Word: perret
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...Perret argues that America has been in decline since April 12, 1945, the day that President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Class of 1904, died. Until then, the power to make war lay in Congressional hands, and “except for the Spanish-American War, Americans had never launched a major war without first being attacked.” After FDR’s death, a succession of small-minded men in the Oval Office made presidential power virtually limitless, he argues. Truman, LBJ, and Bush the Younger are particularly at fault for leading the nation into unnecessary and unwinnable wars...
It’s a problematic argument: post-World War II chiefs were part of a pattern of presidential self-assertion that dates at least as far back as James K. Polk, who lied to Congress in order to garner support for the Mexican-American War. But Perret downplays the significance of that event “because it was Mexico that declared war on the United States, not the other way around...
...does Perret pick the haberdasher from Independence, Mo., as his bête noire? Perret claims that Truman was addicted to a mysterious mind-altering substance that made him feel “in control” and invincible. The effects of the drug drove Truman to trample over legislative checks and balances. “When Truman went to war, some of it was Harry,” Perret writes. “The rest was chemistry...
...book backs up this assertion with a single footnote citing an oral history that presidential physician Wallace Graham gave to the Truman Library in 1989. “Dr. Graham...relied on a medication that his father concocted,” Perret writes. “Just what was in it remains a mystery...
...extensive section on Truman, Perret puts forward an account of Israeli independence so anti-Zionist that it makes Jimmy Carter look like a Likudnik...