When I told my son I wasn’t going to vote for John McCain, he said, “But he was a fighter pilot.  And a POW!”  Meaning, I suppose, that McCain just has to be my kind of candidate.

I understand the fighter pilot part.  Indeed, my ideal candidate would have served in the military.  If he or she had flown fighters, so much the better.  All the fighter pilots I know are intelligent, hard-working, decisive, goal-driven people.  But my ideal candidate would never be a conservative.  Donald Rumsfeld was a fighter pilot, and I wouldn’t vote for him for dog catcher.  George W. Bush was sort of a fighter pilot, and look what an embarrassment he turned out to be.  John McCain was a fighter pilot, but he’s a standard-issue Republican conservative: a friend of the wealthy, no friend of working people.

It’s the prisoner of war part I don’t get.  Without wanting to sound harsh, how is that a qualification for anything?

I knew several Vietnam POWs during my US Air Force career. I remember three in particular: Tom Browning, my instructor pilot during F-15 flight training at Luke AFB in Arizona in 1978; Dave Baker, a fellow F-15 pilot at Soesterberg AB in The Netherlands from 1979 to 1982; Will Abott, the wing commander — and my immediate boss — at Elmendorf AFB in Alaska in 1984.

Tom and Will were long-term POWs, each held for seven years or more. Dave was shot down about a year before the POWs were released. Tom and Will were beaten, tortured, and starved, literally for years on end. Dave tried to escape shortly after his capture and was shot in the thigh by a guard. During his year as a POW he nearly lost the leg from lack of treatment and infection. All three men, after their release, were determined to rebuild their bodies, rebuild their lives, and return to flying status. All three succeeded.

These men, by the way, were excellent pilots, solid officers, and great guys. But they were excellent pilots, solid officers, and great guys before they were POWs.  Their POW experience probably made them more patient, more humble, more inclined to take the long view.  And, to be sure, everyone who knew them respected them for enduring and surviving their captivity.  Not only had they fought for their country, they had suffered for it, in ways the rest of us could never understand.

So.  John McCain was a POW.  Do I respect him for that?  Yes, absolutely.  But I’m not voting to register my respect for a man who was a POW.  I’m voting to change the status quo, to get this great country back on track, to improve the lives of working people.  McCain has nothing to offer to voters like me.

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