And if there were another “total war” you can be sure that plenty more would be in uniform.
I don’t see that as a prerequisite for being President. Having a healthy respect for, and an open ear for, the military is.
The last President with true, hero status, was Kennedy. Say what you will about his politics and his family. What he did in the war is pretty well documented. I don’t think you can say that about very many other Presidents in the 20th Century. Probably TR comes closest.
The days of the valiant knight on horseback is romantic. We will not see it again in our lifetimes.
I agree. There is a tendency here on FR to denigrate JFK and his brother’s service. Both of them served honorably, and courageously. Perhaps no more courageously than millions of others, but there is no need to denigrate either. (Besides, the political and social sentiments of either one would be mainline Freeper these days.)
I don’t want a tradition wherein our leaders must be drawn from the military, as in Imperial Rome or other militarized states. My favorite president, Calvin Coolidge, never served in the military. On the other hand, I think it is extremely unhealthy for the leader of the state to manifest palpable hostility towards our military and our traditional military allies. The harm done by Clinton and Obama cannot be undone. No one will ever trust the United States as an ally again. Japan and South Korea, and possibly Germany, will become nuclear powers as the credibility of American nuclear guarantees diminishes. (It is nearly nil now. The U.S. and U.K. made “ironclad” guarantees to the Ukraine to induce it to give up its nuclear weapons.)
“The last President with true, hero status, was Kennedy.”
He made a good effort getting his men out of the situation he got them into. If his father hadn’t been connected, JFK would have been court-martialed for getting his PT boat run over by a Japanese warship.