When I told my son I wasn’t going to vote for John McCain, he said,\u00a0“But he was a fighter pilot.\u00a0 And a POW!”\u00a0 Meaning, I suppose, that McCain just has to be my kind of candidate.<\/p>\n
I understand the fighter pilot part.\u00a0 Indeed, my ideal candidate would have served in the military.\u00a0 If he or she had flown fighters, so much the better.\u00a0 All the fighter pilots I know are intelligent, hard-working, decisive, goal-driven people.\u00a0 But my ideal candidate would never be a conservative.\u00a0\u00a0Donald Rumsfeld was a fighter pilot, and I wouldn’t vote for him for dog catcher.\u00a0 George W. Bush was sort of a fighter pilot, and look what an embarrassment he turned out to be.\u00a0 John McCain was a fighter pilot, but he’s a standard-issue Republican\u00a0conservative: a friend of the wealthy, no friend of working people.<\/p>\n
It’s the prisoner of war part I don’t get.\u00a0 Without wanting to sound harsh, how is that a qualification for anything?<\/p>\n
I knew several\u00a0Vietnam 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 \u2014 and my immediate boss \u2014 at Elmendorf AFB in Alaska in 1984.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 Their POW experience probably made them more patient, more humble, more inclined to take the long view.\u00a0 And, to be sure, everyone who knew them respected them for enduring and surviving their captivity.\u00a0 Not only had they fought for their country, they had suffered for it, in ways the rest of us could never understand.<\/p>\n
So.\u00a0 John McCain was a POW.\u00a0 Do I respect him for that?\u00a0 Yes, absolutely.\u00a0 But I’m not voting to register my respect for a man who was a POW.\u00a0 I’m voting to change the status quo, to get this great country back on track, to improve the lives of working people.\u00a0 McCain has nothing to offer to voters like me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I told my son I wasn’t going to vote for John McCain, he said,\u00a0“But he was a fighter pilot.\u00a0 And a POW!”\u00a0 Meaning, I suppose, that McCain just has to be my kind of candidate. I understand the fighter pilot part.\u00a0 Indeed, my ideal candidate would have served in the military.\u00a0 If he or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,14,2,8,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-flying","category-military","category-personal","category-politics","category-war"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=444"}],"version-history":[{"count":30,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":473,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444\/revisions\/473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}