For all occupying presidents during this time, the
obsessive public attention to the issue of the communist threat, the
military demands which required American boots on the soil in a wide array
of theatres and the systemic internal pressures from such non-executive
departments as State, Defense and Intelligence would all collectively
dictate a common ground amongst political figures who were most certainly
bitter enemies. Indeed, as the Grover text suggests and as retrospective
history might deduce, the Vietnam War was an issue that belonged to
multiple presidencies, all of whom sought to balance the sense of
individualized power in combating global threats and an awareness of
America's prevailing sentiments concerning the role of America in the
world. Ultimately, we may deduce that while Vietnam became a negative
cross to bear from Presidents Johnson and Nixon, Kennedy's assassination
relieved him of this onus. Indeed, the inevitability of America's Cold War
policy was larger and more determinant than any one presidency. In many
ways, this premise helps to reinforce Grover's main point of discussion,
which is that each president is inherently formed by the issues which he
inherits.
Thus, the president's political philosophy will not shape the issues
which are his. Instead, they will help to guide his response and his sense
of his own autonomy in shaping that response. To this point, Grover
contends that "two main schools of thought have dominated the discourse on
the postwar presidency. One school-the expansivists-generally held sway
from the time of FDR trough the late 1960s....
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