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Interesting! I seem to recall Bill Clinton conferred with Senator Fulbright at one point during Vietnam regarding his worry about remaining “politically viable” while avoiding the draft at the same time.
Yeah, Clinton went through a few machinations to get out of the draft
Thank you. This is very telling information.
Thanks Juliana.
If only he’d had his dad pay off a doctor for a medical exemption.
Did Clinton even know who his daddy was?
Thank you, @tigerlily for compiling this fascinating list. A couple of interesting additions: As a Quaker, Nixon could have qualified as a conscientious objector, yet he signed up. That is commendable. I was starting to say that FDR could not have passed a physical because of his polio disability, but, having a vague memory of it being an adult disease in his case, I thought I’d check it out. His polio hit at age 39, in 1921, so he could have served in WW1, though he’d have been on the older side and might have been turned down (under 5 million served in WW1 vs over 16 million in WW2). Seems like an additional “column” that could be added to the dataset would be whether there was a war in which the President could have served. Nonetheless, even peacetime service is service and familiarity with military life is a worthy requirement for being CIC.
I was going to mention Theodore Roosevelt’s Medal of Honor, but…well, I don’t know.
While I have a mild preference for Presidents with military service, I have become very wary of the “war hero” thing that John McCain grifted off of. That may sound harsh but it is absolutely a fact. McCain stopped one of his supporters from calling Obama a Muslim ( I think that was staged) but he never stopped his supporters from using McCains ‘ heroism’ as a shield from attacking his political positions and record.
Thanks Caryn. Good point regarding Nixon which I hadn’t thought of before. As for FDR, when the US entered World War I, he requested active duty in the navy but President Wilson nixed that telling FDR he would do more good for the war effort as Assistant Secretary of the Navy.
On a walking tour of the Naval Academy, the tour leader’s trivia question was, “Three Naval Academy graduates have run for president and were on the ballot for the General Election. Jimmy Carter was the only winner, name the other two.”
Don’t know the answer but wasn’t Admiral Stockdale on the national ticket as the vice presidential candidate with Ross Perot?
Admiral Stockdale was Perot’s running mate, but he wasn’t running for president.
Nine-ten years ago I wrote an article for Strategy and Tactics Magazine titled “War Hero Presidents.” (S&T 269, Jul-Aug 2011)
My conclusion was:
Incidentally, Buchanan was the only President who served in the military who was not an officer.
John Kerry, who almost became president, served in the Navy and saw combat in Viet Nam. He would have been a horrible president.
Everybody tried to get out of going to Vietnam. It isn’t any kind of commentary on the individual whatsoever. It’s revisionist history to try. In Clinton’s case, the thing I notice is not that he dodged the draft, but that at age 19 he was already calculating his political viability with his every move.
I liked McCain but I agree with you. A better example would be John Forbes Kerry – the most oleaginous character of the modern era. Kerry always reminded me of the Maj. Frank Burns character from MASH. If he were on the ballot I would vote for Trump.
https://pjmedia.com/election/john-kerry-overheard-discussing-a-run-for-president-as-democratic-angst-over-sanders-comes-to-a-boil/
Not everybody.
Well, everybody I knew haha! Everyone I knew had a college deferment, and I knew one guy who drank a bottle of Karo Syrup the night before his draft board appearance, hoping to seem like a diabetic.
Speaking of McCain, wasn’t he a USNA grad?
Yep.
Okay, looked it up. Yes, McCain was a grad, class of 1958. So was Perot himself, class of 1953.
Went to law school with him back when I was a Democrat and couldn’t stand him back then.
You wrote for Strategy & Tactics? Wow. Many years ago I used to play their games.
Yes, you got the other two.
Great post, I love presidential trivia. I think another important factor to look at is whether or not the person in office has private sector work experience. This is a big deciding factor for me – I don’t want someone who has never worked telling people how they should spend their money.
I’m reading a book on John Quincy Adams right now. The popular opinion on JQA is that he had all the tools to be a great president, but things just didn’t work out. I disagree. He did not have the resume to be president. The guy was born into riches and dabbled in politics and academia for his entire life. Mommy and daddy send him to study in Europe throughout his teens. He managed a law practice but that never comes up in the book so I’m guessing he wasnt very involved in it. No real work experience. The guy was so addicted to politics that he served in Congress after his presidency. This is exactly the type of guy you do not want in office.
Me too.
In fairness…I cheated (Google) for the 2nd. Perot was a surprise, though having read “On Wings of Eagles” ages ago, it shouldn’t have been.
Especially at the time of Bill Clinton’s (or, for that matter, DJT’s) potential service. I remember my dad explaining this to me: That there came a point—and I’m going to say 1970 or 71? in which everyone knew that the US was going to get out of the war, and that the meat grinder was pretty much for show. So people (not saying either WJC or DJT would be among them) who might otherwise have been willing to be drafted or sign up were not willing to, as Kerry so memorably put it, “be the last man to die for a mistake.”
Thanks James.
Yeah, there are hundreds of different things (most of which can’t be quantified) to going into what makes someone presidential material