Like Ike? A Trump presidency could mirror Eisenhower

With swing-state polls reportedly driving some nervous Hillary Clinton supporters to check out housing prices in Canada, attention is turning to what many in both parties thought the impossible -- a Donald Trump presidency and what it might look like.

Though the temperament and personality hardly match, there are enough parallels between the high-energy business tycoon and Dwight D. Eisenhower to make the avuncular Ike's Oval Office tenure six decades ago a predictor of a Trump presidency's features.

The World War II hero and five-star Army general credited with winning the war in Europe wasn't rigidly ideological any more than Mr. Trump. Neither man had dipped a toe in the choppy water of U.S. politics before running for president. Both were highly successful at their chosen lines of work.

"Trump has staked out positions that do not allow him to be pigeonholed ideologically -- that makes him more akin to an Ike figure certainly," said Eric Hargan, who was Health and Human Services Department COO under President George W. Bush.

"After losing a bitter fight for the nomination, Taft issued a pro forma endorsement of Eisenhower. It soon became clear though that many of Taft's supporters were holding back and that Taft was in a sulk, so a meeting was arranged between Taft and Eisenhower in September of 1952. Taft came aboard after he easily extracted a pledge from Eisenhower to provide patronage to Taft's supporters, to cut federal spending, and fight "creeping socialism in every domestic field." Indeed, Eisenhower and Taft found that they agreed closely on most domestic issues."

Of course, Ike's pledge was worthless. He not only did not cut spending, he utterly failed to combat the expansion of leftism domestically. Sen. McCarthy exposed him as the "Emperor with No Clothes" on the issue of Communist infiltration. Rather than deal with the problem, he decided to make McCarthy "America's problem." So much for a patriot.

"Where Taft and Eisenhower differed was in foreign policy, with Taft tending toward isolationism and wanting to avoid overseas military commitments against the advance of communism. Taft was even a critic of NATO and the US commitment to help defend Europe. Do you approve more of Taft or Eisenhower in that respect?"

"Whatever your views though, modern American conservatism is anti-communist to the core. Unlike Taft, Ronald Reagan and most conservatives favored NATO and the use of American military power to resist and defeat communism. Indeed, no small part of the case for American conservatism is its role in fostering the ideas and policies that helped lead to the essentially peaceful overthrow of the USSR and the other communist regimes in Eastern Europe."

Since Taft would've had the 5 months of serving actively and the last month+ unsuccessfully battling terminal cancer, there's no way to conclude how Taft would've reacted in the long run. At the time, there was no way to operate as an isolationist President, so I can only theorize had he lasted in office, he would've taken a more internationalist stance. A President MacArthur would've unquestionably been aggressive across the board. He knew our enemies and would bring the battle to them.

"Eisenhower's conception of himself as a small government conservative is supported by the historical record. Conservatives did not fully realize it at the time, and some, like the National Review circle, were almost relentlessly disparaging, but Eisenhower as President actually believed in the Constitution and limited federal powers."

And again, what he "conceived" himself to be didn't match the record. Expansive government, high taxes and failure to combat Socialism is not "Conservative" any more than I'm a fudgesicle. Although he may have regretted it later, Eisenhower's contribution to our courts, Earl Warren, was the singlemost destructive appointment in the history of the Supreme Court and served to throw the Constitution and this "limited federal powers" right into the shredder.

This reminds me of our imbecilic Socialist Democrat Senator here in Tennessee, Jim "Daff-uh-Zit" Sasser (1977-1995). Term after term, he'd come home every 6 years and preach to everyone how "Conservative" he was across the board. Concerned about the daff-uh-zit (deficit), riding around in a cop car showing he was tough on crime. It was all Kabuki theater. After helping to push Bush, Sr. into breaking his 1988 pledge on taxes and his relentless pursuit to become Majority Leader (for which he was about to be designated as following George Mitchell's retirement in 1994), he trotted out his "I'm a Conservative" campaign, which was met with derisively laughter from Memphis to Mountain City. His riding in a cop car looked like Dukakis in the tank, and the film footage was close to a decade old. Law enforcement was not supporting him. Tennessee kicked Sasser out on his ass in favor of the non-politician Bill Frist (whom ironically would get the Majority Leader job). What you think you are, what you roll people into believing you are and what you actually are, as with the case of Sasser and Eisenhower (and Nixon) don't always jibe.

"A few years ago, National Review more or less recanted in "Why Like Ike - Conservatives got Eisenhower wrong the first time around," by Kevin D. Williamson. If you want, use the private mail function here to send me your email and I will provide a PDF copy. Perhaps, like NR, you might conclude on reconsideration that you like Ike."

I believe I've seen that article. NR is not what it used to be by any stretch, and it seems quite pleased and content to see the election of Hillary Clinton and the complete pandemonium that will follow in her wake. But even a cursory glance at Ike and everything that followed under his reign of error makes me an unapologetic Taft-MacArthur supporter. We'd all have been better off had he retired to his ranch by 1952.

dj:

A few small disagreements and additions. William Brennan was a worse appointment to SCOTUS even taking into consideration that Warren was CJ with a lot more power than an AJ. Brennan was a poison who lasted much longer and racked up far more casualties. There is a book, The Brethren, which describes his key, behind the scenes role as SCOTUS's utility infielder for the radical left. Another phony "Catholic" who was presiding over the horse trading of votes on other cases in exchange for support for Blackmun's desire for abortion on demand as a "constitutional right." Potter Stewart sold out for votes favoring Pete Rose being favorably described in the Curt Flood baseball antitrust case. Stewart was also appointed by Ike. 60+ million dead babies and counting. Thanks, Ike!

Barry Goldwater (of whom I am no fan) called Ike's administration "The Dime Store New Deal." He was right about that.

As outlined in books by Bill Buckley, M. Stanton Evans, Anne Coulter and many more, McCarthy was a genuine American hero. This was verified by the release from the soviet archives of the Venona Papers. Throwing him under the bus to suck up to fashionable elitist opinion makes former Ivy League Columbia University President Dwight Eisenhower a bum.

Ike conceived of himself as a small government conservative????? So what? If he conceived of himself as Secretariat, he would not have won a single race. What was he? A political transgender?

Unlike MacArthur, who ran his own campaign against Japan and had a notoriously poor relationship with Nimitz and the US Navy, Eisenhower had the personal and political skill to manage large personalities and forge a multinational coalition that invaded Europe and liberated it from the Nazis. Known and respected by the public and leaders of Europe, as President, Eisenhower was uniquely well-suited to the task of rallying and stabilizing free Europe and making it into a reliable US ally against the USSR and Warsaw Pact.

To be sure, Eisenhower's (and later Reagan's) strategy of well-armed containment required patience and resolve in the expectation that generational changes would eventually lead to the peaceful decomposition of the USSR and the other communist regimes of Europe. And that is of course what happened.

Should we have focused on China and Asia instead? Absolutely not. If we lost Europe, we lost the Cold War. Since Europe after WW II contained a decisively large fraction of the world's uncommitted scientific and technical talent and productive capacity, the incontestable logic of strategy required that the US give Europe its primary attention, not China. And while Korea, China, Japan, and the rest of Asia encompassed a vast land mass and population, in 1952, even when added together, they had minimal economic power and little ability to project military power. That made MacArthur's focus on China and Asia strategically foolish.

Your suggested alternative -- let MacArthur move on China, defeat Mao, and install Chiang -- would have required an immense military effort that the US public would have rejected. And to what end? The conquest of a large, populous, and staggeringly poor country from the communists -- so that it can be returned to Chiang and his gang of corrupt, bickering, incompetents who lost it in the first place. No thanks.

Eisenhower’s record on spending. When Ike was elected in 1952, federal spending was 18.9 per cent of the GDP. When he left office in 1960, his last budget had federal outlays of 17.2 per cent of GDP – with a small surplus. I call that a reduction in federal spending, in relative terms when measured as to its impact on the economy.

Eisenhower and McCarthy. McCarthy was badly flawed, but he deserved better. Eisenhower seems to have regarded him as a treacherous publicity hound and a burden to efforts to establish sound procedures to weed out the disloyal and insecure. Worst of all was McCarthy’s attack on the US Army and reckless slams on George Marshall, Eisenhower’s friend and mentor. Is it any wonder that Eisenhower was antagonistic toward McCarthy?

Taft’s foreign policy views if elected. Really? Taft should be preferred to Eisenhower because Taft would have repudiated his own isolationism if elected -- and then been succeeded by MacArthur, who was intent on waging a massive war in China? Why not simply elect Eisenhower in the first place?

Earl Warren, etc. Eisenhower also thought Earl Warren proved to be a terrible appointment. More broadly, your rhetoric against Eisenhower echoes the Old Right rhetoric against Taft.

"Unlike MacArthur, who ran his own campaign against Japan and had a notoriously poor relationship with Nimitz and the US Navy, Eisenhower had the personal and political skill to manage large personalities and forge a multinational coalition that invaded Europe and liberated it from the Nazis. Known and respected by the public and leaders of Europe, as President, Eisenhower was uniquely well-suited to the task of rallying and stabilizing free Europe and making it into a reliable US ally against the USSR and Warsaw Pact."

Well, you have schmoozers and you have leaders. Leaders can rub others the wrong way. I consider Mac (and Patton) leaders, while Ike was more a schmoozer. As President, the schmoozing left us weaker. That demonstrates today why the base of the GOP is fed up with that type of pol and wants an unapologetic leader.

"To be sure, Eisenhower's (and later Reagan's) strategy of well-armed containment required patience and resolve in the expectation that generational changes would eventually lead to the peaceful decomposition of the USSR and the other communist regimes of Europe. And that is of course what happened."

And we have similarly decomposed. This was not the desired outcome.

"Should we have focused on China and Asia instead? Absolutely not. If we lost Europe, we lost the Cold War. Since Europe after WW II contained a decisively large fraction of the world's uncommitted scientific and technical talent and productive capacity, the incontestable logic of strategy required that the US give Europe its primary attention, not China. And while Korea, China, Japan, and the rest of Asia encompassed a vast land mass and population, in 1952, even when added together, they had minimal economic power and little ability to project military power. That made MacArthur's focus on China and Asia strategically foolish."

I did not suggest an exclusive focus on Asia under a MacArthur Administration. Losing either Europe or Asia was unacceptable, and we effectively did lose Asia. I disagree vehemently that MacArthur's focus on Asia (as a military leader) was "foolish." He exposed Truman's disastrously inept weakness and could've averted the situation we have today.

"Your suggested alternative -- let MacArthur move on China, defeat Mao, and install Chiang -- would have required an immense military effort that the US public would have rejected. And to what end? The conquest of a large, populous, and staggeringly poor country from the communists -- so that it can be returned to Chiang and his gang of corrupt, bickering, incompetents who lost it in the first place. No thanks."

This is a shocking statement. Liberating China from a monster, the greatest mass-murderer known in modern history, before he could implement that action en masse and placing it in the hands of an American ally is wrong-headed ? Your alleging Chiang's "corruption/bickering/incompetents" deserved him to lose Mainland China ? Seeing the result in Taiwan under his governance and policies, I simply cannot believe your stance here. I am utterly floored.

"Eisenhower’s record on spending. When Ike was elected in 1952, federal spending was 18.9 per cent of the GDP. When he left office in 1960, his last budget had federal outlays of 17.2 per cent of GDP – with a small surplus. I call that a reduction in federal spending, in relative terms when measured as to its impact on the economy."

That simply means economic growth outpaced federal spending. He did not CUT spending, he increased it. You're using the rhetoric the Democrats do when they call a slower increase in spending a "cut."

"Eisenhower and McCarthy. McCarthy was badly flawed, but he deserved better. Eisenhower seems to have regarded him as a treacherous publicity hound and a burden to efforts to establish sound procedures to weed out the disloyal and insecure. Worst of all was McCarthy’s attack on the US Army and reckless slams on George Marshall, Eisenhower’s friend and mentor. Is it any wonder that Eisenhower was antagonistic toward McCarthy?"

Ike obviously abhorred the messenger (despite having ostensibly used McCarthy to ride to office in '52), but it seemed obvious that he didn't like the message, either. There was a substantial infiltration of American institutions by Soviet agents and sympathizers (I mean, FDR's 2nd Vice President, Henry Wallace, was a Stalinist sympathizer !), and that included the military. Ike seemed either oblivious or out of his depth when it came to aggressively going after this infiltration.

"Taft’s foreign policy views if elected. Really? Taft should be preferred to Eisenhower because Taft would have repudiated his own isolationism if elected -- and then been succeeded by MacArthur, who was intent on waging a massive war in China? Why not simply elect Eisenhower in the first place?"

Because Eisenhower was a lousy President, as I've outlined here. What one does as a Senator, tending to parochial state interests, differs from what one would do acceding to the Presidency in having to deal with foreign affairs. Had Taft lived, he would've risen to the occasion, as MacArthur certainly would've, and we'd have been left in better shape in my estimation.

"Earl Warren, etc. Eisenhower also thought Earl Warren proved to be a terrible appointment. More broadly, your rhetoric against Eisenhower echoes the Old Right rhetoric against Taft."

And yet Ike continued to make awful and mediocre appointments. Warren, Brennan, Whittaker, Stewart, and that just on SCOTUS. Would Taft/MacArthur have put these bozos on the court ? Let's just say they probably couldn't have done worse. Gee whiz, even JFK put Byron White on the Court, and he pretty much blew away Ike's imbeciles.

Eisenhower as a schmoozer.

Having political skills and a genial manner does not exclude talent as a leader. Eisenhower’s management style, like that of George Marshall, avoided flash and attention. Where Marshall was stern and sober-minded though, Ike as President cultivated an avuncular image and often seemed detached from day to day politics.

It took historians decades to discern that behind the scenes, Ike as President was frequently pulling the strings and accomplishing his objectives at minimal effort and political cost. Reagan used similar methods, with business magazines praising his skill at delegation, which insiders said was modeled on Eisenhower’s practices. Both Reagan and Eisenhower are now generally rated as among the country’s better and even greatest presidents.

Growing US domestic issues today.

The concept of proximate cause matters. Eisenhower cannot fairly be blamed for, say, today’s high rates of illegitimacy and family breakdown, nor can it be assumed that somehow MacArthur as president would have made a difference for the better.

Trying to save China from Mao.

US resources were limited to the degree that we might be able to check the Soviets from further gains in Europe, but we could not, to a virtual certainty, undo Mao’s conquest of China, and there is no possibility that we could have done both. Worse, squandering our economic and military resources trying to save China would likely have permitted a Soviet takeover in Europe.

Chiang as a ruler.

During WW II, US aid was often stolen or diverted by Chiang and his circle, and military resources were usually held back for use against Mao instead of the Japanese. After the war, Chiang and his allies were soundly defeated by Mao. Chiang and the Nationalists lacked a clear and appealing political program for reform and had little appeal to the Chinese populace.

Indeed, on Taiwan, much of the native population regarded Chiang and his Nationalists as invaders, and Chiang’s rule depended on a harsh security regime. Not until after Chiang died was a modern democracy contrived on Taiwan in the 1990s.

To be sure, US support for Chiang was sabotaged by communists working in the US government, but that does not mean that the Chinese populace was ready to revolt against Mao. What MacArthur would have delivered if he had his way would have been a war with China with little prospect of success at reasonable and bearable cost -- and we would risked losing Europe to the Soviets in the meantime.

In light of the Venona Papers gleaned from soviet archives that PROVE McCarthy's claims, for people of objective integrity the case against Joe McCarthy is closed and McCarthy won.

Taft had repudiated his isolationism in his book A Foreign Policy for Americans.

Earl Warren will understandably never be a conservative hero but he was not as bad as many suppose. The job of Chief Justice has many powers in excess of those of an associate justice. Warren seemed to be in over his head. He was principled but not the sharpest knife in the drawer and certainly not a conservative.

It was often said of Warren that if someone in HIS family had been murdered, he would have had a different view of the rights of the criminally accused. In real life, Warren's father, a retired railroad worker, was axe-murdered and a drifter whom he had hired to chop wood, was arrested for the murder. Warren was Oakland County Attorney. He stepped aside while the prosecution was pending, hired an attorney he regarded as the best defense attorney in the county and paid him with his own funds. It turned out that the drifter had not killed his father.

Neither as a politician nor as a judge, is Warren my cup of tea but I knew a black but conservative pro-life Republican judge who had been an Army private in California during WW II. On several occasions, he had been invited along with other enlisted men to small dinner parties at Warren's Governor's mansion. He spoke extremely well of Warren and his admiration for Warren. Often these matters are more complex than we suspect.

William Brennan had NO redeeming qualities. Warren did.

Warren also recognized that Brown vs. The Board of Education of Topeka, KS would be highly controversial and an essentially revolutionary landmark in jurisprudence. He recognized that it would not do to have a 5-4 decision. He exercised all of his management skills and persuasive power and skill at compromise to produce a very one-sided decision that left no hope of being overturned. That is a chief justice using the extraordinary powers of his office in ways that those powers were meant to be used.

Worse than Warren was his predecessor Fred Vinson.

"Eisenhower as a schmoozer: Having political skills and a genial manner does not exclude talent as a leader. Eisenhower’s management style, like that of George Marshall, avoided flash and attention. Where Marshall was stern and sober-minded though, Ike as President cultivated an avuncular image and often seemed detached from day to day politics.

Historians, sadly, tend to overwhelmingly lean leftward (too often a problem with academics). I could see why left-wingers would praise Eisenhower. However, the more I learned about Ike, the less I found (as a Conservative) to like, for all the reasons I cited. One thing I'd be curious to know, since Ike was still alive when Reagan won the CA Governorship in 1966 and was seriously floated for the Presidency in 1968, what his opinion was of him. I would think it probably wasn't terribly well-regarded, as he was viewed as a Goldwaterite (albeit not exactly so), and Goldwater wasn't high on Ike.

"Growing US domestic issues today. The concept of proximate cause matters. Eisenhower cannot fairly be blamed for, say, today’s high rates of illegitimacy and family breakdown, nor can it be assumed that somehow MacArthur as president would have made a difference for the better."

But since Ike paved the way for JFK/LBJ and their explosion of their big government welfare state insanity, an individual in the Presidency who opposed such policies from being implemented at a national level might've slowed down or prevented the fiasco that resulted. Alas, that was neither Ike nor Nixon.

"Trying to save China from Mao. US resources were limited to the degree that we might be able to check the Soviets from further gains in Europe, but we could not, to a virtual certainty, undo Mao’s conquest of China, and there is no possibility that we could have done both. Worse, squandering our economic and military resources trying to save China would likely have permitted a Soviet takeover in Europe."

I chalk this up more to the failings of Truman to let MacArthur actually stop the Communist menace in the Asian theater. But that opportunity was there and should've been swiftly pursued. That MacArthur was relieved of duties was the greatest disasters to befall Eastern politics, and well over a billion souls have paid the price. I also vehemently disagree, again, that we had to choose one over the other. We could deal with Europe AND Asia. After all, we did so in WW2. You can walk and chew gum at the same time.

"Chiang as a ruler. During WW II, US aid was often stolen or diverted by Chiang and his circle, and military resources were usually held back for use against Mao instead of the Japanese. After the war, Chiang and his allies were soundly defeated by Mao. Chiang and the Nationalists lacked a clear and appealing political program for reform and had little appeal to the Chinese populace.

I cannot summon up any indignation against Chiang in "skimming" weaponry to use against Mao. Indeed, I'd have cheered him on. There's simply nothing that can be said to me that would convince me to the contrary that the policies ultimately pursued here were a positive. Mao should've been defeated and executed at the earliest possible time. You pursue an argument reminiscent of those who said Batista removal was justified by Castro. There's another epic-level failure of Ike's... Cuba. And that was left for an in-over-his-head junior Senator who stole the 1960 election (for which Ike also did nothing about it).

RE: Taft, that vindicates my point that he would not have been an isolationist President.

As for Earl Warren, I’ll have to respectfully part company with you on that one. I don’t think I could possibly conceive of a lower opinion for someone to have served on the court. Whatever positives he may have accomplished before leaving the CA Governorship was wiped out swiftly as soon as he hit DC.

He was everything a Chief Justice should never be and his turning the court into a nightmare of a leftist activist one should’ve seen him promptly impeached. And I think he knew exactly what he was doing, too. Had he remained in office to Roe v. Wade, I have no doubt he would’ve gleefully approved. Add in he tried to arrange it so that the crooked Abe Fortas (once attorney for the infamous Communist Owen Lattimore) succeeded him as Chief Justice, thankfully foiled.

Chief Justice Fred Vinson, by comparison, never behaved in such an egregious and destructive manner, both to court and country. I would take 1,000 Freds for one Earl, and then promptly wish him into the cornfield.

Eisenhower and Marshall were natural born bureaucrats. They had the souls of bureaucrats. They displayed the cautious little two-step of bureaucrats. Did either of them ever engage in actual combat during their lengthy careers as soldiers?

It seems an obscenity to compare Eisenhower to Ronaldus Maximus as leaders. It was Eisenhower's "modern" wing of Republicanism which bitterly resisted the rise of Reagan. While you rightly note that Eisenhower was too long ago to be directly blamed for the moral degeneracy of our era, it is also true that he had little interest in such matters. Ronaldus Maximus was THE great POTUS of my lifetime. Eisenhower fans should have some shame and refrain from embarrassing their man with any comparisons.

Depending on his policies and motives, MacArthur's administration of Japan does not evoke confidence that he would have been a force for social issue morality. He had no problem with abortion in Japan in the 1940s. He wanted to force women out of their traditional family roles and into the work place. He seems to have wanted to emasculate Japanese males via social policy. It goes without saying that MacArthur would have been infinitely superior to Eisenhower on foreign and military policies.

Chiang Kai Shek was originally trained by the soviets in the time of Lenin to be soviet stooge in charge of China using the Nationalist Party of Sun Yat Sen. Chiang announced his independence of Moscow by killing thousands of soviet spies in China in The Night of the Long Knives. After that, the soviets hated no one more than they hated Chiang. BEFORE Mao won his revolution, Chiang was betrayed by Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau who, in spite of orders from POTUS, ordered a planeload of gold to be grounded and not sent to shore up Chiang's currency during an absolute fiscal crisis. Then Mao won his revolution.

Somehow, when we are faced with fascist and Nazi enemies, it is practical to do the right thing, attack them and destroy their regimes and execute their leaders. Is it not strange that it NEVER seems practical to treat ANY communist regime similarly. We would not take out Kim Jong Mentally Ill's grandpa or his daddy or him. Nor would we arrange to drag "kindly Uncle Ho Chi Minh" by the beard from his Hanoi lair to be executed in the streets of Hanoi as Mussolini was in Rome. During World War II we humiliated ourselves allying with Stalin. It took Reagan to do in the soviets and, even then, no one was hanged. Curious double standard.

If "we" had lost Europe to further infringements by the soviets, how would things be different? Europe has been conquered by Gramscian communism which offers the moral perversions of your choice in exchange for the rest of your freedoms: The European Union. Also, because the Europeans have become too materialistic to bother raising children and have abandoned traditional religious faith, Europe is now being overrun by Muslims all too willing to raise children. Seizing Europe by outbreeding the Europeans is a lot more fun than armed warfare.

Eisenhower’s record on spending. On balance, federal spending as a percentage of the GDP is a sound basis for comparison. The new categories of spending that Eisenhower approved – for education and the Interstate Highway System – were relatively small and had a connection with national defense.

Eisenhower and McCarthy. Having constant hunts for spies and security risks can cripple an organization. McCarthy’s public fusillades tended to do just that with critical parts of the federal government. McCarthy is vindicated only in part by the times that he was right. His attacks were too much like firing off a shotgun in a crowd, hitting not just valid targets but also innocent people and panicking most of the crowd.

Taft versus MacArthur. You propose that if elected President, Taft, a mature man of deep principle, would have been forced by on the job training and taking up a national perspective to go from isolationist to interventionist. Just how long would such a process take? Would we have to lose Europe to the Soviets first? There can be no credible assurance that would not have happened.

Ike’s Supreme Court appointments. Eisenhower’s Supreme Court appointments include the dismal Earl Warren and William Brennan, but the historical consensus is that the liberal decisions they delivered were contrary to Eisenhower’s expectations.

"Eisenhower’s record on spending. On balance, federal spending as a percentage of the GDP is a sound basis for comparison. The new categories of spending that Eisenhower approved – for education and the Interstate Highway System – were relatively small and had a connection with national defense."

By that reckoning, if you have banner economic growth, it's A-OK to similarly expand federal spending. I vehemently disagree. That's the time to cut back. Actually, there's never a bad time to cut government and spending. As for education measures, that's not something that should remotely be under federal auspices. At least the highway system could have an argument made in its favor, although I'm not a fan of what it did to many of our inner cities in destroying neighborhoods, many of which have never recovered.

"Eisenhower and McCarthy. Having constant hunts for spies and security risks can cripple an organization. McCarthy’s public fusillades tended to do just that with critical parts of the federal government. McCarthy is vindicated only in part by the times that he was right. His attacks were too much like firing off a shotgun in a crowd, hitting not just valid targets but also innocent people and panicking most of the crowd."

Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom. McCarthy was right to ring the bell and loudly. I disagree with the characterization of him "firing off shots" in the vicinity of innocent people hoping that it might strike a guilty party. For years I heard from people, who know little about McCarthy (only that he somehow managed the feat, mostly spent as a member of the minority, to Chair a "House Committee" on Un-American Activities) claiming he harmed "countless, innocent people." My response to that is, "Whom ?" The irony is that most people don't know that HCUA was established to weed out Nazi sympathizers and its founder and co-chair was NY Democrat Congressman Samuel Dickstein, later exposed as a paid Soviet agent.

"Taft versus MacArthur. You propose that if elected President, Taft, a mature man of deep principle, would have been forced by on the job training and taking up a national perspective to go from isolationist to interventionist. Just how long would such a process take? Would we have to lose Europe to the Soviets first? There can be no credible assurance that would not have happened."

Yes. Because there is a difference between being a Senator vs. being President, though he would've only had a matter of months to deal with foreign policy. We certainly know his successor, MacArthur, was no shrinking violet.

"Ike’s Supreme Court appointments. Eisenhower’s Supreme Court appointments include the dismal Earl Warren and William Brennan, but the historical consensus is that the liberal decisions they delivered were contrary to Eisenhower’s expectations."

But yet, he appointed them. You have to own what you do in office.

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