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| Was there ever a more experienced candidate for the presidency than James Madison? He had drafted the Constitution and written most of the Federalist Papers and had served as secretary of state in Thomas Jefferson's cabinet. Yet he was not a successful president. He split the country over the War of 1812 -- New Englanders called it "Mr. Madison's war." He and his wife had to flee Washington to escape the British forces, who then set fire to the White House. His war was the first war that this country ever lost, despite the pretense that Andrew Jackson's victory at New Orleans after the peace treaty had been signed had reversed the defeat. | ||||
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Consider also general Ulysses S. Grant. He had led the Union armies to victory in the Civil War and was a national hero. What better experience to lead the country through the mess of Reconstruction? Naturally the electorate swarmed to cast its votes for him, forgetting that he defeated the Confederacy less by strategic brilliance than by brute and bloody strength. He was an honest and decent man, but his military style was not suitable for the postwar corruption in Washington. But he had experience. Then there was Woodrow Wilson, a brilliant scholar, an able and successful university president and governor of New Jersey. After the end of World War I, he became an international folk hero, but he was outmaneuvered at the peace conference by Lloyd George and Clemenceau and then by Henry Cabot Lodge on the issue of the League of Nations. He had all the moves, it seems, to have been a great president but he lacked the flexibility and the instincts to be, however briefly, the leader of the Free World. His failures made the renewal of that war 25 years later almost inevitable. |
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Let us not leave off this list Herbert Hoover. He rose to national fame as a man who could get things done, who could clear away obstacles and respond promptly and effectively to crisis -- like the threat of starvation in Europe during and after the war. He served as secretary of commerce in two administrations and headed the nation's response to the levee break of the Mississippi River in 1927, the functional equivalent of Hurricane Katrina. He was an able promoter of his own public image as a man equal to any task. Yet he was paralyzed by the Great Depression, in great part because he thought that self-reliance and self-help were the answers to all economic problems. Then there is the man who was a
two-time governor of a major state and whose father was a president. What
better experience for a future president? And indeed a future commander in
chief? In fact he made a mess in that role -- which he has expanded
far beyond its traditional definition. He plunged the country into a long
war with false arguments, exploited the national rage at terrorists, did not
commit enough troops to the invasion, appointed inept administrators for
occupation, and has not been able to devise an effective exit strategy.
Moreover he has become the inkblot for hatred of America all over the world.
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 A Stupid, Unjust, And Criminal War: Iraq 2001-2007 Father Greeley calls to task those who justified, planned and executed the war and reminds us that God weeps at the destruction of war, whether lives lost are ‘ours’ or ‘theirs.’  Order
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