For the first time since 1996, both major parties have picked a veteran for vice president — a fact that some veterans’ groups are hoping it leads to greater understanding of military and vet issues.
For the first time since 1996, both major parties have picked a veteran for vice president — a fact that some veterans’ groups are celebrating, with the hope that it leads to greater understanding of military and vets issues.
That’s if it’s not all lost in a political slugfest of election-year personal attacks that threaten to degrade the public’s respect for veterans instead.
“Through all this noise you still have vice presidential nominees who raised their hand and said that if I am called to give my life for this country, I will do it,” said Rye Barcott, who leads With Honor, a political action committee dedicated to electing veterans who pledge to cross party lines.
“That is valuable and is something that we need more of,” Barcott says.Their military backstories
Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance served four years in USMC public affairs, including one uneventful six-month deployment to Iraq. He went from a broken home life to a GI Bill education that culminated at Yale Law School.
And he writes in his memoir Hillbilly Elegy of how the Marine Corps taught him adulthood.
“The day I graduated from boot camp was the proudest of my life,” he wrote.
Beyond drill sergeants screaming at him to get physically fit, they chaperoned his first grown-up decisions. When he bought his first car, a senior enlisted Marine steered him away from a sports car and a usurious loan.
Walz is also positive military role model from central casting: The high school teacher and coach, juggling his family and job with serving in his state National Guard one weekend a month and two weeks per year.
Walz joined the Guard when he was 17 years old. He’d just hit his 20 years for retirement when 9/11 happened, and he reenlisted. Over the course of his 24 years, he deployed for various natural disasters, and for one year to Italy in support of the war in Afghanistan.
