Today's Hofstadter quote is especially for Major Mike, who (following up on a discussion in comments to this post) tries to show (through historical example) that no president would ever deliberately provoke a foreign policy crisis for the purpose of political gain.
Harrison, on the eve of the Chile affair, for the acuteness of which he was primarily responsible, was being urged by prominent Republican politicians who had the coming presidential campaign in mind to pursue a more aggressive foreign policy because it would "have the...effect of diverting attention from stagnant political discussions." And although some Democratic papers charged that he was planning to run for re-election during hostilities so that he could use the "don't swap horses in the middle of the stream" appeal, many Democrats felt that it was politically necessary for them to back him against Chile so that, as one of their congressmen remarked, the Republicans could not "run away with all the capital there is to be made in an attempt to assert national self-respect."[That's all, folks]
-Richard Hofstadter, Cuba, the Philippines, and Manifest Destiny
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