Not Acceptable

A USN aircraft carrier should not, under any circumstances, be named the Barry M. Goldwater. While I’ll concede that Goldwater would probably be a better choice from the perspective of US history than either Carl Vinson or John C. Stennis, the idea that any of them deserve a supercarrier is simply absurd. The next US CVN should be the William Jefferson Clinton; he was a two termer, a better President than either George H. W. Bush or Gerald Ford, and more popular than Ronald Reagan. Any wingnuts who would feel wobbly about serving on the USS William Jefferson Clinton can go fuck themselves. 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…