A terrific book well worth reading (and pondering about)

Sandy Levinson

I just finished a new book by David Nichols, Eisenhower 1956: The President's Year of Crisis--Suez and the Brink of War (Simon and Schuster). I can't recommend it highly enough, not least bccause it's a real page turner, even if one knows the outcome (i.e., World War III doesn't break out as the result of Soviet intervention in the Suez crisis). But it also has extraordinary resonance with regard to our situation today. Let me suggest a number of things well worth thinking about:

1. We were, overall, very lucky to have Dwight Eisenhower as President instead of Adlai Stevenson, at least with regard to foreign policy. What is really impressive is how committed Ike was to the US not getting into new wars. He won in 1952 on his promise to end the war in Korea (which he did by accepting a staelemate that we live with today), and he vetoed going into Vietnam. He was absolutely insistent that the US not back the colonial powers France and Great Britain in their misguided effort to "teach Nasser as lesson" by occupying the Suez Canal after his nationaliztion (caused, to be sure, in substantial measure by Eisenhower's mistake in accpeting Dulles's advice to cut off an offer to finance the Aswan Dam). Reading this book has led me to believe that Ike may be the only President since World War II whom one should really have trusted as Commander-in-Chief.

Stevenson, on the other hand, seems a more disappointing figure the more one actually finds out about him. Arthur Schlesinger's collection of letters, published a couple of years ago, revealed that Stevenson was at least as cool to civil rights as Ike was. Stevenson, after all, selected Alabama Sen. John Sparkman as his running mate in 1952. There is no reason to believe that Stevenson would have ever named anyone so progressive as Earl Warren to the Supreme Court or appointed such a progressive Attorney General as Herbert Brownell. Moreover, turning back to the point at hand, Stevenson was a hawk on Suez, advocating supporting our purported allies (who absolutely betrayed Ike by lying to him about their plans in the Middle East) in the name of the fight against Communism and supporting Israel (which also behaved perfidiousy, in alliance with France and Great Britain). (Eleanor Roosevelt was similarly supportive of Israel.)

2. Apropos the current discussion of unilateral presidential power, much of which is dominated by Yale faculty, former and present, and Yale alumni, Ike turns out to be a classic Whig, totally out of sympathy, I think it is fair to say, not only with the executive-branch exuberance expressed most strongly by John Yoo, but also, I strongly suspect, with a milder version, by Akhil Amar, whose contribution to Slate was titled "Bomb Away, Mr. President," defending what many of us think is an extraordinarily dubious interpretation of the War Powers Act proferred by former Yale Dean Harold Koh. (Obviously, the War Powers Resolution, for better and worse, entered American politics and law more than a decade after Ike was President.) Over and over, Ike emphasizes that he can employ no force in the Suez Canal unless the Egyptians "attacked our people" (p. 136). "Anything more, [Ike] believed, would require congressional approvalm" according to Nichols. On July 31, 1956, after Congress had adjourned--another reminder of what a remarkably different world it was then--Eisenhower ordered Secretary of State John Foster Dulles to go to London immediately "and make clear how impoossible it would be to obtrain Congressional authorization for participation by the United States in these circumstances." (p. 140.) In a telephone conversation with the almost hysterical Anthony Eden, who almost demanded that the United States offer full support to the UK, Eisenhower "remineded Eden that the United States could join in military action only if Congress was called into special session. For Congress to approve intervention, 'there would have to be a showing that every peaceful means of resolving the difficulty had previously been exhausted.'" (p. 142). "The country will not to war ever while I am occupying my present post," Eisenhower told a news conference, "unless the Congress is called into session, and Congress declares such a war." (p. 167).

It is inconceivable, I believe, that Ike would have thought himself authorized to go to war in Libya. There was, after all, no attack, or threat of same, on any American. And I can't imagine that we would view "hostilities" as involving only threats to American lives and not the use of military force in circumstances that could (and amlost inevitably would) take on added implications after the initial decision. I sus pect, therefore, that he'd be quite sympathetic to the critiques that Yale professors Bruce Ackerman and Oona Hathaway have leveled at the Obama Administration's assessments of its own powers.

To be sure, there were limits to Eisenhower's Whiggery. "Our people should be alert," he told a meeting of advisors. "If the Soviets attack the French and British directly, we would be in war, and we would be justified in taking military action even if Congress were not in session." (p. 250). The reason is tht Ike took NATO with great seriousness, and an attack on the French or British, even if they were illegitimately in the Suez (which was Ike's view), would be treated as an attack on the US. This seems to support Robert Taft's view that NATO did indeed fundamentally reorder the United States Constitution by empowering the President to enter unilaterally into war even in the absence of an attack on the United States or even American soldiers serving abroad.

3. Ike was far sicker than the American public was told. His White House doctor seems only semi-competent. Stevenson made Ike's health a campaign issue, but the White House, not to put too fine a point on it, lied through their teeth about the actualities. Given that there is some reason to believe that Ike was less than taken by the qualifications of his Vice President, Richard Nixon, it was almost criminally irresponsible of him to run for re-election, perhaps at all, and/or to do so with Nixon as his running mate. It is a miracle that he survived (and, indeed, didn't die until well into the 1960), but that doesn't justify his lack of candor and irresponsibility vis-a-vis Nixon.
Posted 5:03 PM by Sandy Levinson [link]