How The Democrats Lost Their Warrior Image
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BY MILES BENSON
NATIONAL POLITICS: ANALYSIS
c.2003 Newhouse News Service
newhousenews.com
WASHINGTON -- The Democratic Party has a problem in the post-Sept. 11 world, one that Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., describes succinctly: Too many voters see it as a "conscientious objector in the battle to defend America."
Indeed, national security trumps everything else in the 2004 presidential race, and Republicans own the issue. Poll after poll shows voters far more confident in the GOP.
Democratic leaders say they outscore Republicans on other important matters -- the economy, education, health care and Social Security. But they recognize that they won't be heard on these issues or anything else if they can't pass the threshold test of defending the nation.
How did the Democrats -- who led America through World War I, World War II, Korea and Vietnam -- lose their warrior image and acquire such a wimpy reputation?
Retired Gen. Wesley Clark, eyeing the Democratic presidential nomination himself, offers reasons starting with Vietnam.
"The country slid into war without facing lots of implications at home and abroad," said the much-decorated Clark, who blames Democrat Lyndon Johnson for bungling the conflict.
Even more significant, Clark said, were broader patterns in American politics as the Democrats captured and embraced "the energy of a wave of social change, and paid a price for the reaction against those changes." He lists "the sexual revolution, civil rights, individual empowerment, greater tolerance -- all of which were accompanied by a certain degree of economic change and posed a threat to much of middle-class America, or was perceived as a threat to middle-class American values."
In a time of "raging patriotism," Clark said, Republican strategists have skillfully exploited these insecurities.
Political scientists agree: The turning point for the Democratic Party was Vietnam.
The conflict gave Democrats the stigma of "war losers," said professor Theodore Lowi of Cornell University. Ever since, they have been battered by a superior Republican message machine that successfully demonizes liberals as "weak," Lowi said.
Michael Mandelbaum, director of American foreign policy studies at Johns Hopkins University, said Vietnam "changed the attitude of the Democratic Party's base toward the use of force."
Contributing to the image problem, Mandelbaum said, is the party's inclination to give priority to the domestic agenda and social programs, "which conflict in some sense with military programs." This was compounded by the departure from Congress over the years of influential pro-defense Democrats like Sens. Henry "Scoop" Jackson of Washington, John Stennis of Mississippi and Sam Nunn of Georgia.
American University's James Thurber identified yet another factor: the leading role of the late Sen. Frank Church, D-Idaho, in exposing the excesses of U.S. intelligence agencies in the mid-1970s -- an effort perceived as an attack by the party on the defense and intelligence communities.
But none of that really explains today's lopsided voter preference for Republicans on the national security issue, said former Sen. Bob Kerrey, D-Neb., an ex-Navy Seal who won the Medal of Honor in Vietnam and ran for president in 1992. Kerrey retired from politics to become president of the New School University in New York.
He attributes the GOP's edge to that party's aggressive comparisons of George W. Bush with Bill Clinton. "Republicans are making the argument very effectively: `We've got the greatest commander in chief and the previous one was horrible.' And they are putting out that message over and over," Kerrey said.
In order to blame the problem on history, "one has to presume Americans begin the evaluation with an active memory of things that happened 20 years ago, and I don't think they do," Kerrey said. "They evaluate current performance and listen to current arguments, and those favor Republicans."
To Clark, an American short-term memory problem may explain why Democrats get zero credit for helping to create the military capability that Bush deployed so "magnificently" in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The equipment and uniformed leaders originated under Clinton, Clark said: "The Bush administration had nothing to do with it. Gen. Tommy Franks (who commanded the invasion of Iraq) was a Clinton appointee, as was most of the senior command. It was the Democrats who were pro-security and pro-defense in the 1990s, and the Republicans who were isolationist."
Complicating the perception problem for Democrats is Howard Dean, now a leading contender for the nomination, who is fiercely anti-war and is re-energizing the peace wing of the party. Republicans are jubilant over Dean's emergence.
"I knew that sooner or later President Bush would extend the war on terrorism to a point which would cause the majority of Democrats to blink," said Republican pollster William McInturff. "The modern Democratic Party is built on a foundation of opposition to the use of military force."
On national security, said profesor John Baker at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, "Democrats themselves have a crisis of belief and it's apparent to voters."
Indeed, the problem has rival Democrats sniping at each other.
The campaign of Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., sees it as an opening to criticize not just Dean, but Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. Dean's and Kerry's speeches seem "weak on defense and national security, reinforcing this false impression of the Democratic Party" said Jano Cabrera, a Lieberman spokesman. The Dean campaign declined to respond, but Kerry spokesman Robert Gibbs fired back, "I think it is well beneath Joe Lieberman to question the national security credentials of the only decorated combat veteran in this field running for the presidency."
It's an awkward situation for Democrats.
"Critique of foreign policy is a legitimate and absolutely essential exercise in democracy," Clark said. "The trick is to not criticize the military. They are only doing their duty. That's a vital distinction."
McInturff, the Republican pollster, only laughs. "The public doesn't follow nuance," he said.
Bayh's prescription?
"We need to embrace national security as an important part of the Democratic message once again and, in doing so, rediscover our own roots," said the Indianan, who heads the centrist Democratic Leadership Council. "There was a time when the defense of freedom and liberty was synonymous with being a member of the Democratic Party."
(Miles Benson can be contacted at miles.benson@newhouse.com) |
