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John McCain (1 Viewer)

David Foster Wallace on McCain (whole thing is worth your time)

In October of ’67 McCain was ... flying his 23rd Vietnam combat mission and his A-4 Skyhawk plane got shot down over Hanoi and he had to eject, which basically means setting off an explosive charge that blows your seat out of the plane, which ejection broke both McCain’s arms and one leg and gave him a concussion and he started falling out of the skies right over Hanoi. Try to imagine for a second how much this would hurt and how scared you’d be, three limbs broken and falling toward the enemy capital you just tried to bomb. His chute opened late and he landed hard in a little lake in a park right in the middle of downtown Hanoi, Imagine treading water with broken arms and trying to pull the life vest’s toggle with your teeth as a crowd of Vietnamese men swim out toward you (there’s film of this, somebody had a home – movie camera, and the N.V. government released it, though it’s grainy and McCain’s face is hard to see). The crowd pulled him out and then just about killed him. U.S. bomber pilots were especially hated, for obvious reasons. McCain got bayoneted in the groin; a soldier broke his shoulder apart with a rifle butt. Plus by this time his right knee was bent 90-degrees to the side with the bone sticking out. Try to imagine this. He finally got tossed on a jeep and taken five blocks to the infamous Hoa Lo prison – a.k.a. the “Hanoi Hilton,” of much movie fame – where they made him beg a week for a doctor and finally set a couple of the fractures without anesthetic and let two other fractures and the groin wound (imagine: groin wound) stay like they were. Then they threw him in a cell. Try for a moment to feel this. All the media profiles talk about how McCain still can’t lift his arms over his head to comb his hair, which is true. But try to imagine it at the time, yourself in his place, because it’s important. Think about how diametrically opposed to your own self-interest getting knifed in the balls and having fractures set without painkiller would be, and then about getting thrown in a cell to just lie there and hurt, which is what happened. He was delirious with pain for weeks, and his weight dropped to 100 pounds, and the other POWs were sure he would die; and then after a few months like that after his bones mostly knitted and he could sort of stand up they brought him in to the prison commandant’s office and offered to let him go. This is true. They said he could just leave. They had found out that McCain’s father was one of the top-ranking naval officers in the U.S. Armed Forces (which is true – both his father and grandfather were admirals), and the North Vietnamese wanted the PR coup of mercifully releasing his son, the baby-killer. McCain, 100 pounds and barely able to stand, refused, The U.S. military’s Code of Conduct for Prisoners of War apparently said that POWs had to be released in the order they were captured, and there were others who’d been in Hoa Lo a long time, and McCain refused to violate the Code. The commandant, not pleased, right there in the office had guards break his ribs, rebreak his arm, knock his teeth out. McCain still refused to leave without the other POWs. And so then he spent four more years in Hoa Lo like this, much of the time in solitary, in the dark, in a closet-sized box called a “punishment cell.” Maybe you’ve heard all this before; it’s been in umpteen different media profiles of McCain. But try to imagine that moment between getting offered early release and turning it down. Try to imagine it was you. Imagine how loudly your most basic, primal self-interest would have cried out to you in that moment, and all the ways you could rationalize accepting the offer. Can you hear it? It so, would you have refused to go? You simply can’t know for sure. None of us can. It’s hard even to imagine the pain and fear in that moment, much less know how you’d react.

But, see, we do know how this man reacted. That he chose to spend four more years there, in a dark box, alone, tapping code on the walls to the others, rather than violate a Code. 
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Just showed the hearse pulling out of his ranch. He died at 4:30 pm. Learning a lot about him. What a stand up guy. Everyone's thoughts are heartfelt, well except for one who should rise above..

 
RIP. I wanted to vote for him in 2008. But couldn't look past Sarah Palin being second in line.

Is there anyone in politics today that is similar to McCain? Or have we lost that forever?

 
KCitons said:
RIP. I wanted to vote for him in 2008. But couldn't look past Sarah Palin being second in line.

Is there anyone in politics today that is similar to McCain? Or have we lost that forever?
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There are many young men and women, in both political parties, who displayed incredible courage in military situations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some of them are running for Office this fall. 

 
I have to admit, just having heard the news minutes ago, this is hitting me harder than expected. One of the true beacons of leadership and heart over decades and decades of service. 

I'm honor of Senator McCain, and all he gave for our nation, no vitriol tonight.  We can save the disagreement and dischord for another evening.

While I can only speak for myself, I do hope others may follow.

 
timschochet said:
There are many young men and women, in both political parties, who displayed incredible courage in military situations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some of them are running for Office this fall. 
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The military courage is great. But, the ability to do the right thing when your own party is breathing down your neck is more of what I am looking for. I guess I was looking for a current lawmaker. 

 
I am a lifelong Democrat. In 2000 I changed my party registration so that I could vote for McCain in the presidential primary. Whether I would have voted for him over Gore in the general I do not know, although I would have given it serious consideration. But I believed at the time that it was important for the Republican party to nominate moderates who would try to find common ground with their opponents. In retrospect, I view that primary as even more of a turning point than I knew at the time. In the subsequent two decades, among the Republican party leadership there have been Establishment types who were clearly uncomfortable with some of the party's right-wing craziness, but there has not been a single one who has actually championed moderation the way McCain did in 2000. He put it on the line, fought the good fight, and lost. Even when he finally did win the nomination in '08, McCain had internalized the lessons of eight years prior and, though he had moments of decency in that campaign, he had largely surrendered to the right wing, most notably in his choice of Sarah Palin.

All of which is to say I have had a complicated relationship with McCain over the past two decades, but even in the depths of the 2008 campaign I never doubted that he was motivated by patriotism and the desire to serve a cause larger than himself. May his memory be a blessing.

 
McCain goes to Vietnam fighting and taking whatever comes to him when he was captured. He could have been released earlier but said others have been in line longer than him so he stayed.

Drumph had bone spurs so he weaseled his way out. ?

 
A lot of classlessness on the internet tonight, at the places you might expect: Reddit, Free Republic, etc. 

But not here. Everyone posting so far here has displayed respect. Part of the reason I enjoy being here so much: you guys are a good bunch.  :thumbup:

 
Hopefully one man who will not be invited to the funeral is Karl Rove. It was Rove who spread the rumor in 2000 that McCain had an illegitimate black baby, just before the South Carolina primary. 

Even today, with all the crap our current President has done, that still strikes me as one of the ugliest moments in modern political history. 

 
CurlyNight said:
One of John McCain's finest moments was in 2008 when a woman at a rally referred to Obama as an Arab. "No, ma'am," McCain replied. "He's a decent family man, a citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with."
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This is the America which I was raised to aspire to, in all actions and deeds. 

McCain was hardly perfect. Nor was he immune from the frailties of the human condition.

Still, he is an example for us all, of who we should strive to be. Imperfections and all, he was a great man. 

 
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