U.S. President Donald Trump dances after speaking at a rally at Coosa Steel Corporation in Rome, Ga., on Thursday.Mark Schiefelbein/The Associated Press
The last person in the White House without elective political experience was known as the “hidden-hand president.” The way he shaped and controlled U.S. politics was all but invisible, a haze of manoeuvres and deliberately crafted bursts of imprecise rhetoric.
Donald Trump, like his predecessor a late claimant to the heritage of the Republican Party and a major force in defining it, is no Dwight Eisenhower.
Historians will not have to search deeply to document Mr. Trump’s influence on his party and the country; it is plain to see in real time in the volleys of “breaking news” television segments he has prompted in five chaotic years in the Oval Office. The only thing hidden about the Trump presidency is specifically who, besides the mercurial President himself, is crafting his administration’s inclinations and initiatives and writing his relentless, blistering social-media posts and desperate-sounding fundraising pleas.
General Eisenhower – he preferred that to the customary “Mr. President” – moved quietly, almost imperceptibly.
He also eschewed involvement in Middle East wars that did not directly include U.S. interests, stunning and disappointing Israel, Great Britain and France by refusing to join their 1956 invasion of Egypt after the nationalization of the Suez Canal by Gamal Abdel Nasser.
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Now Mr. Trump is assembling the most formidable force of fighter aircraft and maritime power in the Middle East since the last business-class Republican president mobilized U.S. military might in the region. But, in another departure from precedent, Mr. Trump is no George W. Bush.
Mr. Trump sent air- and submarine-launched weapons against three Iranian nuclear facilities in his Operation Midnight Hammer strikes last June without congressional notice or support. Now he is assembling an armada designed to impose further ruin on nuclear sites, undermine Iran’s theocratic government and perhaps enforce the sort of regime change he ordered in Venezuela, again without asking Congress.
Such a unilateral style of governance, in both domestic and international affairs, has come to characterize Mr. Trump’s second term.
The last such buildup of U.S. military power in the region, or anywhere for that matter, was Mr. Bush’s ill-fated incursion in Iraq. Critics of Mr. Bush warn that his failed undertaking provides a sobering historical antecedent for Mr. Trump’s effort.
Like his father, George H.W. Bush, who also sent U.S. forces against Iraq – in that case, to claw Kuwait back to freedom after Iraq seized it in August, 1990 – the younger Mr. Bush was plain about his motivations. His war effort included an unveiling of “evidence” at the United Nations, later mortifyingly proven to be false, that Saddam Hussein was building an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. Mr. Bush was diligent about notifying congressional leaders and won the approval of Congress for his plans.
The authorization for the use of military force was supported by the leaders of both parties in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. It won the votes of 81 Democrats in the House and 29 in the Senate, many of whom spent the rest of their political careers defending or apologizing for their support for the disastrous project.
With a similar force assembling in the Middle East, and with indications that it could be ready to strike as soon as this weekend, Mr. Trump has laid none of the groundwork done by Mr. Bush, whom the President often regards with contempt.
John F. Kennedy, speaking to reporters in the wake of the 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco in Cuba, said that “victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.” Spreading responsibility for military action can often provide support as an operation unfolds – and political cover if it fails.
More than a dozen countries in what Mr. Bush called the “coalition of the willing” joined the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Based on Canadian intelligence reports that differed from those of the Americans, then Prime Minister Jean Chrétien was skeptical of the U.S. plan. He flicked away Mr. Bush’s offer to brief him personally in Ottawa and refused to join a group that included Great Britain. That decision was regarded as an endorsement of Canada’s intelligence operation and an emblem of Canadian independence in the face of strong U.S. pressure.
Gen. Eisenhower’s controlled strategic ambiguity was a trademark of his public life. He employed artifice to confuse the Nazis about the timing or location of the D-Day invasion. He was deliberately vague in the mid-1950s Cold War struggle between Communist China and Taiwan over the islands of Quemoy and Matsu in the Taiwan Strait.
Indeed, the 34th president often spoke so opaquely that reporters often struggled to decode his remarks. When press secretary James Hagerty asked him in 1955 how he would respond if correspondents questioned him about the growing tensions between mainland China and Taiwan, Gen. Eisenhower responded, “If that question comes up, I’ll just confuse them.”
By contrast, Mr. Trump’s rhetoric has been clear. He has warned that if Iran doesn’t buckle to U.S. demands, it will be hit “with great power, enthusiasm and purpose.”
There is, however, an important element of ambiguity in the Iran affair: Is the President bluffing, employing strong language as a bargaining tool to force concessions from Tehran, or has he moved F-15 and F-22 fighters and a second aircraft carrier to the region with the real intention to strike? In that regard only, he, too, is hiding his hand.