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Jay’s guest is Alexandra DeSanctis, or Xan (pronounced “Zan”), his colleague at National Review. She is in Washington, Jay in New York. They talk about a range of issues: abortion, impeachment, 2020 politics, baseball, cooking, and more. This conversation is like a busy train line: If you don’t like one issue, another one will be along in just a moment.
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I very much like the intonation in how Jay said “this little dictator”, which made it clear that he could easily have left out the “tator” part.
One of my peeves is the unchallenged assertion by Harry Truman that Dwight Eisenhower wouldn’t know the limitations of presidential power going in.
When you look at Eisenhower’s career up to then, even as Supreme Commander, Europe, he rarely, if ever held a position as a commanding officer of a unit. The vast majority of his career was as a very competent staff officer (including Douglas MacArthur’s staff). Those take different skills to have influence. A staff officer’s job is to make his commanding officer look good, and not take the credit. It takes humility to do well.
But even his job as Supreme Commander was a collaborative one. Winston Churchill was constantly scrutinizing his actions. And realistically, Eisenhower was limited in what he could do to limit British commander General Bernard Montgomery’s excesses since it could damage the alliance.
Though the presidency was his first elected position, his army career actually had provided him some very relevant skills when he started his presidency.
Truman was wrong.