But here is the difference between McCain and Obama -- and Obama had better pay attention. McCain is a known commodity. It's not just that he's been around a long time and staked out positions antithetical to those of his Republican base. It's also -- and more important -- that we know his bottom line. As his North Vietnamese captors found out, there is only so far he will go, and then his pride or his sense of honor takes over. This -- not just his candor and nonstop verbosity on the Straight Talk Express -- is what commends him to so many journalists.I'll hardly dispute that Barack Obama is an unprincipled opportunist. He's a Senator running for President! What else would he be? But does the above excerpt (or the whole article) by Dick Cohen make a lick of sense to you? The paragraph just prior to the first excerpted is a catalogue of John McCain's changing positions on matters grand and mundane. But the bottom line of his integrity has something to do with being a war prisoner, so, yeah, uh, anyway, well. Meanwhile, Obama's integrity exists purely in the realm of his policy positions. Doesn't that seem a wee bit contradictory? By which I mean incoherent. By which I mean fuck-all stupid.
Obama might have a similar bottom line, core principles for which, in some sense, he is willing to die. If so, we don't know what they are. Nothing so far in his life approaches McCain's decision to refuse repatriation as a POW so as to deny his jailors a propaganda coup. In fact, there is scant evidence the Illinois senator takes positions that challenge his base or otherwise threaten him politically. That's why his reversal on campaign financing and his transparently false justification of it matter more than similar acts by McCain.
A presidential race is only incidentally about issues. It's really about likability and character. Obama is, to paraphrase what he said about Hillary Clinton, more than "likable enough" -- in fact, so much so that he is the most charismatic presidential candidate I've seen since Robert F. Kennedy. But the character question hangs -- not because of any evidence to the contrary and not in any moral sense, either, but because he is still young and lacks the job references McCain picked up in a North Vietnamese prison. McCain has a bottom line. Obama just moved his.
-Richard Cohen
John McCain was engaged in the killing of Vietnamese via ariel bombardment. He got shot down, and they treated him badly. The reason that they treated him badly is because he was engaged in the killing of Vietnamese via ariel bombardment. There seems to be a mindset, if that is the word, that imagines John McCain's imprisonment as an event sui generis, that he somehow came to be imprisoned. I'm no apologist for torture; obviously I abhor it. But John McCain wasn't some Pashtun taxi driver snatched and sold for ransom. He was, to quote the neologism, an enemy combattant.
Regardless of the antecedents of his imprisonment, the notion that it constitutes a "job reference" is curious indeed. The measure of a man's integrity is how closely his words match his deeds. Fortitude, courage, resistance, etc.--the virtues of a long-suffering prisoner are plenty, but not infinite. McCain may be the toughest sonofabitch there ever was, but that says not a thing about his honesty, fitness, candor, and merit.
15 comments:
Let's not forget that while McCain was a prisoner of war, he made propaganda broadcasts for the North Vietnamese. He claims he only did this because he was tortured but there is considerable evidence that he was not tortured much and actually received much better treatment than other prisoners because his captors knew he was the son of a high ranking US admiral.
And since he became a US government official, while still using racist language to describe Vietnamese, he has materially aided the government of Vietnam by pushing for US trade with and relations with that government.
Sounds like a Manchurian candidate to me.
Conrad
The measure of a man's integrity is how closely his words match his deeds.
oh.
Richard Cohen is a lying motherfucker. He knows that McCain spilled his guts and says not a word of it. Its just as easy to say that the repubs have nominated another degenerate who couldn't live up to their Poppy's deeds. McCain's courageous dropping of flaming petroleum jelly on villages makes him a man who can follow orders without worry. That's why he's the peoples choice.
drip
By Cohen's logic, any number guests at Club Guantanamo are more qualified than Obama to be president by dint of their treatment by their American hosts.
Lordy, Obama may be a charismatic con-man to me, but he IS Obamajeebus to his enemies.
I know Obama will not CHANGE anything. But...and this is a foolish "but" I know, but...the attacks on The Saint are so patently ridiculous, so vile, so racist, so utterly irrational and stupid...I almost have to vote for him. (Except I am playing George Carlin all day, so...) Can I admit that I have a sneaking hope that the heads of the true red 28% of the population will simply explode, improving immeasurably life for the rest of us? (I am very bad, I know).
I've said it before and I'll say it again: if Poopdeck Pappy's only claim to fame is playing the Man Who Came to Dinner in the Hanoi Hilton, there should be a national groundswell for Mumia and Charlie Manson. Shit, they've both done more time in the joint standing on their heads than the Poopster's whole term.
I like the idea of McCain looking back through the fuselage of his B52 at 122 roped and struggling sprites of the vasty air, stammering pleas at him in blank verse, before chuckling and flipping the lever that drops them all on the (puzzled but appreciative) North Vietnamese.
Or did you mean 'aerial'?
Oh man, that batshit argument reminds me of that old Mr. Show sketch that posited that all "great" people throughout history were made that way by shitty, abusive parenting.
Ben Franklin: "My father touched my butthole. This made me thirst for knowledge."
Ironically, or maybe not, I doubt that American journalists (or most American citizens) would feel the same way about someone who'd gone to jail as a conscientious objector for refusing to fight in a war of aggression, thus showing that there was only so far he would go. But someone who was willing to bomb civilians, that's a moral exemplar who ought to be President.
I thought Gabriel over at Jews sans frontieres put it very well:
"So let's put it in words simple enough for a Times reader:
John McCain is a war criminal. As he himself admitted. He flew missions against civilian targets. He incinerated, men, women, children and farm animals in their huts. And he did all this in a war of unprovoked aggression against a country half a globe away, a war he fully supported, and that killed three million Vietnamese.
The Vietcong should not have tortured him. For a reason hard to understand, they wanted him to confess that he was a war criminal, as if his word could carry more weight than his actions. But they had every right to soak him in gasoline and burn him alive. "
Hmmmm, this is interesting: IOZ posts on Little Dickie at 2:31pm; Wolcott at 4:10.
Ever wonder why you've never seen them both in the same dark, steamy tavern at the SAME TIME??????
ronald
It's just like high school all over again, voting for student body prez. I boycotted those elections too.
Let me get this straight. Obama's stronger on the issues, but that doesn't matter because elections are about likeability. But Obama's more likeable too. And that doesn't matter because the NVA is going to write McCain a job recommendation.
Ow! My head! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow!
[kablaam!]
"McCain may be the toughest sonofabitch there ever was, but that says not a thing about his honesty, fitness, candor, and merit." Oh Yeah!!!
Don't forget McCain also destroyed five U.S. fighter planes (making him a NVA Ace) and killed a oouple U.S. Navy personnel when he bombed the Forrestal.
McCain also questioned our presence/purpose in Vietnam in a Newsweek article.
McCain: Friend or Foe of 'Murica.
You decide.
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