New History Carnival

History Carnival LVI is up at Walking the Berkshires - go check this out for some new blogs to read!

Jimmy Carter, coming to a theater near you

The Jerusalem Post is reporting that a Jimmy Carter moving is coming out soon. Miriam A. Shaviv has the details in Jimmy Carter, coming to a theater near you.

Here is some text from the article:

The controversy over Jimmy Carter's book on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, is set to be reignited by an upcoming screening of a documentary centered on his book tour.

The film, directed by Jonathan Demme, has been picked up by Sony Pictures Classic for distribution in North America by Participant Productions, the socially-conscious company that backed Al Gore's Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth. According to Variety, the documentary will premiere at the Venice International Film Festival later this month and has been titled Jimmy Carter: Man From Plains. It is also rumored to be among the films to be screened at the Toronto Film Festival next month.

In the documentary, Demme follows the ex-president as he promotes his Simon and Schuster publication, which sparked intense criticism from the Jewish world. The ADL took a particularly strong position during the debate, with director Abraham Foxman accusing Carter of "engaging in anti-Semitism."

Presidents and the Military

I'm on a bit of theme week, I guess. Anyway, our last poll was about the best battlefield commander and I also posted on if military experience was important in a President (we got one vote for not essential). To go with that, I found a list of Presidents with and without military experience. Presidents without any military experience were:
John Adams
Thomas Jefferson
John Quincy Adams
Martin Van Buren
Grover Cleveland
William Taft
Woodrow Wilson
Warren Harding
Calvin Coolidge
Herbert Hoover
Franklin Roosevelt
Bill Clinton

This shows that most Presidents have have military experience. Interestingly, I also found a list of those who were in the Navy rather than the regular army and it is all more modern Presidents. Just an interesting side note, so here is the Navy list as well:
John F. Kennedy
Lyndon B. Johnson
Richard M. Nixon
Gerald R. Ford
Jimmy Carter
George Bush

The first site also includes Presidents who were at war during their Presidency. The list is longer than I would have thought because all the Indians Wars were included.

Poll: Which General who became President was the best battlefield commander?

The poll just closed for the question, "Which General who became President was the best battlefield commander?" The choices were George Washington, Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, Ulysses S. Grant, and Dwight D. Eisenhower. (Taylor was left off the list due to space.)

President Grant won easily with 42% of the vote. President Eisenhower was a distant second with 23%. President Washington came in third with 19%. Harrison and Jackson finished in single digits.

Thanks to all who participated in the poll.

Clinton Interviews

Bill Clinton has a new book coming out, "Giving," and will be on Oprah on September 4th to promote it. According to the article, Clinton will also be on Larry King and David Letterman next week.

Military Service Instrumental for Presidents?

The Center for Military History presents the argument “that service in the Armed Forces of our Nation has been instrumental in preparing a notable number of Americans for positions of senior leadership in the government. Military service played a vital role, for example, in the development of such leaders as Andrew Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Harry Truman.”

They then present Dwight D. Eisenhower as a prime example and put out a book on the centennial of his birth about Eisenhower’s long military career. The booklet sketches out Eisenhower’s rise through the military ranks and his experiences in each position all the way through Supreme Allied Commander during World War II.

In the section devoted to Eisenhower’s postwar career, the booklet connects the Presidency to his military career:
The quality of leadership that distinguished Eisenhower the soldier also served him well in the presidency. The diverse challenges of more than thirty years of service in the Army and as an international leader amplified his natural gift for command. He had the considerable advantage that many of the leaders of the postwar world were old friends whom he had come to know well during the war, and with whom he already had a sound working relationship. Eisenhower's military experience also proved invaluable in determining his style of presidential leadership. Based on techniques that had served him well in SHAEF and NATO, he used a chief of staff to keep track of the day-to-day operations, freeing him to maintain an overview of all of the administration's business.

So what do you think? Is military service instrumental for presidents?