There was a time in early 2000 that I thought John McCain would make an excellent president. He was a graduate of the United States Naval Academy, the son and grandson of admirals, and an A-4 Skyhawk pilot during the Vietnam War. He was shot down during a bombing raid over North Vietnam in October 1967 and spent five and one-half years in the Hanoi Hilton.
While John Kerry was in Paris, engaging in a treasonous conspiracy with the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong, McCain was nearing the end of only his fourth year in captivity, undergoing almost daily torture. And when his captors learned that he was the son of Adm. John S. McCain, Jr. Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Command, he was offered early repatriation. McCain refused out-of-turn repatriation and was thereafter subjected to even more brutal treatment.
He was released from captivity in early 1973 and returned to the U.S. He became the Navy’s U.S. Senate liaison in 1974 and retired from the Navy in 1981. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Arizona’s 1st Congressional District in 1982, and to the U.S. Senate in 1986.
His primary opponent for the 2000 Republican nomination was George W. Bush, who was then midway through his second term as Governor of Texas. Bush entered the race after being recruited by some of his father’s former supporters, members of what the media refer to as the “establishment,” or “moderate,” wing of the GOP.
By comparison, McCain appeared to be the stronger, more capable candidate. However, after winning a surprise victory over Bush in New Hampshire, he became the target of the most vicious kind of attacks from the Bush campaign in the South Carolina primary. Bush went on to win South Carolina and nine of thirteen primaries on Super Tuesday, propelling him toward the GOP nomination.
Now, eight years later, McCain seeks the nomination he was denied in 2000, and under other circumstances I might be inclined to feel that nominating him in 2008 would only be a matter of setting things right… making up for past injustices. However, in the past six years he has on too many occasions left conservatives with the feeling that he is far too unpredictable and that he can’t be trusted to always be on the right side of the issues.
In a letter dated January 3, 2007, in which he attempts to reassemble his 2000 organization, he says almost all of the right things: He says that he plans a campaign based on “limited government, fiscal discipline, and common sense conservatism.” He acknowledges that the people are looking for a leader who “talks straight, offers positive programs, acts on principle, and… delivers results.”
On the subject of education, he says that, in order to compete with other fast-growing economies, we need to “shake up school bureaucracies with competition, empower parents with choice, remove barriers to qualified instructors who lack elite credentials, attract and reward superior teachers, and have a fair, but sure process to weed out those not qualified…”
On the subject of national security, he says that “we must rebuild, reorganize, and rethink our intelligence capabilities, our military structure and mission, the way we protect our homeland and conduct our diplomacy. We must prepare across all levels of government… to respond quickly and effectively should America suffer another terrorist attack or catastrophic natural disaster.”
Unfortunately, true to his McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform debacle, he draws what appears to be a natural parallel between special interest lobbying and dishonesty, deceit, and lack of transparency in government and politics. What he describes is simply not true and represents what appears to be a major blind spot in McCain’s political makeup. It is John McCain’s faulty view of what goes on around him that I find very troubling.
The “Duke” Cunningham, Jack Abramoff, Bob Ney, Mark Foley, William Jefferson, and Alan Mollohan scandals were not, as McCain might argue, typical of the status quo in Washington. In each instance they were aberrations brought on by the moral and ethical failings of individual members of Congress.
As imperfect as the system might be, it is still the best system yet devised by man to deal with the complexities of the modern world. We are all “special interests,” some of us many times over. So, in John McCain’s ideal world, who is to decide which special interests are heard and which are not?
So long as all sides, on every issue, have an equal opportunity to petition the Congress, openly and above board, we have little to worry about. It is only when Congress attempts to fine tune or restrict First Amendment rights that we get into serious trouble... and that appears to describe John McCain’s approach.
So far as the 2008 campaign is concerned, I can only say, “Dear John, Please accept my regrets…