Will the real John McCain please stand up
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John Merli
Published: May 15, 2008
Some of us may be old enough to vaguely recall a nearly forgotten movie with the title, “Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?” While that 50 year-old film starring Tony Randall and Jayne Mansfield has nothing to do with politics, it might suggest an increasingly apt phrase for John McCain these days. (Now if only McCain’s real name was Rock.)
There are a couple of McCains floating around out there, and I sort of liked the older one better. The losing McCain. The guy who was so far out of serious contention in the presidential sweepstakes last summer that people were starting to forget he was still alive. This was the guy who seemed to be chopmeat for the TV networks, which would open up their nightly newscasts last fall with something smart-alecky like, “Now that John McCain is on life support in his ill-timed, ill-advised presidential bid, all eyes now turn towards the presumptive GOP nominee, Rudy Giuliani…” (So much for conventional wisdom.)
The former McCain was alarmingly candid and only rarely insulting, and therefore, disarming. And while he sometimes got his facts wrong, at least you knew what he meant. When it seemed he had little to lose by losing, his persona took on that stubborn damn-the-torpedoes-and-full-steam-ahead attitude. “You don’t like what I’m saying,” he seemed to say, “then you can look elsewhere, my friends,” and that que-sera-sera attitude was appealing. There’s nothing more attractive in American politics than a politician who gives the distinct impression that he or she could not care less whether he wins. (It’s a grand ruse, of course, but appealing, nonetheless.)
But then John McCain did the unexpected, and from my way of thinking, the inexcusable: He got better on the stump, then lucked out with a few huge mistakes by some of his GOP rivals, and finally defying the pundits by emerging as his party’s presumptive nominee. Yet in doing so, he committed the cardinal sin that most maverick politicians must commit sooner or later — he had the audacity to jump from pathetic underdog to tentative winner. He became accepted and mainstream, suddenly a big part of the real establishment, and is now expected to behave himself if he has any hope of actually winning in November. He now owes that to his contributors and his other potential supporters — that unseen, unsigned promise not to screw it up and make them look bad. Not to lose. Success can be a terrible albatross for the underdog.
Today’s John McCain now quotes terrorist groups like Hamas voicing their “hope” that Barack Obama wins the election, as though that’s somehow a demerit for Obama — a mind-numbingly stupid observation that does not require, nor deserve, a response from anyone. Today’s John McCain backs away from the bleak failure of Bush-Cheney’s Luddite stance on climate change, but he backs away more quietly now, cautiously. so he will not “give the wrong impression on free trade,” as he meekly, uncharacteristically uttered a few days ago.
Today’s John McCain now always “stay on message” because that message is written out for him on a teleprompter — a device he seemed to disdain until he became the presumptive nominee. True, his two Democratic opponents also use them (albeit a bit more skillfully), but they aren’t political mavericks in the McCain tradition. And the new John McCain will talk down those negative TV ads from outside groups who will try to “swift-boat” Obama like they did John Kerry four years ago, but McCain does it now without conviction, a bit less convincingly than he’s capable of, as he quietly demonstrated recently in North Carolina.
Has success spoiled John McCain? Perhaps for the moment, yes, the older one. So let’s hope the new John McCain retains some of his older, more honest self. That’s the guy who brought him to the dance in the first place.
John Merli has been a Potomac News columnist since 1985. E-mail him at .
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Posted by ( billbell ) on May 23, 2008 at 3:46 pm
Leave No Man Behind
by Garnett “Bill” Bell
Leave No Man Behind: An eyewitness account of the Vietnam War from its early stages through the last day of the Republic, 30 April 1975. A startling new look at the postwar era and the issue of America’s unreturned veterans listed as POW/MIA, an issue that has haunted America since the beginning of American involvement. Shrouded in controversy, a subject of great emotion amid charges of governmental conspiracy and Communist deceit, the possibility of American servicemen being held in secret captivity after the war’s end has influenced U.S. policy toward Southeast Asia for three decades. Now, the first chief of the U.S. Government’s only official office in postwar Vietnam provides an insider’s account of that effort. The challenges he faced in dealing with U.S. politicians, including Vietnam veterans, Senators John McCain and John Kerry, are an ardent reminder of the many similarities in the bloody wars fought by American troops in both Vietnam and Iraq-Afghanistan. In an illuminating and deeply personal memoir, the government’s top missing persons investigator in Southeast Asia, who later became a member of the U.S. Congressional Staff, discusses the history of the search for missing Americans, reveals how the Communist Vietnamese stonewalled U.S. efforts to discover the truth, and how the standards for MIA case investigations were gradually lowered while pressure for expanded commercial and economic ties with communist Vietnam increased. Leave No Man Behind is the compelling story of a dedicated group of professionals who, against great odds, were able to uphold the proud military traditions of duty, honor and country.
Every American fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan should read “Leave No Man Behind.”
As the US Marine Corps helicopter lifted from the roof of the American Embassy in Saigon at daybreak on April 30, 1975, I thought about the carnage that would result from a heat-seeking missile fired by Vietnamese Communist forces gradually encircling the besieged capital of the dying Republic of Vietnam (RVN). Exhausted by a lack of sleep for the previous several days, I no longer felt fear, only curiosity. Tears welled up in my eyes, perhaps due in part to the anguish of witnessing the tragic events unfolding before me, but also from caustic smoke belched out of rooftop incinerators glowing cherry-red from reams of frantically burned secret US Government documents. Feeling a sense of relief, I nevertheless harbored an even stronger sense of guilt. On the Republic of Vietnam’s final day, as I looked down into the gradually diminishing compound and into the terrified eyes in the upturned faces of hundreds of Vietnamese nationals and citizens of other countries friendly to the United States, who were being left behind, I knew that I would be haunted for many years to come. As the venerable “Sea Stallion” throbbed its way through the damp morning air toward a helicopter carrier anchored off the coast at Vung Tau, blazing multicolored tracers rising from the dark-canopied jungle below bade farewell to America and to an era known as the Vietnam War.
During the more than 30 minute flight into the future I sat angry and confused after some 10 years of involvement with a faraway place called Vietnam. I wondered whether the sacrifices in lives and national treasure made by America had been worthwhile or in vain. After contemplating the issue for many years, I believe it is now time to take stock of the American War in Vietnam so that Americans, especially those of us who served there, can finally decide whether or not we now have cause for a celebration or the lingering agony of defeat.
With the fall of the RVN, as many analysts had predicted, jubilant communist forces quickly invaded and occupied the populated areas. Hundreds of thousands of former military and civilian officials were required to be screened, classified and registered as enemies of the revolution to be detained in remote, isolated concentration camps under horrific conditions. Thousands died due to disease and malnutrition, many never to be heard from again by family members. At the same time, the communist leadership insisted that the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in the north and the Provisional Revolutionary Government in the south be united as one.