I don’t have to be a pundit, pollster or politico to know Republicans will lose the White House in 2008, whether the Democratic opponent is Sen. Hillary Clinton, Sen. Barack Obama or Big Bird.

All I have to do is crack a history book.

Voting patterns have changed in the past several decades. People no longer consistently cast their ballot based upon party or class loyalties. One trend, however, never changes – an unpopular war virtually guarantees voters will opt to “throw the bums out.”

Protracted and indecisive wars, or wars without moral rhyme or reason, do not wear well with Americans, who lose confidence in their elected leaders. The Korean and Vietnam Wars are prime examples, with the Iraq War poised to join this unhappy trilogy.

Clear moral purpose is necessary to sustain popular support for war in a democracy, particularly if it drags on. President Franklin Roosevelt put this eloquently in his Dec. 8, 1941, “Day of Infamy” speech. “No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory,” he told Congress, in seeking a declaration of war the day after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.

The U.S. has fought wars in which moral purpose was absent or pretextual. The Mexican War of 1846-1848 and the Spanish-American War of 1898 were glorified land grabs during the heady days of “manifest destiny” and imperialist expansion, but they at least had the virtue of being short and victorious.

Even morally defensible wars which prove long and bloody lead to war weariness. The Civil War was based on the highest principles – integrity of the Union and abolition of slavery. Yet Abraham Lincoln looked apprehensively towards the election of 1864, fearing defeat because he had been unable – after three years and hundreds of thousands of battle deaths – to break the Confederacy. His presidency may have been saved by the Union’s capture of Atlanta in August 1864, just in time for the election campaign.

The Korean and Vietnam wars, in comparison, by being fuzzy in purpose and inconclusive in result, each cost a sitting president his office.

The Korean War commenced when Communist North Korea launched a surprise attack against its pro-Western counterpart, South Korea, in June 1950. The U.S. – under United Nations flag – intervened to save the crumbling South Korean army and prevent what was seen as a systematic campaign of worldwide Communist aggression orchestrated by the Soviet Union.

Gen. Douglas MacArthur routed the North Korean army with a brilliant amphibious flank attack at Inchon, but the entry on the North Korean side of 750,000 Chinese troops in late November threw the American army into retreat. Though American defenses eventually stiffened and held, the bloody stalemate lasted three years and cost more than 52,000 American lives.

President Harry Truman became so unpopular as a result of the war that he did not seek, and was not offered, the Democratic nomination in 1952. The White House was won by a Republican, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, a political newcomer who promised to personally go to Korea to end the war.

Vietnam was even messier than Korea, and fought on behalf of a South Vietnamese ally headed by a series of unstable, unpopular, corrupt and inept governments. Again, Communism was the enemy, this time the North Vietnamese regime under popular nationalist leader Ho Chi Minh. The north was on its way to gaining control over the south, through military and political infiltration, when the U.S. intervened in 1964.

President Lyndon Johnson feared a political backlash, if South Vietnam was lost to Communists. He used a murky pretext – skirmishes between Northern Vietnamese gunboats and two U.S. destroyers in North Vietnamese territorial waters in August 1964 – to secure from Congress the “Tonkin Gulf Resolution,” authorizing military force in Vietnam. Johnson used the resolution to escalate troop levels up to 540,000.

Despite the resources poured into Vietnam, the U.S. ultimately withdrew after suffering nearly 58,000 combat deaths.

In 1968, Johnson barely eked out a win in the New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary against an unknown, Minnesota Sen. Eugene McCarthy. McCarthy ran on an anti-war platform and was soon joined in the race by another, higher-profile, anti-war candidate, Robert Kennedy, brother of the late President John F. Kennedy. The handwriting was on the wall.

On March 31, 1968, Johnson announced he would not seek, or accept, the presidential nomination. That November, Republican Richard Nixon beat Johnson’s vice president, Hubert Humphrey, for the presidency.

The Iraq war has all the makings of a spoiler in the 2008 election. Its moral basis has been clouded by revelations that Saddam Hussein neither stockpiled weapons of mass destruction nor held close ties to Al-Qaeda. Moreover, the shift in the conflict, from defeat of Saddam and suppression of his supporters to a civil war between Sunni and Shiite sects, has made it hard to identify the enemy.

After three years of war, and various changes in command, strategy and tactics, the U.S. seems less a knight in shining armor than a flailing giant. Casualties are far fewer than Vietnam or Korea, but the taste of failure is just as bitter to the American public.

President George W. Bush, in his second term, doesn’t face re-election. However, the electorate will likely take out their displeasure on the Republican nominated to succeed him, making the presidency the Democrats’ to lose. In 2008, the public will not be voting for someone.

They will be voting against something.

Elliott L. Epstein, a Lewiston attorney, is founder and board president of Museum L-A and an adjunct history instructor at Central Maine Community College. He can be reached at [email protected].
After three years of war, and various changes in command, strategy and tactics, the U.S. seems less a knight in shining armor than a flailing giant.