Democrats can win by using historic antiwar critique, Brandeis experts say

Released on June 13, 2007
Contact: Charles Radin, 781-736-4210 or radin@brandeis.edu

Visit the "Campaign '08: Spotlight on the Middle East" website.

From top: Daniel Kryder, Mingus Ulysses Mapps, H.D.S. Greenway

BOSTON, Mass. – If history holds true, the Republican party will suffer in the 2008 presidential election, according to Brandeis University Professor Daniel Kryder, largely because combat deaths trouble the mass electorate, domestic surveillance programs alienate libertarians, and massive wartime deficits worry fiscal conservatives.

“Major American wars generally defeat the party that launches the war,” Kryder, an expert in American political development, the presidency and wartime politics, said at a recent Boston event hosted by Brandeis. “A party seeking to oust a war president has a reliable model.”

Four 20th century elections have been won in the name of overthrowing a wartime president, Kryder said, the election of President Warren G. Harding in 1920, President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952 and President Richard Nixon in 1968, as well as the Congressional elections in 1946.

The opposition candidates in those elections hammered home criticisms about excessive causalities, restrictions on civil liberties and excessive spending. Eisenhower repeatedly invoked the American Revolution, which was influenced by John Locke’s idea that men institute government to protect citizens’ lives, liberties and the pursuit of wealth.

“When a ruler interferes with or destroys these fundamental rights, it is the people’s duty to overthrow him,” Kryder said. And Republicans successfully used this principle repeatedly throughout the 20th century.

Kyrder outlined the model for a Democratic victory during “Campaign '08: At the Starting Line,” the first in a series of events hosted by Brandeis University focusing on the Middle East and the challenges that regional issues present to the United States and to the country’s next president. Brandeis is bringing the Middle East expertise of its faculty and research fellows to downtown Boston this summer, followed by programs on the Brandeis campus in the fall.

Mingus Ulysses Mapps, the Florence Levy Kay Fellow in Urban Politics at Brandeis, discussed the broader role that international relations has played in presidential elections between 1972 and 2000. Compared to economic and social issues, and the functioning of government, international relations has been relatively low on the list of voters’ priorities, he said.

But in 2004 – post-Sept. 11 – the importance increased in voters’ eyes. The tight correlation between citizens who approved of the war and voted for George Bush and those who disapproved of the war and voted for John Kerry, along with the 2006 Congressional elections provide important insight into the 2008 presidential election, Mapps said.

According to polls, the number of people who believe going to war in Iraq was a mistake has steadily increased since 2003. Although that number is now leveling off, opposition to the war is a majority and if it reaches 60 percent, Mapps predicted that the advantage in 2008 will go to the Democrats.

H.D.S. Greenway, foreign affairs columnist for the International Herald Tribune and the Boston Globe, said the next U.S. president – Democrat or Republican – will have to withdraw from Iraq and engage Iran and Syria to keep other powers from rushing into the vacuum. The U.S. must take advantage of the fact that Sunni Arab allies and Israel are scared of Iran, he said.

The next “Campaign '08: Spotlight on the Middle East” discussion at the Old State House in Boston will take place on July 17. Faculty and research fellows from Brandeis’ Crown Center for Middle East Studies will examine developments in the Israeli-Palestinian struggle and how these may affect U.S. politics. For more information, visit www.brandeis.edu/campaign08.