Take On the Talking Heads
Demise of the Veteran
by Garry Wills
March 16, 2000 --John McCain, we hear often, was going to win the Republican presidential nomination because of his "compelling story." The story was, and is, compelling -- but it did not compel people to vote for him as a presidential candidate.
In the past, it might have. Through most of our history, it was always helpful, and sometimes necessary, for a presidential candidate to have a military record. That was never more true than over the last half-century of the Cold War, when we expected the man with his finger on the nuclear button to know at first hand what are the disciplines of the military.
So we had our longest string of second-lieutenant presidents, all men who had served in World War II at the lower-officer level: Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, Bush. The only exceptions to this record were Truman, too old for World War II (but a combat veteran in World War I), and Carter, too young for World War II (but commissioned at Annapolis as the Korean War was ending). During this period, John Kennedy could score valuable points off his primary opponent, Hubert Humphrey, for having avoided military service. The mere word "slacker" was enough to end political careers.
This was in an old tradition. After the Revolution, it was hard to win higher political office without having served in it. Indeed, the painter John Trumbull flattered himself that he had helped elect James Monroe president by showing him wounded in his picture of the battle of Trenton. We have even, despite our noble tradition of civilian control of the military, elected generals in the aftermath of wars -- Washington after the Revolution, William Henry Harrison after the War of 1812, Grant and Benjamin Harrison after the Civil War, Eisenhower after World War II.
Thus McCain should have been given a big boost by his undoubted heroism in the Vietnam War. But something striking happened to our second-lieutenant presidency. The natural heirs to that string of officers, the last viable World War II veterans not too antiquated to run, were George Bush in 1992 and Bob Dole in 1996. Not only were they veterans, they were both war heroes -- Bush shot out of the sky like McCain, Dole with a badly wounded arm like McCain's. Yet both Bush and Dole were defeated by a draft-dodger, Bill Clinton.
Clinton was the beneficiary of a new attitude. You can describe this attitude in different ways. It can mean an end to the glorifying of war. Or mere disillusionment with the particular war at issue, Vietnam. Or the effect of a technologized time of war, impersonal and terrifying, when the nuclear prospect muted martial rhetoric. Whatever the explanation, Clinton clearly broke the tradition of military service as a semi-requirement for the presidency.
Look at the candidates now facing us for the general election next fall. George Bush Jr. did not emulate his father, volunteering for combat. He ducked into the safe-air zone of the Texas Air Guard. And he is not being punished for that, despite all McCain's battle ribbons.
On the Democratic side, Al Gore served in Vietnam -- he did not dodge like Clinton or duck like George W. He was not in the frontlines of the fray, but neither were politically well-connected lieutenants like Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon or Ronald Reagan.
Bill Bradley, on the other hand, had no military experience -- he had a health exemption. That is not the reason, however, that Gore beat Bradley. In a specialized world, we may soon be wanting a president with more experience in technological linkups than in chains of command. That is why McCain's story, though a noble one, was not electorally compelling after all.
Copyright © 2000 Universal Press Syndicate
