Is Iraq Another Vietnam? The Democrats Had Better Hope Not

Let's say for arguments sake that some of the Democrats are right and Iraq is another Vietnam.  Do these Democrats remember clearly what happened to them as a party during the Vietnam War? 

As a student of history I have been scratching my head wondering about the Democratic Parties current fixation on the Vietnam decade.  While it is apparent that many within the party and the media have warm memories of how their feeble protests 'stuck it to the man', that is not all that accurate politically speaking.

The anti-war movement reached its crescendo in 1972...when Republican Richard Nixon won every state in the country except Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.  How could this happen?  The answer is fairly simple, the anti-war movement split the Democratic Party and drove out the blue collar meat and potatoes labor movement.  But that splintering is only a part of the story, the party splintered again over numerous current issues and was incapable of unification behind any candidate.  Many talking heads refer to the 'Reagan Democrats' when looking at the demographic segmentation of the population during elections.  This segment is credited with the Reagan landslide.  The truth is the 'Reagan Democrats' existed as a powerful voting block back when Reagan was still a Governor in California.  It was those same Reagan Democrats who elected Richard Nixon in 1968 and again in 1972.

The irony is that this anti-war split was clearly foreseeable even before 1968, you can see it early in the mid-sixties when student radicals were incapable of playing nice with the other fringe liberals.  For example the outcast bikers were more likely to attack the Berkley radicals than to join them in their street protests.  The party bosses were waring with the new anti-war leadership over control of the party, the party was also divided North/South over race issues and could barely create a platform.  You had Humphrey/Jackson leadership splits over busing, and McCarthy and McGovern splitting off from the Johnson Democrats over the Vietnam War. 

Despite all of this awful leadership and policy splits, the party controlled everything - the Presidency, both houses of Congress and a liberal leaning Supreme Court.  This was the high water mark for the Democrats.  The party has been furiously destroying itself ever since.

Why?

That answer is difficult.  Many ideas suggest themselves to me.  One obvious idea is the use of these natural splits by the Republican Party...driving wedge issues between the glue that tries to hold the Democratic Party together.  You see it on abortion, gay marriage and national defense today.  You also see it most clearly on the anti-war left.  Ironically enough, the Republican Party has had to do very little actual politicking to benefit from these splits.  The Democratic candidates have been spun in circles by their own party; trying to bridge these gaps.  This has allowed the Republicans to charge every national Democratic candidate since Jimmy Carter with flip flopping on the issues or third party candidates to accuse the Democrats of being no different than Republicans.

It might surprise you who I think the biggest ally of the Republican party has been...why the media of course.  Not those few in the media who all but push the Republican talking points...they are useful to the Republicans but they can't really split the Democratic Party since most Democrats are not consumers of those news outlets; and those who are, distrust them deeply.  The Democrats are being split by the liberal leaning mainstream media.  Nothing drives wedges between a party any quicker than media reports which try to push the Democrat's agenda upon party members who feel strongly about the issues.  The agenda-based journalism, trying to push a 'story-line', has created fissures between the Democratic Party and has forced candidates to speak out of both sides of their mouth and the party to have planks in their platform that they clearly do not actually believe or worse fear to articulate.  This is the meat behind the AMMP ('American Mainstream Media Party') described by Howard Fineman when he wrote about it in January 2005.  He says the AMMP has failed...sadly I think he has picked the wrong party.  It is the Democrats who have failed, with a big assist from Howard's AMMP.

With the media whipping up partisan distress over the liberal talking points, special interest groups can force candidates to address issues directly that they otherwise might be able to avoid.  Sadly the AMMP and those special interest groups do not reflect majority opinion.  Thus do the Democrats continual dwindle in their influence.  You can see it most clearly in the disconnect between the platform statements, and the candidates.

The Democrats supported the Iraq war in the last election...according to their platform.  Today they are forced to utter the, 'I was duped defense.'  Yet the core of the party are clearly anti-war, as evidenced by Howard Dean's meteoric rise.  The candidate, John Kerry, clearly stated that he believed that marriage was between a man and a woman, that too is in the Democrat's platform.  Approximately 90% of the delegates to the Democratic Convention supported legalizing gay marriage.  The platform also supported further tax cuts, yet the candidates raged against Bush's tax cuts for the wealthiest 2%.  The candidate, John Kerry, spoke eloquently about how he believed that abortion was wrong - he just didn't want to legislate his own personal morality.  Of course the Democratic platform defended a 'woman's right to choose' and over 95% of the delegates to the convention supported abortion, indeed Kerry himself voted against a partial birth abortion ban.  All of this is great stuff...very nuanced...but it exists not because of the nuance of the issues or because candidate Kerry was somehow unable to make up his mind about anything, but because the Democratic Party has ceased to exist as a uniform entity capable of supporting a single coherent set of beliefs.  If you want unity, the beliefs have to go!  That, more than any other reason, explains why the party has failed to articulate an alternative to the Bush administration policies.

Lets face it, the Bush administration has hardly demonstrated much competence outside of efficiently running election campaigns.  In fact, if the real Democrats could not defeat Bush in 2004, their only hope is to run as maverick Republicans.  Senator Hillary Clinton appears to understand this and has staked out positions which, for Democrats anyway, are nothing short of Attila the Hun.  This is a woman who led an effort to nationalize health care, who has been emphatically pro-abortion, who has had her liberal ticket punched by anyone and everyone who could punch it.  Today she is one of the more conservative Senators, positioning herself to run for President.  Does anyone really believe she is pro-Iraq war?  That position is a political necessity for her but may actually be fatal in the Democratic primaries.  The anti-war constituents will destroy the party and in Hillary's case, perhaps their only hope for success, rather than permit any position short of immediate withdrawal and defeat and the media will see that the anti-war masses remain whipped into a fury by getting their daily fix of anti-Americanism.  Just like 1972!

You see, the roots of this problem extend back to the Vietnam War and with few exceptions (i.e. Republican self-inflicted wounds), the Democrats have never recovered.  It is ironic that some Democrats appear determined to duplicate their Vietnam era failures today.  It is almost nostalgic...even for them.

Comments

[Peter]

Interesting article. I do agree that the democrats have been divided and listless for the 2004 contest, divided between supporting much of the Bush platform, and attempting to create their own policy visions.

Similarly, there has been some enormous difficulty capitalizing on many of the Bush administrations failures, whether perceived or real (Katrina, Iraq, S.C. Nominees etc).

[Mahatma]

Peter:

As I think about it, my conclusion is almost worse than that...purely from a Republican's power politics perspective; If you want to dominate the Democrats politically, go to war with someone!

It is an unbelievable yet hard to refute position that a war, any war, even a cold war, destroys the unity of the Democratic Party and renders the Party incapable of electing a liberal. Kosovo is the only exception I can identify and that was not a 'war' but an arial bombing by a third way (non-liberal) Democrat and it still divided the Democratic Party.

I would like to call this the 'Vietnam Syndrome'...and I believe it will continue to impact American politics for the next 30 years.

If a Republican is elected in 2008...I would look for another war within the next two years. It is the best guarantee for Republican dominance that any administration can have.

What a horrible thought...eh?

[Matt Hurley]

Excellent analysis, as always...

Here's the thing about your next 30 years projection, though...I don't see the current crop of childish lefty protests as being all that effective. Vietnam was the last time these tactics actually worked, hence all the nostalgia. Those folks aren't getting any younger...and as soon as they no longer wield any kind of political influence, I expect these sorts of strategeries will only be employed on college campuses where the last remaining relics from the Vietnam era will still have tenure, influence and power.

[Mahatma]

Matt:

You have 40 somethings who are part of the tail end of the woodstock generation...30 years is the outside edge, but it is a realistic outside edge.

[Mahatma]

I would also take exception to the statement that these tactics worked. As near as I can tell the tactics (anti-war protesting) have never been successful and have always backfired, at least politically speaking.

Yes the U.S. abandoned Vietnam...but the protests had nothing to do with the administrative interference with the war effort...which is what made the war drag on for ever and eventually provided war critics a reason to oppose the war and gradually develop supporters.

Absent the Johnson administration's inept bungling and interference with the military in the conduct of the war, the lack of a plan to establish a Democratic autonomous state, and the the inability to diplomatically deal with China; Vietnam would have been successful and much pain and anger could have been eliminated.

Hindsight is 20/20 but what would have been so wrong with negotiating with Ho Chi Minh to hold a parliamentary style election? If that was held in front of the combatants EARLY in the war...we would have definately seen a less bloody and far smaller insurgency. Basically what we are currently seeing in Iraq! Remember Ho Chi Minh turned to China and communism after the French were fighting him. He was opposing a fascist dictatorship established by the French.

With those assumptions, not even Vietnam would have been Vietnam. No quagmire...no political benefit in opposing it.

[Matt Hurley]

Revise and extend: I agree that the protest tactics didn't "actually" work during the Vietnam era...however, they are "perceived" to have worked by those who are still pushing similar tactics today.

My point about the 30 years projection was that I don't think the hippies are going to be viable political constituency that wields any kind of influence for too much longer. Not so much because of their age (although I think that will be a factor - Bill Clinton was the first hippie POTUS and look at him, he's one Big Mac away from the Golden Arches in the Sky) but rather because the hippies have really become such a minority in this country because they've been wrong about everything...

[Kevin B.]

Heh... "one Big Mac away from the Golden Arches in the Sky"

[Peter]

I disagree. I think the hippies are less visible, because mainstream culture has embraced many tenets of hippie philosophy.

For example, environmentalism is no longer associated exclusively with hippies. the same with pacifism, embrasure of eastern religious ideas (yoga craze anyone?) and on and on.

Its not so much that hippies have faded away, but rather that most people have become hippies, if just in a small way.

secondly, the notion that protests are ineffective, is likewise mistaken. Protests do have effects. they create public pressure, they signal the degree to which discontent exists (the size of the crowd involved), and they put agendas in the media.

Do you think the WTO meeting following Seattle in 1999 would have been located in remote Qatar if not for the enormous and unprecedented protest that took place during the Seattle session?

Dont kid yourself. Protests may not have enormous direct effects, but they help shape popular opinion and media-relayed pressure, which politicians pay close attention to.

Having said all that, part of the reason why protests havent appeared to have worked as well in recent years is of course due to a decrease in youth participation at the grassroots level (especially on campuses). Compare Columbia university in 1968 with Columbia university today, and the difference is striking. Theres no massive protests on the steps, no police involvements...very little in fact.

Even at my own university, people such as myself are more interested in joining the faculty of business administration than a protest...

Perhaps its more a question of participation in protests, than whether protests dont work.

Its by no means fair to say that current protests are equivalent to those in the 60s and 70s - theres just no comparison. Only Seattle comes close I think, and perhaps the world protest in March 2003 which set a historic record for global protest against the US-coalitions planned war in iraq.

...my 2c.

[Mahatma]

I would echo what Peter said about the hippies, but he is missing it on protests. Protests also galvanize the opposition which in most cases is the majority. Therefore...in a Democracy...protests are worse than ineffective, they are self defeating.

Do you think 11 states would have passed a ban on Gay marriage if the Mayor of San Francisco had not tried to force them, or the Judge in Massachusetts had no 'legislated' from the bench? In both of those very public protests...the issue was used to motivate the opposition (the majority) which made the goal of the protests (the legalization of gay marriage) much more difficult to enact at some time in the future. The anti-gayu marriage provisions would have never made it on a ballot if it had not been for the protests.

You can see a very similar pattern with the Iraq War protests. They have been coopted by some fringe radical groups which have forced the public to turn against the anti-war position.

I would also point out that the WTO protests have hardly been effective. One could say quite clearly that the majority has clearly NOT risen up in support of the protester's position. And here we get to the primary point...the purpose of a protest used to be to change policy...today it is a bunch of useless society outcasts trying to get attention, not for their positions, but for themselves. The professional protester in many cases has no discernable position at all. What position would you characterize the anti-war protesters as having? I'm sure I can find organizations who attended the protest who would completely disagree with you.

[Peter]

Perhaps - regarding the WTO.

If by failure you mean the WTO protest failed to result in the dissolution of that world body, and the collapse of world trade, than obviously, you're correct.

However, if you link the WTO protest to a broad and mainstream effort to continue to humanize global capitalism, then its been a very succesful milestone.

Today, terms like CSR, and SII (corporate social responsibility and socially responsible investing) owe part of their existence to a fundamental grassroots antipathy towards corporate globalization in the 1990s.

But when you write things like "useless society outcasts" I begin to see that you have a very black and white view of this issue, and that may not change.

Its a bit infantile to call all protesters useless society outcasts...isn't it? Would you call all the Americans who think the Iraq war was a bad idea in the first place useless society outcasts? In that case, you think about 168,000,000 Americans are useless society outcasts (number arrived at by multiplying 0.60 x 280,000,000 americans). According to Global Pew Research, about 60% of americans now think the initial decision to invade was a mistake.

The protestors you see, are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of their basic views (towards Iraq as just one example).

[Mahatma]

I think I would distinguish your view of WTO protestors in Seattle from the views of responsible citizens. Keep in mind where this started...you claimed that protests were effective. I am asserting that they are effective more in galvanizing the opposition. I have LOTS of evidence and historical facts to back me up.

You are presenting nothing but the adoption of a couple of terms by sympathetic academics?

I can argue better for your position than that! You should have countered with the Civil Rights Movement, the Brown Power movement and the Labor movement...then we could have had a reasonable debate! You are either busy or slipping.

If all you are going to rely upon is the WTO and the current anti-war protests, I think I've won this argument hands down.

What do you think that the Cindy Sheehan protestors have accomplished? (Aside from making an ass out of themselves) And please don't try and claim something silly like raising awareness...what Cindy Sheehan accomplished and every other half wit anti-war protestor accomplished was the re-election of George W. Bush...and by the way, political elections are a 'black and white' issue since you either WIN or LOSE.

And I'd like to see you prove that it has ever been any different from that. (Dig deep and research the Civil Rights movement...it will teach you why these protests are so ineffective)