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Home | Opinion Exchange | Commentary

Should presidents salute?

Doug Mills, New York Times

President Obama and service members saluted fallen soldiers at Dover Air Force Base.

It's a fairly recent practice, and often awkward. But there are moments ...

By CAREY WINFREY

Last update: November 3, 2009 - 10:48 AM

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For nearly three decades, I've felt conflicted about presidential salutes. After all, my U.S. Marine Corps instructors drilled into me the idea that "you never salute without a cover" which, in civilian, meant without a hat.

My fellow Marines and I were also informed, in no uncertain terms, that we weren't to salute out of uniform. So whenever I've seen a president stepping off a helicopter and bringing hand to brow, my drill instructor's unambiguous words have come back to me with much of their original force.

Then there were the salutes themselves, which ranged from halfhearted to jaunty. None of them fulfilled the succinct prescription that Capt. Jack O'Donnell of the Marine Corps delivered, in 1963, to my platoon of freshly minted second lieutenants: "Your salute," he pronounced, "must be impeccable," by which we took him to mean like his: a straight line running from elbow to fingertips, the fingers and thumb forming a seamless whole, the arm brought swiftly to the brim of the cap, no palm showing, and then lowered smartly to the side.

Presidents have long been saluted, but they began returning salutes relatively recently. Ronald Reagan was thought to be the first. He had sought advice on the matter from Gen. Robert Barrow, commandant of the Marine Corps. According to John Kline, then Reagan's military aide and today a member of Congress from Minnesota, Barrow told the president that as commander in chief he could salute anybody he wished.

I've been conflicted -- believing that presidents deserve to be cut some slack, but also feeling a little uneasy about the whole thing.

My ambivalence came to an end last week, when I saw a videotape of President Obama's midnight trip to Dover Air Force Base, where he participated in the "dignified transfer" of 15 Army soldiers and three Drug Enforcement Administration agents killed in Afghanistan. The president stood ramrod-straight and saluted as six soldiers carried the coffin bearing the body of Sgt. Dale Griffin of Indiana off a C-17 transport aircraft and into a waiting van. His salute, it struck me, was impeccable in every way.

Carey Winfrey is editor of the Smithsonian magazine. He wrote this article for the New York Times.

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