344 e lusive v ictories
achieve the national political objectives he set in going to war. To put it
another way, there is no wartime president’s “user’s manual” that can
serve as a guide—and there certainly isn’t a 24/7 help desk a president
can call when a war goes badly. Active direction by a president is by
itself neither necessary nor suffi cient for successful wartime leadership.
On balance, hands-on engagement seems the wiser course because
an involved president is more likely to learn quickly when military
operations have deviated from his broader political purposes. Johnson
could have pressed Westmoreland more closely about the mismatch
between his optimistic assessments and intelligence reports that showed
communist strength steady or increasing. Likewise, Bush could have
reconsidered his administration’s repeated assertions that the Iraqi
insurgency was on its last legs or found a defense secretary who shared
his commitment to building Iraqi democracy. Recognizing failure
earlier matters because, for wartime presidents, time is precious. Yet a
president who attends closely to military matters may also have to pay
an opportunity cost in the neglect of other critical wartime leadership
tasks. It would be a serious, possibly fatal, error for a wartime chief
executive to approach his role as though it consisted solely of acting as
commander in chief of the armed forces.
A third puzzle is why wartime presidents regularly struggle to meet
their non-military leadership challenges, especially planning for the
aftermath of the confl ict. Leading a nation at war involves far more
than seeing to it that military operations refl ect a president’s war goals.
On the home front, where presidents face the vital task of sustaining
popular backing for the war eff ort, they have achieved mixed results.
When a confl ict poses an existential threat to national survival, presi-
dents can tap a willingness to sacrifi ce, at least at the outset. Even with
that, though, public support cannot be taken for granted, especially as
the human cost of the war rises. Lincoln tended carefully to popular
opinion, with cogent public letters explaining his policies and deft
metaphors that resonated in the everyday lives of the men and women
at home. Less admirably, his partisan allies went to great lengths to
intimidate opponents, a lesson several of his successors have emulated.
Roosevelt fought the Second World War in a way that minimized
American casualties while also producing rapid economic growth, a
formula that helped to neutralize criticism of the war eff ort. But he also