I see all the typical pinheaded bit players are spewing their left wing liberal garbage hot and heavy tonight...panty yields, unamerican monica, DillweedKrapcakes, Karon Low-ranting, Dip. ...bunch of sad sacks if ever there were any. the saddest part is that they know it.
The Neo-McGovernites
By Lawrence F. Kaplan
Wall Street Journal | July 8, 2003
For the first time since the 1980s, events overseas may tip the balance in a U.S. presidential election. And to judge by the parade of White House aspirants complaining about President Bush's "arrogant" foreign policy and its "pattern of deception and deceit" on the Sunday morning talk show circuit, the Democrats smell blood. The good news here is that, after a decade of touting microinitiatives, school uniforms and Fleetwood Mac tunes, the party of Harry Truman has finally rediscovered its voice on national security issues. The bad news is that it's the voice of George McGovern.
Rather than claim the mantle of Truman, John F. Kennedy or even Bill Clinton, the Democratic presidential field lately seems to be taking its foreign policy cues from the New York Review of Books. There is, to begin with, Sen. John Kerry, who claims the president "misled every one of us" into backing the war in Iraq -- a claim echoed by Sen. Bob Graham -- and who still cannot decide whether he supported the effort. Then there is Howard Dean, surging in the polls and unsure whether Iraq is better off without a genocidal maniac in power, along with Dennis Kucinich, whose campaign signature is a proposal to create a "Department of Peace." As doubts over weapons shade into doubts about the virtue of the war itself, prominent Democrats have even begun to predict another Vietnam in the making.
Before following Dr. Dean any further down this road, party leaders would do well to cast a glance backward, for this is hardly the first time they have traveled there. The transformation of the party of Truman into the party of McGovern began, of course, in the jungles of Vietnam. By 1972, the conviction that American power was tainted, marred by deceitful use in a "criminal" war, prompted the Democratic presidential nominee to demand that America "come home" from the world. And while such candor tended to be the exception rather than the norm -- among others, Henry "Scoop" Jackson and Daniel Patrick Moynihan directly challenged the isolationism that had seized the party's ranks -- a barely concealed suspicion of American power lingered in Democratic foreign policy salons for the next two decades. For the likes of Jimmy Carter and Michael Dukakis, what had begun as opposition to the war in Vietnam had, by the eve of the 1991 Gulf War, hardened into a reflexive opposition to the use of force.
The Clinton presidency put all this to rest. Bill Clinton's motives for employing military power in Haiti, Bosnia and elsewhere may have been less than exalted, but if a commander in chief earned a battle ribbon each time he sent U.S. troops into action, Mr. Clinton would be wearing a chestful today. Assisted by the end of the Cold War and a keen eye to the polls, Mr. Clinton largely drained foreign-policy debates of their philosophical substance, much as he did with American politics as a whole. The result was that, with the exception of a few party activists frozen in amber, he triangulated the "peace Democrats" out of existence.
The end of the Cold War had the opposite effect on the GOP, which counted on the 20-point advantage Republicans traditionally enjoyed on national security matters. During the '90s, though, national security barely registered among the concerns of voters. A 1995 Times Mirror poll found that only 9% of respondents identified defense and foreign policy as the most important issues of the day, a sharp decline from the 42% who put national security at the top in 1980. Indeed, opinion surveys on the eve of the 1996 election showed that Americans actually trusted Mr. Clinton to do a better job of handling foreign affairs than his Republican opponent.
In the aftermath of Sept. 11, however, voters appear to have reverted to Cold War type. During the 2002 midterm election cycle, polls found that most voters rated national security as the country's top priority, even more important than the economy. And as defense and foreign policy issues have re-emerged, so too has the Republican advantage. Hence, numerous recent surveys have shown that once again Americans trust Republicans over Democrats on national security issues, often by a margin of 3 to 1. So much so that no less a war hero than Georgia's Sen. Max Cleland, who left three limbs behind in Vietnam, succumbed to the charge of being insufficiently hawkish in the 2002 election. True, the economy will play a crucial role in the 2004 presidential election. But, as Kerry adviser Chris Lehane has put it, "To get to that issue, you need to satisfy [voters'] expectation and desire that you can handle national security."
Alas, with the exception of Joe Lieberman, John Edwards and the Democratic Leadership Council, the party has done a pitiful job of satisfying that expectation. The failure could exact a steep price from Democrats on Election Day. Polls still show that a majority believes the war in Iraq was justified, that the administration did not mislead the public, that Mr. Bush has handled the situation in Iraq well. They even reveal a willingness to contemplate military action against Iran and North Korea that puts voters ahead of the Bush team itself. Not surprisingly, then, despite the economy, the president still enjoys approval ratings of 60% plus. If the Democratic Party intends to run against a popular war, its leaders might wish to recall the lesson of a Democrat who ran against an unpopular war. He lost 49 states. |
