The death this week of Osama bin Laden reminded me of an idea I came across some years ago. I don't know where I originally read it, or who the author was, but it's stuck with me ever since.
The idea is that for most of the Twentieth Century, every U.S. President has had an Arch-Enemy; a single antagonist who personified the nation's foes; and that our national foriegn policy could be seen as a personal conflict between the two leaders. Curiously enough, in most of these instances, the President left office long before his Nemisis did.
Being a comic book fan, I naturally found this way of looking at foriegn policy compelling. And so, in that four-color spirit, let's take a look at the past half century through the perspective of the Arch-Enemy Theory of History.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt vs. Adolph Hitler -- This match-up set the pattern for what was to come. After all, the World War II era was the period where comic books came into their own; and Adolph Hitler was a perfect villain: a megalomaniac who wanted to rule the world; creepy henchmen, unspeakable atrocities, super-weapons. He was the living embodiment of what we were fighting against. And although I don't think F.D.R. personified the U.S. in quite the same way that Hitler did Germany, or even that Churchill did Britain; Roosevelt was significant in that he was the first U.S. President to be the member of a Super-Hero Team, ("The Big Three"), one that actually pre-dated the Justice League of America by a good twenty years.
Harry Truman vs. Joeph Stalin -- This one is maybe questionable. The piece I cribbed the idea from started with Eisenhower; but I wanted to include Truman to provide continuity with Roosevelt.
Dwight Eisenhower vs. Nikita Khrushchev -- Pretty obvious
John F. Kennedy vs. Fidel Castro -- Khruschev was the big bad during the Kennedy Administration too, but I'd argue that Castro was more of a personal thing. He was close by; he was the more immediate fear; and Kennedy had a lot more personally at stake in Castro's defeat, first with the Missile Crisis and then with the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion.
Lyndon Johnson vs. Ho Chi Mihn -- Here I think the analogy starts to weaken. Yes, the Vietnam War was in many ways the defining thing of the Johnson presidency (along with the Civil Rights Movement, and to a lesser extent the Great Society); but I'm not sure how much Ho Chi Mihn was regarded as the Personification of Communism in Vietnam.
Richard Nixon vs. Leonid Brezhnev -- Here the Cold War is entering the Detente phase; we've shifted our attitudes towards the Soviets from "Exestential Threats" to "Dangerous Rivals".
Gerald Ford vs. ???? Okay, Ford is the first anomaly. I can think of no World Leader of his era that I think really counts as his Arch-Enemy. Unless you count either Ronald Reagan or Squeaky Fromme.
Jimmy Carter vs. Ayatollah Khomeini -- For the first time, America's Arch-Enemy is not a Communist but a Muslim leader. This won't be the last time.
Ronald Reagan vs. Muammar Gaddafi -- Mikhail Gorbachev was also an Arch-Enemy of a sort, but he was more of an anime-style Respected Opponent than a Diabolical Mastermind. Gaddafi, however, was straight-up Supervillain, and he relished the role.
George H.W. Bush vs Saddam Hussein -- How personal was it? Hussein had a mosiac portrait of the elder Bush inset in a plaza so that people could walk on the American President's face. I'd call that personal. Of course, considering that Saddam thought Bush would turn a blind eye to his invading Kuwait, I suppose he can be forgiven for feeling betrayed. Break-ups are a bitch.
Bill Clinton vs. ???? -- Once again, we have a President who breaks the pattern. Too many exceptions like this and I might need to junk this theory. Ah, but it's such a pretty theory. What about Milosevic? Does he count as an Arch-Enemy?
George W. Bush vs Saddam Hussein -- Dubya actually had two Arch-Enemies, if you count Osama bin Laden; but Bush wisely downplayed that villain to go after the one he could more easily beat. As a result, Bush is the only President after FDR to actually defeat his Nemesis.
Barack Obama ... does not have an Arch-Enemy yet. But Muammar Gaddafi might well become one, depending on how the situation in Libya unfolds.
Now, I'm not saying that Obama needs a Lex Luthor to define his presidency; but people like to define the world as a struggle between Good and Evil with Our Side being the Good Guys; so it's nice to have identifiable Bad Guys for us to be fighting. Obama has succeeded in taking out one Bad Guy. Will he go looking for another? Or will the public latch onto another to pump up into the Next Threat to America?
What's Doctor Doom doing these days, anyway?