Republican ticket lets a military connection slip

By Walter V. Robinson, Globe Staff, 7/28/2000

he Republican Party, through 12 straight presidential elections, from Eisenhower in 1952 until Dole in 1996, matched its muscular approach to national defense by fielding candidates who had served in wartime.

Sometimes the service was heroic, as with Robert Dole. Sometimes it was mundane, as with Ronald Reagan's three years stateside with the US Army and Army Air Corps during World War II. Still, they served.

The 2000 GOP ticket has only the slightest connection to that long gray line. The question is: Will voters care?

During the Vietnam War, Texas Governor George W. Bush compiled a spotty attendance record in a Texas Air National Guard billet arranged through family political connections. And this week, he chose a running mate, Dick Cheney, whose extended student life - and the fortuitous conception of his first child - insulated him from any military service during the Vietnam War.

With Second World War and Korean War veterans dying by the thousands every day, and the Cold War itself just a distant memory, the notion of military service as an invaluable part of a political resume may be passing into history just as quickly.

Indeed, in picking Cheney as his running mate, Bush passed over two decorated Vietnam veterans, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge and Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel - even though his general election oppponent, Vice President Al Gore, spent five months in Vietnam and might yet ask someone like Senator John F. Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran, to join him on the Democratic ticket.

As political strategists in both parties mulled over the Cheney choice yesterday, they saw little risk in Bush's move: After all, in 1992, Bill Clinton, who actively avoided service during the Vietnam War, took the White House away from President Bush, who was the Navy's youngest pilot during World War II.

William D. McInturff, a Republican poll taker who worked earlier this year for Senator John McCain, said a Vietnam War credential retains potential for drawing voters. But, McInturff said, ''Bill Clinton changed the equation. If he could dodge the draft and be elected president, it will be hard for the Democrats to say that Governor Bush's National Guard service or Dick Cheney's deferments are disqualifying.''

By his reckoning, and that of California-based Democratic strategist William A. Carrick, the bulk of the electorate is now concentrated in two generations for whom military service has become increasingly rare.

Statistics maintained by the Selective Service System and the Department of Veterans Affairs suggest that Bush and Cheney are more typical of the Vietnam-era generation than, say, Gore and Kerry. And very few voters under age 45 have served in the military at all.

Between July 1, 1964 and June 30, 1973, just before Bush won an early release from the National Guard to attend Harvard Business School, 18.3 million men registered with Selective Service. Just 8.8 million of them, including 1.7 million draftees, served on active duty. And of those who served on active duty, just 2.6 million served in Vietnam.

As of mid-1966, when Cheney's daughter was born, there were more draft-age fathers deferred from service, 3.5 million, than the total number of men and women who served in Vietnam throughout the war.

Even so, McInturff and Carrick both pointed to evidence that the military credential still draws votes. And McInturff, like Democrats who see partisan advantage in Cheney's selection, said Gore's military experience might appeal to a class of voters who are dependable GOP voters - older white voters in Midwestern swing states who normally vote Republican.

For now, at least, Bush holds an overwhelming edge among such voters, many of whom are veterans, polls show. It is for that reason, McInturff said, that it is important that Bush counter any impression that he received preferential treatment in the National Guard. The Cheney choice may help, he said, because Cheney served as defense secretary under Bush's father.

But making the case against preferential treatment may be hard. There is strong evidence that in 1968, the son of George H.W. Bush, then a Houston congressman, was vaulted to the top of a long waiting list because a friend of the elder Bush made a call to Texas House Speaker Ben Barnes, who often helped place the sons of political allies in the Texas Guard. Both Bushes have denied any knowledge of the intercession.

Bush, despite a low score on a pilot aptitude test, was also quickly approved for pilot training, and a commission as a second lieutenant. After 18 months of pilot training, Bush in June 1970 joined the ranks of part-time fighter pilots at Ellington Field in Houston. He had a four-year flying commitment remaining at that point.

In his autobiography, Bush wrote that he flew with his unit for several years. But the Globe reported recently that Bush abruptly ceased flying 22 months later, in April 1972, and did not fly again.

Bush has said he stopped flying because he moved to Alabama in May 1972 to work on a US Senate campaign for several months, and that he performed alternative duty with an Alabama Guard unit. But there are no records that Bush ever did such duty. And in May 1973, a half year after Bush returned from Alabama, Bush's two commanders in Houston said he had not been seen at his unit in 12 months.

Both men have since died, and Bush has said he did perform duty. He said he could no longer fly the F-102 fighter-interceptor he had been trained on because the unit was switching to a newer jet. As a result, he was released from the remainder of his commitment just after he started Harvard in September 1973.

But the unit's records show, and its former commander, retired Major General Bobby W. Hodges, said that the F-102 was still being flown until the year after Bush left the Guard. Hodges, in a recent interview, echoed the recollection of one of his subordinates: that Bush did not return to the Houston unit, instead finishing his military commitment in Alabama.

''If [Bush] had come back to Houston, I would have kept him flying the 102 until he got out,'' siad Hodges, a Bush admirer. ''But I don't recall him coming back at all.''

Some records show Bush attended some drills in mid-1973, but his official discharge papers that summarize his truncated service in the Guard do not credit Bush with any drills after April 1972 - 18 months before his discharge.

Deepening the mystery, Bush was removed from flight status in August 1972 for failing to take his annual flight physical. Bush's campaign aides have said he did not take the physical because he was in Alabama and his personal physician was in Houston. But flight physicals can be administered only by certified Air Force flight surgeons, and some were assigned at the time to Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, where Bush was living.

In interviews in May, a Bush aide and a retired Guard personnel officer who has assisted the Bush campaign in assessing the governor's records suggested that Bush might have lost interest in the Guard during that year.

Cheney - unlike Clinton, who took controversial steps to avoid the draft - appears to have played by the rules, according to Selective Service records. In 1959, the year he finished high school in Wyoming, Cheney registered with his local Selective Service board. For almost all of the next six years, until he graduated from college in 1965, he maintained a student deferment.

Cheney was briefly cleared for possible induction, but he regained his student deferment when he entered graduate school that fall. In October 1965, Selective Service put childless married men in the same draftable status as single men. In January 1966, Cheney received the more prefereable, and durable classification of 3-A, exempting him from any chance of service because his wife was 10 weeks pregnant.

The spokesman said Cheney's deferments a generation ago pale in comparison to the defense and foreign policy experience he would bring to a Bush White House after his four years at Defense, and as the overseer of the Gulf War.

''Even the Democrats recognized his wisdom, judgment, and experience when they confirmed him for that job,'' Bartlett said. The votes to confirm Cheney included that of then-Senator Al Gore.