John Kerry: Unfit for President?

What do you expect form a guy who looks more at home in a coffin than in the people's house.

Extremely unfit.

CG

What is your definition of qualified? Senator Kerry was against the vietnam war and lobbied against the government during the war while fellow soldiers were in POW camps. To me that is such a cheap thing to do --allow the enemy the benefit of anti war rallies, embolding the enemy to stick it out. Many POW state that the enemy had radios playing the protests.

In my mind, any person who does that is totally unqualified to defend his country if he was ready and willing to do that to the POW> And the most important thing the president does is to protect his country his soldiers and his citizens.

Thanks FO.....another great post. I'd like to come back later with some comments....domestic chores beckon! Plus, I'm gonna ping it to our FRiend, gatorbait.

Lando

"What is your definition of qualified"

Actually able to carry out the responsibilities of the office. Not to my exact wishes on every policy matter, not deserving of it, not the best possible person - just plain able to carry out its actual day to day duties. If Al Sharpton were president tomorrow he'd need new pants. If Kerry were President tomorrow existing staffers leafing through existing rolodexes would smoothly transfer several thousand educated liberal academics and politicians and New England socialite cronies into each executive department, each with a policy background and position papers on every issue.

I'm not saying I'd like his policies, I wouldn't. But he would not be out of his depth, cluelessly lost level, incompetent. It would be his competence at implimenting policies I disagree with that would be the problem. Not his - not knowing what the Federal Reserve is, who to appoint to the State Department, what is to expect an intelligence briefing to consist of, who he must hear out before deciding which matters, and the like.

There is such a thing as basic qualification for the office. Kerry has it, not everyone does. Bush had it - he had been governor of Texas, run multi-million dollar businesses, seen the White House under his father and how it functioned, etc. Cheney had it - he ran the Pentagon in a major war, ran a major corporation, ran the White House as chief of staff for Ford, etc. Dennis doesn't have it, Sharpton doesn't have it, LaRouche doesn't have it, and a lot of other people who pretend they want to be President, when they really just want to be on TV.

It is a useful distinction to maintain, not something to trash for the sake of talking points in one campaign season. Kerry's problem is that he is a liberal who fully reflects the liberalism of a major political party, that is wrong on the substance of important national issues. He was wrong about the things his party was wrong about in the past, too. This amounts to saying he is a liberal democrat and liberal policies aren't good ones, particularly right now.

It does not amount to saying he is one of the clownish characters above, who are *unqualified* (ordinary English meaning of the term, which should be obvious to practically everyone regardless of party) to be President.

According to you any CEO with the right connections is qualified to run the big business of the government.

I am talking about the character qualifications. Mr. Kerry betrayed the Vietnam POW and the American families who lost their children and the American government. He betrayed them inhis association with Jane Fonda and her support for the communists.

That is a character qualification---?CHARACTER? do you understand where I am going--paper shuffler, right connections, serving time in the senate--yeah, they have got him on the right rung on the ladder to "qualify" for the race of the presidency. But so was Hitler qualified to run his government. I am talking about the character, the morals of a cndidate and Mr. Kerry in my opinion does NOT have theCHARACTER qualifcations as neither did Mr. Clinton.

John FRENCHIE Kerry is a piece of liberal shiite.

Hanoi John is about to take a terrible fall.

If Senator Kerry believes that the threat is exaggerated, he either is delusional or doesn't understand the world situation. In either case, that would indicate that he is unfit to be president.

Kerry isn't delusional - he understands the world stage. His goal is nothing less than the total destruction of the United States of America. Why would anyone who gave aid and comfort to the enemy in the 1970s be any different now?

"Any CEO with the right connections" - it is a start. Mack the nightwatchman may be a prince among men, but that doesn't make him ready for this particular job.

I know Kerry was an ass about the Vietnam war after he got back. So was a third of the country. I'm not going to vote for him, as I think I've already said a dozen times by now. But this means he is a liberal, not that he isn't "qualified". Nobody on the left back then was right about the war. And anybody who was on the right back then and has since moved left needs to have his head examined, because the country had moved the other way since and rightly so.

So your theorem simply amounts to, "no one on the left has the character to be President, because they are on the left, which was wrong about the war". Um, right better than left we grok. This is FR. Is the term that characterizes this: "qualified"? It is not. It is conservative. Kerry isn't a conservative. What a shocker. Name someone who could be nominated by the Democrats who is. Was Al Gore qualified? Didn't be "betray his country" over Chinagate money?

It becomes nothing more than a free floating denunciation. It is being used simply as a statement of dislike, or that you won't vote for him. Duh. That is simply not what the English word means. Qualified means fitted by training, skill, or ability for a special purpose.

When 10 men apply for a job you throw out the ones who obviously couldn't do it. Do you hire all the rest, or one of them at random? No. You pick the best out of the remainder, who you bother to look at. You don't even need to bother to look at the ones who clearly could not do the job and have no business applying for it.

Do you have any idea what I am trying to save here? It has nothing to do with Kerry. It has to do with a bipartisan standard of basic ability and seriousness, that I want respected by us, by the Dems, by people at large. Not just in this election, but in picking judges, in other elections, in executive appointments, etc. I don't want it trashed down to simple ideological bashing, "anybody I disagree with is unqualified", "Bork is not a qualified judge", "Miguel Estrada is not qualified".

We can disagree with Kerry and call him a strident liberal who doesn't deserve to be President and is wrong on foreign policy, without trashing the English language and basic standards of seriousness about the most important job there is. It is like moronic liberals calling Bush "dumb". They don't agree with his policies, that's all; the bare statement they actually make instead is transparent nonsense. Does this work, politically? It does not.

And incidentally, no Hitler was not qualified for anything. He was an unemployed housepainter and former corporeal, who'd never done anything but give rabble rousing speeches, and ideologically was a tinfoil nutter in the full LaRouche variety.

Good grief!!! cut it out (or as they say in the military, "knock it off"---Kerry was a TRAITOR to the POW in Vietnam. I was not in favor of the Vietnam war but would not betray those who were still in active duty in Vietnam by starting stories about how they raped, killed, mutilated, ad lib.

Any other posturing on your part in defense of KErry makes it quite ludicrous. CHARACTER COUNTS!!!! Now according to you Kerry is a "well qualified"jerk --now are ya happy with that--!!

I am curious, why are so defensive of Kerry? What is the whole point of your multiple posts--I can't believe it is to convince me of the true meaning of qualified.