The Dangerous First Year: National Security at the Start of a New Presidency

By William I Hitchcock and Melvyn P. Leffler

"You’ve got to give it all you can that first year.... You’ve got just one year when they treat you right, and before they start worrying about themselves.... So, you’ve got one year."--Lyndon B. Johnson, January 1965

In an increasingly polarized political environment, the first year of the new president’s term will be especially challenging. With a fresh mandate, however, the first year also offers opportunities that may never come again. The First Year Project is a fascinating initiative by the Miller Center of the University of Virginia that brings together top scholars on the American presidency and experienced officials to explore the first twelve months of past administrations, and draw practical lessons from that history, as we prepare to inaugurate a new president in January 2017.

This project is the basis for a new series of digital shorts published as Miller Center Studies on the Presidency. Addressing the theme of national security, this debut volume examines the first-year experiences of five previous administrations, including those of John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. Presented as specially priced collections published exclusively in an ebook format, these timely examinations recognize the experiences of past presidents as an invaluable resource that can edify and instruct the incoming president.

Contributors: Hal Brands, Duke University * Jeffery Engel, Southern Methodist University * Michèle Flournoy, Center for a New American Security * Melvyn P. Leffler, University of Virginia * Marc Selverstone, University of Virginia * Jeremi Suri, University of Texas at Austin * Philip Zelikow, University of Virginia

Miller Center Studies on the Presidency

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Virginia Press
• Release date: Oct 28, 2016
• ISBN: 9780813939605

Book preview

cover.jpg

MILLER

CENTER

studies on the

presidency

marc j. selverstone, editor

Miller Center Studies on the Presidency

is a series of original works that draw

on the Miller Center’s scholarly

programs to shed light on the American

presidency past and present.

the first year project

The Dangerous First Year

National Security at the Start of a New Presidency

Edited by

William I. Hitchcock and Melvyn P. Leffler

University of Virginia Press

Charlottesville and London

Contents

Introduction

William I. Hitchcock

Epic Misadventure: John F. Kennedy’s First Year Foreign Policy Stumbles Taught Hard-Earned Lessons

Marc J. Selverstone

The Vision Thing: Ronald Reagan Had a Plan to Win the Cold War, but He Lacked the Right Team

Hal Brands

Hippocratic Diplomacy: George H. W. Bush Let Events Go His Way

Jeffrey A. Engel

It’s Not Just the Economy, Stupid: Bill Clinton’s Distracted First Year Foreign Policy

Jeremi Suri

Trust but Clarify: George W. Bush’s National Security Team Was Beset with Rivalries

Melvyn P. Leffler

Smaller but Sharper: Shrink the White House Staff to Craft Focused National Security Policies

Philip Zelikow

Best Practices: Nine Lessons for Navigating National Security

Michèle A. Flournoy

Contributors

Introduction

William I. Hitchcock

Every president faces national security crises. They come in many forms: attacks on the homeland, foreign wars, global economic upheavals, nuclear proliferation, terrorism, and many others. These are the daily problems that cross the president’s desk.

Yet when such crises occur in the first months of a new administration—and they will—the presidential team is often unprepared to handle them. The new chief executive may lack experience in the job. The crises may pose unfamiliar and complex new problems. Or such foreign policy problems may be unwelcome distractions from other priorities on the domestic policy agenda. For all of these reasons, foreign policy crises in the first year of a new president’s term are especially difficult situations to navigate.

The essays in this short volume are drawn from First Year 2017, a research project conducted by the Miller Center at the University of Virginia. The First Year Project aims to provide historical background and practical expertise on the most important issues facing any incoming presidential administration. This group of essays shines a bright light on the kinds of problems that five previous presidents—John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush—faced in their first years. And they offer some crucial insight into and advice on how best to prepare for such crises when they come.

What common themes run through the essays, and what common mistakes do they reveal? As we show here, new presidents tend to rely for foreign policy advice on staff from the election campaign or other party loyalists and fail to surround themselves with the best and most experienced experts. They tend to consider the ongoing policies of the previous administration as flawed, rather than evaluating them on the merits. They tend to assume that political victory at the ballot box will translate into political capital overseas, and therefore adopt a robust and confrontational tone in world affairs that proves counterproductive. They often fail to see that foreign policy crises will shape their presidency, and prefer to concentrate on domestic initiatives that seem more pressing to their constituents.

While every presidency differs in the nature of the crises confronting the country, we found presidents often face many of the same management and leadership problems when dealing with national security crises in their first year. These problems can be summarized by five key words: goals, staff, information, focus, and restraint.

Goals

Presidents must know before they enter the Oval Office what they want to accomplish in foreign policy and must communicate those goals effectively to the bureaucracy and to the public.

Our project shows that perhaps the best at this was the great communicator, Ronald Reagan. What did he want to do? To end the Cold War, and maybe eliminate nuclear weapons. At the time, his advisers thought that goal unrealistic. Reagan didn’t. He stuck with his broad ambitions, with, of course, dramatic results.

By contrast, Bill Clinton was not very good at communicating what he wanted to achieve in foreign policy. He used inflated rhetoric about engaging civil society but provided few specifics, and did not think about foreign policy much at all before he took office. His presidency suffered for it.

Why does this matter? It matters because in the first months, a new president will be confronted by many crises, both domestic and foreign, and will tend to overreact, jumping on the first crisis that appears and seeing it as a test of his or her skill. But this can lead to trouble and confusion, and draw the president away from his or her main goals.

Staff

Probably the hardest task for a new president is making the transition from the excitement of the campaign to the work of governing.

During the campaign, the candidate listens to political advisers and campaign staffers. But after the election, a new expert team must be created. Who will be the president’s point person on foreign affairs? Will that person be a member of the inner circle and have the president’s ear? Will he or she share the president’s goals?

A lot of good presidents handle the staff issue badly in the first year.

John Kennedy appointed Dean Rusk secretary of state. Rusk was a cautious, mild-mannered professional who never really had much clout in the cabinet. McGeorge Bundy and Robert McNamara, with much stronger personalities, were able to circumvent Rusk’s advice and overshadow him personally. The lack of clear roles for the staff weakened the team and hurt the president.

George W. Bush made precisely the same error: he appointed Colin Powell to head the State Department but gave the real power over national security matters to his vice president, Dick Cheney, and his defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. Both Presidents Kennedy and Bush 43 were not well served by having divisions within the national security team.

Likewise, Ronald Reagan made a bad choice in selecting Al Haig as his secretary of state, and he compounded the mistake by not getting rid of Haig fast enough when he disagreed with Reagan’s main foreign policy objectives. But Reagan corrected the mistake by bringing on board the best secretary of state since Dean Acheson, George Shultz.

Finding the right people, making sure they share the president’s goals, and giving them power and authority within the bureaucracy: these are