War And Politics

Since it now seems likely that we will be caught up in the Kosovo mess for the long haul - the best-case scenario of the current strategy calls for an open-ended presence of NATO troops to stabilize the region - we must face the prospect that for the first time since the Vietnam era, U.S. military action will be a major issue in next year's presidential campaign.

Heaven help us.

War and politics make for uneasy bedfellows, says. Candidates who run for president during times of real or potential military peril tend to lapse into demagogy, if not downright deception.

This has generally been true since the early years of the 20th century, when the United States first ventured on to the world stage as an emerging power.

In the fall of 1916, when President Wilson was up for re-election, he ran on the catchy and popular slogan, "He kept us out of war."

And so he had. For two years, Wilson had pursued a course of cautious neutrality toward World War I. The clear implication behind his pitch for a second term was that he would continue to keep us out of war.

But Wilson's private sentiments leaned heavily toward the Allies, and so in April 1917 - just five months after his re-election - the president who kept us out of war sent American doughboys to Europe. Their mission, Wilson loftily proclaimed, was to "make the world safe for democracy."

Although America's entry into World War I did help to tilt the balance in favor of the Allies, it certainly did not succeed in making Europe (much less the world) safe for democracy.

Far from it. By 1940, Hitler's Wehrmacht was marching across Europe, and the new war there inevitably became a hot issue in President Franklin Roosevelt's successful campaign for an unprecedented third term. His Republican opponent, Wendell Willkie, accused FDR of secretly plotting to engage U.S. troops in the struggle against Nazi Germany.

Willkie knew better. In truth, both he and Roosevelt were privately committed to helping England and other victims of Hitler's aggression - short of actually going to war. But his cynical allegations put FDR on the defensive, and goaded him into making a campaign promise that he would never send America's sons to fight "in any foreign wars."

Then, one year later, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and it wasn't long before young Americans were fighting and dying on battlefields in both the Pacific and Europe.

Given the circumstances, hardly anyone could object to our entry into World War II, but Willkie's campaign charges lingered in the minds of Roosevelt's political enemies who, for years afterward, harbored the dark suspicion that FDR had somehow been complicit in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

But it was during the era of our most unpopular war - the long nightmare in Vietnam - that presidential candidates soared to new heights of hypocrisy and mendacity.

In 1964, the U.S. military commitment in Vietnam was still in its limited phas. The few thousand troops there were called "advisers," and their mission was merely to assist our South Vietnamese allies, who were supposed to bear the brunt of the actual fighting.

The Republican nominee that year, Barry Goldwater, accused the Johnson administration of not doing enough to win the war in Vietnam, and called for an expansion of American firepower, both on the ground and in the air.

In response to that criticism, President Johnson firmly asserted that he would never "send American boys over there to do the job that Asian boys should be doing."

That reassuring promise helped LBJ achieve his landslide victory in the '64 election. But the following spring, Johnson ordered a huge buildup of combat troops in Vietnam, a critical decision that, in effect, transformed the internecine conflict into an American war.

The sharp escalation, which included air raids on targets in North Vietnam, was almost precisely the increased commitment that Goldwater had clamored for in the campaign, and that irony was not lost on the senator from Arizona. In one speech after another in the months following the buildup, Goldwater introduced himself by saying: "Remember me? I'm the son of a bitch who wanted to bomb Hanoi."

By 1968, Johnson's escalation of the war had become so unpopular that he was challenged from within his own party by the insurgent candidacies of Sens. Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy. Having lost his mandate, LBJ chose not to run for re-election.

Johnson threw his support to Vice President Hubert Humphrey, but imposed the condition that Humphrey prove his loyalty by pledging his allegiance to the administration's war policy.

That put Humphrey in a difficult bind. In private, he basically agreed with McCarthy and Kennedy that the time had come to pull out of Vietnam. Yet he also knew that without Johnson's strong backing, he would lose much of the support he needed to get the Democratic nomination.

Humphrey did become the nominee that year, but his compromising, wishy-washy position on Vietnam - the central issue in the '68 campaign - led many voters to assume he was still committed to the war policies of the president he had so loyally served.

The Republican nominee was Richard Nixon, whose stand on the war was, if anything, even more evasive and equivocal. Nixon justified this with the pious declaration that he should "say or do nothing" to undercut Johnson's diplomatic efforts to negotiate a peace agreement.

At the same time, he gave his tacit blessing to supporters when they began spreading the word through the media that Nixon had a "secret plan" to bring the bitterly divisive war to an end.

So, with both candidates doing their best to avoid the paramount issue, Nixon went on to win a close election in November. But it soon became abundantly clear that he had no secret plan to end the war.

Although the new president did take gradual steps to reduce the US. commitment, he extended the war for four more years. And like Johnson before him, Nixon paid a heavy price for continuing to pursue a military victory in Vietnam.

As American casualties continued to come home in body bags, antiwar forces revived the angry demonstrations that helped drive Johnson out of the White House. And in response to that steady onslaught of criticism, a frustrated Nixon approved the clandestine acts and criminal abuses that led to Watergate, the scandal that eventually destroyed his presidency.

So now, for the first time since that traumatic era of political turmoil, pressure is apt to be put on presidential candidates to declare where they stand on a shooting war involving American troops.

Like Humphrey in 1968, the fate of Vice President Albert Gore appears to be in the hands of the president he serves. If Bill Clinton's decisions on the NATO mission in the Balkans are perceived to be a success, then the Veep will be sitting pretty. If not, then it could be hard cheese for Gore, for he has strongly committed himself to the White House strategy.

So far at least, the Republican front-runner, George W. Bush, seems to be leaning toward the tentative, fence-straddling posture that Nixon adopted in 1968. But once the questions about military action become more pointed and challenging, that could be a perilous position to defend.

Of all the GOP contenders, the most forthright has been Sen. John McCain, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam. Instead of beating around the Bush (are you listening, George?), McCain has made a four-square commitment to a decisive victory in Kosovo, even if that means sending in ground troops, which would raise the stakes considerably.

At the other end of the Republican spectrum, there's the "no-to-Kosovo" stand taken by Pat Buchanan, who must be aware of the historical irony his position brings to mind.

Back in the Vietnam era, the antiwar presidential candidates (or doves, as they were called) were liberal Democrats, like Gene McCarthy, Robert Kennedy and George McGovern, who ran against Nixon in 1972.

In those days, right-wing Republicans like Buchanan were merciless hard-liners who, in the words of one super-hawk - Gen. Curtis LeMay - called for bombing North Vietnam "back to the Stone Age."

My, my, how times change.

Now, in response to the current crisis, it's "Pitchfork Pat" (as Buchanan is known to his admirers) who is saying that American troops have no business fighting in the Balkans. In taking the position that a conflict in Europe should be resolved solely by Europeans - with no U.S. intercession - Buchanan's antiwar plea is an eerie echo of the dove-like coos he opposed so vigorously when Americans forces were engaged in Vietnam.

But then, talk is cheap, especially when war clouds begin to settle over our political landscape.

All of which reminds me of the counsel Nixon's attorney general, John Mitchell, once offered to journalistin another context: "Disregard what we say, but watch what we do."

That's advice we should all keep in mind through the coming months as the 2000 presidential campaign starts to heat up.