Forethought: Before there was Jeremiah "God Damn" Wright cursing America, we had "Give 'Em Hell" Harry Truman cursing communists. Barack Obama's misunderstanding of his spiritual mentor may yet cost him his party's nomination for the presidency, but Douglas MacArthur's underestimating of his commander in chief cost him his command in Korea and a possible presidential run of his own. Truman may be an "accidental president" to some, but his decisiveness qualifies him as one of our best commanders in chief.



Lessons from Harry Truman
By George Will
Sunday, May 4, 2008

INDEPENDENCE, Mo. -- Business, meaning research by historians and nourishment for history hobbyists, is brisk at the Harry S Truman Library on this 60th anniversary of the Berlin Airlift, the desegregation of the armed services, recognition of the state of Israel and the improbable election of the president responsible for many momentous policies. The library is a place, and now is a time, to ponder the transformation Truman wrought in the presidency and the Constitution, and why that transformation should be debated before the next president is selected.

With a mere 15 million pages of documents, this library is minuscule: The Clinton Library in Little Rock has 77 million pages. Presidential power has grown exponentially in the six decades since Truman augmented the national security apparatus responsive to the president by creating the National Security Council and the CIA. He, however, was crucial to the magnification of the president's war powers.

A 1948 photograph shows Truman at a lectern delivering a campaign speech in Los Angeles. Seated near the lectern is the man who had introduced Truman, 37-year-old Ronald Reagan. Between Truman's and Reagan's presidencies, between the dawn and dusk of what John Kennedy called the Cold War's "long twilight struggle," Americans accepted extravagant -- or so the Founders would have thought -- assertions of presidential powers. These assertions have been made by presidents of both parties, but have been intensified by the current president in the context of "the long war" against terrorists.

At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, only one delegate (from ever-bellicose South Carolina, naturally) favored vesting presidents with an unfettered power to make war. Presidents, it was then thought, could respond on their own only to repel sudden attacks on the nation. "The Founders," says former Rep. David Skaggs, a Colorado Democrat, "counted on the competitive ambitions of the three branches to make checks and balances work." Instead, we have seen Congress' powers regarding war "migrate ignominiously to the executive."

A crucial event in the migration was Truman's decision to wage war in Korea, taken without Congress and never formally ratified by Congress, other than post facto by enabling appropriations, which are not an adequate substitute for the collaborative decision the Constitution's Framers anticipated for war-making. Since Korea, America has engaged in three major wars (Vietnam, Operation Desert Storm, Operation Iraqi Freedom) and many other exercises of military force, but Congress' constitutional powers relevant to war-making have atrophied from disuse. Both presidents Bush declared congressional assent unnecessary even while they were seeking it, in 1991 and 2002, respectively. Congress' passivity in the face of such constitutional impertinences has amounted to the silent repeal of the relevant constitutional provisions.

Because contemporary conservatism was born partly in reaction against two liberal presidents -- against FDR's New Deal and LBJ's Great Society -- conservatives, who used to fear concentrations of unchecked power, valued Congress as a bridle on strong chief executives. But, disoriented by their reverence for Reagan, and sedated by Republican victories in seven of the last 10 presidential elections, many conservatives have not just become comfortable with the idea of a strong president, they have embraced the theory of the "unitary executive."

This theory, refined during the Reagan administration, is that where the Constitution vests power in the executive, especially power over foreign affairs and war, the president, as chief executive, is rightfully immune to legislative abridgements of his autonomy. Judicial abridgements are another matter.

When in 1952 Truman, to forestall a strike, cited his "inherent" presidential powers during wartime to seize the steel mills, the Supreme Court rebuked him. In a letter here that he evidently never sent to Justice William Douglas, Truman said, "I don't see how a Court made up of so-called 'liberals' could do what that Court did to me." Attention, conservatives: Truman correctly identified a grandiose presidency with the theory and practice of liberalism.

It is but a brisk walk from the library, where Truman is buried, to the corner of Main and Maple Streets, where young Harry earned $3 a week cleaning bottles and mopping floors at Clinton's Drug Store. A few blocks away, a plaque marks where wagon trains formed for the Santa Fe, California and Oregon trails.

A lot started in this town, including, in a sense, an important facet of the modern presidency. That is an odd legacy for a man who is fondly remembered partly because he was, in all personal aspects, beguilingly free of pretense.

Barack Obama seemed puzzled. Angrily puzzled. The apostle of hope seemed flummoxed by the audacity of the question. At the April 16 Philadelphia debate, George Stephanopoulos, longtime aide to Democratic politicians, was asking about his longtime association with Weather Underground bomber William Ayers.

The Weather Underground attacked the Pentagon, the Capitol and other public buildings; Ayers was quoted in The New York Times on Sept. 11, 2001, as saying, "I don't regret setting bombs; I feel we didn't do enough."

It was at Ayers' house that Obama's state Senate candidacy was launched in 1995; Obama continued to serve on a nonprofit board with Ayers after the Times article appeared.

Obamaites live-blogging the debate were outraged. The press is not supposed to ask such questions. They are supposed to invite the candidates to expatiate on how generous their health care plans are. Or to allow them to proclaim that "we are the change that we are seeking." Or to once again bash George W. Bush.

There was some of that in this debate. But Obama was asked about his association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his remarks about wearing an American flag lapel pin, his comment that "bitter" small town Pennsylvanians "cling to guns and religion" and his "friendly" relations -- "friendly" is his campaign adviser David Axelrod's word -- with William Ayers.

Did Obama expect that this would never come up in the campaign? He certainly gave that impression. The normally poised candidate looked irritated and weary. "This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English" -- actually, it's education -- "in Chicago, who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis. And the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn't make much sense, George."

He compared Ayers to Sen. Tom Coburn, who has advocated the death penalty for abortionists. But of course Coburn has never advocated bombing their houses or clinics.

"A guy who lives in my neighborhood." Debates are held not just to learn the details of the candidates' health care plans -- which given the complexity of the issue will probably be considerably altered if they are ever actually put on the table -- but also to learn who the candidates are. And that includes learning about which guys who live in their neighborhood they chose to befriend. About Obama almost all Americans knew next to nothing when he got up on the podium of the 2004 Democratic National Convention and instantly made himself presidential candidate material.

His gracefully written autobiographical "Dreams From My Father" -- we could learn, if we could get through all 464 pages -- is a story not of transcending racial barriers but of developing a black and African identity.

The presidency is a uniquely personal office, and each incumbent puts his individual stamp on it. Obama's choice to join Rev. Jeremiah Wright's church and his choice to befriend William Ayers were not those most Americans would make, and Hillary Clinton was quick to declare, perhaps opportunistically, they were not choices she would have made.

This doesn't mean that Obama is responsible for Wright's outrageous statements or for Ayers' criminal acts (the charges against him were dropped because of government misconduct). But Obama's choices to associate with Wright and Ayers tend to undercut his appealing message -- very appealing after 15 years of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush -- that we must strive to overcome the racial and cultural and ideological divisions which have dominated our politics They are something that voters are entitled to weigh as they make their decisions.

Obama fans are upset that ABC News' Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson broke the unwritten rule that you are not supposed to ask Democratic candidates about these things. Associations with unrepentant radicals and comments made to contributors at a San Francisco fund-raiser in a billionaire's mansion are supposed to be kept indoors. Only the face that the candidate wants to place before the public should be seen.

Beliefs that most activist liberals share should be kept under wraps if they are unpopular with most of the voting public. That is how mainstream media have operated for the last generation or more. But not at Philadelphia's Constitution Center on April 16. The rules had changed. And Barack Obama was not well prepared.

Michael Barone is a senior writer with U.S. News & World Report and the principal co-author of The Almanac of American Politics, published by National Journal every two years. He is also author of Our Country: The Shaping of America from Roosevelt to Reagan, The New Americans: How the Melting Pot Can Work Again, the just-released Hard America, Soft America: Competition vs. Coddling and the Competition for the Nation's Future. (Note: This article borrowed from Townhall.com)