Between Guns and Butter (eBook)

The Modern Presidency and the Politics of Warfare and Welfare

Jeremy Strickler (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025
200 Seiten
University Press of Kansas (Verlag)
978-0-7006-4009-6 (ISBN)

Infos

An illuminating study of how foreign and domestic policies have reinforced each other in postNew Deal presidencies.Studies of presidential leadership tend to separate foreign and domestic policymaking as discrete avenues of inquiry, both empirically and analytically. This two presidencies syndrome has especially afflicted the study of the modern presidency. In Between Guns and Butter, Jeremy Strickler breaks this mold and simultaneously examines two significant developments that have shaped the leadership imperatives of the institution: the rise of the national security presidency and the emergence of the executive as steward of the public welfare. Strickler calls this pattern of governance the warfare-welfare nexus.Analyzing the administrations of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson, Strickler shows how each, under the pressure of emergencies both at home and abroad, navigated their governing environment by expressing ideas on the tradeoffs between guns and butter through the articulation of visions of national strength. FDR directly linked his New Deal programs to national security and defense preparedness, not only through the Social Security Act but also through rhetoric that framed his policy initiatives as efforts to mobilize national strength at home. Truman similarly connected his Fair Deal program to national security in the face of the Korean War, under the assumption that social welfare and national defense were one package. While Eisenhower placed greater emphasis on foreign policy, his vision of an economy-security nexus led him to promote federal funding for education as the domestic foundation for fighting the Cold War. Kennedy linked the needs of the economy with Cold War national security, yet advocated more vigorously for unleashing economic growth as a source of national strength. Johnsons commitments to both his Great Society program and an escalation of the Vietnam Warobscuring the relationship between guns and butterproved unsustainable, representing the unraveling of the warfare-welfare nexus.By juxtaposing American domestic and foreign policies, Stricklers study sheds new light on twentieth-century presidential history.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 11.11.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung
• Schlagworte: american presidency • domestic policy • Dwight D. Eisenhower • foreign policy • Franklin D. Roosevelt • Harry S. Truman • John F. Kennedy • Lyndon B. Johnson • New Deal liberalism • Presidential leadership • warfare • welfare
• ISBN-10: 0-7006-4009-6 / 0700640096
• ISBN-13: 978-0-7006-4009-6 / 9780700640096