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Did the Cold War Hold Democrats Down?
by Alex Thurston  Forgive me while I think aloud for a moment. We hear all the time that Democrats lost seven of the ten presidential elections between 1968 and 2004. Supposedly this proves that 1968 was the year Democrats, and America, lost their way. But let's back up a little. If we date the Cold War's beginning with Winston Churchill's Iron Curtain speech in 1946, then Democrats lost seven out of the eleven presidential elections held during the Cold War. Hell, if we date the Cold War's beginning with the Soviet Union's first test of a nuclear weapon in 1949, then we get the same figure as the 1968-2004 one - seven Democratic losses out of ten presidential elections between 1952 and 1988. Maybe 1968 was not the beginning of a Democratic decline, but rather a midpoint in a struggle that Democrats mostly lost from the jump - a struggle to outhawk Republicans, in other words a struggle to be more vicious than Republicans in pointing fingers at supposed "internal enemies" and more aggressive than Republicans in arguing that America's "national security" hinged on pursuing violent conflicts in third-world countries far from our shores. How did the party of FDR and, even more importantly, the dream of a center-left America with a safety net for all citizens get disrupted, given FDR's huge successes? How did America become so divided after such a clear moment of consensus from 1932-1945? One element, certainly, is the bitter divisions caused by the struggle for African Americans' civil rights. But another factor in turning Americans against each other was the Cold War and the huge rhetorical leverage Republicans extracted from it. Who was calling Democrats weak on national defense in 1945? Yet despite the fact that Democrats presided over American/Allied victories in both world wars, a persistent theme of Cold War politics, especially post-1968, was that Democrats were soft on communism and weak on national security. Without
that toolbox, Nixon and Reagan's presidencies (and George W. Bush's, for that matter) would have looked a lot different. When Democrats offer America peace, America responds. As I've said before, I believe that Robert F. Kennedy - campaigning on a platform of peace in 1968 and thereby repudiating both his own background as a Cold Warrior superhawk and the Democratic Party's Cold War hawkishness - would have won the presidency, had he lived and been the nominee in 1968. 2008 is not just a chance to revisit 1968, it's what 1968 was - a chance to revisit 1945 and the roads not taken in the post-war era. Because 2008, much though it looks like a new beginning, is in many ways - and here I will argue positive ways - a continuation of 1992. Is it an accident that a Democrat won the first post-Cold War election? Is it an accident that Democrats have won three of five presidential elections since the Cold War ended, and won the popular vote in four of those five elections? With the Cold War's end and a changed political landscape, we clearly have the country's confidence. In 1992, and still in 1996, Clinton was winning by pluralities. This year we crushed them in a head-to-head with no distractions. The biggest mistake we could make now would be to buy into the War on Terror. Call 2008 a repeat of 1960. We stand at a crossroads where we can choose between ideological warfare and domestic revitalization. When Kennedy and Johnson allowed the assumptions of the Cold War to stand, they ended up squandering a great opportunity to build on the New Deal legacy. Obama faces the same choice. Realizing his domestic objectives will be tremendously complicated and difficult if he accepts Bush's fundamental premises on foreign policy, especially the assumption that constant projection of American military force abroad is necessary for keeping Americans safe. I'm not saying that the Soviet Union did not pose a threat to the United States. I'm not saying that terrorist networks do not currently pose a threat to American security. But there is more than one way to approach a security challenge. Did the conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, and Latin America help "win" the Cold War? Did they make Americans safer? America's greatest asset, indeed greatest weapon, remains our economy. It was above all American industrial power that helped us win World War II. And even if you believe Reagan's defense spending "won" us the arms race and the Cold War (which I do not), it must be admitted that Reagan-era spending played a significant role in driving up the deficit and the debt. We can rebuild our country and remain vigilant to external threats at the same time, but not if we get distracted by peripheral conflicts. Waging ideological warfare has hurt our country and our party. I hope Americans, and our leaders, take a good look at the history. Alex Thurston is currently a student in the Master's Program of Arab Studies at Georgetown University. He graduated from Northwestern University in 2005 with a BA in Religion and spent the winter of 05-06 working at various jobs around Chicago, including at the notorious 1000 Liquors. In 2006-2007, he lived in Senegal as part of the Fulbright exchange program and studied Muslim youth movements in the capital city, Dakar. His interests (other than politics and religion) include hip hop and literature. He can be reached at alex[at]theseminal.com.
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