I tend to think that Democrats have too much of a What's the Matter With Kansas approach to reknitting their relationship with the military. There's an odd tendency to focus extremely intensely on the economic rewards that an alliance with the Democratic Party would produce: Better veteran benefits and educational subsidies and health care. You see it in the Truman Project's new (and admirable) Strong Military Project, which defines its mission as "leadership that uses our military might wisely, provides them with the tools they need while in the battlefield, and gives service members the health and educational benefits they deserve when they return home." You see it under their "get the facts" tab, where they let you compare the records of various politicians on funding for veteran health care and support for the GI bill. It's not that these things aren't good -- they are. But the tension in the relationship between the Democratic Party and the military comes, as far as I can tell, because the Democratic Party isn't quite sure what it thinks about the military, and the military isn't quite sure where it fits inside the liberal worldview. And neither side is wrong on this: Much of the Democratic coalition has complicated feelings on the role of military might and the influence of military culture, and the military, like any institution, feels more comfortable with administrations that view them with awe than skepticism. It's possible that the grueling course of the Iraq War has created a desire for a respite (Obama and Ron Paul got the most military donations this year), but I sort of doubt its changed those underlying facts. The fundamental problem, as Heather Hurlburt argued in her seminal piece "War Torn," is that Democrats don't spend much time thinking about war policy (not military benefits policy). As Hurlburt argued, "Democrats are in this position precisely because we respond to matters of war politically, tactically. We worry about how to position ourselves so as not to look weak, rather than thinking through realistic, sensible Democratic principles on how and when to employ military force, and arguing particular cases, such as Iraq, from those principles. There are a lot of reasons for this failure, including the long-time split within the party between hawks and doves. But we will never resolve that split, nor regain credibility with voters on national security, until we learn to think straight about war. And we will never learn to think straight about war until this generation of professional Democrats overcomes its ignorance of and indifference to military affairs." Right now, Democrats are able to think straight because opposition to Iraq is a fairly obvious, unifying, position. But Obama and Biden didn't do much to define a liberal foreign policy in this election. And until such a policy achieves sharper definition, Democrats can never have a particularly strong relationship with the military, because no institution likes ambiguity about the nature of their role. It's worth saying, incidentally, that a liberal foreign policy may not be one that the military likes, and may not solve tensions with tat institution. But at least in that scenario, folks would have something more concrete to talk about, and work through.
