Obama, Kennedy, and the Politics of National Security

President Obama and the Democratic Congress will attempt to strengthen the political standing of their party on national security. During the presidency of George W. Bush, Republicans continued to experience success, until 2006, with the important issue of protecting the nation from external and internal threats. This continued a pattern that had been occurring since the 1960s. To understand how Democrats from an earlier era where able to rebound after suffering through an extremely difficult political period, as a result of national security issues (with the fall of China to Communism and the stalemate in Korea), my presentation will analyze the history of partisan competition between the election of 1952 and the Limited Test Ban Treaty in 1963. I will examine the strategies employed by Democrats to counteract the Republican Right, and the long-term costs of those tactics. I will use this discussion to suggest the strategic paths that Democrats might pursue today.