Roosevelt's lessons for future presidents
Saturday, 17 November 2007
SEVENTY-FIVE years ago on November 8, Franklin D. Rossevelt of New York achieved a sweeping victory over Herbert Hoover in the 1932 presidential election.
From time to time we hear assertions about FDR's limitations - that his was only a second-class mind, or that his foreign policy was ambivalent and reactive, or that he was outwitted by Joseph Stalin at Yalta in 1945.
His detractors an right: Roosevelt achieved nothing in his life, apart from rescuing American democracy from the Depression; taking the US into the second world war and, through his defeat of isolationism into the world; leading the Allies to victory over the dictators; winning four consecutive national elections; and doing all this with a crippled body.
Historians have likened the study of FDR's diplomacy to peering through a kaleidoscope: if you take the device apart, what seemed like a random display, created by the outside force of spinning the tube, suddenly: has internal logic. It is the exact reverse of George W. Bushs diplomacy, in which a rigid mindset and ideology has been broken by reality and splintered into random.
Comparing the two presidents may seem unfair however the Bush administration has brought the analogy down on its own bud through its use of second world war imagery and terminology, such as the ill-starred reference to an "axis of evil".
Policymakers may wish to consider three lessons from FDR's foreign policy.
First, curiosity is a good thing. Isaiah Berlin wrote that Roosevelt "practised a highly personal form of government" that "must have maddened sober and responsible officials used to a slower tempo and more normal patterns of administration". FDR ignored established lines of authority, he listened to many advisers but relied on none; he worked through friends, personal contacts and battalions of special envoys. He was determined never to become, as the historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr told me, "a prisoner of a single information network".
Mr Bush prefers clear reporting lines and administrative tidiness. In his first term he was captured by certain ideas and individuals and closed his mind to the alternatives. By the time he had recalibrated his approach, the damage was done. Second, it takes time and effort to build a durable domestic consensus in favour of involvement in a foreign war. FDR reached out to his opponents, coopting vanquished rivals such as Wendell Willkie and installing Republicans such as Henry Stimson in his cabinet. He convinced Americans they needed to lead - and then he asked huge things of them. With the Lend-Lease Act, FDR put the whole country on a war footing even before war had been declared. By the time of the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Americans understood where their security interests lay and they were ready for the fight.
Mr Bush has chosen a different path. He used 9/11 and the early successes of the Iraq war to squeeze the Democrats. His rash decisions have persuaded millions of Americans that their country should look inward and mind its own business. He was quick to invade Iraq, but very slow to ask the American public to share the burdens being borne by its armed forces.
The final lesson is that America is strongest when it works with others. FDR had the imagination to perceive America's appeal to the world. With his ready laugh and his cigarette holder held at a jaunty angle, he was the quintessential American optimist. In the depths of the Depression he raised Americans' spirits by assuring them that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself". By signing up to the Atlantic Charter (with its provisions against territorial aggrandisement and for freedom of trade and the seas) and by pressing his British ally on decolonisation, he signalled that the rest of the world had a place in the American world view. For the postwar settlement, he designed institutions of global order that gave other nations a voice but ensured American predominance.
Mr Bush has presented a different face to the international community: Abu Ghraib, Camp X-Ray, extraordinary rendition and all the rest. These policies violated individual liberties; they also offended against American self-interest.
President Bush told the world: "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists." President Roosevelt!s anniversary is a good reminder that there are better ways to bring the world along.
..............................................
The writer directs the global issues progranitne at the Lowy Institute for International
Policy in Sydney
From time to time we hear assertions about FDR's limitations - that his was only a second-class mind, or that his foreign policy was ambivalent and reactive, or that he was outwitted by Joseph Stalin at Yalta in 1945.
His detractors an right: Roosevelt achieved nothing in his life, apart from rescuing American democracy from the Depression; taking the US into the second world war and, through his defeat of isolationism into the world; leading the Allies to victory over the dictators; winning four consecutive national elections; and doing all this with a crippled body.
Historians have likened the study of FDR's diplomacy to peering through a kaleidoscope: if you take the device apart, what seemed like a random display, created by the outside force of spinning the tube, suddenly: has internal logic. It is the exact reverse of George W. Bushs diplomacy, in which a rigid mindset and ideology has been broken by reality and splintered into random.
Comparing the two presidents may seem unfair however the Bush administration has brought the analogy down on its own bud through its use of second world war imagery and terminology, such as the ill-starred reference to an "axis of evil".
Policymakers may wish to consider three lessons from FDR's foreign policy.
First, curiosity is a good thing. Isaiah Berlin wrote that Roosevelt "practised a highly personal form of government" that "must have maddened sober and responsible officials used to a slower tempo and more normal patterns of administration". FDR ignored established lines of authority, he listened to many advisers but relied on none; he worked through friends, personal contacts and battalions of special envoys. He was determined never to become, as the historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr told me, "a prisoner of a single information network".
Mr Bush prefers clear reporting lines and administrative tidiness. In his first term he was captured by certain ideas and individuals and closed his mind to the alternatives. By the time he had recalibrated his approach, the damage was done. Second, it takes time and effort to build a durable domestic consensus in favour of involvement in a foreign war. FDR reached out to his opponents, coopting vanquished rivals such as Wendell Willkie and installing Republicans such as Henry Stimson in his cabinet. He convinced Americans they needed to lead - and then he asked huge things of them. With the Lend-Lease Act, FDR put the whole country on a war footing even before war had been declared. By the time of the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Americans understood where their security interests lay and they were ready for the fight.
Mr Bush has chosen a different path. He used 9/11 and the early successes of the Iraq war to squeeze the Democrats. His rash decisions have persuaded millions of Americans that their country should look inward and mind its own business. He was quick to invade Iraq, but very slow to ask the American public to share the burdens being borne by its armed forces.
The final lesson is that America is strongest when it works with others. FDR had the imagination to perceive America's appeal to the world. With his ready laugh and his cigarette holder held at a jaunty angle, he was the quintessential American optimist. In the depths of the Depression he raised Americans' spirits by assuring them that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself". By signing up to the Atlantic Charter (with its provisions against territorial aggrandisement and for freedom of trade and the seas) and by pressing his British ally on decolonisation, he signalled that the rest of the world had a place in the American world view. For the postwar settlement, he designed institutions of global order that gave other nations a voice but ensured American predominance.
Mr Bush has presented a different face to the international community: Abu Ghraib, Camp X-Ray, extraordinary rendition and all the rest. These policies violated individual liberties; they also offended against American self-interest.
President Bush told the world: "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists." President Roosevelt!s anniversary is a good reminder that there are better ways to bring the world along.
..............................................
The writer directs the global issues progranitne at the Lowy Institute for International
Policy in Sydney