There’s a problem developing between President Clinton and the armed forces.
It’s bigger than their differences over whether openly homosexual persons should be allowed to serve, although that’s a factor. It’s bigger than any differences over the amount and kind of cuts in the nation’s defense budget, although that, too, is a factor.
It involves the critical issue of the proper relationship between the armed forces and the commander-in-chief. Quite simply, both parties seem in danger of forgetting that it is the commander-in-chief who is elected by the people to give the lawful orders, and the military exists to carry them out.
For the good of himself, the armed forces and the nation, Clinton needs to act promptly and firmly to make sure everyone involved understands and abides by that relationship.
Fundamentally, the source of the problem seems to be that Clinton does not have the personal respect of the people in uniforms. His never having served in the military probably is part of the reason. The dubious means by which he avoided doing so are, no doubt, an aggravating factor.
This lack of respect was reinforced when, in his first days in office, Clinton threatened a pillar of military culture by trying to overturn the ban against service by open homosexuals.
But it was Clinton’s acceptance of a compromise on the issue-wise as it was-that seems to have turned disrespect into contempt, because it apparently was interpreted by the services as a retreat.
According to one questioner at his press conference this week-and no one has challenged the assertion-Clinton was openly mocked by sailors aboard a Navy vessel he visited recently. That could not have happened without the tacit approval of their commanders.
Clinton cannot change his personal history or his personality-he is a politician to the marrow, an instinctive seeker of compromise.
He cannot change the awful bad luck that has kept his secretary of defense, Les Aspin, at the doctor’s office as much as at the Pentagon during his first two months in office and, thus, kept him from taking full command of that vast establishment.
He cannot change the fact that a key senator from his own party, Sam Nunn of Georgia, disagrees in principle with the pace of his defense budget cuts and his position on gays in the military (and probably also enjoys tweaking a man he feels deep down is less qualified to be president than he is).
What Clinton can change-and must-is the impression that this commander-in-chief is a marshmallow who will not give clear orders and demand obedience. If it requires rolling some heads at the Pentagon to make the point, he must not flinch.
Bill Clinton may not be the man the armed forces would have chosen to lead them. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is that the American people did.
