One Reason I Will Vote For McCain....
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Look, politics aside, I know John McCain is not the best Republican candidate. Hell, I could use some of my funky poli sci mojo to unfunkify and clarify why that is, but we all have our different issues and our different reasons for why we do or do not vote for candidates for public office.
Phillip Butler postulates the reasons for his vote against McCain. I will give props to the doctor for his service and captivity. From his bio;
Doctor Phillip Butler is a 1961 graduate of the United States Naval Academy and a former light-attack carrier pilot. In 1965 he was shot down over North Vietnam where he spent eight years as a prisoner of war. He is a highly decorated combat veteran who was awarded two Silver Stars, two Legion of Merits, two Bronze Stars and two Purple Heart medals.
Although, according to his bio, he seems to have made a left turn sometime after that.
After his repatriation in 1973 he earned a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California at San Diego and became a Navy Organizational Effectiveness consultant. He completed his Navy career in 1981 as a professor of management at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. He is now a peace and justice activist with Veterans for Peace.
and that is right where he loses me.... And gives himself away...
Phillip Butler is right about a few things in his article, and I believe him to be truthful about the events he describes in his op-ed. He is also right about the fact that there are many heroes and that he is just one among many. He is additionally right that he and others managed to surmount the obstacles of captivity and survive through the help of their peers.
Here is the BUT-Monkey though... When you write the following, you give away your position and I will call down the thunder...
It is also disappointing to see him take on and support Bush's war in Iraq, even stating we might be there for another 100 years. For me John represents the entrenched and bankrupt policies of Washington-as-usual. The past 7 years have proven to be disastrous for our country. And I believe John's views on war, foreign policy, economics, environment, health care, education, national infrastructure and other important areas are much the same as those of the Bush administration.
I'm disappointed to see John represent himself politically in ways that are not accurate. He is not a moderate Republican. On some issues he is a maverick. But his voting record is far to the right. I fear for his nominations to our Supreme Court, and the consequent continuing loss of individual freedoms, especially regarding moral and religious issues. John is not a religious person, but he has taken every opportunity to ally himself with some really obnoxious and crazy fundamentalist ministers lately. I was also disappointed to see him cozy up to Bush because I know he hates that man. He disingenuously and famously put his arm around the guy, even after Bush had intensely disrespected him with lies and slander. So on these and many other instances, I don't see that John is the "straight talk express" he markets himself to be.
Readers here can make their own judgments on President Bush and the similarities of McCain's policies, politics and the reasons they may or may not vote for him based on that. For me personally, I don't like 99 percent of what he advocates or stands for, and any man that would consider running as John Kerry's running mate, well, that doesn't seem very Republican to me.
But I would vote for him based on a few things that were mentioned in the article;
- He tried to break every rule and regulation while at the Academy (I am a bit of a rule-breaker myself).
- He managed to get over the wall and took the good doctor to "escape" while he was at the Academy to a bar down the road (I am quite certain that had Senator McCain not had severe injuries from punching out of a dying aircraft over enemy territory, he might have used that penchant for slipping out of his room unnoticed to assist his fellow POWs in showing themselves out of the Hanoi Hilton)
- He graduated 5th from the bottom of his class (your author graduated 1184th out of 1227 in his class at his university) so I know a bit about what it means to graduate at the back. The Doctor should know though, that even the guy who graduates last in medical school is still called "doctor" and that means John McCain was still saluted and called "sir" because he still graduated from the Naval Academy, regardless of family history.
This is a passage I found in his op-ed that really sums it up for me... And try to make sure you are not drinking your morning coffee right now, because the hypocrisy might make you spew it all over your fluffy pancakes.
And this is not really Senator McCain's fault....
But my point here is that John allows the media to make him out to be THE hero POW, which he knows is absolutely not true, to further his political goals.
Hmmmm.... I am not certain, but that sounds a bit like someone I saw the other day on TV talking about what a hero they were during a heroic trip to Bosnia in 1996... Or maybe I am thinking of that one senator who ran for President in 2004 who told everyone within earshot of him that he drove those Swift Boats in Vietnam, had three Purple Hearts, and went on secret missions in Cambodia (incidentally, this senator has his picture on display in the Vietnamese Communist War Remnants Museum in Vietnam that has a section that hails the peace movement as helping the Communists to win the war).
I wonder what Doctor Phil thinks about that?