Miltary as President, Conclusion
How The Movement Away From Military Service As Part of Presidential Candidates Reflects The Worst Aspects of the Extremists of Both Political Parties
After Eisenhower’s second term ended, no general has ever received the major nomination from either political party. And with the exception of a boom for Colin Powell after the end of the First Gulf War by the GOP and the failed candidacy of Wesley Clark, formerly head of NATO for the Democratic nomination in 2004, it remains highly unlikely that either party will attempt to nominate a military figure in the foreseeable future.
That doesn’t mean that military service was not a critical part of Presidential elections after Eisenhower: in every Presidential campaign from 1952 to the end of the 20th century, at least one nominee of either party had service of some form in the Second World War. JFK’s military record, though exaggerated, was a key part of him becoming the Democratic nominee in 1960. Gerald Ford served in the Navy and George H.W. Bush won a Distinguished Flying Cross during World War II. Richard Nixon served as a commander in the Pacific, albeit in the reserve. George McGovern was a bomber pilot and Bob Dole was wounded during World War II. While Jimmy Carter didn’t serve during war, he also graduated the Naval Academy and served aboard a nuclear submarine.
In hindsight the shift away from military service being one of the keys to becoming a Presidential contender started in 1992. Among the many issues Bill Clinton faced during the early stages of his campaign was his decision not to fight in the Vietnam War under favored circumstances. One of the candidates he defeated in the Democratic Primary was Bob Kerrey who had been considered a formidable contender for the nomination for his receiving the Medal of Honor during the Vietnam War. Seen as the early favorite when Clinton finished ahead of him in New Hampshire it spelled the end of his campaign for President. Clinton’s defeat of Bush in 1992 and Bob Dole four years later was the beginning of the end of military service being considered not only important for a Presidential pedigree but practically a detriment for both parties.
The movement away from not only generals but the military in particular as being essential makeup for a President reflects a sea change in how both parties view the world and in both cases it involves the extreme elements of the party.
For the first century of their existence the Republican Party nominated five generals for President, all of whom won the office as well as two Presidents with a military background (McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt). The major shift in the conservative takeover of the party almost certainly began when businessmen started seeking out the nomination for President that ended with Donald Trump’s takeover of the GOP in 2016. The most prominent one beforehand was Steve Forbes who twice ran for the nomination in 1996 and 2000. Other far more unsuccessful candidate include Morry Taylor, the manufacturer of a tire company who made a failed run in 1996, Herman Cain who unsuccessfully ran in 2012 and Carly Fiorina, the former head of Hewlett Packard who also attempted to run for President in 2016.
The Republican Party has always reflected both a desire for non-politicians as its standard bearers and a pro-business principle. But their greatest flaw is moving almost entirely away from military figures to businessmen. A military leader, I would argue, is at least as qualified as an elected official to run the country and in other ways even more so. They have already sworn an oath to protect the country against all enemies foreign and domestic, they understand how the U.S. military works and how it doesn’t, they understand the politics of war as much as the campaigns of fighting and they more often then not understand that whatever heroics they accomplish are nothing without the men who serve under them or with them. All of the military men who have served as President have a love of country that is never up to question and they have a devotion to it that, as we saw in the case of Eisenhower and Taft, that some politicians can’t comprehend.
By contrast the idea that a businessman can successfully run the government is one of the most foolish ideas either political party has ever come up with and even for a pro-business party like the Republicans it demonstrates an incredible misunderstanding of government. I acknowledge that most of the things that we as people hold dear — sports, journalism, even film and television — are businesses first and have to consider the bottom line above anything else. But the idea that any country, much less one as complicated as the United States, can be run as a business is insane. The only metric for a businessman’s success, by the standards of Republicans, is how much money his business makes. How he made that money, what corners he had to cut to become successful, how he treated the people who work under him and how he made that profit in the first place is irrelevant to the business world.
And the idea that one can run the US government like a corporation is not only ill-conceived but ridiculous because the two are not remote similar. A government is not successful because of how profitable it is which is the only metric of a business’ success. Solutions to government problems can’t be resolved just by selling certain departments off to foreign markets, though that basically seems to be the only way Republicans think the problems should be solved. Soldiers have loyalty to something bigger than themselves. The only thing any businessman has loyalty to is his profit margin.
The Democrats, since Andrew Jackson, have only once nominated a general for President, Winfield Scott Hancock in 1880. And while the disconnect with the GOP and the military is built on the corporate interests of the party, the Democrats at least since the Vietnam War, have a problem with the leftist wing of their party that always looks down on any form of public service and thinks with every fiber of its being that the military and the actions it takes are immoral.
Historically as I’ve written countless times before, the left has always been a movement based almost exclusively on words and never on action. Even at their ‘height’ during the student protest movements of Vietnam, they did far more to convince people to vote for Republicans than anything to do with the War itself. And their academic field always urges invectives on anyone who actually takes action to serve a cause rather than stand by the sidelines and shake their fist.
And as a result the leftist writers have constantly mocked the idea of any politician and argues that their military service deserves no more respect than their political service. During the 2008 election Harper’s one of the leading leftist publications only mocked John McCain’s presidency by saying the only real qualification he had for office was that he had been a prisoner of war for longer than any other American. For a public servant whose campaign slogan was ‘Country First’, this was perhaps the biggest insult not only on McCain’s service but his entire public life where he had not only been one of the most effective Senators in either party, but also one who had frequently crossed party lines in order to fight for issues he believed were important to the American people. Yet none of that mattered to men like Lewis Lapham who clearly thought his service to the Republican Party trumped any loyalty he had to his nation.
Furthermore twelve years earlier Lapham wrote a two part article after Bob Dole resigned from the Senate in an attempt to boost his flagging campaign hopes to argue that Dole was one of the great villains in American history. Considering that during Dole’s entire political career the Republican Party was essentially the minority party and the fact that he worked prominently with Democrats both as minority and majority leader, it’s very hard to consider him in the same vein as Nixon or Newt Gingrich. Considering that he was also a prominent believer in the rights for veterans (he’d worked to renew the GI Bill while in Congress) and especially considering the many scandals of Clinton’s personal life that were emerging by the end of his first term, this involved a remarkable selective memory. And yet it is completely in keeping with a movement that looks down on anyone who dares to spoil their purity by serving your country in any form.
That’s why I wonder at the hypocrisy of Daily Kos when it berated Trump for calling military figures suckers. Were they really angry at him or were they upset that he had taken one of their major talking points without paying copyright privileges? That same year on Saturday Night Live Pete Davidson drew an immense amount of fire when he mocked Dan Crenshaw, who was running for Congress for the first time, on his physical appearance. Crenshaw appeared on SNL, Davidson gracefully apologized and Crenshaw took the opportunity to speak up for military service. Daily Kos tore into both Davidson and Saturday Night Live for not only apologizing but giving Crenshaw a public platform.
Crenshaw, in case you didn’t know, served on Seal Team 3 during the War in Afghanistan. He was deployed three times and on the third time he was wounded in an action, losing his right eye to an improvised explosive device. He won two Bronze stars, the Purple Heart and the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation medal with Valor. And he was willing to fight and give his life in a war that many of these dissenters have argued not only is immoral but that anyone who fights in it is guilty to essentially war crimes.
The idea of mocking a man who had lost his eye during military conflict is the exact thing that the left has spent so much time and energy berating Trump for doing not only during his run for the White House but in all the year’s subsequent. Yet they have no trouble slurring the same kind of veteran that Trump does. In their minds the first oath he should have taken, like everyone else, is to the Democratic Party first and everything else second. That Crenshaw took an oath to protect his country and served to fight for it is meaningless if he doesn’t uphold the values that any real American would.