Will Mattis be another Marshall?
President-elect Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, retired Marine Corps general James Mattis, is not, thank goodness, a latter day George Patton, despite what Trump says.
For one thing, he appears to be far more restrained than Patton, who, after all, wouldn’t have minded fighting the Russians soon after the two of us, along with the British — as allies — had finished off the Germans in World War II.
According to the renowned military reporter and historian Tom Ricks, Mattis thinks in strategic terms.
There were three layers of cover between Patton and the strategists of the Second World War. Patton’s immediate boss, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, was one. Another was at the very top of the chain of command, President Roosevelt.
Between these two was Gen. George C. Marshall, the Army chief of staff.
FDR, Marshall and Ike could not have imagined permitting Patton to play any role in directing the war. A fierce warrior and a brilliant tactician, Patton was temperamentally ill-suited to high command. He barely got along with his superiors in the Army. He had little if any patience with allies. He famously slapped a GI or two, which made him politically toxic among the home folks.
No, let’s hope “Mad Dog” Mattis is not the second coming of George Patton. Donald Trump to the contrary, it’s not in our interest to have a Patton clone in command of the Pentagon.
If Mattis is Marshall-like — well, that’s another matter.
Marshall, of Uniontown, served as Secretary of Defense for a little over a year starting in 1950. Up to this point, he is the only professional soldier to have held the post. Like Mattis, he required a waiver from Congress to serve. He passed muster; his having served brilliantly as Secretary of State early in the Truman years helped. Nevertheless, it was hard going.
Let’s review. President Truman asked that Marshall return to public service in August 1950, several months after the start of the Korean War. He was in line to replace the toxic Louis Johnson. Talk about unstable. Johnson fought with everybody. His attempts to undermine Dean Acheson at the State Department were finally too much for Truman to shoulder.
Marshall promised stability, a strong presence at the Pentagon and a reputation for high achievement. “People place unbounded confidence” in Marshall, “to whom no aura of politics attaches,” one newspaper editorial said.
The Washington Post, fearing the country had reached a point in which “the military is under constant temptation to take advantage of its power” to establish “a garrison state,” was relieved that Marshall was “an authentic American in his … devotion to our American system of government.”
Immediately after World War II Marshall was assigned the task of trying to compose the differences between the government of China and a communist insurgency. When China fell to the communists, Marshall was blamed in some quarters of the Republican Party.
To ultra conservatives like Indiana Sen. William Jenner, Marshall was wicked. In a speech on the Senate floor opposing the waiver clearing the way for Marshall to take the helm at the Pentagon, Jenner said Marshall’s appointment was an attempt by the Truman administration “to swallow up the treachery of the past in the new treachery they are planning for the future.”
“The truth is this is no new role for him, for Gen. George C. Marshall is a living lie.”
Sen. Leverett Saltonstall, a Massachusetts Republican, was stunned. “If ever there was a life spent in the interests of our country, a life that is not a lie, it is the life of George C. Marshall.”
It isn’t even remotely possible that the debate over Gen. Mattis will reach the same fevered pitch.
Tom Ricks, for one, views Mattis as a welcome “restraint” on the incoming president, whom he calls “a profoundly ignorant man who seems to act on gut instinct or what pleases the crowd. That is a dangerous combination to have in the White House.”
Trump deserves credit for his selection of Mattis. Perhaps he senses a vulnerability, his foreign policy-national security experience being zero. At the same time, Trump had no business introducing Mattis to his “thank you” tour pep rally audience the other night. The secretary of defense is not be used as a political prop.
On another note, I’m afraid I sowed confusion with my last column about the Electoral College. In making a pitch for the National Bonus Plan, I failed to properly interpret one aspect of the changes that would be wrought. Under the plan, the presidential candidates would do battle over 640 electoral votes. Their goal: a winning majority of 321. Today’s corresponding numbers are 538 and 270. Hats off to several alert readers.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown and is the author of two books — “Grand Salute: Stories of the World War II Generation” and “Our People.” He can be reached at grandsalutebook@gmail.com.