Military, politics need to keep their distance

May 5, 2004

This op-ed appeared in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution May 5.

By: Diane H. Mazur
Diane H. Mazur is a professor of law at the University of Florida and a former aircraft and munitions maintenance officer in the U.S. Air Force.

When 1st Lt. Paul Rieckhoff, a National Guardsman and Iraq veteran, delivered the Democratic response to President Bush’s weekly radio address on Saturday, criticizing the administration’s war planning and operations, people took notice.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who usually has an unerring sense of healthy civil-military relations, thought Rieckhoff had crossed “a clear line between civilian and military in America, as far as politics is concerned.”

McCain is a little late. That line has already been obliterated. The only reason Rieckhoff attracted attention was because he wasn’t following the military’s party line. No one would have looked twice if he publicly supported our current efforts. Rieckhoff is just the latest addition to a presidential campaign already rife with dueling military voices.

Federal law regulates the political interaction between civilians and the military because of the real potential for undue influence when uniformed personnel cross paths with the voting process. The principle is vital to our constitutional democracy, yet it seems to have been completely forgotten or discarded.

Some suggest the military vote could tip the balance in 2004 just as it did in 2000. So it’s no surprise that both President Bush and Sen. John Kerry have been shamelessly wooing service members.

As commander in chief, Bush can make his pitches to the 101st Airborne in person, as he did on the one-year anniversary of the start of the Iraq war. Kerry had to make do with a speech the day before at George Washington University touting his “Military Family Bill of Rights.”

Such overtures may be politically expedient, but they help create an environment in which the military is seen as just another voting demographic. It is not. Service members have the same right to vote as you and I. But they also have a special responsibility to remain politically neutral under any circumstances in which their partisan allegiance might be connected to the uniform. Expressions of partisan support violate the military’s long-standing professional and constitutional ethic of political neutrality.

Just after the end of the Vietnam War, the Supreme Court reminded us in Greer v. Spock that the military has an obligation under the Constitution to avoid “both the reality and the appearance of acting as a handmaiden for partisan political causes.”

In a nation built on civilian control of the military, the people holding the weapons should never appear to influence the votes of the citizens they protect.

More subtly, the military can also wield undue partisan influence just because the military is so widely admired. So it’s a problem when Bush’s appearances at military installations are met with a sea of whooping, hollering service members who act as if they’re at a political rally. Their partisan behavior is unprofessional, and the military knows it. The Republican Party, which bills itself as the party that understands the military, ought to know it too.

Both presidential candidates have a constitutional obligation to take care in how they seek the endorsement of individual service members. Attempts to paint the military as either Republican or Democratic tinker dangerously with the obligation of political neutrality that keeps civilian control strong.