Pershing, still in command of the American Expeditionary Force in Europe, which was going into occupation duty in Germany, showed up as Ohio Republicans were imagining him as a candidate for the 1920 Presidential Election.
The speculation would not prove to be idle. While Pershing would see a major promotion on the horizon elevating him in 1919 to the rank of General of the Armies of the United States, a rank higher than that occupied by any other U.S. officer during his own lifetime, Pershing did somewhat entertain the move. He later announced that he would not campaign for the office, but he wouldn't decline it if offered either, sort of splitting the Shermanesque position that is so famously quoted. As luck would have it, however, Gen. Leonard Wood, well regarded in Republican circles, and not beholden for career success to a Democratic President, as Pershing was, would be the martial early favorite before his campaigned flamed out in favor of Warren G. Harding.
The presence of Villa on the front page should give the reader now, and should have then, some pause in regard to the Pershing boosterism. How successful of a general was he really? He's come down in history as a major American military success but the record is frankly rather thin on that. Prior to the Great War he had been a very successful combat officer in the Philippines, but he wasn't the only one and that was, after all, an ongoing, embarrassing, low grade guerrilla war. That doesn't mean that Pershing was bad at it, but guerrilla wars aren't usually major conflicts, and the Philippine Insurrection, while it started off as one from the American prospective, really wasn't by the end.
That wasn't Pershing's first combat command, indeed he saw service in the late stages of the Indian Wars and he'd commended troops in the field in Cuba during the Spanish American War. But none of those events had really raised him to prominence. It would take the Punitive Expedition to do that. But how well did he do, really?
Well, a person can debate it. He kept the American effort going and it didn't cost a lot of American lives. It also did not capture Villa, or put him out of commission, which had been its singular goal. Late in the expedition he made recommendations that would have undoubtedly have caused a major escalation of the war which would have almost certainly converted it from a border conflict into a full blown war with Mexico. We could have won that, surely, but it would have put us in the position of occupying a hostile revolutionary Mexico which was proving difficult for its own successive governments to manage. That effort would have likely have been so taxing on the United States that our later participation in World War One may very well not have occurred, which in turn may very well have meant that Germany's 1917 and 1918 efforts would have paid off and Imperial Germany emerged the victor.
Pershing can't be faulted for not seeing that far forward, but he can be for not realizing that a small police action shouldn't risk being expanded into a full blown war. And in regard to his suitability for national leadership, that's important.
Of course those boosting Pershing were thinking of his hero status that came about due to the Great War. But here too, real questions can be raised. Americans have believed since the very onset that Pershing was absolutely correct in keeping the U.S. Army out of action until it could be committed as a singular large command, but the evidence shows that this is somewhat of a myth and, moreover, the AEF was not really well commanded in some regards. In reality American troops started to go into action under French and British control both in order to get combat experience and because the German 1918 Spring Offensive required the deployment of American troops in defense actions. They did well but when counterattacks began American troops took horrendous casualties in part because they were so green but in part because the American military steadfastly refused to accept lessons from the French and the British regarding the circumstances of 1918 European combat. American military efforts were successful, but at huge and at least partially unnecessary cost and at least one American offensive, the St. Mihel Offensive, was unnecessary yet conducted at American insistence. When the Germans began to break in 1918 they were impressed with the recklessness of American operations and the individual American fighting man, but at the same time its notable that the French and the British were advancing with less loss. Moreover, Pershing was one of the generals, although certainly not the only one, who insisted that combat continue right up until the last minute of the war, something which at least now appears to be not only a miscalculation but perhaps a bit more than that.
All in all, retrospectively, Pershing's record is pretty mixed and open to question. Nothing really existed to suggest that he would have been a good President. In the end, the GOP didn't decide to run him.
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