Soccer Dad

An exceptional choice

Another National Journal poll: What should John McCain focus on in his acceptance speech?

I was in the minority when I wrote that he should play the Commander in chief card:

If Sen. McCain is to follow up on the theme of the convention "Putting Country First" - so perfectly enunciated by Sen. Thompson - he can best do that as Commander in Chief. It is a role he has prepared for in different capacities over the past four decades. He may reassure the country that he's aware of their anxieties or show how he'd depart from current policies, but those will be secondary to his main point.

I don't think I was that far off, he did link his military service to his ambition to lead and change the country.

Regardless, I think I owe my readers an explanation why I am happy with the Republican choice of John McCain as their nominee for President of the United States. Eight years ago, I preferred George W. Bush. Though his critics would claim that he is absolutely incurious and rigid in his beliefs, the hallmark of his terms in office have shown that he has changed.

Eight years ago he derided the idea of "nation building," but now has engaged in it - not just the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - but also through the aid he has sent to Africa. 9/11 forced him to reconsider his previously held beliefs because he realized that terror abhors a vacuum.

But if his instincts were generally good, he didn't succeed as he might have because in too many circumstances he failed to follow through on good policies. See JoshuaPundit for his analysis of where we are in Iraq.

This failure to follow through leaves me with a feeling that President Bush's presidency is unfinished. True he faced the greatest challenge of our time - Isalmic extremism - but either due to missteps, circumstances or combination of both, he failed to win that challenge decisively.

Still I'm not unhappy that I supported President Bush. It's possible that Al Gore would have been a good president, though he's subsequently descended into a caricature of himself. Maybe winning the presidency would have grounded him. I have no doubt that John Kerry would have been an awful president. He never impressed me as being serious and I'm very happy that Bush won a second term.

I have no way of knowing if McCain would have been a better president than Bush, though I suspect if he had been president, Republicans wouldn't have lost both houses. But if I was wrong choosing Bush in 2000, well I want to make up for it in 2008.

John McCain is not without his faults. To some degree he seems to seek rock the boat for now reason and he's guided by a sense of self-righteousness. The circumstances of his divorce from his first wife and marriage to Cindy don't reflect well on him at all.

Still for now, the most important question facing us is whether the next president will continue to fight the Islamic threat or will deem it secondary in importance? Will we consolidate the recent gains in Iraq or will we let them dissipate? Who will start to challenge the prevailing wisdom of governance in our country that what we need is more spending and more regulations?

I think that John McCain will respond to these three questions better than Barack Obama. I also think that John McCain is a remarkable man deserving of our support. A few months ago, Karl Rove wrote a really nice profile of McCain for the Wall Street Journal, Getting to Know John McCain, which told of his bravery especially in Viet Nam. Here's one example:

The break was designed to shatter Mr. Day's will. He had survived in prison on the hope that one day he would return to the United States and be able to fly again. To kill that hope, the Vietnamese left part of a bone sticking out of his arm, and put him in a misshapen cast. This was done so that the arm would heal at "a goofy angle," as Mr. Day explained. Had it done so, he never would have flown again.

But it didn't heal that way because of John McCain. Risking severe punishment, Messrs. McCain and Day collected pieces of bamboo in the prison courtyard to use as a splint. Mr. McCain put Mr. Day on the floor of their cell and, using his foot, jerked the broken bone into place. Then, using strips from the bandage on his own wounded leg and the bamboo, he put Mr. Day's splint in place.

Years later, Air Force surgeons examined Mr. Day and complimented the treatment he'd gotten from his captors. Mr. Day corrected them. It was Dr. McCain who deserved the credit. Mr. Day went on to fly again.

And Rove wrote how the torture McCain endured, injured his arms so that he could no longer lift his arms over his head.

This fact was not lost on the very classy Anna Quindlen:

But the senator is not your average man of his age. He takes stairs slowly and cannot lift his arms to comb his hair.

But being unable to lift his arms has nothing to do with his age. It had to do with his torture. Nice touch there Anna. But Sen. McCain may have injured but he's hardly infirm. Here's how his son Jack described his hike last year:

In further defense of his dad's health, Jack enjoys telling the story about how he and his dad hiked the Grand Canyon last summer.

"He hiked 30 miles...9 down, 15 across and 6 up in two days. We started out on the North Rim [of the Grand Canyon] and made it to the South Rim. If age is ever an issue [just think of] 30 miles, two days, in 115 degree heat...and carrying a back-pack as well. And my dad doesn't have any cartilage in his knees."

One of the most memorable parts of the excursion, especially for a political science major, was being able to listen to his dad talk about "any period in history."

"...If you start in China and head all the way to the United States, he knows about it. We probably had a four-hour conversation about the Ottoman Turks."

I'm a few decades younger than the Senator, and I can't imagine doing that hike.

(Another thing from that interview that I loved:

For example, at a town hall meeting this past summer in New Hampshire, he was quoted by a local newspaper as saying, "You know, my son Jack attends the Naval Academy, where he has zero demerits. I got so concerned; I had DNA tests run just to make sure he was my son."

But John McCain isn't just about physical courage, there's more. I've linked to this article before, but I must do it again. It's from the NYT Magazine, called the Subversive and it was written by Michael Lewis.

''Mo reached out to me in 50 different ways,'' McCain recalled. ''Right from the start, he'd say: 'I'm going to hold a press conference out in Phoenix. Why don't you join me?' All these journalists would show up to hear what Mo had to say. In the middle of it all, Mo would point to me and say, 'I'd like to hear John's views.' Well, hell, I didn't have any views. But I got up and learned and was introduced to the state.'' Four years later, when McCain ran for and won Barry Goldwater's Senate seat, he said he felt his greatest debt of gratitude not to Goldwater -- who had shunned him -- but to Udall. ''There's no way Mo could have been more wonderful,'' he says, ''and there was no reason for him to be that way.''

For the past few years, Udall has lain ill with Parkinson's disease in a veterans hospital in Northeast Washington, which is where we were heading. Every few weeks, McCain drives over to pay his respects. These days the trip is a ceremony, like going to church only less pleasant. Udall is seldom conscious, and even then he shows no sign of recognition. McCain brings with him a stack of newspaper clips on Udall's favorite subjects: local politics in Arizona, environmental legislation, Native American land disputes, subjects in which McCain initially had no particular interest himself. Now, when the Republican Senator from Arizona takes the floor on behalf of Native Americans, or when he writes an op-ed piece arguing that the Republican Party embrace environmentalism, or when the polls show once again that he is Arizona's most popular politician, he remains aware of his debt to Arizona's most influential Democrat.

One wall of Udall's hospital room was cluttered with photos of his family back in Arizona; another bore a single photograph of Udall during his season with the Denver Nuggets, dribbling a basketball. Aside from a Congressional seal glued to a door jamb, there was no indication what the man in the bed had done for his living. Beneath a torn gray blanket on a narrow hospital cot, Udall lay twisted and disfigured. No matter how many times McCain tapped him on the shoulder and called his name, his eyes remained shut.

A nurse entered and seemed surprised to find anyone there, and it wasn't long before I found out why: almost no one visits anymore. In his time, which was not very long ago, Mo Udall was one of the most-sought-after men in the Democratic Party. Yet as he dies in a veterans hospital a few miles from the Capitol, he is visited regularly only by a single old political friend, John McCain. ''He's not going to wake up this time,'' McCain said.

This is loyalty the likes of which I rarely see written about among politicians. McCain was much different from Udall politically, but he remembered that first break that Udall gave him and he honored it until the end. If there's someone who can reduce some of the cynicism we see in politics today, I believe it is John McCain.

When this campaign season started out, McCain was not my first choice. If I knew 2000 what I know now about Sen. McCain might I have supported him? Possibly. (Not that it would have made a difference.)

But right now John McCain is the choice of the Republican Party and I'm not unhappy. More than that, I'm very happy and proud to have the opportunity to support such a remarkable man.