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Interesting point from Robert Dallek:
War kills reform. Every time we've had a major commitment to a war, it has killed a reform movement. Progressivism was done in by the Spanish-American war. Populism by World War I. FDR said Dr. New Deal has been replaced by Dr. War. The Great Society by the Vietnam War. You cannot have guns and butter. If Obama escalates in Afghanistan, if he draws us into a broader war which takes many lives and much money, it will ruin his chances for reform.That sounds right. And note the "guns and butter" point. The issue isn't simply that war consumes presidential attention and eventually increases political polarization, but that it costs a lot of money. It's easy to forget amidst this era of huge bailouts and stimulus bills and loans, but revenues eventually have to roughly approximate spending, and that's rather harder to do if you're enmeshed in a war that you can't lose and whose costs you thus can't control. And since it's much harder to cut the costs of a war than it is to cut the costs or pace of legislation, it's the latter that loses out.
