TEVI TROY: Trump faces the burdens of a wartime presidency
America’s war with the mullahs of Tehran is into its second month and it has already changed Donald Trump’s presidency in important ways. As the president considers how to navigate...
By Fox News · Fox News
America’s war with the mullahs of Tehran is into its second month and it has already changed Donald Trump ’s presidency in important ways. As the president considers how to navigate these new dynamics, it’s worth considering the experience of some previous presidents who entered office not expecting to be wartime presidents. Woodrow Wilson ended a four-cycle Republican winning streak by winning the three-way election of 1912. He did so because his two opponents, former president Teddy Roosevelt and incumbent president William Howard Taft, split the Republican vote. As president, Wilson embarked on an aggressive progressive domestic policy agenda. Things changed when World War One broke out in Europe midway through Wilson’s first term. Wilson then ran for reelection in 1916 promising to keep America out of the conflict, even using the slogan "He kept us out of war." He did not keep that promise, though, as America entered the war in 1917, during the first year of his second term. Franklin Roosevelt was elected in 1932 to rescue the economy from the Great Depression. In his third term, he gained a new mission: fighting the Axis Powers and presiding over the largest military mobilization in American history. Roosevelt addressed this shift at a 1943 press conference where he explained the transition from "Dr. New Deal" to "Dr. Win-the-War." FDR’s quip highlighted the way his administration had to reorder itself to face the new challenge. Lyndon Johnson came to office unexpectedly after the tragic assassination of John F. Kennedy. He took over in peacetime and began pursuing his dream of a Great Society — a sweeping domestic agenda to rival Roosevelt's New Deal. WHY TRUMP, IRAN SEEM LIGHT-YEARS APART ON ANY POSSIBLE DEAL TO END THE WAR As he managed to pass his ambitious — and costly — domestic agenda, he soon found himself and his administration consumed by the conflict in Vietnam. The experience was so draining that by 1968, Johnson, who had spent his whole life pursu…