Foreign Affairs and Party Ideology in America: The Case of Democrats and World War II

While running for president in 1968, George Wallace frequently said that "there ain't a dime's worth of difference between the two parties." The American party system, he suggested, was rigged to present voters with two versions of the same thing; voters simply were not offered real alternatives. Though it seems doubtful that Wallace surveyed the literature before opining, his argument was firmly rooted in a vast and time-tested scholarship. It has often been said that ideological differences—at least any of a serious or fundamental nature—are lacking in the American political tradition. Recently, however, scholars have paid more attention to the ideological component of political parties and challenged the consensus thesis. The most prominent and comprehensive work in this area has demonstrated that American political parties do have reasoned, observable, evolving, and oppositional ideologies. However, this scholarship has generally focused exclusively on "domestic policy ideologies." As a result, the critical and interconnected role that international events—and particularly wars—have played in the development of party ideology has not been fully recognized.

In one sense, this omission is not surprising because, as David R. Mayhew and Ira Katznelson have recently noted, many scholars studying the United States limit their causal variables to those that can be found within the nation's borders.¹ Regrettably, this narrow approach leaves out an enormous explanatory factor: foreign wars. The underappreciation of major U.S. wars as a causal variable in the domestic realm limits our understanding of American politics and government. For scholars of American political development and policy history, the domestic and international realms are too often treated as separate entities, existing independently of each other. Like brief thunderstorms, international events are cast as temporary distractions that can make the lights flicker on Capitol Hill; but once the storms pass, normal business resumes unperturbed and in accordance with previously scheduled events.

What follows is, in part, an attempt to take up the scholarly call to arms by Mayhew, Katznelson, and others. I do so by exploring the relationship between international influences and party ideology. Wars, offering the most profound kind of foreign influence, are an obvious place to begin. I argue here that World War II offers a prime case study of this relationship and that it was a major contributing factor in the Democratic Party's ideological shift away from economic populism and toward inclusion and solidarity.

Ideology, Rhetoric, and American Political Parties

Political scientist Louis Hartz argued that, in stark contrast to Europe, a classical liberal consensus was firmly planted in American culture, and that any party differences were minor and played out within the narrow confines of that ideological box.² Historians such as Richard Hofstadter and Daniel Boorstin led the "consensus school," which articulated a similar lack of ideological conflict.³ Hofstadter touched on political parties in making his broader consensus argument: "It is in the nature of politics that conflict stands in the foreground," he wrote. But the "fierceness of the political struggles has often been misleading; for the range of vision embraced by the primary contestants in the major parties has always been bounded by the horizons of property and enterprise."⁴

Only in the postreform era have scholars consistently focused on ideology as a central component of political parties. While studies emphasized the absence of intraparty ideological cohesion and lack of interparty ideological conflict in much of the post-World War II era, more recent research shows that in the post-1968-72 period, the parties have become more ideologically cohesive internally and more polarized comparatively.⁵ Congressional studies are paying more attention to ideology, many noting the increasing ideological cohesion of the caucuses.⁶ The elections and voting literature notes a revival in parties, partisanship, and ideological voting at the individual level.⁷ Other studies explore ideology and parties in the states.⁸ Scholars are also addressing the role of intraparty factions, considering, among other things, their ideological influences on the larger parties.⁹ Several factors have been cited as drivers of party ideology, including...