The Economist - USA (2019-11-30)

26 United States The EconomistNovember 30th 2019

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1

was thrown over the ship’s name. Mr

Trump later praised the “well meaning” of-

ficials who had anticipated his wishes.

Mr Trump’s assault on civil-military

norms has also provoked a backlash that

may compound the problem. On October

17th William McRaven, a retired admiral

who oversaw the raid against Osama bin

Laden in 2011, wrote an op-ed that contrast-

ed military virtues with Mr Trump’s feck-

lessness, and urged Democrats and Repub-

licans to replace the president. He quoted a

retired four-star general as telling him: “I

don’t like the Democrats, but Trump is de-

stroying the Republic!”

Mr McRaven’s willingness to do what

Mr Mattis and Mr McMaster would not—

mount an attack on the moral fitness of the

president using the authority of their for-

mer uniforms—was cheered by the presi-

dent’s critics. But it reflects a trend that

many experts in civil-military relations

find troubling: an increasing role for senior

retired officers in electoral politics.

Military endorsements of presidential

candidates were rare before the 1980s. But

in 1988 P.X. Kelley, a former head of the ma-

rine corps, endorsed President George H.W.

Bush. In 1992 William Crowe, a former

chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, en-

dorsed Bill Clinton. There followed an

arms race of military endorsements that

reached its grubby pinnacle in 2016, when

Mr Flynn sided with Mr Trump, urging

crowds to “lock up” Hillary Clinton, and

John Allen, a general who headed the fight

against Islamic State, backed Mrs Clinton.

Retired flag officers like Mr McRaven

are largely free to do as they please, al-

though they technically keep their com-

missions and remain subject to the Uni-

form Code of Military Justice, which

restricts criticism of the president, notes

Alice Hunt Friend of the Centre for Strate-

gic and International Studies, a think-tank.

But recent surveys conducted by Jim Golby,

an active-duty army officer, and Peter

Feaver, a professor at Duke University, sug-

gest that the public cannot usually distin-

guish between serving and retired officers,

so interventions by the latter colour per-

ceptions of the former.

“It’s been rare in ushistory that politici-

sation of veterans and retired military

hasn’t been quickly followed by the politi-

cisation of serving officers,” says Mr Golby.

“It’s really hard to hold the line. We’ve seen

this at the founding, the Civil War era and

during the Gilded Age.” Infighting among

veterans over the share of battlefield com-

mands during a war with Mexico in 1846-48

culminated in Winfield Scott, an active-

duty general, running for the presidency in

1852, for instance. Such politicisation is

worrying. Not only does it undermine trust

between political leaders and their military

advisers, resulting in poorer decision-

making, but the very perception of military

disgruntlement or resistance is likely to

erode confidence in the supremacy of

elected civilian leaders.

What connects these threads is the un-

ique popularity of the American armed

forces. A Pew survey published in July

showed that they were one of the most

trusted groups in the country, second only

to scientists: 83% of people expressed con-

fidence in the armed forces, above public

schools (80%), police officers (78%) or das-

tardly journalists (55%). But a forthcoming

paper by Mr Golby and Mr Feaver shows

that, if Republican and Democratic respon-

dents are told that the military establish-

ment favours the rival party, their confi-

dence in it plummets.

In truth, the armed forces reflect broad-

er attitudes: the highly educated officer

corps dislikes Mr Trump, while 47% of the

enlisted ranks, largely without college de-

grees, back him. But as the military ser-

vices draw from an ever-narrower demo-

graphic pool—southern recruitment has

soared over the past 40 years, while that

from the north-east has plummeted—its

attitudes could grow more unrepresenta-

tive. On top of that, Mr Trump’s enthusiasm

for pardoning convicted war criminals and

the broader weaponisation of veterans by

the president and his opponents risks

bringing about a loss of confidence.

Since the end of the draft, public under-

standing of how the armed forces work has

declined, with men in uniform sitting in-

creasingly apart from society. The risk of

politicising them has become poorly un-

derstood, says Kori Schake, a former Penta-

gon official who, together with Mr Mattis,

wrote a well-regarded book on civil-mili-

tary relations. A small consolation is that

the republic has weathered worse. Leonard

Wood, a serving army general, ran for pres-

ident in uniform in 1920. Bill Clinton was

openly jeered on his first visit to an aircraft

carrier because of his perceived draft-

dodging and effort to allow gays to serve

openly. In 2007 left-wing groups ran ads

attacking David Petraeus, a general who

oversaw a successful surge of forces into

Iraq, as “General Betray Us”.

And whereas no-one doubted that Mr

Trump could sack Messrs Flynn, Mattis,

McMaster and Kelly at will, or that he has a

right to make ill-advised decisions like the

reinstatement of Mr Gallagher, this has not

always been so clear. When Harry Truman

decided to sack Douglas MacArthur, the top

general in Korea, for insubordination in

1951, he worried about his ability to pull it

off. Mr Truman would later convey a senti-

ment shared by many presidents: “I fired

him because he wouldn’t respect the au-

thority of the president. I didn’t fire him

because he was a dumb son of a bitch, al-

though he was, but that’s not against the

law for generals. If it was, half to three-

quarters of them would be in jail.” 7

M

ichael bloomberg announced his

candidacy for the Democratic presi-

dential nomination on November 24th,

scoring a rare triple. Mr Bloomberg has run

for office as a Republican, as an indepen-

dent and now as a Democrat. In a country

where voters often claim to want biparti-

sanship but usually vote as if the other lot

are rogues, this is risky. Mr Bloomberg has

pitched himself as a counter-weight to left-

wingers such as Elizabeth Warren and Ber-

nie Sanders, who he says are “not well-po-

sitioned” to defeat President Donald

Trump. He has outlined an ambitious, left-

ish policy agenda while disavowing Medi-

care for All, the signature health-care pro-

posal on the left of the party. Mr Bloomberg

might yet become the Democrats’ pick for

the White House, but the odds are slim, and

his campaign will first have to overcome a

problem: currently voters dislike him more

than any of the other serious candidates

running for president. He is a lot more un-

popular than Mr Trump (see chart).

There is much to like about the idea of

Mr Bloomberg in the White House. He has

executive experience and, unlike the presi-

dent, is a self-made entrepreneur. He won

WASHINGTON, DC

The former mayor of New York is

much less popular than Donald Trump

The Democratic primary

For Bloom the

polls toll

Foot of the mountain

United States, net favourability ratings* of

presidential candidates, percentage points

Bypoliticalparty,Sep28th-Nov16th 2019

Sources:YouGov;

The Economist

*Percentageofvoterswhoviewa candidate

favourablyminusthepercentagewho

view them unfavourably

-10-15-20-25 -5 50

Michael Bloomberg

Tulsi Gabbard

Tom Steyer

John Delaney

Deval Patrick

Joe Sestak

Donald Trump

Julián Castro

Kamala Harris

Steve Bullock

Amy Klobuchar

Cory Booker

Joe Biden

Michael Bennet

Bernie Sanders

Andrew Yang

Pete Buttigieg

Elizabeth Warren