Obama to Inskeep: I'm not Eisenhower, ISIL is not the Soviet Union, the media is not the culprit, the country is not in crisis

NPR's Steve Inskeep began an interview with Obama by setting on a tee what might have looked to some like a giant softball:

STEVE INSKEEP: I have been reading a history of part of the Cold War. Dwight Eisenhower was president, he's meeting his cabinet sometimes in this room where we're sitting. The Soviet Union has emerged as a major nuclear threat. The country is very worried at this point in the 1950s. But Eisenhower is convinced that they are not that strong, that the United States is stronger, that the U.S. will win if we just avoid a huge war.

And he decides to try to reassure the public, gives a series of speeches, saying, keep your chin up, everything's fine, our strategy is working. It's a total failure. The public doesn't believe him. He is accused of a failure of leadership, and his approval rating goes down.

Are you going through the same experience now with regard to ISIS?

Obama took it for a ball:

Precedent Eisenhower

When justifying his major foreign policy decisions, Obama cites Eisenhower more than any other predecessor -- e.g., in his December 2009 speech announcing his time-limited Afghan surge:

As President, I refuse to set goals that go beyond our responsibility, our means, or our interests. And I must weigh all of the challenges that our nation faces. I don't have the luxury of committing to just one. Indeed, I'm mindful of the words of President Eisenhower, who -- in discussing our national security -- said, "Each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs."

As calls mount for U.S. intervention in Syria, with exhortations to Obama to uphold U.S. "credibility," I find this summation by Stephen Ambrose in Rise to Globalism*  of Eisenhower's second term instructive:

THE OVERWHELMING FIRST IMPRESSION OF AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY from 1956 to 1961 was one of unrelieved failure. America’s inability to do anything at all to aid Hungary’s rebels made a mockery of the Republican calls for liberation. Eisenhower and Dulles were unable to contain the Russians, who succeeded in their centuries-old dream of establishing themselves in the Mediterranean and the Middle East. Spectacular Soviet successes in rocketry, beginning with Sputnik, sent the United States into a deep emotional depression. Russia seemed to have won the arms race, and in 1959 it was Khrushchev who played at brinksmanship from a position of strength. After the Suez crisis, the French, British, and Americans could never fully trust each other. In Southeast Asia, Communist guerrillas in South Vietnam and Laos threatened to upset the delicate balance there in favor of the Communists. In Latin America, the Eisenhower administration was helpless in the face of a revolution in Cuba, which soon allowed the Russians to extend their influence to within ninety miles of the United States. 

Surface appearances, however, reveal only surface truths. Eisenhower’s outstanding achievement was to avoid war. However irresponsible Republican emotional appeals to the anti-Communist vote may have been, and despite the Russian shift to the offensive in the Cold War, Eisenhower refused to engage American troops in armed conflict. He was not immune to intervention, nor to provocative rhetoric, nor to nuclear testing, nor to the arms race (within strict limits), but he did set his face against war. It became the Democrats’ turn to complain that the United States was not “going forward,” that it was not “doing enough,” that America was “losing the Cold War.”

"The electorate is smarter than all of us?" Lincoln said it better...

At her 77th birthday dinner last night, my mother asked me if I still believe the dictum that's always been on my profile to the right on this page, that "the electorate is smarter than all us." I had to say no.  That is, it's an oversimplification. I will take it down or modify it when I put up my next post.

The idea first formed itself when I read Stephen Ambrose's biography of Eisenhower in the mid-90s and it occurred to me that while I would never have voted for Eisenhower, the country was wise to.  With some hesitation, I extended the thought to Reagan, and to Bush Sr. (reasoning here).

More broadly: throughout American history, notwithstanding long periods of drift and poor governance, the electorate has periodically empowered great leaders to embark on  major course corrections.  I never believed that the electorate never makes mistakes -- simply that, in the broad sweep of history, it enables corrections when they become necessary. 

I hold to all that, except maybe the Reagan part (I credit his flexible and creative response to Gorbachev, but I also think that his denigration, defunding and denaturing of federal government agencies by appointing frauds and shills like Clarence Thomas and James Watt had disastrous consequences).  And I still think that democracy remains the worst form of government except for all the alternatives because in the long run the people will hold leaders accountable for decisive failures of policy or execution -- as they did to Hoover, Carter, and ultimately Bush Jr.