Friday, June 9, 2017

Do we even effectively have a President?


Again no no -- no reference to current controversies.  The time is July 1961; the speaker is Dean Acheson, President Truman’s Secretary of State, and a member of JFK’s executive committee during the Berlin crisis:

Acheson reacted to mention of Kennedy’s name by saying: “Gentlemen, you might as well face it.  This nation is without leadership."
-- Richard Reeves, President Kennedy:  Profile of Power (1993), p.  196

(This precedent is also relevant to current gossip about “sniping at the President from within his own Administration".)


And, I.F. Stone, writing 1 Sept 1958,  during Eisenhower’s second term:

It is tragic that  just when another irrepressible crisis looms ahead  there should be such a nobody in the White House.

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