Portrait of Camelot
A Thousand Days in the Kennedy White House
Published to commemorate the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy's election as president of the United States, this book is a revealing and intimate portrait of a leader, husband, and father as seen through the lens of Cecil Stoughton, the first official White House photographer. Stoughton's close rapport with the president and first lady gave him extraordinary access to the Oval Office, the Kennedys' private quarters and homes, to state dinners, cabinet meetings, diplomatic trips, and family holidays. Drawing on Stoughton's unparalleled body of photographs, most rarely or never before reproduced, and supported by a deeply thoughtful narrative by political historian Richard Reeves, Portrait of Camelot is an unprecedented portrayal of the power, politics, and warmly personal aspects of Camelot's 1,036 days.
DVD INCLUDED: packaged with a DVD created exclusively for this book, containing color and black-and-white film footage Stoughton created of the Kennedy family in the White House, in Hyannis Port, and on holidays.
Reviews
"Like the TV series Mad Men, this book is also a remarkable period piece . . . informative and beautiful." Publishers Weekly
Daring Young Men
The Heroism and Triumph of The Berlin Airlift-June 1948-May 1949
"Daring Young Men" reached #29 on The New York Times Bestseller List. The book was named the best history book of the year by the Book of the Month Club. The Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force, General Norton Schwartz, announced this month that it is one of the ten books on his personal reading list for the year and recommends it to all officers interested in augmenting leadership skills. The Christian Science Monitor has named Daring Young Men as the best nonfiction book of the year.
From the bestselling presidential biographer, a stirring tale of young men in old planes who achieved the "impossible.": with planes landing and taking off 90 seconds apart supplying the food and fuel and medicines to supply a city of more than two million people by air for almost a year.
In the early hours of June 26, 1948, phones began ringing across America, waking up the airmen of World War II — pilots, navigators and mechanics — who were finally beginning normal lives with new houses, new jobs, new wives and new babies. Some were given just 48 hours to report to local military bases. The President, Harry S. Truman, was recalling them to active duty to try to save the desperate people of the western sectors of Berlin, the enemy capital many of them had bombed to rubble only three years before.
Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin had ordered a blockade of the city, isolating the people of West Berlin, using hundreds of thousands of Red Army soldiers to close off all land and water access to the city. He was gambling that he could drive out the small detachments of American, British and French occupation troops because their only option was to stay and watch Berliners starve — or retaliate by starting World War III. The situation was impossible, Truman was told by his national security advisers including the Joint Chiefs of Staff. His answer: "We stay in Berlin. Period." That was when the phones started ringing and local police began banging on doors to deliver telegrams to the vets.
Drawing on service records and hundreds of interviews in the United States, Germany, and Great Britain, Reeves tells the stories of these civilian airmen, the successors to Stephen Ambrose's "Citizen Soldiers," ordinary Americans called to extraordinary tasks — again.
They did the impossible, living in barns and muddy tents, flying over Soviet-occupied territory day and night, trying to stay awake, making it up as they went along and ignoring Russian fighters and occasional anti-aircraft fire trying to drive them to hostile ground.The Berrlin Airlift changed the world. It ended when Stalin backed down and lifted the blockade, but only after the bravery and sense of duty of those young heroes had bought the Allies enough time to create a new West Germany and sign the mutual defense agreement called NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. And then they went home again. Some of them forgot where they had parked their cars after they got the call.
Reviews
"Re-evaluating what has been called the first battle of the cold war, noted presidential biographer and syndicated columnist Reeves (President Kennedy) takes a closer look at the courageous young American and British pilots who, in order to bring food, fuel, and medicine to a Berlin blockaded by Russia, flew aging cargo planes into Soviet airspace in the fragile post-WWII years. Vying with the West for control of Berlin and Germany , Stalin choked off the defeated German capital with 400,000 Red Army soldiers, and the Washington hawks called for war with Moscow. But Truman, whom Reeves calls a hero for persevering against skeptics, pursued the airlift instead. Using diaries, letters, and government documents, Reeves shows the suffering of the vanquished German people, the calculated coldness of Soviet officials, and the individual pilots who risked their lives to save their former enemies. This probing book reveals the intricate talks that led to the unraveling of Stalin's demands, the partitioning of Germany, and the creation of NATO. Reeves gives us a mesmerizing portrait of America at its best when challenged by Russia's tyranny." 16 pages of b&w photos. Publishers Weekly (Starred review)
"As the book's title suggests, Richard Reeves's main emphasis is on the human side. At centre-stage are General Lucius Clay, the iron-willed military governor of the American sector of Berlin, and the workaholic logistics chief William Tunner, who during the war had supervised a trans-Himalayan military airlift. Behind them stands the figure of Harry Truman, the American president who overruled his entire military, diplomatic and security staff to insist that Berlin be saved." The Economist
"...wonderfully told by Richard Reeves in "Daring Young Men," his account of the Berlin Blockade and the heroic efforts to defeat it. Could Berlin be supplied by air? "Absolutely impossible," said the American military governor, Gen. Lucius Clay. The British were optimistic, though; they would not only feed their own garrison but have a go at supplying the Berliners as well." The Wall Street Journal
"Richard Reeves, a bestselling author of three presidential biographies and several other books, has delved into declassified archives and provided fresh insights into the power clashes between Truman, Stalin and other leading figures... But the real value of Reeves's book lies in the remarkable human sagas he collected through hundreds of interviews with uncelebrated pilots, mechanics, weathermen and ground controllers who sustained the airlift for almost a year." The Washington Post
"...Reeves has helped to ensure that this enormous accomplishment will not fade from view. ... The individual stories Reeves tells are illuminating and often very moving. " The Christian Science Monitor
Upcoming Events
- East Lansing, MI — October 27, 2011 — Annual fall meeting/public lecture of the Division of Nuclear Physics of the American Physical Society @ Kellog Center Auditorium, Michigan State University @ 8:00 PM
- Los Angeles, CA — November 17, 2011 — AFA's 2011 Global Warfare Symposium at Hyatt Regency Century Plaza - Symposium 3:00-3:45 PM, Book signing TBA
Audio of Recent Interviews
Click to listen to an interview of Richard Reeves from For Your Ears Only. Original broadcast April 3, 2011.
Videos of Recent Appearances
Richard Reeves, author of 'Daring Young Men', on Charlie Rose
Recent Articles
The Last Campaign: Legacy
By Richard Reeves
Senior Fellow, Center on Communication Leadership & Policy
USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism
This paper was delivered at the 100th Birthday Celebration of President Ronald Reagan at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley California on February 2, 2011.
For presidents there is always one last campaign: Legacy. How will they be remembered? The last campaign is manned by family, former cabinet members and assorted other assistants, biographers, political scientists, policy analysts, librarians and archivists, television talkers, bloggers and just about anyone else who can get their voices heard in America. A president may leave the White House in triumph or in disgrace, but the moment he leaves office, he and his followers begin the construction (or revision) of a legacy for the ages.
When President Reagan, the 40th president, left office in 1989, his legacy did not seem of Mount Rushmore quality. He left office with a good approval rating (63 percent). People always liked him. But there was limited enthusiasm for his record in office. Many of his ideological soulmates were disappointed with the Gipper, thinking he was a tired old man who was being manipulated by younger aides in such capers as the Iran- Contra scandal, but also outflanked by the more energetic and trickier Soviet leadership. Some of his men thought the old hard line anti-Communist was even losing the battle of the second half of the 20th century as he palled around the world with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Howard Phillips, the founder and chairman of the Conservative Caucus, in 1987, called Reagan "a useful idiot for Soviet propaganda."
And then there were liberals in journalism and the academy who never had much use for him and enjoyed repeating Clark Clifford's sarcastic description of him as "an amiable dunce."
For true believers in the man's greatness, the autobiography and biography that presidents traditionally rely on to try to explain, revise and improve their records seemed to be controlled by outsiders: Lou Cannon of the Washington Post, who had covered Reagan since his first California gubernatorial campaign in 1966, set the standard - a high one and a fair one - with President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime, published in 1991. Men and women ready, willing and able to seriously argue greatness for their former boss were frozen in place because not only did the ex-president plan to write an autobiography, but the Reagans (really his wife, Nancy) had also selected an official biographer. Few were willing to publish until that biographer - the talented historian Edmund Morris, who had access to the Reagan White House, including multiple interviews with the president - finally published Dutch in 2000.
Despite the obvious fact that friendly biographies add to an ex-president's legacy - David McCullough's Truman was a recent example, Parson Mason Weems' The Life of Washington an old one - Morris quickly learned the president did not share much of his wife's enthusiasm for the project. Morris complained to anyone who would listen that Reagan was not "opening up" to him. Unlike many of his predecessors, among them Richard Nixon and John Kennedy, Reagan was not obsessed with his legacy or what history would say of him. Perhaps it was because he was so much older than they were. He already knew what he wanted to know; he was set in his ways, stubborn and generally uninterested in what journalists or the hired help thought of him. In 1985, when one of his political staff, Ed Rollins, brought up the subject of legacy, Reagan cut him off, saying: "First of all, history will probably get distorted when it is written. And I won't be around to read it."
Morris' book Dutch, though brilliantly written, turned out to be a mix of fact, fiction and frustration (about Reagan's ability to avoid serious subjects and personal insight), and did little to burnish the subject's works and reputation. And Reagan's own autobiography, An American Life, was a rather bland story that might be characterized as "Tom Sawyer Meets the Presidency." In his diary entry on December 8, 1987, the day he and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Reduction Treaty (INF) nuclear arms treaty, Reagan wrote without reflection or passion, "This is the big day."
That said, An American Life revealed something important in Reagan's leadership style. More than once he had read the short, uncelebrated autobiography of the 30th president, Calvin Coolidge. Among the lines he underlined were these: "In the discharge of the duties of the office there is one rule of action more important than all others. It consists of never doing anything someone else can do for you." So maybe Ronald Reagan was Tom Sawyer, a barefoot hustler in overalls sitting on a barrel in the shade, munching someone else's apple - a shrewd kid watching others whitewash his aunt's fence because he persuaded them it would be fun.
************
Whatever the impact on the president's legacy, the Reagan Legacy Project has been a useful tool in organizing lobbying groups in the 50 states, including a group in Nevada trying to rename a mountain for the 40th president. More important than mountains and buildings in revising the Reagan reputation has been the work of Martin and Annelise Anderson of the Hoover Institution on the Stanford University campus.
With researcher Kiron Skinner, the Andersons - both of whom worked in the Reagan White House - spent years at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, where Martin Anderson's top-secret clearance from his days as an assistant to the president was sometimes helpful in gaining access to documents. But their most important discoveries were not in the president's official papers at all.
Skinner, now an associate professor of international relations and political science at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, with the permission of Reagan's office in Los Angeles, was working with Reagan's closed pre-presidential papers when she came across four boxes of handwritten scripts Reagan had used for daily radio commentaries in the years between his governorship and his presidency. He recorded 14 or 15 at a time for a syndicate of 286 stations. (Edmund Morris was apparently the only other researcher allowed to see those particular pages, which were not government property, because they preceded the Reagan administration.) Skinner showed two of the scripts to Martin Anderson, who immediately suspected that a trove of such commentaries on the issues of the day in the 1970s could be used to disprove the perception by friend and foe alike that Reagan was a charming, empty-headed actor skilled at projecting other people's words and ideas.
The scripts, 686 of them, were Reagan's ideas and thoughts - in his own hand! That was the point emphasized in the title Reagan In His Own Hand: The Writings of Ronald Reagan That Reveal His Revolutionary Vision for America.
"One of the things these commentaries do is blow apart the notion that Reagan was a flighty actor who floated through the presidency on the basis of charm and communication skills," wrote David Brooks in The New York Times Book Review. The book was a bestseller, laying out a fairly comprehensive map of how Reagan thought, and was much quoted by both friends and adversaries of the 40th president. No one proclaimed him an intellectual, but his writings made clear that Reagan was a man of ideas with a sense of what he wanted to accomplish as a national leader.
************
The Andersons, with occasional help from Skinner, wrote six books on the Reagan presidency, the first, Revolution, published in 1988. Martin Anderson, a Reagan loyalist, began with a cool, somewhat academic tone but the books, always based on documents - letters, newspaper columns and even classified National Security Council minutes - show his passion for Reagan and the president's achievements escalated along with the conservative push to establish greatness. In a forthcoming essay by Martin and Annelise Anderson, they analyze the Reagan years and policies and conclude that he was one of only four "great" presidents:
The Andersons, of course, were not alone in using biography - or revisionist biography - to champion their cause. Over the years, hundreds of less influential books, many of them by other former Reagan aides - attempted to build a case for Reagan as one of the nation's greatest leaders. That case usually rested on four pillars:
- Ronald Reagan won the Cold War.
- Ronald Reagan reduced federal taxes and his policies led to the subsequent boom in the American economy in the 1980s.
- Ronald Reagan reduced the size of government.
- Ronald Reagan restored Americans' faith in themselves and in their government.
Counterarguments can be made to all of those boasts - beginning with Reagan's inaugural pronouncement that "government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." - but the fact is that books attacking presidents' records tend to be written by journalists and published with the president in question still in office. Examples in Reagan's case would be Gambling With History: Reagan in the White House by Laurence Barrett in 1983 and Landslide: The Unmaking of the President, 1984-1988 by Jane Mayer and Doyle MacManus, published in 1988. The end of any administration is too early for historians and, by the nature of their craft, White House correspondents and other reporters tend to move on to a new president or new assignments. That's when former White House assistants - most of them acolytes - begin remembering the glow and glory of the Oval Office. Many are perceptive; many are of an old genre: "And then I told the president. ..." Occasionally, a former insider will write a negative book - Donald T. Regan's For the Record: From Wall Street to Washington is an example - but the overall effect is almost always positive.
If published portraits of a Mount Rushmore-ready Ronald Reagan can be considered revisionist history or biography, there has been notably little re-revisionist work in recent years. One book that would qualify is Tear Down This Myth: How the Reagan Legacy Has Distorted Our Politics and Haunts Our Future, published by Philadelphia journalist Will Bunch in 2009.
Bunch went down the list of "accomplishments" attributed to Reagan by conservatives, dismissing the claim that any one man ended the Cold War, arguing that it was a triumph of the American people and a line of presidents going back to Harry S. Truman. As for Reaganomics, Bunch quoted a Washington Post series in April 1987 that concluded: "In less than a decade, the world's largest creditor nation has become its leading debtor, foreign competition humbled America's mightiest companies, hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs have disappeared and middle-class living standards have declined in many communities."
He portrayed Reagan as a politician who rose by attacking "tax and spend" Democrats and then became the father of Republican "borrow and spend" economics. Under Reagan, government spending increased by 2.5 percent, and the number of federal employees increased from 2.8 million to 3 million.
************
When presidents leave office, there is some residual bitterness and score-settling to be sure, but political opponents usually have little reason to re-fight old battles. In Reagan's case, there were more books than usual, more than a thousand, most of them ranging from positive to adoring. There are, however, particularly in Reagan's case, important reasons to mount and continue a last Reagan campaign that continues today. And, for those reasons (among others), Reagan's historical stature rose after his personal, political and ideological allies began to make their arguments. Reagan's Gallup Poll approval ratings increased from 63 percent when he left Washington in 1989 to 74 percent in November 2010. Only two other modern presidents did better. Jimmy Carter's approval rate went from a very low 34 percent to 52 percent as he wrote a series of books about his humanitarian efforts as an ex-president. John Kennedy - whose aides and friends launched a "last campaign," framed by his wife's invention of "Camelot" to describe his White House years, as vigorous as the later Reagan campaign - jumped from 58 percent to 85 percent approval in Gallup polls between 1963 and 2010.
(In general, poll numbers for presidents tend to rise after they leave office, as memories mellow and adversaries take on new, more immediate targets. Gerald Ford's approval numbers in Gallup polls steadily increased from 53 percent to 61 percent after he left office in 1977. Even Richard Nixon's numbers have improved, from 24 percent to 29 percent. One example of the differences between contemporary polling and later perceptions was USA Today polling four days after the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989. On the question of who was most responsible for the ending of the Cold War, only 14 percent of American respondents named Reagan, while 43 percent said Gorbachev. Among Germans, 2 percent said Reagan and 70 percent said Gorbachev. Since then, however, dozens - perhaps hundreds - of books have been written by former Reagan assistants crediting their boss with ending the Cold War almost single-handedly.)
******
It is no exaggeration to say that Ronald Reagan - or "Reaganism" - is the true core of both the Republican Party and the modern conservative movement in the United States. To diminish him and his legacy is a step toward fracturing the cause. To begin with, Reagan is the only president known by an "ism." There is no "Rooseveltism," even though the 32nd president and his policies were at the core of the Democratic Party and American liberalism for decades.
It is, again, no exaggeration to compare Reagan as an ideological figure to Roosevelt. There is an old New York political story about a candidate for the State Assembly in Brooklyn who complained to his county chairman that the party was doing nothing for his campaign. The chairman asked the candidate if he ever watched the ferries come in from Staten Island and saw the garbage and flotsam that swirled into the dock with the big boat. Said the chairman: "Roosevelt is the ferry. You're the garbage he'll bring in on Election Day."
Roosevelt's public-policy legacy, nurtured by his family and liberal politicians, has remained a remarkable thing long after his death. In effect, he was "president" to much of the country for at least 30 years or more. Even Richard Nixon, elected in 1968, essentially governed within the liberal tradition - the Roosevelt tradition. The same lasting impact can be said of Reagan. In many ways, he is still "president"; his ideas and rhetoric, sometimes embellished, are part of every modern policy debate.
This is what I wrote covering the 1984 Republican National Convention for The New York Times Magazine:
I assumed that the whole spinning apparatus would implode when the nucleus, Reagan, was removed. I was wrong: Some of that did happen, but it was soon replaced by "Reaganism." In effect, "Reaganism was a word that could be used by all men for their own things.
Whenever it was used or Reagan's name invoked, it was proof of a sort that Reagan was still the center of the party. That it is why it is so important to Republicans and conservatives to build and preserve the "Reagan legacy." It is what unites them.
Whether they call themselves fiscal conservatives, tea-partiers or social conservatives, they are all proud to call themselves Reagan Republicans. And they honor or swear by the four pillars of Reaganism: (1) Strong defense, (2) lower taxes, (3) smaller government, and (4) nationalism/unquestioning patriotism. Pull out the core - Reaganism - and the party and conservative movement are again in danger of spinning out of control.
Jeff Shesol, a speechwriter for President Clinton, made a similar argument in discussing the impact of In His Own Hand in a review of Reagan-related books in the May 22, 2005, edition of The New York Times Book Review, writing:
But the true believers, led by conservatives like Norquist, aggressively claimed victory and Ronald Reagan's legacy as their own as the president rode off into the sunset. When he began the Reagan Legacy Project, Norquist told the Baltimore Sun of his grand ambitions: "The guy ended the Cold War; he turned the economy around. He deserves a monument like the Jefferson or the FDR - or the Colossus of Rhodes!"
This is the Text of the speech Richard Reeves gave at the Allierton Museum on Berlin on the 60th anniversary of the end of the Berlin Airlift:
The Airlift in American Global Politics
Richard Reeves
Asked years later about the importance of the Berlin Airlift of 1948/49, Clement Atlee, the British prime minister during those years said: "It wasn't until the Berlin Airlift that American public opinion really wakened up to the facts of life."
The facts of life, as Atlee called them, were the ambitions in Europe of the Soviet Union. Or, in shorthand, what the rest of us called the "Cold War." His words were apt. It was ordinary people - including that "ordinary" man, Harry S. Truman - who immediately and instinctively grasped the importance of the United States and its allies staying in the city divided into four sectors, occupied by the Soviet Union and by the United States, Great Britain and France.
Even after President Truman uttered, in private, the words, "We stay in Berlin. Period," almost all of his top advisers, including Secretary of State George Marshall, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Omar Bradley, and almost the entire National Security Council continued to believe that it was not possible to hold Berlin or that the old enemy capital was not worth holding. Marshall's Undersecretary, the formidable Robert Lovett, contributed two memorable quotes to the dialogue inside the White House:
"All the Russian's need to overrun Berlin is shoes."
"Mr. President, have you thought this through?"
Pessimism
It was not much different among American leaders on the other side of the Atlantic.After the Soviets blocked the roads, railroads and canals leading from the Allied-occupied territories of western German through 110 miles of Soviet-occupied territory to Berlin, General Lucius Clay, the United States Military Governor for Germany, was asked by Marguerite Higgins of the New York Herald Tribune whether Berlin could be supplied and sustained by air alone. His answer: "Absolutely impossible."
The pessimism among American leaders was generally shared by what is now called the "elite press." Months before the Soviet blockade was instituted in June of 1948, Newsweek magazine had published a scenario based on interviews with officials in Washington. The headline read: "Dateline Germany, 1948: The Big Retreat."
The dispatch, plausible fantasy backed by real State Department cables, was from James O'Donnell, the magazine's Berlin bureau chief, reporting on the exodus of American and British officials and soldiers from the city as the Soviet Union took complete control. In O'Donnell's fantasy, Clay cabled Washington that he intended to order B-29 Superfortresses, to begin attacking Soviet installations across Germany - and beyond. Washington responded: "Withdraw to Frankfurt."
Then, the Newsweek story continued: "At 1000 hours Saturday, the American cavalcade rendezvoused with the British.... The bedraggled and demoralized caravan proceeded along the 117 miles of Autobahn to Helmstedt in the British zone...." Newsweek got real at the bottom of that two-column account published on August 8, 1947: "This fantasy does not sound so fantastic in Berlin as it does in the United States. For the German capital has been buzzing with rumors that the Western Allies would this winter recognize the irrevocable division of Germany and pull out of Berlin. The Germans probably envision some dramatic exodus. Actually, policy makers in Washington have seriously considered quietly leaving Berlin for the Russians to rule - and feed."
Then the magazine printed a genuine "Top Secret" cable from Ambassador Robert Murphy, the State Department's man in Berlin, Clay's chief political adviser: "The next step may be Soviet... demand for the withdrawal from Berlin of the Western powers. In view of the prospect that such a ultimatum would be rejected, the Soviets may move obliquely, endeavoring to make it increasingly impossible or unprofitable for the Western powers to remain on; for example by interfering with the slender communications between Berlin and the Western Zone, taking further actions towards splitting up the city.... Our Berlin position is delicate and difficult. Our withdrawal, either voluntary or non-voluntary, would have severe psychological repercussions which would, at this critical stage in the European situation, extend far beyond the boundaries of Berlin and even Germany. The Soviets realize this full well."
The Public Opinion
It all could have happened, except for Truman's determination, British initiative and determination and the steadfastness of the people of Berlin - and of the people of the United States. I would argue that, from an American perspective, the Airlift was a striking example of people leading leaders.
That July of 1948, a month after the Red Army blockaded land routes into Berlin in late June, as Truman was campaigning for reelection, he received a memo from the State Department about public support for the Airlift in the United States - even as American and British planes had been struggling, not very successfully, to fly food and fuel into West Berlin. The memo, titled "U.S. Public Opinion on the Berlin Situation," read in part: "The overwhelming majority of press and radio commentators remain united in support of the official United States position - that we shall not be 'coerced' out of Berlin." Some of the editorial support Truman saw confirmed that judgment: From The New York Times: "We were proud of our Air Force during World War II. We're prouder of it today."
From the more conservative San Francisco Chronicle: "The forthcoming Congress will be properly concerned with expenses. But we agree with General Clay that a pivotal operation like the Berlin Airlift - which will cost less for an entire year than a single day's operation toward the end of World War II - is no place to begin economizing. On the contrary, we would consider it cheap at ten times the price."
Public opinion polls backed up such editorials, generally showing support of 80 percent to 90 percent of respondents supported the Airlift, even when the possibility of war with the Soviet Union was mentioned in the questions. That same 80 percent of Americas thought the Allies would stay in Berlin, which compared with 43 percent in French polls. Ironically, as the Airlift continued, polling of Berliners done by OMGUS (Office of Military Government for Germany, U.S.) rose to that same 80-plus percent level among Berliners.
People Leading Leaders
Truman, running far behind his Republican opponent, Governor Thomas Dewey of New York, in electoral polls, was the big winner in those airlift polls. As Republicans usually did, Dewey was accusing the Democratic president of being "soft on communism" and of "blunders" that led to the crisis in Berlin. John Foster Dulles, known to be Dewey's choice for Secretary of State, called the Airlift "almost untenable."
It was soon obvious that American voters were not buying the Republican line on Berlin. Soon enough Dewey and Dulles began toning down their attacks on the Airlift. Dulles came to Berlin on October 17, 1948 and went to Clay's house for lunch. The two men despised each other and it was widely assumed that Clay would be fired in the first days of a Dewey administration.. They lunched in silence until the arrival of Berlin's elected Mayor, Ernst Reuter - invited by Clay. Dulles seemed annoyed that he was being asked to talk to a local official. "This is your problem," the General whispered to Reuter as he left Dulles and the German alone.
"Will the Germans stand fast during the winter?" Dulles began. "Or will they give up, accept Russian aid, and get us out of Berlin?"
"The people of Berlin are accustomed to suffering," said Reuter. "We are willing to suffer a great deal more to escape Russian domination."
The rest of the conversation is unknown to history. But, after leaving Clay's house, Dulles never said another negative word about Berlin or the Airlift.
Dewey got the message three days later at a major political event, the annual Alfred E. Smith dinner hosted by the Archbishop of New York, Francis Cardinal Spellman. Clay who was in the United States to plead for more planes - he got them after Truman overruled the National Security Council - was seated next to Dewey, an old friend. When Clay spoke, defending the Airlift and other American policies that Dewey had been attacking, the crowd of two thousand New Yorkers, stood as one, applauding and cheering for several minutes. Dewey stood, too, and most American newspapers ran photos showing the Republican candidate applauding America's military governor.
Whatever effect it might have had on the 1948 presidential campaign in the United States, the Airlift turned out to be as great a public relations triumph for the country as it was a technical and logistical success for the Air Force. Publicity was always a consideration and the Air Force proved to be one of the great public relations machines in the world. In August, the operational chief of the Airlift, General William Tunner, received a cable from his immediate superior, Major General Laurence Kuter, the chief of the Military Air Transport Service:
"We should make every effort to have the 'Vittles' story told by qualified aviation writers who can appreciate the implications of such strategic air transport and who can explain both the techniques of the effort and its essential place in any plan for national defense."
Tunner replied: "No one is more aware than I of the terrific public relations potential in this operation - that this is the greatest opportunity we have ever had, or probably will have, to tell the air transport story and make certain that people will pay attention to us. [It's] more than just an airlift. [It's] a propaganda weapon held up before the whole world."
Propaganda War
And, indeed, the United States fought a brilliant propaganda war on two fronts, winning the hearts and minds of both Berliners and Americans. Anyone my age, a young boy in New Jersey, would have thought Berlin was actually an American state. Mothers told their children to eat everything on their plates: "Think of the poor starving children in Europe" - meaning Berlin.
Lieutenant Gail Halvorsen, a young airlift pilot who had dropped, by little parachutes, candy bars to children gathered at the fence of Tempelhof airport to watch the planes take-off and land, was rushed back home to appear across the United States on the most popular radio and television shows. Predictably, candy makers sent tons upon tons of their sweet products to Germany, while ordinary folks contributed handkerchiefs by the tens of thousands to make the mini-parachutes. President Truman handed over 10 U.S. dollar - on camera - to send a CARE package to a family in Berlin. Walter Cronkite of CBS News did the voice-overs for television documentaries promoting the Airlift, films produced largely by the Department of Defense. Actors Paul Douglas and Montgomery Clift starred in The Big Lift (1950, dir.: George Seaton), a feature film that used pilots and airmen playing themselves. When Mayor Reuter came to the United States after a series of favorable magazine and newspaper articles, he was treated as a hero, an American hero, greeted with a ticker-tape parade down Broadway in New York City.
Germans were no longer the enemy. Germans were people. America was engaged with the world again. In Berlin, the Americans were no longer seen as occupiers; they were seen as protectors.
Lieutenant Arlie Nixon, who was the chief pilot of Trans World Airlines, before being recalled for "Temporary Duty" as an airlift pilot - reducing his pay from 550 U.S. dollar a month to 180 U.S. dollar - walked into a restaurant in Wiesbaden just as the Airlift was beginning and, without a word being spoken, every German stood, left their tables and food, and walked out. Two weeks later, he came back to the same place and every German stood again, walking to the bar and then lining up more steins of beer than he could drink in a week. A corporal, Louis Wagner, was huddled in a cold train headed for Frankfurt, when a German man walked up, uncorked a bottle of schnapps and said in English, smiling: "This could be poison, Captain, would you like to test it with me?"
Americans were being seen as they saw themselves, as crusaders for the right and true.
A Fundamental Change
In Berlin, RIAS (Radio in the American Sector), once a tiny-voiced 800 watt station grew into the most popular station in both West and East Germany, mixing entertainment, news and advertising in the American way. Most importantly, in a city starved for both news and electricity, RIAS trucks equipped with loudspeakers went from square to square to read the news of the day to the crowds that formed around the soundtrucks.
The world was turned upside down. Lieutenant Noah Thompson, was called away from his farm, wife and new baby in New Hampshire for Temporary Duty. Within 24 hours of arrival, he was piloting ten tons of coal toward Berlin. He knew the landscape below from 21 bombing missions over Germany in the B-17s of the Eighth Air Force. More than 40 percent of his Group's 450 crews had been shot down or just crashed. Below him now were the people who beat to death his buddy, Lieutenant Don Dennis, the man in the bunk next to him in 1945, who had parachuted onto farmland from his burning B-17 one spring day. "And now I'm bringing them food," Thompson thought. "What a world."
When the Soviet blockade of Berlin ended on May 12, 1949 with Berliners cheering in the streets as the first trucks came down the Autobahn from Helmstedt, a talented British correspondent, Anthony Mann of London's Daily Telegraph was there and wrote: "It was a victory of great political and psychological consequence, but in fact it decided nothing fundamental in the East-West war of ideologies...." In the United States, Secretary of State Dean Acheson, who had succeeded Marshall, added: "[We are] again in the situation in which we were before the blockade was imposed." Diplomatically, Acheson and Mann may have been correct. But, politically, everything was different. The American people had decided the nation had to stand up in Berlin, in Germany, everywhere in the world. Atlee was right: The hardening of American attitudes represented fundamental change.
In 1945 and 1946, the United States had demobilized its great military machine as quickly as possible after World War II. "Bring the Boys Home!" was the cry of the nation. Those were the boys called back by Truman to feed Berlin and America rallied around them. They may have been the reason Truman was elected in one of the great upsets in democratic history. It was, in large measure, the reason the American public was willing to support and pay for the Truman Doctrine of fighting communism globally, to support the idea of containment, to cheer the Marshall Plan, to accept the idea of two Germanies, East and West, in September of 1949. And, most of all, Americans chose to stay engaged, to support and pay a great deal for the establishment of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a mutual defense treaty that extended far beyond the borders of the United States.
Atlee was right about the United States and the facts of life. What a world, indeed. As prime minister, Atlee visited British stations only once during the Airlift, on a rainy day in March, 1949, coming home to call the effort: "One of the wonders of the world."
And so it was.
Richard Reeves has the lead article in the Fall 2007 edition of Berlin Journal, the magazine of the American Academy in Berlin.
I spent the better part of the last twenty years researching and writing a trilogy on the American presidency, doing books on John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan. I knew I had said what I had to say on all that. I had to find some new subjects. At the same time, I continued writing a syndicated column for newspapers around the country, an exercise that kept me up on the politics and people of the day and of the twenty-first century. I was not happy many of those days. My country was becoming, or being — seen as, arrogant, self-righteous, and brutal — a monster using its very substantial power to try to enforce a new order, a kind of neo-imperialism. Of course, we meant well; Americans usually do. After all, didn't these people want to be like us?
Reader Emails
DECEMBER 15, 2011 — RE: Latest Column
Perhaps the most astute and succinct analysis of the Newt boomlet I have read.
I think part of the problem is that many of commentators weren’t thinking about politics when Gingrich first commandeered the house cameras before empty chambers to discredit the Democratic leadership and don’t even consider the significance of the lack of support from fellow Republican politicos. I do not know whether Newt is the conservative he claimed he was when he became speaker of the house, or the liberal that the conservative Republicans claim he is. I do know that regardless of my considerably more conservative politics now than when Gingrich was speaker, I would crawl over broken glass to vote against him, because I detested him so much then. His manner of speaking is condescending. He has the same sort of sneering tone to his voice that Joe McCarthy had. In his case, the messenger definitely not only undercuts, but actually detracts from the message.
Much of the support for Gingrich, such as today’s news that Sheldon Adelson (a man who earns his money by being the house that moral pontificator in chief Bill Bennett regularly loses to)is ponying up $20 Million to a super-pac, comes from neo-cons, Likudniks, and Jewish Republicans who like his stance on Israel. That’s all well and good, but speaking for myself as a Jew, I don’t think that is the way to select the President of the United States.
If by some chance Ron Paul wins the Republican nomination, what will be fun to watch is all the Republican and conservative columnists who have attacked Obama for being everything from a socialist to a hater of America and a hater of Israel and responsible for the deficit and the recession/depression, fall all over themselves to explain the reasons Obama is preferable to Ron Paul. David Frum laid the groundwork on his website today. Of course it won’t happen, but it will be intriguing to see how they decide who is the bigger threat to America.—D.M.
DECEMBER 4, 2011 — RE: Barney Frank
He is a communist.
"Capitalism works better from every perspective when the economic decision-makers are forced to share power with those who will be affected by those decisions."
And: "Community action is as valuable a principle on the international level as it has been domestically." Or: "Increasing inequality in income distribution in the country has broader policy implications, and there is also the growing problem of perverse incentives that result from executives receiving grossly disproportionate compensation based on decisions they themselves take."
Oh my, a Capitalist behind every bush!
The following passage came to mind when thinking about Frank, Obama, Reid, Pelosi, Biden, Holder, Clinton and to a lesser degree, most of the current Congresspersons on both sides of the aisle:
John Chapter 8
43 Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say. 44 You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.—S.K.
NOVEMBER 12, 2011 — RE: Latest Column
Bill Moyers is a smarmy slime ball who was LBJ’s hit man. He’s the poster boy for defunding PBS.—R.H.
NOVEMBER 11, 2011 — RE: Latest Column
It is not the Coke company s responsibility to keep people from throwing plastic bottles into the Colorado river, it is the park authorities job. And why if i , a non throwing abiding citizen who throws his plastic bottle away properly suffer because some do not? Moyers new show? Who is paying for that? You, Moyers, Nador, you guys are just 3 peas in the same pod called the extreme left.—S.R.
NOVEMBER 11, 2011 — RE: Latest Column
Bravo! You do speak the truth on so many levels in this column. Being center right, my question to you is, how to change it?—C.R.
NOVEMBER 4, 2011 — RE: Latest Column
I think your column is correct in setting out the implications of the cutbacks in higher education in California.
I do think your column, which by necessity, is not detailed omits some relevant information regarding the decline of higher education in California.
First, the political underpinnings for funding the schools has changed. When the three tiered system for higher education, (and elementary and secondary education as well) was developed, education was thought of as core function of the state. What I see happening is that other things that are core functions, such as the courts, are getting short shrift, because politicians pay attention to their constituents. Many other constituencies, particular recipients of social services, prison guards in particular and public employees in general , have benefited to the extent that as far as the legislators who fund those programs are concerned, they are core function of the state on par with education (or the courts.) In the absence of increased revenue, the state legislature has to decide how to cut programs to fit the budget. Unless the legislators actually agree that their pet social programs, or satisfying the public employee unions that donate to their election campaigns is less important than what were originally understood to be core functions, the schools will suffer.
Second, a point made by many conservative commentators, I am thinking particularly of Heather MacDonald of the Manhattan Institute, is that state Universities seem to have money to ever expand their diversity administrators and increase their salary, or find money for politically correct but not terribly relevant courses at the expense of more traditional courses.
Third, I don't know if this is true at the higher education level, but in the public schools the ratio of administrators to class room teachers continues to increase. Although teachers have complained about the number of administrators for as long as I can remember, this problem relates to the number of administrators needed to comply with various Federal and State edicts. This is I suppose part of the unfunded mandates problem that state and local governments have long complained about..
Finally, its important to appreciate that the shifting demographics in the state have shifted attitudes toward funding education. For better or for worse, California was an overwhelmingly white state up through the mid 1970's whereas whites are no longer a majority. Again, most of the tax revenues in the state, including property tax revenues comes from whites. But once whites left the public school system (I realize this is a generalization and doesn't apply to many suburban school districts) in L.A. first as a reaction to forced busing, then a belief that their child would be unsafe and get a poor education in a public school, to the point now where their child will be in a small minority since the L.A schools are overwhelmingly Latino, they lost an incentive to fund it. If the people who paid the taxes were of the same demographic group of the people who directly benefit from providing sufficient funding to public education at all levels, and they sent their children to the public schools, I don't think this would be a problem, or at least not to the same extent it is today.—D.M.
I appreciate you note and agree with it. Leaving race aside,I think what is happening is thatv people are livingh longer and no longer care about education when their children move. They happily ignore the fact that taxpayers past paid for both generations of education. —R.R.
NOVEMBER 4, 2011 — RE: Latest Column
Growing up in the 60's and 70's, California was a trend setter in culture, economics in almost all aspects of American life. The other trend that California has pioneered in is fiscal irresponsibility. Your commentaries have been quite illuminating as it relates to the referendums that in many ways have been very detrimental to health of the state. I am not going to rail on the public officials that the state has chosen, by my count the decline of California has been ushered in by both by Republicans and Democrats. But what I do know is, that Jerry Brown's successor, Lt. Governor Gavin is akin to the greatest excesses of past Roman Emperors in his behavior, and under his tutelage, we should see the final decline and fall of the State of California.—C.R.
NOVEMBER 4, 2011 — RE: Latest Column
I have been spamming around that $10.15/hr 1968 federal minimum wage ($1.60/hr adjusted) -- going by the Minneapolis fed reserve bank online inflation calculator... ...and that today's US median wage is $15/hr going by chart 3.5 on p. 134 of "The State of Working America, 2008/2009." The lost growth facts may be more extreme. According to the BLS online calculator -- which uses the most widely accepted index (CPI-U) -- $10.43/hr was the 1968 minimum... ...and dividing an annual median wage of $26,363 -- reported by Harold Myerson -- by 2080 hours, today's US median wage comes at $12.68/hr. All -- following 43 years of improving productivity (we are both old enough to remember the typing pool) -- double the per capita income since. Somebody please just say the words out loud: sector wide labor agreements, sector wide labor agreements, sector wide labor agreements. Friedman? He found something positive in Reagan firing air traffic controllers. Knew I didn't like him ever since.—d.d.
NOVEMBER 1, 2011 — RE: Latest Column
I think you are spot on. I am 55 yrs old and I am embarrassed for my generation. I cringe every time I see AARP commercials threatening to hold the country hostage. We have known for years about the impact on Social Security and Medicare of the baby boom generation aging. Yet, we encouraged Congress kick the can down the road by not standing behind any politician who had the courage to speak the truth. We have no one to blame but ourselves.—S.S.
OCTOBER 30, 2011 — RE: Latest Column
Your commentary "The Worst Generation" was published in the Charleston, WV Sunday Gazette-Mail on October 30 where I discovered and read it being a devoted admirer of your columns for many years.
This particular column could be the best short piece you have written in your distinguished career, certainly the most poignant, although reading it made me feel even more ashamed than usual of myself and my fellow Baby-Boomers.
A short background story: As a college freshman at Stony Brook University in 1969 I returned to my dormitory complex from a sparsely attended meeting of perhaps 8 students questioning the university administration's plan to compete for Defense Department research grants by transforming a small liberal arts / teacher's college into a major scientific research institution. Entering the main hall, I found a growing crowd of at least 100 students eagerly awaiting the Friday night beer blast. Excoriating them for their self-absorbed hedonism and lack of social conscience I had little idea that I was confronting the true nature of my generation. My tirade was quickly dismissed as a mere annoyance by the few individuals not already engaged in prospecting for and cornering their respective partners for the evening.
Disappointed but not surprised by the corruption and self-aggrandizement common to my experience and your commentary I can't help wondering if both ego-consumed personality characteristics might be consequences of the pervasive fear of nuclear self-immolation with which The Worst Generation grew up magnified by JFK's inaugural pledge that a new generation of Americans would make any sacrifice and pay any price in defense of liberty. Why worry about the future if it offers little more than sacrifice and cost while all life on the planet could disappear in the next moment?
Hey, pass me another brewsky, the game should be on any minute!—J.S.
OCTOBER 30, 2011 — RE: Latest Column
PLUNDER. I wish this destructive issue received more analysis. It is obvious that war profiteering is today acceptable. Look at the billions passed to Dick Cheney's own company-Halliburton-on no bid contracts to provide thousands of mercenaries in Iraq, and other Defense cronies who reap profits from "privatization".
NATIONAL SWINDLE. This was not carried out by an abstraction called "Wall Street". It was and is being done by corrupt individuals in powerful financial positions. The "Too Big to Fail" panic provided cover for individuals to loot billions-directly and through undeserved and unearned "bonuses". The AIG bail out reveals a few of the specifics. We have unindicted fraud and a ruined economy- caused largely by the very individuals who used the resulting panic to enrich themselves.—R.C.
OCTOBER 29, 2011 — RE: Latest Column
You nailed it in your latest column. America has become like the old Soviet Union, where the government functions basically to enable the upper crust to exploit the rest. Quite a transformation of a society in a mere thirty years. Moreover, those who foolishly started the movement, and have now passed on, probably had no idea where their political and economic heirs were going to lead the country, purportedly in their name, just as Marx could never have envisioned Stalin. You know who I'm talking about, you wrote books about them.—M.O.
OCTOBER 26, 2011 — RE: Latest Column
Thanks to Brokaw's "Greatest Generation" conceit, we have become the World's "Indispensable Nation". Thanks, too, for giving all of us Social Security-our very own prepaid old age pensions! Personal thanks to Tom Brokaw for appointing his father's generation the "greatest", while some of his contemporaries were giving their lives and/or limbs in Viet Nam (to considerably less acclaim).—R.C.
OCTOBER 21, 2011 — RE: Latest Column
I had hearty Irish laughs reading your Oct. 20 piece - especially Romney's lawn being paved. As for TV, I wrote a guest column that my alma mater www.scrantontimes.com (before AP) ran Oct. 15 recalling that date in '58 when ED Murrow stressed TV's role to inform & illuminate in remarks to the Radio & Television News Directors in Chicago. Then, 2 days later, I read NBC had canceled its new Playboy Club series & installed - starting Oct. 31 - a "magazine show" anchored by Brian Williams. Documentaries like Murrow's "Harvest of Shame" Thanksgivng weekend 1960 are passe at CBS, NBC & ABC. Nets say nobody would watch.—H.L.
OCTOBER 16, 2011 — RE: Latest Column
As one who has been uplifted by the growing "Occupy Wall Street" movement, I want to thank you for your brilliant piece, "Which Side Are You On?", which appeared in my T, 10/18 edition of the Kitsap Sun. Your commentary is always succinct and to the point...this piece was no exception. I will continue to look forward to your writing.—C.O.
OCTOBER 16, 2011 — RE: Latest Column
Too many people are too ignorant of their own best interests to know what side they should be on or what side opposes their best interests. Only a very few tea baggers realize they are being used to advance the Koch Brothers agenda through the organizational efforts of Dick Armie and a few other corporate flacks. It is a dangerous time in America, especially since the Supreme Court has removed all doubt of its' corrupt majority.—W.G.
OCTOBER 13, 2011 — RE: Latest Column
Our hope is there for this protest movement! I am too old for the streets, but am proud of those out there. The skeptic in me is on alert, however, after Obama's collapse (or sell out). "Hope", after all, is passive-no "Audacity" in it.—R.C.
AUGUST 26, 2011 — RE: Latest Column
Was there nothing in that book about him being personally annointed by Jesus to save America from the secular liberal Babylon it has become? The more I learn about the mean-spirited ravings--I mean political philosophies--of Rick Perry, the bloviating alumnus of A&M with the 2.2 GPA and a major in animal science, the more I desperately hope the Republican rank and file choose the flip-flopping, wishy-washy Mitt Romney as their candidate to oppose Barack Obama, just in case you are not prescient and Obama does not garner the needed electoral votes to retain his office. (Just in case he has so alienated a critical mass of his own base to the point where they sit home on election day rather than vote for a Quisling.) Being a pragmatic businessman (which inherently implies duplicity), Romney just might promote some of the policies needed to turn the economy around, you know, the same ones that the GOP will not allow Obama to effect because he is not one of them. Cocksure Mr. Perry, who governs like Dubya riding a wild mustang and packing a six shooter, will stick to ultra-right wing ideological purity, just to be cussed, if nothing else. The rich will love the increased tax breaks and deregulation under Perry until the middle class is beggared, the economy totally crashes and their big corporations stagnate with no American customers. That's what happens when one player winds up with all the money in the board game Monopoly. It's game over, everyone else is a loser, and even the winner can't make any more money.—M.O.
AUGUST 6, 2011 — RE: Latest Column
Obama will not be easily reelected. The people in fly over country who work and own small businesses and those who work for large corporations alike do not like Obama and also see the folly of the last congress that brought our once great country to the brink of ruin.
I have always thought you to be kind and intellectually balanced, but your portrayal of all "tea partiers" which is now a media driven watch word for racism, to be ignorant and foolish is very snob filled Northeast bombast that we in South and Midwest hate about that part of the country. Regardless of your shameless and superiority driven labels, the freshmen republicans were elected to cut spending and stop any increase in taxes. They won a resounding mandate in the last election. They have stuck to it by not voting for the debt ceiling. They are not stupid or uninformed, they just happen to disagree with liberals like yourself who think you know better than everybody, although your policies are ruining our country. Who is uninformed. If we raise the debt limit and raise taxes with no spending cuts, where does it end? I will tell you where it ends, the candidate be it republican or democrat who proposes a balanced budget amendment and a flat tax either on income or value added or a combination thereof. The democrats would never do that, it makes too much sense, so it will be up to the republicans to put up a leader who can make this happen.
I must say, I am very disappointed by the tone of this article, and believe the divide you are promoting will not end well for our country.—C.R.
AUGUST 4, 2011 — RE: Latest Column
I hope you are a clairvoyant when you say that Obama should win re-election handily, because another Republican presidency linked to another solid Republican congress will prove disastrous for anyone not in the top 1% of income recipients. These guys are not keeping it a secret what they have in store for us non-billionaires. I mean, consider the Ryan budget which they've already had the audacity to pass by a wide margin. Does it not concern you that the current polls have Obama behind Romney by several percentage points in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, and Iowa, all states that he absolutely must have to win--each of which he carried by a wide margin in 2008? Moreover, he barely squeaks by extremist Michelle Bachmann in these same states. I would wager that he is already far behind any Republican here in Florida, in spite of the stink that Gov. Rick Scott is causing for the GOP with his Gestapo moves against working folks. Old folks here do not see him as a strong protector of Medicare, still buying the specious Republican narrative which gave them nearly a sweep in the 2010 congressional elections and a complete sweep at the state level, including massive majorities in both houses (veto proof as if necessary with Scott). Now they think he's put Social Security on the cutting block to balance the budget. If that's not his intention or message, he's not getting through, he's having one helluva failure to communicate. I know, as they say in baseball, that it is "still early" in the presidential election season, but the Republicans, especially the tea bagger variety, have played Obama like a fiddle in several key confrontations and, let's face it, the man is looking weak not only to his detractors but also to his base. In fact, if you visit the liberal blogs, they are feeling downright alienated from the guy and many swear never to campaign or vote for him again. I think he has created himself a world of trouble. I don't think he has attracted the "centrists" and independents he was after by repeatedly giving the back of his hand to the liberal faction of his own party and I think he is in real big trouble with regard to this election. I fear he will lose handily, not win handily. So, truly, I hope you can see, smell or feel the future--whatever it is that clairvoyants do.—M.O.
JUNE 29, 2011 — RE: Latest Column
Just wanted to strongly support your conclusions that it will not matter how long we wait to build a nation in Afghanistan. It seems like the various tribes and cultures in Afghanistan are programed to hate and kill each other no matter what we do. You have so much wisdom. Too bad you are not sitting at the left elbow of President Obama! I grew up in Lyndhurst and Rutherford in the 30s and 40s, and my first wife in Jersey City. She died in 1992, and I am now married to a German woman whose family and my family were "connected" in a Prussian town in Silesia in the 1840s and 50s! Some personal events are not predictable.—R.M.
JUNE 28, 2011 — RE: Latest Column
I agree 100% with what you wrote in "It's time to get out of Afghanistan".
Body parts and lives lost for what?
Good article --- Thanks—R.M.
JUNE 7, 2011 — RE: The New Segregation
I often don't agree with you, but in this article you were "right on". I believe that our military needs to be a citizen military. Everyone needs to have a vested interest by participating in a draft or UMT. Integration is important in that it keeps the military centered and less likely to create a constitutional crisis in some distant year. Also, we can then thank all of us for our service.—H.P.
JUNE 3, 2011 — RE: The New American Segregation: The Military
Just wanted to drop you a short note to express my agreement with your recent, entitled, "The New American Segregation: The Military". As a Korean War veteran (U. S. Navy, 1954-57) and a staunch supporter of our present military, it pains me to see most of our young people seemingly indifferent to the military. Although they generally seems to appreciate the efforts made by our troops, these young people have no sense of identification with our military's plight. I am the father of two sons and two grandsons and as much as I would hate to see them sent to the Middle East, I feel that required military service would give them a much better sense of commitment to the country. We are indeed moving in the direction of the "warrior class". Thank you again for an excellent article,—C.G.
JUNE 2, 2011 — RE: Latest Column
I am one of those people you see at the airport who greet military personnel with that same line "Thank you for your service." I do not extend this "small courtesy" out of guilt. I greet them out of heartfelt appreciation. My father served. I served and my son recently returned from a tour in Afghanistan. So, yes, I get it. I understand the commitment and personal sacrifice. I understand your point. Understand mine. The next time you see a middle aged woman thanking a military person for their service do not be so quick to cringe. That lady might be me.—S.K.
JUNE 2, 2011 — RE: Latest Column The New American Segregation: The Military
Amen! I couldn't have said it better myself.
Regards A Veteran,—L.W.
JUNE 2, 2011 — RE: Latest Column
Richard: you nailed it. Yet David Brooks, in his NY Times Op-Ed page piece this week, wrote the country demands too much of its college-age generation adding they deserve better. He was born in 1961. I knew, in college, the draft awaited. I served in Army after graduating. I was fortunate: it was between Korea & Vietnam. Nobody was shooting at us when some of us in an Army PsyWar unit ran special "missions" in SE Asia.—H.L.
JUNE 1, 2011 — RE: Latest Column
We grew up with the obligation and celebration of national service. When we gave up that "duty" and the government authority to conscript-we began the decline in America we are in today. I served in Viet Nam and am proud of that--even now when I see the horrors in MENA and reflect on my earlier beliefs.
Tom Brokaw, who did not serve, named his father's generation "The Greatest Generation". This Depression/WW2 theme drained all the oxygen from the national honors due Korean and VN war heroes. As one VN vet put it, "We play the hand we're dealt."
The swaggering and belligerent, tough talk of political "leaders" (and their media cheerleaders), who misled America into Iraq is a continuing outrage. We have destroyed an entire country and disgraced America to feed the egos of these chickenhawks--hypocrites who managed to avoid military duty when they were called.—R.C.
MAY 4, 2011 — RE: Latest Column
I never understood the grudge that the modern state of Pakistan holds against former British India. Does it date back to the time of the Moguls, when Islamic warlords ruled all of Hindu India? Do they still think it their birthright to run the whole place? Is it a race-based thing, with the lighter-skinned tall northerners (sometimes considered the mythical "Aryans," whom, by the way, the Iranians also claim to be) feeling compelled to exert their superior force of will against the darker and genetically different southerners? Is it right to assume that there is much less animosity (maybe even harmony) along the Indian/Bangladeshi frontier? My money would be on the outrage surrounding the lost Mogul empire. It's a similar type of outrage (loss of the ancient Persian empire) that drives a lot of Iranian bad behaviour. The arrogance lingers long after the power has been lost. Perhaps a lesson for us to keep in mind as the passing decades change global political and economic realities.—M.O.
MAY 1, 2011 — RE: Latest Column
I was just remarking to a friend today about how difficult it was proving for Nato sans the United States to contain even a third rate third world military like Qadaffi's. Surely some lesson is contained therein. All the rest of the world combined spends less money on their militaries than we do, and the weak performance of Britain, France and Italy versus Qadaffi's mercenaries from Chad and Niger certainly reflects this. Even Russia spends a pittance on the ability to make war compared with us. Only second place China maintains a robustly growing military establishment. How will this emerging red dragon react to the apparent military impotence of the West? By relaxing and opting for a peace dividend? Or, will they see an opening to pursue the military hegemony they've traditionally accused America of enforcing on a less advantaged world? If China and the rest of the world see the benefits and the historical imperative of standing down, will we follow suit? Or, will the right wing loons who never seem to lose much influence in the American political arena continue to beat the war drums and spend us into bankruptcy on ever more complex and expensive weapons systems (conveniently manufactured by their corporate financiers) even as social programs are shaved to the marrow to make possible even more tax cuts for those cronies? Moreover, since advanced weaponry seems to be the last product line that America produces in quantity and quality, can we afford to start beating our swords into ploughshares without totally busting what remains of the economy? In my opinion, starting with Ronald Reagan, the conservatives have relentlessly pushed us into a corner that seems to provide no escape (certainly none that is popular with the propagandized masses), so where we go from here, I don't know. I don't think anyone really does, but the Republicans are certain to chauffeur us straight to perdition a lot sooner than the better informed and more deliberative Obama. At least he will try to avoid mowing down pedestrians in the roadway, and, who knows, may even make some attempt to use the brakes (and veto crazy GOP legislation). To the Republicans, anyone worth less than a billion bucks is just potential collateral damage...tough luck if you're in their way!—M.O.
MARCH 9, 2011 — RE: Doubling Brain Power
I totally agree with you on our brain power being doubled and the good it has done and will do to have women in power positions. Unfortunately, it has come with a heavy price to the American family (divorce, inept child rearing, and the most horrifying and problematic - wives too tired for sex). Everything is a trade-off.
A capitalist monster. It still beats all the other monsters by a long shot. The same people at the top of the heap in our capitalist system would be on top in any system because they are brighter, meaner and overachieving maniacs. In any other system, you, I and everybody else would shake out about where we are in this one.—S.K.
MARCH 9, 2011 — RE: reader's praise
My wife and I remember you from your Esquire column many moons ago, and have always been impressed with your clarity and style. Your column on Obama's 11 choices in Libya is exactly the kind of objective, clear-headed thinking we need more of. Well done, sir.—D.M.
MARCH 9, 2011 — RE: no easy choices
Choice #12 - stay out of Libya and the entire middle east (except to defend Israel) and begin drilling our own oil and gas plus building nuclear power plants. This is what we would have been doing for the past thirty years if logical thinking were allowed to prevail above the din of baby face Liberals.—S.K.
MARCH 1, 2011 — RE: Intramural class warfare
Well said, but its not enough to point fingers at Republicans. Democrats such as Jerry Brown here and Andrew Cuomo in New York are looking at cutting public employee's pay and benefits. And its pretty clear that will happen along with a severe cut in government services and direct aid.
Its also worth mentioning that one of the reasons the rich did fine (I read recently that the average hedge fund manager's compensation in 2010 was a billion dollars and even if that's exaggerated, we know that 2010 paid record bonuses to the employees and partners of the Wall Street investment houses that survived the 2008 meltdown) is because the Obama administration is in bed with them. Obama's selections for positions ranging from Treasury Secretary on down come from the same people who raped the public with the TARP bailout. Also they were heavy contributors to Obama and the Democrats in 2010. I believe a strong case can be made that Obama either (1) failed to grasp the import of what was happening or (2) simply delegated the decision making to people like Emmanuel, Geithner, Bernancke and Summers, and I think that history will judge him very poorly on this point, in contrast to the actions taken by Roosevelt to regulate financial markets in 1933-34.
I don't think many people think through the consequences of reducing the pay of public employees. They make up a substantial part of the consumers of goods and services and as private sector employment dries up, they are the ones who keep the economy from total free fall. But on the other hand its hard to argue that without a significant uptick in the economy generating more tax revenues, maintaining salaries and benefits where they are will lead to inevitable bankruptcy (figuratively not literally) for the states.
There has also been an erosion of the notion that a public office is a public trust and its substitution at the highest level that a public office is a public trough, and at the lower level that the employees protected by a variety of civil service rules and union negotiated protections, are remarkably unresponsive to the public that pays their salaries. Its one thing to complain to the management in the restaurant and stop patronizing the place. Its entirely different kettle of fish, to complain about an employee at the DMV, let alone, to boycott the place.
But we are seeing in fairly fast motion the destruction of the middle class and the social contract that had been in existence since at least the end of WWII. What comes out at the end of that process is not going to be pretty.—D.M.
JANUARY 29, 2011 — RE: Latest Column
Hi Mr Reeves, I'm a big fan for years; I've read most of your books too. I'm also one of those returned PC volunteers from way back, 1965. Let me clue you in on something: All of us quickly shed any illusions we might have had about changing the world not long after we got there, but we also knew, almost from the first day, that we ourselves would never be the same. We called it "the cross cultural experience." We were the first Americans to really do it that way, be immersed in the place, the food, the pace, language, the whole thing. Not tourists, not diplomats, not military. That's the way Sarge conceived it, and he was right. He was a hell of a guy, and any Kennedy should consider himself lucky to be related to him.—P.M.
JANUARY 28, 2011 — RE: Latest Column
CBS Evening News aired 1-27 segment in which several women Corps volunteers said they had been raped in their duties & the Corps did nothing & made it seem they caused the problem. It wasn't reassuring and the Peace Corps had no comment, or so CBS said.—H.L.
I saw the report. I took it to mean the PC ain't what it used to be. Shriver was big on both public relations and on-site reporting. Journalists were hired by Inspector General Charlie Peters -- later founder of the Washington Monthly -- to report directly to Shriver on local problems. That system seemed to work better than whatever they have now.—R.R.
JANUARY 20, 2011 — RE: Latest Column
Thanks for this positive information on JFK. Unfortunately he is remembered more for the Bay of Pigs debacle, but later credited for forcing the removal of Soviet missiles from Cuba. I have read or heard some analysts wish Obama had the courage to stand up to the war mongering generals the way Kennedy did. At least JFK made them pretend American troops and pilots were only "advisors" in South Viet Nam's resistance. But as you know we were already deep into it. Our much expanded base in Clark AB, Philippines was a staging ground for the air war as were bases in Thialand and Viet Nam itself. It took Pres Johnson and the Gulf of Tonkin "Incident" to give up the pretense. I hope one of your next books gives a history of the contrived events that were catalysts for many of our wars.—R.C.
JANUARY 18, 2011 — RE: Latest Column
Thank you Richard for another reminder of what it was like when JFK was in office. Please keep hitting some of these 50 year milestones, including the Berlin speech when the time comes. Too many Americans today are incapable of understanding how loved and admired President Kennedy was.—J.P.
JANUARY 18, 2011 — RE: Latest Column
"You have to get close to your enemy, and he or she is going to fight back." The same applies to someone breaking into your home and whether the intruder(s) have a gun or not they very likely can overpower the home owner, so, a home owner with a firearm has, at least, evened the odds no matter how physically weak they may be.
You know all the pro-gun rhetoric so I'll just bore you with one of them: Citizens need to be armed to protect themselves from a rogue administration. The present administration and their Democratic Party allies scare the sh!t out of many Americans. Besides appointing all of the socialist/communist Czars and advisors they can find under rocks and hay stacks, Obama has floated statements concerning a civilian army trained and armed as well as the military - wonder who might comprise that army.
I do agree that high tech weapons in the hands of the general public is a debatable issue, but, the bottom line is if you let a govt. take your gun, you are no longer an adult.
P.S. It would do you good to get out and do some deer and turkey hunting.—S.K.
JANUARY 14, 2011 — RE: Latest Column
My comment on your comment. How do you expect gun control to work? Drugs are illegal, yet there are drugs. Driving under the influence is illegal, yet people drive under the influence. Texting while driving is illegal, yet people text while driving. Speeding is illegal, yet people speed. Etc, etc, etc. Gun control will never work. Some people will always have guns. Only law abiding people will be defenseless with gun control. I carry, packing as you say. For one and only one reason. To protect my family and myself. Since you will never get all the guns, I don't want to be sitting there while someone unloads his 30 rounds on a bunch of innocent people who can do nothing to prevent it. He may start shooting, but he won't get 30 rounds off. When there are no guns at all, I would be glad to stop carrying mine. Its heavy and uncomfortable.—C.D.
JANUARY 12, 2011 — RE: thanks for column 1/11/11
Thank you for your column 1/11/11 regarding the ignored problem of guns in our society. I grew up in rural Iowa and nearly everyone had a "squirrel" gun and maybe a shotgun for hunting. Policemen and bad guys (at least we thought that) had handguns. They served no purpose for anyone other than law enforcement people as a deterrent.
I spent several hours discussing gun control with a co-worker last night. He is my friend and I find him very intelligent and insightful. I could not understand how he could seriously believe that everyone should be able to buy a handgun and possess it at anytime. No waiting period, no background check, able to walk into a store and buy one as if you are buying a toaster. He's not as experienced as I am so he doesn't have an adult memory of our President nearly falling to a deranged assassin and the crippling wounding of Mr. Brady. How did we get here? It's now socially acceptable to attend a political rally packing your gun if you live in the Southwest?
Please help me understand how we arrived at this point. There must be a path back to sanity. It has been a tough last decade being a liberal in Illinois.—M.M.
JANUARY 12, 2011 — RE: Latest Column
Jan. 11 column personal, powerful, pertinent & persuasive. Robert Kennedy, addressing the City Club of Cleveland April 5, 1968, said: "...we make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire weapons and ammunition they desire." The night before, in perhaps his most moving public utterance ever, he was the first to inform an Indianapolis black audience that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was fatally shot hours before in Memphis.—H.L.
Latest Column
Politics As Entertainment
LOS ANGELES —- In 1976, to my regret, I wrote what amounted to an obituary of the Republican Party. Writing about the Democratic Convention in New York that year, I said:
Column Archive
America's Five Political Parties
LOS ANGELES — It would seem that the United States has a five-party system right now. What was done in Iowa last Tuesday could unravel in New Hampshire, but whatever happens next, the United States is more politically fractured than it has been in decades.
Why Americans Aren't Trusted
DALLAS — One of the darker pages of American history was illustrated by film of South Vietnamese, many of whom had worked for the American military or diplomatic corps for years, desperately trying to get into the U.S. Embassy in Saigon and being pushed and batted away by Marines as the last Americans climbed to the roof to escape the advancing North Vietnamese troops by helicopter.
Goodnight, Moon! Goodnight, America!
LOS ANGELES — Scanning the latest national polls, it seems that only 17 percent of Americans — fewer than one in five — say they are satisfied with the way things are going in the United States. Only 11 percent have confidence in the U.S. Congress, and the same percentage believe that old one about the country being headed in the right direction. Two out of three respondents think the economy is going in the wrong direction. This in the land of hope and glory.
The New Newt
WASHINGTON — Mention the name of the man of the hour around here and people all seem to have the same reaction. They shake their heads. Some seem amused, some angry, some frightened. Despite living most of his adult life here, Newt Gingrich does not have many friends among his neighbors.
The Sayings Of Chairman Barney
WASHINGTON — I first met Barney Frank in 1979, when he was a state legislator in Massachusetts. We spoke the same language, Jersey cynical, because we grew up a couple of miles from each other. He was from Bayonne and I was from Jersey City, the jewel of Hudson County.
Whack-a-Newt Is The New Game In Town
WASHINGTON — Like most reporters here in the 1980s, I liked Newt Gingrich and spent time listening to his office lectures every few weeks. He was smart, he was candid about most things, wrong about others — and funny in his hypercharged way. He was young and irreverent — like us — and he was on his way to taking over the Republicans in Congress and then Congress itself. His ambition was boundless, but he was changing the rules in Washington for better or worse.
It Seems Wall Street Is Occupying Us
LOS ANGELES — The good news of the day is that Bill Moyers is coming back to television next January. The bad news is that Coca-Cola seems to be winning its battle to fill the Grand Canyon with empty plastic bottles.
American Decline; Crushing The Middle Class
LOS ANGELES — By chance, the three things that landed in my inbox — that's a polite euphemism for "pile" — on Tuesday were these:
The Worst Generation
DETROIT — Looking at the newspapers this morning, I noticed that Tom Brokaw was making a speech in New York. It made me wonder if he was working on a sequel to his books on "The Greatest Generation." This one might be called "The Worst Generation."
Nice Debates, Guys, But You're In Trouble
LOS ANGELES — I was pleasantly surprised last Wednesday when I asked a roomful of students at the University of Southern California how many had watched the Republican candidates' debate the night before and dozens of hands went up, more than half the students, maybe two-thirds.
Which Side Are You On!
LOS ANGELES — I am all for Occupy Wall Street — and a lot of other places — but I wish I understood where this is going. And why it took so long to get going.
The Republican Circus
LOS ANGELES — Who's left? Is there a good-looking, smart state legislator out there somewhere whom the Republican parties could agree on as their candidate?
Class Warfare: Bring It On!
LOS ANGELES — President Obama came out here last Tuesday to proclaim himself a "warrior for the middle class." Would that it were true.
America The Passive
BERKELEY, Calif. — Democrats should be building statues of former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm, or at least giving away copies of her new book, "A Governor's Story."
Lost Decade ... Lost Generation?
LOS ANGELES — "Soaring Poverty Casts Spotlight on 'Lost Decade'" was the lead headline in last Wednesday's New York Times.
Does Karl Rove Know Something We Don't?
LOS ANGELES — Karl Rove, pundit for now, continued to pound away at his favorite target, Sarah Palin, over the summer, saying this time she was too "thin-skinned" to be president.
Who Pays For God's Revenge?
LOS ANGELES — The phrase "the general welfare" of the people is part of the U.S. Constitution that so many political folk wave around these days — arguing basically that the problems and assumptions of 1789 remain inviolate in the 21st century.
Deep In The Heart Of Fantasyland
SAG HARBOR, N.Y. — Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a man who would be king, has written a book. It's called "Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America from Washington."
