John Tyler: The Accidental President
Author: Edward P Crapol
The first vice president to become president on the death of the incumbent, John Tyler (1790-1862) was derided by critics as "His Accidency." Yet he proved to be a bold leader who used the malleable executive system to his advantage. In this biography of the tenth President of the United States, Edward P. Crapol challenges previous depictions of Tyler as a die-hard advocate of states' rights, limited government, and a strict interpretation of the Constitution.
In pursuit of his agenda, Tyler exploited executive prerogatives and manipulated constitutional requirements in ways that violated his professed allegiance to a strict interpretation of the Constitution. He set precedents that his successors in the White House invoked to create an American empire and expand presidential power.
Crapol also highlights Tyler's enduring faith in America's national destiny and his belief that boundless territorial expansion would preserve the Union as a slaveholding republic. When Tyler, a Virginian, opted for secession and the Confederacy in 1861, he was stigmatized as America's "traitor" president for having betrayed the republic he once led. As Crapol demonstrates, Tyler's story anticipates the modern imperial presidency in all its power and grandeur, as well as its darker side.
Publishers Weekly
Most historians have dismissed John Tyler as an inept failure. In this remarkable study, Crapol, professor emeritus at the College of William and Mary, argues that Tyler was in fact a terrifically strong president who helped strengthen the executive branch. Tyler was William Henry Harrison's vice president. Before Harrison's death in 1841, presidential succession was murky: did the vice president become president, or was he merely a temporary stand-in until an emergency election could be held? Tyler decisively seized the office, setting a precedent that is followed to this day (and was codified in 1967 in the 25th Amendment to the Constitution). Yet Tyler's story, argues Crapol, is ultimately a "tragedy." Tyler's commitment to territorial expansion, which found its keenest expression in the annexation of Texas, was driven in part by his contorted thinking about slavery. The to-the-Virginia-manor-born president believed the contradictions of slavery would be best resolved not by abolition but by extending it into new territories, thus diffusing the slave population. That Tyler died a traitor to the Union, just about to assume his seat in the Confederate Congress, is the final, sad irony. This balanced, fascinating volume will introduce a new generation of readers to an oft-ignored president. (Oct. 9) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
John Tyler who became president after William Henry Harrison died after one month in office remains one of our most obscure chief executives, still seen by most historians as hapless and ineffective. Now Crapol (American history, emeritus, Coll. of William and Mary; James G. Blaine: Architect of Empire) has written a revisionist history of Tyler's presidency, arguing that Tyler was a strong leader who set important precedents, some of which we take for granted (e.g., that the vice president should become president after the death of the chief executive and that he take a separate oath of office). Crapol contends that Tyler was the main architect behind the Texas annexation at the end of his term, his final anti-Whig act that propelled North-South party alignments, and that it was he who pushed for a great American empire in the Pacific with American influence in Hawaii and trade with China. His gravest flaws: his support of slavery and his belief that additional American territory would diffuse the slave population. Crapol's claims seem balanced because he makes them based on the historical record. This book is important in crediting Tyler with the ways in which he imbued the presidency and American expansion with greater power; it will compete with the projected Tyler entry in Times Books' "American Presidents" series. Highly recommended for public and academic libraries. Bryan Craig, Jefferson Madison Regional Lib., Charlottesville, VA Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Book review: America Is in the Heart or Brief History of Neoliberalism
See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism
Author: Robert Baer
In his explosive New York Times bestseller, top CIA operative Robert Baer paints a chilling picture of how terrorism works on the inside and provides startling evidence of how Washington politics sabotaged the CIA’s efforts to root out the world’s deadliest terrorists, allowing for the rise of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda and the continued entrenchment of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
A veteran case officer in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations in the Middle East, Baer witnessed the rise of terrorism first hand and the CIA’s inadequate response to it, leading to the attacks of September 11, 2001. This riveting book is both an indictment of an agency that lost its way and an unprecedented look at the roots of modern terrorism, and includes a new afterword in which Baer speaks out about the American war on terrorism and its profound implications throughout the Middle East.
“Robert Baer was considered perhaps the best on-the-ground field
officer in the Middle East.”
–Seymour M. Hersh, The New Yorker
From The Preface
This book is a memoir of one foot soldier’s career in the other cold war, the one against terrorist networks. It’s a story about places most Americans will never travel to, about people many Americans would prefer to think we don’t need to do business with.
This memoir, I hope, will show the reader how spying is supposed to work, where the CIA lost its way, and how we can bring it back again. But I hope this book will accomplish one more purpose as well: I hope it will show why I am angry about what happened to the CIA. And I want to show why every American and everyone whocares about the preservation of this country should be angry and alarmed, too.
The CIA was systematically destroyed by political correctness, by petty Beltway wars, by careerism, and much more. At a time when terrorist threats were compounding globally, the agency that should have been monitoring them was being scrubbed clean instead. Americans were making too much money to bother. Life was good. The White House and the National Security Council became cathedrals of commerce where the interests of big business outweighed the interests of protecting American citizens at home and abroad. Defanged and dispirited, the CIA went along for the ride. And then on September 11, 2001, the reckoning for such vast carelessness was presented for all the world to see.
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