More Mike Mullens, fewer Rush Limbaughs

This was another year of the vanishing center in America. Despite the election of a president who promised to govern across party and racial lines, partisan division seemed to engulf nearly every important institution and topic — with one notable exception, and that was the U.S. military.

So at year’s end, I want to examine the person who came to symbolize the military’s apolitical unity, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. A year from now, I’d love to be able to say there are more Mullens in our national life and fewer Rush Limbaughs…

In a speech several months ago in New York, Mullen described himself as the military version of Rodney Dangerfield. He noted that when a woman at a dinner party asked what he did at the Pentagon, he told her that he was the president’s top military adviser: ” ‘Oh my goodness, General Petraeus, I’m so sorry,’ she blurted. ‘I did not recognize you.’ “