General Clark's the Wrong Kind of General

by Thomas Fleming

Mr. Fleming's new book, The Illusion of Victory: America in World War I, was published by Basic Books on June 1. He is a member of the corporate board of HNN.

Once upon a time -- in 1920, to be exact -- another general ran for president. His name was John J. Pershing. He had far better credentials than General Wesley Clark. He had commanded two million men in battle against the most formidable adversary yet seen in the world's wars, the imperial German army -- and he had won. Air, artillery, infantry, supply, Pershing had orchestrated them all to bring off an improbable victory. When he returned to America, Congress conferred on him the unprecedented title, General of the Armies.

Soon after the armistice in November 1918, various VIPs nominated Pershing for president. When he revealed he was a Republican, the vice president of the National Republican League thought he was a cinch to repeat General Ulysses S. Grant's performance in 1868. One ex-senator and old friend urged both political parties to nominate Pershing on a national reconciliation ticket in 1920.

Pershing's father-in-law, Senator Francis Warren, advised him to deny any ambition to be president. That was the best way to stir a groundswell. Pershing went to some lengths to deny he was a candidate. He told one lady friend that he would be a "damned fool" to run for president. But could not resist comparing himself to other generals who had reached the White House. Besides Grant, there was Zachary Taylor, thanks to the Mexican War, and Andrew Jackson thanks to the War of 1812. Not to mention George Washington, whose victory in the War for Independence made him the inevitable first president.

General John J. Pershing - Portrait from Library of Congress

Pershing did not object when old friends from Nebraska, which he considered his home state, formed a "Pershing for President Club" and began touting him as the state's favorite son. For the first few months of 1920, Pershing acted like a candidate, though he never said a word about running. Secretary of War Baker, either wittingly or unwittingly cooperating, sent the General of the Armies on a nationwide inspection tour.

Pershing brought along many of his AEF favorites, and the trip took on the character of a royal progress. In thirty-two states, local VIPs held receptions and banquets to welcome the conquering heroes. Pershing turned on the charm, wowing women, kissing children and greeting AEF veterans with hearty handshakes. In speeches he hailed American patriotism and urged voters to support Universal Military Training (UMT) so America would never again be caught unprepared to fight a war.

Unfortunately, the general had liabilities. Pershing was President Woodrow Wilson's appointee and Republicans learned to loathe Wilson in the brawl over ratifying the Versailles Peace Treaty. The president sneered publicly at their "bungalow minds" and accused them of "breaking the heart of the world." A Pershing nomination could be viewed as an oblique endorsement of Wilson. By 1920, this was something most Republicans were unwilling to do. Pushing UMT was also not the best political move in the atmosphere of growing disillusion with the war, as it began to dawn on many people that the vengeful Versailles Peace Treaty made a mockery of Wilson's idealistic Fourteen Points that would guarantee world peace.

On April 20, Nebraska held a Republican presidential primary. Pershing's friends launched a vigorous campaign, replete with mailings, admiring articles by selected reporters and heavy newspaper advertising. The other candidates were liberal Senator Hiram Johnson of California, General Leonard Wood, whom Wilson had refused to send to France because he was a close friend of Theodore Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover and Governor Frank Lowden of Illinois. Pershing finished a dismal fifth.

Undaunted, his friends persuaded the general to make a statement at a Washington D.C. reception in his honor. Pershing said he was not seeking the nation's highest office but would not "decline to serve" if the people summoned him. The Washington Post made it a page one headline. A few days later, the Literary Digest reported a nationwide poll on eight possible Republican nominees. Pershing ranked eighth.

Still the general refused to abandon his by now almost clandestine candidacy. As the Republican convention loomed, he wrote his old friend Charles Dawes, one of his top civilian aides in Europe, urging him to make sure someone would be on hand to push his name to the front if the delegates deadlocked. The delegates deadlocked briefly and in a smoke-filled room chose Senator Warren Harding of Ohio. Pershing's name was not even mentioned.

The general should have paid more attention to the many other generals who ran for the ultimate prize without success. After the victorious Mexican War, Army commander in chief Winfield Scott, known as the thinking man's soldier, ran against Democrat Franklin Pierce, who had served briefly in the war as a brigadier of volunteers. Scott lost badly. In 1864 General George McClellan ran against Abraham Lincoln. He too lost ingloriously. In 1880, General Winfield Scott Hancock, the hero of Gettysburg, ran against James Garfield, who had a mediocre record as a general of volunteers. Garfield won.

Then there is General Douglas MacArthur, who was repeatedly mentioned as a presidential candidate after he won fame in World War I. Franklin D. Roosevelt reportedly considered him his most dangerous potential opponent, which was one reason why he sent him to the farthest reaches of the South Pacific during World War II. When Truman fired MacArthur for mishandling the Korean War in 1951, MacArthur returned home to hysterical acclaim, with tickertape parades in major American cities and frantic calls for him to run for president. But congressional hearings soon established that Truman had good reason to fire him -- and worse, the general did not have any magic formula for winning the Korean War. When General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the man who defeated Adolph Hitler's armies, announced he was available as a candidate, MacArthur receded into the shadows.

What does this quick trip through the generals who ran for president reveal? It demonstrates that a certain type of general is able to win presidential elections, and another type is an almost certain loser. With the margin for error that all generalizations require, it becomes clear that the winners all fit Arthur Schlesinger's brilliant division of America's soldiers into roundheads and cavaliers. Roundheads eschew military glory and lay no claim to brilliance. They are all small d democrats. Cavaliers are all aristocrats, in love with glittering uniforms and orotund appeals to glory and patriotism. General Winfield Scott is the prototype cavalier. He designed his own gorgeous uniforms; the soldiers called him "Old Fuss and Feathers." The other major general in the Mexican War, Zachary Taylor, wore no visible signs of rank and sat his horse, Old Whitey, sidesaddle at the Battle of Buena Vista, eyeing the charging Mexicans before ordering the West Pointers in command of the artillery: "doubleshot your guns and give them hell." Ulysses Grant, who served in Mexico, was an Old Zach clone; there was not a sign of gold braid on his uniform and instead of soaring appeals to patriotism and heroism, he said: "We shall fight it out along this line if it takes all summer." Ike Eisenhower struck the same lowkeyed "let's get this job done" note World War II.

The bottom line of this rapid survey would seem to be fatal to General Wesley Clark. Like MacArthur and Pershing, he was a star at West Point, graduating first in his class. (Grant was in the lower middle of his class, Eisenhower likewise. Taylor skipped the whole thing.) During Clark's "war" in Kosovo, he was extraordinarily fond of getting his picture in the papers and on TV in his well tailored uniform. To the enlisted men this spells a damning phrase: glory hound. Moreover his war was an elitist operation in which all the fighting was done by a handful of pilots and techies in charge of cruise missiles. No large numbers of enlisted men served under Clark and learned to like his ways. Add it all up and Wesley's appeal to the American voters, outside the corps of desperate Democrats searching for someone to beat George Bush, is close to zero.