It's beginning to look a lot like 1971.

For this baby boomer, the current mixture of popular culture and an unpopular foreign war brings back memories. Memories of an odd-numbered year before a presidential election, when Hollywood moved left — and the country moved right in reaction. And it was over-the-top anti-war protesters who cemented the conservative majority.

The war back in '71, of course, was in Vietnam. In that year, most Americans had concluded that the war was a failure, at least in terms of securing South Vietnam as a "model democracy." And in fact, Richard Nixon had been elected president in 1968 on a promise of ending the conflict.

But Nixon had also said he would bring "peace with honor," and that was a powerful message. OK, Americans told themselves, maybe we weren't going to win in Vietnam, but darn it, we weren't going to let ourselves be humiliated. The answer was some sort of gradual drawdown, combined with various tactical "surges" along the way — although back then, they were called "incursions."

Nixon, a Republican, was widely reviled for pursuing this cautious strategy, but most Democrats didn't seem to have a better idea — so they mostly just held congressional hearings and criticized.

Do any of these events from 36 years ago have a contemporary ring? What about the saying "The more things change, the more they stay the same"?

Meanwhile, the popular culture targeted not only Nixon and the war but also, in the minds of many, America itself. In 1970, movies such as "M*A*S*H," "Catch 22" and "Little Big Man" mocked the military.

And in December 1970 came the nastiest movie of them all, "Joe," a direct assault, launched by the counterculture — a young star in the movie was Susan Sarandon — on factory-working "hard hats," who were portrayed as hateful and murderous.

And January 1971 saw the CBS premiere of "All in the Family," establishing Archie Bunker as the archetypal blue-collar bigot — the man all enlightened Americans were supposed to hate for his racism or at least pity for his ignorance.

But in fact, the Archies from Queens — and the Okies from Muscogee and other Silent Majoritarians across the nation, all scorned and scourged by the entertainment elite — had the last laugh at the ballot box.

Because the following year, 1972, George McGovern, the liberal Democratic presidential nominee — who promised "I will crawl on my knees to Hanoi" to seek a peace deal — was crushingly defeated by Nixon. If the bicoastal elites hated Nixon so much, Middle America reasoned, then he must be doing something right.

Now let's fast-forward to another odd-numbered year before a presidential election, 2007. Once again, an unpopular foreign war, with no good end in sight. Once again, the American people don't want to continue the combat, but they like the thought of losing even less. Smart politicians, in both parties, are trying to reflect that stalemated sentiment; a case in point is Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., who endlessly triangulates between hawk and dove.

But in politics, one must answer for one's friends, as well as oneself. And so when the lefty group Moveon.org took out a full-page advertisement in — where else? — The New York Times, in which the antiwar activists rhymed the name of Gen. David Petraeus with "Betray Us," the Democratic Party inevitably got some of the blame.

Meanwhile, the Hollywood hits against America keep coming, just as in 1971. A new film, "In the Valley of Elah," written and directed by Oscar-winning Paul Haggis, presents a biting and bitter view of the Army; indeed, the movie goes much further, deliberately dishonoring the American flag. And it stars, interestingly enough, the same Susan Sarandon, veteran of left-leaning movies reaching all the way back to "Joe."

Can Democratic presidential prospects survive these wounds inflicted by supposed allies? Perhaps. But history provides them with a pessimistic precedent.

James P. Pinkerton is a columnist for Newsday. Reach him at pinkerto@ix.netcom.com.