Commanders in Chief without military experience

The Constitution sets relatively few requirements for holding the office of president of the United States: One must be a "natural born citizen" of the United States and must be 35 years old or older and must have resided in the United States for 14 years.

Few jobs in America have such a short list of job requirements, yet the country has survived for these 229 years since the adoption of the Constitution with presidents meeting only minimal job requirements. A college education is not required. Many of our most admired presidents — Lincoln, Washington, Truman, for example — would have been disqualified by such a requirement. No job experience is required, and the way we choose a president has little application to the overwhelming difficulty of managing a federal workforce in the millions, dealing with foreign countries, both friendly and adversarial, dealing with Congress, and serving as commander-in-chief of the armed forces. That's far different from traveling around the country asking people to vote for him/her.

A week of mourning for Sen. John McCain has brought to mind that last responsibility of the president. If military experience counted, McCain might have reached his dream of being elected president. He was the son and grandson of U.S. Navy admirals and had served with distinction as a Navy aviator.

For much of American history, service in the armed forces was a common trait among presidents. Washington, Andrew Jackson, Benjamin Harrison, U.S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, Franklin Pierce, William Henry Harrison, Theodore Roosevelt and others served in combat. In my own lifetime, Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan and Bush — every president until Clinton's election in 1992 — served in the military either in combat or stateside. Voters have not elected a military veteran, with the exception of George W. Bush, who only served in the Reserves and was never deployed, since the first President Bush lost the 1992 election to Clinton.

Although it's not a requirement for office, it's fair to ask what presidents without military experience are missing in their resumes. Military service teaches discipline, motivation, management, service, sacrifice and patriotism. It also exposes Americans to people with different backgrounds, advantages or disadvantages. In the years of a military draft, well-bred, well-connected college graduates rubbed shoulders with high school dropouts, and they learned to depend on these soldiers or sailors who were very different from themselves.

That experience would certainly enlighten the resident of the White House faced with a decision on military intervention or troop deployment. Presidents such as Washington, Jackson, Grant and others, who had experienced war up close and had been responsible for orders that resulted in deaths of brave, obedient soldiers, certainly would recognize the gravity of their actions in a way that someone without military experience would not.

In today's America, with only a small percentage of Americans voluntarily choosing a military career, it is difficult to find presidential aspirants with a military background. Veterans dominated the White House and congressional leadership from 1945 to the end of the century, but veterans are much rarer now in the halls of power.

Military experience does not inoculate presidents from bad decisions. George W. Bush foolishly ordered U.S. troops to invade Iraq in 2003 in search of non-existent "weapons of mass destruction." But President Kennedy, still scarred by injuries suffered when a Japanese ship sank his PT boat, rejected the advice of his generals and chose a successful blockade of Cuba in 1962 instead of an invasion to destroy Russian missiles there, a strategy that would result in high casualties and could escalate into nuclear war. Unlike the younger Bush, Kennedy had experienced combat and seen good men die all around him.