@mattizcoop
IN THE DAYS and weeks before Donald John Trump was sworn in as the 45th president, there was a lot of attention focused on a 55-year-old film, The Manchurian Candidate. Given Russian interference in the U.S. election, many naturally gravitated to the 1962 Frank Sinatra film about a Soviet-Chinese plot to install a puppet in the Oval Office. (Everyone ignored the much- maligned Jonathan Demme 2004 remake.) In January, The New York Times asked if Trump was a modern Manchurian candidate. In December, Saturday Night Live spoofed a shirtless Vladimir Putin telling Trump: “We think you’re the best candidate, the smartest candidate, the Manchurian candidate.” (“I don’t know what that means, but it sounds tremendous,” Alec Bald-win replied in perfect Trump form.)
The film was an exemplary example of what historians call Cold War liberalism, a post–World War II belief in liberal policies at home—equal rights for blacks, an activist, New Deal–style federal government—and aggressive challenging of Communism abroad. John F. Kennedy’s inaugural speech in 1961 encapsulated this view. As he put it, the U.S. would, “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe” to promote freedom.