A Brief History
On November 3, 2020, the 2020 United States of America (U.S.) presidential election will be the 59th quadrennial U.S. presidential election. The president of the U.S. is the head of state and head of government of the U.S. The president directs the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces. This article therefore indicates the executive and military experience of the major party candidates currently running for president. For the purpose of our table below, “executive experience” refers to holding an executive political office such as mayor or governor and not an executive business title. (See our article “10 US Politicians who Fought for the United States”)
Digging Deeper
| Name | Party | Executive Experience | Military Experience |
|---|---|---|---|
| Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. (born November 20, 1942) | Democratic | 47th Vice President of the United States (January 20, 2009 – January 20, 2017) | None |
| Bernard Sanders (born September 8, 1941) | Democratic | 37th Mayor of Burlington (April 6, 1981 – April 4, 1989) | None |
| Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) | Republican | 45th President of the United States (January 20, 2017 - present) | At age 13, he was enrolled in the New York Military Academy, a private boarding school. By his senior year, the cadet attained the rank of captain. |
As a potentially important note, some of the candidates listed above actually avoided serving in the military during wartime. For example, both Biden and Trump received student draft deferments during the peak of the Vietnam War (1955–1975). They subsequently received reclassifications for medical reasons. In 1968, Biden was reclassified by the Selective Service System as not available for service due to having had asthma as a teenager, while Trump was given a medical deferment which resulted in a 1-Y classification: “Unqualified for duty except in the case of a national emergency.” In 1972, Trump was reclassified as 4-F, which permanently disqualified him from service.
Question for students (and subscribers): Should the president of the U.S. have both executive and military experience prior to becoming president? Should those candidates in the table above who have neither be essentially disqualified as valid candidates? Please let us know in the comments section below this article.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Biden, Joe. Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose. Flatiron Books, 2017.
Sanders, Bernie. Bernie Sanders Guide to Political Revolution. Henry Holt and Co. (BYR), 2017.
Trump, Donald J. Great Again: How to Fix Our Crippled America. Threshold Editions, 2016.
The featured image in this article, a photograph by Sgt. Gabriela Garcia of John Mack (left), Commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. Joseph F. Dunford, Jr. (second left), and Steven Wallace (right), the Co-founder of Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation (MC-LEF), awarding Donald J. Trump the Commandant’s Leadership award during the MC-LEF 20th Annual Semper Fidelis Gala at New York, N.Y., April 22, 2015, is in the public domain because it contains materials that originally came from the United States Marine Corps. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image is in the public domain.
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