Structured Response: Presidential Leadership During Cold War v. Post Cold War

Is Presidential leadership more difficult in the Post Cold War than during the Cold War?

In my opinion, presidential leadership is more difficult in the Post Cold War, because that president has to deal with the fallout from the previous administrations, he has to reestablish morale, and stitch back together the fabric of American hope. Gergen says that in the Post Cold War, “what most Americans thought of as they looked back over nearly twenty years was a string of assassinations, a lost war, political scandals, economic turmoil at home, embarrassment overseas, and uneven responses in Washington” (Gergen). Reagan took over a country that was completely devastated, both morally and physically, in numbers. Many troops were lost in the Vietnam War and even more returned home, severely wounded, unable to contribute to the economic structure of the U.S. President Reagan had to revive the economy, reassure the constituency that America could regain face, and “banish the Vietnam syndrome,” all of which he accomplished. I think that this is the most difficult part of being a leader: leading a country that is so downtrodden requires a lot of effort, or at least of pretending to know to one is doing. After the Cold War, the president who lead the country had to be extra careful not to send out troops again, to start another war, or to cause chaos of any sort, because the country could not handle another war at this point. Every action made by the president had to be calculated in a way to make sure that the American people are not negatively affected by it, like they had been during the Cold War.

Some people might argue that leading a country during the Cold War would prove most difficult, but I think that since America was already so engaged in the war efforts, there wasn’t as much resistance as there was Post Cold War. Everything that the President did during the Cold War was what had to be done to “win.” This is no way meant to undermine the effort it took to lead during the Cold War, but in my opinion trying to put a country back on its feet after a roughly 44 year war is a daunting task.