That’s Dana Milbank’s theory:
A Congressional Quarterly count of the current Congress finds that just 86 of the 435 members of the House are veterans, as are only 17 of 100 senators, which puts the overall rate at 19 percent. This is the lowest percentage of veterans in Congress since World War II, down from a high of 77 percent in 1977-78, according to the American Legion. For the past 21 years, the presidency has been occupied by men who didn’t serve or, in the case of George W. Bush, served in a capacity designed to avoid combat. It’s no coincidence that this same period has seen the gradual collapse of our ability to govern ourselves: a loss of control over the nation’s debt, legislative stalemate and a disabling partisanship. It’s no coincidence, either, that Americans’ approval of Congress has dropped to just 9 percent, the lowest since Gallup began asking the question 39 years ago.
Because so few serving in politics have worn their country’s uniform, they have collectively forgotten how to put country before party and self-interest. They have forgotten a “cause greater than self,” and they have lost the knowledge of how to make compromises for the good of the country. Without a history of sacrifice and service, they’ve turned politics into war.
James Joyner finds that notion “absurd”:
Off the top of my head, it’s not even obvious that current Members of Congress who are veterans are more willing to “make compromises for the good of the country” than their non-veteran peers. Certainly, recently-departed Representative Allen West, a former Army lieutenant colonel allowed to retire after escaping conviction for war crimes, didn’t fit that bill. Nor did Todd “Legitimate Rape” Akin, who served in the Army Reserve. Looking at a slightly dated list of veterans in the House and Senate, one sees plenty of firebrands. Spencer Bachus. John Conyers. John Dingell. Louie Gohmert. Duncan Hunter. Darrell Issa. Peter King. Charlie Rangel. Bobby Rush. Joe “You Lie!” Wilson. Jim Inhofe.
Jazz Shaw, a veteran himself, piles on Milbank’s theory by calling it “the worst argument in favor of the draft ever”:
Personally, I find military service to be a significant plus on the resume of any candidate for elected office, but it won’t be my only consideration. The willingness to actually serve your nation, even at the cost of placing your own life in peril, speaks volumes about the person’s character when they come along later asking to serve in a different, less physically dangerous capacity. But I’m equally positive that prior service not only doesn’t need to be a requirement, but that it shouldn’t be. We keep the leadership of the civilian and military worlds separate for a reason, and we keep a very close eye on the one place where they overlap. (That being the dual nature of the President of the United States also being the Commander in Chief of the armed forces.)
Instituting the draft would still only affect a tiny portion of the civilian population under the most optimistic of Milbank’s envisioned circumstances. The odds that any significantly larger portion of the electoral candidate pool would wind up being veterans are too low to calculate.
Larison joins the chorus:
Depending on how Milbank’s expanded military is used, bringing back the draft could produce large numbers of radicalized citizens angry that they were forced to fight in the latest foolish and unnecessary war. Universal conscription guarantees nothing except the diminution of the freedom of Americans. Bringing it back would yield nothing but greater disaffection from and hostility to the government than already exists.
The Dish 