JFK's Message for Today's Democrats: Pursue a 'Strategy of Peace'

What would President Kennedy say about Gaza and Ukraine?

President John F. Kennedy speaks at American University, June 10, 1963.

In his commencement address to the graduates of American University 62 years ago today, President John F. Kennedy declared he had “chosen this time and this place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth is too rarely perceived — yet it is the most important topic on earth: world peace.”

Peace was not a subject you heard a lot about during the 2024 presidential campaign. President Donald Trump spoke of ending the war in Ukraine not as a way of achieving peace but of appeasing Vladimir Putin. Israel’s savage assault on Gaza that killed tens of thousands of civilians only interested the Republican nominee as an opening to the possibilities of building vacation resorts on the graves of Palestinians.

Vice President Kamala Harris supported the war in Ukraine and did not utter a word about peace in Gaza. It cost her a key constituency — antiwar Democrats. A YouGov survey concluded 29 percent of nonvoters who supported Joe Biden in 2020 said U.S. support for Israels’ ethnic cleansing of Gaza was the top reason they sat out the 2024 election. That might not have cost Harris the election but it clearly demoralized Democrats and hurt turnout everywhere. In the past nine presidential elections, only Harris and John Kerry lost the popular vote.

What Democrats haven’t heard from most of their leaders in Washington is what JFK offered 62 years ago: a “strategy of peace.” In the debate about the party’s future, the issues of war and piece—of empire and republic—have taken a back seat to domestic policy.

The Democrats like Ezra Klein who want to revive the party’s fortunes with a domestic policy of “abundance” — namely delivering public goods and services faster and more widely — blame regulation and bureaucracy for foiling liberal goals. They don’t much grapple with the reality that the forever wars supported by Hillary Clinton, Biden, and Harris have had a profound cumulative effect. They have alienated the most loyal supporters of the liberal policies of abundance. Liberals can’t implement abundance policies if they don’t win presidential elections. And the 2024 election indicated they can’t win elections without the antiwar vote.