When the Anti-Military Generation Takes Office

One of the principal themes running through Bill Clinton’s first 100 days has been the way he has failed to win the trust of the military and its numerous supporters. It now goes far beyond his plans to ban discrimination against gays, or the fact that he failed to serve during the Vietnam War. For weeks now, stories--some surely apocryphal--have circulated in Washington about how Clinton couldn’t manage to salute correctly; that he planned to order military personnel to wear civilian clothes at the White House; that a White House aide angrily told an officer she didn’t speak to people in uniform, or how daughter Chelsea once refused to enter a government car because she didn’t want to ride with a uniformed officer.

The real question, of course, is why anyone is surprised that such stories have become the source of one of the new Administration’s major unfolding dramas. Fewer than six months ago, commentators were hailing the rise of a new generation of leadership to power, ending the 30-year hegemony of the World War II generation. Yet, as anyone who lived through the ‘60s knows, if there’s anything that separates many baby boomers from their elders, it lies in their attitude toward the military. This cultural and generational clash has been brewing for three decades.

It’s not for nothing that in their book “Generations,” William Strauss and Neil Howe call the generation that ruled the country from John F. Kennedy to George Bush the “GI Generation.” Because of World War II, nearly half of all men in that generation served in uniform--the highest percentage of any generation in U.S. history. Its heroes were the boys on the beach at Normandy and the flag-raisers at Iwo Jima. Its “poets”--James Jones, Gore Vidal, Joseph Heller or Norman Mailer--tended to cut their teeth writing military novels, just as heroic war movies were something approaching that generation’s version of rock ‘n’ roll. Even for those women and others who didn’t serve, reverence for a successful military was the cultural glue that gave that generation much of its identity.

The GI generation didn’t just admire the military. Their formative experiences in the service formed the basis for many of their core beliefs--and then ours--about leadership and how to run an organization. When Lyndon B. Johnson wanted to end poverty, he declared “war” on it, just as when pro-football owners decided to select players out of college for their teams, they created a “draft.”

In a popular women’s self-help book of the ‘70s, “Games Mother Never Taught You,” Betty Lehan Harragan even told her readers that the key to office politics was to realize the extent to which the army defined the workplace. “Regardless of how or why the military mentality overtook the corporate structure,” she wrote, “it is absolutely critical for aspiring women to understand that this is the primary layout of the business game board.”

Harragan attributed the rigid hierarchy of the corporate structure, its deference to authority, the separation of corporate officers from workers, the importance placed on following chain of command and even the emphasis on dress codes as a reflection of military life. It also goes without saying that the role for women in this was, at best, peripheral.

Thus, it’s no coincidence that the White House has been organized ever since World War II in a similar fashion. Those who enter the Oval Office for the first time are often struck by what a military office it has become--not just because there are soldiers around, but because its code of etiquette and chain of command (chief of staff, etc.) are so similar to the military’s. The President is far more a “commander-in-chief” today than he was 50 years ago--in part, because of the Cold War, but also because that’s the way the World War-II generation tended to organize almost everything, whether your name was Kennedy (war hero), Jimmy Carter (Naval Academy graduate) or Ronald Reagan (hero of war movies).

Now, of course, comes Clinton. In many ways, his generation defined itself by an antipathy to the military. It’s not simply that ‘60s activists objected to the rise of the “military-industrial complex,” or opposed the war in Vietnam. Long before that war, in fact, many baby boomers were defining themselves as anti-military and, therefore, anti-Establishment. Kenneth Kenniston wasn’t the only ‘60s author struck by the boomers’ “ambivalence” to male authority, which then often meant military authority.

The boomers’ beef with the military was as much cultural as substantive: If their fathers and mothers believed in the power of the group and strict structure, they believed in individualism and letting it all hang out. As Strauss and Howe have noted, one generation wore the army green, clipped its hair army-short and made the V-sign the symbol of its military triumph. In rebellion, the boomers made army jackets into hippie attire, grew their hair and appropriated the V-sign as a symbol of peace.

If the boomers had a common culture, it was supplied not by the army but by rock music, television or--if you were middle or upper-middle class like Clinton--by the disordered order of the college-dormitory gab session. It’s hardly a coincidence that Clinton has surrounded himself with a group of perpetual undergraduates or that he governs by the late-night bull session, the seminar or by publicly pondering every idea that seems to come into his head. He even has women as close advisers! No wonder the military can’t understand him, and vice versa.

Viewing Clinton in this light also makes it easier to see why Ross Perot is striking a nerve with so many of the electorate and has emerged as Clinton’s chief adversary. Perot, after all, is a Naval Academy graduate and first made a name for himself as a rescuer of missing servicemen abandoned by the government. Much of Perot’s strongest support has come from areas where there is a core of retired military people, just as many of his best-known supporters--James B. Stockdale or Orson G. Swindle III--are former military men.

While Perot may have his foot in an industry of the future, he has a reputation for organizing his businesses along a military model, placing him squarely in the generational camp opposing Clinton. For example, when he was asked about the Administration’s move to allow women to fly combat aircraft and serve aboard most Navy warships, Perot said, “I know I’m old-fashioned and out of date, but I just don’t see it.”

As with all generational conflicts, something will have to give. In a sense, the military has already moved--despite its current opposition to lifting the gay ban and the problems it continues to have with harassment of women. While no one would ever confuse life in the current military with life on a commune, the military has reformed itself in the light of the ‘60s. The leading opposition to military intervention now tends to come from generals; women are rising in the ranks, and even the military’s current fight with the commander-in-chief shows that the ‘60s slogan “Question authority” has taken root in the unlikeliest of places. Still, to get along with Clinton, the military and the generation that has embodied its ethos must change some more.

But Clinton and his followers must do the same and soon--particularly if military action is contemplated in Bosnia. Like many middle-class members of his generation, this President may have grown up distrusting the military without ever realizing it. Perhaps, because he grew up fatherless, he was simply unaware of the importance of military culture to his elders. Whatever the reason, he must come halfway now.

There is an irony to the charge that Clinton avoided military service at all costs some 25 years ago at the same time he was nurturing his ambition to be President. The good news, Bill Clinton, is that you got the job. The bad news is: Your deferment has ended. You’re the commander-in-chief. Like it or not, you’re in the army now.