A Veep on a White Horse?

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Senator Barack Obama's campaign is considering picking a military man as a running mate to compensate for his own limited national-security experience. But it's far from clear that military experience raises the prospects for a successful presidency. While Dwight D. Eisenhower won pretty good White House grades following his 43-year Army career, Jimmy Carter (seven years in the Navy) didn't do so well. Old soldiers still grimace when recalling the military highlight of his presidency: 1980's failed mission to rescue U.S. hostages in Iran. The Desert One fiasco killed eight U.S. servicemen, doomed Carter to lose to Ronald Reagan later that year, and primed the pump for Reagan's military buildup.

The glad-handing and stroking that come naturally to politicians are not the norm for more button-downed military officers. They've spent years smartly saluting and being saluted, issuing and carrying out orders. That's probably not the best prep for a role in which persuasion and cajolery are vital. None of that dims the luster a former general or admiral — they tend to be slender, ramrod straight, and well-spoken, especially on foreign-policy matters — can bring to a ticket. (Well, not always: the late James Stockdale, who was Ross Perot's running mate in 1992, was a retired Navy vice admiral who famously opened up that year's vice presidential debate by saying, "Who am I? Why am I here?")

Robert Scales, a retired Army major general, suggests that having a military officer on the ticket is a mixed blessing. "The great strength of a military guy would be credibility on national security," says Scales, a military historian and former commandant of the Army War College. "The great weakness is that he lacks any type of regional attraction, which, to my mind, is really the primary purpose in picking a running mate." Indeed, military officers often move every three or four years, making them essentially political transients.

Still, the Obama camp is considering the option. Here's a quick guide to the ex-servicemen they're in the frame to join the Illinois senator on the ticket: