Jonathan Zasloff has an interesting post up questioning the conventional wisdom that Democrats lost their national security credibility as a result of the Vietnam peace movement:
these [polls] are interesting because they could just as easily demonstrate the opposite conclusion of the conventional wisdom. Although the antiwar movement was in place in 1967, it was still on the fringe. But perhaps the Democrats began to be distrusted precisely because they had gotten us embroiled in Vietnam. Vietnam was, in Bob Dole's infamous phrase, a "Democrat war." Nixon ran as the peace candidate in 1968, while Humphrey was supporting Johnson's policies.
It would certainly be an odd irony if the Democrats originally lost trust because they were aggressive and incompetent and then saw that sentiment cement into the judgment that they were weak and pacifistic. It's possible though: The mistrust of Democrats on national security issues may have been a constant, while the specific rationale backing the skepticism proved changeable. Indeed, Zasloff places the onus for the Democrats-are-weak meme on Carter:
For 444 days, American hostages sat in what used to be the US Embassy in Tehran, and the United States did nothing. In the meantime, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, and the President appeared shocked that "Brezhnev lied to me." Then Iran released the hostages on Reagan's first day in office, creating the impression (perhaps true, perhaps not) that his bellicose statements had cowed the mullahs, and then he invaded Grenada. Altogether, this gave the public the idea that the GOP would do what needed to be done to protect America, and the Democrats wouldn't.
Here's the polling chart in question, by the way:
My grasp of the period's history isn't solid enough to come down on one side of the other, but it certainly wouldn't surprise me if the lessons of the 70s were wildly oversimplified. It's worth putting out as a counterfactual, too, that Democrats were in the odd position of both starting and ending a failed war, so they were blamed for both the invasion's folly and the humiliating retreat. If the anti-war movement had arisen among Republicans, you might see a situation more akin to Bush's current bind, in which Democrats were simply loathed as incompetent warmongers. Point of all this is that it's not necessarily the case that advocating an end to an unpopular war is a bad political move, at least if not coupled with a series of odd events, culutral upheavals, and an interminable hostage crisis. If Democrats finished the war and then one assumed the presidency capably dealt with a tricky foreign crisis, the party would likely be seen as strong and competent on foreign affairs. The 60s and 70s might have been uniquely unlucky for the party, and not necessarily applicable to the current situation.
