As I have stated repeatedly, the Democrat response to the Bush campaign commercials and the faux outrage about including 9/11 imagery was preposterous and hypocritical. So preposterous and hypocritical that the Democrats have stopped mentioning it. Unfortunately, the mainstream press is now on the story, and they show that if anything, Bush is out of his league when it comes to ‘exploiting’ tragedy:
But is it, as supporters of John Kerry and other critics suggest, wrong for Republicans to convert the emotions of that national tragedy into grist for a political campaign?
To answer that question, I went back, with help from Washington Post researcher Brian Faler, to 1944, when Franklin D. Roosevelt, almost three years after Pearl Harbor, was running for reelection. What you learn from such an exercise is that Bush is a piker compared with FDR when it comes to wrapping himself in the mantle of commander in chief.
Item: FDR did not go to the Democratic convention in Chicago where he was nominated for a fourth term. A few days before it opened, he sent a letter to the chairman of the Democratic Party explaining his availability for the nomination. And what an explanation!
“All that is within me cries out to go back to my home on the Hudson River, to avoid public responsibilities and to avoid also the publicity which in our democracy follows every step of the nation’s chief executive.”
But, he wrote, “every one of our sons serving in this war has officers from whom he takes his orders. Such officers have superior officers. The President is the Commander in Chief, and he, too, has his superior officer — the people of the United States. . . . If the people command me to continue in this office and in this war, I have as little right to withdraw as the soldier has to leave his post in the line.”
Item: Roosevelt delivered his acceptance speech to the convention by radio from where? From the San Diego Naval Station, because, he said, “The war waits for no elections. Decisions must be made, plans must be laid, strategy must be carried out.”
Item: If FDR’s politicizing of his wartime role seems blatant, what does one say of the main speakers at the convention? Keynoter Robert Kerr, then governor of Oklahoma, declared that “the Republican Party . . . had no program, in the dangerous years preceding Pearl Harbor, to prevent war or to meet it if it came. Most of the Republican members of the national Congress fought every constructive move designed to prepare our country in case of war.”
Read the whole thing.
HH
“Roosevelt delivered his acceptance speech to the convention by radio from where? From the San Diego Naval Station…”
Remember Robert Byrd saying he had never heard of a president using the military for re-election? Maybe he was too busy writing love letters to the Klan to remember…
Andrew J. Lazarus
I agree the complaints about the Bush ads are misguided (I think there are OTHER problems about the ads). Two points about FDR in 1944, though:
1. I think that at that time, it was the custom for the nominee NOT to attend the convention.
2. By 1944, FDR was in very poor health and looked terrible. It was one thing not to photograph him in his wheelchair, but there could be no hiding the gaunt frame and sickly appearance. (Look at the famous Yalta photo with Churchill and Stalin to see what I mean.) He limited his public appearances. Radio was of course a different matter.
Dean
Andrew,
I’m pretty sure, in fact, that candidates DID attend the convention. FDR first gained fame in his introduction of “Al Smith, the Happy Warrior,” iirc, in the 1920 convention—and I believe there are photos of the two standing together at that convention.
More to the point, FDR was a very, very sharp politician. His “Fala” speech was a classic example of turning the tables on opponents by, effectively, appealing to other emotions (aka “misdirection”).
Kimmitt
What I like about this post is that it implies that we are in a national emergency which even vaguely approaches that posed by WWII.
Can you explain to me which G-7 country was conquered by bin Laden in a lightning spring assault? Or which US territories were captured by a powerful and well-disciplined Wahabbist army, forcing US troops to retreat and leave civilians to their mercy?
Pfeh. Things were different then; the President was at a naval station because that was his damn job in 1944. And even in 1944, Parties were actually allowed to discuss specific policies which might have made the US safer. That’s not allowed in 2004, where, two and one-half years after 9/11, we have no offical analysis of what took place and therefore no way to make any sort of decisions.
I’m not sure if you’re actually standing in contempt of sacrifices of men like my great-uncle who stormed the beaches at Normandy or if you are genuinely, insanely, convinced that the threats we face are of the same type or scope.
Ricky
“Pfeh. Things were different then”
Yeah….FDR was a Democrat.
Kimmitt
On reflection, my comments in this area were out of line. I apologize for my remarks, especially the personal statements.