Hacker News Reader

Comment by wnoise | Hacker News Reader

It is explicitly trying to optimize for measuring/inculcating military performance.

I think there are two effects here:

1. West Point does a very good job of selecting for and rewarding the same traits that lead to career success.

2. The most successful military leaders (especially in wartime) become famous, far beyond the most successful doctors or lawyers. 12 of them became US Presidents, but this has been true since ancient times. The guy with the best grades in Harvard Medical School might have a fantastically successful career, but you haven't heard of him.

Is that still true though? A handful of leaders from WWII are well known but the only American leader I know from recent times is general Schwarzkopf with his video games.

Wars in more recent times are less impactful on the American populace. The last war that had a significant influence on the average person was Vietnam, and even then, we almost had John McCain, Al Gore, and Wesley Clark as presidents, although none were particularly high-ranking in the military.

After being West Point valedictorian, Wes Clark was NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Europe – can’t get too much higher than that. But yes, McCain was “only” a Captain, and Gore served for a year or so.

That's true, my mistake, and I guess he was in charge during Kosovo. But I'm not sure he would really count as being a "military leader" in the same way that Washington, Grant, or Eisenhower were.

It is less true in modern times, but the wars that have been waged have been inconsequential for the average American. It will probably matter again someday.

Well hopefully not. I'd be really happy if we could deprecate the military and its spending altogether because the world is safe enough. War is terrible for everyone even the winner. And there is no glory in conquest.

Unfortunately we still need them for now.

You weren’t paying attention to national news if you didn’t read about Petraeus.

If not following the news is enough to miss someone then I would think they’re not that famous

Probably could have been a president if he didn't leak a ton of shit to his mistress and get gmail hacked -- he was the golden boy for a while

Yeah, he was the golden boy until he wasn’t. There could have been another universe where he parlayed into a political career, but I think the fact that Iraq is still fundamentally a mess cut against him because his big success was still sort of just an asterisk. He would have had to run in like 2012 on the platform that Obama was ruining his victory in Iraq.

Colin Powell is another.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com