It’s the only U.S. to that point that never produced a veteran. Any guesses why no Korean vets ever became President?
Even if you don’t account for any other issues, not that many people get to be the president. Only 43 people out of something like 472 million people born here have been the president. That’s not a very big sample, so it’s probably going to be skewed a little.
The 1930s didn’t produce a president either (well, it could still happen, but John McCain was probably the silent generation’s last chance).
Neither did Vietnam.
It’s a conspiracy, I tell you, a conspiracy; probably the Illuminati are behind it. Or maybe the Koch brothers.
It’s mostly coincidence.
Look at the birth dates of the presidents. It’s not a perfect pattern, but in general presidents are clumped into generations and then the voters decide to go young and start a new clump.
After the Civil War every president from Grant to McKinley had served in that war. Then the youngest ever president, Teddy Roosevelt, happened to get in and the next several stayed around the same age. They were all too old for WWI, and only Roosevelt was among the few who served in the Spanish-American War.
The next group, FDR, Truman, and Eisenhower, were all associated with WWI and were all too old to fight in WWII, except that Eisenhower happened to be a top general.
Kennedy was 27 years younger than him, so he led off a group that was the right age for WWII. This group stayed in office until another jump was made with Clinton, who was 22 years younger than Bush I. Reagan was the anomaly here - he was older than the previous three presidents, something that had never happened before.
But you also can’t make the statement that Presidents skipped Korea and Vietnam. No involvement in the action, true. But definitely veterans. Carter was active duty Navy throughout the entirety of the Korean War. And Bush II was in the National Guard during Vietnam, and could, theoretically, in a different universe, have been called up.
I thought the “Silent Generation” was the Korean-War generation – the generation, that is, between the G.I. Generation and the Baby Boomers. At least, that’s how it is in the Strauss and Howe theory. In that theory, there are four types of generations – Prophet, Nomand, Hero, and Artist – and the Silents are an Artist generation:
And that might be why it has produced no presidents.
Besides just being luck of the draw, it might very well be that Korea and Vietnam weren’t thought of as being the kind “good war” that WWII was. In other words, being a WWII vet counted a whole lot more on your president-to-be resume than being a veteran of either of those two wars do. And we didn’t win either of those wars, so you’re not one of the victors.
I would’ve called bullshit on that . . . before 2004. 
Imagine any WWII vet getting swiftboated!
But then, no WWII vets came home, protested the war, and then ran for president.
They were very different wars, and produced very different veterans and our perception of them.
AK84-I explicitly said “to that point”. I wouldn’t be surprised if we have a 'nam vet eventually.
I also was thinking about “saw combat”, I knew Carter was of age for Korea.
Also, not only is having served a minority of the overall population, “seeing combat” is as well a minority of the total force, in most conflicts.
And in the specific case of FDR he would not have been considered a “veteran” at all, as he was not enlisted or commissioned in WW1 but rather was a politically-appointed civilian official (Assistant Secretary of the Navy) in DC.
Plus he entered Annapolis in 1943, so he can be considered to have been in service in both the WW2 and Korea time periods. From Ike all the way to Bush41 it was 40 years of presidents who were in uniform in one way or another during WW2 - from the Supreme Commander to the youngest pilot, from people getting shot at to REMFs to an academy midshipman.
Another factor is there were a lot fewer Korean War vets (1,789,000) than there were WWII vets (16,112,566).
Excellent point Nemo! Goes along with “coincidence”.
Really, the answer is this, and nothing more. It’s an incredibly tiny sample size, plus it’s spread out over more than 2 centuries (which introduces its own problems, which I haven’t even addressed). “Korean War Vet” isn’t even remotely 1 in 100 million in the running for “Presidential Candidates” from the current population.
Pick 3 people, at random, from the current population of the US. Now look at those 3 people, and find some common characteristic in the general population and see if one of them matches it. You will find that most characteristics you could name won’t even be represented. For example, you are much more likely than not, to not even have an example of “black people” in that “random sample”. Add in the fact that ‘presidential candidates’ are not picked randomly, but rather for “appeal” characteristics, and if the characteristic you are picking for has no appeal, there is no selective pressure for it, it’s not a surprise that no one with it got picked.
It’s not a case of “so it’s probably going to be skewed a little.” It’s a case of 'probably going to be skewed by a “heluva lot”. Probably to the point that it’s statistically “utterly fucking useless”.
If war record were a random factor, then what you say would be true. But war record has always been one of the major factors in getting people to vote for a candidate. Eisenhower became President solely because he was the leading face of WWII. Kennedy used his war record to win over Nixon, but Nixon was helped getting into politics because he was a veteran. The 19th century is full of generals who became president, and most of them never would have based solely on their political record.
I think people who didn’t live during the reign of WWII veterans can’t appreciate how powerful this was. In politics you almost had to be a veteran to succeed. Lyndon Johnson knew this and was, IIRC, the first Congressman to enter the service. “Tail Gunner Joe” McCarthy succeeding because of his “war record”, even if was as true as everything he said later. No matter. When veterans were associated with a party, or even the extreme wing of one, they were still national heroes.
Korea was a much smaller war, smaller than even the figures than Little Nemo gave. A large percentage of participants were WWII veterans called back into service. So in addition to having a comparatively tiny number of new bodies, it seemed less of a new war than a continuation of the old.
No national heroes came out of Vietnam, just as no national heroes came out of the Gulf War or Iraq War. The aftermath appears completely different than any previous American wars. Service was once almost mandatory. It no longer is, except to a small segment who wants to politicize service. Note that it wasn’t an issue at all in the Republican primaries.
I can’t even imagine what circumstances could lead to a future nationally popular war, but if one ever happens participation in it will be mandatory for future presidential candidates.
I would dispute this. The Gulf War was seen as a “good war” and it produced Colin Powell and Norman Schwarzkopf as national heroes. There was presidential talk about both men in the nineties.
The youngest Vietnam veterans are in their mid-50s and many (like John McCain) are much older, so I don’t think it’s going to happen. It’s hard to predict who could become a candidate in the future, but as far as I can tell, there’s nobody in either party who served in Vietnam and would be considered as a likely future nominee. The 2012 election is going to be the first without any kind of veteran on either side since, what, 1984?
Purely disgusting, that was. People were talking about Colin Powell as a presidential prospect when nobody even pretended to know the first thing about his politics! :mad:
[Racism] Because there is no such thing as Korean vet, they eat pets, they don’t treat them [/Racism]
The same thing has begun to repeat with Petraeus, although that seems to have quieted a bit.
I think the cultural shift that accompanied the Vietman war dramatically changed the way the public viewed veterans. It is nowhere near the boon it was politically prior to that. The idea that a WWII draft-dodger could be elected president seems ridiculous, but Clinton dodging Vietnam was only a minor issue.