McGovern, Daschle, and the Foreign Policy Debate

In case you haven't noticed, Peter Beinart is getting lots of attention for his recent cover story story in The New Republic arguing that liberals need to be more aggressive on the war on terror and less sympathetic to the anti-war left.  As precedent, he cites liberals’ embrace of anti-communism and the purge of communists and those willing to accommodate communists from the Democratic Party and leftist organizations in the 1940s.  Beinart specifically notes the purge of Henry Wallace and his followers and criticism of Wallace's pro-Soviet 1948 Presidential run (South Dakotan George McGovern attended the 1948 Wallace convention) and calls for a similar distancing of the contemporary Democratic Party from the “Wallacite grassroots that views America’s new struggle as a distraction, if not a mirage.”  Beinart cites MoveOn's statements and also quotes Michael Moore, who believes “There is no terrorist threat” and questions “Why has our government gone to such absurd lengths to convince us our lives are in danger?”  Beinart explains that “when Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe and Tom Daschle flocked to the Washington premiere of ‘Fahrenheit 9/11,’ and when Moore sat in Jimmy Carter’s box at the Democratic convention, many wondered whether the Democratic Party was anti-totalitarian.”  And the criticism of Daschle during the Senate race, it should be noted, was focused less on his alleged hug of Moore than the symbolic embrace of Moore's leftism and the credibility it was given.  In his farewell address to the Senate, David Frum notes that Daschle did not discuss the major wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and calls the omission “his party’s problem: For all the Dems insist that they have overcome their dovish and isolationist history, it remains the case that the defense of the nation remains a subject about which they prefer not to speak.”[2]  Liberals like Kevin Drum of the Washington Monthly wonder if the “danger” of Islamic totalitarianim that worried Beinart is “truly overwhelming” and believe “anyone who was even a bit skeptical in 2002 now views the war as trivial at best, and comical or Machiavellian at worst.”[3]  Making Beinart's point about the influence of the anti-war left over the Democratic Party, the head of MoveOn’s political action committee wrote an e-mail after the election criticizing Terry McAuliffe and the Democratic Party’s “professional election losers” and claimed the party’s mantle: “We bought it, we own it, we’re going to take it back.”[4]  Beinart also noted in his article that Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who codified the liberal “fighting faith” of the 1940s with his book The Vital Center, has now abandoned his early crusade.  What Beinart did not address is Vietnam, when liberalism splintered and then became associated with the anti-war movement.  And it was that experience that shaped John Kerry and George McGovern and Tom Daschle.  In the early 1970s, the Americans for Democratic Action, which had spearheaded the liberals' efforts to purge the communists in the 1940s, enthusiastically supported George McGovern’s “Come Home, America” sentiment.  In 1977, McGovern became the president of the ADA.  President Carter, whose first major address on foreign policy condemned the nation’s “inordinate fear of communism,” welcomed Michael Moore into his box at the Democratic convention in 2004.  The 2004 ADA said of Beinart’s argument that “while we acknowledge his accurate depiction of ADA’s history, we also must point out his inaccurate contextual use of that history in this piece.”[5]  So they want nothing to do with Beinart's plan.  The editor of the Washington Monthly said after the election that “today’s Democratic political operatives, most of whom came up in the late 1960s to early 1970s and were essentially anti-war, have never been comfortable with national security.”[6]  Hence the problem for the national Democrats, explained in part by two South Dakota Senators, McGovern and Daschle.

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[1] New Republic, December 13, 2004. 

[2] National Review Online, November 22, 2004. 

[3] December 2, 2004. 

[4] Associated Press, December 9, 2004. 

[5] William Voegeli, Claremont Institute, December 8, 2004. 

[6] Washington Monthly (December 2004).