It starts, as it always does anymore, with Republican presidential
hopeful John McCain’s prisoner-of-war status. It’s the single most
distinctive thing most Americans know about him. Shot down during the
Vietnam War and taken up residence, the hard way, in the so-called
“Hanoi Hilton.” There isn’t a politician, pundit, or voter alive, from
liberal to conservative, military or civilian, campaign ally or
competitor, who hasn’t acknowledged that -- in a positive and respectful
way. And despite his and his supporters’ protestations, nobody is
taking its name in vain. Unlike so many other Republican leading
lights, McCain actually did wear his country’s uniform, see combat, and
shed blood and even those many millions of us who won’t be voting for
him still honor that.
Perhaps that aspect of McCain’s back story is so prevalent because
neither he nor Barack Obama seems willing to leave it alone. Obama
sometimes sounds almost like he’d rather be McCain’s PR manager than
his Democratic opponent, carrying on at almost every turn, almost
rhapsodically, about The War Record. With McCain himself, it’s more or
less all he has, as far as solid cards to play. Everything else about
him involves either evasive maneuvers about where he’s stood on any
number of issues over the years, or his embrace of so much of
Governance-According-to-George
-W.-Bush that he’s understandably billed by critics as running for Bush’s “third term.”
Perhaps that’s why he’s so sensitive about it. Evidently, as all Team
McCain members vehemently insist, that’s off-limits. It’s actually
another one of those World’s Biggest Republican Entitlement Programs:
that John McCain’s military background renders him unassailably immune
to ANY sort of objection you might raise. He’s the MC Hammer of the GOP
with his own personalized cover of “You Can’t Touch This.”
Well, I’m sorry, Senator McCain, but -- to borrow another 2008 campaign constant, “Yes We Can.”
John McCain has willingly stuck his neck up and out of the foxhole
here. Nobody waterboarded him or held him captive to force him against
his will to run for president. He may call himself a maverick from dawn
til dusk but claiming absolute sacred cow status is asking a bit much.
If you put yourself out there to that extreme, in this day and age,
fortunately or unfortunately, then everything about you is fair game.
According to the rules of this or any other warfare, if you poke your
head up into the open in the heat of battle, you risk becoming a
target. Since he and his pals all want to make so much of his Vietnam
experience, it is not unreasonable for opponents to make what they can
of it, too.
It is completely fair for retired General Wesley Clark to observe,
aloud, that flying a fighter jet over enemy territory and being shot
down doesn’t necessarily or automatically mean you’re qualified to be
president (anymore than how fun you are to go have a beer with means
you’ve got what it takes, either). One would think with a background
like his, McCain would want to bring his brothers- and sisters-in-arms
home from a wasteful war they -- and we -- were lied into, rather than
wanting to maroon them in Iraq for the sake of some vague, undefined,
and distant “victory.” One would think, as a veteran -- a wounded
veteran at that -- McCain would be the first and loudest supporter of
ANY GI Bill to ease his latter-day comrades’ transition back to
civilian life, rather than complain that it’s too generous and not even
show up to vote for it. The ensuing breathless outrage from McCain and
his minions further loses credibility and all claims to the moral high ground when he brings back one of John Kerry’s
Swiftboaters, Bud Day, to join the latest counter-offensive. I guess to
McCain and company, it’s more than okay to Swiftboat a Democrat, but
thou shalt not challenge this year’s GOP standard-bearer!
It is also not out-of-bounds for Senator and decorated Vietnam War
veteran Jim Webb to take issue with the politicizing of military
service. Webb correctly pointed out on MSNBC’s “Countdown” that McCain
should “calm down” about it, because “people don’t serve their country
for political issues.” Or at least they shouldn’t. Calming down is not
a bad thing. Cooler heads should prevail in Oval Office, anyway.
I’d like to give the whole issue a rest, but I know better. We’re all
stuck with it. As long as both McCain and Barack Obama insist on
bringing up McCain’s background in speech after speech, then all’s fair
in politics and war. If McCain’s own hypocrisy has punched holes in
whatever integrity his Vietnam experience originally bought for him,
Obama supporters somehow are not allowed to weigh in?
Here’s the real straight talk: the letters POW do not spell POTUS. Such
voices as those of Wesley Clark and Jim Webb are correct to bring some
balance and perspective to the issue and wipe some of the steam off the
windows. As long as McCain and Company want to parade it around in
public for all to see, and to make it such a big issue in his campaign,
they really can’t demand that the rest of us keep to a hands-off policy
when we want to look closely at it and speak realistically about it.
We’re being asked to quarter it in our stables for four years. It’s
not asking too much to want to look a war horse, or a sacred cow, in
the mouth.
***
Mary Lyon
is a veteran broadcaster and five-time Golden Mike Award winner, who
has anchored, reported, and written for the Associated Press Radio
Network, NBC Radio "The Source," and many Los Angeles-area stations
including KRTH-FM/AM, KLOS-FM, KFWB-AM, and KTLA-TV, and occasional
media analyst for ABC Radio News. She began her career as a liberal
activist with the Student Coalition for Humphrey/Muskie in 1968, and
helped spearhead a regional campaign, The Power 18," to win the right
to vote for 18-year-olds. She remains an advocate for liberal causes,
responsibility and accountability in media, environmental education and
support of the arts for children, and green living. In addition to
World News Trust, Mary writes for Huffington Post, OpEdNews, Democrats.us, WeDemocrats.org's "We! The People" webzine. Mary is also a parenting
expert, having written and llustrated the book "The Frazzled Working
Woman's Practical Guide to Motherhood.