The controversy surrounding Donald Trump’s visit to Arlington National Cemetery earlier this week has once again put the military at the forefront of the 2024 presidential race.
What was intended to highlight a potential vulnerability in Kamala Harris’s vice presidency was the fact that 13 American soldiers were killed and dozens wounded in the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, which backfired on Trump as his campaign faced allegations that he physically pushed a cemetery worker and that using the cemetery for political purposes violated federal law.
It’s the latest in a series of events in which the military has been used as a political cudgel in campaigns: neither of the candidates for this presidential election has served in the military, yet both have chosen veterans as their running mates.
This is part of a decades-long political strategy.
“I think there’s always been a political instinct because respect for the American military is a binding moral foundation,” the congressman said. “That’s why it’s so tempting for political operators to attack based on rudeness,” said Jake Auchincloss (D-Mass.), a former Marine who ran for office.
Sometimes such events involved actual national security and military decisions, especially those involving a sitting president and his cabinet. But that was not always the case.
Think of the scandals that still resonate in America’s political imagination: Benghazi, the 2012 attack on U.S. facilities in Libya, a political burden for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton; the vote to go to war in Iraq that haunted both Clinton and Joe Biden for decades; the “Swift Boat” campaign against John Kerry’s military record that became political shorthand for an unfair attack.
In 1992, George HW Bush accused his rival Bill Clinton of being a draft dodger. In 1988, Michael Dukakis criticized Bush for the Iran-Contra affair and posed for a photo in a tank to portray himself as a competent military leader. But the plan was aborted when his huge helmet and smile seemed more foolish than tough. Bush, a World War II hero, ran a photo ad that helped sink the Democratic campaign.
“Of course Dukakis did it to show that he was tough and cared about national security, but he looked stupid wearing the hat, and it just backfired,” said Peter Feaver, a Duke University professor and former White House National Security Council adviser. “And I would say Trump has been thinking a great deal about this, too, in terms of approaching a ceremonial moment with the seriousness and respect and thoughtfulness and reflection that the moment requires.”
“The president has to pass the commander-in-chief test,” Fever added. “They have to meet the minimum standard of trustworthiness to be the commander-in-chief, trustworthiness to be entrusted with nuclear weapons, trustworthiness to be entrusted with the lives of our men and women in uniform.”
The Army said in a statement Thursday that while Trump was attending a wreath-laying ceremony honoring soldiers killed during the withdrawal from Afghanistan, members of Trump’s campaign team “suddenly pushed” and “unreasonably assaulted” an employee who was trying to stop a campaign photographer from taking photos of Trump at the soldiers’ graves, at the invitation of military families. The Army defended the employee, saying, “The campaign was aware of federal law, Army regulations, and Department of Defense policy that explicitly prohibit political activity at cemeteries.”
NPR first reported the incident. The military says the officer is not being prosecuted and the military considers the matter closed.
Trump campaign spokeswoman Caroline Leavitt said in a statement defending the former president’s visit that “there has never been a greater advocate for our brave soldiers” than Trump. Trump campaign spokeswoman Stephen Chung pointed POLITICO to a 2020 Biden campaign ad that shows the president standing at a soldier’s grave.
Harris campaign spokesman Michael Tyler told CNN in an interview Wednesday that the events in Arlington were “quite sad” but “not surprising,” and spokesman James Singer told POLITICO that the vice president’s Democratic National Convention speech last week promised that “we will honor our sacred duty to care for our military members and their families, and we will always honor and never diminish their service and sacrifice.”
When President Joe Biden was still the Democratic nominee, Trump’s campaign aired an ad showing the president checking his watch at an event honoring soldiers killed during the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan. And at last month’s Republican National Convention, some of the soldiers’ families took to the stage to criticize him.
“When you honor those who have served their country and died, it’s the most ceremonial (part of the presidency), and it’s often spoken of in sacred terms: ‘sacred ground,’ ‘holy ground,'” Feaver said. “People who want to be president have to show that they can rise to the occasion in that moment.”
As Harris replaces Biden on the Democratic ticket, Republicans are likely to place greater emphasis on her role in the Afghanistan withdrawal in the run-up to Election Day.
“It’s going to be a very big responsibility for Harris, especially when she says, ‘I was the last person in the room, and I absolutely approved that plan,’” said Charlie Zero, a veteran Republican strategist. “For me, it’s a game, a set-up, a match on that score.”
Trump’s campaign also sought to discredit the service record of Harris’s running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, accused Walz of “stolen valor.” Walz, who served in the Minnesota National Guard for 24 years before retiring from the military to run for Congress just before the troops deployed to Iraq, dismissed the criticism.
“My record speaks for itself,” he told CNN on Thursday.
Criticism of Walz’s service record dates back to the 2004 presidential campaign, when then-candidate George W. Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard was questioned. The scandal culminated when CBS News released a series of documents it said were fabricated by network sources, which became the basis for the 2015 film “Truth.” During the same campaign, John Kerry’s record was also questioned in the “Swift Boat” attack orchestrated by Chris LaCivita, now a senior adviser to the Trump campaign.
But Trump has also been vulnerable to military and veterans, with a history that includes reports that he has called them “idiots and losers” — something he denies — and said that Sen. John McCain, a former prisoner of war, was “not a war hero” because he was captured. Earlier this month, Trump drew criticism from veterans groups when he said the nation’s highest civilian decorations were “much better” than the country’s top military decorations because the soldiers who received the latter were “in very bad shape” or “dead.”
“It’s something he can’t erase. It’s a stain, an indelible stain, and nothing Vance says or does can get rid of it,” Feaver said.
But Zero said he doesn’t think it will affect Trump’s military turnout. “In the last two elections, it made no difference. He won the biggest share of the veterans vote and the military vote, and I think that will be the case again,” he said.
