Veterans in Congress: The Courage Problem Washington Actually Needs to Solve

Rye Barcott, a former Marine who co-founded With Honor, is making a case that sounds hopeful: military veterans running for Congress bring something Washington has lost, moral courage, the willingness to stand against your own party when it's wrong.

He's not wrong about what courage looks like. His book profiles politicians from both parties who served in uniform and then risked their careers to do the right thing. Seth Moulton, a Marine and Massachusetts Democrat, criticized his own administration's chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal. That took guts. Barcott's data shows the trend is real: more veterans are running for federal office than ever before, and women veterans are running at nearly double the rate they did in 2024.

But here's what matters: courage is not enough. Not when the system itself is broken.

The Real Problem

Individual virtue doesn't fix structural corruption. A Marine who votes against their party leadership still answers to donors who funded their campaign. A veteran with moral clarity still has to navigate a Congress where special interests have direct access and party leadership can punish dissent with funding cuts.

This is why the Common Good Party exists. Washington doesn't have a courage shortage. It has a corruption problem. And no amount of personal integrity solves that.

What Barcott Sees, and What He Misses

The article shows something real: veterans do tend toward bipartisanship. They've learned to work with people across lines. They understand stakes and consequences in ways most politicians don't. That's valuable.

But Barcott is looking for solutions in character when the problem is structural. Congress didn't become partisan because we elected the wrong people. It became partisan because:

• Money controls access. Donors get the ear. Constituents get a town hall once a year.
• Party leadership punishes independence. Step out of line and your funding dries up, your committee assignments disappear, your primary challenger gets backed.
• Gerrymandering makes primaries matter more than general elections. So politicians answer to the far edges of their base, not to the middle.
• No transparency. Voters don't know who's funding whom or what promises were made in private.

You can bring the most courageous veteran in America to Congress. If they depend on corporate donors and fear party punishment, the system will grind that courage down. Not because they're weak. Because the incentives are built that way.

Where Veterans Do Matter

This doesn't mean veterans shouldn't run. They should. They bring institutional discipline, cross-party relationships, and a different ethic. But their presence alone won't fix Washington.

What would? Getting money out of politics so politicians answer to constituents, not donors. Real campaign finance reform. Transparency requirements with teeth. Independent redistricting so politicians fear voters, not primaries. Term limits on party leadership. Ranked-choice voting to encourage coalition-building.

These are the systems that would let a courageous veteran actually be courageous instead of constantly calculating the cost.

The Veteran Advantage, Used Right

Veterans do have something: they know how to work across lines because their survival depended on it. In Iraq, Barcott's story shows, a lower-ranking sergeant had the moral courage to defy a superior officer because the mission and the unit mattered more than rank. That instinct could reshape Congress, if Congress was built to reward it instead of punish it.

The question isn't whether veterans can save Washington. It's whether we'll build a political system that lets anyone, veteran or not, do the right thing without losing everything.