Veteran Status and Electability

Nominations, Elections, and Veteran Status

The office of the president is a logical one to examine in terms of veteran status and electability because of the president's role as commander in chief and in policy decisions that affect the military. In presidential races from 1788 to 2004, veterans were chosen to run 46 times while nonveterans were chosen and ran 62 times (a 3:4 ratio). In the period prior to the Civil War (1788–1860), veterans ran 14 times, nonveterans 27 times. From the Civil War to the year before U.S. entry into World War I (1864–1916), a period during which the veteran to nonveteran ratio was higher than in previous decades owing to the vast numbers of Civil War vets, veterans and nonveterans were candidates for the presidency in equal numbers (13 times). Between the election following World War I and the last election during World War II (1920–44), only one veteran ran for the presidency while nonveterans ran 13 times. During the Cold War years (1948–88), however, veterans outnumbered nonveteran presidential candidates 12 to 7. Since the end of the Cold War (1992–2004), a veteran ran six times, a nonveteran twice.

In 24 presidential races, a veteran faced another veteran or a nonveteran faced another nonveteran. Three races were uncontested (the first two, in 1788 and 1792, when George Washington had no opposition, and in 1820, when James Monroe ran unopposed). Hence, 27 races involved a veteran vs. a nonveteran. Of these, veterans won 17, nonveterans, 10. These data seem to suggest that veterans had an advantage over nonveterans in running for president. But if the extent of combat experience is weighted (a combat veteran counting as 1, one who saw no combat one-half), the balance shifts to 14 with combat experience and 12 without combat experience or without military service at all—not a significant difference.

Why, then, did political party leaders choose veterans for presidential races at rates that, for most of these years, were higher than the proportion of veterans in the adult male population? In the only research of its kind, Albert Somit (1948) explored the possibility of whether “military hero” status aided the electability of presidential candidates. Somit noted that a number of individuals had military careers of such distinction and glory that their careers were the central factor contributing to their nomination for president. More than 40 percent of the presidential nominees between 1828 and 1916 could be styled military heroes. Using this classification, Somit found that military heroes received a greater percentage of the popular vote than others, whether they won or lost, and tended to win by larger [Page 864]margins when running against nonheroes. Somit concluded that a political party that nominated a military hero increased its chance of winning the election.

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