I'm a former Republican, now registered as an independent and I've contributed money to both the Obama and McCain campaigns. Here's why: they aren't Clinton/Romney. In different ways Obama and McCain represent the best of our democratic traditions. And Obama and McCain are up against the Romney/Clinton nepotistic dynasties that appear to be more like entitled heirs grasping for the throne of pre-revolutionary France, than anything American. Worse--like W--Clinton/Romney talk tough on defense and are ready to send other people's children to war, but not their own.
My Marine son recently served in the Bush dynasty's wars-of-choice for long months that stretched into gut-wrenching years. I was proud of my son's service but also resentful when he was deployed again and again while the commander-in-chief's service-age daughters were on a perpetual spring break. My slow burn--feeling like a peasant looking through the gates of Versailles just before the French Revolution--got me to thinking about the sorts of people running our country these days.
The real division in America isn't between Republicans and Democrats or the left and right or between religious and secular people. The most glaring division is between we the "peasants" and a self-perpetuating royalty. Nowhere is this division more apparent than in who serves in our military and who does not. (In 1956 about half the graduating class of Princeton went on to serve in the military, today it's less than a fraction of one percent and the same is true of the other Ivy League schools. For more see AWOL--The Unexcused Absence Of America's Upper Classes From Military Service and How It Hurts Our Country, a book I co-authored.)
This country doesn't have a draft. The freedom not to volunteer extends president's children too. And I don't want to suggest that politically ambitious parents should push their offspring to serve. That said, presidents and potential presidents are free to encourage or discourage their children to do a little heavy lifting along with ordinary Americans once in a while. And to me this is one way to assess character. For instance, Joe Biden, who opposes the war in Iraq, has a son serving in the military who is about to be deployed to Iraq. This tells me a lot about the Biden home: service trumps entitlement. (Too bad Biden dropped out of the race!)
How do the candidates with a real shot at the presidency measure up when it comes to my offbeat whose-children-serve yardstick? My question doesn't apply to Senator Obama. His children are both too young. And Obama has consistently opposed the Bush wars-of-choice, so even if his kids were of service age at least he can't be accused of gross hypocrisy.
Senator McCain has two children in the military. Nineteen-year-old Jimmy is a Marine and twenty-one-year-old Jack is at the Naval Academy. The fact that his sons are willing to fight a war McCain has vowed to try and win lends weight to his words, no matter what you think of his strategy for ending Bush's misbegotten wars.
Romney has five military age sons. They're all helping with his campaign. And when CBS's Mike Wallace asked them whether any of them had thought about serving, the answer was a universal no. "I feel guilty about not having done it," said thirty-two-year-old real estate developer Josh Romney. His twenty-nine-year-old brother been admitted: "I've seen a lot that made me say, 'my goodness, I hope I never have to do that.'"
Chelsea Clinton, who is routinely trotted out to play the part of a strangely mute campaign ornament, has led a similarly privileged and protected life as the Romney heirs. She went from Oxford to a consulting job with a starting salary of over $100,000 at (what else?) a hedge fund company. The lesson she seems to have taken from her parents is: chase the money, prestige and power.
There is nothing wrong with the Clinton/Romney heirs making a buck instead of serving their country -- unless Clinton/Romney are going to ask other people's equally gifted children to sacrifice. It isn't a question of what the children should do, but of what kinds of parents we want in charge of our country, as judged by the values they have or haven't passed on to those closest to them.
Maybe it's time Clinton/Romney take a page from Eleanor Roosevelt. She wrote in her diary: "I think my husband would have been very much upset if the boys had not wanted to go into the war immediately. But he did not have to worry very much because they were either already in, before the war began, or they went in immediately after."
The inference was that FDR (no stranger to privilege) would have been ashamed to ask ordinary American's children to do what his children lacked the patriotism to do. The commander-in-chief is, in the context of today's all-recruited military, also the recruiter-in-chief. Personal credibility should be one perquisite of seeking the presidency.
It's time to ask Clinton/Romney, who consistently talk tough on defense, if they think they can inspire the country to make sacrifices while their own children have chosen to join the most lucrative of overpaid professions: hedge fund managing and/or the Romney family financial empire, at a time when other young men and women are dying in part because of the pro-war Clinton votes in the Senate and the continuing blind support of Bush's foolish war-of-choice by the likes of Romney.
It seems that the Romney/Clinton children, unlike Biden's son, the McCain children (or anti-Iraq-war Senator James Webb's boy who is a Marine serving) have learned all too well from their parents: life is about enriching yourself through power and nepotistic privilege. This is surely especially true of the Clintons, whose personal fortunes have been made exclusively by their cashing in on political power via book advances, inside deals through access to powerful individuals and outsized--some might say obscene--speaking fees.
Surely the entitled dynastic continuity of the Clinton and Bush families--a grab for power by passing on the presidency from father to son and now husband to wife, is not the American way. Nor is telling others to serve when your own won't.
I'd be relieved to see Obama and McCain in a race against each other. They both are a lot more we the people than divine right of kings. And in an Obama vs. McCain race we could concentrate on a real choice between different policies. The race would be between honorable candidates who have the moral authority given those who live the way they talk, instead of between Clinton and Romney, who are really just more of the same: members of our nepotistic wealthy elite playing we peasants for suckers.
For the last 8 years we've been led by an entitled dynastic prince pretending he's one of us while sending other people's children to war. One W is more than enough.
Frank Schaeffer is a writer and author of "Crazy For God: How I Grew Up As One Of The Elect, Helped Found The Religious Right, And Lived To Take All (Or Almost All) Of It Back."
Follow Frank Schaeffer on Twitter: www.twitter.com/frank_schaeffer
"playing us peasants for suckers" would be correct. Not that I agree with this article in general, although Bush and the Republican Party in general do play poor religious people for suckers.
Because I cannot bear to to belabor the obvious foolishness of such a standard, let me tap a mighty nail in the coffin of Schaeffer's argument with this historical example: President Lincoln's eldest son, Robert Todd Lincoln, spent most of the War at Harvard, to spare the President anxiety about his well-being. Now, did this make Lincoln a careless or less tortured commander-in-chief? Hardly. Nor did it make Robert Lincoln a villain: he went on to serve as a Secretary of War and an Ambassador to Great Britain.
Mr. Schaeffer's son's decision to volunteer to serve in the Marine Corps is, in my view, laudable: but it was his decision, not his father's, and made I'm sure not to please anyone but himself. That all who know and love him, worry for his safety, is a consequence of a choice we must respect. Such endless awful concern, however, does not make Mr. Schaeffer's opinion of who should be commander-in-chief any more acute, or persuasive, than my opinion, or yours.
Schaeffer's reasoning that Obama and McCain (whose opinions, not incidentally, on the Iraq War and use of military force are antithetical) are better choices for president than, say, Hillary, because her daughter did not enlist, is simply absurd.
YOU WROTE A BOOK? wow!!
Don't kid yourself, this does not make you smart. You're fooling no one.
If you were, you'd have realized the Clinton family is no Dynasty.
Now the Bush (crime) family certainly is. Barbara was President Pierces Granddaughter and feels her family is entitled to OUR WHITE HOUSE. The Bush legacy is full of war-profiteers since WWI. Probably before!
Don't insult our intellegience. Having been a Republican once proves you're not too bright.
Do you really want your son to be serving in McCain's hundred year war for profit? My family has proudly fought in every war beginning with the Revolution. Having been duped into serving during the Viet Nam war for profit, I told my son not to go to this one. I am proud that he is smarter than I was at his age.
Our enemy is here within our borders. This is where we need to be fighting now.
I wouldn't be too surprised to find that Bill's vehement (?!) support of Hillary arises from simple recognition that if Hillary becomes President, she probably never will dump him - and all of the millions he is harvesting for having been a corporate lackey for all of these years will be safe.
Blah blah blah Hillary's bad, Obama's good.
Yawn.
Trouble is, your man Obama is so dainty he's let Hillary and Bill turn him into a whining baby--showing us in the process that the evil GOP swiftboaters will eviscerate him if he gets that far.
As for McCain, please.
No more war, damn it. No more.
Obama is a GREENHORN who is more green than black or white but granted is a male.
McCain is too old and a war-monger and will be a replica of what we already had.
As a Princeton student, I can also personally attest to the fact that we were the LOUDEST to protest the Iraq War. 9/11 happened on my first WEEK at Princeton before classes had even started.
I'm a poor black kid raised by an immigrant father and a mother from a low-income Memphis neighborhood (what some would call a ghetto). My dad lived through the Bi-Afran war and had to walk through the bones of the dead on his way home from school.
Spare me this "rich people don't send their kids to war" bunk. Princeton is overwhelmingly leftist and anti-war, OF COURSE THEY WON'T SERVE IN THE MILITARY! We won't even let ROTC on campus because of their anti-gay policies!
your alleged support of Obama-McCain sounds all the more perplexing knowing full well there will not be a ticket linking these 2 candidates. your argument is as troubled as the person yourself having contributed money to both campaigns. you are a true "independent" sitting on the fence buying full insurance. what exactly are you?