One thing seems to be a constant. Our educated elites don’t like bold, decisive presidents. Sixty years ago President Harry Truman was beginning to make the decisions that would shift the nation’s strategic focus from defeating Nazism to containing communism. Then as now, people talked about the little man in the White House.
The start of the cold war was similar to the start of the war on terror. Writes Alan Dowd in the Weekly Standard:
[Truman] drew a line around Moscow's empire and promised to wage global war if Stalin crossed it; and spent billions to rebuild European industry and revive European democracies.
In our time it is the underappreciated President Bush who is waging global war on terror and spending billions to rebuild Iraq and spread democracy in the Middle East.
[Truman] created the super-secret National Security Agency by executive fiat, with the goal of having a central node for monitoring and deciphering information from all over the globe.
On top of that he created the CIA and “retooled” the FBI to catch “spies and saboteurs.”
The president’s critics tore him to pieces as the
“Cold War's first four years... 'were filled with starts and stops rather than any considered policy or long-range goals.'”
Now, of course, we look back at the Truman Administration as an era of giants. Will they do the same for the Bush Administration?
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