Lawyer, Teacher, Soldier, Spy: Some Thoughts on Pre-Presidential Job Polarization
With the Democratic National Convention underway and the Presidential and Vice Presidential tickets set, I want to use this column to make some observations on the sorts of pre-politics careers that Presidents, Vice Presidents, and nominees for those offices have had. My goal is to see whether we can draw any general lessons, but I begin with an anti-generalization: ideology, party, and temperament almost certainly play a larger role in determining what kind of candidate and President someone makes than does their pre-political profession. Accordingly, some of my remarks will aim to show that the particular training isn't especially relevant.
I'll also add an obvious caveat. Some people fit multiple categories. For example, Tim Walz was both a soldier and a teacher; J.D. Vance was a marine (which, for our purposes I'll count as "soldier," a term I'll use to capture military service more broadly) and a lawyer. And an additional caveat: I'm not going to attempt to be comprehensive.
1) Lawyer. Let's start with the notable fact that in recent years, the Democratic Party has more often nominated lawyers than have the Republicans. Consider the last ten contests, including the current one, in reverse chronological order:
2024: Democrats nominate a lawyer for President (Harris) and a non-lawyer for VP, while Republicans nominate a non-lawyer (Trump) for President and a lawyer (Vance) for VP.
2020: Democrats nominate two lawyers (Biden and Harris), while Republicans nominate none (Trump and Pence).
2016: Democrats Democrats nominate two lawyers (H. Clinton and Kaine), while Republicans nominate none (Trump and Pence).
2012: Democrats nominate two lawyers (Obama and Biden), while Republicans nominate a lawyer for President (Romney) and a non-lawyer (Ryan) for VP.
2008: Democrats nominate two lawyers (Obama and Biden), while Republicans nominate none (McCain and Palin).
2004: Democrats nominate two lawyers (Kerry and Edwards), while Republicans nominate none (Bush 2 and Cheney).
2000: Democrats nominate a non-lawyer for President (Gore) and a lawyer for VP (Lieberman), while Republicans nominate none (Bush 2 and Cheney).
1996: Democrats nominate a lawyer for President (B. Clinton) and a non-lawyer (Gore) for VP, while Republicans nominate a lawyer for President (Dole) and a non-lawyer for VP (Kemp).
1992: Democrats nominate a lawyer for President (Clinton) and a non-lawyer (Gore) for VP, while Republicans nominate a non-lawyer for President (Bush 1) and a lawyer for VP (Quayle).
1988: Democrats nominate two lawyers (Dukakis and Bentsen), while Republicans nominate a non-lawyer for President (Bush 1) and a lawyer for VP (Quayle).
Weighting Presidential nominations and Vice-Presidential nominations equally, that's sixteen lawyers for Democrats and five for Republicans. Even more strikingly, only two of the Republican lawyer nominees (Romney and Dole) were at the top of the ticket, and Romney comes with an asterisk. He got a JD-MBA from Harvard but doesn't appear to have ever practiced law. Meanwhile, nine of the ten most recent Democratic Presidential nominees have been lawyers, and the only one who wasn't (Gore) attended Vanderbilt Law School for about a year.
2) Teacher. This is a small category. Only Walz has had substantial experience as a teacher. Bill Clinton taught briefly at the University of Arkansas Law School and Barack Obama adjuncted at the University of Chicago Law School, but I'm using the term "teacher" to mean a a primary or secondary school teacher. Hillary Clinton taught in the Arkansas public schools for a year. To find other examples, you need to go back to prior to my (admittedly arbitrary) time period: both Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter were teachers for a few years early in their careers.
3) Soldier/Military. Using the last ten elections, we find the following tally of both Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates:
Four Republican nominees with actual combat experience: Bush 1, Dole, Kemp, and McCain. One Democratic nominee with actual combat experience: Kerry.
Three Republicans with military (including stateside National Guard) experience in a non-combat role: Quayle, Bush 2 and Vance.
Two Democrats with military experience in a non-combat role: Gore and Walz.
4) Spy is a joke category simply to make the title of today's essay more true to the John Le Carré novel, although Bush 1 was CIA Director for a year during the Ford administration. Perhaps other nominees were also spies but under cover!
Analysis
What do we learn from the foregoing? I'll disregard the spy category altogether and then switch up the order to teachers, lawyers, and soldiers.
Teacher. While aspiring politicians sometimes take brief gigs in academia, being a primary or secondary school teacher is not a very popular path to a political career. Hillary Clinton did make education an important priority in her political career, although her work for the Children's Defense Fund featured much more prominently than her brief experience as a teacher.
Whether being a teacher is good preparation for politics or governing is untested. LBJ's brief stint as a teacher was hardly a crucial part of his pre-Presidential career, which was defined much more by his role in the Senate. Likewise, Jimmy Carter emphasized his pre-political role as a peanut farmer (and to a lesser extent in the Navy). During the brief time he has been on the ticket so far, Walz has leaned into his role as a football coach more than his role as a teacher, but the two are intertwined.
In principle, being a teacher should be pretty good preparation for campaigning. To be a good teacher, one needs energy, effective communications skills, and a sense of how to motivate people. A teacher must strike a balance between maintaining classroom discipline and providing encouragement and support. Politics presents its own balancing challenges. One must appeal to the party base without alienating swing voters. One must show an empathic side while also being able to project strength in the Commander in Chief role. Etc.
Lawyer. The marked contrast between the parties with regard to lawyers is striking. It's easy to draw the conclusion that this reflects the parties' views. Lawyers are part of the basic machinery of government. The modern Republican Party is in many respects an anti-government party, whereas Democrats are more likely to favor regulation.
But that's too easy. Republicans like to portray themselves as the "law and order" party. True, that alignment is scrambled this election by the fact that Harris is a former prosecutor whose stump speech includes criticism of Trump for his criminal deeds. Even so, Trump's campaign rhetoric and his record in office fit the law-and-order script and then some, especially with respect to undocumented immigrants. So how do we explain that the party of law and order tends to nominate people without expertise in law?
The short answer is that the "law" in "law and order" is not really about law. "Law and order" is essentially a euphemism for authoritarianism. A phrase more commonly used by Democrats, by contrast, is "rule of law," which connotes a more capacious understanding of the law, including, crucially, due process.
In saying that, I'm not denying that the meaning of "rule of law" is contested. Nor am I denying that Republican politicians use the term "rule of law" or that Republicans care about due process. They obviously do, especially with respect to (their) property rights. What I am saying, albeit tentatively, is that Republicans use the term rule of law almost interchangeably with law and order.
Soldier. It is easy to find examples of American Presidents whose political careers were launched by their military careers: George Washington, Andrew Jackson, Zachary Taylor, Ulysses S. Grant, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and George H.W. Bush are leading examples. In more recent times, however, it's much more difficult. Only Bush 1 really fits the bill.
Notably, the other two candidates in the last 40 years who were genuine decorated combat veterans were John Kerry and John McCain, and they both lost their Presidential elections. Republicans even used Kerry's military service against him, albeit disgustingly and dishonestly. The fact that Donald Bonespurs Trump paid no political price whatsoever for his despicable claim that McCain was not a war hero because he was captured shows that even heroic military service seemingly has little cash value.
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Botton Line: Lawyers are substantially more likely to make it onto a Democratic Presidential ticket than onto a Republican one, but being a lawyer does not appear to confer any special electoral advantage or disadvantage. There probably are pre-political occupations that help. Ronald Reagan was hardly a great actor, but he used his acting skills to connect to a mass audience. Trump arguably falls into the same category. He has never been a good businessman, but he is very good at pretending to be one, and was essentially acting as the fictional character of Donald Trump, tycoon, on The Apprentice. Being an actual tycoon would be helpful if for no other reason than that one can self-finance much of a campaign. Helpful, but hardly sufficient, as the Mike Bloomberg campaign demonstrated.
Thus, I end where I began. What one did in a pre-political career is generally less of a determinant of whether one succeeds as a candidate or as President than are other factors.