The Way of the Fox

摘要

For more than half the history of our country, one of the surest ways to be elected president was to gain public fame as a general in the U.S. Army. George Washington set the example, and Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor and Ulysses S. Grant followed. There were others, too; presidents we do not think of as military men, although they wore stars: Franklin Pierce, Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Chester A. Arthur and Benjamin Harrison. The bumptious Theodore Roosevelt made it to colonel during the Cuban expedition of 1898. Had the war with Spain gone on, he would surely have advanced. Successful generals attained attention in the newspapers, and in the days before radio and television-let alone YouTube and Twitter-that could translate to votes. Since the tumultuous 19th century, we have fallen out of the habit of electing generals. Some generals tried, or at least thought about it, or had it thought about them. These include Douglas A. MacArthur, Alexander M. Haig, Colin L. Powell, Wesley K. Clark, and in recent years, David H. Petraeus. But the one exception to the rule turned out to be Dwight D. Eisenhower, former five-star general, former commander of Allied forces in Europe in World War II, first supreme commander of NATO and a two-term president who defined an era. It was a great achievement by any measure, especially for an indifferent West Point cadet (61st in a class of 164, although high in demerits), an officer who graduated in 1915 yet missed the Great War, and a prototypical staffer with only a few months of experience commanding troops before World War II began. Yet when the call came, Eisenhower was ready.