People generally get mad when debating about the course the country should take, because it is very important to them.

I agree that McCain deserves a lot of respect for his service, however it doesn't make me want to vote for him any more than if he had been a civilian.

Some people hold the belief that a person with military service automatically make a good president. This is not true.

- US Grant
- LBJ
- Jimmy Carter
- George W Bush (if you call serving in the Air National Guard and then deserting a "military career")

All of these had two things in common:

they all served in the military and they are all widely regarded as bad POTUS.

Originally Posted by Easy-8

Some people hold the belief that a person with military service automatically make a good president. This is not true.

- US Grant
- LBJ
- Jimmy Carter
- George W Bush (if you call serving in the Air National Guard and then deserting a "military career")

All of these had two things in common:

they all served in the military and they are all widely regarded as bad POTUS.

I'd remove LBJ because he was neither a career military officer nor a bad president, he was "average".

However you can add Zachery Taylor, William Henry Harrison, and arguably Andrew Jackson.

The only one who was decent was Eisenhower, but in overall, military officers have made extremely poor presidents.

Originally Posted by mmarsh

I'd remove LBJ because he was neither a career military officer nor a bad president, he was "average".

However you can add Zachery Taylor, William Henry Harrison, and arguably Andrew Jackson.

The only one who was decent was Eisenhower, but in overall, military officers have made extremely poor presidents.

I think Andrew Jackson was great but the other two I would agree with.

I liked Andrew Jackson too.

It's hard to evaluate Andrew Jackson, because not even Del Boy was around for the Jackson administration.

He served in the 1820s. He made some popular moves, but then again he also arranged the Trail of Tears...

Andrew Jackson is a controversial individual, there was no doubting his popularity and he did do some good, but he did some very questionable actions too. "The Trail of Tears" is one, his dissolution of the 2nd National Bank caused a economic meltdown in the US, and his active encourgement of the "spoils" system (giving federal jobs to cronies) has led to the corrupt system we have today. There is a tendency to confuse Andrew Jackson the war hero, with Andrew Jackson the President.

Which gets back to Easy-8 point that military-career people make poor presidents. I have no problems with Presidents who served in the military, but I think the career military individuals become too rigid and authoritative for the job. A president needs to be assertive but flexible.

The military and the civilian worlds are two very different worlds that don't understand each other very well.
Military leaders being good presidents... only in a dictatorship. And other than South Korea I can't think of any other case where this was true.
As for the rigid and authoritative, it's a bit of a stereotype. You can get quite a few of those who are NCOs but as far as officers go I think they are quite different. It's really funny sometimes when you see a movie and you have these high ranking officers acting like NCOs. But I think if there's anything they could have issues with, it's that in general people in the civilian world lack something called mutual respect when it comes to interaction between different lines of work.