Just before Christmas, Vice President Mike Pence slipped into Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan unannounced.
Pence stood at a podium wearing a leather flight jacket and told assembled U.S. troops that he was delivering a holiday greeting from President Trump, the third commander in chief to oversee military operations in the country since late 2001.
“Before I left the Oval Office yesterday I asked the president if he had a message for our troops here in Afghanistan, and he looked at me without hesitation from behind the Resolute Desk and he said, ‘Tell them I love them,’” Pence said. “And during this special season, I know President Trump was speaking for every American.”
After 15 months in office, the question remains when or if Trump will make his own trip to visit the roughly 13,000 troops deployed to Afghanistan, the country’s longest war, and the thousands of troops fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
“I think he’s missing a big political opportunity because, you know, this is an important part of his presidential brand is support of the military and his belief in a strong America and you see it in his tweets and his oral statements a lot,” said Steven Schier, a political science professor at Carleton College and author. “You would think he would want to back that up by supporting troops in their fields of combat personally but he has not done that.”
During his first year, the president paid visits to troops stationed overseas at a Navy base in Italy and an Army camp in South Korea. But so far the vice president is the highest official to visit a combat zone, even as the administration has been busy setting new strategy and rethinking policy.
“I think Pence is a lot more comfortable doing that sort of thing because he is, I think, more resolute in his support of these deployments than perhaps Trump is, so it’s not personally difficult for Pence to go overseas and do that,” Schier said.
Trump had criticized the U.S. war in Afghanistan for years before becoming president, calling it a waste. But thousands more troops have deployed there since August when he was convinced by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and his military advisers to approve a new surge strategy.
A 22-year-old American soldier was killed in the stepped-up fighting there last week.
The president has also railed against the U.S. military role in the Middle East, claiming the country has spent $7 trillion and gotten “nothing.” But he also touted the country’s “incredible warriors” who have “essentially just absolutely obliterated” the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria during a White House press conference with the French president last month.
“Still, there’s nothing like presidential presence to really highlight the importance of a military mission,” Schier said.
No hard-and-fast rule exists for when presidents should visit combat zones and Trump’s predecessors have handled the trips differently, and to underscore different political points.
President Barack Obama met with troops in Baghdad within three months of being inaugurated in 2009 and underscored a campaign pledge to wind down U.S. military operations there.
“It is time for us to transition to the Iraqis. They need to take responsibility for their country,” said Obama, although he would send forces back to the country in 2014 to fight the Islamic State.
Obama did not make a trip to Afghanistan until 2010. That was relatively quick compared to President George W. Bush, whose first 2006 trip there came four and a half years after the U.S. invaded in retaliation for the 9/11 attacks.
But Bush scored a public relations win in 2003 when he made a secret trip under intense security to Iraq to have Thanksgiving with troops who had overthrown the government of Saddam Hussein about eight months earlier, said Stephen Farnsworth, a professor of political science at the University of Mary Washington in Virginia who has written books about the presidency.
“The image is with us still: President Bush with a military windbreaker putting down a fully cooked turkey for the troops gathered. It provided an image of the president as national father, as commander in chief, a very favorable image for Bush,” Farnsworth said.
Just like Pence, both Obama and Bush focused their trips on boosting morale and thanking service members who had fought in the Middle East and Afghanistan.
“I can’t think of a finer group of folks to have Thanksgiving dinner with. We’re proud of you,” said Bush, who also underscored that the American public “stands solidly behind you” despite widespread controversy and division over the Iraq invasion.
But the trips can also work in the opposite direction to boost a sitting president because the military is typically viewed more favorably by the public, Farnsworth said. The military’s popularity will sometimes rub off on a commander in chief such as Trump, who has struggled with low approval ratings throughout his presidency.
“I think it is a major public relations mistake for a president to spend weekend after weekend after weekend at Trump property golf resorts and not make a single trip to connect with the troops in the Middle East,” he said.
