Presidential candidates and their childrens military records

All the sons and daughters of our Monarchy are in something military. Her Majesty the Queen often reminds people that she was a motor mechanic when she needed to be and it was all hands to the pump apart from the hands across the Atlantic.

The Heir to the Throne only gave up fast jets when he pranged a hangar and said he didn't think he was cut out for the job and transferred to helicopters. Another has sat in a ship in the Falklands War waiting for an Exocet to come through the hull.

Princess Anne is a Regimental Colonel and she sure can sit a horse decorously apart from that unfortunate incident with the Pond fence.

I heard the same commentary. I thought his point was that those whose children seem to lead a life of privilege would be less responsible with his child's life than those who encouraged their children to public service and seemed to understand the sacrifice involved. I thought it interesting that when McCain beats the war drums that he has two children marching to that drumbeat. At least he's living with the consequences of his actions. Romney's and Clinton's war chants sound hollow when their children are sitting in the corner office figuring which stocks will do well in a war time economy.

Huckabee's son apparently killing a dog (hanging it from a tree) makes me think somewhat ill of Huckabee, but that also has to do with how he handled it. I'm not sure what I'd think of it in a vacuum, or if Huckabee seemed to feel badly about it.

But generally, what the candidate's kids do has little to no impact on what I think about the candidate. On the level of signing up for service or not, definitely not a criteria for me.

Yes, that was what was said, however, encouraging your child to do something is no guarantee that is what they want to do for themselves, or will do.

The comment about Eleanor Roosevelt saying FDR would have been disappointed if his sons had not joined is an example....yes, he would have been disappointed, but that does not mean he had not encouraged them.

One can't assume what the candidates encouraged their kids to do.

And exempting Obama from this because his girls are too small? Why not hold him up to the same standard?


soz, didn't know that about Huckabee's son, I'd have to see how he handled it also to know how to feel.

The cruelty thing worries me, too...re parenting, and the handling.

I am with you that generally kids are irrelevant, though. If a candidate used their wealth/power to avoid mandatory service for themselves or their kids AND then waxes eloquent and icky about the glory of the military and such.......scrub 'em.

Oh...and if a parent tries to push a kid into the military so the parent looks good......ick and yuck and scrub them, too.

Would you not vote for a candidate because his/her child, although perhaps encouraged, chose not to join?

It wouldn't matter to me.

I think his point (right or wrong) was that he was using this as a standard to evaluate the candidates. Obama is a cipher in this respect since there is no evidence of his performance. I think Edwards is in the same boat. I don't know that this is a particularly good metric, but I do understand what the commenter was trying to say.

The military's volunteer. Why should they go if they don't want to?

Chai provided a link above if you want to listen to the commentary. The speaker is a military parent suffering all the concerns connected with that and wondered if the future President of the US would understand his concerns when sending our military into war. Is it a great metric? Doubtful since the service is voluntary. Still, it wasn't a bad commentary and probably reflects some of the opinions of those with children in the service.

I'm much more interested in the candidate's military career than his or her children's.

Generally speaking, I have a more favorable impression of people whose children seem to be living lives consistent with their expressed values.

If a politician lives consistent with his or her professed values, then I would expect to see the politicians children do so as well.

Children's lives, to a great extent, express the values their parents have taught them verbally and, more importantly, by example.

If John McCain's two sons are in the military we can conclude one of two things:

1) He has taught them that service to their country is important and a career in the military is honorable
2) He wields extra-ordinary control over their lives and has browbeaten them into joining.

From everything else I know about McCain, I would share conclusion #1.

I'm sure everyone knows of a family where a child's life reflects the opposite of what, on the face of it, we would believe the parents' values to be.

In my childhood county, the daughters of a judge serving in the county's highest court were promiscuous petty criminals who spent most of their days high on alcohol or some other drug.

I didn't know anything about the family other than the observed behavior of the daughters. I suppose there are any number of reasons these girls behaved they way they did, but it certainly didn't seem that they were living the values one would have expected a judge to teach them through word and deed.

I think it would be foolish to expect the lives of the children of politicians to mirror every policy decision the parent made or supported, but as a general proposition I think the lives of the children of politicians can tell us something about the politician.

engineer wrote-



Understandable though those concerns are, and I'm sure everyone shares them and not just those who express them, wouldn't a President, who no doubt shares the same concerns only much more pointedly, who placed too much emphasis on them lead a nation which wasn't going to go to war and if that happened how long would the taxpayer be prepared to pay for a military at all. It would be nice I suppose to have the military in the role of the Swiss Guard at the Vatican, and that was a military power once, but I hardly think it will be passed by congress. Or the voters.

Possibly military recruitment would be reduced to those parents who paid no mind to the welfare of their children. Mercenaries even.

You could nuke us all I suppose.

Would the concerns in this thread be on our minds, if the world was in a relatively peaceful state that no one thought would change?

So, with a world that is not at peace, and countries are jockeying for influence here and there, the military has become a larger reality in the nation's collective mind, I believe.

I do believe, on a gut level, a candidate that has a majority of his/her brood in the military would get more votes. It just reflects positively on the candidate that his/her own offspring have the same patriotic values that the candidate is telling the public that he/she has. It just gives credence to the candidates love of country. This may sound old fashioned, but perhaps in anxious times people do wax nostalgic for old fashioned values?

Similarly, notice the generals that became President. Many voters love generals; that might be because we feel assured that generals love our country.

Then maybe this will help...

http://www.presidential-candidates.org/compare-presidential-candidates-military.php

And if you want a list by party, here is the repubs...

http://www.republican-candidates.org/compare-republican-presidential-candidates-military.php

And here is the dems...

http://www.democratic-candidates.org/compare-democratic-presidential-candidates-military.php

I'm sure there is a better list somewhere, but I found this in just a few minutes.