First Principles

Wesley Clark was an enormous gas bag and a fool the other day when he commented “Well, I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president.”  But the resulting outrage on the right and the flagelation of the left was mostly misplaced, in my view.  Wesely Clark wasn’t out of bounds for looking to Sen. McCain’s military record to determine if it made him qualified to be president.  He was just factually wrong (by omission) and politically tone deaf in what he actually said.

Clark was right about one, narrow thing.  “Riding” in a fighter plane and getting shot down doesn’t qualify one to be the President of the United States.  In fact, nothing does.  It is a job so unique and so demanding that I would argue no one take the oath of office being qualified for the job they are assuming. No one on the planet is ready for that job on “Day One.”  The only real question is if the experiences they do have, and the character they possess, is enough to carry them through when the demands of the Office start coming at them fast and furious.

In assessing that character, judgment, and knowledge, any actual experiences a candidate has had in the fields of leadership, corporate management, law, government, business, etc. must be taken into account.  And no less important than whether they’ve had those experiences at all is how they comported themselves while actually experiencing them.  Did they succeed?  Did they excel?  Did they gain a reputation for loyalty?  Did their subordinates respect them?  Did they learn from mistakes?  Did they ever make a personal sacrifice for other people’s gain?  How did their political philosophies impact their experiences, or vice versa?

Military service is no different.  The choice to serve should and generally is viewed with respect and admiration.  But that alone is not enough.  After all, I view a small business entrepreneur with respect and admiration, too.  And there are plenty of war veterans, decorated and otherwise, that no one would (or should) respect and admire – Timothy McVeigh, Adolf Hitler, and Lynndie England, to name just a few.

Anyone who has worn a military uniform for any length of time is aware of the cast of characters that can be found in almost any military unit – there are slackers and hard workers, cowards and heroes, people who honor their marriage vows and those who don’t.  Most are competent, some are excellent, and still others have no business whatsoever in the military.

And so when a candidate for public office has spent time in the military, it is critical to examine the job performance for however long they did the job – especially when they’ve made that service a central argument for why they should be elected in the first place.

Take John Kerry.  After accepting the Democratic nomination for President in 2004 by saluting the crowd and saying, “Reporting for duty!”, anyone who actually looked at his record was accused of “dirty tricks” and “smears.”  But the facts remained that Kerry’s military service consisted of a mediocre tour as the electrical officer on a destroyer escort, a four month swiftboat tour, and an abbreviated stint as an admiral’s aide – after which (and even during which) he perjured himself about his service, slandered his shipmates, and (while still on active duty) met with officials from the communist North Vietnamese government.  On balance, his military record said a lot about him, and its examination was a prime reason for him losing the election – rightfully so.

And then there’s Wes Clark, who was by all accounts heroically wounded in Vietnam.  But when he put on those stars, he was less successful.  When tested with strategic responsibility as NATO Supreme Allied Commander in the Balkans, he did so well that he was fired by the Clinton Administration.

Nothing about this critical examination is an indictment of their decision to serve in the first place.  Good for them.  But if everyone earned all their points just for showing up, we might as well start giving out bucketful of medals at boot camp.

And so it is worth looking at McCain’s military record with some detail.  His early career is a little iffy – barely graduated from the Academy, and then wrecked several aircraft before his first combat mission.  And it’s true that being shot down is hardly something to be proud of.  But the years he was in captivity – when he could have left early but didn’t, when he could have lost faith but kept it, when he could have met with North Vietnamese officials but refused – that says a great deal about being steadfast in the face of adversity in a way that very little else can.  (It’s noteworthy to me that he (mostly) refused to do under penalty of torture that which John Kerry did for free.)  And after his ordeal, when he could have gotten out of the service and made far, far more money, he chose to remain in uniform.

Clark is a fool to bring this up, because Americans are smart enough to know that the examination of their choices for president doesn’t end with whether someone served, but extends to what happened during that service.  (And thank God – the last thing a free nation needs is a cult of the Unassailable Military Man.)  On examination, John McCain’s military service tells us a lot about what kind of a president he’ll be, because it unquestionably shaped who he is.  And unlike Clark or Kerry’s, McCain’s service record balances more on the “pro” side of the balance sheet when it comes to picking a Commander in Chief.

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McCain himself handled this incorrectly, I thought.  His response was to call the “attacks” “unnecessary,” and paint them as just the same old dirty politics, and then to bring out surrogates of his own to basically shout, “How dare you, sir!”  But McCain is wrong.  It is necessary to take a look at the candidate’s past, because we aren’t just electing a president based on his policy proposals now.  We’re electing him to respond to crises we can’t even yet imagine.

I wish McCain would have embraced it, and said, “General Clark is right – military records are fair game, and can tell us a lot about who a candidate is.  I invite the American public to examine mine closely, and then to examine Senator Obama’s when they’re done.”

Fortunately, I think Americans will do this anyway, not just in this campaign, but in the future as well.  We should ever cast a critical eye on all of our candidates and the whole of their resumes.  To do otherwise is to abrogate our responsibilities in a representative democracy.