In recent years, the conventional wisdom has been that “Peace” is a losing issue in U.S. presidential campaigns.  Proponents of this view point to George McGovern’s run for the presidency in 1972, when he called for peace in Vietnam and was trounced at the polls.

But a more thoroughgoing analysis of the peace issue in presidential races supports a more nuanced conclusion.  Indeed, it indicates that peace has been a winning issue numerous times.

First of all, peace is only one of many issues raised in most presidential campaigns and, therefore, its influence on the outcome is hard to disentangle from other issues.  Moreover, the issue can be muted even further when the candidates of the opposing parties take roughly similar positions on it.  In addition, people are not always driven by the issues.  Indeed, they are often motivated by party loyalty, by the personality of the candidates, or--in recent years--by slick campaign ads.

Even so, there have been numerous times when the peace issue has been very prominent—and when the candidates raising it have won.

During the 1916 presidential race, in the midst of World War I, President Woodrow Wilson campaigned strongly as a peace candidate.  With the Republicans adopting a hawkish line on the conflict, the Democrats rallied behind the slogan:  “He Kept Us Out of War!”  And it worked.  Between 1912 (when he won only because of a split in Republican ranks) and 1916, Wilson’s share of the popular vote rose from 42 to 49.4 percent, carrying him through to victory.

Another sharp division on the question of peace occurred in 1952.  When the Democratic Party was blamed for the bloody, unpopular Korean War and its presidential candidate, Adlai Stevenson, promised to fight the war as long as it took, Dwight Eisenhower, the Republican candidate, made a strong peace appeal.  Americans “must avoid the kind of bungling that led us into Korea,” he told a campaign audience.  “The young farm boys must stay on their farms; the students must stay in school.”  That fall, Eisenhower proclaimed that the Democrats had given the “false answer . . . that nothing can be done to speed a secure peace.”  But, if he were elected, he said, he would “concentrate on the job of ending the Korean war,” adding:  “I shall go to Korea.”  It was perhaps the most popular and most-quoted statement in his campaign. He surged to victory, with 55 percent of the vote.

In 1964, the Republicans nominated a bona fide hawk, Barry Goldwater, who bluntly declared that his goal was winning the Vietnam War and casually chatted about the use of “nukes” in world affairs.  Addressing the Republican national convention, Goldwater assured his audience that “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.”  Not surprisingly, the Democrats seized the opportunity to paint the GOP candidate into a corner.  Party ads played skillfully upon the widely shared view that Goldwater was “trigger-happy, with the best known of them showing a little girl plucking a daisy as the world exploded in nuclear war.  Meanwhile, Johnson campaigned as a peace candidate.  “We are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves,” he told voters.  “We are not going north and drop[ping] bombs.”  Johnson easily won the election, securing the greatest vote, the greatest margin of victory, and the greatest percentage (61.1 percent) up to that point in American history.

By 1968, Johnson’s betrayal of his peace promises had made him and the escalating Vietnam War so unpopular that he was forced out of the Democratic primaries by two peace candidates, Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy.  Furthermore, even Richard Nixon, the GOP candidate, now chose to criticize the war and to claim that he had a “secret plan” to bring it to an end.  Although Nixon’s credibility as a peace candidate was not high, the peace credentials of his Democratic opponent, Hubert Humphrey, seemed even lower, for Humphrey was clearly Johnson’s stand-in.  In the election, Nixon eked out a narrow victory.

Finally, in 1976, Jimmy Carter, the Democratic presidential candidate, sounded many strong peace themes during his campaign.  Attacking the Nixon-Ford administration’s cynicism in world affairs, he promised a new foreign policy, based on peace and human rights.  In addition, he called for the scuttling of the B-1 bomber, a comprehensive nuclear test ban, and for movement toward the elimination of all nuclear weapons.  So impressive was Carter’s peace position that the executive director of SANE, America’s largest peace group, resigned to work in Carter’s campaign.  Carter, too, emerged victorious, with 50 percent of the vote.

Even in the case of George McGovern’s 1972 election defeat, it is worth noting that Nixon neutralized the peace issue to some extent by emphasizing his withdrawal of most U.S. troops from Vietnam, his claim that his administration had secured “peace with honor,” and his policies of détente with China and the Soviet Union.

Thus, there seems to be little basis for the assumption that “Peace” is necessarily a losing issue.  Indeed, “Peace” has been (and can be) a potent force in U.S. presidential campaigns.

Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007

The author's examples are so wide-ranging that is very difficult to draw useful general conclusions from them. Of course, politicians are all for "peace," along with motherhood, apple pie, and enough fossil fuel reserves to fill the known universe.

There are, however, tremendous differences between advocating "peace" by staying out of an existing massive but distant conflagration (1916) or giving up on a existing war that is patently not worth the price of victory (1968) or promising to fight an existing war to more prompt an effective conclusion (1952) or vaguely pining for "peace" as alternative to a bogus war being propagandized as a real war (2004). Not surprising, the latter has proven the least effective.

Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007

This trite conclusion about how "GOP presidents have usually been more willing to stand up to America's enemies militarily" clearly leaves out consideration of the most massive and crucial war of the period, World War II. American involvement in this greatest of all U.S. military victories of the period was instigated, organized, led, and consummated by Democrats, while Republicans were largely the party of isolation and appeasement. The 1970s are also not mentioned, probably because America's all-time worst military setback, in Vietnam, occured under the presidential administrations of Republicans Nixon and Ford (albeit with the prior able assistance of a blundering Democratic LBJ). As serious historians realize, looking across the 20th century, both U.S. political parties have had foreign and military policies containing numerous successes and failures. Karl-Rove-like propagandists, on the other hand, have a different, more presentist, and more abusive attitude towards U.S. history.

Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007

March 1941 Lend Lease - massive American support for the war against Hitler, well before Pearl Harbor

May 1954 Dien Bien Phu - neary 7 years before JFK entered the White House

Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007

Lend lease a "consolation"? More like a deliberate strategy to supply as much assistance to Britain as possible short of a declaration of war. In any event the larger point remains: there is no meaningful Democrat-Republican correlation in the history of America's wars since 1865. Both parties have been all over the map. It is a lazy abuse of history that attempts to draw a lasting distinction on this basis. For a real understanding there is substitute for examining the issues of specific American military involvements on their respective merits

Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007

Apparently you think I meant massive POPULAR support rather what I actually sought to imply: massive support by the Federal Government under FDR (doing an end run around public opinion). This a non controversial historical aspect of World War II, having little do with conspiracy theories about FDR's people having deliberately engineered the Pearl Harbor attack. Those theories -some of which are less ludicrous than others- are rather obtuse since it is not really disputed that FDR wanted into the war and was waiting for a suitable pretext, and that some incident was likely to occur eventually either in the Pacific or the Atlantic.

Patrick M. Ebbitt - 9/24/2006

Lawrence,

According to the DOD the first official US combat deaths in Vietnam occurred on July 8, 1959 (Buis & Ovnand) under the Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower.

You can look it up.

Patrick M. Ebbitt - 9/24/2006

Andy,

The facts speak for themselves. US military involvement in Vietnam War was initiated under Eisenhower not Kennedy or Johnson or Nixon or Ford. The first combat deaths occurred on July 8, 1959 and is a matter of public record. Look it up and stop rewriting history to suit your ideological motives.

If you want to play that game then Ford and the Republicans lost the Vietnam War. We all know that is not true but, this type rewrite is akin to your nonsense.

Patrick M. Ebbitt - 9/24/2006

Andy,

Q. 1. What was a Republican White House expecting to gain by entering SE Asia in 1958? Why not enter the conflict on the side of the French before 1958 say May 7, 1954 for example if, this front was so important in halting the spread of communism? Was Kennedy stuck with the misbegotten legacy of Eisenhower and forced to play the hand dealt or did he create his own reality? What was the role of prominent Republican hawks in Congress and the Pentagon in pushing Kennedy to escalate US involvement?

Further;

"I want them to hit everything. I want them to use the big planes, the small planes, everything they can that will help out there. Right now there is a chance to win this goddamn war, and that's probably what we are going to have to do because we are not going to do anything at the conference table."-- President Richard M. Nixon orders more illegal bombing in Cambodia 12/9/1970.

Q. 2. Did Nixon really begin to the de-escalation in the war effort or did he escalate the war, realize the losses and was forced to exit because of his poor policy decisions? Did Nixon really dictate the withdrawal or was it his bungling that determined outcomes. Please explain?

Remember, that the architect of the war Robert McNamara resigned as Secretary of Defense, deciding the Vietnam War was unwinnable on 2/29/1968. Why did Nixon keep the US in country for the next (4) years without any major troop reductions whatsoever?

Both Republicans and Democrats were equally complicit in the loss of the Vietnam War just as both parties are equally responsible for the current setbacks in Afghanistan and Iraq. Don't you agree?

andy mahan - 9/18/2006

Patrick,

I guess this diversion is an admission that my earlier post is statistically correct.

Q. 1. What was a Republican White House expecting to gain by entering SE Asia in 1958? Why not enter the conflict on the side of the French before 1958 say May 7, 1954 for example if, this front was so important in halting the spread of communism? Was Kennedy stuck with the misbegotten legacy of Eisenhower and forced to play the hand dealt or did he create his own reality? What was the role of prominent Republican hawks in Congress and the Pentagon in pushing Kennedy to escalate US involvement?

Gain? Containment. VietNam was a colony of France and it was their purview. In the end France again exposed itself to be so militarily inept that they finally quit in frustration. The US (Eisenhower) being the benevolent hegemon that it is sent in advisors to help the SVM resist the NVA. Kennedy could have chosen whatever he wanted. He CHOSE to escalte troop levels from only 760 to 16,300. No one forced him. Certainly not the House or Senate they were Democrat controlled 2-1. If anything, they encouraged Kennedy. Republican Hawks? Come on. At least make an attempt at intellectual honesty.

"I want them to hit everything. I want them to use the big planes, the small planes, everything they can that will help out there. Right now there is a chance to win this goddamn war, and that's probably what we are going to have to do because we are not going to do anything at the conference table."-- President Richard M. Nixon orders more illegal bombing in Cambodia 12/9/1970.

Retrospectively, I have to say Hooray for Nixon! He knew public support was waining and wanted to kick the hell out of em as soon as possible. Practically all American VN Vets would tell you that that is EXACTLY what they wanted to do all along…WIN!

Q. 2. Did Nixon really begin to the de-escalation in the war effort or did he escalate the war, realize the losses and was forced to exit because of his poor policy decisions? Did Nixon really dictate the withdrawal or was it his bungling that determined outcomes. Please explain?

Read about it Patrick. Don’t just poke around for crap that fits your prejudice political agenda. I’ll say again, he NEVER escalated the war. He continually de-escalted while trying new strategies for a dramatic and rapid victory, like wandering into Cambodia and Laos.

Remember, that the architect of the war Robert McNamara resigned as Secretary of Defense, deciding the Vietnam War was unwinnable on 2/29/1968. Why did Nixon keep the US in country for the next (4) years without any major troop reductions whatsoever?

Isn’t that special? The miserable failure of a Sec of D posthumously exclaims the war unwinable? Reminds me of these loser ex-Generals today acting like they got all the answers. Funny how when they were in a position to get something done they weren’t all that smart. I say F the second guessers, they’re useless crybabies. About deployment, you’re wrong, Nixon pulled out 61,000 from 68 to 69, 140.000 from 69 to 70, 185,000 from 70 to 71, and 133,000 by the end of 71. There were 50 men there is 72.

Both Republicans and Democrats were equally complicit in the loss of the Vietnam War just as both parties are equally responsible for the current setbacks in Afghanistan and Iraq. Don't you agree?

Probably true. The difference is that I don’t mind mistakes if someone is trying to do something positive and it doesn’t work out. But I find it dispicable when people act in a manner that benefits the enemy thereby manufacturing failure where it wouldn’t exist. America is far too politically devisive. If we were half as united as Iran (for instance) we would do much better. When Democrats use American lives as political pawns to futher their political aspirations, it is unforgivable.

andy mahan - 9/18/2006

Kennedy escalated the Vietnam War over Eisenhower by a multiplier of 5. Johnson and his "great society" escalated over Kennedy by more than 28 times. Though Nixon is so often blamed by liberals for the Vietnam War he did not escalate the war at all. Not 1 year. From 69 on, he drew troop levels down. Funny how the shrill left insists they create "their reality".

andy mahan - 9/18/2006

"massive American support for the war against Hitler"? HA! lend lease was a consolation to FDR because popular opinion was so AGAINST involvement that an all Democrat legislature refused to let him enter the war in earnest. Incidentally, today’s Democrat Party is nothing like that of 1941. Miles apart. With today’s poll driven Democrat ideology this would never happen.

andy mahan - 9/18/2006

Not really Patrick, what I wrote is statistical fact. Just point out what part of my factual statement is nonsense. I'd be glad to debate it. Nixon ended the war after two Democrats escalated it to nearly 1/2 million troops.

I'll go you one further, Eisenhower's deployment was genuinely advisory. It wasn't until Kennedy that REAL Americn combat troops were deployed.
Sorry to have to feed you the strong medicine of reality.

andy mahan - 9/18/2006

I don't know if you are ignoring my point, or are doing the diversion dance. There was NO "massive American support for the war against Hitler", pre Pearl Harbor. And if there were such "massive support" why stop "short of a declaration of war"?

As to your contention that Democrat Presidents are as likely to become embroiled in war as Republicans, I agree. Vietnam was a Democrat war.

Lawrence Brooks Hughes - 9/1/2006

Kennedy sent the first substantial body of troops to Vietnam. It was 16,000 men.

Arnold Shcherban - 8/26/2006

Comments are redundant...

Lawrence Brooks Hughes - 8/26/2006

"American involvement in World War II was instigated by the Democrats." That's interesting. You seem to subscribe to the theory FDR was in cahoots with the Japanese respecting the Pearl Harbor attack.

Lawrence Brooks Hughes - 8/26/2006

It helps to have a few facts at your command, Peter. The Vietnam War was started by John Fitzgerald Kennedy, for your information.

john crocker - 8/26/2006

"For most of American History, isolationism was buttressed more by the notion that the rest of the world would corrupt the United States."

Can you support this contention?

"Today's leftist isolationism contends the reverse. In arguing that the US is the corrupting factor, it must commit to two major "misrepresentations" : one is contrasting the corrupt, corporate mirage of American Democracy with forces opposed to the U.S. The likes of Hezbollah, then become freedom fighters; the consequent delusion is to then ignore the imperialistic aspirations of non-democratic forces (that it has contorted into democratic forces)."
This is not the view of the left it is the distorted republican talking point characterisation of the left's positions. The rest of your argument stems from this flawed characterisation and so is not worth responding to.

john crocker - 8/26/2006

Caliber: 1 a : degree of mental capacity or moral quality

Carter certainly fits with definition 1a of caliber. He is quite intelligent and his moral quality is apparent.

He was not an effective politician as president, but has since become perhaps the best ever ex-president.

I think we would be well served by a president of Carter's intelligence and moral quality who was also an effective political leader. A Clinton without the moral foibles.

Jason Blake Keuter - 8/25/2006

Good. I would say "isolationism" is code for avoiding problematic foreign entanglements that the US can't control. In a more important sense, I think isolationism might best be thought of as downplaying or even ignoring the degree to which the rest of the world can affect the United States. At least, in the present context, I would say that is the most important definition.

I agree that there are respectable positions that entail calling for a withdrawal from Iraq. However, I still contend that the strongest strand of American isolationism is different today than it has been in the past. For most of American History, isolationism was buttressed more by the notion that the rest of the world would corrupt the United States. Today's leftist isolationism contends the reverse. In arguing that the US is the corrupting factor, it must commit to two major "misrepresentations" : one is contrasting the corrupt, corporate mirage of American Democracy with forces opposed to the U.S. The likes of Hezbollah, then become freedom fighters; the consequent delusion is to then ignore the imperialistic aspirations of non-democratic forces (that it has contorted into democratic forces). If followed to its logical conclusion, this makes one of two things inevitable: a major destructive war with a force that was allowed to grow unchecked or allowing decidedly non-democratic societies to control most of the planet.

Lawrence Brooks Hughes - 8/24/2006

George McClellan (1864), was clearly a peace candidate, and he went down in flames.

When Eisenhower said, "I shall go to Korea," he had no more idea than the man in the moon what he would do next. In fact, to get an armistice at Panmunjam he found it necessary to threaten the North Koreans with resumption of the war using nuclear weapons, which he recounts in his book, "Mandate for Change." So, while he did campaign promising to bring peace in Korea, his method of achieving it was highly bellicose. Thoughtout the 20th and 21st centuries, in fact, the GOP presidents have usually been more willing to stand up to America's enemies militarily than the Democrats, which has avoided and ended several wars. It has also led to their winning elections, because Republicans are considered by most of the public to have more gonads than the Democrats.

Oscar Chamberlain - 8/21/2006

Jason

An interesting post. You are right about the range of meanings that "Peace" has in political debates, and that many people, myself perhaps included, have used the term without being conscious of that range.

I would disagree that advocating isolationism today = the assumption that American caused a war. As an example, one might advocate withdrawal from some conflicts not because we caused them but because we don't know how to end them in a way consistent with our values and abilities.

Indeed "isolationism" can be a misused term. The foreign policy of the 1920s was not at all isolationist, except in comparison with League of Nation's internationalism or with the post-WWII proliferation of American alliances. In the 1920s the United States pursued arms control, intervened in Latin America, and helped renegotiate German reparations in a manner that, at least temporarily, helped to stailize its economy.

Some of these things were good; some not (at least according to my reckoning). And certainly there was great care to keep the United States out of any "entangling alliances." But that is not the same as isolation or inaction.

Jason Blake Keuter - 8/21/2006

Woodrow Wilson won on an isolationist position. That is not a "peace" position. A peace position requires policies that actually address the root causes of war. Anyone who argues that US noninvolvement in war is tantamount to "peace" reveals a bias that the US is responsible for war.

Carter's victory was hardly a "peace" victory; it was a post-Watergate victory against a bumbling opponent whose embrace of Kissinger's realpolitik and detente earned him the opposition of the emerging Reagan wing of the party, which trounced Carter handily four years later. Moreover, Carter was hardly from the McGovern wing of the party, as evidenced by Kennedy's last gasp, liberal revolt, primary run in 1980.

None of the victories above brought lasting peace. Upon closer inspection, they can't serve to stoke the fires of sanctimony that fuels the anti-military core of the new Democratic party.

Charles Edward Heisler - 8/21/2006

Oh would I like you to elaborate on the "leader of...Carter caliber" statement!
Well at least you have used two terms not normally associated with Jimma Carter--leader and caliber. Up to now I assumed that it was generally thought he lacked both.

Ronald Walter Haslock - 8/20/2006

Your scholarly look at history made my day. The, "If you're not with me, you're against me" attitude proliferates,and must stifle sane and questioning comment to some degree?
In this instance, presidential election ahead, let us hope that history repeats itself and a leader of the Carter, Eisenhower, etc. caliber emerges.