350 e lusive v ictories
been approved shortly before 9/11: the widening federal defi cit (largely
a product of the cut and war-related expenditures) would have no
serious economic consequences.
It is not so much the cost as it is wartime political calculation and
contestation that drain the impetus from a president’s reform agenda.
In market-oriented societies, major wars tend to empower conservative
economic elites, on whose cooperation governments depend to meet
their urgent need for military output. Wilson and Roosevelt tapped
leaders in the private sector to help steer economic mobilization, while
in the Second World War especially the federal government off ered gen-
erous incentives to large corporations to induce them to supply the vast
production of war materiel needed by the U.S. armed forces and by the
Allies. Even where a confl ict does not require a broad shift in economic
activity, presidents see a need to tend to the concerns of business leaders,
particularly to their fear that wartime federal expenditures may create
infl ationary pressures. Wartime presidents also crave broad political
support at home. Lincoln’s incessant clashes with his Democratic foes
were not lost on his successors. For liberal presidents, the quest for
political unity has meant reaching a political accommodation with their
conservative adversaries in Congress. Th ese presidents also have seen
conservatives command greater leverage after they gained seats in
wartime midterm elections. Wilson lost control of Congress in 1918,
while both Roosevelt after 1942 and Johnson after 1966 governed with
reduced majorities.
Even as wars strengthen the hand of a liberal president’s political
foes, his natural allies find themselves weakened. The social reform
movements in the eras of Wilson, Roosevelt, and Johnson drew their
energy from the political left. In wartime, this cohort often generates
the fi rst voices of antiwar dissent and in turn becomes the target of
mainstream opprobrium. Radical and liberal activists face attacks on
their patriotism, a process that can delegitimize both them and the ideas
they represent. Th e Wilson administration’s relentless assault on those
who objected to the war, coupled with the eff orts of the American Pro-
tective League and other forms of political persecution, infl icted a fatal
wound on the Progressive movement. Much the same might have hap-
pened during the Vietnam era, except the peace movement gained suf-
fi cient backing from mainstream Democrats to forestall marginalization.