Best qualified presidential candidate ever?

President Obama said it during the Hillary Clinton campaign stop in Charlotte Tuesday. He said Hillary Clinton is the best qualified person ever to run for president. That sort of thing has been claimed before with surprisingly little contradiction -- No one has ever run for president, they've claimed, with more experience than Hillary Clinton.

I beg to differ, not to dispute that HRC has experience or that she is qualified for the presidency, at least in terms of experience. But the most qualified ever? Really?

A few candidates from the not-too-distant past had experiences that could match or surpass the former one-term senator and secretary of state. Franklin Roosevelt had been governor of a large state (New York) and had served as secretary of the Navy. Lyndon Johnson had served in the House and the Senate, had been on congressional staff, and had been perhaps the most effective majority leader of the Senate in the upper chamber's history. He also served nearly four years as vice president. George H.W. Bush had been a member of Congress, ambassador to China, director of the CIA and vice president for two terms. Dwight D. Eisenhower was light on Washington experience, but he had successfully managed the largest, most complex and probably most difficult military alliance in history. Richard Nixon had been a member of the House and the Senate and held key congressional leadership posts, and he served two terms as vice president. (All of which goes to prove that experience isn't everything.)

Some presidents' successful terms help prove that experience isn't everything. Harry Truman had little to recommend him in 1945, when he inherited the presidency after FDR's sudden death. He had been a machine politician from Missouri with a slim record of congressional accomplishments. He had served only a few months as vice president and had been so out of the loop that he didn't even know about the atomic bomb. He was not a college graduate. But many historians now consider Truman one of our best presidents.

And then there's Abraham Lincoln, a one-term congressman and failed candidate for Senate. He was elected president only because of a catastrophic split in the Democratic Party and was so detested by many of his countrymen that they withdrew from the Union before he was even inaugurated. His strategy to keep the country united failed and resulted in a tragic, four-year war that killed 600,000 or more. He second-guessed his generals and frequently fired them. He was expected to lose his 1864 re-election bid (against a general he had fired) and was saved only by a change in battlefield success. Despite all the failures and lack of solid experience, Lincoln is considered one of the two or three best presidents in history.

Let's grant Hillary Clinton the fact that she has experience as a cabinet secretary, a senator and as first lady (which should count for something). But is she the "most experienced ever"? Not by a long shot.

American military, despite accolades, has huge problems

James Fallows, whom I've been reading faithfully for nearly 40 years, has an absolutely devastating indictment of America's defense establishment in this month's Atlantic magazine. The long article begins with America's recent adulation of everyone in a U.S. military uniform or anyone who's ever served (i.e., veterans) and goes on to critique the military procurement system and a military hierarchy that takes care of its own.

More than a year ago, I complained that veterans or current military personnel were being hailed as "heroes," regardless of their type of service. I have been offered the same rewards — free meals on Veterans Day, a preferred parking space at the grocery store, and thankful compliments when asked if I was a veteran — as men who faced combat. But my military commitment was fulfilled by sitting behind a desk and answering correspondence from parents, spouses and members of Congress. At no time did I face hostile fire. My most hazardous moment was probably when I was urged by war protesters to take off my uniform and join the anti-war movement on the streets of Washington, D.C. I just walked on by.

More than 50 years ago, President Eisenhower warned America of a "military-industrial complex" that sought not the best military might for America but the best profits for themselves. Fallows documents just how much worse things have gotten since Eisenhower's 1961 farewell address. He makes the point that military weapons procurement has less to do with military weapons and more to do with spreading economic stimulus packages throughout the country. Thus, the ideal weapons system — an aircraft carrier, bomber or fighter jet — is one that has subcontractors in every congressional district in the country, thereby ensuring that Congress will approve the system, regardless of costs, cost overruns, or effectiveness of the weapon.

The F-35 fighter jet is the latest iteration of this economic-stimulus-as-defense package. It will be the most expensive airplane ever, and it can't do what it is supposed to do. An accompanying article in the Atlantic laments the inferiority of the U.S. M-16 combat rifle and its later versions, such as the M-4, compared to the AK-47, which has been used by the Soviet Union, China, Cuba and other countries for more than 50 years. The M-16 is a more complex, harder to maintain and more likely to jam weapon than the AK-47, which is simpler, easier to maintain and is less likely to jam. But America has been using the same basic, inferior rifle for more than 40 years.

Fallows points out that since World War II, American soldiers, the best supplied and most expensive (by far) army in the world, have lost again and again against less-sophisticated, poorly supplied and poorly trained enemies in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. The military-industrial complex needs to be shaken up, beginning with Congress and then with the officer corps, before greater damage is done to the nation.

The military's problems need to be part of the presidential debate and congressional campaign issues, but as long as Americans believe everyone in a uniform is a hero and above criticism, that can't happen. A good starting point would be for every member of Congress and every candidate for Congress or the presidency to read Fallow's article.

D-Day plus 70 years

Last night, on the 70th anniversary of the night hundreds of thousands of Allied troops, sailors and airmen set out for the Normandy coast, I began reading Rick Atkinson's "The Guns at Last Light," the third volume of his Liberation Trilogy, tracing the war in Europe from D-Day to the German surrender.

Today, on the Normandy shore, European and American leaders celebrate the success of that greatest amphibious invasion in history with the last survivors of that battle, all of them now in the late 80s or 90s. Commemorations of D-Day have been held every year since then with larger celebrations on these 10-year segments. I recall watching Dwight Eisenhower, by then the former president, walking the beaches and hedgerows of Normandy with Walter Cronkite on the 20th anniversary. On the 40th anniversary, it was Ronald Reagan's turn as he gave perhaps the most moving speech of his presidency, praising "the boys of Point Du Hoc."

These commemorations risk turning mundane, the visual images becoming too familiar to shock. The black-and-white pictures from wartime photographers and the row upon row of white crosses at the American Cemetery have all been seen before. We know what happened there.

What we can't know is the uncertainty of that endeavor. Eisenhower, the supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, was not sure it would succeed. The British, for whom Dunkirk was still a painful, bleeding wound, were doubtful. The Germans had spent four years planning for this day while the Allies found themselves mired in Italy and working to build the ships and landing crafts and airplanes that would be needed for such an invasion. The French coastline was a bastion capable of pushing back a mighty army.

The success of D-Day and the ultimate success of the Allied defeat of Nazi Germany testify to the skill of military leaders, the productivity of American industry, which was untouched by bombs and artillery that devastated Allied and Axis factories, the determination of American and British troops and the amazing resilience of the Soviet army on the Eastern Front, where millions of lives were lost. As Atkinson shows in the first two volumes of his trilogy, Allies' experience in North Africa, Sicily and Italy also paved the way for success at Normandy.

On this D-Day anniversary, we praise the dwindling few survivors of that cauldron, and we marvel at the bravery of the men who stepped off those landing crafts knowing their chances of surviving the day were not good.

Sixty-five years ago on this date

Today is D-Day. Sixty-five years ago, thousands of Allied troops gave their lives for the liberation of Europe from the Third Reich. The few remaining survivors will remember the sacrifices made on this date. They are, in Shakespeare's immortal words, a "band of brothers ... for he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother." The playwright put the words into the mouth of King Henry V before the battle of Agincourt and promised that the date, St. Crispian's day, would live forever. June 6, 1944, will live forever.

Each passing year, I am struck by how recent D-Day was, World War II was, when I was growing up. When I was a child, just discovering what D-Day meant, that battle was as recent as the Clinton administration or the first Gulf War is today. On the 20th anniversary of D-Day, I watched Walter Cronkite tour the Normandy battlefield with Dwight D. Eisenhower, remembering the sacrifices of that day.

President Reagan gave one of his greatest speeches on the 40th anniversary of D-Day. It's a speech worth remembering 25 years later.