When Democrats Became Doves

With the GOP candidates eager to call Obama weak-willed on foreign policy, it's worth looking at how Democrats got stuck with this tag.

BY MICHAEL COHEN | DECEMBER 2, 2011

Forty-four years ago this week, the senior senator from the state of Minnesota, Eugene McCarthy, stepped to a podium in the Senate Caucus Room and transformed the Democratic Party. Angered by the war in Vietnam and his belief that President Lyndon Johnson would "set no limit to the price" he was "willing to pay for a military victory," there McCarthy announced his intention to challenge the incumbent president of his own party in four presidential primaries.

McCarthy didn't even bother to declare he was seeking his party's nomination -- after all, in the fall of 1967 everyone knew that Johnson was practically a shoo-in to be the Democratic presidential nominee in 1968.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the Democratic Convention in Chicago. McCarthy didn't end the war, but he ended Johnson's political career and in the process heralded the shift of the Democratic Party from Cold War hawks to anti-war doves. By creating a political opportunity for Democrats, opposed to the war in Vietnam, to directly engage in the electoral process McCarthy helped change the way that all political leaders -- Democrats and Republicans -- talk about national security policy. No longer could national Democrats ignore liberals skeptical of American power; and Republicans were given a renewed opportunity to cast Democrats as a party beholden to their anti-war base. Quite simply, McCarthy's quixotic presidential bid is the gift that keeps on giving.

Eugene McCarthy was perhaps the single unlikeliest person to launch an insurgent presidential campaign, topple an incumbent president, and spark a year of cataclysmic political change. Aloof, haughty, and frankly a bit lazy, McCarthy was given little chance of having a political impact when he announced his candidacy. He would be, said his fellow Minnesotan and Agriculture Secretary Orville Freeman, a "small footnote" to history.

Two events would ensure that McCarthy's run would be far more than that. First the Tet Offensive on Jan. 30, 1968 -- ironically and prophetically the same day Robert F. Kennedy announced he would not challenge the president and would acquiesce to his re-nomination. After months of being told that the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel was visible in Vietnam, the surprise Tet attack, which struck at every provincial capital in the country as well as the U.S. embassy in Saigon, shattered the illusion of progress. In the process it exposed Johnson and the members of his administration as serial liars about the war.

Lisl Steiner/Getty Images

 

Michael A. Cohen is a regular columnist for Foreign Policy’s Election 2012 channel and is writing a book on the 1968 presidential election.

DELTA22

7:55 PM ET

December 2, 2011

m

A healthy society ought to be anti-war by default. There are times when war is truly necessary, but those times are often few and far between.

 

YASIR QUANTUMSEOLABS

1:19 PM ET

December 3, 2011

Those who tell others to act

Those who tell others to act peacefully are usually the ones who shatter peace the most. The world has entered the 11th year of war in the name of peace. Those who say they love peace have caused devastation everywhere.

 

GENEVIEVETOYD

2:07 PM ET

December 3, 2011

Who Ever Wins

I wish and hoped that whoever wins this forthcoming elections will make sure that all Mesothelioma Lawsuits case will be expedited so the concerned parties can finally have justice.

 

MAVEE22

3:34 AM ET

December 4, 2011

Go McCarthy!

I remember watching a documentary about Eugene McCarthy while I was running on one of my treadmills with TV. I truly admire this guy.

 

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7:36 AM ET

December 4, 2011

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8:23 AM ET

December 4, 2011

Who tell others to act

The world has entered the 11th year of war in the name of peace. Those who say they love peace have caused devastation everywhere. Those who tell others to act peacefully are usually the ones who shatter peace the most.Thanks! Seguro Imoveis Massagistas Acompanhantes Ar Condicionado Carro

 

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JOHNWERNEKEN

2:56 PM ET

December 4, 2011

The wrong guy got assasinated maybe

What a bunch of Bull. For starters, dovish-ness is stupid and wrong and the Democrats ARE the irresponsible party, in every conceivable way. They did not used to be. Second, Tet signaled American victory of Communist militant expansion, it was its last gasp. The American media and especially the combination of inflation and the draft is what change the US politically.

What we got was a Democratic coalition of rich idiots and the leaders of lobby groups who exploit various population groups in the name of protecting them from exploitation by Republicans and by the wealthy. Given a choice, it’s better to be exploited by Republicans or wealthy people, for they will try to build something useful, in which some day one may hope to share. Exploiting Democrats limit and allocate opportunities, freedoms, and progress and produce universal serfdom, almost as in medieval times.

McCarthy did win in Oregon my home state. As RFK said it’s a giant suburb (at least the part RFK knew about. The balance is the Western Province of Appalachia; Oregon was the first state in the country to make being Black or Oriental Unconstitutional, and the last to knowingly elect a KKK Grand Dragon as its Governor). So we are crazy enough to vote for Satan or for Alfred E Newman. Which we seem to have done when we voted for Obama, although I tend to see him more as Al than as that other guy in red with the pitchfork.

Yea McCarthy and his movement, which I must confess I briefly joined 1968-1971, DID change politics. Still a solid South but now a different party. Still corrupt urban machines, but now run by differently complected folks and no longer in cahoots with the South. Still a bunch of resource-developing land speculating Republicans in the Midwest, but now it is they who link to the South, not the Midwestern workers. The workers have no party, for the Democrats have replaced them with so-called professional people, the ones who love lightless light bulbs un-flushable toilets underpowered cars and expensive beers.

Apparently the mad assassins of the 1960’s got the wrong guys.

 

PALMER

1:51 PM ET

December 5, 2011

The logic escapes me

Let's see--"dovish-ness is stupid and wrong and the Democrats ARE the irresponsible party, in every conceivable way" and "Given a choice, it’s better to be exploited by Republicans or wealthy people, for they will try to build something useful, in which some day one may hope to share. Exploiting Democrats limit and allocate opportunities, freedoms, and progress and produce universal serfdom, almost as in medieval times."

So, the Democratic Party is trying to return to feudalism and the Republican party, while protecting the wealthy, is actually protecting everyone because wealthy people will try to to build something useful? This is known as the trickle-down theory. It was the theory espoused by Reagan, but not actually implemented by Reagan, although we are still dealing with the aftermath. The Laffer Curve and supply side economics didn't actually work, and despite 25 years of experience no one in the Republican party is willing to admit that it didn't work.

You have been reading Ayn Rand, haven't you? Why is it no one understands that Atlas Shrugged is a NOVEL. It's FICTION. It's MADE UP. It DIDN'T HAPPEN. Novels are a very poor basis for solving problems of political economy.

I keep hearing about how the fabulously wealthy spend a lot of time worrying about creating jobs. What I observe is that the wealthy spend most of their time worrying about getting and keeping their wealth, not creating jobs for the working class. If the wealthy were worried about creating jobs, they would have kept them in the U.S. instead of exporting them to our economic competitor, China.

But back to the Republican party and "those irresponsible Democrats." Seriously, what could be more inane than starting two wars and CUTTING TAXES at the same time? This was the most irresponsible thing I can think of in recent political economy, enacted by a Republican president and perpetuated by a Republican House of Representatives.

This is the same economic policy as Lyndon Johnson, and we know how that went. Now, the Republican party which asserts it is all about job creation--which makes them Keynesians, by the way--is adamant that we must balance the budget but not increase taxes. When 40% of our national budget was borrowed, as last year, we cannot simply balance the budget by cuts. We also have to pay for the services we get. And we need to revisit the progressive nature of the national tax system. We are not really arguing about whether the tax system ought to be progressive--i.e., the rich pay higher taxes--we are arguing about what that percentage should be.

But can we please drop this inane pretense that the Republicans only protect the wealthy because they really are trying to help the little guy? This is so preposterous I cannot believe it is advocated with a straight face. The Republicans are protecting the wealthy in order to regain and maintain their own political power, and because the rich are the ones with the money, not because there is some grand goal of advancing the common good.

You can argue that the Democrats are feckless, but they do at least seem to genuinely believe there is a common good and that it ought to be promoted. They are still beholden to the wealthy, but they don't try to make a virtue of it.

 

WILDERMANN9

1:21 PM ET

December 6, 2011

At least they have had jobs.

Comparing Obama to Alferd E. Newman or Satan was grossly unfair to Newman and Satan. Who or what ever Satan may be for all I know he may be a fictional character Those guys have had jobs and a long history of working Obama has never worked before politics. His career in Legislature is spotty and shows profound laziness and now as President he is totally inept something Newman is not and Satan in the stories about him doesn't show. At best Obama is a chamelion and a lazy one at that we deserve better.

 

PULLER58

8:46 AM ET

December 5, 2011

Footnotes

It might be convenient to label McCarthy as a gamechanger in todays' parlance, but it was the people in the country that climbed over to object to the foreign policy conventions that the US government had nurtured for decades. The footnote analogy does not wash...

 

PORKOV

11:21 AM ET

December 6, 2011

Let's not forget the Neocons.

The purge by the Democratic party of anyone who supports our country's treaty and other foreign party commitments drove many people who were very much leftists to depart over the lack of support for Israel. The Democratic party still considers the departure of that strange band of ex-Trotskyites and civil rights champions to be the worst kind of treason. There is no worse indictment from a Democrat than to be called a Neocon.

On this issue Obama is between a rock and a hard place. His base is riddled with people whose activist glory days saddled them with a lifelong commitment to peace at any cost. The vast majority of Americans are not prepared to capitulate to communism or Sharia law. His transparent attempts to play both sides in this game have not won him much credibility with either camp.

I have heard several of my lefty friends equate the OWS participants as the great new (white?) hope that represents their youthful activism. Wouldn't it be just swell if they could bring the glories of the 1968 Democratic Convention from Chicago to Charlotte in 2012?

 

TSOL

1:05 PM ET

December 6, 2011

the call for a weak America

"McCarthy was attacking the very heart of American global power -- its over-ambition, its pretensions of global leadership, and its hyper-inflated view of American strength, interests, and capabilities.'

Sounds like a long-winded way of saying he was an isolationist.

 

YARINSIZ

6:21 PM ET

December 31, 2011

On this issue Obama is

On this issue Obama is between a rock and a hard place. His base is riddled with people whose activist glory days saddled them with a lifelong commitment to peace at any cost. seslichat The vast majority of Americans are not prepared to capitulate to communism or Sharia law. His transparent attempts to play both sides in this game have not won him much credibility with either camp.