President Bush wore his Air Force flying jacket for the second time recently, this time greeting the troops at Ft. Campbell. That’s twice too many. In the first place, he hasn’t earned the right to wear a uniform as a civilian politician. Protecting the skies of Texas while better men were risking life and limb in Vietnam just doesn’t qualify.
Second, American leaders who had earned the right to wear it didn’t exercise it. President Dwight D. Eisenhower never wore the uniform when he campaigned for president–and he was a five-star general (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text). Bush’s own father never wore the uniform after he got out of the Navy–and he was a real war hero (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text).
Over the last 65 years or so, the world leaders who wore military uniforms for political occasions were pretty unsavory, including Josef Stalin and Saddam Hussein. Are these the people we want our president emulating?
