Like it or not, this election is all about integrity, authenticity and character-- probably the main reason, we must admit, we think Obama is the better candidate on the Democratic side. There ain't much difference on the issues nohow. But whoever outlasts the other will have to take on McCain (for whom, it must be disclosed, we voted for in Mississippi's Republican primary in 2000-- under the rationale that we disliked GWB more than we liked Gore).
Now, here's a guy whose gumption cannot be challenged, as the following testimony about his POW experience will indicate:
October 1967
McCain's A-4 Skyhawk plane shot down over Hanoi. McCain ejects, breaking both arms and one leg and receiving a concussion. Lands hard in a lake in downtown Hanoi. Treads water as North Vietnamese soldiers pull him out and then shatter his shoulder with a rifle butt and bayonet him in the groin. Taken to the nearby Hoa Lo prison-- aka the Hanoi Hilton (hint-- it ain't "One Night in Paris").
One Week Later
Doctors finally set two of his fractures without anesthetic. Two other fractures and groin wound left untreated.
Several Months Later
By this time his weight has dropped to 100 pounds and he is barely able to stand. The VC offer to release him, seeking a PR coup since his father, Admiral John S. McCain II, has just been named the head of all naval forces in the Pacific. McCain III refuses the offer, as this would go against the US military's Code of Conduct for Prisoners of War, which stated that POWs had to be released in the order they had been captured. As a result, guards rebreak his arm, break his ribs, and knock his teeth out.
The Next Four Years
McCain doesn't check out of the Hanoi Hilton (let alone leave), spending most of his time in solitary, in what is known as the "punishment cell."
This could all mean that he is entirely selfless, and would put the wants and needs of his country above any personal ambition... or that he may get off on suffering and possess a perverse sense of pride and honor that could lead him to get us tied up in Iraq for, say, the next hundred years.
Information culled from the David Foster Wallace essay "Up, Simba" from his collection entitled Consider the Lobster.
