Thursday, December 27, 2018
Political Mayhem Thursday: Presidents, War, and the Draft
Yesterday's New York Times had a fascinating description of how Donald Trump stayed far away from the Vietnam War, even as people like Randall O'Brien stepped up to serve. He is the third of the last four presidents (the others being George W. Bush and Bill Clinton) who managed to stay out of the war using advantage and exemptions not available to others (Obama was too young to be drafted).
Trump graduated from college in 1968, and lost the education deferment that had kept him out of the draft in July of that year-- at the height of the war. 300,000 men were inducted into the armed services that year. Despite a lifetime devoted to golf, it seems that Trump received a medical exemption from the draft based on "bone spurs." The New York Times found the family of the deceased podiatrist who gave the diagnosis to young Trump, and found that he apparently often bragged about doing favors for the Trump family.
Does it matter, whether we are talking about Clinton, Bush, or Trump, that they found a way around draft eligibility and to safety at home while others put their lives on the line?
As someone who did not serve in the military (and was never eligible for the draft as it ended when I was twelve), I don't have the perspective some others do. And clearly it does not matter much to an electorate that voted against genuine combat vets and in favor of draft evaders twice in the past few decades: Clinton over Bush I, and Bush II over Kerry.
But... should it matter?
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Clinton also beat Bob Dole, a WWII vet who was so badly wounded by a German machine gun burst to the back and shoulder he never fully recovered. Obama defeated McCain, a man who spent years in confinement as a POW.
So I think it goes deeper than just Vietnam-era draft service or avoidance. People simply don’t consider military service as an essential quality in a president. Why? I think it’s because so few people serve anymore. Less than one half of one percent of adult Americans is on active duty. Only about seven percent have ever served at all.
I think people value the qualities they see in themselves, or perhaps want to see. If people chose not to serve, then service in that way wasn’t that important to them. That translates to the ballot box.
So I think it goes deeper than just Vietnam-era draft service or avoidance. People simply don’t consider military service as an essential quality in a president. Why? I think it’s because so few people serve anymore. Less than one half of one percent of adult Americans is on active duty. Only about seven percent have ever served at all.
I think people value the qualities they see in themselves, or perhaps want to see. If people chose not to serve, then service in that way wasn’t that important to them. That translates to the ballot box.
To me, the bigger quality for a presidential candidate is willingness to serve for some aspect of the country's greater good. I don't see military service as any more valuable to U. S. society than teaching in an under-resourced public school for four years, or being a community organizer in Chicago. I think there's a good case to be made for some kind of mandatory national service for everyone, male and female; however, service to one's country (in my view) encompasses much more than military service. I suppose the U.S. is beyond never having a standing military, but in an ideal world (to me), we wouldn't.
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