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OrpheusAgonistes -> RE: General Petraeus for President in 2012? (4/3/2010 10:30:42 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: DarkSteven
Intriguing article. But from reading it, I gather that Petraeus is the last person to say that he does not want to be President without meaning it.
FDD, you say that there were twelve. Off the top of my head, I came up with Ike, Grant, and Washington. I wish I knew more history.
People always forget Hamilton, probably because he couldn't even manage to out duel a swaggering dandy like Aaron Burr. But Hamilton was a Revolutionary War hero. He was ballsy, brilliant, and above all he was ambitious and there's no better way for the "bastard brat of a Scotch peddler" (as Jefferson described him) to rapidly improve his social status than by distinguishing himself in a War of Independence.
Off the top of my head, I can think of Zachary Taylor, Jackson, Garfield, Johnson, Pierce, and Harrison (in addition to Washington, Grant, and Ike). The others I'd have to look up.
Of course times are different now, for a lot of reasons. It isn't just that the tastes of the voters have changed, nor that the media has changed. The military itself has changed dramatically. There's an entirely different skill set these days for top brass than there used to be. I've had friends describe the ideal general in the army these days to be like "a really badass college president." Strangely enough, people who have had actual experience with modern warfare are often less able to portray themselves as swashbuckling macho macho men than are the guys who shirked service or who managed to land comfortably (by pluck or luck or, you know, vast family fortunes) far away from combat.
Petraeus, by most accounts, is a hell of a good general. That doesn't mean he'd be a good President. More to the point, that doesn't mean he'd have any chance of being elected. He's taken stances at various points that have enraged both the putative Right and putative Left wings of the American spectrum. My own impression of him is that he's one of the few grownups left in the American limelight. It seems like he thinks (and I am not sure I disagree with him) that the job he's doing right now is probably more important than being the CEO of America.
Edit:
Edited to add that I'm a schmucky airhead who forgot to mention in his long paean to Hamilton that Hamilton never got around to being elected President before his misadveture at Weehawken. He was, however, the very model of a modern major general and an all-round cool and froody guy on top of that.
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