The amazing presidential victory of President Barack H Obama in 2008 is now coming to a close. But how did Obama gain the ballast to win the presidency in the first place?
James Mann, a superb investigative journalist, argued that the seeds of Obama’s victory lay in the American aversion to foreign military ventures which the Republican elites in Washington DC often put in motion, only to lose the ability to systematically control.
Invariably, it was the visceral aversion to the Vietnam War in the 1960s that characteristically morphed into a large-scale aversion to the Iraq War in mid 2000s.
Thus, even though, President Jimmy Carter, a Democrat only held the White House for a mere four year between 1976-1980, before President Bill Clinton won it again in 1992-2000, it was during the interregnum of forty odd years since the 1960s that many Democrats honed their legislative skills and public rhetoric, all of which built up neatly to eventually favor Barack H Obama.
When he campaigned on the back of the “audacity of hope,” at a time when America was in another state of drift, his willingness to take America back from foreign military ventures caught a popular chord in the United States.
Indeed, this was an idea that first germinated in the presidential campaign of George McGovern whose rallying call was “Bring America Home.” History, however, showed that George McGovern was badly battered and defeated by President Richard Nixon, argued James Mann.
Richard Nixon won 501 electoral college votes to the 17 received by George McGovern in 1970. But despite the massive defeat of George McGovern many Democrats in Washington DC, and throughout college campuses were attracted to his ideas anyway. One of them was Barack Obama at Columbia University, prior to going to Harvard University for his law degree.
In the “Obamians: The Inner Struggle to Redefine American Power in the White House,” James Mann wrote that many old timers, such as Joe Biden, Anthony Lake, Leon Panetta, and new strategists, such as Ben Rhodes and Michael McFaul, were doing their utmost to prevent the Republicans from claiming that the Democrats were perennially weak on military campaigns. Hence, some tried to expand the war in Afghanistan, successfully killing Osama Bin Laden, while others called for the toppling of Muamar Gaddafi in Libya. The whole idea was to do a one-up on the Republicans; who for years had been successful at winning the White House since the days of Richard Nixon, despite the ignominy of his sudden resignation over the Watergate scandal.
As the victory of President-Elect Trump showed, the Democrats have failed again. Repeatedly, the Republicans have shown the Democrats to be weak, and in favor of enlarging the size of the government through Obamacare. Hilary Clinton, feisty as she was, could not project the same military appeal, partly because President Bill Clinton preferred zero casualty air-war-over-ground campaigns. Come what may, James Mann is the ultimate reader on US foreign policy, having written “Rise of the Vulcans,” that describes the foreign policy advisers of the Bush administration. With James Mann still around as a scholar in residence at Johns Hopkins University, President Trump is in for a major roasting, if he appoints the wrong team of advisers in office.