Good Advice: Dodge the Draft and Do Drugs?

Very nice intro, Archi. Your invocation of Admiral Stockdale got me to thinking -- Viet Nam vets have not done so well in the Presidential elections. Assuming McCain can't pull this one out, you've got him, Gore, and Kerry losing. And then you've got the two draft dodgers winning four elections between them (and Cheney, if you want to count him). And you've got Clinton, Bush, and Obama admitting to drug use (or alcohol abuse) as well. So, is the advice to all the young kids out there aspiring to be President that they should avoid military service at all costs and feel free to dabble in drugs any time up to your 40th birthday?

I'm reminded of the Andrew Sullivan article that Gobo notifed me about about Obama finally representing an end to the kulturkampf of hippies vs. hawks that's been waged in every election since the 60s. But what does it really say if the country has flat-out rejected Viet Nam vets and four times elected men who chose not to serve in that war? Sullivan takes a much more nuanced approach to it all and looks at each election individually. But maybe it's just more general. Like, perhaps military service, including McCain's, counts for nothing among the electorate these days. And that veterans groups are an impotent (or conflicted) special-interest group. But maybe the conflict is not a culture war, but a generational war (Sullivan hints at this too), where the younger generation finally voted in someone of their generation in 1992 and 1996 against two men who served in WWII, and they're not going back.