i ntroduction 9achieve their larger political goals. Lyndon Johnson, for one, demon-
strates the problems with both schools. He meddled in some military
operations (the air campaign against North Vietnam) while he kept his
distance from others, and achieved dismal results in both cases. Th is
leads us to a second puzzle of wartime presidential leadership: Why do
presidents, in their role as commander in chief, still struggle to fi nd an
eff ective approach to achieve the national objectives they have estab-
lished in going to war?
Besides yielding no clear answer, the debate between the two camps
is too narrow. No matter how large the confl ict or how many demands
it makes on them, wartime presidents are never only the commander in
chief of the armed forces. Th eir domain encompasses American foreign
policy writ large, with objectives that transcend the battlefi eld. Presi-
dents also play a critical role in sustaining broad popular support for
the war eff ort and securing the resources needed to bring the war to a
successful conclusion—responsibilities that get brushed aside in the
argument over whether a president should let military professionals run
things.
Yet presidents often fall short in meeting their other wartime chal-
lenges, a failing that clouds the prospects for victory and undermines
their capacity to fashion the kind of peace that gives it meaning.
Abraham Lincoln did little to prepare for Reconstruction; Lyndon
Johnson futilely attempted to stem the collapse of popular support for
the Vietnam War, which in turn put a halt to his vision for a Great
Society at home. Their failures point us to a third puzzle: Why do
wartime presidents regularly struggle to meet their non-military chal-
lenges, especially planning for the aftermath of the confl ict?
Wars also do not put a stop to domestic politics. After winning the
White House behind promises of sweeping domestic policy initiatives,
several presidents—Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon
Johnson—became wartime leaders. Th ey all claimed strong popular
mandates to pursue ambitious agendas, and all three introduced major
domestic initiatives either before the war or in its midst. Th eir sup-
porters wanted social reform to continue, yet these domestic projects
collapsed amid the war, separating the president from some of his key
constituencies. War per se does not necessarily doom social reform—
witness the World War II Beveridge Report in Great Britain that led to