Is John Fetterman Channeling Scoop Jackson?
Pennsylvania Democratic Sen. John Fetterman sounds a lot like Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson, a Democrat who served in U.S. the Senate from the state of Washington between 1953 and 1983. Sen. Fetterman has been a lone Democratic voice supporting the war against Iran, and he has courageously attacked his fellow Democrats for their opposition to the war and their opposition to anything President Trump says or does. He was the only Democrat in the Senate to vote against his party’s efforts to restrain Trump’s war powers. He criticized party leaders for failing to fully fund the Department of Homeland Security. He went so far the other day as to suggest that the Democratic Party is led by Trump Derangement Syndrome. Like Sen. Jackson in the 1970s, Fetterman has repeatedly placed country over party.
For those too young to remember, Scoop Jackson was one of the political heroes of the Cold War. He remained a staunch anti-communist even as his party was captured by left-wing McGovernites in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Republican President Richard Nixon wanted Jackson to be secretary of defense, and later Republican President Ronald Reagan selected Jackson to serve on his transition team after winning the presidency in 1980, and Reagan, too, wanted Jackson to serve as secretary of defense. Nixon and Reagan knew that Jackson, unlike many in his party, never imbibed the radicalism of the 1960s and never suffered from the Vietnam Syndrome. In the 1970s, as Democrats in Congress cut the defense budget and proposed even greater arms limitations than the Nixon administration proposed in the SALT talks, Jackson became the country’s chief critic of arms control and Nixon’s overall policy of détente with the Soviet Union. He repeatedly bucked his own party on defense/national security issues, which probably cost him the party’s presidential nomination in 1972 and 1976.
During the presidency of Democrat Jimmy Carter, who defeated Jackson and several other contenders in the Democratic primary campaign, Sen. Jackson opposed the administration’s efforts to cut key weapons programs and criticized what he called Carter’s “appeasement” of the Soviet Union. There were a few other Democrats in the 1970s who, like Jackson, supported a strong defense and sought to win the Cold War — several members of Jackson’s staff ended up serving in the Reagan administration in key national security positions. They were known at the time as the “Jackson wing” of the Democratic Party.
But today Sen. Fetterman is all by himself. There is no “Fetterman wing” of the Democratic Party. Fetterman is, like Jackson was, a staunch supporter of Israel. Like Jackson, Fetterman has refused to oppose a Republican president for purely political reasons. Fetterman has supported acquiring Greenland, though not by force. He again broke with his Democratic colleagues to support funding for ICE and vote for Trump’s recent pick to head the Department of Homeland Security. Fetterman has often been in lockstep with Pennsylvania’s GOP senator, Dave McCormick. At a forum last year, Fetterman and McCormick agreed on Israel’s war against Hamas, on the need for Europe to spend more for their own defense, and the need to spend more for border security.
Fetterman explained his willingness to buck his party time and time again on major issues: “I take no pleasure in constantly voting against the majority of my caucus. For me, I’m going to follow truths that are embedded in country over party and what the base demands.” The truths that are embedded in country over party.” Scoop Jackson couldn’t have said it better.
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