Politics and War through American History
The presidential candidate who provided the template for the dualing “anti-war here, pro-war with some criticisms of the president’s handling of the war there” strategy toward presidential elections was DeWitt Clinton, during the 1812 election — which coincided with The War of 1812. The results were the same as John Kerry’s — which is to say that he lost (and let us for the moment assume that he did in fact lose). History repeats itself, or as I put it: History regurgitates forward. As for The War of 1812, it concluded… roughly where it started, but with a feeling that “we won”. The template for how the Korean Conflict ultimately unfolded.
Dwight Eisenhower, who had been running somewhat ahead of his competition in Adlai Stevenson in the 1952 election, and running with the strong anti-communism Conservative movement that lurked in the shadows of the Republican Party suggesting we need to bomb Korea to the stone-age. Eisenhower’s “October Surprise” was to announce that he would bring the damned thing to an end, a vote for Eisenhower was a vote for Peace, thus laying the groundwork to what looks like in 20/20 hindsight his inevitable landslide victory. Dwight Eisenhower would go on to accomplish two key things in his first term: (1) By ending the War in Korea, and not submitting to a policy of always fighting the Communists and never ever “appeasing” or making any type of agreement with the Soviet Union, a frustration with the Right-wing base of the Republican Party who hated “containment”, he assured at the very least some half-way decent boundary on where we could not go to war through the Cold War. (2) He was useful in defusing Joseph McCarthy. He never confronted McCarthy. Actually, his role as “Golfer in Chief” echoed a template set by George Washington: a minimalist presidency by a Supreme Commander.
Eisenhower’s second term was pretty darned useless, though.