By William M. Arkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Monday, November 20, 2000; 12:00 AM

Chennault Circle, the intellectual ground zero of the U.S. Air Force at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Ala., has the well-manicured and serene feel of a private country club. The Wright brothers established the first civilian flying school there in 1910, and since 1946, the circle has housed the Air University and its various officer schools and colleges.

With the exception of Washington, D.C., there is no doubt that more air force officers are stationed at Maxwell than in any other location in the world. Like most Americans, they spent their study breaks and spare time last week channel surfing and gossiping about the latest situation report from Florida.

Not surprisingly, this is Republican country. But professors here point out that it wasn't always that way. And when one scratches the surface to ask why George W. is the overwhelming favorite of military officers, there are only vague explanations, and there are few expectations that much will change with regard to defense policy in the next four years.

A combination of Bill Clinton's personal problems, and what are perceived to be eight years of social agenda imposed on the armed forces at the cost of military traditions and even capability, has profoundly shifted sentiment against the Democrats.

A Look Inside the Beltway

"The military is a good and moral institution," says one officer. "We don't see that in government."

The government that is being referred to is the Clinton administration, which many in the military blame for a host of insults, slights and decisions—don't ask, don't tell policy on gays in the military and the prospect of women in combat, particularly—that have assaulted the military institution and even harmed national security.

While many directly blame Bill Clinton for the shift, others consider the Democratic Party apparatus itself at fault. "They chose party over nation," one officer says of the Lewinsky affair and the refusal of the party to stand up on behalf of its own feminist principles and standards of sexual equality.

If the military is given credit for a Bush victory, a professor here observes, Democrat Party loyalists will likely hate the military "even more than they already do," a sort of strange conclusion given that there is nothing in Al Gore's record or background that would portend any kind of hostility toward the military. Furthermore, these officers all joke about George W. Bush's fake military service record in the Air National Guard.

Yet although Al Gore might be as hawkish as Bush—and Gore explicitly promised a pay raise for the military—a number of officers observe that Bush seemed less "plastic" and more human to them, surrounding himself with good people, more comfortable with who he is and his weaknesses, able to reach out for advice and input.

Bush to them seems more able to lead. These are men—they are mostly men—who have all worked for brilliant generals and senior civilians in their careers. In that regard, Al Gore scares them. Either because he represents the worst aspect of "Washington knows all" and the isolation and group think that occurs with too much time inside the Beltway, or because Gore individually is so convinced of his intellect and grasp of the issues that he just does not have what it takes to listen to others, captive of Washington or not.

A Republican Core?

Although Clinton is the lightning rod and Gore is seen as inseparable from the administration's policies, of course there is the reality that the further and further the volunteer military institution gets from any draft, the more it grows suspicious of civilians. Regardless of what civilian is president, the institution naturally is becoming more and more incestuous and insular as time goes by. "It's self-selection," a senior officer says of the growing conservatism. The military attracts a certain personality type, one that is at heart socially and economically conservative. The military has tradition, hierarchy and a set of rules that seem missing in civilian society.

To hear these officers describe their institution and its current affinity with the Republicans is a trip down a deeply contradictory path. Republicans represent individual achievement and a sense of one pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, attributes the military identifies with, an officer says. Yet, as another officer points out, it is also "the most socialist organization in the United States," a beneficiary of government largesse, with free health care and subsidized food and housing.

All of that entitlement on behalf of national security is not seen as a government welfare program. Instead, officers say, the benefits are necessary to keep pace with civilian salaries and opportunities. Though one can't serve in the military without a sense of service to the nation, increasing pay and benefits are seen as offsetting the sacrifices that do come with constant deployments, uncertainty and moving from base to base. In other words, careerists expect to be rewarded.

What a Career

The career doesn't exactly have a civilian equivalent. Here at Maxwell, officers are achingly aware of colleagues who have left the service to fly for the airlines or work in the information industry. Pilots who love the military life and the world of warplanes disparage their civilian counterparts as "bus drivers." Yet for those who choose to stay in, there is a concern that eight years of Clinton has created too much political correctness in the ranks, and an anti-warrior bias.

Once, not too long ago, integration and imposed racial equality in the U.S. military, the very institution which created Colin L. Powell, was a point of pride. It was the military that was a powerful and progressive social force. Yet on the terrain of sexual relations, the current social engineering is not seen as beneficial.

If there is one way in which the military itself benefits from the politically correct gloss, it is in evading the central fact of their profession: They are trained to be killers. For the Air Force, the human connection is even more tentative than in the other services. Pilots rarely come face to face with their quarry, and the new crop of "space" operators here, like their nuclear missile predecessors, sit at consoles, never having to face the fact that their "electrons" tell a weapon where to go, that their work ultimately kills on the ground. One officer calls it "a service without a soul."

Though Air Force officers readily admit that a woman is as capable as a man in flying a plane or "manning" a computer, they worry about the other services, and of the espirit and sense of camaraderie that is lost not so much merely by sexual integration but by a political correct stigmatization of a warrior creed. Somehow George W. Bush and the Republicans are supposed to help to preserve the traditions and the status quo, though no one can say how.

William Arkin can be reached at william_arkin@washingtonpost.com.