Somewhere in the backrooms at the Republican party, Karl Rove is surely chortling as he manipulates the levers controlling the smoke and mirrors that have his candidate in a position where he might win the election. His ego must be bursting. He has taken the strategy of the Republican party of the late nineteenth century, which he has studied carefully and greatly admires, and outdone his role models.

Rove is hardly the first Republican strategist of recent decades to see how well the party’s political strategy of the late nineteenth century could be adapted to the circumstances of a hundred years later. From 1868 through 1900, Republicans won seven of the nine presidential elections by running against the sixties of the nineteenth century: the Rebels of the Civil War. Republicans were fond of reminding voters every four years that while all Democrats may not have been Rebels, all Rebels had been Democrats.

A very similar strategy has worked well for the party a century later. Since 1968, Republicans have skillfully linked the Democrats with the worst aspects of what the public remembers of the 1960s. The GOP has won six of the last nine presidential elections by identifying itself as the “anti-Sixties party,” the defenders of American values against the cultural rebels of the civil war of the 1960s.

The late nineteenth century Republican practice of asserting that Democrats were responsible for the extraordinary bloodshed of the 1860s was often termed “waving the bloody shirt.” The similar strategy of focusing on the civil war of the 1960s and telling voters that Democrats were responsible for the excesses of those years and the continuing social wounds flowing from them can be called “waving the tie-dyed shirt.”

Yet the challenge that Karl Rove has been facing is much greater than that of his counterpart and idol from the campaigns of William McKinley, Mark Hanna.

In 1896, Hanna was able to run (actually, “sit”—it was a front-porch campaign) McKinley against an economic collapse that had occurred with Democrats in control of the government. In 2000, Rove pulled off the much more difficult task of running Bush successfully—well, sort of—against the greatest period of economic prosperity in American history, which had occurred with a Democrat in the White House.

In 1900, McKinley won reelection with the help of prosperity having been restored and a “splendid little war” having been won during his first term. In 2004, Rove is running Bush after prosperity collapsed in his first term, a federal budget surplus of $230 billion has been transformed it into a $500+ billion deficit, and with what the president promised would be a splendid little war having turned into a quagmire, the rationale for which has been shown to have been false.

And there is another difference between Rove’s candidate and those of the late nineteenth century that makes the challenge facing him even greater. In order to make effective use of the “bloody shirt,” post-Civil War Republicans always sought as their candidate someone who could plausibly be portrayed as a Union war hero. McKinley had volunteered for service in the Union army during the war of the 1860s. Rove, in contrast, has to promote a candidate and running mate who both avoided the real war of the 1960s. But, amazingly, Republicans seem to be succeeding at turning the valorous service of an opposing candidate into a negative for him.

Significant numbers of voters came to doubt John Kerry because of stories, which have been almost entirely discredited, alleging doubt about some of the medals he won. People are talking about on which side of the river from which Kerry pulled a fellow American soldier there was enemy fire. Here’s something that is certain to the highest possible standard of evidence: We know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there was no enemy fire within 9,000 miles of where George W. Bush was during the Vietnam War.

There are four different categories into which those of draft age during the Vietnam War can be divided: many believed the war was justified and served; some (including Kerry) thought the war was wrong, but served anyway; others (including Bill Clinton) thought the war was wrong and avoided serving in it. Finally, there were those who believed the war was right, but somebody else should fight in it. This last position, it seems obvious, is by far the worst. That was the position of both President Bush and Vice President Cheney.

The Swift Boat smoke and mirrors have obscured the bottom line on the Vietnam service of the candidates in this year’s election: John Kerry was a member of the coalition of the willing; George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were members of the coalition of the unwilling to serve in Vietnam. Bush and Cheney were, however, and still are, very much members of the coalition of those willing to send other Americans into mistaken, unnecessary, counterproductive wars.

Yet what the candidates did during the Vietnam War is an issue that is currently hurting Kerry and helping Bush and Cheney. If you were Karl Rove, wouldn’t you be chortling? Don’t pay any attention to the man behind the curtain, who is showing himself to be much more skillful than his nineteenth century prototypes.