In 1992, Bill Clinton won the support of some foreign-policy thinkers who had previously supported Ronald Reagan. They thought that Clinton would be more willing than Walter Mondale or Michael Dukakis, and maybe even George H. W. Bush, to use military force abroad to promote human rights and democracy. (Clinton was at the time attacking Bush for his soft line toward “the butchers of Beijing.”)
This year, too, could see some hawks previously associated with the Republican party flipping to the Democrats. The New York Times Magazine just ran a cover story by Mark Landler about how hard Hillary Clinton has worked to cultivate them. In recent decades, Republican presidential candidates have been more interventionist than Democratic ones. It’s one more pattern that could break this year.
Hillary Among the Hawks