role of the presidents

While reading this book one of the main points by McMahon was the differences in strategies and ideas used by each President from FDR to Ford. This got me wondering about the affects of having so many different plans while trying to stabilize an entire region. As we inaugurated each new President, he introduced a new course of action for dealing with the communist threat. From Truman and military aid to JFK sending in more advisors, it seems that every 4-8 years the US would adopt an entirely new plan. Can we describe the effects of such a system as helping us ensure that we can adapt quickly to new problems or was it a detriment as no plan was fully completed and each revision costed more time and money?

Finally I was thinking about our discussion from a few weeks back about combining the history of the Civil Rights Movement with that of the Cold War. According to McMahon do we see any evidence that the actions in Southeast Asia and the ones at home influenced each other? The seems to be little evidence in this book that government officials at home connected any of these events together. When Sukarno does visit the United States he seems much more interested in viewing examples of American wealth and celebrity in Hollywood and Disneyland then in looking at actual American cities and the divisions between them.