Cleveland’s course.
So, in terms of hypocrisy and self-serving political wheeling dealing, twas ever thus! When I’m tempted to think that there was a golden age when politics was more civil and profiles in courage were more common, all I have to do is read history to get a corrective lesson.
And don’t think we’re just talking about Republicans, here. A few sentences later we read this:
The Democrats, meanwhile, released from the burden of defending Cleveland’s inaction, now assailed McKinley for pursuing the same course.
So, what else is new?
I hope to write more about this book soon. It makes some fascinating points that indicate certain parallels between the Spanish-American War and the Iraq War–although they may not be the ones you think.
Yep, same old same old. Nothing to see here. And a big tip o’ the Captain SQL hat to much hated former President Jimmy Carter, for making Ohio’s own look so much better by comparison!
If I recall the politicians didn’t even want to engage in a war with cuba/spain. But popular sentiment forced their hand. Cuba was quite nice after American intervention. It was only until Castro the dictator, that nobody on the Left accuses the US of proping up ala the Shah, that things went bad.
It was almost too easy for me to believe that Cuba had always been thus, a third world nation torn by internal and external conflict.
Continuing in the vein of “same old, same old”, Ive been reading The New Dealers’ War, by Thomas Fleming; subtitled “FDR and The War Within WW II”.
Fleming focuses on national politics within the context of the war, using primary sources and the record. After all the FDR/New Deal hagiographies and light weight; “…so shoulder to shoulder, the war was won.”; faux histories this is red meat.
And there are resonances with time-now here similar to Kagan’s (which I have only skimmed, consigning it to the stack on the shelf under the active reading). For example, here we find a understandable contextuallization for the “Unconditional Surrender” demand that came out of the Casblanca summit. I had been aware of the poltical and diplomatic storm stirred up by this. But here is the first explanation that places it firmly in FDR’s lap and explains it as a domestic political consumption piece after the disaster of the ’42 congressional elections.
Without Unconditional Surrender, the War in Europe, along with the death camps, could have ended in, perhaps, late 1942 or early 1943, allowing the Allies to quickly strangle the Japanese Homeland.
Parallels abound on every page, even given that the book went to press prior to 9/11. The largest parallel is the continuing willingness of the Democrats to focus on domestic power over national interest. Eg.: We were against the war, until we were for it. But now we’re against it again.
Nothing ever seems to change until the voters use the clue-by-four does it?