Today's pop quiz: Which two GOP presidential candidates have served in the military?
Here's one of them, ripping one of the candidates who didn't serve:
Air Force veteran and presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul. R-Texas, has opened up a new line of attack against former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga.
Interviewed by Megyn Kelly on Fox News Channel, Paul was responding to the negative ads he's running against Gingrich when he added, “you know, there was one other issue that I personally found annoying is that he's probably as aggressive with the military as anybody. He supports all the wars in the Middle East a thousand times more than I would. But, you know when, in the 1960?s when I was drafted in the military, you know, he got several deferments. He chose not to go. Now. He'll send our kids to war. But, at that time, he said, one person wouldn't make a difference, he didn't know how he could make a difference. So I see that as important information, people should know that, and It reflects on him.”
Gingrich sought and received deferments because of his marriage and student status.
Kinda funny. The candidate who is probably the least inclined to use our military is the veteran, and a candidate very quick to support military intervention is the non-server. Gingrich is one of those Vietnam avoiders who now get all boo-hooey over their decisions.
In 1985, Gingrich told the Washington Post that “Given everything I believe in, a large part of me thinks I should have gone over.”
Well, you didn't, so just shut up about it, OK? Be a man.
Paul was a flight surgeon in the Air Force from 1963 to 1965 and served in in Air National Guard for three years after that. The other veteran is Rick Perry, who also served in the Air Force, for five years beginning in 1972, discharged with the rank of captain.
Neither Perry nor Paul is likely to get the GOP nomination, so no matter which party wins the election, we're probably not going to have a veteran in the White House. Thirty-one of our 43 presidents have served, and I wish we had a few more in the field this time around. Serving in the armed forces gives you experience and judgment you can get no other way, and the president is commander in chief, after all. It's always preferaqble to have a CEO who actually knows what the company's business is all about.
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Paul served on active duty for just two years as a flight surgeon, which had him doctoring friendly aviation personnel in a non-operating war theater environment - not 4077th Mash stuff. Having graduated from college about the same time that he did, I can assume that he was a product of joining the reserves to avoid the draft which existed back then. But doctors just did not get off serving because of the war. Had he not been in the Air Force reserve, he would have been delivering babies.
The old argument that you cannot command the miltary without having first served is totally idiotic. It has the same smell that Ron Paul ethics emit when you examine his "i did not vote for earmarks", while at the same time he loaded record pork requests onto the budgets each year.
I want someone in the oval office who has had blood and gore and guts spatter all over them while he fears for his life. I don't care if they served in the military; a war correspondent counts. Our presidents have a tendency to take out our army for a spin, to see what it will do on the open road. That's usually a bad idea.
Would you hire a restaurant manager who's never cleaned out a grease pit, a farm manager who's never pulled a calf at 3 AM, a trucking manager who's never driven a semi in freezing rain? A boss should know what he's asking his employees to do - and more important, they should know their boss knows.
Al Gore served in the military, albeit as a reporter for Stars and Stripes. George W. Bush "served" in the National Guard for the purpose of avoiding the Vietnam-era draft. FDR did not serve, but managed WWII pretty well. JFK pulled strings to get into the Navy (after the Army rejected him) despite serious medical problems, solely for the reason of padding his political resume. Abraham Lincoln served briefly in a small, regional militia, but was our greatest president. U.S. Grant was a great general and a lousy president; Eisenhower was a great general and an undistinguished president (although he looks better in hindsight - he did give us a 91% top tax rate). Ronald Reagan served, if you count making instructional movies about avoiding VD and such "serving." In short, I see no correlation between military service and success as president.
Dubya didn't experience combat and got us into two of the longest,most pointless wars. His father, a pilot, got us out of Kuwait promptly. FDR tried and tried to get us into WWII and only a strong Congress kept us out after 1936. JFK kept us out of war, but LBJ, who never saw combat reneged on his promise not to send American boys 9,000 miles to do what others should be doing for themselves. Lincoln got us into an incredibly bloody war - and one that Jimbo Buchanon had deftly avoided. Did the war solve anything? No, we're still fighting over the same things, 150 years later. Lincoln and Kennedy were crappy presidents, honored only because people hated their policies enough to kill them. Eisenhower got us out of Korea, got us out of an incredible deficit, gave us peace, prosperity, and the National Defense Highways - the greatest president of the 20th century. Reagan, with no combat experience, got us into Grenada - not a major war, but do we really want to go to war against a med school?
War isn't the only thing a president does, but unnecessary wars are not minor. If you catch your wife screwing the milkman, you probably don't care that she sweeps the living room carpet twice a day.
So, Harl, you're saying that a serial killer would be qualified to be president?
Seriously, though, I notice that you left Carter (military) and Clinton (non-miltary) out of your analysis. And I think your views on some of the others need reprised.
KENNEDY: Granted, it was a mistake for the CIA to not brief him on the planned invasion of Cuba beforehand. But that does not excuse his extremely poor judgement in deciding to send the rebels in without providing air-support.
BUCHANAN: Avoided the looming issue and just kicked the can down the road. I quote from Wikipedia (so you know it's true): "However, his inability to impose peace on sharply divided partisans on the brink of the Civil War has led to his consistent ranking by historians as one of the worst Presidents."
LINCOLN: Brought firm resolution to an issue that could not be avoided for much longer. If it were not for him, blacks in the south would probably still be slaves today. Plus, if we hadn't used this period to harden our military, they probably never would have had the resolve to subjugate the former colonies of the Spanish Empire.
LBJ: Seriously, how many people do you think would actually have the guts and the know-how to assasinate the president? He earned his blood and guts credentials with that alone.
REAGAN: At long last, Harl, have you no sense of decency left? Clint Eastwood is an American Icon! Ever hear of Heartbreak Ridge? I think that's all that needs to be said about this subject.
Too many of our presidents have thought with the wrong head and turned into serial killers.
Clinton kept trying to get us more involved in Bosnia, Herzegovina. Carter could easily have gotten us in up to our necks in the mideast, and when Reagan was elected, the release showed that, but he showed restraint. Which shows the wisdom of Goldwater and SAC: "peace thru strength".
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Kennedy didn't send in the rebels; they were rebels. Someone told them there would be air cover, and that person should have been court-martialed.
If not for Buchanan, the civil war would have started in 1856. Slavery was uneconomic, and by 1880, we would have bought up all the slaves for a fraction of the monetary cost of the war. I live about a mile from Wheatland, and Jimbo is a favorite bit of history for me to study.
Subjugation is not a proper activity for a democratic people, only for a tyrant.
The whole world saw Ronald Reagan in the movies, and knew him to be fearless and a dead shot. They saw him bust the air traffic union. They generally wanted to avoid a fight with Dutch, which makes it harder to start a war. Too bad all presidents don't have such reputations.
Well, you know they say it's difficult to stare into the abyss for long without becoming a monster. Perhaps we need to give our presidents more vacation time (or shorter terms) so the stresses of the job don't warp them so badly.
As for the wife analogy, I'm still not convinced. How well does she cook?
It probably wouldn't hurt to put president on a 40-hour week.
And if I knew how well your wife cooks, I sure wouldn't admit it to you, would I? I haven't been staring into the abyss THAT long.
Wait a minute, are you my milkman?
On Bay of Pigs:
The rebels were recruited, organized and trained by CIA. The B-26 bombers they used were marked as Cuban militery by CIA and given to the rebels for this mission. And the U.S. Navy had several destroyers stationed near Guantanamo to support the invasion. This was a CIA mission that simply used the rebels as fodder.
Kennedy was apprised of the pending invasion only after he assumed the Presidency, giving him only three months to decide what to do. I believe this major blunder was one of the major driving forces behind the decision to actually brief major contenders about such things even before they have possibly won the Presidency. So it was most definitely a systemic failure.
But President Kennedy had the authority to either cancel the invasion (it would not have happened without U.S. support) or support it with explicit U.S. Air Force cover. Instead, he chose the half-assed, sure to fail option that was worse than either of the other two choices. He lost big on this one, but he gets way more positive points for the way he handled the missile crisis - but only because the Russians blinked.
I also think Kennedy had a pretty fair grasp of the fact that many of the insurrections that were going on against the U.S. government, both domestically and internationally, had moral (if not legal) merit, and tgried to deal with them accordingly. So, overalll, I rank him pretty high.