Donald Trump’s victory in November 2024 continued a more than three-decade trend: not since George H.W. Bush’s victory in 1988 had Americans chosen a combat veteran to be their commander-in-chief. Many of our recent Presidents, in fact, did not serve in combat. Bill Clinton controversially avoided the draft. George W. Bush served in the Texas National Guard when the Guard was a place for the rich and well-connected to avoid Vietnam. And while Barack Obama was just 12 years old when the Vietnam War draft ended, Donald Trump received four student deferments and a medical-leave deferment for bone spurs to avoid fighting in Vietnam. Similarly, Joe Biden received five education-related deferments and a medical exemption to help him avoid war.
While some Americans may no longer view military service as a prerequisite for the presidency, it’s important to understand how this attitude is a departure from the past, when wartime experiences shaped the personality and character of those in the White House. John F. Kennedy spoke for his generation when he said, “The war made us. It was and is our single greatest moment. The memory of the war is key to our characters. It serves as a break wall between the indolence of our youths and the earnestness of our manhood.” The war created a bond that could transcend political differences and convince future Presidents that the United States needed to play a vital role in world affairs.
For 36 years, beginning in 1953, every President from Dwight Eisenhower to George H. W. Bush (except for Ronald Reagan, who spent World War II making wartime propaganda films in Hollywood) had been in uniform during World War II. Jimmy Carter, who graduated from the Naval Academy in 1946, missed the war but served on a submarine in the early days of the Cold War.
These veteran Presidents demonstrated enormous personal courage. Instead of using their privilege to avoid service like some later Presidents, they used it to get closer to the…
