Is Dick Cheney Right that Our Enemies Gain Comfort from Lieberman's Loss?

A timely amplification about Americans as they cast their ballots in times of war might prove instructive for Vice President Cheney. My plaint stems from his post-mortem observation that Senator Joseph I. Lieberman's defeat in Connecticut's Democratic primary on August 8th transmitted a signal comforting our enemies because it revealed the lack of American resolve in prosecuting the war against terrorism. His specious claim merits revision.

The historical record informs us that elections in times of war and in their aftermath, contrary to the vice president’s presumption, offer any number of instances that counter this ill-conceived claim.

Consider the American Civil War. In 1862, acknowledged as the bleakest year for the Union’s military campaigns, President Lincoln nonetheless salvaged an electoral disaster in the mid-term congressional balloting. It was rooted in the decisive – and horrifically costly – Union victory in the battle at Antietam. The twin effects of this epoch military encounter and the ensuing election instantly emboldened the president to take a consequential step. First he removed the ever-hesitant General George B. McClellan from his command of the Army of the Potomac. Then Lincoln advanced toward issuing the Emancipation Proclamation, culminating in a wholesale transformation that redefined and elevated the purpose of the Civil War.

If we turn to the Second World War, President Franklin D. Roosevelt found barely a modicum of comfort from the mid-term election of 1942. The voting occurred at a moment when the much-awaited Allied military campaign in North Africa was not yet underway and the fighting in the Pacific was proving especially brutal as well as discouraging. Hope remained negligible for quickly overcoming the formidable offensives launched by our Japanese and German adversaries. Even though Republicans did not attain majorities in Congress, they increased their numbers substantially.

Vice President Cheney also might wish to contemplate – both in the United States as well as in England – others aspects of the world wars during the twentieth century. As the fighting ended in November of 1918, President Woodrow Wilson was chastened by a humiliating Republican takeover of Congress – enduring over the next twelve years – for the first time since 1910. In the summer of 1945, the British electorate cast ballots in a wartime general election that culminated in the dramatic ouster of Winston Churchill as the Tory prime minister. This happened in the middle of the Big Three conference at Potsdam. When deliberations resumed, Clement Attlee – the newly installed Labor prime minister – sat in the chair heretofore occupied by Churchill alongside of Marshal Stalin and President Truman. Then in the American mid-term congressional election of 1946, the Republicans attained majorities in both legislative house for the first time since 1930.

The vice president might also recount the unexpected drama of the presidential election of 1948 in the midst of the Cold War. Disregarding abundant signals – foremost among them major public opinion polls forecasting the election of the first Republican president since 1928 – the incumbent Harry S Truman attained his startling victory over Thomas E. Dewey. Who can forget the photograph of a jubilant Harry Truman – a textbook staple – holding aloft the late evening edition of the Chicago Tribune still emblazoned with the erroneous headline “Dewey Defeats Truman?”

Electoral behavior, be it assayed in wartime or in its aftermath, defies simplified and instantaneous analysis. If there is a constant in any of this for Vice President Cheney to mull over it should not furnish him with even a single ounce of consolation. Unquestionably Americans today are in the throes of the undiminished despair and suffering manifested by 9/11 and the calamitous grand strategy devised by the Bush administration for conducting the war against terrorism. Nearly sixty months hence our nation detects little relief – no Antietam, no Gettysburg, no Midway – affording rays of optimism upon the still darkened and unremittingly distant horizon.

Senator Lieberman’s fate at the ballot box on August 8th affirms that ultimately voters do retain a collective capacity to fiercely express their independence of mind. Connecticut’s unmistakable dissent has provided a much-needed source of comfort for the American people rather than for our terrorist enemies. The electoral outcome deserves resounding approbation rather than the customary harsh, defamatory invective invoked by Vice President Cheney.