In 1940, Franklin Delano Roosevelt faced a serious foreign policy problem. Europe was in the process of being subjugated by the Nazis but the American people did not want to get involved and the Republican Party (really the whole Conservative Coalition) led by Sen. Robert Taft of Ohio was strongly isolationist. So, FDR did something that turned out, in retrospect, to be quite wise. He appointed Henry Stimson to be his Secretary of War and Frank Knox to be his Secretary of Navy. Both men were prominent Republicans. Very prominent…
Stimson went on to serve as Secretary of War under President Taft from 1911 to 1913. Stimson used his experience in the Taft administration to help him advance in the Republican Party. In 1927, he was appointed by President Calvin Coolidge to be the Governor General of the Philippines. He served until 1929.
From 1929 to 1933, Stimson served as Secretary of State under Herbert Hoover.
As for Knox:
He served in Cuba with the Rough Riders during the Spanish-American War…
An active Republican, he was that party’s nominee for vice president in the 1936 election, under Alf Landon.
Whatever you think of our early 20th-Century policies towards the Philippines and Cuba, it was a shrewd move on Roosevelt’s part to tap these representatives of the non-isolationist wing of the GOP. It gave him political cover for essential policies like the Lend-Lease Act. That’s why it doesn’t necessarily concern me to read that Barack Obama is considering Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska for the position of Secretary of Defense.
Obama is hoping to appoint cross-party figures to his cabinet such as Chuck Hagel, the Republican senator for Nebraska and an opponent of the Iraq war, and Richard Lugar, leader of the Republicans on the Senate foreign relations committee.
Senior advisers confirmed that Hagel, a highly decorated Vietnam war veteran and one of McCain’s closest friends in the Senate, was considered an ideal candidate for defence secretary. Some regard the outspoken Republican as a possible vice-presidential nominee although that might be regarded as a “stretch”.
Asked about his choice of cabinet last week, Obama told The Sunday Times: “Chuck Hagel is a great friend of mine and I respect him very much,” although he was wary of appearing as though he was already choosing the White House curtains.
Obama faces a different political atmosphere than FDR faced in 1940. While FDR had to persuade a wary nation of the necessity of combating fascism, Barack Obama will inherit a nation already at war. While FDR confronted a Republican Party that resisted foreign entanglements, Obama faces one that is insistent upon them. And that might not be Obama’s only problem. He may find his own party resistant to foreign policy decisions that are necessary, because of a general fatigue with American interventionism. For both of these reasons it may well benefit him to have a Republican Defense Secretary who is both supportive of an active American role in the world and of pulling our troops out of Iraq, come what may.
As a partisan, I don’t like the idea of putting Republicans in key cabinet positions. I didn’t like it when Bill Clinton tapped the moderate Republican Senator William Cohen of Maine to be his Defense Secretary. But Cohen’s presence was reassuring when, during the l’affaire Lewinsky, Clinton decided to bomb Afghanistan and the Sudan. Whatever the wisdom of those strikes, it was damaging to hear Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott accuse the president of ‘wagging the dog’. Secretary Cohen’s strong defense of the President’s actions put a quick end to such conspiracy theories.
I would not recommend Chuck Hagel for the position of Secretary of Defense and I will be mildly perturbed if he gets the appointment. But I can see definite advantages to such a move and we should remember our past. It would not be an unprecedented move.