Obama Joins Johnson in Escalating Unpopular War He Inherited
By Michael Tackett
Dec. 2 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama’s announcement that he’ll send 30,000 more U.S. troops to fight in Afghanistan had echoes of many of his predecessors whose ranks he has joined -- war presidents.
It is a collection of leaders with mixed political fates. History suggests failure is at least as likely as success, with early assurances collapsing under the weight of events the presidents couldn’t contain.
“More often than not, presidents misjudge what they achieve through these conflicts and then they are unable to control the domestic agenda when they become distracted by war,” said Robert Dallek, a presidential historian.
“This idea of guns and butter that Johnson talked about is false,” he said, referring to former President Lyndon Johnson, who escalated U.S. involvement in Vietnam at the same time he expanded social-welfare programs at home.
Obama’s challenge is greater in many ways because he’s also pressing to remake health care, which represents about 18 percent of the nation’s economy, reverse an unemployment rate of 10.2 percent and deal with a record $1.4 trillion deficit. And the war itself, polls show, is increasingly unpopular.
The White House estimates the cost of the additional troops will be $30 billion next year. Versions of health-care legislation are estimated to cost between $848 billion and more than $1 trillion over 10 years. Some Democrats are pushing the president to propose a second economic-stimulus package on top of the $787 billion plan, and Obama has said he wants climate-change legislation, which may also prove costly.
Like Iraq Surge
On Afghanistan, the president decided the infusion of troops might have the same effect as the 2007 surge of American forces in Iraq, namely to produce a more stable country on the road to lasting progress, a senior White House official said.
Unlike President George W. Bush, who said that setting a date certain for troop withdrawal would embolden the enemy, Obama has calculated that announcing an exit timetable would prompt Afghans to move faster to take control of their country, the official said.
Obama’s message that the Afghan people “will ultimately be responsible for their own country” recalled the words of John F. Kennedy about Vietnam when he said in September 1963: “In the final analysis, it is their war. They are the ones who have to win it or lose it.”
Recalling Johnson
Acceding to his generals’ calls for more troops was reminiscent of Johnson as he stepped up the conflict in Southeast Asia. “If you’re going to put one soldier in, make damned sure you have enough,” he said, according to an oral history by McGeorge Bundy, Johnson’s national security adviser.
Public anger about the Vietnam War prompted a challenge to Johnson in the Democratic primaries in 1968 and ultimately his decision not to run for a second full term.
Harry Truman, facing a public restive about the war in Korea, also decided against seeking a second full term in 1952. He announced his decision about a month after a Gallup Poll showed him with a 22 percent approval rating, the lowest of any American president since Gallup’s first survey in 1935.
Dwight Eisenhower, the retired general who led the Allied forces to victory in World War II, won as a peace candidate. An estimated 28,500 U.S. forces are still in South Korea.
“We have done very poorly in our history exiting wars,” said Ken Warren, a professor of political science at St. Louis University. “We don’t know how to.”
Mindful of Vietnam
Obama was mindful of the Vietnam analogy, and said the comparison was inaccurate because the U.S. is “joined by a broad coalition of 43 nations” in Afghanistan and that troops weren’t facing a “popular insurgency” there. “Most importantly,” he said, “unlike Vietnam, the American people were viciously attacked from Afghanistan and remain a target for those same extremists who are plotting along its border.”
Obama is also caught between Democrats who have opposed the war and Republicans who support the conflict yet not new taxes to pay for it.
“He’ll be placed in a vice grip of deficits and following a conservative’s policy,” said George Edwards, a presidential scholar at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. “It’s irritating the left and it’s irritating the right. It can define his presidency.”
Lack of consensus about Afghanistan and Americans’ concerns about the direction of the economy have left Obama with approval ratings that are near the lowest of his presidency. A Gallup tracking poll had him with a 51 percent rating yesterday.
No Guarantees
At the same time, successful conflicts haven’t ensured popularity. George H.W. Bush had an approval rating of 89 percent during the Gulf War in February 1991 only to lose his re-election bid to Bill Clinton in 1992. George W. Bush, who referred to himself as a “war president,” saw his ratings climb to 90 percent after the Sept. 11 attacks. Americans initially supported his war efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq and he won re-election, only to see his ratings plunge to 27 percent by September 2008.
Even Franklin Roosevelt, elected to a fourth term in 1944, faced opposition to his domestic programs as victory in World War II was becoming more likely. As David Greenberg, a history professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey says, Roosevelt proposed an “economic bill of rights” that promised 60 million jobs, among other items. He won with his lowest Electoral College vote total.
“It’s Johnson’s war, it’s Nixon’s war, it’s Bush’s war, now it’s Obama’s war,” said Warren. “He will be defined as a war president.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Michael Tackett in Washington at mtackett@bloomberg.net; Edwin Chen in Washington at echen32@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: December 2, 2009 00:14 EST |
