2. Did they think that they personally should go to fight in the war?

For three of the positions in the matrix, you can imagine moral and character defenses. (The arguments would start when you say which should rank above which others.) Not for the fourth. To take them in order:

1. Committed Warriors Yes, and Yes: This group includes people who thought that somebody should go fight, and were themselves willing to go. Among currently prominent public figures, John McCain would clearly be in this group. So would former Democratic senator and presidential candidate Jim Webb, a wounded and decorated Marine combat veteran, and like McCain an Annapolis graduate. Assuming that Robert Mueller was in favor of the war when he joined the Marine Corps in 1968, he would be another member. Presumably John Kerry, before experience in Vietnam turned him against the U.S. involvement, would also fall into this category.

2. Reluctant Warriors. No and Yes. These were people who thought no American should have to go and fight—but that if anyone had to go, they should be willing to do so as well. Al Gore is an obvious example. He opposed the war as a college student but nonetheless joined the Army and went to Vietnam, though he was not in combat there. The closest hometown friend of mine who was killed in Vietnam, Christopher Warren Morgens (who was in the same Harvard class as Gore), was in this category, too. As a matter of character, bravery, and patriotism, you could argue that this group is the most admirable of all.

3. Consistent Non-Warriors. No and No. These were people who thought that no Americans should be going off to fight in Vietnam, and that the “no one” should apply to themselves too. This was my own category. As a college student in the late 1960s I was part of the out-of-Vietnam movement, and like many other college students I did my best to keep myself out, too. The brutal fact that it was easier, for opponents of the war, to keep themselves from being involved than to change the whole nation’s policy left this group with its moral ambiguity. Back in the 1970s I wrote a Washington Monthly article called “What Did You Do in the Class War, Daddy?” about the way the college-educated averted their eyes from who was going to war in their stead. But at least they—we—had some logical consistency to their position. We didn’t want to go, and we didn’t want others to go either. Bill Clinton would be in this group.

A variant that straddles several categories would be those who served but in a way calculated to keep them out of Vietnam or combat. The National Guard berths of Dan Quayle and George W. Bush fit this pattern—as, it seems clear, did the Marine Corps reserve service of Richard Blumenthal. (Blumenthal’s varying accounts of his service are another matter.)