Conflict and Crisis, by Robert J. Donovan
Kirkendall, Richard
BOOKS IN REVIEW - "Conflict and Crisis, by Robert J. Donovan" pretty much the same people, so that for them China is reduced to the "cozy proximity of a small-town Rotary Club." Even one's servants are provided by the service section of the Ministry of Foreign...
...scholars have become more cautious, and even unfavorable...
...They assume that our society and its institutions would function successfully once again if only a good American of the Truman type would come to the front...
...In his approach to the Maoist regime, Schell is much more positive than Leys...
...The description of Chou En-lai's state banquets is priceless...
...He had permitted the Communists to gain control of Eastern Europe and China, and he had failed to prevent—and then to end—the Korean war...
...CI ENCOMIUMS FOR CALIFANO (continued from page 4) he...
...Carter assumes that such a man has emerged, but of course so did Ford...
...This is a charge that ought to be laid to rest once and for all, and its veracity is not too difficult to establish...
...and his interpretation of the man from IndepenInstitute on Public Policy and Private Enterprise Grove City College Grove City, Pennsylvania June 11-17, 1978 _ `-.—;saistniiMINEENSEn J. Howard Pew Fine Arts Center Site 011978 Institute HANS F. SENNHOLZ Internationally-known free market economist, author and lecturer Professor, Grove City College R. EMMETT TYRRELL, JR...
...In the meantime, overall interpretations of the Truman period will continue to rest upon untested assumptions...
...In so doing he made some mention of the economy and civil rights, but he emphasized foreign affairs, especially the decision to intervene in Korea...
...So, back to the ghetto to watch old Fernandel films at the French Embassy...
...and Joe found a political philosophy based on harum-scarum much to his liking...
...The second will be explored in a second volume...
...In bidding farewell, Truman challenged this appraisal, insisting that he had been unusually successful...
...His past does not trouble him...
...I confess I am not sure...
...Joe was quick to grasp the change Kennedy was bringing about...
...I have it on good authority that the gentle Cy Vance would scramble behind his chair whenever a caravan arrived from Joe's office...
...And I wager that the acrobats are the product of traditional Chinese training passed down from generation to generation like the "families" of Noh and Kabuki actors in Japan...
...Is he a bit naive in this...
...Donovan uses well over 400 pages and covers only the first term...
...He maintained that he had learned the lessons of history and avoided the mistakes of the past, and thus had saved mankind from World War III, at least for the time being...
...In the Kennedy administration he served as a button-down factotum, first for a Mr...
...Like Leys, he is frustrated in his attempts to break through the official facade and to establish meaningful relationships with individual Chinese...
...But in fact they cannot be dealt with effectively until the Russians are persuaded to open up their archives...
...his explanation of Truman's failures in domestic affairs stresses the difficulties Truman faced, including the power of the conservative coalition in Congress...
...This has always been his strong suit...
...Or is Leys unduly cynical...
...I have a vivid image of him merrily trundling around the halls of government, gathering bushel baskets of incomprehensible facts and dubious analyses, pasting them down and tying them together with portentous and hopelessly wrongheaded conclusions, then ordering some twitching ninety-pound secretary to lug them off to his already sorely pressed boss...
...AS Name Address City State Zip L -1 1 June will be a perfect time to hear and question recognized defenders of ordered liberty and free markets...
...Of course his language is not always as grandiloquent as that of JFK, but it has plenty of noble exhortations, spiced withnonce values like compassion and progress...
...McNamara was more agreeable to such pothering and Johnson seems to have positively envied it—though on this the historians are in, dispute...
...In explaining his actions some revisionists stressed his unfortunate personality, while others saw him as little more than the puppet of an imperialistic capitalism...
...Moreover, let us remember that even the elegant...
...He implied that he had 34 The American Spectator March 1978 been wiser and more successful than Roosevelt or Hoover, and that his successor must continue the Truman policies...
...According to the new line, Truman was an intellectual incompetent—politically weak at home, aggressive abroad...
...Can a state of things that has existed for more than 600 years be labelled by any stretch of the imagination an "aberration" ? Only an Arnold Toynbee could sympathize, with such a sweeping dictum...
...Although he nowhere brags about it, it is obvious that he could communicate adequately with all of the Chinese people he met, even though they might talk with, say, the heavy accent of a Shansi peasant...
...While eager to see everything good that he can find, he nonetheless frequently complains about the boring "B.I.' s" (Brief Introductions) read or spoken by rote wherever his group was allowed to visit...
...Give the clowns what dazzles them...
...Donovan has explored the full range of writings by historians on the Truman period, and has profitted from recent openings in the Truman Library...
...By the late 1960s, however, the liberal interpretation was being challenged vigorously from the left...
...Donovan's writing is at its best in describing scenes and people,nearly all of whom he saw in action as a reporter for the New York Herald-Tribune...
...There is that absurd earnestness with which government's career bureaucrats pursue hopeless and often contradictory policies...
...Some went so far as to allege that he unscrupulously claimed authorship of memos actually written by subordinates...
...Politics was already becoming America's safest route to riches and fun, and political influence for the non-elected and probably non-electable could be secured by showering one's boss with memos, ramrodding whatever idiotic policy is presumed to assuage the crisis of the moment, and solemnly intoning whatever socially approved bromides suddenly become fashionable amongst the powerful...
...He came home to work for his doctorate at the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California in Berkeley...
...A quarter century ago most Americans had a negative opinion, one that historians soon attempted to correct...
...Perhaps he set them to doing those pointless studies of mass transit...
...At times he appears to attribute to them all the credit for the brilliant cultural achievements of China's past...
...Nowadays in America this is an essential quality for greatness...
...He is neither a conservative nor a liberal...
...A revisionist historiography had emerged that emphasized the power and influence of capitalism and capitalists in American history, and blamed the United States rather than Russia for the Cold War...
...Doubting that he—that anyone—could have accomplished much more either at home or abroad, these historians regarded him as a "great," or at least "near great," president...
...This enthusiasm for Truman is the result of a deep and pervasive leadership crisis that has been taking shape for a decade and is now one of the most important features of our politics...
...Then too I can see him personally rewriting regulatory codes, making them even more incomprehensible and perplexing to bureaucrats and the regu36 The American Spectator March 1978...
...In the years to come behemoth bureaucracies would be shelved in gigantic and hideous buildings—every one looking like a fortress designed by Le Corbusier...
...Schell is less cynical than Leys, however, in explaining the motives of those who thus frustrate the curiosity of western visitors...
...Or would you prefer the British Embassy and Peter Sellers...
...Henry Fairlie has pointed out that the Kennedys "could not sit still...
...and his admirers in and out of the White House tend to emphasize his personality, above all his moral qualities, rather than his decisions and policies...
...Unlike the revisionists, Donovan does not attach primary importance to the military or economic influences on American foreign policy, although he recognizes they played a part: In holding that the United States should offer international leadership, Truman was not simply in step with the military but was aligned with the views of formidable elements in big business, in investment houses, in banks, in the large law firms, in the universities, in the press, in labor, in Congress, and in the government bureaucracies....Differences might arise on details, but on the main questions of a dominant American role, moral leadership, support of capitalist interests, and stopping Soviet expansion Truman stood at the heart of a broad and powerful consensus...
...Doubtless he entertained himself with mischievous subterfuges just to make their work grimmer and more idiotic...
...To be sure he was never ignored, but what is striking today is that most people express admiration for him...
...Secondly, according to Leys, all of Chinese history since the founding of the Ming dynasty has been one long aberration leading the "most civilizedpeople on earth" into the "rut" of Maoism...
...he is a public servant who chooses his publics wisely...
...He attributes the difficulties not to the deliberate machinations of a totalitarian regime, or to the frightened reactions of aspiring bureaucrats, but to an underlying cultural difference that orients the Chinese to collectivist attitudes and makes them quite uncurious about western ways and western preoccupations...
...The contrast between this book and what previously was the best effort by a journalist to survey the subject is striking...
...What did the Russians hope to achieve...
...but it had themisfortune to be led—or rather misled—by Truman in a crucial period...
...Yet after reading Leys I could not help but reflect upon the atypical nature of these things in China today...
...What would they have accomplished if Truman had behaved differently...
...In fact he is famous for joshing it up with reporters, pols, and anyone else not directly subordinate to him...
...In The Truman Presidency, published in 1966, Cabell Phillips covered the entire period from 1945 to 1953 in less than 400 pages...
...Also, unlike the revisionists, Donovan emphasizes continuity when examining the switch from Roosevelt to Truman, does not blame Truman for the Cold War (although he believes partial fault lay with the United States), and does not criticize him for deciding to use the bomb and not to make a reconstruction loan to Russia...
...In 1952, most Americans regarded Truman as a failure...
...From the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s, liberal historiography—the dominant historiography of the time—tended to support Truman's self-estimate...
...Besides, it is great fun to read...
...Above all, Donovan is impressed by the contrast between what was expected (and what he believes should have been expected) and what Truman accomplished—and he refuses to give all credit for success to advisors and subordinates...
...It would seem that most Americans now yearn for an honest man of a traditional sort—even more than for an effective man —and they see Truman as the man of their dreams...
...Others insist that Johnson admired the prolific young memoist, fending off any criticism of him with statements like: "Don't you criticize Califano...
...During his great years he has presciently sensed the changing moods and has generally latched on to those about to change these moods...
...Is not the "barefoot doctor," rather than the skilled brain surgeon, the typical medical figure in China...
...How powerful were they...
...It is the kind of joke Joe enjoys best: putting to his own purposes the foolishness of the hour...
...First, Leys is ambiguous and ambivalent about the nature of the Chinese "masses...
...BOOK REVIEW Conflict and Crisis: The Presidency of Harry S. Truman, 1945-1948 Robert J. Donovan / W.W...
...Cy Vance and then for Mr...
...Norton / $14.95 Richard Kirkendall veryone, it seems, now has an opinion Ea on Harry Truman' s quality as president...
...after all, he had a hand in the establishment of the Department of Transportation...
...And questions to officials about personal matters like sex and marriage are deflected, answered in implausible ways, or ignored altogether...
...He has become a national hero...
...The group not only had one of the standard two-week tours of Peking, Yenan, Sian, Shaoshan (Mao's birthplace), and Shanghai, but also was permitted to spend time working in a Shanghai factory and in the fields of the model Tachai Brigade in Shansi...
...Soon Washington would be transformed from a drowsy Southern city of boozy pols into a world capital, the seat of the most immense government on the planet...
...Yet elsewhere he endorses Lu Hsiin' s pessimistic dictum about the slave-like character of the Chinese people...
...A t the age of 35, Orville Schell visited China in 1975 in a party of twenty Americans varying in age from 18 to 60...
...The visit was arranged through the Hinton family of the Putney School in Vermont, a family regarded by the rulers of the PRC as enthusiastic and reliable friends...
...The chief shortcoming of this new book is its lack of a controlling theme...
...Donovan's list of Truman's accomplishments resembles Truman's own, as well as that of the liberal scholars of more than a decade ago...
...After graduating from Harvard, he spent several years in the Far East mastering Chinese...
...Donovan presents a predominantly positive appraisal of Truman, while endorsing some of the usual criticisms: such as that Truman contributed to the rise of irrational anti-Communism, and that 'in the Truman years can be found sources oflater CIA misdeeds...
...No about-face has been beyond his God-given talents...
...Joe is living proof that one of Washington's legendary "workaholics" can be cheerful...
...Yet even in these dreary hours he must have enjoyed himself...
...But I do detect a couple of major flaws, even if we play by the author's ground rules...
...and Truman's first campaign tour in 1948...
...There's never been a man around me who wrote so many memos...
...Phillips used the scholarly literature in a highly selective way, ignoring the revisionism that was already emerging, and complained bitterly about the inadequacies of the materials available to him in the Truman Library...
...Joe keeps his face to the horizon...
...Joe became renowned for tireless activity and thousands (perhaps hundreds of thousands) of memos...
...These are the showpieces reserved for foreigners...
...His critics assumed that the United States could be a successful nation and accomplish all that it desired, if only it were led by a great man...
...At first his policy responsibilities were tedious matters like supervising the Army Corps of Engineers Civil Works Program and the water-pollution-control regulations...
...Last year, men and women from 17 states with varied occupational backgrounds attended the stimulating six-day Institute...
...He is ready to be impressed by the accomplishments of the People's Republic, and is indeed impressed on more than one occasion: for instance, his excited and vividreport of brain surgery (with the use of acupuncture to anesthetize the patient) in Shanghai, or his account of the incredible grace and skill of professional acrobats...
...Donovan does not address these questions and actually is not very clear about his assumptions here...
...Schell was well qualified to get the most out of a limited and carefully controlled experience...
...Donovan does not, however, debate with the scholars about their interpretations...
...As for the speeches: "...most of the time the waters of governmental eloquence flow smoothly and blandly, bearing their cargo of commonplaces down the canals of predictability...
...These were important components of the Kennedy style...
...At any rate, I can well imagine the surreptitious amusement Joe derived from advancing himselfthrough governmental ranks by creating ever more onerous labor for his bosses...
...Yearning for an effective president, they considered him to be weak and indecisive...
...Truman's relationship with Byrnes, Marshall, and Acheson...
...As the organization into a large number of small chapters suggests, Donovan is fascinated with the details of the story, and he has gathered together a vast amount of information...
...Finally, while claiming to be simply painting a few shadows, Leys likes the company of George Orwell and Lu Hsim (he quotes both of them frequently) and appears to harbor the ambition of becoming the third member of a great prophetic trinity...
...JFK was not incapable of blurting out such bilge as "The American cow is the 'foster mother' of the human race, and a great asset to the nation"—the historic day was February 27, 1960, and the site, Bloom, Wisconsin...
...Seating arrangements are the consequence of "some complex algebra that would have fascinated the Duc de St...
...If they venture to taste the delights of Peking "culture," they find Madame Mao's six Revolutionary Model operas, a few lousy movies, and some mediocre restaurants...
...Now, Truman has become a hero to the people, while Richard Kirkendall is professor of history at Indiana University and editor of The Truman Period as a Research Field...
...Although the revisionists have exertedsome influence in the historical profession and have even reached beyond it, most Americans, including our most recent presidents, reject this view of Harry Truman...
...While noting his defects, the liberal historians emphasized his accomplishments, arguing that Truman had exercised, enlarged, and preserved the powers of the presidency, attacked Jim Crow, and made major foreign-policy decisions with great and valuable consequences...
...Certainly, the present-day enthusiasm for Truman is to some extent unwarranted, but Robert J. Donovan's Conflict and Crisis does provide a realistic and reliable basis for viewing Truman as a successful president...
...Some say the truckloads of memos sent up for LBJ ' s nocturnal reading made him groan...
...he sticks close to his sources and does not, in the fashion of some historians of the period, supply a bold thesis to which the details are subordinated...
...Whenever he seems about to do so, his official guide and interpreter intervenes to foil the move...
...Sad to say, not everyone appreciated the rising hustler...
...Robert S. McNamara, the theorist...
...On the other hand, permanent foreign residents, such as embassy staffs, are consigned to their "ghettos" in Peking...
...At many points he adds to our knowledge and understanding of episodes and people and relations among them, for instance: the Palestine issue...
...Phillips relied chiefly on interviews for his contributions, but Donovan conducted many more and was also able to draw heavily on a rich collection of oral histories which have become available in the past decade...
...Indeed, Schell is very much aware of this situation...
...Editor-in Chief, The American Spectator JOHN C. MOORHOUSE Labor economist, author, Wake Forest University RUSSELL KIRK Prolific writer, Editor, The University Bookman Visiting Professor, Hillsdale College ROBERT M. BLEIBERG Editor, Barron's National Business & Financial Weekly L. JOHN VAN TIL Historian, commentator on public policy, Professor, Grove City College REED LARSON President, National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation JOHN A. SPARKS Lawyer, economist, Professor, Grove City College CHARLES S. MACKENZIE Scholar, theologian, President, Grove City College Mail Coupon To: Dr...
...Even one's servants are provided by the service section of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs...
...John A. Sparks, Director Institute on Public Policy and Private Enterprise Grove City College Grove City, PA 16127 (412)458-6600 Please send brochure, application, & scholarship information about Institute on Public Policy and Private Enterprise...
...The American Spectator March 1978 35 dence denies that Truman was swayed only by political considerations and did not have commitments to liberal and humanitarian principles...
...At any rate, Leys and Schell complement each other in interesting ways, and both are well worth reading...
...This anecdote is useful, revealing as it does the Washington exaltês' high esteem for that bizarre frenzy that they take to be an acceptable simulacrum for work, and suggesting as it does Joe's mixed reviews...
...The advance of research and interpretation enables us to see now that the crucial questions about Truman concerned Russia...
...Given Leys' own purpose, I cannot fault this book for its one-sidedness...
...Joe's prose style is outstanding, even for a Washington operator, and the distinguishing mark that gives it away every time is that some variation of the word "enhance" appears on every third page...
...Send coupon for brochure, application and scholarship information today...
...The grandchild of an immigrant fruitmonger, Joe bounced about the hard surfaces of Brooklyn, graduated from Holy Cross, and entered Harvard Law School from which he emerged magna cum laude after honing his legalese at the Harvard Law Review...
...Simon....During lulls there is music: a band from the People's Liberation Army plays at regular intervals, like a well-oiled music box, from its vast repertory of about a dozen tunes...
Vol. 11 • March 1978 • No. 5
