The Twilight of the Presidency

The Twlight of the Presidency: An Examination of Power and Isolation in the White House
© 1970, 1987
200 pages

In Twilight of the Presidency, George Reedy uses his personal experience as a Johnson aide, along with the study of other administrations of the 20th century, to comment on the apparent decline of the US Presidency as an effective force for serving the public good.   Writing in an age that had seen the ill repute of the Johnson and Nixon administrations, followed by the benign but inept administrations of Ford and Carter,  Reedy was pessimistic about the future of the presidency.  In our own age the imperial presidency has revived and waxed even stronger,  to the degree that  American families may hear or mention the president by name more than their own  relations!    Yet for all the time that has passed, Twilight of the Presidency's insight into how the presidency as an office works remains incredible.

Reedy refers to the office as an elective monarchy, and maintains it had that potential from the beginning.  Yet except for Abraham Lincoln, no president of the 19th century really used the office to its full  authority.   The essential advantage of the presidency, Reedy writes, is the will to action: the Supreme Court can only decide on such issues arrive at its doorstep, and the Congress is an enormous bureuacracy whose wheels are clogged with corruptive grime.  The president can act on his own accord, can be  -- The Decider.    He can seize the initiative and put everyone else on the defense while Congress is still attempting to get a bill from a subcommittee to the floor.     Another advantage in the president's court is the aura of his office; the American president is simultaneously the head of government and the head of state.  He enjoys much of the reverence given to a figure like Queen Elizabeth the II,  escaping direct personal abuse as someone like Tony Blair or Nick Cameron might have to endure during "Question Period".

In one chapter, Reedy dwells on more of the monarchical trappings of the office of POTUS: the fact that the chief executive is surrounded by hundreds of people every day, all of whom are fixated on him. They may be White House staff serving his needs so he can focus on the issues of the day,  or enthralled aides waiting for their chance to bask in the royal farr and be noticed.  This bureaucratic cloud has the effect of isolating the president from society at large;  their own opinions being the only ones the president hears. They're hardly representative: Reedy writes that Johnson couldn't understand the youth rebellion against him, because all of the young men in his employ were  perfectly at ease with the administration's current Vietnam policy.    More substantially, Reedy comments that because the host around the president is there to serve and administer his wishes,  he rarely receives pushback from policy suggestions.  (Reedy alleges that the only president of the 20th century who was nearly completely successful at staying connected to the people, instead of being hemmed-in by his advisors, was FDR. )  Reedy comments mournfully that there were numerous times that  the United States might have resisted further entanglement in Indo-China, but when Johnson passively expected alternatives, all he received were alternating views on what his aides thought he wanted to do -- stay the course.     Staying the course is almost always the easiest thing to do,  even when considered objectively it's unwise. Presidents are not objective,  however; they are the subject of national attention, and of history books. They are the face and will of the nation.   If a private citizen makes a mistake that costs him dearly, he is free to cut his losses and walk away with a slightly reddened face and a lighter wallet. But if a President decides engagement in Vietnam or Iraq was a mistake, he has not only wagered money but lives and honor.   To write off the lives of thousands of young men and women is not a task easy to do in a democracy.

The office's isolation and policy inertia of part of the reason why perfectly intelligent men can make  astonishing missteps in office, whether it's invading Cuba on bad intelligence, or invading Iraq on....can the WMD threat even be dignified as 'intelligence'?. Another aspect, though, is the growth of the office itself: we've come a long way from Washington and his three secretaries.    Because so much authority has been delegated to executive agencies, it is perfectly possible for people of one department to make pivotal decisions under the aegeis of presidential authority without the executive actually knowing about it.  The bureacracy is now so large that it has institutionalized itself;  it moves under its own inertia, and  a particular department's  long-running policies and officers can outlive presidents.  This is why Reedy, despite being a Democrat, thinks it is perfectly possible that Iran-Contra could have been created and implemented without Reagan actually knowing in full what was happening.

Twilight is incredibly insightful, and admirable. Although he wrote out of concern for an office  whose efficiency was fast diminishing,  his exposure of why remains true today.  At least in part, that is; I assume the presidency has become even more isolated from the American people because of security concerns.  The 2016 election results, which took D.C. utterly by surprise, may indicate how out of touch the imperial center is with the people beyond the coasts.  I wonder if such a book could be written today: Reedy had the advantage of witnessing or knowing people who remembered the presidency when it was still boring, before  Hoover and Roosevelt made the office a source of daily fixation. Could an author who has grown up with the imperial presidency analyze it in this fashion? I doubt it.

Related:

• The Cult of the Presidency, Gene Healy, which quoted on this and recommended it to me. 
• The Once and Future King, F.H. Buckley. Buckley contends that effective monarchy has re-established itself in the form of the American presidency and the prime ministers of the UK and Canada,  echoing some of Reedy's chapter on the making of the American monarchy. This is one I really must re-read..

Mean Streets

Mean Streets: Confessions of a Nightime Taxi Driver
© 2002 Peter McSherry
256 pages

Mean Streets takes readers into the dark side of Canada, or at least the dark side of Toronto. Ever since the 1970s, Peter McSherry has been driving the night shift at various cab companies,  writing about the strange people and stories the night produces along the way. In this volume many columns he's submitted to taxi publications are collected and organized in particular categories --  his experiences with drug dealers, prostitutes, and criminals on the lam, for instance, or the shady practices of tax firms -- spanning his time driving. McSherry isn't simply witness to many of these stories, but an unwilling participant in them; he is often threatened or solicited, and in his younger days was known to give chase to people who tried to stiff him on the cab fare.  Being far removed from Canada, I tend to imagine it as a bland, safe sort of place, nice to visit but not that exciting. McSherry's account certainly presents a different picture! His Toronto is just as grimy and unruly as New York City. with affair after affair recorded here that are worthy of depiction on COPS.   I didn't realize Canada, or at least Toronto, had the sort of racial strife that still besets the United States, though its came from Britain's colonial heritage, rather like France's does today.  Driving a cab was an education for McSherry, too;  originally an idealist who went to school to teach children and believed the best in everyone,  his experiences being cheated by bosses, customers, and city officials alike definitely create a world weariness.  With that, though, comes a genial tolerance both of people's failings (including his own), though he's definitely no pushover.   He readily ignores teenagers, drunks, pushy pimps, and others on the street who bitter experience has taught him are more trouble as fares than they're worth -- and if push comes to shove, he's as ready with a right cross as he is with a kind word. (Melissa Plaut, in her Hack, also learned to discriminate against teenagers, though she felt bad about it.)

Those interested in learning about the business practices of cab companies won't find too much here beyond the 1970s,  but the memoir has the usual appeal to those who like "a day in the life"  tales or true crime stories.  I noticed that McSherry prefers to drive as an independent contractor, just like Melissa in Hack;  this allows himself and other drivers to work as much or as little as they choose to, depending on their circumstances.

McSherry is, at least of 2014, still writing about driving even as he hits 70.

Related:

• Hack: How I Stopped Worrying About my Life and Started Driving a Cab, Melissa Plaut
• Taxi! A Social History of the New York City Cab Driver, Graham Russell Gao Hodges

Laughing Without an Accent

Laughing without an Accent: Adventures of a Global Citizen
© 2008 Firoozeh Dumas
256 pages

In 2003, Firoozeh Dumas charmed readers with stories about her transoceanic childhood, unfolding in both in Iran and the United States in the 1970s. This sequel to Funny in Farsi uses the same basic approach, blending funny stories about her relatives with reflection on the immigrant experience and the human experience in general.  Here, though, a third culture has entered the picture -- that of her French husband's -- and, with more stories about her life as a parent, she is more serious at times.

 I remember her familial caricatures fondly from last year, especially that of her frugalistic father. Here we find him mystifying his son-in-law by presenting him Christmas gifts wrapped in on-sale "Congratulations, graduate!" and "Happy birthday!" wrapper paper --  subjecting the family to various misadventures after attempting to bring home several  "bargain-priced" tables in a purple hatchback, Her mother's enthusiastic but creative use of English also features again. As a parent Dumas writes more seriously, recording her personal triumph in showing the family TV the door; not only did she create precious space for imagination and rest in her home, but her children were spared thousands upon thousands of commercials.  Imagination is important to Dumas; as a college student she is dismayed to realize her fellow students think getting drunk and gyrating is a good time. She'd much prefer a morning walk accompanied with literary conversation. (Her mother attempts to warn off the future husband, stating that Firoozeh never stops reading.) Through the humor and reflection readers are allowed to experience the warmth of her extended family, gathering frequently as they do -- even if it's just to watch The Price is Right and yell at Bob Barker. (Her father's love of bargains makes Price his absolute favorite bit of American television programming.)  

As with Funny in Farsi, I found this simultaneously educational, funny, and cozy.

Iran and the United States

Iran and the United States: An Insider's View on the Failed Past and the Road to Peace
© 2014 Seyed Hossein Mousavian
368 pages

The United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran have not been on speaking terms since the hostage crisis of 1979 - 1981,  in which students drunk on revolution seized the American embassy in Tehran and held scores of American workers captive for well over a year.  This was not a random outburst of anti-American violence, but a carefully planned demonstration designed to spurn the United States' foreign policy in Iran.  The revolution in which these students played their part  had before thrown a US-installed dictator out of power -- and they would not accept his return.  The old relationship having been rejected, neither American nor Iranian leaders have been able to establish a new one -- but, according to this briefing by Sayed Mousavian, it's not an impossible task.  Both sides have attempted to come to some level of rapprochement, but misunderstanding, inconsistency, and timing problems have destroyed every trial balloon.  Iran and the United States reviews the whole of Iranian-American foreign relations, identifies the issues which are most problematic, and finishes by proposing a path to concord.

Once upon a time, the United States government was not a world power, but an idealistic Republic that held to a path of nonintervention. The Persian people looked at America as the shining light of the west: unlike the British and Russian empires, the Americans had no desire to  manipulate or force their will on the middle east. Even when Iran attempted to stay out of the West's way, as it did by declaring itself neutral during the Great War, the imperials insisted on dragging Iran into it -- as they did when Britain and Russia used Iran to attack the Turks, turning Iran into a warzone and reducing many of its people to refugees or worse.  During the Second World War, Iran became even more important for the west as a route for supplies to the Soviets, and a source of oil to power the legions of airplanes, tanks, ships, and service vehicles that supported a global war.   WW2 cost the United States the last vestiges of its innocence: it landed troops in Iran and thereafter would take a very active interest in Iranian politics.  When the Iranians attempted to resume control over their oil from Britain in the early 1950s, Britain and the US worked together to throw out the Iranian government and replace it with one that would do their bidding.

That government, the Shah's, was the one the Iranian revolution so forcefully rejected -- and not merely because he was foreign-imposed and allowed imperial powers to harvest the majority of Iran's oil wealth, but because he used brutal methods like the secret police to support his reign.  After the revolution, an overtly Islamic  government was installed, and thereafter relations with the outside world went steadily downhill. The Islamic nature of the government was in part religious, and in part a defense of Iranian traditions which had been supplanted by western mores.  The nuclear program that Britain and the United States had once encouraged in Iran was now forbidden, in part because of Iranian's militant rebuke of the decades of coercion endured from Britain, Russia, and now the Americans.   The new government's hostility extended to Israel, as the creation of the west in response to its own tragedy.  Iran would support militias fighting against Israel in Syria and Lebanon, and thereby earn a reputation for itself as a sponsor of terrorism -- even though some of the attacks attributed to it were actually perpetrated by the same Saudi terrorists who would later attack the United States.  The Islamic Republic had been founded on rejection of foreign meddling, and would spend its first decade fighting for its very life against Saddam Hussein -- a man who opportunistically invaded Iran, aided and armed by the Americans.  Although Iran was able to take back land stolen by Hussein's army, when it began an offensive into Iran it was warned discretely that the west would never allow it to 'win' the war by sacking Hussein, and the west has continued low-level hostilities since: destroying an Iranian fleet during the Iraqi invasion, assassinating its nuclear engineers, and even inaugurating cyberwar to disable its reactors.  Little wonder Iran regards the west with deep suspicion.

  Previous attempts at restoring connections have been marred by the gap between American and Iranian culture:  when a hostile American media sneers at Iranian leadership,  this is perceived as being the opinion of the American president.  When Congress and the president take opposing stances on the subject of Iran, this is seen not as a quirk of the American political process, but deliberate misleading on the part of the president.  On the other side, Americans fail to understand how deep the scars of the early 20th century go:  the Islamic Republic's entire raison d'être is reaction against western humiliation. Iran would rather perish than cave to the threat of violence. If concordance with the Iranians is to be achieved, it must be by appealing to their interests. One especially potent source of collaboration is counter-terrorism.  While Americans might include Iranian leadership in the ranks of 'Islamic extremism',  Iran's status as the center of Shi'ia Islam makes it an target to Sunni groups like ISIS.  Iran's leaders have acute interest in developing their economy further,  the sort of interest that makes stabilizing parts of the middle east a potential shared goal as well.  Other past attempts at patching together a peace have been hindered by misalignment between the nations' respective leadership: when the Iranians feel chatty, the Americans are bellicose, and vice versa. The Bush-Ahmadinejad years were a perfect combination of idiot dancing, as both men sent messages indicating they wanted to talk, then referred to the other party as the Great Satan the next week.

This is a fascinating volume, in part because it's by an Iranian who, until his arrest for treason by Ahmadinejad, faithfully served the Iranian government as its ambassador to Germany and on the nuclear negotiation team. He is not hostile toward the United States, despairing of both governments' talking past one another, and is able to understand the American side of the story.  The combination of his amiability and his experience as a journalist (later editor for the Tehran Times)  results in a thorough but approachable history and analysis of Iranian-American relations.  There certainly seems to be reasons for hope,  though the ramifications of the nuclear deal arrived at with the Iranians just recently are has yet unclear. The White House is very proud of the deal ,but the White House is also very proud of the ACA website.  Hopefully what little progress made can be sustained through the next president, though this is stretching it given that a proven warmonger is most likely to win.   At any rate, for Americans and Europeans attempting to get a handle on Iran, this is a commendable beginning.  The fact that we continue to attempt to control mid-east politics when every previous attempt has backfired and created larger problems is awe-inspiring in its historic obliviousness.

Funny in Farsi

Funny in Farsi: Growing up Iranian in America
© 2003 Firoozeh "Julie" Dumas
240 pages

Imagine a time when most Americans had never heard of Iran, when a little girl from a village thereof might as well be from Podunk, Eurasia.   Such was the case of young Firooezeh, whose father was an Iranian petroleum engineer sent to work in the United States for two years.  With little to prepare them, her family took English lessons from The Price is Right and went off to explore America.  Funny in Farsi is a collection of Firoozech’s comic coming of age in the United States, combining both the awkwardness of the immigrant experience and fond recollections of her childhood in Iran.

Though after the Iranian revolution and the hostage crisis, Iran would take on a sinister charge in the American imagination,  Funny in Farsi isn’t written as a somber reflection on Iranians and the Revolution; virtually all of reminiscences here are written to draw a smile.  They accomplish it regardless of the setting, whether they’re about her uncle taking her halfway across Iran to find his favored brand of ham, or Firooezeh enduring her American classmate’s dearth of geographic knowledge. (“You know China? Iran is on the same continent.”)  Comments on the immigrant experience (why are Americans so enamored of the French? Iranians also eat snails! It’s not fair!) go back and forth with family tales, like her father’s  many attempts to teach her to swim, or  his immense pride in spending as little as possible, as when he obtained lunch by visiting a grocery wholesaler and dining on the free samples.

While these recollections are delightful in their own right -- a reassurance that everyone's family has its odd ducks, regardless of continent -- there's also a useful reminder here that Iran is more than the possession of the reigning ayatollahs, being instead an ancient nation which has endured many a tyrant and will outlast the current breed as well.