From the At War Blog: The Role of the Military and Veterans in Politics

The recent death of Senator Daniel K. Inouye, a celebrated World War II veteran, coincided in many ways with the waning influence of veterans in American politics. There are now only three World War II veterans in Congress: Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, Representative Ralph Hall of Texas and Representative John D. Dingell of Michigan. Over all, the number of veterans joining Congress has perpetuated a four-decade-long slide.

But military veterans still have significant political clout. Former Senator John Kerry, a Vietnam veteran, was recently confirmed as secretary of state, and former Senator Chuck Hagel, also a Vietnam veteran, has been nominated for defense secretary. If Mr. Hagel is confirmed, President Obama’s cabinet will have three Vietnam veterans (the third being Eric Shinseki, secretary of the Department of Veteran Affairs.)

Left, Courtesy of John Kerry, via Associated Press; right, Library of Congress, via Assoc! iated Press John Kerry, left, in 1969 and Chuck Hagel in 1968 during their service in the Vietnam War. Mr. Kerry is President Obama’s choice to lead the State Department, and Mr. Hagel the Pentagon.

Although the overall number of veterans in Congress has decreased, the election of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans is on the rise. Of the 89 military veterans in the House, 17 are veterans of Iraq or Afghanistan. Of the 18 senators who are military veterans, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is the only veteran of Iraq or Afghanistan.

The interplay between politics, the military and veterans is a complicated subject matter. Although war is supposed to be an extension of politics, we don’t want service members associated with politics. Some historians surmise that Lincoln removed Gen. George B. McClellan, the top Union Army general, partly because General McClellan showed too great of an < href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/03/the-mcclellan-problem/">interest in politics.

Throughout American history there have been notable American political leaders who have served in the military. Some veterans turned legislators played down their military backgrounds or made it a point that they could also view the military through a critical lens. Eisenhower is remembered for his warning of the “military industrial complex.”

This trend continues. Joyce Tsai, in Stars and Stripes, found that many veterans who ran for office this past election played down their military experience. Chris Fields, a Democrat who ran for a House seat, said, “We don’t try to wrap ourselves in the flag and say the opposition is less patriotic because they didn’t go into the military service, because! that, in! my opinion, would be false.”

In the past, some veterans have highlighted their military service when running for office, including Senator John McCain in the 2008 election. But Senator Bob Dole did not make it a point when running for the presidency in 1996.

Veterans and military service also played a significant role in the past election cycle. Many observers noticed that Mitt Romney did not bring up the topic of the war in Afghanistan during the speech in which he accepted the Republican nomination. William Kristol, a conservative writer, questioned “the civic propriety of a presidential nominee failing even to mention, in his acceptance speech, a war we’re fighting and our young men andwomen who are fighting it.” By contrast, the Democratic National Convention prominently highlighted a tribute to the nation’s veterans.

Nevertheless, a vast majority of veterans in Congress identify as Republicans. More military veterans ran for election to the current Congress â€" and won â€" as Republicans than as Democrats. Out of the 89 military veterans in the House, only 20 are Democrats.

Additionally, of the newly elected Iraq and Afghanistan combat veterans, 14 are Republicans and only 2 â€" both female â€" are Democrats. In the past election cycle, according to Joyce Tsai of Stars and Stripes, there were 42 candidates for Congress who had war zone experience (38 House and 4 Senate candidates). Of the 42 candidates, 13 were Democrats.

Interestingly, in the last presidential election, Ron Paul received more in donations from military veterans than any other candidate.

Although there is a prepo! nderance ! of military veteran members of Congress who are Republicans, some recent research suggests that political affiliation among current service members is more diverse. Jason Dempsey, an Army officer and a former White House fellow, found from his research that “there is no monolithic ‘military vote.’” He found that “on most social issues and questions of how the government should spend money, the attitudes of service members largely tracked those of the civilian population.” Although “older generations of veterans remain solidly Republican,” “among the youngest service members and veterans … there is an even split in party identification with 36 percent identifying themselves as Democrats and 41 percent as Republicans.”

Heidi Urben, an Army officer and American politics professor at West Point, found that of the officer cors, “60 percent identify with the Republican Party,” but that a “majority of those who called themselves Republican were less partisan and more centrist.” Ms. Urben states that most service members “are weak partisans or independents. And that’s something you don’t hear reported as much.” Ms. Urben also found that “people are leaving the military with pretty much the same views they had going in.”

Jim Golby, Kyle Dropp and Peter Feaver have done research on the impact of high-profile endorsements from retired military personnel on presidential campaigns. The study is important because the trend of candidates’ seeking endorsements of general and flag officers is only likely to continue, given the overall decrease of prominent veterans in politics and as military service becomes a more rarefied career. Their research found that:!

While military endorsements do not provide a statistically significant boost in overall support for candidates, our research indicates that they may persuade a small but significant portion of two groups - independent voters and voters who report low levels of foreign policy interest - to favor President Barack Obama.

These researchers also say that their survey suggests that such high-profile general officer endorsements “do affect the way the public views the military and that endorsements may undermine trust and confidence in the military over the long term. The public already views the military as having something of a partisan cast.” They also believe such endorsements may “undermine military recruiting efforts and hinder effective civil-military relations.” They support eliminating veteran endorsements because veterans â€" “be they prvates or generals â€" always cross a line when they claim to speak for the military institution itself … by attaching their partisan political causes and candidates to the reputation of the military.”

In recent decades the number of military veterans in Congress has greatly diminished, but this trend will somewhat reverse as Afghanistan and Iraq veterans come of age. Although this past election cycle was focused on domestic issues and the economy, it will be interesting to analyze whether veterans running for office place a great emphasis on their military service in an election cycle in which foreign policy is a major issue. It will also be interesting to note how veterans of my generation contextualize their service and explain what lessons they learned from our recent wars. Veterans are not a homogenous group, and every veteran takes away a different lesson from military experience.

Tim Hsia is pursuing a J.D./M.B.A. at Stanford. He is currently in the Army Reserves as an R.! O.T.C. in! structor at Santa Clara University, which offers training for Stanford cadets. The views expressed in this post are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, the Department of Defense or the United States government.

Brown Said to Decide Against Massachusetts Senate Bid

Scott P. Brown has opted out of the Senate race in Massachusetts to fill the seat being vacated by John Kerry, according to a person close to him.

The decision leaves the Republicans without a candidate yet for the special election set for June 25, and it could leave the seat in Democratic hands.

Other potential Republican candidates have been waiting for a signal from Mr. Brown, who was seen as the strongest Republican, despite the loss of his Senate seat last year to ElizabethWarren.

Mr. Brown first alerted The Boston Herald, which was strongly supportive of him during his last campaign, that he was not running.

“U are the first to know,” Mr. Brown said in a text message to The Herald.

On Iran, Hagel Muddles the Message

Dealing with Iran is complicated, but President Obama’s policy on the question of whether a nuclear-armed Iran could be successfully “contained’’ - the way the Soviet Union was during the cold war - is simple.

His answer is no.

But in the weeks of preparation for his Senate confirmation hearing on Thursday, either no one explained that to Chuck Hagel, Mr. Obama’s nominee for secretary of defense, or he forgot it. And so on his first outing, Mr. Hagel fell immediately into the trap that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and several other administration officials have complained about in recent years. He became the latest official to send what many inside the administration fear has been an inconsistent and confusing message to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, about whether the Obama administration would, if there was no other option, take military measures to prevent Iran from possessing a weapon.

“It’s somewhere between baffling and incomprehensible,” a member of Mr. Obama’s own team of advisers on Iran said on Thursday night when asked about Mr. Hagel’s stumbling performance on the question during the all-day hearing. The worry was evident in the voice of the official, who would not speak on the record while criticizing the performance of the president’s nominee. For those who question whether the no-containment cornerstone of the Obama approach to Tehran is for real, or just diplomatic rhetoric, Mr. Hagel cl! early muddled the message, he said.

Mr. Hagel’s flubbing of the answer was even more remarkable because in his prepared remarks to the committee, which were carefully vetted by the White House and then e-mailed to reporters before the hearing, he got the president’s position exactly right. “As I said in the past many times, all options must be on the table,’’ Mr. Hagel said, in a statement meant to clean up past comments by the former Nebraska senator suggesting that an attack on Iran’s nuclear sites would be so disastrous that it was not a feasible alternative. “My policy has always been the same as the president’s, one of prevention, not of containment. And the president has made clear that is the policy of our government.’’

So far, so good.

But then, Mr. Hagel went down a different road. “I support the president’s strong position on containment,” he said, appearing, perhaps by imprecision, to suggest that the president’s view wa that a nuclear Iran could be contained. (Mr. Obama has gone on to explain that containment would fail because other players in the neighborhood - probably led by Saudi Arabia - would race for the bomb as soon as Iran had one.)

Then an aide slipped a piece of paper to Mr. Hagel. He glanced at it, then said: “By the way, I’ve just been handed a note that I misspoke and said I supported the president’s position on containment. If I said that, it meant to say that obviously â€" on his position on containment â€" we don’t have a position on containment.”

That made it worse. So the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, tried to rescue Mr. Hagel. “Just to make sure your correction is clear, we do have a position on containment: which is we do not favor containment.’’!

Wh! y might any of this matter Perhaps it won’t; it could just be another in the litany of Iran slips, like the time in December 2011 when Leon E. Panetta, the man Mr. Hagel hopes to replace at the Pentagon, described how any attack on Iran would strengthen the country’s position in the region and help it shed its pariah status. (He was probably right, but it made it sound as if the defense secretary really thought there were no military options on the table.)

But Mr. Hagel’s stumbling caused heartburn inside the administration because it made him appear unfamiliar with his brief. And even before he spoke, American credibility on the question of whether it would allow nations to get the bomb has been less than impressive.

The United States warned Pakistan against pursuing the development of a nuclear weapon during the Clinton administration. It conducted a nuclear test in 1998, responding to an Indian test, and both countries briefly suffered American economic sanctions. Then, after the Sept. 1, 2001, terrorist attacks, the sanctions were lifted, Pakistan became a “major non-NATO ally’’ and India signed a commercial nuclear agreement with the United States.

Then there is North Korea. President George W. Bush said he would never “tolerate’’ a North Korea with nuclear weapons. North Korea set off its first nuclear test in 2006, and its second a few months after Mr. Obama became president. Satellite phot! ographs s! uggest that a third may be only days or weeks away.

That record, many believe, could prompt Iran’s leaders to conclude that once countries get a weapon, or the capability to build one, America shrugs its shoulders and declares that containment will work fine. Mr. Hagel raised that possibility in a 2007 speech - though he stopped short of endorsing it - which is why the administration wanted to make sure he got on the same page with the president. He didn’t, and there is little doubt that the Iranians noticed.

Anti-Hagel Groups Emboldened After Confirmation Hearing

The sense that Chuck Hagel performed poorly in his confirmation hearing has buoyed the outside groups that have been working to defeat his nomination, many of them financed by donors who refuse to identify themselves (and are not legally compelled to do so).

“It certainly has breathed new life into the effort,’’ said Stuart Roy, a strategist with the American Future Fund, an anonymously financed group that has been running ads against him.

Mr. Roy said that he had fielded excited calls from donors on Thursday but he did not know whether that would translate into significant new donations.

But, like other groups involved in the effort, American Future Fund is already planning to run commercials until there is a vote. Mr. Roy said the back and forth of the hearings has provided potential new fodder for the next round of ads. “It’s sort of like that first Obama debate today,’’ he said, referring to Mr. Obama’s lackluster first debate with Mitt Romney last year, which galvanied Mr. Romney’s campaign.

Mr. Hagel’s opponents said they were hopeful the hearing would embolden Republicans to threaten to block his nomination from coming to a vote, dissuade potential Republican supporters from defecting to his side, and push a handful of Democrats facing re-election to come out against him.

Most of the efforts so far have focused on Democrats, with ads, phone calls and mailings urging their constituents to call and write their offices urging no votes.

Some new developments in the campaign against Mr. Hagel have surfaced surrounding the hearing and its aftermath.

Richard Silverstein, the author of the liberal blog Tikun Olam, reported receiving an anti-Hagel robotic phone call from the Republican Jewish Coalition - financed in part by the casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson - at his home in Washington State, of all places. The state’s United States senators Patty Murray an! d Maria Cantwell, both Democrats, are not expected to defect.

And the Sunlight Foundation, a research organization that seeks to make government and politics more transparent, reports that another anonymously financed new group has entered the anti-Hagel realm, Secure America Now, which, it reports, was founded by Allen Roth, a political aide to Ron Lauder, the cosmetics heir and former ambassador to Austria who is active in Jewish causes.

The group is running an online petition drive to thwart Mr. Hagel and offers visitors to its Web site a pamphlet making their case against him.

Anti-Hagel Groups Emboldened After Confirmation Hearing

The sense that Chuck Hagel performed poorly in his confirmation hearing has buoyed the outside groups that have been working to defeat his nomination, many of them financed by donors who refuse to identify themselves (and are not legally compelled to do so).

“It certainly has breathed new life into the effort,’’ said Stuart Roy, a strategist with the American Future Fund, an anonymously financed group that has been running ads against him.

Mr. Roy said that he had fielded excited calls from donors on Thursday but he did not know whether that would translate into significant new donations.

But, like other groups involved in the effort, American Future Fund is already planning to run commercials until there is a vote. Mr. Roy said the back and forth of the hearings has provided potential new fodder for the next round of ads. “It’s sort of like that first Obama debate today,’’ he said, referring to Mr. Obama’s lackluster first debate with Mitt Romney last year, which galvanied Mr. Romney’s campaign.

Mr. Hagel’s opponents said they were hopeful the hearing would embolden Republicans to threaten to block his nomination from coming to a vote, dissuade potential Republican supporters from defecting to his side, and push a handful of Democrats facing re-election to come out against him.

Most of the efforts so far have focused on Democrats, with ads, phone calls and mailings urging their constituents to call and write their offices urging no votes.

Some new developments in the campaign against Mr. Hagel have surfaced surrounding the hearing and its aftermath.

Richard Silverstein, the author of the liberal blog Tikun Olam, reported receiving an anti-Hagel robotic phone call from the Republican Jewish Coalition - financed in part by the casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson - at his home in Washington State, of all places. The state’s United States senators Patty Murray an! d Maria Cantwell, both Democrats, are not expected to defect.

And the Sunlight Foundation, a research organization that seeks to make government and politics more transparent, reports that another anonymously financed new group has entered the anti-Hagel realm, Secure America Now, which, it reports, was founded by Allen Roth, a political aide to Ron Lauder, the cosmetics heir and former ambassador to Austria who is active in Jewish causes.

The group is running an online petition drive to thwart Mr. Hagel and offers visitors to its Web site a pamphlet making their case against him.

Q&A: Reformatting a Kindle Fire

Q.

I want to pass my old Kindle Fire to a friend since I got a new model. How do I make sure all of my personal content is erased before I give the old Kindle away

A.

The Kindle software includes a setting that wipes the tablet and returns it to the state it was in when you first took it out of the box. Before you start the process, though, check that the Kindle has a good battery charge so it does not conk out in the middle of erasing itself, and make sure you have any personal files you need on the device backed up elsewhere.

Next, tap the gear-shaped icon for the Settings menu. On the Settings menu, tap the More icon, scroll down and then tap Device. At the bottom of the Device screen, tap the option called Reset to Factory Defaults. In the Factory Data Reset box that pops up, tap the Erase Everything button.

When you tap Erase Everything, the Kindle does just that â€" it deregisters the tablet with your Amazon account and deletes any ersonal files you have copied to it. It also wipes out any movies, books, music, apps and other content you purchased on the device. (Although your personal files are erased, any Amazon purchases you made on the Kindle are backed up to Amazon’s cloud servers and can be used with the new Kindle registered to your account.)

Once the Kindle finishes erasing itself, it should reboot. When the tablet finishes restarting, you should see the Welcome screen that invites you to set up the Kindle Fire as a new device.

On Immigration, a Campaign-Style Push in Hispanic Media

As he makes his case for major immigration changes, President Obama is turning to a forum he used effectively during his two presidential campaigns: the Hispanic media.

In two interviews this week â€" one with Univision and another with Telemundo â€" Mr. Obama pledged to press Congress to pass a sweeping overhaul of the immigration system before the year’s end.

p>“I am happy to meet with anybody, any time, anywhere to make sure that this thing happens,” Mr. Obama said in an interview with José Díaz-Balart on Telemundo.

In a separate interview with Jorge Ramos and Maria Elena Salinas on Univision, the president said he was not going to “lay down a particular date” by which Congress must act. But he made clear he won’t wait too long.

“I want to give them a little bit of room to debate,” Mr. Obama said. “If it slips a week, that’s one thing. If it starts slipping three months, that’s a problem.”

Mr. Obama’s appearance on the two networks is an extension of his campaign’s aggressive outreach to the Hispanic community during the 2012 presidential race. His campaign spent heavily on Spanish-language advertisements to win Hispanic votes. He granted an interview to Telemundo just a week after accepting the nomination in September.

Getting an immigration overhaul through a reluctant C! ongress, especially the House, will require Mr. Obama to persuade lawmakers and voters beyond the Hispanic community. His aides are working to build support in rural, white communities where opposition to illegal immigration is strong.

But putting the president in front of a largely Hispanic audience could also help to convince that community that he has made a concerted effort to push through immigration changes, even if the effort gets bogged down in the Congress. Hispanic supporters of the president have expressed deep disappointment that he didn’t push for changes in his first term.

The interviews could also help the president respond to lingering anger among many Hispanics that he has moved too aggressively to deport illegal immigrants during his first term. Questions about his deportation policy came up in both interviews.

“You know, when it comes to enforcement of our immigration laws, we’ve got some discretion,” Mr. Obama told Telemundo. “We can prioritize what we do. Butwe can’t simply ignore the law.”

The deportation issue was also raised during a “Fireside Chat” that the White House organized on the Internet on Thursday. Cecilia Muñoz, the president’s top domestic policy adviser, who is one of the White House officials in charge of the immigration effort, joined in a video chat with Latino and immigrant advocates, seeking to rally groups who will provide support from the ground for Mr. Obama’s overhaul.

By invitation from the White House, the chat was moderated by Jose Antonio Vargas, a journalist born in the Philippines who has revealed publicly that he is in this country illegally. Mr. Vargas, who has become an immigrant rights activist, questioned Ms. Muñoz about the high number of deportations during Mr. Obama’s first term.

Like the president, Ms. Munoz responded that the administration has no choice but to follow the current law, and said that is part of the motivation for broad immigration changes that would give illegal i! mmigrants! a path to citizenship.

The Internet event was unusual in that it had visible participation by an immigrant without legal status in a White House activity.

But it was further evidence that the White House is eager to reach all parts of the Hispanic community as it campaigns for immigration legislation in Congress. In the interview with Univision, Mr. Obama said he thought the politics of the issue was ripe for success.

“I’m going to keep on pushing as hard as I can,” Mr. Obama said, perhaps signaling more conversations with Hispanic supporters in the near future. “I believe that the mood is right.”

Follow Michael D. Shear on Twitter at @shearm.