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    War as an Election Issue
    War as an Election Issue
    War as an Election Issue
    Ebook154 pages2 hours

    War as an Election Issue

    By Richard von Fuchs

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    In 1964, President Johnson promised the electorate that he would not go to war; then shortly after his re-election he vigorously escalated the modest American effort in Vietnam into a major war. Do the voters in a democracy make significant policy decisions. President Bush invaded Iraq without the electorate's approval.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRichard von Fuchs
    Release dateJan 14, 2010
    ISBN9781466008878
    War as an Election Issue
    Author

    Richard von Fuchs

    Dr. Richard von Fuchs was born in St. Louis, grew up in Niagara Falls, New York. He graduated from the University of Colorado and the University of Rhode Island, and much later from the University of Vienna. After teaching high school in Rhode Island and Ontario, he settled on Vancouver Island in 1971. The BC NDP (social democrats) hired him as an organizer and he became a Canadian citizen.He had walk-on parts as a fisherman, tree planter, a radio and TV news announcer, including CBC Prince Rupert, retail music store owner and piano tuner. The habit of door knocking in political campaigns led to several years as a door to door salesman.He trod the boards in amateur theatre and musicals in Courtenay, B.C in the 1970s, and then sang in some Folk Festivals and isolated bars. Twice went to Japan to teach English.His former wife, Betty, took excellent care of him.In 1990 he moved to Western Hungary to teach English at a forestry college and earned a PhD at the University of Vienna. Abandoning 33 years of atheism, he returned to the Lutheran church, and became a church janitor in Scarsdale, New York for 18 months, while teaching at Iona College. He was a Green party candidate in Ontario in 2OO3.Returning to Europe, he was employed at the University of West Hungary until 2014, settled in a bourgeois suburb of Sopron, Hungary. He has a Hungarian wife, Etelka, and a son Maximilian, born in 1996.

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      War as an Election Issue - Richard von Fuchs

      WAR AS AN ELECTION ISSUE

      Richard von Fuchs

      Copyright 2010

      Smashwords Edition

      License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author

      Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

      MASTER OF ARTS in POLITICAL SCIENCE

      UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND

      1971

      ABSTRACT

      The problem of war as an election issue has been dramatically brought to our attention in recent presidential election campaigns. In 1964, President Johnson promised the electorate that he would not go to war; then shortly after his re-election he vigorously escalated the modest American effort in Vietnam into a major war. The following problem then presents itself: Do the voters in a democracy make significant policy decisions? A historical survey of similar elections before the First and Second World Wars has been used to determine whether of not the 1964 election was an isolated piece of bad luck or if it was symptomatic of a persistent problem in a democracy: How can citizens control their government rather than being controlled by it? For each campaign the incumbents’ speeches were compared with their private statements as recorded by their intimates and with their official actions. The speeches of the losing candidates were compared with their post-election statements to the public. By thus comparing the apparent campaign differences of the candidates in three pre-war elections with the real attitudes of the candidates, it is possible to determine whether the electorate had any genuine choice on the issue of war or peace. When possible, public opinion poll data were used to measure the voters’ reaction to the election campaign. In each case the results of the study showed that both parties and both candidates were in fundamental agreement in their calculations of the probability or desirability of going to war. The author concludes that in these crucial elections the voters were not offered a genuine choice on the question of going to war.

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      I. Introduction

      II. The Wilson–Hughes Campaign of 1916

      III. The Roosevelt–Willkie Campaign of 1940

      IV. The Johnson–Goldwater Campaign of 1964

      V. Conclusions

      Appendix A

      Appendix B

      I. INTRODUCTION

      This thesis deals with the question of how the issue of war or peace id dealt with as an election issue. I use the definition of democracy as a system of government where a people chooses its governors. In a representative democracy, the electorate does not participate in the day to day decisions of the government. The electorate chooses broad outlines of policy by choosing candidates who represent differing policies at election time. The question of whether or not to go to war or remain at peace is a policy decision which affects the welfare of almost every member of the electorate. If the electorate is not given a meaningful choice on such an important policy issue, then democratic theory must provide a new explanation for the significance of the act of voting. IF the voter is not able to choose even broad outlines of policy, then I would not ask how can the voter choose between different candidates, but why should he choose at all? To those who would argue that the decision to go to war is too technical to be left in the hands of the electorate, I would ask, What issue is more important than questions of life or death? What is the significance of democracy of the electorate is not to concern itself with either the day to day operation of government or the most fundamental policy decisions?

      Specifically the manner in which the war-peace issue was presented to the electorate and handled by the candidates will be examined on the basis of three presidential elections which preceded American involvement in all but one of its war in this century: the Wilson–Hughes election of 1916, the Roosevelt–Willkie election of 1940, and the Johnson–Goldwater election of 1964.

      It is generally agreed that the American two-party system tends to compromise issues instead of defining them because it is based on an underlying consensus which works to the detriment of extremist opinion and to the advantage of a nebulous mainstream. – 1 The two parties tend to imitate one another while striving to appeal to overlapping groups on the margins of their constituencies. Although they may be obscured, the divisions are never eradicated. The parties reflect some of these divisions, and also to justify their separate existences, they manifest a contrary trend of emphasizing their minor differences as a negative tribute to their substantial agreement on major ones.

      War differs from the average election issue. Unlike the tariff or foreign aid, which have uninhibited proponents and opponents, the emotion-charged issue of war does not raise champions who plead for war with open-armed enthusiasm. Rather, both sides speak of it with a degree of reluctance, viewing it as an unfortunate event, but sometimes a regrettable necessity. The campaign dialog is thus warped by an imagined constraint not to appear too enthusiastic about making a war, out of respect for the real or imagined sensitivity of the electorate.

      In spite of these special considerations, war has appeared as an issue in at least these three elections under consideration. Furthermore, opposing sides in the contest seemed to offer the voter a choice between the candidate’s own policy which would achieve America’s objectives in world politics and keep the nation at peace, and the opposition candidate, whose policy would fail to achieve America’s objectives in world politics and lead to war as well. This study will try to answer these two questions: were the two candidates fundamentally agreed upon the possibility and desirability of war to achieve commonly understood goals of American foreign policy? Did they exaggerate their differences on the issue so as to appear to offer the voters a choice on the issue of going to war or not? To answer these questions – whether there was a choice, and whet5her there was an appearance of choice – the public position which the candidates took on the issue, as recorded in their speeches, has been compared with an estimate of their private positions on the issue of war or peace. This estimate is based on both their confidential statements made during and after the campaign, and, in the case of the incumbent presidents, their official actions which tended to lead toward or away from war.

      The electorate’s response to the choices it faced will be measured by the results of the vote, although as Angus Campbell–2 and others have observed, such information does not necessarily give an accurate picture of the voter’s mind. On basic assumption must be made in each case. We assume that the issue of war or peace was of major concern to the electorate so that it substantially, if not primarily, affected the outcome of the election. Since the Wilson–Hughes election of 1916 occurred before the advent of scientific public opinion polls, this information will have to be inferred from contemporary journalists’ opinion. In addition to the available poll data, past election comments and the opinion of informed commentators will also be used for the 1940 and 1964 elections. In the way, I will attempt to evaluate the importance of the war-peace issue to the electorate in the campaign.

      There are many surprising similarities between the three campaigns, including an equal span of twenty four years between them. The three campaigns were contests between incumbents Democrats and challenging Republicans. In the first two cases, the Republican candidate represented the candidate which the party felt had the greatest chance of winning the election, and not the one which would have best represented the opinions of the party members. In 1964, the Republicans threw caution to the winds and picked the man whose opinions were closest to their fundamental beliefs, rather than to the center of the spectrum of political opinion. – 3 Since the first two were compromise candidates, they are better examples of the previously mentioned habit of mutual imitation by the two parties in their efforts to woo the swing vote in the center. Since in the last instance, the minority party’s more sectarian candidate fared the least well of the three, the practical efficacy of un-polarized candidates with overlapping appeals is demonstrated.

      The incumbent Democrats all had records of domestic reform. In part the elections took the form of a referendum on these domestic policies as well as the question of how to deal with the problem of war or peace in foreign affairs. Therefore it could also be argued that either the public endorsement of liberal legislation was the paramount issue, or that the incumbents won because incumbents usually do win.

      The foreign policy records of the incumbent administrations were less saleable, however. They were face with a dangerous or deteriorating international situation and held accountable for it. – 4

      It could be argued that American policy makers were not in total control o the events of the First and Second World Wars, or of the civil war in Vietnam. However, since these situations were viewed as threats to the national interests of the United States, it was natural for the Republicans to stress the incumbent administration’s responsibility and its inadequate response to the situation. For this Cassandra role, they were branded the war party by campaigners for the administration. The Democrats defended themselves by defending the status quo and became the peace party. They were maneuvered into promising to perpetuate the present vanishing peace. I take strong exception to the conventionally accepted view that wars are disasters which are visited upon peace-loving nations like plagues or earthquakes. They are merely a switch in tactics in the continuing struggle for power among nations. In place of the cataclysmic interpretation, I would emphasize the rational calculations which political leaders in and out of office use in planning for war or peace.

      In each election the opposing parties are in fundamental agreement on foreign policy. They see war as a regrettable necessity, which should be avoided if possible, but not at the expense of American interests. American interests are seen as including the maintenance of the balance of power among nations, of an American sphere of influence, and of the spheres of influence of certain allied nations. Even in so-called isolationist days, the United States was concerned with maintaining its hegemony over the Western Hemisphere, and certain fluidly defined rights on the high seas. The maintenance of European spheres of influence in the Pacific helps to account for the conflict with Japan in that part of the world in the Second World War. The perpetuation or extension of the sphere

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