Ike was certainly right and he knew better than anybody.
The status quo is a Congress that keeps military budgets up since the military’s the only acceptable form of socialism to the GOP, and it’s a rare kind of welfare both sides of the aisle can agree on, they love using the military as a make-work program, support weapon systems to keep defense contractor money flowing, and work hard to keep bases in the US open since they draw in government dollars.
The status quo is a State dep’t that loves to authorize selling weapons systems to virtually anyone who’ll buy regardless of their plans, and loves to help out in conflicts by shipping rebels weapons. Presidents have a habit of dropping (remarkably expensive) bombs and using costly high tech flying death robots with eve more expensive infrastructure in conflict areas.
In the US both parties are beholden to the defense industry, and that’s the status quo for anyone who can get ~%50 of the vote, since political parties are also a racket, and the electoral system and Constitution enforce the damaged system.
This is a perverse state of affairs, but there are still some presidents who are worse than others, and some lines that can be drawn for trends (and foreign policy is more than just who you bomb/invade). AFAIK, Reagan was the last to sell weapons to both sides of a hot (selling some secretly/illegally selling them to Iran). Bill Clinton cut defense spending, Bush massively boosted it and got separate funding for two wars in his binge of global violence, Obama’s managed to cut defense spending again, though only in a hideous way through sequestration. And we’re hosed since Clinton and Trump both want to increase defense spending, the former’s embedded in the military industrial complex, while the latter would be an easy target for their scams.
Even if the US managed to get a Sanders-type elected, the Congress has at least as large a role as the WH in propping up the Military-Industrial complex, and are almost completely beholden to the defense industry. Fixing that’s less likely than getting a universal single-payer healthcare system or reducing the SSI retirement age which would both be much easier.
And to the original point, even if many things suck about both and the system in general, there are still meaningful metrics to judge candidates (and parties) by that matter enough that there are good reasons to want to stop the one promising shocking evils even if it means supporting the other and participating in a morally compromised system.
