Conventional wisdom in U.S. politics holds that foreign policy rarely matters in midterm elections. When it comes to the composition of Congress, voters care about many issues, but ordinarily, what the United States does overseas is usually not among them. Bread-and-butter concerns (or, in today’s parlance, the issue of affordability) are much more likely to drive voters’ decisions about who should represent them. As Thomas E. Ricks wrote for this magazine in 2012, “Americans frankly don’t give a damn about foreign policy, Scarlett. By a 81 to 9 percent margin, they care more about the economy.”

There have, however, been notable exceptions where politics does not stop at the water’s edge, and 2026 is shaping up to be one of those years. It typically takes extraordinary circumstances for foreign policy to influence voting behavior, whether that concerns a full-scale mobilization, as in the 1942 and 1944 elections, or the deployment of large numbers of ground troops, as in the 1970 or 2006 elections. Yet the connection between military operations and economic conditions can also become politically potent.

Conventional wisdom in U.S. politics holds that foreign policy rarely matters in midterm elections. When it comes to the composition of Congress, voters care about many issues, but ordinarily, what the United States does overseas is usually not among them. Bread-and-butter concerns (or, in today’s parlance, the issue of affordability) are much more likely to drive voters’ decisions about who should represent them. As Thomas E. Ricks wrote for this magazine in 2012, “Americans frankly don’t give a damn about foreign policy, Scarlett. By a 81 to 9 percent margin, they care more about the economy.”

There have, however, been notable exceptions where politics does not stop at the water’s edge, and 2026 is shaping up to be one of those years. It typically takes extraordinary circumstances for foreign policy to influence voting behavior, whether that concerns a full-scale mobilization, as in the 1942 and 1944 elections, or the deployment of large numbers of ground troops, as in the 1970 or 2006 elections. Yet the connection between military operations and economic conditions can also become politically potent.

When voters can readily perceive a direct link between a president’s national security decisions and the state of the economy, the conditions are ripe for the opposition party to connect the dots in its argument for rebalancing power on Capitol Hill.

This dynamic was an important part of the story in the 1966 midterm elections.

President Lyndon Johnson knew that the 1966 midterms would not be easy. From the moment he took over the presidency following John F. Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963, he urged his advisors to move quickly and decisively, recognizing that the window for major legislation would begin to close once lawmakers turned their attention from governing to........

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