One man with courage makes a majority.

-- Andrew Jackson

And any politician admired for his courage has an enhanced shot at winning a majority.

Sen. John Kerry, such a candidate, won a Silver Star, a Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts in Vietnam.

He also won the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, and appears to be gaining inevitable-nominee status as the Democratic presidential race reaches the South Carolina primary and contests in six other states Tuesday.

Kerry's outstanding military record elevates his political stock in an era when most candidates have no military record.

A stint in uniform once seemed a prerequisite for presidential ambitions. Then came lifelong civilian Bill Clinton, who reneged on his commitment to join the ROTC. Welcome to Baby Boomer commanders in chief.

Then came the second President Bush, whose 1968-73 service in the Texas Air National Guard drew predictable -- and credible -- criticism as a dodge of Vietnam duty. A less credible charge: Bush shirked minimum attendance obligations after transferring to the Alabama Guard.

Bush denied it, and The New York Times reported, on Nov. 3, 2000, that official records "indicated that some of those concerns (about Bush's absence) may be unfounded," adding, "A review by The Times showed that after a seven-month gap, he appeared for duty in late November 1972 at least through July 1973."

The Washington Post summed it up: "It is safe to say that Bush did very light duty in his last two years in the Guard and that his superiors made it easy for him."

That doesn't make it easy for Bush to send young Americans to war today.

Retired Gen. Wesley Clark is this year's other presidential candidate with a military record, also outstanding (he won a Silver Star, two Bronze Stars and a Purple Heart in Vietnam). But he didn't advance his offensive by pointing out that he outranked Kerry. And he stood by silently three weeks ago as author/filmmaker/leftist crank Michael Moore called Bush a "deserter." Clark has since passed on multiple opportunities to express disapproval of Moore's asinine accusation.

Clearly, the battle over candidates' military credentials is joined.

The political boost that Kerry's Naval-officer background gives him is at least partially negated by his post-military pronouncements as a spokesman for Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) -- including his 1971 testimony before Congress that U.S. soldiers in Vietnam were committing widespread atrocities "reminiscent of Genghis Khan."

Count on hearing more replays of Kerry's anti-war (and anti-American?) rhetoric if -- make that when -- he wins the nomination. Count, too, on a revival of America's tired, painful, irresolvable Vietnam War argument.

This American thought Kerry got the Vietnam issue wrong back then, and got it wrong again during a Jan. 22 debate in New Hampshire when he cited a prudent presidential standard -- "only go to war because we have to" -- while blaming Richard Nixon for failing to follow it.

Nixon didn't "go to war."

He inherited a war.

But though Kerry should place more of the Vietnam-tragedy blame on Lyndon Johnson and less on Nixon, his opinions about war -- then and now -- are undeniably informed by pertinent experiences most of us lack. Lt. Kerry fought for his country. He earned a fair hearing.

And before assuming that if you've seen one Massachusetts liberal running against a Bush you've seen them all, keep in mind, that 1988 scene of Michael Dukakis looking silly on a tank ride shouldn't be confused with the scene, now airing here in a campaign commercial, of Kerry looking heroic with a machine gun in Vietnam.

Should macho military imagery matter to voters?

Maybe not.

Yet to lots of us, and not just vets, it does.

Plenty of aging U.S. male non-vets, including this one, feel at best awkward, at worst ashamed, while pondering the unbridgeable gap separating us from those who did serve -- and those who still do.

Sure, George McGovern, a decorated WWII bomber pilot, lost 49 states in 1972.

Then again, the candidate who won those states was WWII Naval officer Nixon.

During the 1992 presidential campaign, the first President Bush criticized challenger Clinton's youthful anti-war activities. That drew this response from the Senate floor: "You and I know that if service or non-service in the war is to become a test of qualification for high office, you would not have a vice president, nor would you have a secretary of defense, and our nation would never recover from the divisions created by that war."

That astute point came from Sen. Kerry.

So as divisions past and present emerge during this election year, give fair credit to those who risked their lives for us, even if you think they're mistaken about that war -- or this one.

And don't get bogged down again in that Vietnam-debate quagmire.

Once was enough.

Frank Wooten is associate editor of The Post and Courier. His e-mail is wooten@ postandcourier.com.