The art of US presidents making deals

Our new president-elect is so enamored of his book "The Art of the Deal" he distributed autographed copies to his creditor's attorneys while they were seizing his assets and putting him on an allowance. Deal-making is Trump's mantra and supplants such unpresidential follies as reading or receiving security briefings. As America and the world ponder how best to put Trump's proclaimed skill set and afflatus to good use, it might be useful to remember that presidents have, over the years, played a positive role in striking deals between others. Nobel Peace Prizes have been won that way, and the Donald would surely love one for the Trump Tower Trophy Room.

In 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt assumed the role of mediator in chief when he ignored the advice of his attorney general, Philander Knox, and negotiated a settlement of the Anthracite Coal Strike. Prior president's like Grover Cleveland liked to deal with strikes by sending in troops to bust heads like they did at Haymarket Square in Chicago. But attitudes about labor unions began to morph in the 1890s when Pope Leo XIII issued his encyclical Rerum Novarum, an uncharacteristically democratic bull for a royalist institution, that decreed workers' inherent moral right to organize and bargain collectively. Anthracite coal was in huge demand because it was hard and didn't burn so dirty. Almost all of it came from the five counties near Scranton, Penn., populated by papist Irishmen, Italians and bohunks. Between 1897 and 1902 membership in the United Mine Workers jumped from 10,000 to over 115,000.

Republicans like President William McKinley, who once represented striking miners in Ohio's Tuscarwas Valley, courted the workingman's vote, believing prosperity is best when shared. The strikers and the owners were at absolute loggerheads, and Roosevelt feared large parts of the country freezing to death. So, he summoned everyone to Washington: "I speak for neither the operators nor the miners, but for the general public." The miners went back to work and everyone agreed that their differences would be settled by a commission Roosevelt would appoint. The commission cut the baby in half on just about every issue, and Roosevelt came out of it looking like a statesman, as well as a champion of the common man.

His appetite for diplomacy whetted, Roosevelt then went about winning his Nobel by summoning the Russians and the Japanese to Portsmouth, New Hampshire to settle the Russo-Japanese War. The Russians desperately wanted a warm water port on the Pacific and set their sights on a cove in Manchuria they named Port Arthur. The Japanese, who were starting to throw their elbows around Asia, didn't take kindly to Russia's territorial ambitions, and (believe it or not) decided a sneak attack was in order. In another bit of historical prologue, they decided that a good way to invade Korea was to invade at Inchon.

The Russians threw their whole Navy at Japan, apparently failing to take stock that Japan is a seafaring nation. The Japanese kicked ass, an outcome that led to an unhealthy bit of hubris on their part a few decades later. Roosevelt cut the Russians a face-saving deal that fueled Japanese suspicions about American intentions. The Czar went back to suppressing people at home.

Ex-President William Taft got into the arbitration game when he was named to a panel charged with liquidating the Grand Trunk Railroad, which had been seized by the Canadian government. The Grand Trunk had been badly mismanaged since its president, Charles Hays, went down on the Titanic and by 1920 it was broke. Taft ruled its carcass was worth $48 million, but two Canadian judges outvoted him, declaring all railroad stock worthless. Because Taft was in the minority, he didn't get paid. When Warren Harding appointed Taft chief justice, the Canadians had a change of heart and sent him a check for $75,000. No eyebrows were raised.

When Harry Truman was president he decided to force the settlement of a steel strike by threatening to seize the steel mills and draft all the strikers into the army. The Supreme Court rapped his knuckles in Youngstown Sheet and Tube v. Sawyer, and most presidents ever since have taken a back seat and let others do the mediating.

One notable exception was Jimmy Carter, who turned contentious negotiations between Egypt's Anwar Sadat and Israel's Menachem Begin into the Camp David Accords by changing the subject to everyone's grandkids. His accomplishment was historic. But when the Nobel Prize was awarded that year guess whose name wasn't on it. The Nobel committee finally corrected its error without admitting fault, giving Jimmy the award in 2002 for all kinds of other wonderful stuff.

In 1985 the Major-League Umpires Union threatened to strike on the eve of the World Series. Both sides agreed to put resolution of the matter in the hands of Richard Nixon, who had resigned in disgrace and accepted a presidential pardon 11 years earlier. Union President Richie Phillips described him as "a man both sides can have confidence in." He wasn't the MVP, but Nixon saved the series.

So, it is not without precedent for Trump to direct his capacious energies to dispute resolution. It's more promising a prospect that his directing them to dispute creation.