Yes and no - - -

and Senators Obama, Clinton, Kennedy;
And Representatives (too many to list!)
and Former President Clinton;
and Former Secretaries of Defense William Cohen, William Perry, Harold Brown;

Those with military reserve records (GW Bush, Mr. Rumsfeld, Mr. Aspin and others) have received military training (individual and unit) and experience to at minimum understand how the force structure works, what REALLY happens when call-ups occur, how deployments are managed, and what happens when things go both right and wrong.

I have to admit being partial to Presidents and Secretaries of Defense/State who have active-duty military training and experience (Presidents GHW Bush, Carter, Reagan, Kennedy, Johnson, Eisenhower; Secretaries Powell, Haig, Carlucci, Gates and many others) to include for most time-in-combat. It's not as easy to order military deployments when you know first-hand what the results will be and have lived through others making that decision for you. And it's just as hard to make the decision to bring them home, when you believe that in doing so may result in another generation having to face the same deployment decision, but only many times more dangerous.

Being Commander-In-Chief is not a hollow title and in my mind is the most important role the President has, and the fact that people will live and/or die based on a President's decisions means that person should make these decisions based on knowledge and skill, not political points or straw polls.

Would you like an amateur screwing around with your household plumbing or electrical wiring? Would you go to a hospital where decisions as to how treatment will be dispensed is made by persons with no knowledge or experience in medicine? Would you willingly accept medical treatment from someone who has no medical training or experience, but does have 'advisors' giving him/her suggestions as to what to do next? Of course not! So why are people so anxious to make someone who has no knowledge of military history, strategy, force selection, or deployment (administrative, logistics, etc.) the Commander-in-Chief of such a complex and sizeable entity as the US Military? Is this really the job someone should learn how to do totally by 'on-the-job training" ? ? ? ?