Bookreporter.com - PRESIDENTIAL COURAGE: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America 1789-1989 by Michael Beschloss

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Michael Beschloss

PRESIDENTIAL COURAGE: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America 1789-1989

THE CONQUERORS

PRESIDENTIAL COURAGE: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America 1789-1989
Michael Beschloss
Simon & Schuster
History
ISBN-10: 0684857057
ISBN-13: 9780684857053

Michael Beschloss is probably America's most widely respected historian of the Presidency. His field of historical vision has always been a wide one, but up to now his books have concentrated on Presidents of the past 60 years. In PRESIDENTIAL COURAGE he casts a wider net, starting with George Washington's battle for approval of the controversial Jay Treaty after the American Revolution and ending with Ronald Reagan's decision to deal in good faith with the Soviet Union rather than simply damning it as a sinister enemy and reflexively opposing it at every turn, a course strongly advocated by many of Reagan's advisers and a large segment of Americans in general.

There are nine names on the author's rollcall of courageous Presidents: Washington, John Adams (for avoiding a needless but widely anticipated war with France), Andrew Jackson (for his crusade against the Bank of the United States), Lincoln (for issuing the Emancipation Proclamation), Theodore Roosevelt (for attacking the predatory practices of Big Business); FDR (for realizing the danger posed by Naziism and nudging the country into the fight against it), Truman (for his recognition of Israel); Kennedy (for his belated but strong stand on civil rights) and Reagan (for his willingness to talk turkey in earnest with the Russians).

All of these choices are at least understandable, but some seem more logical than others. Was not Truman's decision to use the atomic bomb more far-reaching in its effect and just as courageous as his recognition of Israel? And what about Kennedy's masterly handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, or the courage shown by Texan Lyndon Johnson's sponsorship of landmark civil rights legislation? If, as they say, a cat may look at a king, perhaps a mere book reviewer may quarrel here and there with Michael Beschloss.

Beschloss has always been a lively writer, and this book bears that out once again. His approach is chatty and anecdotal rather than pedantic. If a good story comes along, whether or not it is strictly relevant to his topic, he includes it. This is history for the general reader, not merely for the academic archives.

Several themes bind the nine Presidential stories together. One is the fierce opposition that all the subjects faced from political enemies. Beschloss gleefully quotes many of the picturesque insults flung at his heroes (when John Adams lost the Presidency in the election of 1800, one newspaper chortled that he had been thrown out of office "like polluted water." Lincoln was called in print an "obscene ape.").

Several of the nine Presidents felt that, by making the decisions they did, they were signing their own political death warrants. Lincoln was warned that by issuing the Emancipation Proclamation he would lose the support of voters serving in the Union army (he ended up winning it by 80 percent). Truman and Kennedy both voiced the sentiment that it was better to do what one felt was right and go down honorably than to simply bow to public pressure. Reagan felt the same way about his dealings with the Soviets. Beschloss implicitly raises the issue at the end of his book --- can this sort of thing still happen in this day of poll-driven politics, spin doctors and focus groups? He seems to doubt it.

Another major theme that runs through this book is the human weaknesses and frailties of even such resolute Presidents. Beschloss seems to go out of his way to emphasize, for example, Harry Truman's private denigration of Jews while then giving him credit for recognizing Israel over the strident objections of people like General George Marshall. He treats Kennedy in much the same way, first giving a detailed description of his political timidity on civil rights before acknowledging that he finally came out strongly for the cause after the pressure became too great to resist.

Beschloss cuts off his narrative at 1989, giving it a neatly rounded 200-year reach from Washington's time to our own. This tactic also saves him from the historical minefield of comment on more recent events that are still hotly debated. But the parallels are intriguing: John Adams's willingness to talk to the French (people most Americans regarded as enemies), Franklin Roosevelt's quiet toleration of warrantless wiretapping, the belief of both FDR and Theodore Roosevelt that sometimes it may be necessary for the good of the nation to bend the Constitution ever so slightly. When future historians take up these hot potatoes, one hopes they will do so with the grace and eloquence of Michael Beschloss.

--- Reviewed by Robert Finn (Robertfinn@aol.com)

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