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Prodding the President. Harry Truman, in his own way, was all for Monroe. "The reason we're in trouble in Cuba," he said, "is that Ike didn't have the guts to enforce the Monroe Doctrine." In less rough language, other politicians of both parties indicated that they felt the same way about Kennedy. South Carolina's Senator Strom Thurmond said the President's comments on Cuba "indicate strongly that the Monroe Doctrine has recently been reinterpreted with major omissions." In the Senate debate on the Administration request for stand-by authority to call up 150,000 reservists, Republicans urged amendments to prod the President into taking action against Castro. Connecticut's Prescott Bush offered an amendment declaring that the U.S. "has the right and obligation" to end Communist domination of Cuba. His amendment, said Bush, would put Russia on notice "that the Monroe Doctrine is not dead, but remains an integral part of American foreign policy and will be en forced" Iowa's Jack Miller proposed an amendment that would have "authorized and directed" the President ";to take such action as is necessary to prevent any violation of the Monroe Doctrine." Most of these comments were emotional. Many were unknowing. But in a significant sense they reflected an intense American conviction that the Monroe Doctrine — almost like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution — is an enduring cornerstone of national policy.
Avalanches of Change. And so it is. In the flux of history, the most earnest pronouncements of statesmen tend to be ephemeral. The archives of nations are stuffed with decrees, declarations, edicts, enunciations, protocols and pronounce ments that were meant to resound for decades but lasted only for weeks or months. Yet the Monroe Doctrine lives on in the hearts and minds of Americans—even though most of them have only the foggiest notion of what it says and means.
When James Monroe issued his doctrine on Dec. 2, 1823, most of the world's great nations were ruled by kings or emperors, and most of their subjects were farmers or peasants. Byron and Beethoven were still living, Darwin and Marx were still children. The years since then have witnessed avalanches of change that have transformed the world beyond the imaginings of the men of Monroe's time. But the Monroe Doctrine survived all the transformations and remains today a living principle of national policy.
A Cautious Man. The doctrine's durability derived in part from the character of its author. John Calhoun, who as Monroe's Secretary of War sat in on the Cabinet discussions that shaped the Monroe Doctrine, recalled his former chief as "among the wisest and most cautious men I have ever known." Calhoun meant the word cautious in a complimentary sense.
Thomas Jefferson, Monroe's political mentor, wrote that he was "a man whose soul might