Anti-War? Unenthusiastic About Kerry? The Recipe for a Bush Victory

The chief political achievement of the Vietnam antiwar movement was to help get Richard Nixon elected in 1968. There is some possibility its successors will perform the same service for George W. Bush in 2004.

The choices in 1968 were distinctly unattractive for those opposed to the Vietnam War. Nixon was a congenital anti-Communist hawk while his opponent, Hubert Humphrey, was vice president to Lyndon Johnson and had accordingly been deeply associated with the escalation and prosecution of the war in Southeast Asia they so detested.

But to anyone with the least sophistication about politics, Humphrey's dilemma was obvious. The prominent liberal's instincts were clearly on the dovish side--he had been just about the only politician to take a really genuine interest in arms control when in the Senate, for example. However, to win the election he could not afford directly to renounce Johnson's war since he desperately needed the president's support particularly with such large, key states as Texas.

In their rage over the war, many of those opposed to it refused to acknowledge this political reality. Some of these sat on their hands during the election. Others (Norman Mailer, for example) managed to convince themselves on the basis of purely atmospheric evidence that Nixon had reformed himself--that there was a "new Nixon"--and many of these people probably voted for him. And, most notably, some of the most vocal war opponents actively expressed their rage by trashing Humphrey's campaign (but not Nixon's) by shouting him down and displaying antagonistic banners sporting such vivid and memorable slogans as "Dump the Hump."

Due in part to this politically self-destructive reaction, Humphrey narrowly lost the election. Released thereafter from the Johnson albatross, he actively opposed the war--as, it was learned later, he had behind the scenes when vice president. Meanwhile, however, a man even more hawkish on the war than Johnson had been elected President.

To the degree that the Iraq War remains on the election agenda, John Kerry's dilemma in 2004 echoes that of Humphrey. His dovish credentials are, to say the least, well established. However, he can't win the election simply with the votes of the antiwar crowd, and he clearly has decided he must pedal to the center to appeal to independents and Republicans. Accordingly, while criticizing Bush's instigation and prosecution of the war in Iraq, he has not directly renounced it in the manner yearned for by those deeply angered by the war. His hope, presumably, is that they will understand the problem and vote and work for him.

It seems unlikely that any of those outraged by the war in Iraq will vote for George Bush. To them his apparent zeal to apply military force to rid the world of evil must make Richard Nixon look like Mahatma Gandhi.

However, probably mostly because of his stance on the war, Kerry has been unable to energize the Democratic base nearly as much as Howard Dean had in the primaries. This suggests that Kerry may not be able to generate the kind of enthusiastic, doorbell-ringing support that is needed to populate an effective campaign.

And most ominous for Kerry in this regard is the presence of war-renouncer Ralph Nader on the ballot. Many of those in a deep fury over the war may, like their predecessors in 1968, decide, however self-destructively, that they can only adequately express their passions by voting for Nader. This reaction is most likely if Kerry seems apt to lose the election. Accordingly, thanks to those most deeply opposed to the war, poor poll ratings for Kerry could become self-perpetuating.

Another similarity with 1968, and another potential danger for Kerry, could arise from antiwar antics at the political conventions. The Democratic convention in Chicago in 1968 became a shambles when what might be considered to be complementary riots by demonstrators and by the local police broke out. Overwhelmingly, the public blamed the antiwar demonstrators for the chaos, and Vietnam War protesters attained unprecedentedly dismal popularity ratings on polls; asked to place them on a hundred point scale, fully a third of the public gave them a zero and only 16 percent put them anywhere in the top half. This reflected unfavorably on their cause and discouraged prominent politicians from joining it.

The comparison this year would be with the Republican convention, set to take place in that most theatrical of cities, New York. Unrestrained antiwar demonstrations there could be as counter-productive politically as they were in 1968.