Testing the Next President

When McCain jumped on Biden’s recent comment that Obama will be tested soon after he becomes president, he reminded us of JFK’s first few months in office when he was faced with the Cuban Missile Crisis. I was in high school during that time, (I’m not as old as McCain), and I have an abominable memory, so I looked it up online.

I’m glad I did, because I was reminded that the missile crisis was not the first test faced by the president - his first test, which he failed rather badly, was the Bay of Pigs. And it wasn’t a foreign power that tested him - it was the CIA.

Just a few months after his inauguration, Kennedy learned of a CIA plot that had been hatched during the Eisenhower years. The intent was to remove Fidel Castro from power in Cuba, just as previous US covert actions had helped remove the Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953 and the democratically elected president of Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán in 1954.

Kennedy’s “test” was to choose between (1) accepting the plan as presented to him, or (2) changing the plan so that it would give him better political cover in case things went wrong, or (3) scrapping the plan completely and deciding to negotiate with Castro instead of attempting to assassinate him. Kennedy chose (2), to our regret.

And this reminded me that a new president inherits many things from previous administrations, including a shadow government filled with spooks and operatives, policies and plans, all created to fit the politics and world view held by his predecessor. Kennedy inherited the plan to invade Cuba, just as Johnson inherited Vietnam, and either Obama or McCain will inherit Iraq and Afghanistan - along with perhaps hundreds of covert operations that normal citizens will never hear about. How the new president faces those challenges can affect us all for many years to come.

If the invasion of Cuba had worked out the way it was supposed to, perhaps Cuba would now be ruled by someone friendlier to US power - but history has shown us that people tend to hold grudges when their leaders are assassinated by foreign governments. If Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh had not been removed from power by a US-backed coup d’état in 1953, would Mahmoud Ahmadinejad now be president?

When Obama taught law at the University of Chicago Law School, he sometimes noted that even the best-reasoned ideas have unintended consequences. That helps me believe that when the CIA director comes to his office next January with a plan that was created during the Bush years, he’ll be able to see beyond the ideology and wishful thinking, and rationally consider the possibility that things may not go exactly as planned. I’m also hoping that he knows his history well enough to know that the most important tests in foreign policy come often from within, rather than without.