2nd May 2003, 9:46 AM
No, Eisenhower started it by sending in the first advisors. Johnson, I'd admit, was the one who made it a big war (not Kennedy, really)... which is why he didn't get reelected or even run again -- he knew his Democratic base didn't like him at all...
In WW1 we did NOT declare war after the Lusitania sank... check your history. It was more than a year later. We declared war because of more, repeated US ships being sunk... including some government-owned ones. The real kicker was Germany's reopeining of unrestricted submarine warfare in 1917... that got Wilson (who had just won the election partially on the platform "he kept us out of war") to declare war... because of the increased threat, but not from some obvious act like Pearl Harbor.
And the point isn't just that they were Democratic presidents but that they did a very good job... and got re-elected... in FDR's case, three times...
In WW1 we did NOT declare war after the Lusitania sank... check your history. It was more than a year later. We declared war because of more, repeated US ships being sunk... including some government-owned ones. The real kicker was Germany's reopeining of unrestricted submarine warfare in 1917... that got Wilson (who had just won the election partially on the platform "he kept us out of war") to declare war... because of the increased threat, but not from some obvious act like Pearl Harbor.
And the point isn't just that they were Democratic presidents but that they did a very good job... and got re-elected... in FDR's case, three times...