The first post-9/11 vets are running for president. Do voters care? - jklimas@politico.com (Jacqueline Feldscher)

The first post-9/11 vets are running for president. Do voters care? –

Afghanistan vet Pete Buttigieg charged President Donald Trump with an “assault on the honor of this country” for avoiding the draft during the Vietnam War. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), recounting his four tours in Iraq, told voters he hopes the man who took Trump’s place in combat is “still alive.” And Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) drew on her war experience in warning Trump that a war with Iran would make Iraq “look like a cakewalk.”

Together, the Democratic trio mark the first post-9/11 veterans to run for the White House. But military credentials that once helped pave candidates’ road to the White House may hold little appeal for today’s electorate, according to a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll of registered Democratic voters released Wednesday.

More than half of respondents said it’s not important for the party’s presidential nominee to be a veteran, while only a third said military service in the candidate’s background is very or somewhat important to their decision. Twelve percent had no opinion at all.

“Our polling suggests 2020 contenders who tout military credentials won’t necessarily have an advantage when Democrats cast their votes at the ballot box,” said Tyler Sinclair, Morning Consult’s vice president. “Notably, 36 percent of Democratic voters said it was important for their party’s nominee to be a military veteran. This compares to 69 percent who prioritize political experience.”

The poll of 1,997 registered voters was conducted between May 31 and June 2 and has a margin error of 2 percent.

The three candidates are all banking on their experience to give them a boost, but the results are another indication that military service — even in the midst of the longest period of sustained combat in American history — is steadily fading as a major resume-builder for would-be commanders in chief.

Three of the four most recent presidents — Trump, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton — didn’t have a military background (George W. Bush had served in the Air National Guard). That’s compared with all eight of the previous chief executives, all of whom served in the military: Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

And throughout the nation’s history, more than half of all Oval Office occupants have worn a uniform.

The recent trend is credited to a number of factors, including the makeup of the armed forces and the changing nature of war. The U.S. has no mandatory conscription, which ended in the final stages of the Vietnam War, and exceedingly few Americans volunteer to serve in the armed forces — less than 1 percent. As a result, far fewer Americans can personally relate to the military than when a much larger proportion of the population either served or knew someone who did.

Americans have not yet had time to reckon with the consequences of the ongoing wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan, said Matthew Gallagher, an author and Iraq veteran who has written about electing veterans as president.

“It’s dark and complex and messy. It’s not as simple as it was for the greatest generation to say, ‘I proved myself in combat, I can prove myself in government,’” Gallagher said in an interview. “It’s not something that resonates as widely. It’s an open question as to whether it resonates at all beyond a very small percentage of voters.”

On the stump, however, the recent veterans running for president — all considered long shots for the Democratic nomination — are relying heavily on their military credentials.

“I decided that if people with my experience didn’t step up and run, we’d never truly learn the lessons of what it means to carelessly put Americans into harm’s way,” Moulton, a three-term congressman from Massachusetts, told POLITICO.

Gabbard, a congresswoman from Hawaii who deployed to Iraq as a member of Hawaii’s Army National Guard and remains a major, has called for an end to “wasteful regime change wars” and recently tweeted that Trump is risking another war with Iran.

Buttigieg, who spent six months in Afghanistan as an intelligence officer in the Navy Reserve, recently posted on Twitter that his service in the military “makes me very aware of the consequences of sending troops abroad, and personally committed to ending endless war.”

All three candidates are also using their military service as a bludgeon against Trump, who secured multiple deferments from the draft during the Vietnam War for attending college and also received a medical exemption for bone spurs in his feet.

Buttigieg accuses Trump of using his wealth and connections to fake the bone spurs to get out of going to war.

“You have somebody who thinks it’s all right to have somebody go in his place into a deadly war and is willing to pretend to be disabled to do it. That is an assault on the honor of this country,” Buttigieg said May 26 on ABC’s “This Week.”

Moulton says he volunteered so others wouldn’t have to, while Trump “was happy to have someone else go in his place.”

“I’d like to meet that American someday who went to Vietnam in Donald Trump’s place,” Moulton said recently. “I hope he’s still alive.”

He also contends Trump “is a man who truly does not understand the consequences of war.”

They are all banking on their military credentials help them stand out in a crowded field of nearly two dozen Democrats, even if they don’t propel them all the way.

Their military background could help them establish credibility on defense and security issues, countering the fact that they are younger and have less experience overall than some of the other contenders, said Jeremy Teigen, a political science professor at Ramapo College of New Jersey.

“For Buttigieg, Moulton and Gabbard, their service will not give them an instant promotion to the top tier, but it will help them stand out against the other younger, less visible candidates,” Teigen said.

Gabbard is 38, Buttigeig is 37 and Moulton is 40. Any one of them would be the youngest president in history if elected.

Their experience may also resonate with some older voters who place more emphasis on military credentials, added Molly O’Rourke, the director of American University’s masters program in political communications, who specializes in public opinion research.

Whether it helps bring them electoral success or not, Moulton, Gabbard and Buttigieg are unlikely to be the last post-9/11 vets to seek the presidency.

Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have been running for local and federal offices since 2006 and have now garnered enough experience to move up the hierarchy, said Jeremy Butler, the CEO of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, a nonpartisan advocacy group.

And he said having the three in the 2020 presidential race could ultimately help elevate critical veterans issues like health care, as more people who have direct experience with the military and the Department of Veterans Affairs achieve the power to make decisions.

Moulton, for example, recently shined a light on the problem of post-traumatic stress disorder among veterans by revealing he has sought therapy and unveiling a plan to improve mental health services for veterans.

Their candidacies could also prompt even more veterans to run for office, said Ellen Zeng, senior vice president of With Honor Action, a political action committee that helps veterans run for office. She said the group is talking to more than 80 veterans thinking about running for the House in 2020.

Morning Consult is a nonpartisan media and technology company that provides data-driven research and insights on politics, policy and business strategy.

More details on the poll and its methodology can be found in these two documents: Toplines: https://politi.co/2KA0s7h | Crosstabs: https://politi.co/2Z7SrKI

Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine

– June 5, 2019 at 05:55AM