McCain's Experience


Now McCain wants Obama to distance himself from Wesley Clark because the general questions whether being shot down and held prisoner prepares you for an administrative command. In other words, the Republicans would like it to be unfair to question whether or not McCain would be a good President. If the democrats fall for that, and start apologizing, they deserve to lose, because they're just too goddamned nice to know when to push back.

Of course it’s fair to discuss the obvious, when there is no misrepresentation of the facts. The only thing Clark did was point out that you can get so focused on somebody’s being a war hero that you forget to ask the more obvious questions about the relevancy of his actual experience to what qualities are needed to be a good chief administrator.

After all, he’s applying for the CEO spot, and the guy we’ve got in there now wasn’t looked at too closely. All the focus was on the family name, and the fact that he (or Cheney) never ran a business anywhere but into the ground was overlooked. The corporation that was bankrolling Bush (Enron) wasn't looked at too closely, either. If these men had been properly vetted it would have been obvious that either of them would run the country into the ground -- they are nothing if not consistent -- and then, like any desperate gambler, double down. The basic pattern stays the same, whether it's Cheney buying asbestos litigation or Bush having to be rescued from his business ventures by his family.

I like McCain, but I don’t think he’d be as good a President as he is a senator, because I think he would owe his office to some people who do not give their money and power to somebody who will not represent their interests. It’s not that I think he won’t believe in what he says and does, but I think he’ll have to believe in it to not get caught in a game loop. If he does he might nod off into old age and let somebody else run the show. If that someone is Mitt Romney I think we’re in real trouble. I never got past the information that he thought his dog enjoyed being trapped in a cage on the roof of a speeding car.

General Clark wasn’t suggesting that McCain is anything less than advertised. He’s the captain who is willing to go down with the ship. If we elect him he might fulfill his destiny, like an actor who plays a role that revolves around a central pattern, that one perfect role which will finally merge the actor with the character at the center of his story.

Why shouldn’t we be careful this time? We’re focused on MIddle Eastern oil fields while we’ve lost our own neighborhood. One after the other, the countries to our south are electing governments hostile to us, and they are doing business with Russia and Iran. We are losing our own hemisphere because of neglect, while we're tied down and can't get out of Iraq. The focus on providing corporate security instead of national security has put us in deep trouble, and we’d better be looking at whether the man fits the job instead of whether he is capable of self-sacrifice.

The source of the quote I don't recall, but I know it was in a little book I used to own called "Liberty and the Great Libertarians: The Laconics of Liberty," which concentrated on the founding fathers, great patriots and libertarian thinkers. The quote was: "Self sacrifice allows one to sacrifice others without blinking." This is something worth considering. It's at least as relevant as flag pins and vicious gossip.

Sometimes the reflection of the collective ideal of a man is the child of an incurious mind, which assumes that the collective ideals are adequate to elevate the individual to lead, as opposed to follow. This is illogical. We need somebody who can step in and apply pragmatic solutions, and quickly, the way FDR had to step in when Hoover drove the country into a similar ditch. We also need someone in power who is of the world, and can move between cultures without retreating into a local reality.

Asking whether John McCain’s experience qualifies him to be President doesn’t denigrate his experience in the least. It’s not like Clark suggested McCain has an illegitimate black child, or put a tall blonde on television blowing him a kiss and signaling, “Call me,” like the Republicans did to Harold Ford Junior. It’s certainly not anything like what the Republicans did to Kerry, not asking if his status as an American hero was relevant to the job of President, but rather suggesting he made up the story behind his heroism, and that his heroic act was to shoot a kid in the back. The Republicans lie like a bad rug. The media calls it "misleading," or "inflated," like putting lipstick on a pig.

Nothing bad was said about John McCain at all. There was a simple and pertinent question put: Does being shot down and held captive in VIetnam qualify as relevant experience for leading the free world? If it is a question of character and values, it might be. But if character and values are code words for inflexibility and a narrow field of choices, then it might not be.

If we can’t even have the discussion without McCain's getting prickly and wounded, then that needs to be looked at as well. If democrats play defense on this one, they'd better order some knee pads.

Posted: Tue - July 1, 2008 at 10:40 PM