"Mark K. Updegrove’s “Baptism by Fire” is not a fiery book. Updegrove, a former publisher of Newsweek and author of “Second Acts: Presidential Lives and Legacies After the White House,” seeks to provide succor to a nation reeling from foreign and domestic woes. As he examines the record of eight presidents, from George Washington to Gerald Ford, Updegrove’s tone is seldom less than soothing and sonorous. This is not the stuff of revisionist history seeking to topple great men from their plinths, but a dutiful account that buffs them to a gleaming finish intended to leave the onlookers oohing and aahing in admiration.
Often there is much to admire. Washington’s grave deportment and decisiveness ensured that the fledgling Republic gained a firm footing. He quashed the Whiskey Rebellion in Pennsylvania, supported the creation of a national bank, and shrewdly refused to take sides between France and Britain. But that wasn’t all. As a firm believer in a robust central government, Updegrove observes, Washington recognized that if the nation’s new capital “were to rival those in Europe, it must be steeped in majesty reflecting the country’s character.” Thomas Jefferson, by contrast, favored a small city made up of little brick buildings and anonymously entered a design contest for the president’s house with a plan in the style of Palladio’s Villa Rotonda. Washington knew better. He insisted upon a stately mansion and added his own flourishes, including intricate carvings. According to Updegrove, Jefferson “sneered at the final design, which, like the growing federal government, was both larger and more imperial than to his liking.”
As president, however, Jefferson blatantly (and fortunately) contravened his own strict view of the presidency’s limited powers by authorizing the Louisiana Purchase, which more than doubled the size of the United States and plunged it into debt. Less uplifting is Jefferson’s speaking against slavery while practicing it himself. (Updegrove oddly remarks that “his alleged relationship with his slave Sally Hemings still remains in question.” It doesn’t.) As president, he did adhere to his precepts concerning social informality. He presided over cafeteria-style dinners and padded about the White House in threadbare slippers, prompting a British diplomat to condemn his “utter slovenliness and indifference to appearances, and in a state of negligence actually studied.”
When it comes to Abraham Lincoln, Updegrove does not have to contend with such vexing inconsistencies. The encomiums pour forth. Lincoln, Updegrove writes, “would have brightened at the knowledge that the nation he rescued in the face of blistering adversity a century and a half ago stands today — despite outsized imperfections — as the envy of the world.”
Then there is Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was initially dismissed by Walter Lippmann as an “amiable boy scout.” At a moment when some conservatives are declaring that the New Deal actually prolonged the Depression, Updegrove quite correctly says that Roosevelt’s blizzard of programs “would strengthen liberty itself.”
And what of Roosevelt’s homespun successor, Harry S. Truman? After a somewhat rocky start, Truman stared down the Soviets and established the doctrine of containment. In contrast to the rollback doctrine espoused by the hard right in the 1950s, which calumniated Truman and his secretary of state, Dean Acheson, as liberal traitors, Truman struck out on a sensible middle course of patiently waiting for the Soviet Union to decay from within.
Updegrove runs into some difficulties with more modern presidents. He extols John F. Kennedy as an able leader who kept his wits about him during the Cuban missile crisis but says little about Kennedy’s role in Vietnam. Updegrove’s unqualified praise for Gerald Ford is even more problematic. Yes, Ford was right to pardon Nixon. But he scarcely rises to the level of a Roosevelt, and his presidency was distinguished by little other than his gaffes and blunders, including claiming several times in a debate with Jimmy Carter that Poland was not under domination by the Soviet Union.
As he conducts his amiable stroll through the past, Updegrove would have us believe that his gallery of greats should instill “hope and confidence in our future.” In this moment of crisis, “we are invested in the hope that Barack Obama is the best of us.” No doubt. But given the havoc wrought by George W. Bush, even plain competence should begin paying big dividends."
BAPTISM BY FIRE
Eight Presidents Who Took Office in Times of Crisis
By Mark K. Updegrove
