President
Bush's popularity among American voters remains high, thanks
primarily to his new and improved status as a wartime president.
As he and his administration realize this fact, they accordingly
plan to extend his status by escalating the war against terrorism
into Iraq, and throughout the Moslem world. Their obvious
political calculation is that if the war in Afghanistan increased
the president's popularity, then certainly further wars in
that vein must surely do the same. Such a political strategy
is aimed, therefore, at the ultimate prize – the re-election
of the president in 2004. |
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That
much must be obvious. But is it similarly obvious that wartime presidents are
routinely re-elected in American history? Some might consider the answer to be
somewhat complex, but on the whole it is actually a rather simple phenomenon that
trends mostly in one direction. That trend is that American wartime presidents
are usually, and ultimately, dumped by the voters. This
historical phenomenon tends to run in a curve. When the war first breaks out,
the American president becomes very popular. But as the war drags on into a period
of months and years, that wartime president's popularity begins to decline, usually
all the way to the point of his ultimately losing his office. This is due to the
domestic political and economic traumas that the war increasingly inflicts on
society. Such are the domestic consequences of America's most famous and "glorious"
wars. Those wars would be, according to the perpetual war hawks, the Gulf War,
Vietnam, Korea, and World War II. George
H. W. Bush's political suicide was the result of his once popular wars. The voters
dumped him in 1992 because of the recession which many, if not most economists
trace to two related causes: Bush's Iraq war, and Bush's tax and spending increases.
The major spending increases that Bush favored most were not on the domestic-welfare
side of the budget, but rather on the military-warfare side. Bush wanted that
money for his invasion of Panama, and for his invasion of Iraq. Thus, Bush's wars
and his inevitable post-war recession resulted in his electoral defeat in 1992.
The
American body politic also dumped two other war hungry Republican presidents during
the post-war traumas of Vietnam. Ford lost re-election due to two related causes:
the post-war recession that continued into 1975, and his pardon of Nixon. Both
of these were the result of the U.S. war in Vietnam. The recession was caused
by the Federal Reserve's measures to crush the wartime inflation, and the pardon
was for the Watergate crimes that were themselves all wrapped up in Nixon's Vietnam
fight. Both
Ford and Nixon were thrown out of office because of the political and economic
traumas caused by Vietnam/Watergate. Some may argue, however, that Nixon was a
wartime president when he was re-elected in 1972. But by 1972 Nixon had drastically
de-escalated U.S. involvement in the war. He had de-escalated in every year of
his administration, which was why the voters rewarded him with re-election. The
more Nixon de-escalated, the less he could be considered a warrior president. Nevertheless,
Nixon's remaining degree of involvement in Vietnam still ultimately lost him his
office. This was because Watergate was the domestic side of the global anti-communist
struggle. When the Watergate was burgled during the 1972 campaign, the primary
political issue was still Vietnam. McGovern was charging that Nixon was not de-escalating
fast enough, which inevitably left the Democrats open to the perennial Republican
charge that the Democrats were soft on Communism. Therefore, any attempt by Nixon
to defeat the Democrats with burgled Watergate information was primarily motivated
by the primary issue of that campaign: Vietnam and the Cold War against Communism.
Vietnam
destroyed not only Nixon's and Ford's presidencies, but also that of their predecessor,
Johnson. They all repeated the fate of Truman and his handpicked successor Stevenson,
both of whom were dumped by the voters in 1952 because of their fruitless war
in Korea. That
leaves us with the only twentieth century wartime president to be re-elected while
a war was raging and escalating. This was FDR in 1944, and he is the great model
upon which all subsequent wartime presidents have based their illusory and ill-fated
hopes. But even the case of the 1944 election still comports with the theme that
wartime presidents lose their popularity. FDR's re-election in 1944 was by his
slimmest majority ever. In other words, of all four of his campaigns, 1944 was
his least successful. Nevertheless,
the wartime FDR was re-elected, and many will argue that this singular case will
be the precedent that George W. Bush emulates. But these dreamers' analogy is
fundamentally flawed for the following reason. In 1944, FDR was actually less
pro-war than was his opponent, Dewey. Although both candidates equally supported
the war against the Axis, Dewey took his belligerence a step further by implicitly
advocating yet another war, one against Russia, because of its conquest of Poland.
The Cold War was already beginning, at least in the traditionally anti-communist
Republican ranks. The
current Republican war hawk analogists should now ask themselves if Bush will
also emulate FDR's relation to his 1944 opponent. Do they believe that Bush's
Democratic opponent will actually be even more pro-war than Bush? None of the
partisan rhetoric thus far has indicated that that kind of historic turnabout
is likely. History
clearly demonstrates that Americans soon tire of war and the wartime presidents
and politicians who pushed those wars. Americans may be enthusiastic for war at
its outset, but that enthusiasm inevitably wanes. And when it does, pro-war presidents
and candidates soon lose their popularity, and their grasp on office. This
is the trend of history. But if the current warrior president is able to buck
this trend and the fates, he would be the greatest political and military genius
in American history. He would have to be even more brilliant than FDR. How many
American voters who would re-elect the president today also believe he is indeed
an unprecedented genius? Richard
Hill is the author of the forthcoming book from Lynne Rienner Publishers, entitled
Hitler
Attacks Pearl Harbor: Why the U.S. Declared War on Germany. |