How should senior military officers in democratic states influence their domestic political environments? The flippant answer is that they should not: they should do as they’re told. The American civil-military relations literature, written largely in the shadow of Samuel P. Huntington’s myth of an apolitical military, has consistently downplayed the positive role officers play in politics, to such a degree that we have only a dim outline of what constitutes appropriate and effective political influence by officers Thus, in practice, we fear that too many officers find that their professional military education fails to prepare them for the realities of being a commander.