Adjutant general’s role lacks checks, balances

South Carolina is the only state in the nation where the adjutant general — the commanding officer over the state’s National Guard citizen soldiers and airmen — is a politician who raises money to run for his job every four years. As elected officials, adjutants general are fond of saying they “have no boss.”

Our state’s adjutants general have always been products of a system lacking the critical checks and balances vital to a responsible military organization. Conversely, an appointed adjutant general would have the governor as his immediate supervisor. The governor is the most obvious choice because he is the most scrutinized person in the state. Only a foolish “one-term governor” would fail to use sound judgment in appointing the adjutant general.

With a governor providing immediate and critical oversight, an appointed adjutant general will always be disinclined to offensive conduct. Thus, it becomes far riskier for an appointed adjutant general to lure or allow his subordinates to be lured into objectionable activity. The fact that a couple of foolish appointed adjutants general played leading roles in their own scandals in other states is the best possible argument for demanding the checks and balances in our own system that put them in jail in theirs.

In South Carolina, the adjutant general heads an agency that includes hundreds of federal civil service employees who help maintain Guard units’ readiness between monthly drills. These employees are required to remain Guard members to keep their full-time jobs, so few sane employees are going to object to anything an elected adjutant general or his political campaign does. This will never change until ready and effective appeals are available at the local political level.

When an employee does register a complaint, federal law normally says the final arbiter is the adjutant general; there is no further appeal. That’s all right when the governor is the adjutant general’s boss. But when the adjutant general has no boss, it’s absurd.

I know. After I refused to sell tickets for the adjutant general’s re-election campaign, I was “management directed” from my job in charge of the armory in Greer to a position at state headquarters in Columbia — a move that I believe was reprisal. (The alternative was to be terminated from my full-time job.)

To whom can a Guard employee appeal when he reports wrongdoing by the adjutant’s general political organization, and then is hit with reprisals by his military superiors? The only appeal is to an elected adjutant general who stands to benefit from not looking too closely at inappropriate campaign activity by his own employees.

The governor and other state officials are powerless to do anything about it. Such matters are too small, handled too quietly and just too remote from voters for voters to be able to hold the adjutant general responsible for his actions.

As important as it is to establish minimum qualifications for the adjutant general (currently there are none), such qualifications must take second place to accountability. Establishing qualifications while leaving in place an elected adjutant general is like telling a sick dog how much better off it is going to be once it gets its pedigree papers. O

f course there should be minimum standards. But to the degree that those standards preclude a worthy leader being considered, they are counterproductive. For instance, Colin Powell and Wesley Clark are no longer federally recognized officers due to retirement, but who could argue that either could not ably lead the S.C. National Guard?

The Guard is better equipped and better trained than ever. What is lacking is simply this: a system that ensures integrity in leadership and the means to summarily remove an incumbent who demonstrates a lack of this essential quality. In a system that requires the adjutant general to be an elected politician, the promotion of senior Guard officers can appear to be too easily and too often predicated on political loyalties. It is then no surprise that those officers can become preoccupied with politics when they should be focused on training and taking care of soldiers.

We must remove the burden of the adjutant general having to raise money for his campaign, pay off campaign debts and, most importantly, face the nasty prospect of politically influenced promotions. Until this is fixed, too many committed and professional citizen-soldiers will remain first in the line of suffering and last in the line of fairness. Ultimately, yes, it is a simple matter. It’s about accountability.

Mr. Enloe is a major in the National Guard, with 24 years of military service.