While Clinton could probably be hung with her husband’s draft record in the same way Trump hammered on his allegations of sexual harassment or assault after the infamous Access Hollywood tape, but why didn’t Trump’s primary opponents make a bigger deal about it? ISTM that at least those who had military experience (admittedly few) should have been shouting from the rooftops, calling him a coward. While he was technically 4F, or whatever it was called in those days, and only Jim Webb has combat experience, such technicalities have never stopped anyone from making an attack ad.
Do people still care about the draft? It mattered for Bill Clinton because there were still a lot of draft-era veterans in politics in 1992, including his opponent. It’s harder to tar someone as a draft “dodger” when you’ve never actually been subject to it yourself. And nobody else in the race except maybe Bernie was.
I got plenty to bitch out Il Douche about. I can’t find it in myself to condemn someone for that, I have yet to understand how a man honors his country by aiding in an ignoble and dishonorable cause.
John Wayne avoided the draft, and he’s a Conservative Saint. Wayne had the opportunity to join the military, but never followed through. Cecil reports that Wayne felt bad about that.
On the other hand John Kerry did serve in combat. But he is a liberal, so his service doesn’t count. For Trump’s opponents, there’s John McCain. He served in combat, but he was captured. Loser!
I think it’s a combination of Democrats’ service not counting because they’re, you know, Socialist, and Trump’s lack of service not counting because he’s Making America Great Again.
elucidator: I like the Mussolini play, and I used it myself during the campaign. Personally, I like to use ‘Ill’ instead of ‘Il’. 
I think draft evasion has become the equivalent of divorce; it’s become too widespread among candidates to be a valid attack opportunity. Even the politicians who aren’t personally vulnerable can’t use it because it will backwash against some of their political supporters.
Is it actually widespread among candidates now? The draft was a long time ago. The GOP runner-up was a toddler when the last draftees were inducted.
True. In any case the upper echelons of politics and business across the whole spectrum over the past 30+ years were so filled with people who found a way to weasel out of it that it has lost punching power. Essentially this as a burdensome negative was broken by Bill Clinton in 1992. By the 21st century, Kerry can get Swiftboated and McCain be talked down to by 4-F Combover Boy who “likes people who don’t get captured”, and nobody blinks.
Also, the general culture has changed as the years have passed and there is a more general acceptance now of the idea that, hey, if there’s a lawful provision from which you could benefit, then dammit of course you took it. However, even in the face of that, how the Republican/Conservative/Neocon/BatshitPopMedia upper spheres in that time period have included such very visible or loud Chicken Hawks (Gingrich, Cheney, Ashcroft, Will, Buchanan, Limbaugh, Nugent), that just grates.
There was only so much ammunition(pardon the pun) that could be used against Trump; mysogyny, racism, corruption and tax evasion to name just a few. Draft dodging was used against Trump but with so many other allegations to pick from his opponents had to quickly concentrate on just a few. Draft dodging had been shown not to have worked again recent candidates. Misogyny and racism were the best allegation to work with. This was an election(and culture) mired in sex and race after all. Plus, Trump was hardly the war candidate. If his foreign policy contained anything of substance it was to become less involved in foreign wars.
Yeah, Kerry’s service didn’t count. He only got one Bronze Star and one Silver Star, and besides, he was actually on a fishing boat in Hawaii rather than a swift boat in Viet Nam, and also he was illegally in Cambodia so he should be tried as a war criminal for allowing himself to be wounded. Seriously, the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” was the weirdest, most bizarre smear campaign in modern politics, based, as it was, on factually disprovable accusations that were in contradiction to Kerry’s publicly available military record and disputed by Kerry’s fellow veterans who served directly with and under him.
Trump, on the other hand, is basically immune to any kind of scandal or criticism, because he just doesn’t care and his supporters pretty much discount everything they don’t like as “fake news”, even if it is Trump caught on tape avowing his experience in sexually molesting women or lying about his support for the war in Iraq. That he has never served in the military or done any kind of public service seems completely lost on his supporters, even as he claims to have made a lot of sacrifices that aren’t any kind of sacrifice whatsoever.
Stranger
**Why wasn’t Trump hammered more about the Vietnam draft?
**I suppose mainly because Obama didn’t serve in the military. Republicans, especially Trump and his team, like nothing more than answering questions with “Obama”. This would have been like a “can you say Obama?” softball.
Yep. My Trump-supporting uncle shared a post praising veterans. Someone(s) replied to the original thread, 'Well, how long did Obama serve in the military? :dubious: ’
I didn’t bother to reply that Trump dodged the draft, and Obama didn’t.
We did a thread about this. Though Trump was graded 4F at one point his draft number was so high that he would not have been drafted anyway.
The thread where you were the OP.
Yes, I think it’s going to fade away. It’s pretty much an issue focused on male candidates born between 1945 and 1955 - ie those who were draft age in the Vietnam war era.
Are there people who think that draft dodging was this horrible things anymore? It seems to me that most have accepted that Vietnam was a bad war, and thus people who stayed out were just smart.
Yes, there are people who did their service and regard draft dodgers and those that facilitated them with contempt, although Trump’s blustering about how he is going to “Make America Great Again” and execute a “great rebuliding” of the armed forces seems to cause people to overlook that just as they did Reagan’s wartime service as a liaison officer making promotional films because of his supposed “eyesight difficulties” which nonetheless didn’t prevent him from competitive swimming, football, and acting. I’m guessing you don’t know many veterans or families of veterans for whom that sentiment–along with a general contempt for military service through the 'Eighties–left them with a bad taste for “peacenik” sentiments.
That said, the draft during Vietnam was unconscionable, used to conscript troops to fight in a travesty of a war that even American politicians were often loathe to support but were too gutless to actually stand up and vote ending. It is an example of military adventurism gone terribly wrong, architected by people who had little concern for the effects of what they were doing both to Americans and the people of Vietnam and Southeast Asia as a whole.
Stranger
I’m not sure that’s right. I think it’s that military service simply isn’t common or expected any more. Of the declared candidates last election, Jim Webb was a war hero. Rick Perry was in the air force. Was anyone else? I don’t think so.
The other thing is that I think the draft dodging allegation was principally aimed to anger the WWII era population. They served (they were drafted); it was an obligation. Their children (and children’s children, etc.) don’t see it the same way. The draft during Vietnam was problematic and it’s since been abolished. My grandfather went to Europe because that’s what men did; I never had to make that choice. It’s a lot easier for me to forgive a draft dodger than it was for him. At that demographic is quickly becoming ineligible to vote anywhere but Chicago.
And I think a lot of the people most offended by the draft stuff were even older than that. It’s easier to see military service as an obligation when your generation was sent off to fight Hitler and avenge Pearl Harbor, not to get involved in a civil war between distant small-time dictators. Our national memory of the draft as anything other than a means to get embroiled in a dumb war is fading quickly.
Edit: What Falchion said.
Some crimes and civil misdemeanors will lose you your friends, and some are easily forgiven if that’s what you want to do.
I suspect draft dodging is very much the latter. It’s like speeding or fiddling your taxes; if it’s your enemy who gets caught doing it, it’s another reason to dislike them. If it’s your friend who gets caught doing it, well, everyone speeds and downplays their taxes, right?
I feel it was a more powerful issue when men were being drafted to fight in a war. It could be spun as a matter of privilege; if you didn’t get drafted, somebody else got drafted to fill that spot. (This was also a political issue after the Civil War with candidates who paid for a exemption.)
In the modern military, everyone’s a volunteer. So nobody can claim that somebody was forced to take the spot for a candidate who didn’t join.