On the September 10, 2004, edition (accessed via Nexis) of Fox News’ Special Report, Roll Call executive editor Mort Kondracke asserted that “this whole business of John Kerry saying I’m qualified to be commander in chief because I was a Swift boat commander in Vietnam is bunk. … It does not qualify you to be the commander in chief of all the Armed Forces because you were a Swift boat commander.”

In a February 13, 2004, column, syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker wrote: “Given that military service neither qualifies nor disqualifies one for political office — and given the fact of Bush’s honorable discharge — it’s time to dismount this jackass. Vietnam is over. To judge people now on the basis of what they said or did then is to forget how emotionally riven we were. And how young and naive we were. … What’s more important now is what would a man do as president?”

In a September 23, 2004, column, syndicated columnist Thomas Sowell wrote of Kerry: “Never mind that people who were actually there with him in the 1960s dispute what a great job he did then. Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that he did all the things he said he did and none of the things that eyewitnesses in Vietnam said he did. How does that qualify anyone to be President of the United States?”

In an August 26, 2004, column, National Review Online editor-at-large Jonah Goldberg wrote that “experience — while more often than not superior to the lack of it — isn’t as powerful or important as we like to think. If service in Vietnam or in uniform were the prerequisite for correct thinking on military and foreign-policy issues, then you’d think Veterans would all agree with each other. Obviously, they don’t. The media’s favorite veteran, John McCain, disagrees with John Kerry about Iraq and most foreign-policy issues.”

MediaMatters

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