Something about MacArthur’s persona resonated deeply within certain right-wing and reactionary elements of the American population. Still, MacArthur was wildly popular in his day, almost a demigod among a considerable swath of the American public, and he still enjoys a kind of cult following among those who like their generals to strike Napoleonic poses and carry themselves with a certain swagger.
“MacArthur,” President Eisenhower once said, “could never see a sun, or even a moon for that matter, in the heavens, as long as he was the sun.” “I have returned,” MacArthur said with typical bombast when he waded ashore at Leyte, apparently forgetting that an entire army and navy got him there. It was said that he didn’t have a staff he had a court. (If Twitter had been around during his time, he surely would have mastered it.) MacArthur refused to listen to inconvenient information, and he seldom cultivated or appreciated experts- he was the expert. He loved the trappings of power and stayed eternally vigilant to the micro-nuances of publicity. He was incapable of admitting an error or taking responsibility when things went wrong-which they often did during his watch. He was brilliant, yes, but usually the first to admit it. It’s well known that MacArthur was an incorrigible gloryhound, a man infatuated with the vertical pronoun. While it’s preposterous to think the president reads works of biography or military history, his proclaimed affinity for the so-called American Caesar makes perfect sense: Egomaniacs tend to admire other egomaniacs.
“General MacArthur,” Trump said, “is spinning in his grave when he sees what we do.” Most recently, he made headlines by calling James Mattis, his own former Secretary of Defense, “the world’s most overrated general.” By contrast, during the 2016 campaign, Trump repeatedly declared that Douglas MacArthur was his “favorite general.” At rallies, Trump would invoke MacArthur’s name almost as though he were in direct communication with his ghost. In that dubious department, few generals in modern history come close to Douglas MacArthur.įrom time to time, President Donald Trump (he who pleaded the bone spurs defense to avoid service in Vietnam) has rather audaciously taken it upon himself to grade various American military figures, past and present. This Veteran’s Day, as we remember those men and women we’ve sent into battle, we should also take a moment to remember the fateful decisions, sometimes tragically bad ones, our commanders made that put our fighting forces directly and often needlessly in harm’s way.
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