How the war with Iran is already reshaping Donald Trump’s presidency

America’s war with the mullahs in Tehran is into its second month, and it has already changed Donald Trump’s presidency in significant ways. As the president considers how to navigate these new dynamics, it is useful to consider the experiences of some previous presidents who took office without expecting to become a wartime president.

Woodrow Wilson won the three-way election in 1912, ending the Republicans’ four-term winning streak. He did this because his two opponents, former president Teddy Roosevelt and incumbent president William Howard Taft, were splitting the Republican vote. As president, Wilson embarked on an aggressive, progressive domestic policy agenda. Things changed when World War I broke out in Europe in the middle of Wilson’s first term. Wilson later ran for re-election in 1916 promising to keep America out of the conflict, using the slogan “He kept us out of the war.” However, he broke this promise when America entered the war in 1917, in 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 won a new mission: to fight the Axis Powers and preside over the largest military mobilization in American history. Roosevelt addressed this shift at a 1943 press conference, where he described the shift from “Dr. New Deal” to “Dr. Win-the-War.” FDR’s quip highlighted how his administration must reorganize itself to face new challenges.

Lyndon Johnson unexpectedly took office after the tragic assassination of John F. Kennedy. He took over in peacetime and began pursuing his Great Society dream, a comprehensive domestic agenda to rival Roosevelt’s New Deal.

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While he succeeded in implementing his ambitious and costly domestic agenda, he soon found himself and his administration consumed by the conflict in Vietnam. The experience was so grueling that in 1968, Johnson, who had spent his entire life pursuing the presidency, shocked the world by refusing to seek re-election.

In 2000, George W. Bush openly campaigned on pursuing a modest foreign policy, rejecting the nation-building missions of the Bill Clinton era. His goal was to become “President of Education”. Then 19 militant jihadists from Al Qaeda struck America on September 11. In response, Bush ordered the invasion of Afghanistan and then Iraq by countries that supported terrorism. As someone who served in that administration, the change I saw was tangible. Bush took office with one kind of vision for the presidency, but history had a completely different idea.

U.S. President George W. Bush (right) talks about recent flooding that displaced thousands in the midwest during a briefing as Vice President Dick Cheney (left) listens in Washington, D.C., on June 17, 2008 (Mark Wilson/Getty Images))

War is reshaping much more than the man behind the Resolute Desk. It changes the teams around the president. We also saw this with the resignation of Trump’s counterterrorism director, Joe Kent. As the Kent incident shows, advisors who are aligned before the conflict begins are not necessarily aligned when the fight begins.

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Such things have happened in previous presidencies as well. In the early years of the Wilson administration, Wilson relied on the advice of Colonel Edward House, a Texas political operative who was so close to the president that he even lived in the White House. But things changed during the war, as domestic critics at the State Department and the White House challenged the House’s broad authority to direct the war. Wilson and House also clashed over the Treaty of Versailles, which led to the permanent end of their once close relationship.

As for Johnson, he was famously intolerant of domestic dissent and alienated or silenced advisers who questioned his Vietnam strategy. Johnson initially sidelined his secretary of defense, Robert McNamara, the face of the Vietnam War, after he noticed and failed to appreciate McNamara’s growing skepticism of Johnson’s Vietnam policy. Johnson wanted and got an echo chamber, to the detriment of his administration and our nation.

Daylight Saving Time was first enacted under the Johnson administration following the passage of the Uniform Time Act of 1966. (contributed via Bettmann/Getty Images)

The Iraq war under Bush began a bureaucratic civil war within Bush’s national security team. This infighting led to the Valerie Plame affair, which led to the indictment of Vice President Cheney’s top aide, Scooter Libby, after the name of an undercover CIA agent was revealed. But Libby hadn’t leaked her name; The person who leaked the information was his bureaucratic nemesis Dick Armitage, and Armitage remained shamefully silent about his role during the investigation. This incident showed how much the high risks of war, let alone innocent lives, can shake a government.

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War also harms presidents personally. Sometimes it leads to behavioral changes. In 2003, Bush quit playing golf, one of his few outlets to escape the pressures of the presidency. Years later, he said he didn’t want to appear in contacts while American soldiers were dying in Iraq. As he explained in 2008, “I don’t want a mother whose son might have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf.” It was a devastating admission about the weight a wartime president carries every day.

In other cases, the cost of being president in wartime was even greater. While in Europe, Wilson suffered a stroke and was incapacitated for most of the remainder of the administration; His team kept the American people in the dark while his wife, Edith, secretly ran affairs in the White House. Roosevelt died at age 63, in his fourth term. Those who saw him in his final days saw him as pale and exhausted beyond his years. A visibly weakened Johnson, who left office at age 60, died less than four years after leaving the White House.

While these examples may seem sad, there is an instructive counterexample.

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George HW Bush entered the Gulf War with a limited goal, formed a broad international coalition to oust Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, achieved this goal and exited the war. Bush’s national security team was extraordinarily disciplined and cohesive. The war does not appear to have fundamentally damaged Bush’s presidency or his person. Yet even Bush could not escape the political weight of wartime leadership; he was thought to be so focused on foreign affairs that he had lost touch with the stagnant domestic economy; This led to what many believed was highly improbable when Bush had a 91 percent approval rating: his defeat at the hands of Bill Clinton in 1992.

The lesson here is not that presidents should avoid the use of force. President Trump had the courage to stand up to one of the most bloody and predatory regimes of the past half century. The decision to go to war is the most difficult decision a president has to make. It costs lives and changes the world in unpredictable ways. And before the end is even reached, the president is changing his team and his agenda, testing his character and taxing his body and soul in ways that cannot be fully predicted.

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