3
Veterans and American Society
Although there is a growing interest in the military and the political implications
of military service, relatively little systematic attention has been paid to such questions.
The media typically report either vague generalities or bivariate polling data, which shed
little light on whether veterans have distinctive political and policy orientations. In the
academic world, some scholars have investigated the democratic ethos of veterans, the
political mobilization of veterans, and the socio-cultural attitudes of veterans. If we want
to know whether veterans are more likely to support Democrats or Republicans, however,
there is little we can learn from the political science literature. If our question is how
veterans of different races and ethnicities engage the political system, there is almost no
evidence whatsoever.
There are good reasons to be interested in how military service may have political
implications. The military is a governmental institution through which tens of millions of
Americans have passed. It has affected the lives of men and women, Anglos (non-
Hispanic whites) and minorities, citizens and non-citizens, and individuals from every
region, religion, and socio-economic group. Surprisingly, social science literatures have
relatively little to say about the political content or implications of this experience. This
leaves military service as perhaps the largest and least explored “black box” in American
society. While not everyone serves, and the proportion of veterans has declined since the
end of the draft in 1973, the 2004 American National Election Study reported that
approximately 13 percent of the overall citizen population (160 veterans out of 1,200
respondents), and about a quarter of men, identified as veterans. In an era when almost
every variable relating to political mobilization and vote choice has been studied in detail,
Convention