A dialogue arose from my December 20 post about “Balance.” Trump, being ex officio commander in chief of the armed forces, had just issued (by Twitter!) an abrupt decree that all American troops be withdrawn from Syria, thus abandoning allies such as Britain, France, and especially the Kurds, and ceding influence in the region to Iran and Russia and power to Turkey, President Assad, and the Islamic State terrorists. I remarked that, as the only U.S. president who had had no military experience, he ought to have heeded the advice of others, such as his Secretary of Defense (who had immediately resigned).
Anthony Barreiro pointed out that Clinton and Obama had not served in the military (“although neither claimed to understand military strategy better than his Secretary of Defense and Joint Chiefs of Staff”). I said that I stood corrected, and that Wikipedia also needed correction:
“He became the oldest and wealthiest person ever to assume the presidency, the first without prior military or government service, and the fifth to have won the election while losing the popular vote.”
As Anthony further pointed out, this Wikipedia statement was ambiguous, and should be clarified: Trump is the only president “with neither prior military nor government service… A Venn diagram would show most presidents with both prior military service and elected office, some with only one or the other, and Trump in a cell by himself.”
I thought it would be interesting to show that Venn diagram, and asked Anthony whether he could draw one for us. He used an online Venn diagram generator, but the result was poor and he passed the task back to me.
As noted by Anthony, the data can be found in two Wikipedia articles:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Presidents_of_the_United_States_by_military_service
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Presidents_of_the_United_States_by_previous_experien
And he remarks that: “Trump is counted as the 45th President, but only 44 people have held the office. Grover Cleveland served non-consecutive terms, 1885-1889 and 1893-1897. Of the 44 people who have served as US President, 31 have been military veterans. Thirty-nine previously held elected office. Of the five who had not held previous elected office, Zachary Taylor, Ulysses S. Grant, and Dwight Eisenhower had been the highest-ranking generals in the Army and had won wars. While Herbert Hoover had never won an election prior to the Presidency, he led the US Food Administration during World War I, helped to negotiate the Treaty of Versailles, led the post-war American Relief Administration, and served as Warren G. Harding’s Secretary of Commerce.” It might also be mentioned that G.W. Bush served only in the National Guard.
Logically it may not be essential that a president should have served in the military or in previous governmental office. What matters is how good, wise, and successful they turn out to be, and both experience and election can fail to predict those things. Rulers elected can be malign, such as Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil who promotes torture, death squads, and the clearcutting of the world’s largest remaining rainforest; some rulers unelected have been benign, such as Asoka of India and Karim Khan Zand of Iran.
You may imagine what I, as a long-time Amnesty International activist, feel about today’s news that the United States has ceased to admit U.N. rapporteurs on human rights. A fine signal is sent to North Korea, China, saudi Arabia, Nicaragua…
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I apologize for an experiment that went wrong. I tried to upload this post as a “private” one to Anthony Barreiro, so that he could approve my quotation of his words. It produced only an error message, so I tried what seemed the only other option, “password-protected”. I didn’t realize it would go to everybody. It is now not password-protected.
I think that Trump’s lack of political experience is exactly why he was elected. I have voted for professional politicians all my life. Despite their promises, none of them have reigned in government spending, but rather have continuously increased the size of government thereby decreasing my freedom. Maybe a non-politician president like Trump is what was needed to finally enact common sense reforms.
It is true that Trump had no prior military experience. That also may be a good thing. He pointed out that ISIS is fighting the Taliban, and we are fighting both of them. He said that doesn’t make sense; just let them fight each other so they can weaken each other. Trump admitted that he had no military experience, then said that maybe he would have made a brilliant general if he chose that line of work. (I tend to agree with him.)
I still contend that Trump will end up making the right decisions in the Middle East so that the Kurds, Palestinians, and Israelis will have a secure future. Sorry to break into this blog that was intended as a private conversation, but I had to take this opportunity to offer hope in this troubled world.
the popular vote was certainly skewed to clinton because of all the illegal aliens voting in california, new jersey, connecticut, etc. etc. they don,t even try to hide it at motor vehicle departments.
Michael, can you provide any evidence of this claim? Reputable journalists from the US and abroad have refuted it (e.g. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38744612 ), and President Trump’s own Advisory Commission on Election Integrity disbanded without publishing a report ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_Advisory_Commission_on_Election_Integrity ).
Aha! There is a hair to split! “W.W. Harrison” should be “W.H. Harrison”. William Henry Harrison served one month as President in 1841 before dying of pneumonia. The original oversight was mine; I failed to notice that there were two presidents named Harrison, so only put their last names in the list I sent to Guy. Benjamin Harrison served a full term, 1889 – 1893.
One ambiguous sentence in a wikipedia article led down a rabbit hole, but we came out the other side with an instructive diagram of the previous experience of US presidents. Each of the three prior presidents with only military experience was the highest-ranking general in the Army and the commander of a significant military victory — Taylor the Mexican-American war, Grant the civil war, and Eisenhower the second world war. Of the three, only Eisenhower was a highly distinguished president. The list of presidents with only political experience is longer and includes some of the nation’s most popular and successful presidents. Many presidents had only very modest military service (George W. Bush stands out as the only one who was absent without leave for six months). I personally think that political experience is a better predictor of success than military experience. One thing every successful politician masters is the art of compromise. With Nancy Pelosi now elected as Speaker of the House, we will see how long it takes President Trump to learn this art, and, consequently, how long it takes for our federal government to reopen.
As for the US banning UN human rights rapporteurs, it’s one more shame upon this nation, and, as you say, a harmful precedent for other despotic regimes.