The Changing Role of Foreign Policy at the U.S. National Conventions

Republicans and nominee William McKinley, a former governor of Ohio, meeting in St. Louis, Missouri, campaign to protect U.S. manufacturers by raising the tariff on foreign imports. They also express opposition to “the free coinage of silver, except by international agreement,” which they warn will create harmful inflation, in favor of maintaining the gold standard. Meanwhile, in their platform rolled out in Chicago, Democrats and candidate William Jennings Bryan, a former House Democratic representative from Nebraska, denounce Republican attempts to restore a 50 percent tariff, which they say “proved a prolific breeder of trusts and monopolies.” Prior to winning the nomination, Bryan gives a rousing convention speech arguing that silver coinage will relieve debt-burdened farmers, ending with the now-famous line: “You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.” Democrats are split on the issue, but the final platform argues in favor of silver.

With Europe at war for two years, the Democratic Party and incumbent President Woodrow Wilson meet in St. Louis, Missouri, and campaign on a platform of neutrality and determination to keep the United States out of the conflict. This becomes a central theme of the convention. However, their platform also calls for military preparedness and notes the “revealed necessities of international action which no former generation can have foreseen.” In Chicago, Republicans and candidate Charles Evans Hughes, an associate Supreme Court justice and former New York governor, also advocate for neutrality in their platform, but call for presidential diplomatic powers to be handed to Congress. They also push for an immediate halt to military spending increases. They declare that “no war shall be declared or waged by the United States without a referendum vote of the entire people,” unless the country is invaded.

In the aftermath of World War I and facing an increasingly isolationist American public, the Republican Party and its nominee Senator Warren G. Harding (R-OH), meeting in Chicago, run on a platform criticizing the incumbent Democratic administration’s handling of the war and noting the country’s “unpreparedness for peace.” The platform spurns joining the League of Nations, created at the Paris Peace Conference that ended World War I in 1919. “It will avail nothing to discuss in detail the League Covenant, which was conceived for world super-government, negotiated in misunderstanding, and intolerantly urged and demanded by its administration sponsors, who resisted every effort to safeguard America, and who finally rejected it when such safeguards were inserted,” Harding says in his convention speech. Convening in San Francisco, Democrats and their nominee, Ohio Governor James Cox, campaign in favor of the league, saying it is the “surest, if not the only, practicable means of maintaining the permanent peace of the world.”

With a war again raging in Europe, the Democratic Party and incumbent President Franklin D. Roosevelt meet in Chicago, where they run on a platform of significantly strengthening the U.S. military and extending to European allies “all the material aid at our command.” But the platform says the United States would not participate militarily in the war “except in case of attack.” Republicans and their nominee, lawyer and corporate executive Wendell Willkie, run on a platform “firmly opposed to involving this nation in foreign war,” but they also call for greater military preparedness. The Republicans, convening in Philadelphia, blame Roosevelt’s New Deal economic policies for the country’s “un-preparedness and for the consequent danger of involvement in war.”

In Chicago, Republicans and their candidate General Dwight D. Eisenhower campaign on a platform to end the two-year-old Korean War. They also attack the Truman administration for failing to halt Soviet Communism, saying, “500 million non-Russian people of fifteen different countries have been absorbed.” At the convention, though Eisenhower makes no mention of communism in his speech, Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) takes to the podium, railing against the communist threat at home and abroad. “[W]e have allowed communism to spread its dark shadow over half of Europe, and almost all of Asia, and for the first time… they are appearing on the pages of America’s history,” McCarthy says. Also meeting in Chicago, the Democratic Party and its nominee, Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson, defend the U.S. effort in Korea as showing resistance to the “menace of Soviet aggression.”

The Democrats, along with nominee Senator John F. Kennedy (D-MA), launch a platform in Los Angeles that includes pointed references to the takeover of Cuba by Communist leader Fidel Castro, who came to power in 1959. The platform pledges to prevent “the establishment of a regime dominated by international, atheistic Communism in the Western Hemisphere.” They also assert the country has a “missile gap, space gap, and limited-war gap” with the Soviet Union. The Republican Party and nominee Vice President Richard M. Nixon, meeting in Chicago, also campaign on a strong national security platform, but make no mention of Cuba. Both party platforms include a pledge to move forward on nuclear disarmament.

Against a backdrop of raucous anti-Vietnam War protests and a sharp police crackdown in Chicago, the Democratic Party and candidate Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey craft a platform that rejects a “unilateral withdrawal” of U.S. forces from Vietnam. But the party is split on the issue, with a minority plank championed by rival candidate Senator Eugene McCarthy (D-MN) calling for both ending bombing in North Vietnam and a negotiated withdrawal. The widely covered protests on the sidelines of the convention were directed at the escalation of the war by the Lyndon B. Johnson administration. Republicans and nominee Richard Nixon, convening in a quieter Miami Beach, pledge to find an “honorable end” to the war.

Meeting again in Miami Beach, Republicans and incumbent President Nixon tout a drawdown of forces in the Vietnam War, but the convention is plagued by widespread anti-war protests. Amid rising inflation caused in part by war spending, the Republican platform also hails Nixon’s decisions to impose mandatory price controls and take the dollar off the gold standard. Also in Miami Beach, the Democratic Party and its candidate Senator George McGovern (D-SD) note in their platform that, while troop reductions have occurred, “the war has been extended in Laos and Cambodia; the bombing of North Vietnam has been expanded to levels of destruction undreamed of four years ago.” They also say Nixon’s economic policy has increased unemployment in a failed effort to tackle inflation. In his convention speech, McGovern offers to end the “senseless bombing of Indochina on Inaugural Day” and “put millions back to work.”

The election opens as the nation copes with an ongoing hostage crisis in Iran and the aftermath of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, launched the previous December. Incumbent President Jimmy Carter faces a lengthy convention fight in New York as Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) forces him to add a number of liberal domestic and economic issues to the platform. On foreign policy, the platform emphasizes diplomacy and peace in the Middle East. It touted the Carter administration’s boycott of the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympic Games and trade restrictions as showing “determined opposition to Soviet aggression” in Afghanistan. Republicans and their nominee Ronald Reagan, gathering in Detroit, launch a platform heavily focused on national security and the U.S.-Soviet relationship, saying “the United States can only negotiate with the Soviet Union from a position of unquestioned principle and unquestioned strength.”

In Houston, the Republican Party and incumbent George H.W. Bush come out in support of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), saying it will produce economic incentives to reduce illegal immigration from Mexico. In New York, the Democratic Party and nominee Governor Bill Clinton (D-AR) say they would insist “that the conduct of world trade is fair” and “legitimate concerns about environmental, health and safety, and labor standards are included” in any trade deal. Third-party candidate Ross Perot does not hold a national convention, but makes opposition to NAFTA a central theme of his campaign. At a presidential debate, Perot argues that Mexico’s lower wages and environmental standards mean that “you're going to hear a giant sucking sound of jobs being pulled out of [the United States].”

Following the 9/11 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, the United States invades Afghanistan and then Iraq, pursuing what incumbent Republican President George W. Bush labels a “global war on terror.” National security issues permeate the 2004 campaign. Bush and the Republicans reiterate in their platform, released at the party gathering in New York, that they are dedicated to ensuring “America remains safe, terrorists are defeated, and democracy flourishes in the world.” In Boston, the Democratic Party nominee Senator John Kerry (D-MA) also runs largely on national security issues. The Democrats release a platform criticizing the Bush administration's approach to world affairs, accusing it of a “rush to force before exhausting diplomacy.”

The country continues to face two increasingly unpopular wars and storm clouds over the global economy. In their 2008 platform, Democrats and nominee Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) pledge to bring the Iraq war to a close and “defeat al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where those who actually attacked us on 9/11 reside and are resurgent.” The platform also promises to increase troop levels in Afghanistan and calls for using more military technology, such as satellites and drones. The Republican Party and its candidate, Senator John McCain (R-AZ), also run on a platform focused on national security, rejecting “politically inspired timetables” for Iraq and “the Democratic Party’s idea that America can succeed in Afghanistan only by failure in Iraq.”

The election debate centers largely on trade, immigration, and national security. In Cleveland, Ohio, Republicans and nominee Donald Trump present a sharp departure from the status quo. Trump’s “America First” philosophy holds that the United States bears too much of the burden of maintaining world order, and that its trade policies have harmed American workers. In his convention speech, he proposes protectionist trade rules, calls the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) “obsolete,” and pledges to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. He argues that illegal immigration, rising crime, and terrorist groups abroad “threaten our very way of life.” In Philadelphia, Democrats and nominee former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledge to strengthen the U.S. role in the world, expand trade agreements, and bolster U.S. commitments to allies. The Democratic Party’s platform also prioritizes addressing climate change and passing comprehensive immigration reform legislation.

Neither candidate accepts his nomination in-person for the first time since 1944 as the COVID-19 pandemic dominates the mostly virtual conventions. The Democrats and their nominee, former Vice President Joe Biden, pledge to increase public health funding while criticizing incumbent President Trump for failing to control the virus’s spread. Their platform also promises to shake up trade policy to better serve the middle class. In an unprecedented convention speech delivered from the South Lawn of the White House, Trump blames China for the pandemic and vows to produce a vaccine by the end of the year. (The vaccine becomes available in December.) He also reiterates his pledges to pressure allies to spend more on defense, restore American jobs, and end U.S. involvement in wars abroad. For the first time since 1856, the Republican Party does not publish a platform; instead, Trump releases a bullet point list that includes “core priorities” for a second term, including ending a “reliance on China.”

Days after surviving an assassination attempt at a rally in Pennsylvania, Republican nominee Trump unveils a platform dominated by his America First agenda at his party’s convention in Milwaukee. As he formally accepts the Republican nomination, Trump describes the United States as a “nation in decline” that would be “respected again” under his leadership. The party’s platform promises to restrict immigration and raise barriers to trade, among other policies. At the Democratic convention in Chicago, Vice President Kamala Harris, the party’s nominee, says that her vision is to “strengthen, not abdicate, our global leadership.” She pledges to hold autocrats accountable, ensure that “America, not China, wins the competition for the 21st century,” and remain “steadfast in advancing our security and values abroad.”

*A previous version of this timeline incorrectly stated where the 1972 Democratic convention took place. It was in Miami Beach.