When I return to my Wisconsin lake house every August, I have a summer ritual. I re-read several books that I first picked up out here as a teenager. “The Great Gatsby” and “East of Eden” are on the list. This summer of 2024 is different from any other year, though. I found myself drawn to a book that came out almost 40 years ago by Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas — “The Wise Men.”

The book focuses on six men: Dean Acheson, Averell Harriman, George Kennan, Charles Bohlen, Robert Lovett, and John McCloy. Six men, all educated in the early 20th century at the country’s most elite schools, wealthy from huge inheritances or careers on Wall Street in the 1920s. Six men who had an oversize influence in charting America’s course through World War II and into the Cold War. 

They were products of America’s WASP aristocracy that ruled this country from its founding through the 1960s. An American nobility that produced a common world view. All six were completely committed to the security of the United States, its dominant position in the world and the continuation of the American experiment begun in 1776. They fought the isolationists in the GOP, but they also held a sober view of the challenge of the Soviet Union and the vital importance of deterrence with a strong American military presence around the world.

Most of them imbibed their belief structure at home, watching successful fathers. It was also backed up by their teachers and headmasters like Endicott Peabody at Groton, followed by Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Their careers on Wall Street gave them a realistic understanding of the country’s economic system and then, working to expand markets globally, they met and befriended future foreign leaders.

This early training made them perfect stewards for U.S foreign policy. I didn’t agree with everything they did — McCloy certainly turned a blind eye to some of the worst Nazi criminals after the war when he served as America’s High Commissioner for Germany.  None was directly involved LBJ’s troop buildup in Vietnam in 1965, and Harriman was the chief negotiator at the Paris peace talks. 

There was never any doubt, though, that these men put in years of hard work and their best efforts to defend this country. I would also include in this group of 20th century wisdom, people like George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, and Jeane Kirkpatrick. None held public office, except Harriman, who served a term as governor of New York. Instead, they were a sound and trustworthy back up to presidents.

One doesn’t need to be a psychiatrist to understand why I gravitated towards this particular book at this particular time, and I am guessing that I am not the only person feeling uneasy in this summer of 2024. Our country seems bereft of this solid, wise leadership today. A quarter of the way into this new century, our ship of state lacks anyone of consequence to chart its course through increasingly dangerous waters. 

We all see it. It’s right there in front of us, from shockingly inept foreign policy decisions — Gulf War II, the Afghanistan surrender-debacle, the appeasement of Iran, the chaotic shifts in support of Israel and Ukraine, to baffling domestic decisions — like wide open borders — that seem to lack any element of common sense.

I picked this book up because I needed to remind myself that, indeed, there was once a time when men (mostly) held positions in our government who were intelligent, realistic, and had enough common sense to understand political gimmicks when they saw them. Perhaps even more important, their views were well formed, informed, strategic and serious.

The Great Depression and World War II were events of real consequence and the generations that lived through them understood their significance. They took these events seriously and, perhaps most important, they learned the right lessons from them. We have had no such existential conflicts since and, thus, we have not been confronted by that kind of real world seriousness. It also seems we have not learned the right lessons from 9/11, the rise of Muslim extremism, Iran … as well as the fall of the Soviet Union.

It’s not just the leadership of these men that we have lost. It’s also the institutions that created them. A Harvard education in the 1970s was just not as valuable as one in the 1920s or 1930s and that 1970s education is head-and-shoulders above the Harvard of today. By rejecting the old establishment rules, our colleges now elevate leftist claptrap over centuries of philosophical reason, nonsense over gravity, celebrity over substance.

A self-censure that has created “right” and “wrong” thoughts has stifled honest conversation and because robust debates are no longer allowed on campuses, we see an extreme lack of focus in thought as well. There are arguments people are just not allowed to have, but we should. The college protests this year supporting a fundamental religious extremism no different than Nazism, is an obvious outcome of all this. Along with our parents and grandparents, these six men must be turning in their graves.

This pessimism runs counter to what it means to be an American and, frankly, it runs counter to my own nature. American history shows us that at difficult times in the past, we have always had the miraculous gift of outstanding leadership.

It’s just that in this summer of 2024, that wise leadership is nowhere to be found. 

___________

Correction: Averell Harriman, the governor of New York from 1955 to 1958, was the only “Wise Man” to hold elected office.