Riding the Tiger

Friday Feature: Nancy and Ronald Reagan Not Riding a Tiger

2013-05-17T14:05:07+00:00

Photo Courtesy Ronald Reagan Library, c. 1982. Taken at Rancho Del Cielo, Santa Barbara, CA.

Here on the east coast things have started heating up… could it be true? Is summer on the way?

In honor of the shifting seasons, here are the Reagans doing what many of us are starting to do this time of year (though not quite in the way we normally do it): mowing the grass. The mower was an anniversary present.

Stay tuned! Every Friday we'll highlight an interesting item from presidential history.

Friday Feature: The Tiger Goes Riding

2013-05-03T13:59:59+00:00

How about a little cuteness to wrap up the week? Here's President Clinton with Socks (clearly ready for action).

For more, check out this feature of presidential pets posted by Cute Overload back in February.

Stay tuned! Every Friday we'll highlight an interesting item from presidential history.

What Are The Tea Party’s Plans?

2013-05-01T13:00:26+00:00

Last week, Politico reported that the Tea Party is back in action with a new strategy and a growing membership. While discussions from the April 25^th caucus meeting were not made public, Matt Kibbe, president and CEO of FreedomWorks (the most influential tea party organization in the United States), spoke about Tea Party 3.0 and the future direction of the Tea Party at a Miller Center Forum in March.

During the forum, Kibbe noted that the Tea Party is going to focus on getting their policy proposals focused on reducing the budget and reforming entitlements introduced by members of Congress. He also noted there are at least ten Senators whom the Tea Party has helped elect to office, including “rock stars” Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio.

The plan for 2014, according to Kibbe, is to go after a number of Democratic seats that are up for reelection in 2014 and to focus on places like South Carolina. According to Kibbe, “We can do better than Lindsey Graham in the primary.” He also argued there is a big opportunity is to solve the Missouri problem and get behind principled fiscal conservatives in Arkansas, North Dakota and Alaska.

Kibbe called the Tea Party a “leaderless,” decentralized movement, united by a set of values based on limited government. One must view it as a bottom-up movement. Kibbe said the reason why the Tea Party wasn’t as successful in the 2012 election was because the top of the presidential ticket was the Achilles Heel of the Party. According to Kibbe, Romney was unelectable and he was anathema to the Tea Party principle of limited government. Kibbe asserts that the Tea Party has changed the way the Republican Party controls politics. He said, “There’s no going back to a model controlled by a small group of experts like Karl Rove. People like Rand Paul can go to the internet to get funding and endorsements.”

Watch the Forum video to learn more about the Tea Party’s plans for 2013 and beyond.

George Washington Warned Against Partisanship

2013-04-30T12:59:59+00:00

Think partisanship is a political problem unique to today’s political context? Think again. In his first inaugural address delivered on this day in 1789, President George Washington warned Congress to avoid local and party partisanship:

In these honorable qualifications, I behold the surest pledges, that as on one side, no local prejudices, or attachments; no separate views, nor party animosities, will misdirect the comprehensive and equal eye which ought to watch over this great assemblage of communities and interests: so, on another, that the foundations of our National policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality; and the pre-eminence of a free Government, be exemplified by all the attributes which can win the affections of its Citizens, and command the respect of the world.

In the address, which was delivered to a joint session of Congress in New York City (the temporary seat of government), Washington acknowledged the shared responsibility of the president and Congress to preserve "the sacred fire of liberty" and a republican form of government. He also called on Congress to pass the Bill of Rights, though he didn’t mention them by name:

Besides the ordinary objects submitted to your care, it will remain with your judgment to decide, how far an exercise of the occasional power delegated by the Fifth article of the Constitution is rendered expedient at the present juncture by the nature of objections which have been urged against the System, or by the degree of inquietude which has given birth to them. Instead of undertaking particular recommendations on this subject, in which I could be guided by no lights derived from official opportunities, I shall again give way to my entire confidence in your discernment and pursuit of the public good: For I assure myself that whilst you carefully avoid every alteration which might endanger the benefits of an United and effective Government, or which ought to await the future lessons of experience; a reverence for the characteristic rights of freemen, and a regard for the public harmony, will sufficiently influence your deliberations on the question how far the former can be more impregnably fortified, or the latter be safely and advantageously promoted.

Read the full address in our archives here.

This Day In History: Nixon Justifies Release of White House Transcripts Instead of Tapes

2013-04-29T13:00:15+00:00

On April 29, 1974, President Richard Nixon addressed the nation to explain the edited transcripts he was releasing of the White House tapes in response to the House Judiciary Committee’s subpoena for the actual tapes. The president continued to refuse to release the actual tapes, claiming that the Constitutional principle of executive privilege applied to them and claiming that they were vital to national security. The tapes contained conversations that would reveal what Nixon knew about the break-in two years prior at the Watergate complex, the subsequent cover up and what he did about it.

In the April 1974 speech, Nixon defended his innocence and the right to presidential privacy. He told the nation:

Ever since the existence of the White House taping system was first made known last summer, I have tried vigorously to guard the privacy of the tapes. I have been well aware that my effort to protect the confidentiality of Presidential conversations has heightened the sense of mystery about Watergate and, in fact, has caused increased suspicions of the President. Many people assume that the tapes must incriminate the President, or that otherwise, he would not insist on their privacy.
But the problem I confronted was this: Unless a President can protect the privacy of the advice he gets, he cannot get the advice he needs.

This principle is recognized in the constitutional doctrine of executive privilege, which has been defended and maintained by every President since Washington and which has been recognized by the courts, whenever tested, as inherent in the Presidency. I consider it to be my constitutional responsibility to defend this principle…

I have been reluctant [to release the tapes] because the principle of confidentiality is absolutely essential to the conduct of the Presidency. In reading the raw transcripts of these conversations, I believe it will be more readily apparent why that principle is essential and must be maintained in the future. These conversations are unusual in their subject matter, but the same kind of uninhibited discussion—and it is that—the same brutal candor is necessary in discussing how to bring warring factions to the peace table or how to move necessary legislation through the Congress.

Of course, as we now know, Nixon ordered a cover up of the cover up just one year before. On April 18, 1973, Nixon asked his Chief of Staff, Bob Haldeman, to destroy the tapes. However, Haldeman didn’t destroy the tapes, perhaps knowing that if he did so, he would go down in history as the fall guy.

The House Judiciary Committee rejected the edited transcripts, arguing that they did not comply with the subpoena for the actual tapes. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court. In July 1974, the Court ruled in United States v. Nixon that Nixon must turn over the tapes.

Watch and read Nixon’s April 1974 speech here and be sure to check out the Miller Center’s Watergate collection here.

Friday Feature: Tigers Ridden

2013-04-26T13:50:57+00:00

It's a rare occurrence to have all living presidents in one location (if you will, imagine the security concerns for a moment) but it happened yesterday at the opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum in Dallas.

Check out this slideshow of images from yesterday's event, thanks to the Washington Post. The Bush Presidential Library, similar to all NARA Presidential Libraries, seeks to "[serve] as a resource for the study of the life and career of George W. Bush, while also promoting a better understanding of the Presidency, American history, and important issues of public policy."

Stay tuned! Every Friday we'll highlight an interesting item from presidential history.

President Kennedy, the Press and the National Security Question

2013-04-26T13:00:54+00:00

Today’s guest post is by Elizabeth Brightwell, a Miller Center Student Ambassador and a fourth year student at the University of Virginia majoring in English and French and working on her MA in Public Policy at the Batten School.

Fifty-two years ago, on April 27^th, 1961, President John F. Kennedy addressed the American Newspaper Publishers Association in New York City’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. His speech, titled “The President and the Press,” addressed the role of the press in helping American efforts to curb communism; the speech discussed the standards for releasing sensitive materials that might compromise national security. The President’s address came just over one week after the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion in which the U.S. trained and funded parliamentary group, Brigade 2506, unsuccessfully invaded Cuba. In the days leading up to the invasion, the media had leaked plans for the invasion, which was intended to be a surprise.

The plans for the Bay of Pigs Invasion began after the Cuban Revolution replaced Fulgencio Batista, an ally of the U.S., with Fidel Castro. A Cuba led by Castro concerned the U.S. government especially because Castro began expropriating the country’s economic assets from the U.S. and developing a relationship with the Soviet Union. It was actually President Dwight Eisenhower who initiated and authorized the bulk of the Bay of Pigs planning process. President John F. Kennedy, however, gave the final nod of approval for the invasion, which began on April 17^th, 1961 and ended in defeat three days later. One hundred and eighteen Americans were killed and 1,202 were captured and the invasion was a major embarrassment for the U.S. President Kennedy subsequently ordered many internal investigations of the invasion plans, preparations and execution.

The plans for the Bay of Pigs were classified and intended to be kept secret in the interest of national security and in the interest of the plans’ success. The plans, however, were not as secret as the Administration would have wished. Much of the news media, especially smaller publications, were aware of the story. Before the invasion, The New Republic sent the White House detailed plans for the operation asking if their release would compromise national security. Obviously, the Kennedy Administration requested that all U.S. media refrain from any such releases but the fact remained that the plans had been compromised. The Miami Herald did not release any of the information. However, according to George Beebe, who worked for the newspaper, “Everyone in Miami knew about it. I had a five-part series in my desk for two months but I didn’t want to be the first S.O.B. to release the story.” Not all publications adhered to the same set of principles. On April 7, 1961, ten days before the planned invasion, the New York Times released a limited—in the interest of national security—version of the invasion plans.

The failure of the Bay of Pigs was not entirely the result of these leaks, but the widespread of awareness of the invasion plans certainly did not help to protect the element of surprise. President Kennedy’s speech on April 27^th was intended to, in his own words, “examine the proper degree of privacy which the press should allow any President and his family.” Kennedy’s remarks were not hostile or angry towards the press. He displayed a bit of humor as he told a member of the New York Times, “Maybe if you had printed more about the operation, you would have saved us from a colossal mistake.” Despite his ability to joke, President Kennedy did blame the press for contributing to the Cuban disaster and called for the press corps to hold itself to a higher standard.

Under the modern presidency, the press has generally gone along with the president, joining forces against a common foreign enemy during a time of war. However, at the time of the Bay of Pigs invasion and because the Cold War and the anti-communism efforts of this period were never part of an officially declared war, the president and the press didn’t share this same relationship. In his speech, President Kennedy argued that even in an undeclared war, leaks could compromise national security and compromise government operations:

If the press is awaiting a declaration of war before it imposes the self-discipline of combat conditions, then I can only say that no war ever posed a greater threat to our security. If you are awaiting a finding of "clear and present danger," then I can only say that the danger has never been more clear and its presence has never been more imminent. It requires a change in outlook, a change in tactics, a change in missions—by the government, by the people, by every businessman or labor leader, and by every newspaper. For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence…

The speech marked an important turning point in the expansion of the use of national security doctrine to justify withholding sensitive information. In expressing his discontent with the press’s news coverage of the Bay of Pigs, the president noted there is a need for both “far greater public information” and “far greater official secrecy.” He told reporters:

Every newspaper now asks itself, with respect to every story: "Is it news?" All I suggest is that you add the question: "Is it in the interest of the national security?" And I hope that every group in America—unions and businessmen and public officials at every level—will ask the same question of their endeavors, and subject their actions to this same exacting test.

Read and listen to the entire speech in the Miller Center’s archives here.

Miller Center Celebrates Life of Kenneth W. Thompson

2013-04-24T13:00:52+00:00

Kenneth W. Thompson, Director of the Miller Center from 1978-1998. He continued to head the Center’s Forum Program until 2004.

On April 12, 2013 the Miller Center celebrated the life of Kenneth W. Thompson, who headed the Miller Center from 1978-1998. As Governor Gerald Baliles, Director and CEO of the Miller Center, noted, “The Miller Center would not be what it is today without the inspiration and passion of Ken Thompson Ken initiated much of the work that continues to this day. Because of him, presidential history that might otherwise have been lost will be preserved for generations to come. Ken will be greatly missed, but his legacy will live on as we carry on what he started.” In this post, we highlight remarks from Gov. Baliles, Gov. Linwood Holton, Leonard Sandridge, Eugene Fife, Philip Zelikow, Shirley Burke and students delivered at the memorial service remembering the life and work of Professor Thompson.

During the memorial service, Gov. Baliles remarked:

Ken never found a satisfactory substitute for public service and public policy…He was one of the most influential in establishing the Center and three key programs. The first is the Forum Program, which he chaired until the age of 84. He also conducted the Center’s first Oral History, that of Jimmy Carter and his administration. It was the first in the post-Watergate presidency where scholars didn’t have taped recordings. Finally, he launched the Center’s National Commission. He organized eight such commissions on topics ranging from disability to the selection of federal judges. The National Commission has become a platform for the Miller Center to engage with the policy world.

Gov. Linwood Holton, Governor of Virginia from 1970 to 1974 and member of the Miller Center Governing Council:

It’s a sad occasion but it is wonderful to celebrate a life that has meant so much to many of us. Ken understood the purpose of the Miller Center. He understood that Mr. Miller wanted to be an assistant to the President of the United States to help make better decisions. Mr. Miller believed that we backed into the war in Vietnam and no one made a decision to do so. Mr. Miller wanted to cure this deficiency. One of Ken’s first accomplishments that made an impact on a national basis was The National Commission on Presidential Press Conferences. In 1981, the Miller Center made recommendations to make presidential press conferences more decent and orderly. President Reagan’s press secretary, Jim Brady, read the Center’s report and adopted the reports conclusions.

Leonard Sandridge, former Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at the University of Virginia:

I was impressed with the national leaders he knew and could call upon. But you would have to see it for yourself because he was not a name dropper.

Eugene V. Fife, a former partner at Goldman Sachs and a founding principal of Vawter Capital LLC and the chairman of the Miller Center Governing Council:

Ken’s smile, I don’t know how to describe it. There was a warmth about the man that came across.

When I was thinking about what I would say about Ken, the first word I came up with is warmth. He was a good, good guy.

The second is respect. Why is that the rolodex stayed so active? Why did they return his call? The core of that is that they respected the man. And his opinions mattered.

The third word I came up with is love. He obviously loved his family. He loved teaching and loved his students. He loved talking about the issues and striking a balance. He loved this Center, everything it stood for.

He had a wonderful gift of interrelationships with people.

Philip D. Zelikow, former Miller Center Director and Associate Dean for the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Virginia:

After World War II, Ken was like a lot of Americans who realized that they came into a whole new world. He was part of a generation that asked: How do I help my country figure out its place in the world? He became part of a founding generation of scholars in a field called International Relations. Ken Thompson became one of the giants in the field.

His second intellectual contribution was to create a unique center.

He also contributed to enriching community. The Forum Program is just one example in which he served both the university and the Charlottesville community. He also served the university. I’d see the unfailing graciousness in all of his dealings at the university and in his students.

I want to remember the day in which we dedicated the pavilion. We were all gathered and appreciated how extraordinary it was because it was a faculty member’s name on the building. The outpouring that day showed that his name deserved to be on edifice, not just in stone, but also in our hearts.

Shirley Burke, Ken’s long-time and long-suffering Executive Assistant:

I started working at the Miller Center in 1976. It was a few years after that that I became Mr. Thompson's secretary and his pencil sharpener. We didn’t have email those days, but he did kind of have that way of communicating. It was a pencil, an outbox and a notebox. We went through a lot of pencils. He would write everything on the pads. “Please clip this. Don’t fold. Save for the quarterly report.” He had a tablet for writing all his books, which I typed. We went through a lot of pencils. When I got more confident in my job, I decided to buy him a pencil sharpener. He didn’t get along with the pencil sharpener very well, so I went back to sharpening his pencils. Those were great days and I’m grateful I had the honor to work with him and be his pencil sharpener. Thank you, Mr. Thompson.

David, a former student of Mr. Thompson:

There are three facets of his character that I want to highlight. The first is his brilliance and eminence as a scholar. His conceptions of power, principle and practice were essential to the field of International Relations. Second, the sheer breadth of his sympathies and interests. He knew and helped to fund a wide array of scholars and from across the political spectrum. Finally, I would point to his sheer kindness and generosity. He may have been careful with the resources of the Center, but he practiced the utmost liberality and generosity with his students.

Stephen A. Douglas and His Legacy

2013-04-23T13:00:07+00:00

Hon. Stephen A. Douglas, Ill. Portrait by Matthew Brady, courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration, PD.

Today’s guest blog post is by Matthew Irvine, a 2012-2013 Miller Center Ambassador and first year student at the University of Virginia majoring in Computer Science.

Two hundred years ago today marks the birth of one of America’s most prominent political leaders. Though Stephen A. Douglas was never elected President of the United States, he tried his hardest to ascend to the position. In the process, he served as a member of the United States House of Representatives and the Senate, championing causes like westward expansion and popular sovereignty. Although his legacy is sometimes eclipsed by that of his Illinois political rival Abraham Lincoln, Douglas was one of the most influential and powerful politicians of his day.

Stephen A. Douglas’s legacy began on April 23, 1813 when he was born in Brandon, Vermont, to parents Stephen Arnold Douglass and Sarah Fisk. Before entering into politics, Douglas held a variety of jobs. He worked on the farm where he grew up until he turned 15, at which point he became a cabinetmaker’s apprentice. Quickly moving on, he relocated to New York, where he worked as a farmhand for three years. Yearning for a career in law but not wanting to spend the four years in school that New York required, Douglas ventured westward to the land of opportunity and self-made men and settled in Jacksonville, Illinois, where he quickly became a lawyer.

As a citizen of Illinois, Douglas involved himself in politics almost immediately. Only about a year after coming to the state, he was appointed as a state prosecutor. Over the years he worked his way up through the political ranks, holding such positions as state legislator, state supreme court justice, U.S. Representative, and, eventually, U.S. Senator. From his time as a young man to his tenure in the United States Senate, Douglas was a dedicated Jacksonian Democrat, believing in such principles as limited government, westward expansion, and popular sovereignty.

As a federal legislator, Douglas played a huge role in the pre-Civil War debate over the “peculiar institution” of slavery. When Douglas joined the Senate, the United States has just acquired vast new territory in the Mexican-American War, and faced the question of how to deal with slavery in the new land. Confronted with a Southern secessionist movement and the first national debate over slavery in decades, the freshman Senator worked closely with Henry Clay to broker the Compromise of 1950. With this compromise, Douglas was able to implement in New Mexico and Utah what remained a key position of his throughout his career: popular sovereignty. This was a policy that he advocated several years later in the Kansas-Nebraska Act, when he argued that citizens in Kansas and Nebraska should be able to choose for themselves whether to accept slavery or not. What Douglas saw as encouraging western settlement and removing the divisive issue of slavery from national politics, however, others saw as a blatant attempt to expand slavery.

Douglas is, perhaps, most remembered for his famous debates with Abraham Lincoln and his aspirations for the presidency. In his 1858 campaign to retain his Senate seat, Douglas faced a challenge from Republican Abraham Lincoln. The two agreed to a series of debates, one in each congressional district of Illinois. Given the state of national politics at the time, the debates naturally focused on the issue of slavery. Through the course of the debates, Douglas defended his support of the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act, speaking in favor of the idea of popular sovereignty. Lincoln, on the other hand, saw Douglas’s policies as nationalizing slavery rather than removing them from the national debate.

Although Lincoln failed to convince the Illinois legislature to elect him to the Senate over Douglas, it may have been Douglas who suffered the most from the debates. At a debate in Freeport, Illinois, Lincoln trapped Douglas by asking him how his theory of popular sovereignty could fit with the Supreme Court’s decision in Dred Scott, where it had ruled that the federal government could not exclude slavery from the territories. Douglas’s response established the Freeport Doctrine, which said that any territory could prevent slavery by failing to pass laws favorable to the institution. While Douglas had believed that popular sovereignty would be seen as a great compromise between pro-slavery and anti-slavery ideals, the effect of Lincoln’s trap was to make Douglas less appealing to Southern Democrats who supported slavery as well as to Northerners who took a strong anti-slavery stance. Douglas hoped that the compromise that won him his Senate seat in Illinois would win him the presidency in 1860, but it only served to ensure that neither those who supported slavery nor those who opposed it looked favorably upon him. Even though Douglas never ascended to the presidency, he still had a long and successful career as a powerful and influential Jacksonian Democrat.

Former Miller Center Fellow Beverly Gage: Unanswered Questions About Watergate

2013-04-22T17:27:11+00:00

President Nixon, with edited transcripts of Nixon White House Tape conversations during broadcast of his address to the Nation. Photo courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration. PD.

Former Miller Center Fellow and Yale History Professor Beverly Gage reviews Robert Redford’s new documentary, which aired on the Discovery Channel last night, All the President’s Men Revisited, for Slate.com. The documentary was created to coincide with the 40^th anniversary of Watergate. Gage argues that the film is “a reasonably adequate primer on Watergate mythology, and it’s certainly fun to watch. But it is also a missed opportunity for historical reflection—and one that, given the age of most Watergate participants, is unlikely to come around again.” For example, Redford fails to explore the implications of whether Mark Felt leaked information to Bob Woodward for his own purposes. As journalist Max Holland argues in his 2012 book, The Leak: Why Mark Felt Became Deep Throat, Felt did so in his own interests to win a “war of succession” then underway at the FBI following J. Edgar Hoover’s death.

Gage also notes that forty years later, there still big political questions left unresolved:

How did a Republican Party on the verge of collapse in 1974 surge back six years later to launch the Age of Reagan? How much of the scandal was really about Nixon and his paranoia, and how much was about a broader set of institutional and political rivalries? Did the reforms put in place after the scandal—on presidential power, on intelligence prerogatives—effectively constrain the executive branch? To what degree did Watergate, once seen as a great Democratic triumph, help to fuel a conservative anti-government backlash?

Redford’s film, according to Gage, does offer a few tantalizing thoughts about today’s fractious political scene. According to Gage:

Rachel Maddow argues, for instance, that Obama’s fondness for drones and secret intelligence operations owes much to Nixon’s “imperial presidency.” Bernstein himself suggests that the Watergate era may look shockingly good when compared to today’s bitter partisan politics. In 1974, he notes, Republicans and Democrats finally joined together to serve the public interest by ousting the president.

Read the full review on Slate here. And be sure to check out the Miller Center’s Presidential Recording Program collection of transcripts related to Watergate here.