War and the American Presidency.

War and the American Presidency by Arthur Schlesinger (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2004); 160 pp., $23.95 cloth.

IN THE INTEREST of full disclosure, I'll say up front that I'm a flaming liberal and I voted for change in the November 2004 elections.

So even though I'm on more or less the same side as the venerable Dr. Schlesinger, I'm sorry to say I don't consider War and the American Presidency a real book. It's basically a last-minute diatribe attempting to persuade intellectuals to dump George W. Bush. Even though I agree with nearly all of Schlesinger's points, I have to say that this isn't so much a book as a political pamphlet.

Some could justifiably call War and the American Presidency propaganda. But, to paraphrase Woody Allen, just because it's propaganda doesn't mean it isn't true. It just means the author has an agenda. In this case, it's primarily a legal and ethical debunking of the Bush doctrine of "preventive war:' And as Dwight D. Eisenhower said, the only thing war can prevent is peace.

As a pamphlet, War and the American Presidency follows in the tradition of patriotic pamphleteers such as Thomas Paine. It also joins the spate of last-minute polemics tossed off by the likes of Gore Vidal, George Soros, Bob Graham, Richard Clarke, John Dean, Michael Moore, Al Franken, and others. Many of these are interesting works, and I've enjoyed and even agreed with most of them. But lasting literature they aren't. Released in September 2004, the shelf life of Schlesinger's little book would at best be only be a couple of months; by the time you read this review, it will already be in the bargain bins.

More proof that this book is not serious literature is the fact that it contains no notes and no index. While there is little doubt that Schlesinger knows his facts--he was a history professor at Harvard University, a special adviser to President John F. Kennedy, and is the author of at least eighteen scholarly books--he tends to omit facts that don't fit his agenda.

The book is aimed at academics and educated folks who like their propaganda dry and unemotional. War and the American Presidency could serve as a doctoral thesis on the legal and philosophical precedents precipitating the growth of power of the executive branch. If a reader has an interest in this very narrow topic--as I do--this is a good source of information. But its overall audience will probably be limited to political scientists, law professors and party hacks.

Schlesinger demonstrates thoroughly that presidents almost always attempt to consolidate and enlarge their power. U.S. history is loaded with instances of presidents overstepping their constitutional bounds--even Thomas Jefferson, who helped frame the Constitution. Schlesinger points to temporary transgressions by both Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, the titans of democracy. They both took their turns at "playing king." Apparently the temptation to turn the presidency into a virtual monarchy is irresistible; Americans must eternally be on guard against this tendency. That is why there are checks and balances written into the Constitution.

War, however, is the ticket around such checks. War and threats to national security consistently serve to expand executive power, Schlesinger points out. The imperial presidency is a term Schlesinger popularized in his 1973 tome of the same title, written during Richard Nixon's presidential reign.

Unilateralism--another buzzword he apparently coined--was the norm prior to World War I. Democrat Woodrow Wilson was the first president to "internationalize" intervention. Wilson's internationalist gimmick went over so well that within a generation it became the norm. One such Wilsonian escapade Schlesinger fails to mention is a 1918 United States-led coalition against the U.S.S.R.--without authorization from Congress.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt also sought to expand the foreign-policy powers of the presidency. Schlesinger mentions that Roosevelt arrogated himself unofficial war powers prior to World War II. He informs us that Roosevelt was carrying on a private, undeclared war with Germany in the North Atlantic in 1940. But, ever the apologist, he counters that Roosevelt did it surreptitiously and regretfully--at least he felt guilty about it.

Harry S. Truman, however, initiated a new phase. He declared war single-handedly and openly. He did, however, clothe his Korean adventure in United Nations garb, thereby giving it a cloak of "collective security." What a guy.

George W. Bush's administration has dispensed with even that formality, setting foreign policy back to the pre-Wilson era, Schlesinger says. In his estimation, Bush has brazenly pushed the issue of consolidation of executive power further than any president in memory. Schlesinger does suggest that perhaps this view gives Bush too much credit--Dubya would have to get up pretty early to beat the likes of James K. Polk, William McKinley, or even Andrew Jackson.

Schlesinger explains the difference between preemptive war--which is how the Bush administration presented its Iraq proposal--and preventive war, now known as the Bush doctrine. Preemptive war is considered constitutionally sound if it is based on a clear and present threat. Preventive war, on the other hand, consists of eliminating even potential enemies. Bush's plan, outlined in the September 2002 document, National Security Strategy of the United States, embraces preventive war. Schlesinger asserts that this hasn't been implemented since prior to World War II. But if you think about it, the "domino theory" that put the United States into Southeast Asia operated on much the same principle: destroy enemies before they even hatch.

Although obviously a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, Schlesinger is no peacenik. He finds the war in Afghanistan an absolute necessity, although he doesn't explain exactly how bombing raids serve to catch terrorists. He briefly mentions Bill Clinton's unilateral actions in Afghanistan, Sudan, and Iraq but neglects to mention Haiti. Clinton, like Truman, was careful to clothe his interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo in internationalist--in this case, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)--garb.

Historian James Loewen, author of Lies My Teacher Told Me, says that Schlesinger in his 1945 book The Age of Jackson, should have taken Andrew Jackson to task for his policy of Indian Removal--but it wasn't even mentioned. Jackson's administration was the blueprint for imperial presidencies. Loewen says: "[Schlesinger] cannot seem to bring himself to say anything bad about American presidents, especially if they were Democrats." True enough, Schlesinger has little but praise for such war presidents as Wilson, Roosevelt, and Truman. He is also an apologist for Lincoln and Eisenhower, both Republicans.

One item conspicuous in its absence is the imperial aspirations of Schlesinger's former boss, John E Kennedy. Nowhere in his book does he mention Kennedy's--or his own--extra-constitutional involvement in Vietnam (Kennedy created the Green Berets for this purpose). And he glibly glosses over Kennedy's preemptive blockade of Cuba.

In 1961, Cuba did have plans to build actual weapons but was many months from posing a clear and present danger to U.S. security--in fact, Cuba's missiles were less a danger to the United States than the Jupiter missiles in Turkey the United States had aimed at Moscow. But Kennedy acted tough on television and played it for everything it was worth. This was clearly irresponsible of Kennedy, who could have solved--and eventually did--the issue through diplomacy and negotiation, instead of creating a worldwide, nuclear red-alert. Schlesinger fails to address any of this.

Schlesinger has other fish to fry than just abuses of presidential power. He tackles the American electoral system with its "great anomaly": the winner-take-all electoral college system, which has given us the two-party duopoly. Schlesinger thinks this is a good thing, that it just needs a little tweaking. He suggests assigning two electoral "bonus votes" for each state in order to guarantee the popular-majority candidate always wins the electoral college.

Schlesinger is in my estimation an extremely conservative Democrat. I would describe him--to borrow a term from Noam Chomsky--as a cruise-missile liberal. Still, he is a rationalist, and his humanist side shines through occasionally, as in this excerpt from his current work:

Religious fanaticism is the breeding ground for the greatest threat to civilization, which is terrorism. Most of the killing around the world--whether in Ireland, Kosovo, Israel, Palestine, Kashmir, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, the Philippines, Tibet--is the consequence of religious disagreement. There are no more dangerous people on earth than those who believe they are executing the will of the Almighty.

Despite its flaws, War and the American Presidency is a brave endeavor. However, now that Bush has been reelected, Schlesinger will undoubtedly land on Ann Coulter's "Official Enemies List."

Michael Fitzgerald is has written for the Jacksonville Business Journal, Folio Weekly, JAM Magazine, and the Musician's Trade Journal. He recently taught creative writing at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts in Jacksonville, Florida.