Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 21. August 2006 / Timeline August 21, 2006
Version 3.520. August 2006, 22. August 2006
08/21/2006
Can “Peace” Be a Winning Issue in Presidential
Campaigns?
By Lawrence S. Wittner
In recent years, the conventional wisdom has been that
“Peace” is a losing issue in U.S. presidential
campaigns. Proponents of this view point to George McGovern’s
run for the presidency in 1972, when he called for peace in Vietnam
and was trounced at the polls.
But a more thoroughgoing analysis of the peace issue in
presidential races supports a more nuanced conclusion. Indeed, it
indicates that peace has been a winning issue numerous times.
First of all, peace is only one of many issues raised in most
presidential campaigns and, therefore, its influence on the outcome
is hard to disentangle from other issues. Moreover, the issue can
be muted even further when the candidates of the opposing parties
take roughly similar positions on it. In addition, people are not
always driven by the issues. Indeed, they are often motivated by
party loyalty, by the personality of the candidates, or--in recent
years--by slick campaign ads.
Even so, there have been numerous times when the peace issue has
been very prominent—and when the candidates raising it have
won.
During the 1916 presidential race, in the midst of World War I,
President Woodrow Wilson campaigned strongly as a peace candidate.
With the Republicans adopting a hawkish line on the conflict, the
Democrats rallied behind the slogan: “He Kept Us Out of
War!” And it worked. Between 1912 (when he won only because
of a split in Republican ranks) and 1916, Wilson’s share of
the popular vote rose from 42 to 49.4 percent, carrying him through
to victory.
Another sharp division on the question of peace occurred in 1952.
When the Democratic Party was blamed for the bloody, unpopular
Korean War and its presidential candidate, Adlai Stevenson,
promised to fight the war as long as it took, Dwight Eisenhower,
the Republican candidate, made a strong peace appeal. Americans
“must avoid the kind of bungling that led us into
Korea,” he told a campaign audience. “The young farm
boys must stay on their farms; the students must stay in
school.” That fall, Eisenhower proclaimed that the Democrats
had given the “false answer . . . that nothing can be done to
speed a secure peace.” But, if he were elected, he said, he
would “concentrate on the job of ending the Korean
war,” adding: “I shall go to Korea.” It was
perhaps the most popular and most-quoted statement in his campaign.
He surged to victory, with 55 percent of the vote.
In 1964, the Republicans nominated a bona fide hawk, Barry
Goldwater, who bluntly declared that his goal was winning the
Vietnam War and casually chatted about the use of
“nukes” in world affairs. Addressing the Republican
national convention, Goldwater assured his audience that
“extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.” Not
surprisingly, the Democrats seized the opportunity to paint the GOP
candidate into a corner. Party ads played skillfully upon the
widely shared view that Goldwater was “trigger-happy, with
the best known of them showing a little girl plucking a daisy as
the world exploded in nuclear war. Meanwhile, Johnson campaigned as
a peace candidate. “We are not about to send American boys
nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys
ought to be doing for themselves,” he told voters. “We
are not going north and drop[ping] bombs.” Johnson easily won
the election, securing the greatest vote, the greatest margin of
victory, and the greatest percentage (61.1 percent) up to that
point in American history.
By 1968, Johnson’s betrayal of his peace promises had made
him and the escalating Vietnam War so unpopular that he was forced
out of the Democratic primaries by two peace candidates, Eugene
McCarthy and Robert Kennedy. Furthermore, even Richard Nixon, the
GOP candidate, now chose to criticize the war and to claim that he
had a “secret plan” to bring it to an end. Although
Nixon’s credibility as a peace candidate was not high, the
peace credentials of his Democratic opponent, Hubert Humphrey,
seemed even lower, for Humphrey was clearly Johnson’s
stand-in. In the election, Nixon eked out a narrow victory.
Finally, in 1976, Jimmy Carter, the Democratic presidential
candidate, sounded many strong peace themes during his campaign.
Attacking the Nixon-Ford administration’s cynicism in world
affairs, he promised a new foreign policy, based on peace and human
rights. In addition, he called for the scuttling of the B-1 bomber,
a comprehensive nuclear test ban, and for movement toward the
elimination of all nuclear weapons. So impressive was
Carter’s peace position that the executive director of SANE,
America’s largest peace group, resigned to work in
Carter’s campaign. Carter, too, emerged victorious, with 50
percent of the vote.
Even in the case of George McGovern’s 1972 election defeat,
it is worth noting that Nixon neutralized the peace issue to some
extent by emphasizing his withdrawal of most U.S. troops from
Vietnam, his claim that his administration had secured “peace
with honor,” and his policies of détente with China
and the Soviet Union.
Thus, there seems to be little basis for the assumption that
“Peace” is necessarily a losing issue. Indeed,
“Peace” has been (and can be) a potent force in U.S.
presidential campaigns.
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