Dems And Vets

Our colleague, The Atlantic Monthly's Joshua Green, explores the historical roots of the phenomenon of vet candidates who identify as Democrats.

An excerpt: "That sort of raw authenticity -- experience in combat -- has declined steadily over the past three decades. According to research conducted by William Bianco, a professor at Penn State University who has studied the civilian-military divide, the number of veterans in the House reached its zenith in 1971, when more than 72 percent of congressmen had served.

With the retirement of World War II veterans and the under-representation of veterans of later wars, that number has slipped below 20 percent. Experts attribute this decline to the paucity of large-scale combat operations, the shrinking of the armed services overall, and the change in 1975 to an all-volunteer military, which created a higher percentage of career-minded soldiers, less likely to take an interest in running for office.

That could change. "What you're looking at now is fairly unusual," says Richard Kohn, a history professor and the chair of the Curriculum in Peace, War, and Defense at the University of North Carolina. "This is the first time post-1975 that you're seeing a group emerge that specifically wants to get involved in politics."