We Don't Need a Praetorian Guard

The Wall Street Journal quotes presidential candidate Rick Perry as explaining that his run for the presidency is motivated by the desire to make sure service members have a commander in chief they can respect. When queried, Perry explained:

"If you polled the military, the active duty and veterans, and said ‘would you rather have a president of the United States that never served a day in the military or someone who is a veteran?’ They’ve going to say, I would venture, that they would like to have a veteran.”

"The president had the opportunity to serve his country. I’m sure at some time he made the decision that isn’t what he wanted to do."

Perry's remark is not unlike a remark made by the late Senator Jesse Helms that if President Clinton visited the troops in North Carolina, he'd better bring a body guard with him.

Both of these remarks are at odds with the strong tradition in this country that members of the military have no special role in partisan politics. That's why military officers, like civilian officials, take an oath not to the particular president who occupies 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but rather an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America. No one should understand this more clearly than a person who has served both in the military and in high public office.

Regrettably, charges that a particular candidate or incumbent is disloyal are as old as the Republic. During the Adams administration, Federalists accused Thomas Jefferson and his followers of disloyalty. Those charges led to the infamous "Alien and Sedition" laws. One result of these laws was the imprisonment of certain journalists who supported Jefferson.

The charge of disloyalty against democrats reached a low point in the 1884 campaign of republican James G. Blaine against Grover Cleveland. A few days before the election, a minister at a religious gathering with Blaine present charged democrats with being "the party of rum, Romanism and rebellion." This alliterative remark probably cost Blaine the New York vote and the election.

That didn't keep republican supporters of Hoover from resurrecting the remark in the 1928 campaign against Al Smith. It didn't hurt Hoover in 1928, but didn't help him in 1932.

Charges of disloyalty, however expressed, have become a regular staple of republican campaigns.

It's worth pointing out that the supposed preference of veterans for veterans didn't help George McGovern, Jimmy Carter (1980), Michael Dukakis, Al Gore or John Kerry. Nor did lack of military experience seem to hurt Bill Clinton or Barack Obama.

Most importantly, our Constitution doesn't award any special role for veterans in selecting our presidents. They don't need a special role. They are Americans.