Vets on the trail.
Sixty years ago, as the United States approached its first national elections after the conclusion of World War II, a political consultant told a candidate in California's 12th District to "Just stand there in your uniform, keep your mouth shut, and I'll get you elected." The consultant was Murray Chotiner, a disciple of the first modern campaign consultants, Clem Whittaker and Leone Baxter. The intended beneficiary of Chotiner's advice, as older readers may remember, was Richard Milhous Nixon.[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
But Nixon was smart enough about politics not to place too much stock in that sound bite of advice. He won a House seat in 1946 thanks to Republican money, Republican newspapers, his public speaking abilities, and his and Chotiner's smear of incumbent Jerry Voorhis as a puppet of the Congress of Industrial Organizations.
This year, with dozens of veterans running for Congress, almost exclusively as Democrats, three lessons from Nixon's first successful run for federal office seem pertinent.
1. Wearing a uniform is not a campaign strategy. Conventional wisdom has it that veteran status can inoculate Democrats from the perennial Republican charge that they are weak on national security. John Kerry won support in 2004 in part because Democrats thought he was electable in just this way, and John Murtha has emerged as a leading spokesperson for an alternative to the Bush administration's Iraq policy for the same reason.
Yet if that's true, it's not enough to win, not even in a year where matters of war and security dominate the agenda. Most of the 58 veterans listed at BandofBrothers.com are going to lose or drop out (at least one already has), because they appear to be paying scant attention to campaign strategy. Their online statements and photographs fall into the pattern of behavior elucidated by political scientist Robert Boatright in "Expressive Politics," a fine study about Congressional long shots. They don't target messages. They don't bring up their opponents, preferring to attack President Bush. They espouse issue positions likely to be at odds with a majority of the voters. So what are they doing in the race?
2. There may be good personal reasons why veterans come home and run for elective office. Politics, like war, is a vocational adventure that requires great stamina, personal discipline, collaborative skills, competitiveness and patriotism. The vets on the trail in 2006 have, in their own words, reflected on their experiences in war and their informed observations of the current war, and they are outraged to the extent that they are willing to put their names and time on the electoral front line. They are following the examples of Kerry, Murtha and Paul Hackett of Ohio, who lost by a surprisingly narrow margin in a special Congressional election in August 2005. It's worth noting that only one veteran of Iraq is running on the GOP side, Van Taylor of Texas. In other words, a passion to defend the course of the war is absent from the current crop of House candidates.
3. Being a vet is a good attention-getting tactic at a time when people are thinking about war. Veterans may lack durable credibility with voters on defense issues, but they readily symbolize righteous anger, thanks to Hollywood as much as anything else. Edward Victor Michel Izac, a Medal of Honor winner for his service in World War I, won a House seat in 1936 on his second try as a Democrat in a district where Republicans voters outnumbered Democrats 2 -to-1. The FDR landslide was the chief force propelling Izac's triumph. As historians Mike Wallace and Allen Mikaelian wrote in "Medal of Honor: The war stories brought in the crowds, but his promises brought in the votes."
To which I would only add that, in 2006 the candidate must also be able to bring in the money. Unless, like that other veteran-turned-freshman Congressman in 1946 named Kennedy, they have plenty of their own money to contribute. There is a new factor this year in the form of an online network of activists. The antiwar Netroots may be capable of raising sufficient money on behalf of a slate of candidates, including veterans, for them to compete with incumbents and other well-funded opponents. Pro-war online activists, meanwhile, seem as scarce as pro-war veteran candidates; SwiftVets.com is dormant.
In the end, much depends on how well campaign challengers tie opponents to an issue position that voters resent. A focused attack is more important than the clothing worn while articulating it.
ADVICE BY MICHAEL CORNFIELD
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| Title Annotation: | veterans in elections |
|---|---|
| Author: | Cornfield, Michael |
| Publication: | Campaigns & Elections |
| Geographic Code: | 1USA |
| Date: | May 1, 2006 |
| Words: | 752 |
| Previous Article: | The staff shuffle. |
| Next Article: | The primary test. |
| Topics: | |
| Standing up for veterans. |
| Helping homeless vets. |
| Vets: no sure vote, either. |