to repudiate
Yalta, Marshall Plan, ties with
UN and NATO

“… the first issues that were going to come up in the Eighty-third Congress would be foreign policy issues, and in foreign policy the dominant Republicans in Congress (and in particular in the Senate, which would, because of its treaty-approving power, be the focus of foreign policy debate) were not Eisenhower’s natural allies but his natural enemies.

It was the support of the eastern, internationalist wing of the party that had given Ike the presidential nomination over Taft, but the Taft wing consisted mostly of Republicans from the Midwest, bedrock of isolationism.

The Ohioan’s midwestern allies — Jenner, Bourke Hickenlooper, Welker, Ferguson, Molly Malone — had yearned for years to dismantle the Roosevelt and Truman policies that the liberals thought were so wonderful.

Now, they felt, their time had come at last.

They would, Johnson was certain, move at once to repudiate Yalta, slash away at the Marshall Plan, and loosen or sever America’s ties with the United Nations and with NATO.

But Eisenhower was not merely a supporter of NATO; he had been commander of NATO.

Says George Reedy, who was down on the ranch with Johnson and was familiar with his thinking, Eisenhower “had actually spent most of… the preceding twenty or thirty years in virtual support of the foreign policies of Roosevelt and of Truman.

The Republicans … under Taft were opposed to that policy, [so] he and the congressional Republicans were just bound to be at loggerheads.”

All the Democrats had to do was “take advantage” of the situation.

Isolationism was back on Capitol Hill, and it was back strong. Journalists who remembered the America First Committee filling the Senate galleries in 1940 and 1941 saw what Richard Rovere called a “resurgent isolationism” in the way the galleries were filled in 1953 when Joe McCarthy was scheduled to speak.

The thunderclap of Pearl Harbor may have demolished in an instant the arguments of the Borahs and Nyes, the thunderclap of Hiroshima may have made it even clearer that in an age of nuclear weapons and modern air forces, the oceans were no longer moats; but those thunderclaps seem to have been heard only faintly in Senate Republican councils, in which the views of quite a sizable bloc (including, of course, the Republican leaders, the defiantly isolationist Taft and the suavely isolationist Bridges) sometimes seemed to resemble the views of the Republican senators who had helped Henry Cabot Lodge Sr. defeat the Treaty of Versailles.

From Master Of The Senate: The Years Of Lyndon Johnson by Robert A. Caro (Random House: New York, 2002).

And of course, Mr. Caro is writing about events in 1952.

The phrase that rang my bell?

Now, they felt, their time had come at last.

I remember a chat in the early 2000’s about George W. Bush and the feller I was chatting with said something along the lines of “We thought we had our guy in there and he is such a disappointment.”

He was one of those fellers who felt the United States had no business, no defined role in any world affair – just stay home and take care of us.

That feller felt, their time had come at last.

They got behind George H.W. Bush.

Now, they felt, their time had come at last.

And H.W. Bush led the coalition of world powers against Saddam Hussein and watch the Soviet Union dissappear.

They got behind Ronald Reagan.

Now, they felt, their time had come at last.

And Reagan led the coalition of world powers to strengthen NATO and call on the Soviets to tear down that wall.

They got behind Richard Nixon.

Now, they felt, their time had come at last.

And Nixon stunned the coalition of world powers by establishing relations with the Peoples Republic of China.

And they got behind Ike.

Now, they felt, their time had come at last.

And, as Mr. Caro writes, “But Eisenhower was not merely a supporter of NATO; he had been commander of NATO …  Eisenhower “had actually spent most of… the preceding twenty or thirty years in virtual support of the foreign policies of Roosevelt and of Truman. Eisenhower ‘had actually spent most of… the preceding twenty or thirty years in virtual support of the foreign policies of Roosevelt and of Truman.“”

Prior to Ike were the years of Franklin Roosevelt.

The man who had been on office so, a good part of America thought his first name was President.

The man who was elected President 5 times but the last time he was elected, it was Harry Truman’s name on the ballet.

There is a strong school of political science that feels Truman’s surprise reelection was just that, the 5th time FDR won.

There was a joke that after FDR died, a Republican said to the Democrat … Who are going to vote for now? The Democrat replies, We’ll dig some one up … NO NO PLEASE.

Prior to FDR you have the 12 years of Harding, Coolidge and Hoover that led to that blip in history known as The Great Depression.

Good name though there was nothing great about it.

And before those three guys you have Woodrow Wilson.

When they said, their time had come at the last, they were thinking back to the time when the views of the Republican senators who … helped Henry Cabot Lodge Sr. defeat the Treaty of Versailles.

Defeat the Treaty of Versailles and Woodrow Wilson.

There was no winner in World War 1.

The world at war decided it was time to call it quits, arranged an armistice on Nov. 11th, 1918 and agreed to meet and work out a treaty to settle the game.

President Wilson showed up with 14 points for a peace plan that caused French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau to famously remark, “Even God only had 10.”

One of those points, which was accepted by other nations involved was the formation of the League of Nations where problems of international importance could be settled and, maybe, future wars avoided.

President Wilson brought the treaty to the United States Senate, the body that had to approve all treaties by a 2/3 vote.

Back then the United States Senate took its role as a part of the Government of The United States seriously.

That and the fact that that 2/3 vote meant that for anything to pass, you had to get votes from both sides.

It came close in a vote several times, but the Republican party controlled the Senate and every effort was made to reject the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations.

As a point of trivia, the United States of American and the German Empire did not official end World War 1 until August 21, 1921.

Another point of trivia is that in the election of 1918, the Republican Party won control of the Senate by 1 vote.

Had one seat in 1918 gone Democratic, the vote would have been tied and the Vice President would break the tie giving Democrats control on the Senate and the Senate Foreign Policy Committee.

That year Henry Ford of Ford Motor Company fame and supported of Woodrow Wilson ran for Senate in the State of Michigan.

He entered BOTH the Republican and Democratic Primaries (which was allowed back then) and had he won the primaries he would have be awarded the Senate Seat.

Ford lost the Republican primary and ran as a Democrat and lost the general election by 8,000 votes out of 430,000 votes cast.

Michigan sent Republican Truman Handy Newberry, former Secretary of the Navy to the Senate.

Republican’s organized the Senate by virtue of the 8,000 Michiganders who voted against Henry Ford and the League of Nations was formed without the United States.

The league clearly operated less effectively than it might have. Standing apart from the league also made it easier for the United States to turn inward over the next two decades and to view growing world crises as someone else’s problem. After Pearl Harbor, many Americans concluded that Wilson had been right—fueling support for what became the United Nations.

And here we are today.

Now, they felt, their time had come at last.

There IS nothing new under the sun, is there?