Presidency Archives - Not Even Past

Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House by Michael Wolff (2018)

Donald Trump responded to Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House in a predictable way. The President launched an incoherent, childish tweetstorm, labeling Wolff “mentally deranged” and an agent of the “Fake News Media,” which, typically, drew even more attention to the book. Indeed, in the hours after the President’s tweets, Fire and Fury shot to the top of the New York Times’ bestseller list. In his alleged exposé of a scandal-ridden administration, Wolff promised to include everything in this new work, from insider’s knowledge of the frigid marriage between the President and First Lady, to Ivanka Trump’s mockery of “the Donald’s” hair. Fire and Fury proved almost instantly popular amongst an exasperated American electorate, regardless of methodological problems that dominate the work.

Does Wolff’s book merit serious consideration from scholars? Is it an historical account? Fire and Fury does not seem to fit the typical model of a presidential history. Wolff’s work seems most similar to political journalist Joe McGinniss in The Selling of the President 1968. Unlike, say David McCullough’s John Adams and David Herbert Donald’s Lincoln, which rely on meticulous research to evaluate the President’s accomplishments throughout the course of a presidency, McGinnis and Wolff hone in on a few short months at the beginning of the president’s term. McGinniss followed the presidential campaign of Richard Nixon, often seen as Trump’s closest historical parallel. Both McGinniss and Wolff benefit a great deal from their insider’s access and a sensationalist writing style in the midst of presidential scandal.

Even as a work of journalism, though, Fire and Fury defies convention. Wolff often inserts tawdry detail and gossip that would be incredibly difficult to substantiate. While this makes it problematic to verify, Fire and Fury does capture the flavor of White House operations in a way that traditional reporting does not. For instance, it may be hard to verify that Ivanka Trump and Dina Powell tried to convince Trump to take a “presidential stance” regarding human rights atrocities using a PowerPoint of graphic, violent imagery or that Trump then poured over for hours and showed to others, but the inclusion of this gossip gives the reader a window into the character of the President, even if it is based on rumor.

Campaigning in Arizona, October 2016 (via Gage Skidmore, Flickr)

Fire and Fury is especially useful in understanding the flawed cast of characters that vie for control over Trump and his “agenda,” (something Wolff doubts really exists). Traditional media coverage, understandably, focuses to such a degree on the President that his backdrop of enablers, at times, fades into the background. According to Wolff, the failures of the Trump administration can be tied directly to the mismanagement and political infighting of the fools surrounding him, including General H.R. McMasters and Reince Priebus. Throughout Fire and Fury, Wolff contends that the current state of the administration springs from a basic fact of the Trump administration: that the current POTUS never actually wanted to win the presidency. The Trump family, according to Wolff, saw the 2016 election as a grand moneymaking scheme, only seeking to elevate their national profile—and their brand revenues. After his surprise win, Wolff argues, Trump entered the White House particularly unmoored from reality, governed solely by personal impulse and self-gratification. The excesses and corruption of the current administration emerge in startling display and Wolff persuasively shows the collective inability of Washington’s establishment to curb the impulses of the White House.

Former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus looks into the Oval Office as President Donald Trump reads over his notes, Friday, March 10, 2017, prior to meeting with the Healthcare Specific House Committee Leadership at the White House (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead, via Wikipedia)

Wolff suspiciously manages to hit almost all of the mini-presidential scandals that seem to emerge almost daily with the current administration, an impressive feat. For instance, Wolff has a knack for bringing seemingly disparate political moments together. One chapter manages to connect Trump’s frustrations over the situation in Afghanistan and his issues with General H.R. McMasters to the decision to bring in Anthony Scaramucci. In doing so, Wolff creates the breakneck pace of news since Trump’s inauguration and brings the reader into the center of an ongoing crisis in which Trump’s lackeys try to use one crisis to resolve another. Unsettlingly, and predictably, Trump’s messengers seem as overwhelmed as the rest of the American populace.

Unfortunately, Fire and Fury is riddled with methodological problems. Wolff consistently fails to cite sources. Speculation is indistinguishable from on-the-record quotes throughout. Tracing Wolff’s line of argumentation is impossible, because he masks much of his evidence under the guise of protecting sources. Wolff uses this umbrella of protection even when using full quotations from figures like Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner—a highly unorthodox use of journalistic convention. Furthermore, Wolff uses Trump’s ill-preparedness for the highest office in the land as proof that Trump “never wanted to be President.” He ignores the fact that Trump has publicly flirted with the idea of running for president since the 1980s, even discussing it on national television with Oprah in 1988. Whether or not these were sincere ambitions, Trump clearly desired the power and influence that came with the presidency. Wolff’s shortcomings not only dilute his arguments, but bring the rest of his work into question.

Protest against Presidential Executive Order banning entry of citizens of Muslim-majority countries into the United States, in front of the White House, Washington, DC (via Wikimedia Commons)

The most glaring problem in Fire and Fury is Wolff’s treatment of the President’s connection to white supremacy. Throughout the book Wolff portrays Trump as an incompetent, narcissist, incapable of thinking outside the paradigm of personal vanity. However, Wolff ignores how Trump uses white supremacy to maintain a connection with his most ardent supporters. Look no further than the President’s disgusting comments regarding Haitian and African immigrants that he hoped would play well with his base. Yet, Wolff argues that not only are left-wing accusations of Trump’s racism “hysterical,” but also that white supremacists like Richard Spencer prove “pesky” for the White House. Wolff claims that he only criticized former National Football League quarterback and activist Colin Kaepernick because Trump was annoyed that he wasn’t getting the attention he felt he deserved. Instead of acknowledging proof of the President’s calculated racism and his active connection with white supremacists, Wolff insists Trump merely “tolerates a race-tinged political view.” By hedging his discussion of the racism of the Trump administration, Wolff manages to create an image of the President as an almost entirely impulse driven figure without political calculation. Undoubtedly, impulse and narcissism govern the President. But to depict Trump like this ignores the President’s long history of racism going back to the 1970s, with notable examples including avoiding renting to African-Americans, taking out full page ads in New York newspapers urging for the death penalty of the Central Park Five in 1989, and calling his black casino employees “lazy.”

Wolff calls Fire and Fury “explosive,” but in reality, it validates much of the current speculation regarding the gross incompetence of the Trump administration. Readers should take caution, however, with Wolff’s portrayal of a child-like President. Throughout most of Fire and Fury, Wolff argues that Trump and his colleagues have no idea what they are doing. But, perhaps the exact opposite is true.

Also by Augusta Dell’omo on Not Even Past:

Angela Merkel: Europe’s Most Influential Leader by Matthew Qvortrup (2016)
History Calling: LBJ and Thurgood Marshall on the Telephone
Trauma and Recovery by Judith Herman (1992)

The Impossible Presidency

by Jeremi Suri

The U.S. presidency is the most powerful office in the world, but it is set up to fail. And the power is the problem. Beginning as a small and uncertain position within a large and sprawling democracy, the presidency has grown over two centuries into a towering central command for global decisions about war, economy, and justice. The president can bomb more places, spend more money, and influence more people than any other figure in history. His reach is almost boundless.

Reach does not promote desired results. Each major president has changed the world, but none has changed it as he liked. Often just the opposite. Rising power elicits demands on that power, at home and abroad, that exceed the capabilities of leaders. Rising power also inspires resistance, from jealous friends as much as determined adversaries. Dominance motivates mounting commitments, exaggerated promises, and widening distractions – “mission creep,” in its many infectious forms.

Abraham Lincoln and George B. McClellan in the general’s tent at Antietam, Maryland, October 3, 1862 (Wikimedia)

Despite their dominance, modern presidents have rarely achieved what they wanted because they have consistently overcommitted, over-promised, and overreached. They have run in too many directions at once. They have tried to achieve success too fast. They have departed from their priorities. And they have become too preoccupied with managing crises, rather than leading the country in desired directions. This was the case for presidents as diverse as Lyndon Johnson, burdened by a war in Vietnam he did not want to fight, and Ronald Reagan, distracted during his second term by the Iran-Contra Scandal.

Extraordinary power has pushed even the most ambitious presidents to become largely reactive – racing to put out the latest fire, rather than focusing on the most important goals. The crises caused by small and distant actors have frequently defined the presidents. The time and resources spent on crises have diminished the attention to matters with much greater significance for the nation as a whole. Presidents frequently lose control of their agendas because they are too busy deploying their power flagrantly, rather than targeting it selectively. This happened with Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, both of whom spent much of their presidencies fighting wars abroad that did not make the country safer.

Theodore Roosevelt with a globe (Wikimedia)

Unmatched capabilities and ambitions encourage undisciplined decision-making, followed by stubborn efforts to make good on poor choices. These are the “sunk costs” that hang over the heads of powerful leaders determined to make sure nothing sinks, except their own presidencies. As much as they try, presidents cannot redeem the past nor control the present. Their most effective use of power is investing in future changes defined around a limited set of national economic, social, and military priorities. Priorities matter most for successful leaders, but presidents forget them in the ever-denser fog of White House decision-making.

Thomas Jefferson anticipated these circumstances two centuries ago. Although he valued virtue and strength in leaders, Jefferson recognized that these qualities were potential sources of despotism as much as democracy. The virtuous and the strong often try to do too much and they adopt tyrannical practices in pursuit of worthy, now corrupted, purposes. Machiavelli’s prince, who promotes the public good through ruthless policies, was a warning for eighteenth century American readers against centralized power run amok.

Like other founders steeped in the history of empires, Jefferson wanted to insure that the United States remained a republic with restrained, modest, and cautious leaders. He envisioned a president who embodied wisdom above all – a philosopher president more than a warrior president or a businessman president. For Jefferson, the essential qualities of leadership came from the intellect of the man who occupied the office.

Franklin D. Roosevelt giving the State of the Union speech that came to be called the Four Freedoms Speech, January 6, 1941 (The Four Freedoms).

The checks and balances in the U.S. Constitution divided power to prevent presidential tyranny, but they did not guarantee the election of presidents with intellect, prudence, or personal restraint. Fragmented authority could be just as flagrant and misguided as centralized authority and it could franchise its despotism in multiplying offices and agencies with similar effects to the dictatorial prince. According to Jefferson, powerful democracy ultimately required wisdom and self-denial in its leaders, more than constitutional barriers. Democratic leaders had to remain introspective and ascetic as their country grew more dynamic and prosperous.

Writing on the eve of the country’s first burst of expansion, Jefferson warned that the nation’s leaders may one day “shake a rod over the heads of all, which may make the stoutest of them tremble.” Restrained use of power and disciplined focus on the national interest were the only antidotes to excess, despotism, and decline. “I hope our wisdom will grow with our power,” Jefferson wrote, “and teach us that the less we use our power the greater it will be.”[1]

John Turnbull, The Declaration of Independence (Wikimedia, 1819).

Jefferson’s heirs did not heed his words. By the mid-twentieth century the rapid growth of American power made frequent misuse unavoidable and effective leadership nearly unattainable. The United States strayed from its democratic values more than any elected president could correct, despite repeated public hopes for a savior. Leaders pursued goals – for wealth, influence, and security – that undermined the democracy they aimed to preserve. Too often they sacrificed democratic procedures – supporting dictators abroad and increasing secrecy at home – for these other goals.

The widening gap between power and values produced President Donald Trump, elected to promote raw power above all. He is the final fall of the founders’ presidency – the absolute antithesis of what they expected for the office. President Trump was not inevitable, but the rise and fall of America’s highest office had a historical logic that explains the current moment, and how we might move forward.

For more on the presidency and its challenges see Jeremi Suri’s new book:

The Impossible Presidency: The Rise and Fall of America’s Highest Office (2017)

Or watch him talk about it on C-SPAN.

Or listen to our interview with Prof Suri on our podcast, 15 Minute History

Lady Bird Johnson, In Her Own Words

by Michael L. Gillette

Between 1977 and 1991, Michael L. Gillette, executive director of Humanities Texas and former director of the LBJ Library Oral History Program, sat down with Lady Bird Johnson to discuss her childhood, family life and experiences as First Lady. For the first time anywhere, Not Even Past is publishing audio segments from these incredible conversations.

Lady Bird, 1915 (Image courtesy of the LBJ Library)

What happened when a young Lady Bird and a friend traveled to New York City in June 1934? Hear her impressions of Chinatown, Depression era poverty and a “museum for fish” she visited.

How did Lady Bird and LBJ meet? In this segment, she describes their very, very brief courtship and Lyndon’s almost immediate proposal.

After LBJ’s proposal, Lady Bird went out to San Marcos to meet Lyndon’s parents. Here she talks about first meeting Mr. and Mrs. Johnson and her impressions of the old Texas family.

“You’ve brought a lot of boys home, and this time you’ve brought a man.” These were the words of Lady Bird’s father after meeting Lyndon for the first time. Hear more about that initial encounter and life at the “Brick House,” Lady Bird’s family home in Karnack, TX.

Credits:

Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson Oral History Interviews, by Michael L. Gillette, LBJ Library

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