Professional officers who have become President have conformed to the civilian pattern not only as candidates but also in office. With one possible exception, their policies as a whole have not significantly differed from the policies of those presidents without military experience. More passively, perhaps, than many civilian politicians, they have been the accurate representatives and instruments of the dominant political forces of their day. In particular, they have not tried to impose definite policy views on the government, but have played it largely by ear and have usually paid great deference to the wishes of Congress. “It’s easy enough to be President,” Admiral Dewey is reported to have declared, “all you have to do . . . is to take orders from Congress.”10 Only with respect to the size of the military forces do the policies of the professional military presidents appear to differ significantly from those of the civilians. The administrations of Taylor, Grant, and Eisenhower all saw substantial reductions in the military establishment. In part, this was due to postwar demobilization. In part, it was also certainly due to an over-adjustment to civilian values and the fact that it is much easier for a general to reduce the size of the Army than for anyone else to do so.
The rise of military professionalism after the Civil War tended to sharpen the line between the military and politics. Prior to that time most politicians held militia commissions, and many moved in and out of the Regular Army. Five of the nine nonprofessional candidates ran for office before the Civil War and three made their military reputations in the Civil War. With the exception of Theodore Roosevelt’s fling in the Spanish-American War, the War Between the States was the last opportunity for the citizen-officer to make a name for himself. America has fought its twentieth-century wars under professional leadership. The nonprofessional military hero is probably a phenomenon of the past. Citizen-soldiers in the future will only be able to distinguish themselves by individual exploits of valor — like Sergeant York — not by the command of victorious armies.
What, however, can be said about the professional military hero? Has he tended to become more or less important? Two of the professionals, Taylor and Scott, were candidates in the pre-Civil War years when, even for regulars, the line between military service and politics was not very sharp. Three other professional candidates made their reputations in the Civil War. From 1880 to 1952 no professional military man was nominated for the Presidency. Admiral Dewey and General Wood, the two professionals during these years who most obviously yearned for the Presidency, did not get very far. And Wood, who entered the Army as a physician and made his military reputation as a volunteer officer in the Spanish-American War, was really only a “semi-pro.” The seventy-two-year break between Hancock and Eisenhower thus reflected the heightened professionalism of the post-1865 military. Nonprofessional soldiers (except for Theodore Roosevelt) did not become military hero candidates because they did not become military heroes. Professional soldiers did not become military hero candidates because they were professional: they were dubious about venturing into politics and the politicians were dubious about seeking after them. The election of Eisenhower in 1952, on the other hand, signalized the entrance of the military professional into politics in the drastically changed conditions prevailing after 1940.
* The Neo-Hamiltonians of the turn of the century — Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, Elihu Root, Herbert Croly — were semi-conservative. See below, Chapter 10.
* All of the nonprofessionals except Jackson, W. H. Harrison, and Frémont met the primary test of the citizen-soldier: their military service was limited to years of war or the threat of war. Jackson entered the national military service from the Tennessee militia during the War of 1812 and remained in the Army seven years after the end of the war. He had, however, already made a reputation as lawyer, judge, planter, and politician, before becoming a soldier. W. H. Harrison was a Regular Army officer from 1791 to 1798 but his reputation as a military hero was based on his subsequent service as Governor of Indiana Territory and as a major general in the War of 1812. Fremont served for about fourteen years in the Army in peace and war from 1834 to 1848 but his peacetime service was almost exclusively devoted to exploration. Taylor and Scott were not West Pointers, but each spent virtually all his adult life in the Army. Grant was seven years outside the service but never became proficient at any other trade. McClellan was a railroad executive for four years before the Civil War, Eisenhower a college president for an even shorter period. Hancock was never out of uniform. All the professionals, except McClellan, were on active service when advanced for the Presidency. Lewis Cass, Democratic nominee against Taylor in 1848, was a general in the War of 1812, but his military record played little role in his campaign, and consequently he cannot be classed as a “military hero candidate.” In a sense, Theodore Roosevelt was only a military hero candidate for the vice-presidency; in 1904 he ran primarily on his record and personality as President. Nonetheless, his Spanish-American War exploits played such a significant role in his political rise, that it seems legitimate to classify him with the nonprofessional military heroes.
* The political disability of naval officers has extended to congressional elections also. In 150 years apparently only six former officers of the Regular Navy were elected to Congress. U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, LXXVII (December 1951), 1339–1340.
7
The Structural Constant: The Conservative Constitution versus Civilian Control
THE CONSTITUTIONAL ABSENCE OF OBJECTIVE CIVILIAN CONTROL
The United States Constitution, despite the widespread belief to the contrary, does not provide for civilian control. That is, it does not permit the objective civilian control compatible with a high level of military professionalism. The essence of civilian control in this sense is a clear distinction between political and military responsibilities and the institutional subordination of the latter to the former. These are unknown to the Constitution, which mixes political and military functions, interjecting politics into military affairs and military affairs into politics. Present in the minds of the Framers when they wrote it and perpetuated in its provisions was an essentially subjective approach to civil-military relations. Civilian control has at times existed in the United States, but it has emerged despite rather than because of constitutional provisions.
The very aspects of the Constitution which are frequently cited as establishing civilian control are those which make it difficult to achieve. Civilian control would be maximized if the military were limited in scope and relegated to a subordinate position in a pyramid of authority culminating in a single civilian head. The military clauses of the Constitution, however, provide for almost exactly the opposite. They divide civilian responsibility for military affairs and foster the direct access of the military authorities to the highest levels of government:
(1) Within the total federal system of government, the militia clauses divide control over the militia between the state and national governments.
(2) Within the national government, the separation of powers divides control of the national military forces between Congress and the President.
(3) Within the executive branch of the national government, the Commander in Chief clause tends to divide control over the military between the President and departmental secretaries.
These latter two provisions reflect the distribution of military powers in the British government in the eighteenth century. The similarity, however, turned into a fundamental difference in the course of a century and a half. The evolution of British government centralized all authority over the military in the Cabinet, and the British constitution today provides for extremely effective civilian control. The American Constitution, however, remains frozen in the eighteenth-century pattern. The centrifugal politics of this country and the written, inflexible character of the Constitution combined to obstruct changes similar to those in Great Britain. American lack of concern with military affairs, furthermore, left the constitutional structure almost unsupplemented by statut
ory enactments. Prior to the twentieth century the only significant additions were the office of the Secretary of War created in 1789 and the office of the Secretary of the Navy created in 1798. For most of American history, the Constitution and little else determined the legal structure of American civil-military relations.
THE FRAMERS AND CIVILIAN CONTROL
The speeches and writings of the Framers of the Constitution abound with statements that the military should be subordinated to the civil power. If this is the case, how is it that they apparently failed so completely to carry out their intention? The answer is, of course, that military professionalism and civilian control as the subordination of that profession to political institutions were simply unknown to the eighteenth century. In terms of providing for civilian control, the Constitution was drafted at just the wrong time in history. It was a product of the last years of preprofessional officership. If it had been framed twenty-five years later, its clauses with respect to military power might well have been significantly different. But, as it was, for all their political wisdom and insight, the Framers did not, with a few exceptions, foresee the emergence of military professionalism and objective civilian control. It is no criticism of them that they did not provide for something which did not exist when they were drafting the Constitution. Their approach to civilian control was reflected in their ideas on military officership, military forces, and governmental organization.
Military Officership. The Constitution does not envisage a separate class of persons exclusively devoted to military leadership. “I am not acquainted with the military profession,” George Mason proclaimed at the Virginia convention and, except for Hamilton, Pinckney, and a few others, he spoke for all the Framers. They knew neither military profession nor separate military skills. Military officership was the attribute of any man of affairs. Many members of the Federal Convention had held military rank during the Revolution; Washington was only the most obvious of the soldier-statesmen. They combined in their own persons military and political talents much as the samurai founders of modern Japan also combined them a hundred years later. Following Blackstone, they believed that in a free state the citizen did not cease to be a citizen when he became a soldier but rather became a soldier because he was a citizen.1
Such views were clearly revealed in the ineligibility and incompatibility clauses of Article I, Section 6:
No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil office under the Authority of the United States, which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been increased during such time; and no person holding any Office under the United States shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance in Office.
The Convention almost unanimously supported the second clause of this paragraph making legislative office incompatible with judicial or executive (including military) office. This was required by the separation of powers. It reflected the necessity of keeping the legislature distinct from the executive rather than the desirability of keeping the political distinct from the military. Attention at the Convention centered on the first clause of the paragraph. As reported from the Committee of Detail, this clause proposed to make members of the legislature ineligible for appointment to any national office during the time for which they were elected. Opinions on the desirability of permitting legislators to assume civil office varied and were finally resolved by compromise. There was, however, a universal belief that Senators and Representatives should be eligible for appointment to a military office. “Exclude the officers of the army & navy,” said Gouveneur Morris, “and you form a band having a different interest from & opposed to the civil power: you stimulate them to despise & reproach those ‘talking Lords who dare not face the foe.’ ” What would occur, he inquired, in the
. . . case of a war, and the Citizen the most capable of conducting it, happening to be a member of the Legislature. What might have been the consequence of such a regulation at the commencement, or even in the Course of the late contest for our liberties?
Others, such as Edmund Randolph, who favored the general ineligibility of legislators for executive office also recognized that military talent might well exist in Congress and supported an exception with respect to military office. Consequently, the final draft applied incompatibility to both civil and military office but the eligibility limitations only to civil office. Subsequently, in the Virginia convention Madison defended the eligibility provisions concerning civil office by citing the absence of any such restrictions upon appointment to military office. His argument plus the lack of any opposition to legislative eligibility to military office in the ratification debates indicates how widespread was the acceptance of this Cincinnatus theory of military leadership.2
Military Forces. The Framers’ concept of nonprofessional officership could have been embodied in either of the two forms of military organization familiar to eighteenth-century America: the standing army and the citizen militia. These forms, however, were essentially the extension into the military realm of different political beliefs. The standing army with its upper-class officers and lower-class enlisted men was basically an aristocratic institution. It was associated with the British Crown and with European despotism. It was also quite unnecessary in the eyes of many Americans. The distance of the United States from Europe meant that it required no permanent military force with the possible exception of small frontier garrisons to deal with the Indians. Consequently, it was generally agreed that primary reliance must be put upon a citizen militia composed of part-time officers and enlisted men. This was the only form of military force suitable for the new republic. The militia embodied the democratic principle that defense of the nation was the responsibility of every citizen. The distinction between officers and enlisted men was minimized, and the line between them did not correspond to any sharp cleavage in the social structure.
Preference for the militia was almost universal throughout the states. “There was not a member in the federal Convention,” Edmund Randolph remarked with only slight exaggeration, “who did not feel indignation” at the prospect of a standing army. The ratifying conventions were even more strongly opposed to regular military forces. Nonetheless, they approved a Constitution which, while barring standing armies to the states, gave the national government unlimited power to maintain a military force, the only restriction being that no appropriations for this purpose could be made for more than two years. The reasons for this apparent anomaly were twofold. First, it was generally recognized that the national government would have to maintain some sort of permanent force along the frontier. Secondly, there was always the possibility that a standing army might be necessary in an emergency. But the hope and expectation were that this emergency would never occur and that the power would never be utilized. Few provisions in the Constitution were agreed to with more reluctance, and some delegates most vehemently opposed to standing forces refused to sign the Constitution. Criticism of this unrestricted congressional power was widespread in the state conventions. A number of states proposed requiring an extraordinary majority in Congress for the maintenance of such a force or suggested amendments declaring the militia to be “the natural defence of a free state” and standing armies in peace “dangerous to liberty.”3
Preference for the militia had two important results for future civilian control. First, it assigned a major place in the American military scheme to a force which could never be professionally officered or subjected to civilian control. At the time, of course,professional officers were just as rare in standing armies as they were in citizen militias. The former, however, because they were composed of full-time soldiers, could eventually evolve into a disciplined body of professionals. This was impossible in a part-time militia force. Secondly, the expectation that the militia would be the main reliance for defense made the framers relatively unconcerned with devising institutional techniques to control military forces in being. In part, this was the result of t
he feeling that such devices could never be successful. To a larger extent, it reflected the view that such devices were unnecessary. The republic would be defended by its loyal citizen-soldiers. Civilian supremacy would be maintained by eliminating a distinct military force.
Governmental Organization. The Framers’ concept of civilian control was to control the uses to which civilians might put military force rather than to control the military themselves. They were more afraid of military power in the hands of political officials than of political power in the hands of military officers. Unable to visualize a distinct military class, they could not fear such a class. But there was need to fear the concentration of authority over the military in any single governmental institution. As conservatives, they wanted to divide power, including power over the armed forces. The national government if it monopolized military power would be a threat to the states; the President if he had sole control over the armed forces would be a threat to the Congress. Consequently, the Framers identified civilian control with the fragmentation of authority over the military. Concern for the independence of Congress from executive control, rather than an understanding of the distinct nature of the political and military functions, caused them to make legislative and military office incompatible. The issue of the relative desirability of a militia versus a standing army was subordinate to the issues of the relative power of the states and the nation, the executive and the legislature, over the military forces, whatever their character. Those who wished a strong national government had no hesitancy in arguing: (1) that continuation of the Articles of Confederation would mean standing armies in every state; (2) that the proposed national government necessarily had to have the power to raise a standing army; and (3) that to avoid the necessity of exercising this power, the national government should also organize and discipline the militia. Supporters of states rights, on the other hand, argued that it was unnecessary for the national government to have a standing army and that, in any case, the states ought to have exclusive control over the militia in order to protect themselves against the standing army of the national government.4
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