had been inherited from the 1930s, had ossified into a "Liberal Theology." Among the three main tenets of this theology was the dictum that War Is Bad.
In the 1960 presidential race, Democratic Sen. John F. Kennedy had narrowly defeated then-V.P. Nixon by adopting the original seed idea of American liberalism — in White's words, "to keep opportunity for individuals open" — as a defense against Soviet communist threat.
When U.S.S.R. Premier Nikita Khrushchev told us, "We will bury you," it had jolted Americans out of their 1950s complacency. Kennedy had convinced his countrymen they needed to "move" to solve problems at home — civil rights issues, medical care for the aged, what would become the War on Poverty — to keep pace with Soviet growth in strength and stature in the eyes of the world.
In his inaugural address, JFK said, "If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich."
As President, JFK followed up on his campaign and inaugural commitments to help the poor and strengthen our society at home. He launched the Race to the Moon ... and he embraced an incipient war in far-off Vietnam.
All these initiatives were what would later be insistently called "liberal" ones. Yet
at the time White wrote The Making of the President—1960, "liberal" politics were so taken for granted that neither that word nor its antonym, "conservative," had to be used much in White's narrative of the 1960 race. If American had to "move" in liberal directions to offset its erstwhile complacency, that was seen as a pragmatic response to external threat. We must be strong at home, the reasoning went, if we are to be strong abroad. And we must be strong abroad if we are to stave off the Soviet threat.
So the pragmatically "liberal" JFK did not for one moment believe that War Is Bad, always and everywhere. We can argue today over whether, had he lived, he would have sidestepped Vietnam. But if he would have done so, it would have been because of a pragmatic re-evaluation of our commitment there. For his basic instinct was to fight communist expansion wherever and whenever necessary.
By, say, 1969, the year in which the Liberal Idea really began to ossify into a Liberal Theology, JFK had been assassinated. His successor, President Lyndon B. Johnson, had (to put it mildly) not seen his way clear to sidestepping the Vietnam War. JFK's brother, Democratic Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, orgininally a hawk, had (again, pragmatically) come to see the folly of the war, had tossed his political hat in the 1968 presidential ring, and had himself been assassinated.
Meanwhile, the liberal braintrust in America had divided in two, many following RFK and other leaders such as Sen. Eugene McCarthy as doves, others remaining true to the original hawkish liberal commitment to fight communists in Vietnam. But the doves were in the ascendant, and by 1972, War Was Definitely Bad.
Fast forward, now, to 2005. America is again challenged by an external threat: the terrorism associated with Radical Islamism. The U.S. President, George W. Bush, nominally a neo-conservative Republican, has taken us to war in Iraq. His justification for doing so has shifted from dismantling weapons of mass destruction (not found) and quashing links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda (not proven) to the noble-sounding goal of sowing democracy and liberty in the Middle East. To this "old-style liberal" blogger, it sounds like an initiative the Kennedy Administration might have pursued.
True, JFK would have done it more deftly, one hopes, with less alienation of allies. He would have, with his vaunted gift of rhetoric, sold it better to the American people. But I think it fits admirably with his "pay any price, bear any burden" philosophy.
But liberals today are still haunted by the War Is Always Bad credo which frightened mainstream America away from George McGovern in 1972, despite their manifest disaffection with the particular War in Vietnam. In the 2004 election, President Bush harped incessantly on the notion that his Democratic challenger, Sen. John Kerry, was a "liberal" and couldn't be trusted with the nation's security. It worked.
In truth, today's liberal Democrats have not managed to come up with any strategic vision for fighting the War Against Terrorism to match the one President Bush has put forth. His "no justice without freedom" inaugural address theme rings like JFK's own stirring inaugural address.
"We have seen our vulnerability, and we have seen its deepest source," he said. "For as long as whole regions of the world simmer in resentment and tyranny — prone to ideologies that feed hatred and excuse murder — violence will gather, and multiply in destructive power, and cross the most defended borders and raise a mortal threat." Liberals shoud take their heads out of the ideological sand and recognize words and sentiments worthy of JFK.
"There is only one force of history," Bush went on, "that can break the reign of hatred and resentment and expose the pretensions of tyrants and reward the hopes of the decent and tolerant. And that is the force of human freedom." JFK could have said that, too.
Now, this blogger faults the President
for his noteworthy failure to prosecute the Iraq War with candor and dexterity. What's more, there should be a clear exit strategy, and there isn't. It is for such reasons that oldstyleliberal displays the "Support Our Troops: Bring 'Em Home" ribbon on his blog.
Yet this blogger faults liberal Democrats just as much, if not more, for failing to present America with a strategic vision as valid and sweeping as Bush's own. For Bush is, in essence, extending the venerable liberal desideratum of promoting individual freedom and opportunity, in a democratic context, to the world at large ... and all liberals have done is carp and cavil.
That's not going to be enough to put a liberal Democrat back in the Oval Office in the 2008 election!
No comments:
Post a Comment