My militarist uncle, James A Hull, has a letter in the Wichita Eagle today:

It is a well-known fact that John McCain was shot down and became a prisoner of war in Vietnam. I agree with his critics that getting shot down and becoming a POW does not qualify him to be president. But it should not disqualify him, either.

The real reason that critics of McCain consider him to be unqualified to be president is that he has not denounced the Iraq war or apologized for his part in it.

That's actually about as true and well-reasoned as Uncle James has ever gotten. Gen. Wesley Clark's original complaint about McCain had more to do with McCain's failure to move up in rank to a command position than anything deprecatory about McCain's service, dedication, sacrifice, etc. It was meant to imply that real Generals, like Clark, are far more qualified than mere pilots, like McCain. The subtext is the notion that senior military management prepares one better than most other career paths for becoming president. There's not a lot of historical evidence supporting that position -- more importantly, there are no examples from the permanent military that was formed after WWII and freed from the draft after Vietnam.

The reason people mistake Clark's comment is that McCain has done little but trade on his fame and misfortune ever since he got back from Hanoi. He built his whole political career on being a Vietnam POW. The fact that he was almost unique in doing so may show that he had something more going for him -- a rich wife bankrolling him, a father who did match Clark's rank, genuine skill at bamboozling the media. Over 20-some years in the House and Senate he has accumulated the level of policy experience that others with similar credentials regard as qualifying. However, during those 20-some years, he's made numerous bad policy decisions, of which his rabid and unrepentant advocacy of invading and occupying Iraq for the next century or two ranks especially high.

Uncle James may have meant his last paragraph as a point of pride -- as evidence of McCain's real heroism -- but it cuts the other way just as cleanly and decisively.