Democrats war against anti-military image

Ever since the Vietnam era, Democrats have struggled to overcome a notion the party is not just antiwar but antimilitary.

Now, sensing a chance to shed that image, Democrats are wrapping themselves in khaki and embracing the nation’s fighting men and women.

Even as they press for withdrawal from Iraq, congressional Democrats have proposed more money for armored vehicles, shorter tours of duty for Reserve soldiers and expanded programs to care for veterans.

On the campaign trail, party leaders and Democratic presidential hopefuls invariably couple condemnation of the war with expressions of sympathy and support for those fighting.

The reception has been positive, from even the most fervently antiwar audiences. Recently, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) drew a cheering, whistling, foot-stomping reception at the state party convention in San Diego when she combined an assault on the Bush administration with heaping praise for U.S. troops.

“We salute them for their courage, their patriotism and the sacrifices they and their families are willing to make,” Pelosi told the crowd, which was speckled with signs calling for Bush’s impeachment and an immediate end to the war.

Pelosi said that instead of being honored upon their return, “veterans are being forced to cope with a system that is not equipped to care for them.

“Democrats will take proper care of our heroes and leave no veteran behind.”

Falling in behind the troops, presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) has offered several proposals, including improvements in healthcare and disability assistance, to address the needs of soldiers and their families. She promises she will soon unveil a “GI Bill of Rights” to expand business, education and homeownership opportunities.

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) devotes a section of his presidential campaign website to veterans’ issues, including brain injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder. During a presidential debate last month, he parlayed a question about war funding -- which many on the left oppose -- into a statement of support for soldiers in Iraq.

“If we’re going to send hundreds of thousands of our young men and women there, then they have to have the night-vision goggles, the Humvees that are reinforced, and the other equipment that they need to make sure that they come home safely,” Obama said.

On Saturday, presidential candidate and former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) unveiled a website, SupportTheTroopsEnd TheWar.com, suggesting ways of “reclaiming patriotism” and observing Memorial Day, such as organizing a prayer vigil for U.S. soldiers, sending troops a care package or attending a demonstration to urge their withdrawal from Iraq.

In a commencement speech Saturday at New England College in Henniker, N.H., he said: “Each of us has a responsibility ... to do all we can to support the troops and end this war.”

Even antiwar groups are using a pro-troops message to make their case.

A new TV spot targeting more than a dozen Republican members of Congress, including Rep. Mary Bono of Palm Springs, features two retired Army commanders accusing Bush of ignoring his generals and weakening the military. “You did not listen, Mr. President,” retired Maj. Gen. John Batiste says in the ad, sponsored by VoteVets.org, a group of antiwar veterans. “You continue to pursue the failed strategy that is breaking our great Army and Marine Corps.”

Republicans, who have long had an edge over Democrats on defense and national security issues, are hardly ceding the high ground. They say any effort to make war funding conditional amounts to a “slow-bleed strategy” that hurts soldiers. “Republicans will not support rationing for our troops in harm’s way, and neither will the American people,” said House Minority Leader John A. Boehner of Ohio.

Karl Rove, the White House political strategist, chimed in at a recent political dinner in Florida: “The troops do not need Gen. Pelosi to micromanage the war from Capitol Hill.”

But even some Republicans say the White House has handed Democrats a campaign issue. “Frankly, there have been a whole series of mistakes in Iraq, in which troops didn’t have armored vehicles, didn’t have body armor. Then Walter Reed was the clincher,” said GOP strategist Don Sipple, referring to reports of shoddy care and frightful living conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. “There’s a nice opportunity that Democrats are taking advantage of.”

It is a rare position for the party, which was torn apart by the Vietnam War and has paid a political price ever since.

From antiwar riots at the Democratic convention in Chicago to the failed rescue of U.S. hostages in Iran to pictures of presidential hopeful Michael S. Dukakis in a tank, the party often managed to project hostility or ineptitude toward the armed forces -- an image Republicans were happy to exploit.

That began to change about 1992, after the first U.S. invasion of Iraq. Although Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton spent much of his Democratic presidential campaign batting down charges that he dodged the Vietnam draft, he didn’t shrink from using patriotic and pro-military symbolism in his campaign. He selected Tennessee Sen. Al Gore, a Vietnam veteran, as his running mate, in part because of Gore’s vote in support of the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

In 2004, Democrats nominated another Vietnam veteran, Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, who turned the party’s national convention into a pageant of pro-military sentiment. “That wouldn’t have happened in 1972,” said Mark Mellman, a Kerry strategist, who remembers marveling at the standing ovation accorded the soldiers and sailors who spoke on Kerry’s behalf. “They wouldn’t have been invited, and they wouldn’t have gotten a standing ovation.”

Still, polltaker Peter Hart, who has advised scores of Democratic candidates, cautions that the party has to “make up a lot ground” to convince a majority of voters that its members can be as strong as Republicans on national defense.

“You have perceptions that have been ground in over a long, long period of time,” said Hart, who suggested that supporting the troops was one way of showing the party’s resolve.

“There are periods of time when people open a window and are willing to listen,” he said. “I think Democrats have one of those windows.”

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mark.barabak@latimes.com