As the mother of a Marine who was admitted to Georgetown Law and opted to serve his country instead, and the mother of a similarly bright and level-headed Marine Corp reservist who joined after 9/11, I agree. Both my sons have served in Iraq, and on a really bad day have far more intelligence and plain common sense than George W. Bush.

I am currently involved in efforts to support veterans running for public office, not because they are veterans, but because they are brave, dedicated, willing to do what it takes to get a job done, and willing to be "ready and able", not arrogant and willful. They would never squander the lives of our sons and daughters in a petulant display of ego and ignorance. And I hope that whenever people see them out there fighting against big money and the "good old boys" network with only the support of people who really care....that people give them a thank you and a leg up. And a check.

Having said that...there is a more important qualification Mr. Keillor should consider as the first requirement for the highest office in the land. An IQ test.

If you are going to require that all presidential candidates have military experience then you must first remove the ban on GLBT persons serving in the military, otherwise you are by default banning a whole class of people from seeking our nation's highest office.

Also the disabled, since I guess people with physical disabilities do not enlist in the military. So no more Franklin Roosevelts holding office from their wheelchairs.

This would also suck for women who aspire to the presidency, since although the numbers are growing, I think there are still more men than women serving in the military.

I guess no Quaker presidents. No conscientious objectors!

Anyone else I'm forgetting in this shrinking presidential field?

Please..., why stop there. Why not a Boy Scout? ("..I shall not lie") No one can be ungrateful for their service to our country but how many get a free pass among the civilized? Can you say Abu Ghraib? How many of them could not even stick up for one of their own, ala Swift Boaters. As far as I know, the '60s version of the National Guard was considered the military. Not a great track record if you ask me.

Actually that's not a bad idea. We would at least have the comfort of knowing that a President, when he or she made the most important decision a President ever makes, would have some life experience to draw upon when deciding whether our soldiers should risk life and limb and carry the awful burden of whether or not to kill others.

There is an increasing, and well documented, distance between the U.S. military and the rest of Americans. Both the reflexive flag-wavers and the reflexive-antiwar crowd often have little knowledge of military life. Witness their quickness to paint the military and the men and women who serve in it as either all good or all bad, rather than human beings with many contours and shades of gray to their respective characters.

As to those readers who have written in with knee-jerk responses that dismiss the people who serve in our military as dangerous automatons, I suggest you take the time to get to really get to know some vets. Visit Walter Reed Hospital if you can. Maybe you'll change your mind a bit.

The sort of military-bashing that's gone on in these responses is the sort of unthinking crap that helps make the left so irrelevant - Unless of your only looking to impress your fellow art school friends/sociology majors/know-it-all record store clerks.

I realize, of course, that Mr. Keillor was being at least partially facetious. However, perhaps he doesn't realize the vast number of minor physical defects that can disqualify a person for military service. My father avoided the draft in Vietnam because of a small cyst on his tailbone - a spot the size of a dime kept him out of that war. When I was young and foolish, I wanted to join the air force, only to discover that I was two inches too short (minimum requirement is 5'2" for women) my eyesight was too bad, and I was too flabby. Now, the flabbiness could have been remedied through some serious dieting and exercise. But there wasn't much I could do about my height or myopia.

While I understand the point Mr. Keillor was making about the advantages of military training, the plain fact is that such training is not available to all Americans. To create a military service requirement for presidential candidacy would be in direct conflict with the Equal Protection clause of the Constitution. Granted, presidential candidacy is already limited to an exclusive group - those with a lot of money and the right connections. But those limitations are a product of economic and social forces, and are not dictated by law.

The brevity of qualifications for presidential candidacy are arguably intended to open the field to as many Americans as possible. The framers of the Constitution certainly could have created stricter standards ("all candidates for the presidency shall be able to speak coherently"), but they didn't, and that choice demands deference.

Mr. Keillor, I'm surprised, where's the sarcasm? I never served and those who do are deserving of my respect and adequate healthcare, educational incentive, etc... but let's stop short of demoting everyone who hasn't to second class citizen. Equality is one of those little things they served to protect.

On the other hand, some form of mandatory national service is certainly worth considering.

By that logic, George W. Bush would still have been qualified to be president since he served in the Texas Air National Guard, but Bill Clinton would not have been qualified.

We still could have had Ronald Reagan because of his service in WWII making films in Hollywood, but FDR would have been disqualified.

I can't think of a worse idea.

Many of the letter writers here have focused too narrowly on Keillor’s suggestion that presidential candidates should be required to undertake military service. I would suggest that Keillor is not offering that suggestion in deadly earnest, but is in fact using that suggestion to come at his larger and very serious point in the amusingly sly and sideways fashion so common to his work. The serious issue that he raises here is the question of how, in a culture founded on self-interest and self-congratulation, do we encourage people to shed some of that narcissism and take an interest in the problems, struggles and needs of our communal life. And I can’t think of an issue more pressing. Virtually all of our ills can be traced back to the ethic of selfishness that’s drilled into us day after day by the voices and imagery that surround us, from the Bush administration’s disastrous unilateralism to the vexations of everyday rudeness.

Bush’s utter failure as a president results directly from the slackness of spirit that a devotion to self-interest brings about. What a nightmare that he has twice been elected and yet how fitting that an obese and overpriveleged nation has elected one of their own, the pampered, indolent son of comfort, interested in nothing but his own gratification, bailed out of a series of mistakes by wealthy and influential caretakers, now elevated by those same caretakers to be their flummoxed and inarticulate figurehead. Much as it pains me to say it, however, we now have the president we deserve.

I don’t pretend to have an answer to the problem of culturally embedded selfishness, but mandatory military or national service would be a good place to start. As one who vehemently opposed the Vietnam War I never dreamed I’d say this, but I think we should bring back the military draft, with no exemptions for anyone, for any reason other than physical disability. The American military has been used recklessly and thoughtlessly in recent history, because those in command know they’re using the sons and daughters of the powerless. If the sons and daughters of the wealthy and the upper middle class go to the front lines instead of to college, I guarantee we will see far less military adventurism and an end to the deplorable concept of preemptive war.