While this makes sense, it’s interesting to note how many Korea/'nam vets have been the losing candidate in recent elections; practically all of them, in fact.
In 7 of the past 8 elections, the loser has been a veteran and the winner has been someone who either didn’t serve in the military or got a cushy position and avoided combat. Moreover it seems that in 6 of those elections ('80, '84, '92, '96, ‘00’ and '08) the winner avoided military service by questionable means. So it doesn’t seem as if the voters have any particular desire to put a veteran in the White House.
Okay, of course we all know that in 2000 Al Gore was the real winner according the greatest number of voters.
Reagan was a veteran. Yes, he never served in combat but he was in the Army from 1942 to 1945.
Puh-leeze. Clinton used political connections and got favors to avoid Vietnam, just like Bush. Excecpt Clinton didn’t get into the Champagne Squadron of the Texas ANG and then drop out because they started testing for cocaine.
I don’t think a Vietnam vet will ever get elected. From the ones I know personally and the ones whose writings I read, they tend toward being hyper-patriotic right-wingers. Not all of them, mind you, but a disproportionate number. Such people tend not to have the political savvy to compete in the political arena. So it’s only a minority of an aging small set of people that could potentially get elected. Kerry was the best chance that a Vietnam vet will ever get.
Looking at that list of presidents on Wiki, I guess I never connected the fact that Carter (who served most of his term in the '70s) and GHW Bush (who served most of his term in the '90s) were born less than four months apart. And Bill Clinton and GW Bush were born only six weeks apart.
Eisenhower was on active duty during the Korean War - he was serving as SACEUR at the time.
I know of three Vietnam vets that wouldn’t fit that description. I can’t think of any of their names, but there was that gay one that Romney spoke to, then there was one featured in a documentary about COINTELPRO and there was a friend of Chomskys that later went back to Laos (IIRC) to set up telecommunications towers and distribute cell phones to poor farmers to make their transactions easier.
How did Obama avoid military service by questionable means?
Obama graduated High School in 1979. The way you avoided military service in 1979 was by not volunteering. How is not volunteering for the military questionable?
While I agree that declining to volunteer is not questionable, it does indicate the shift in norms.
I think (and perhaps someone more familiar with mid-century social norms could correct me) that failing to volunteer if you were healthy and able to serve was seen as rather distasteful and dishonorable during WWI and II. I have to think that if Nixon (to use one example) had used his Quakerism to avoid service during WWII he would never have been elected president.
I meant to write “04” , not “08”. Apologies.
ITR, that’s the second time today I’ve read a post of yours making this kind of apology (typing an Obama year in place of a Bush II year). Lest you be thought the SDMB incarnation of Fox News (D for R), might I suggest you double-check your posts before hitting “Submit”?
I would like to suggest that any “clustering” that is observed with presidential birthdates may be due to randomness. Randomness does not mean “evenly spaced” as most people think.
During a war, perhaps, but in peacetime, the vast majority of able-bodied men don’t volunteer, and if they did, the military would have no way to use them all.
True, of course.
I do think there is a qualitative difference in the way veterans are viewed today, particularly when it comes to politics. It’s just not a liability to not be a veteran these days, even if you were “of age” during a war. This is dramatically different than for men of age during the World Wars.
I personally think this is due almost entirely to Vietnam and the way that has changed the entire conception of warfare in the modern American psyche. It will be (and perhaps already is) interesting to see how Iraq/Afghanistan vets will be seen. I imagine it will be the similar to Vietnam vet’s experiences - fine if you have it, but not at all a difference-maker electorally.
That doesn’t really answer the OP’s question re: Korea, however, which I think is actually more due to chance than anything else.
R. Lee Ermey for President. He’ll kick your ass and fuck your mom!
I think WWII was such a major event that it tends to be treated as if it were a typical war, even though it was a radical outlier.
In WWII just about everyone served in some way. Maybe they were in an essential civilian job. Maybe they worked in a factory. Maybe they were a supply clerk in Kansas. Maybe they had garrison duty on some island in the middle of nowhere for the whole war. Or maybe they were at Normandy.
Not everyone was a war hero, not everyone saw combat, not everyone wore a uniform. But enough did that if you weren’t a part of it, you were in the minority, you didn’t share the same experiences that most men of your generation did.
Other wars just weren’t the same. They were fought by a small number of men, they didn’t require a total mobilization of the country. Yes, lots of people were in Vietnam or Korea or the Gulf War, or Afghanistan, or Iraq. But those wars were something most people read about in the news, not something they were involved in. Even for Vietnam, there were plenty of people drafted in the Vietnam era, but plenty of them went to Germany or stayed stateside. And it was very common in that era for people with certain connections to avoid service. They could get a college deferment, they could get family deferments, they could get medical deferments, they could get into the national guard. Nobody got a college deferment in WWII, and the national guard wasn’t a safe place for kids from good families. Everybody from every strata of society was in WWII, even people in the pool of people who would go on to political careers. But WWII wasn’t your average conflict.
Right. The historical pattern tended to be that if there had been a war at the suitable time in your life and you served, that was a positive in your resume, but otherwise there was no expectation to serve an enlistment just because.
If you go far back enough you get to the times when the militia was every able male citizen, but then it was a matter of actually being called up or not. And the US only had a standing peacetime draft post-WW2, but that in turn was NOT universal service, even during the Korea and Vietnam hostilities.