2008, McCain and the war hero gap

As recently as the American boyhoods of John Kerry, John McCain and George W. Bush, it was nearly impossible to think of becoming president without going through the ritual of combat.

World War II vets threw down a gauntlet that members of the succeeding generation couldn't hope to wield unless they donned uniforms and picked up rifles. But the motif of warrior as leader goes back most vividly and foundationally to Washington.

The general on horseback myth worked so well and the country's early talent pool tested in war went so deep, few men thereafter could vie for the chair of presidential power without showing battle stripes. From the country's founding all the way up to 1908, only the elections of 1800 (Adams v. Jefferson) and 1844 (Polk v. Clay) failed to feature war hero candidacies.

Tantalized by the prospect of stepping into the brand new boots of America's version of Augustus, John "no war record on the resume" Adams would end up drinking bitterly from the nation's cup of post-Washington blues as the second president failed to stir the same kind of martial pride in the hearts of his countrymen.

Adams' unabashed eggheadedess in the White House doomed several generations of would-be morally courageous leaders to the tank tread of history, including Adlai Stevenson, Fitz Mondale and, of course, Mike Dukakis. 

There have been notable exceptions. Madison and later Lincoln bucked the warrior trend with non-combat service records. But the presence of both men in the White House summoned stern if unsuccessful war hero candidates from the other side (General Pinckney against Madison in 1808 and General McClellan against Lincoln 1864). Of course, both Madison and Lincoln would stare down those challenges and preside over wars that fortified the country with sprawling stables of war-tested presidents, from generals Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor to U.S. Grant, Rutherford Hayes, James Garfield and beyond.

Mars in buckskins with presidential aspirations, Teddy Roosevelt shined up his combat boots for a last charge in the Spanish Civil War before there arrived the country's first real lull of combat veterans in the White House as the Civil War vets aged and died off. From 1908 through FDR, civilians ruled. But the drums sounded again and WWII stocked a mid-century's worth of commanders-in-chief.
 
In the thick of the Cold War, voters went from war hero Truman to war hero Ike right to war hero Kennedy. Johnson had Silver Star credentials, and while Nixon was an ice cream soldier in WWII, he was still in the Pacific when it counted, and anyway Ford and Carter offered Navy combat and Navy sub service respectively. Then came Reagan, who was no war vet, but who embodied in the Oval Office that same hero whom two generations of Kubrick-fried moviegoers had enjoyed in the posture of submariner, cowboy, cavalryman, football star and all purpose uniformed he-man. 

When the country floundered back into reality and glimpsed the American underbelly of Oliver "Vietnam-Central America-Iran" North, an uneasy electorate re-asserted the presence of combat flyer George Herbert Walker Bush, who was adequately absorbed into a compelling and comforting - if aging -WWII mythology.

Sensing the warrior spirit sputtering in what to old guard Republicans was the moral turpitude of civilian Bill Clinton, WW II hero Bob Dole tried to rev up the iconography of physical courage, only to lose as the country appeared to be sustaining another period of peace. 

Confounded by mixed metaphor candidates in 2000, the Supreme Court went with National Guardster Bush II over pencil-toting warrior Gore. But early, Bush awakened Baby Boomer outrage - among the hipsters who'd rejected the war and had to sit in class with non-combat true believers like Bush, and among stout warriors like James Webb, who'd come home from Nam and sat at too many bars flanked by the loud-mouthed likes of Clinton and Bush.

Republicans tried to depict the younger Bush as tough on terror as the country entered another war epoch, but there was no record to back up the man, and into that increasingly nervous breach emerged the Ike-like General Wesley Clark, and three-purple hearted Kerry.

Clark promptly imploded, leaving Kerry to snap off a reassuring salute in his convention debut. Packaged as a war hero in the vein of those dead-ahead WWII dog soldiers who populated the books of Stephen Ambrose and Tom Brokaw and the pining-for-war Speilberg pic "Saving Private Ryan," Kerry nevertheless - like Vietnam - was a strangely tortured contradiction. He was for the war, then against it. Twice. First in Vietnam and then in Iraq. It was too complicated a chord change for the Toby Keith-wired culture of post 9-11 America that sought John Wayne in vain and settled for Bush II.

Now it's three years later and in the face of the civilian triumvirates of Obama-Edwards-Clinton II in the Democratic Party, and Giuliani-Romney-Huckabee in the GOP, here comes the self-described "No Surrender" candidacy of McCain, a ravaged, 70-year old, leather-jacket-wearing icon who's riding the war hero arc all the way back to Ike, Grant, and Washington. 

"I released my bomb, and I was hit by a surface to air missile," the Arizona senator and Vietnam War veteran says in an ad against a backdrop of black-and-white pictures of himself in combat and as a POW, with the word DUTY flashing into an American consciousness now frazzled by five years of war with no credible skipper on deck.

This week, former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean stood beside McCain in Boston and declared him to be the best choice for president on national security grounds. "In the history of our nation," said Kean, "a mere handful of senators have exerted a greater influence over free men and free women than even some presidents of the United States. John McCain has been one of those senators, and he has tremendous respect throughout the world."

This from an elder statesman whose fellow GOP Jerseyans rate McCain at 8% in the polls, behind Giuliani's whopping 45% and Fred "Reagan Resume" Thompson's more modest 12%. Nationally, McCain is doing a little better. Gallup and Newsweek put him in the thick of a second tier pack that includes a foundering Thompson, Huckabee and Romney - all behind Giuliani. In Iowa, at least momentarily, it's Huckabee who's broken out of the crowd to challenge Romney's lead.

In New Hampshire, a CNN/WMUR poll released yesterday shows Romney in first place with 33%, and McCain and Giuliani battling for secnd place at 18 and 16% respectively.  

One can argue that all of the invective last time surrounding Kerry, Swift Boats, the National Guard and Bush simply exhausted the country and put most voters in a frame of mind resistant to war stories. But the record shows that the country has seldom withstood general election years without placing a warrior in contention. Even if he doesn't win a general election (ie. John C. Fremont, Winfield Scott), the old soldier emanation traditionally soothes the American psyche.

Or does it still?
 
A panic-stricken Democratic Party thought so three years ago. When Kerry was sinking like Stonehenge with a month to go before the 2004 Democratic caucuses in Iowa, the conventional wisdom showed Dean winning and Clark banking on a chance to gain a foothold by throwing all of his resources into New Hampshire. But an old comrade in arms from Vietnam - a Republican no less - stood on stage next to Kerry down the stretch, testifying to the former Swift Boat captain's heroism, and the Iraq War-bedeviled public made a beeline for the old war hero myth over outright antiwar candidate Dean.

In his autobiography, Clark says Kerry's victory in Iowa deflated his own war hero alternative to what everyone thought would be a Dean win in the Midwest. As the candidates headed into New Hampshire after Dean's yeeaaahh moment, Kerry was the clear comer, before he won.

Ceding Iowa to presumably Romney, who's pumped the most money into the state, McCain's people right now are playing the old Clark card in New Hampshire. But with new polls showing Huckabee gaining ground on Romney, that's good breaking news for McCain. If Romney arrives weakened in New Hampshire, or if it's the regional candidate Huckabee doing a victory lap headed into the Northeast, McCain figures he can compete.

On one level, he's chained to Bush II and the policy in Iraq. But in crisis times with a war on, the GOP will inevitably face a general election candidate without military service, much less combat. McCain's there as the old gutcheck. As a party blown up in the wake of Bush II casts about for ideological common ground, the go-to American warrior myth beloved in both parties may prove too foundational for the otherwise wayward GOP to resist.