Bill Katz writes:

One of the joys of professional writing is the chance to go into a library stack and snoop around. Doing research on your own time is great fun, especially when no one sees you. You can try to convince your spouse that you spent the day hunched over a keyboard, bleeding every golden word as you dreamed, "Soon to be a major motion picture." I don't know any spouses who believe it, but they play along. They know us. If they wanted to marry dentists, they could have found them.

While researching another piece for Power Line recently, I came across something juicy. It's the Democratic Party platform for 1864 – yes, eighteen-sixty-four – the year the Democrats nominated George B. McClellan to run against the sinking Abraham Lincoln. The platform, in its entirety, follows. It will take but a few minutes, and I urge you to read it. It's worth the time, and you can impress your friends at lunch. Then, as Ms. Baerman used to say in the 12th grade, we'll discuss:

Resolved, That in the future, as in the past, we will adhere with unswerving fidelity to the Union under the Constitution as the only solid foundation of our strength, security, and happiness as a people, and as a framework of government equally conducive to the welfare and prosperity of all the States, both Northern and Southern.

Resolved, That this convention does explicitly declare, as the sense of the American people, that after four years of failure to restore the Union by the experiment of war, during which, under the pretense of a military necessity of war-power higher than the Constitution, the Constitution itself has been disregarded in every part, and public liberty and private right alike trodden down, and the material prosperity of the country essentially impaired, justice, humanity, liberty, and the public welfare demand that immediate efforts be made for a cessation of hostilities, with a view of an ultimate convention of the States, or other peaceable means, to the end that, at the earliest practicable moment, peace may be restored on the basis of the Federal Union of the States.

Resolved, That the direct interference of the military authorities of the United States in the recent elections held in Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, and Delaware was a shameful violation of the Constitution, and a repetition of such acts in the approaching election will be held as revolutionary, and resisted with all the means and power under our control.

Resolved, That the aim and object of the Democratic party is to preserve the Federal Union and the rights of the States unimpaired, and they hereby declare that they consider that the administrative usurpation of extraordinary and dangerous powers not granted by the Constitution — the subversion of the civil by military law in States not in insurrection; the arbitrary military arrest, imprisonment, trial, and sentence of American citizens in States where civil law exists in full force; the suppression of freedom of speech and of the press; the denial of the right of asylum; the open and avowed disregard of State rights; the employment of unusual test-oaths; and the interference with and denial of the right of the people to bear arms in their defense is calculated to prevent a restoration of the Union and the perpetuation of a Government deriving its just powers from the consent of the governed.

Resolved, That the shameful disregard of the Administration to its duty in respect to our fellow citizens who now are and long have been prisoners of war and in a suffering condition, deserves the severest reprobation on the score alike of public policy and common humanity.

Resolved, That the sympathy of the Democratic party is heartily and earnestly extended to the soldiery of our army and sailors of our navy, who are and have been in the field and on the sea under the flag of our country, and, in the events of its attaining power, they will receive all the care, protection, and regard that the brave soldiers and sailors of the republic have so nobly earned.

Sound familiar?

The Democrats are saying 1) The war is lost; 2) Let's negotiate; 3) The Constitution is trashed; 4) They steal elections; 5) We support the troops.

You've got to hand it to these Dems. They're certainly consistent. They revere their history, except for the corrupt, neo-con deviations between 1941 and 1963. I wonder if Nancy Pelosi's great, great, great grandfather was there in 1864, inking the quill.

Oh, by the way, as most of you know, George B. McClellan - "Little Mac" as he was called – was Lincoln's first commander in the Civil War. Now, here he was, turning on Lincoln and running against him. Generals knifing their own commander-in-chief in the back? Ah, come on. Never happens.

In fact, during World War II another general – Big Mac – Douglas MacArthur, was widely reported to be sharpening the blade to run against Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1944 election. I guess Big Mac decided that wading ashore in the Philippines made a better picture than waving from a convention platform, but he put off his political dreams, which never materialized.

Now, flash forward from 1864. Here's a piece of real wisdom:

"It doesn't do any good to go around digging up dead horses after the war is over, like the last time. The thing to do is dig this stuff up now, and correct it. If we run this war program efficiently, there won't be any opportunity for someone to stir up a lot of investigations after the war—and cause a wave of revulsion that will start the country on the downhill road to unpreparedness and put us in another war in 20 years. . . ."

Who's saying that? Who's warning that a war must be run efficiently to avoid recriminations afterward, recriminations that could destroy support for national defense? John McCain? Dick Cheney? Joe Lieberman?

No, that was Senator Harry S. Truman of Missouri, speaking in 1943, a year before he was chosen as the Democratic nominee for vice president, two years before becoming president. Harry Truman was not the mythical "little man from Missouri," unknown to the public. In fact, he was a powerful member of the Senate, and made the cover of Time on March 8, 1943. He had essentially created "the Truman Committee," which exposed corruption in wartime defense procurement. He knew that the public had to have confidence in the way a war is run, or the country would tear itself apart afterward, destroying the very strength that makes lasting peace possible.

What's the point of recalling the 1864 Democratic platform, the generals scheming against their presidents, and Harry Truman's warning? The point is that history doesn't repeat itself. It never does. It's the ideas of history that repeat themselves, the emotions, the instincts, the human greatness and pettiness, the false faith placed in men with "proven records," and the fortunate gut faith placed in men like David Petraeus.

The Dems of 1864 seemed to be going through the same emotions many of them are going through today. Harry Truman understood people, and warned us, in 1943, how people would act after World War II.

The military historians, like the great Victor Davis Hanson, whose latest essay, "In War: Resolution," Power Line noted both yesterday and today, understand the workings of history in wartime. Too many other commentators do not.

Posted by Scott at 7:23 AM  |    |