Ray Malone's Commentary

Senator Chuck Hagel is playing to the mainstream media as he declares the war in Iraq another Vietnam. Hagel. the media and others, say Iraq it is like Vietnam. They Bush's poll numbers prove it. If it is true the result will not be to Hagel's or the Media's liking

The more the opportunist polls poll and the more the pundits pundit .. the more they reveal how little they know.

Lets go back to the days of yesteryear and look at what happened to Presidents during the Vietnam war. Then let's look a why.

The war in Nam started for the USA when President Lyndon Johnson got the Gulf of Tonken resolution passed by congress. LBJ claimed that the North Vietnamese had attacked our ships. The Gulf of Tonken Resolution passed by congress authorized LBJ to go to war with North Vietnam. .. and he did.

More than 3 years later we had over a half million men in Nam and LBJ was in deep trouble with his own party. We had lost thousands of men. The 1968 Democratic primary campaign began with New Hampshire. An anti war Democratic Senator Eugene McCarthy took on LBJ in the New Hampshire primary. LBJ did not do well against the anti war McCarthy. In March of 1968 LBJ withdrew from the race.

The media was correct to assume that Vietnam did LBJ in. LBJ did have enough clout to get Hubert H. Humphreys the nomination. That was after Sirhan Sirhan killed Robert Kennedy who entered the Democratic primaries to take advantage of the anti war sentiment..

In the fall of 1968, the hated Richard Milhous Nixon was elected President of the United States. Every one believed that Vietnam had cost the Democrats the presidency. The conventional wisdom of the time said Dick Nixon had not won the presidency .. LBJ had lost it.

Four years later, after many more deaths, we are still at war in Viet Nam. The Democrats believed that since Vietnam had taken LBJ down it would destroy Richard Nixon's attempt at re-election. Nearly fifty eight thousand American troops had died in Vietnam. Nixon lied and Americans died was much in the press. The media was all set for a Democratic landslide in November 1972.

Nixon was the "Peace with Honor" candidate and the Democrats George McGovern was tne "Declare Victory and bring the troops home" candidate. The polls showed 60 percent of the voters did not approve of the way Nixon was handling the war. Nixon's over all job approval was just over 50 percent. Then like now the media never looked at the break down of those 60 plus percent who did not approve of the way Nixon was handling the war. They were in fact two very different groups of people

About 38 percent of the voters who were against Nixon wanted to just bring the troops home and end the war. They were nearly all Democrats. About 23 percent of those who were against Nixon wanted him to nuke or carpet bomb North Vietnam until there was nothing left standing. About 38 percent were Nixon supporters and thought he was doing as well as they expected.

On election day it was no surprise that the 38 percent who supported Nixon voted for him. But the 22 percent who did not support Nixon because he was not tough enough , ended up voting for him. When given the choice of a Nixon who was not tough enough, or a McGovern who wanted to surrender now and avoid the rush later, they chose what they saw as the lesser of two evils... they chose Nixon. The lesson of that election is Americans want to win. The media has never understood that simple fact. That was proven in the Civil war. Lincoln was way behind George McClellan in the early part of the 1864 race. The North was getting beat and the North did not like to lose. But then Grant won in the west and then won in the East and victory was assured. Lincoln was transformed from a war loser to a war winner and won the election walking away.

On Election day 1972 Richard Nixon came with in one tenth of one percent of having the biggest election victory of the 20th century. Nixon got 60.7 percent of the vote.. while McGovern got just 38 percent. Only FDR in 1936 got a bigger percentage of the votes than Nixon. FDR in 1936 got 60.8 percent. Imagine how big Nixon's victory would have been if the voters had liked him.

So to the Hagels of the world, I have a simple message. A Democrat who is anti war will get all of his base to vote for him. But he is as sure a loser in a general election because he can't attract the middle or the right. An anti war Republican will do even worse. He won't get the Republican base and he won't get much of the middle either.

Hagel is a fool. He has no understanding of the American people. He thinks that the majority opposed to the way Bush is handling the war, will turn to an anti war candidate. He thinks by being anti war will be a popular position come 2008.

A Democrat may have to take a McGovern like position on the war to win the Democratic primaries. But it will prevent him from winning the election.

A Republican who takes an anti war position will only suffer humiliation and massive defeat a the polls

The lessons of history are that leftists want to lose. The right and the center want to win. A candidate who does not understand those two simple facts is doomed to lose general elections.