In July 2017, the hat of a Marine standing by the president’s
helicopter flew off at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. President
Trump bent down, picked up the hat, walked over to the Marine,
and placed it on his head. The serendipitous interaction was
captured on video. It went viral.
In February 2020, President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence
visited Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. They stood at attention
in the rain and saluted as two flag-draped caskets were carried
from a C-17 Globemaster and put into an awaiting vehicle. One
casket carried the remains of Sergeant Javier Jaguar Gutierrez of
San Antonio, Texas; the other held the remains of Sergeant Antonio
Rey Rodriguez of Las Cruces, New Mexico. The two 28-year-old
servicemen were killed in Afghanistan.
Serving Thanksgiving dinner to the troops, retrieving a Marine’s
cap, honoring fallen soldiers – such is the life of a Commander in
Chief in the 21st Century.
In his book The Hardest Job in the World: The American
Presidency, John Dickerson of 60 Minutes writes that, “The
presidency is a job of unrelenting difficult decisions.” He notes that
Dwight D Eisenhower told his successor John F Kennedy, “There
are no easy matters that will ever come to you as president. If they
are easy, they will be settled at a lower level.”
Writing for The Atlantic, Dickerson had this to say about
the presidency:
“No one man – or woman – can possibly represent the varied,
competing interests of 327 million citizens. And it may be that no
man – or woman – can perform the ever-expanding duties of office
while managing an executive branch of 2 million employees (not
including the armed forces) charged with everything from regulating
air pollution to X-raying passengers before they board an airplane.”
Even when the nation was young, its population paltry, and its
leadership battle-tested, governing wasn’t easy. Little wonder,
then, that 11 of America’s first 23 chief executives were generals:
George Washington, Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison,
Zachary Taylor,
Franklin Pierce,
Andrew Johnson,
Ulysses S Grant,
Rutherford B
Hayes, James A.
Garfield, Chester A
Arthur, and Benjamin
Harrison. Since then,
only one president possessed such a high-level
military pedigree: Dwight Eisenhower, a five-star general
who served as Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary
Force in Europe during World War Two.
Of course, not every general wants to be president. William
Tecumseh Sherman, who served in the Union Army during the
American Civil War, was clear about his intentions: “I hereby state,
and mean all that I say, that I never have been and never will be a
candidate for president; that if nominated by either party, I should
peremptorily decline; and even if unanimously elected I should
decline to serve.”
Some presidents who did serve departed the highest office in the
land with less-than positive memories regarding their time as chief
executive. Here are a few:
“I did not expect to encounter what has beset me since my
elevation to the presidency. God knows, I have endeavored to
fulfill what I considered to be an honest duty, but I have been
mistaken; my motives have been misconstrued and my feelings
grossly betrayed.” – Zachary Taylor
THE US MILITARY ACADEMY AT WEST POINT held its graduation and
commissioning ceremony for the Class of 2020 on The Plain in West Point,
New York, June 13, 2020. In attendance were commencement speaker
President Donald J Trump, Secretary of the Army Ryan D McCarthy and Chief
of Staff of the Army General James C McConville. Photo by Brandon O’Connor.
116 The TRUMP RALLY Publication