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Aircraft Carriers and Republican Presidents

The USS Ronald Reagan, USS Gerald Ford, and USS George H.W. Bush are all the names of existing or planned aircraft carriers. Jimmy Carter was a submariner, so there’s something fitting about naming a sub after him even though it’s a lower-status ship. But as Robert Farley says this clearly means that the next aircraft carrier ought to be the USS William Jefferson Clinton not the Barry Goldwater:

And no, USS Enterprise is not an acceptable alternative, at least not for CV-79. I’m open to naming a future carrier after the Enterprise, but not this one; I’m tired of the conceit that Republican Presidents get CVs, but not Democratic ones. We can talk about George W. Bush after the USS Lyndon Baines Johnson is commissioned, although I’m guessing that Bush the Younger will still be residing in Nixon’s Locker when the time comes…

…this may seem trivial, but the fact that Republican one-term and half-term Presidents get major fleet units named after them (and yes, I know that Jimmy Carter has a submarine; subs are a far less visible projection of national power) perpetuates the notion that only Republicans and conservatives are serious about national security. There is no halfway; if you name aircraft carriers after a succession of mediocre Republican Presidents, you can’t suddenly insist that you “want to take the politics” out of ship naming. You can name the next ship Enterprise if you go back and rename Stennis, Vinson, Reagan, Bush, and Ford.

John Stennis and Carl Vinson were, of course, Democrats and frankly their inclusion on the list of guys with aircraft carriers named after them is far more egregious than any Republican President. The idea here seems to be that veteran white supremacist politicians are worthy of honor as long as they also liked defense pork.

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