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Jewish World Review March 1, 2000 / 24 Adar I, 5760
Chris Matthews
Having sustained torture and near-death as a Vietnam
POW, he has focused his campaign, and increasingly the
country's attention, on the need for drastic reform in
Washington.
This is not to predict McCain's victory, simply to argue
that what he says about the "Iron Triangle" of lobbyists,
corporations and lawmakers in Washington is as
undeniable as his courage in the "Hanoi Hilton." Also that
his election this November would fit neatly in the romance
that has graced so much American history.
Think of Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John
F. Kennedy.
TR won the governorship of New York and the vice
presidency after news reports that his Rough Riders
captured San Juan Hill in the Spanish-American War.
Eisenhower went to the White House after leading the
Allies to victory in Europe during World War II. It's no
big deal being president, his grandson and biographer
once remarked, for a guy who defeated the Nazis.
Kennedy succeeded Ike in no small part due to his heroics in saving his
crewmen after his PT boat was rammed by a Japanese destroyer.
In each case, we see the same pattern: courage in battle, vision in politics.
TR fought his own party to reform the civil service, end the corrupt patronage
system and bust the trusts. Eisenhower brought an era of peace and prosperity
by giving the country a breather from the long period of Democratic rule and by
moving his own party to modernize. JFK ended his party's lip service to civil
rights in the North and West and collaboration with the segregationists down
South. A Cold Warrior, his greatest legacies were the Peace Corps and the
nuclear test ban treaty.
McCain may someday follow in their footsteps. He was a Navy pilot who took
risks flying over Hanoi. When his captors offered him early release because of
his father's rank as commander-in-chief of the Pacific navy, he adhered to the
military code: first prisoners taken, first to go home.
For that decision, he would spend years in solitary confinement in the "Hanoi
Hilton." He returned home with his limbs broken, his honor intact.
Now he faces the angry jibes of his political rivals.
"John McCain has spent 18 years in Washington, you know, triple the time he
spent, you know, over in Vietnam in a POW camp," said John Engler,
Michigan governor and George Bush promoter.
What the governor must not know himself is that Americans do not deride
courage in war as just another item on a politician's resume. Teddy Roosevelt
would not be on Mt. Rushmore were it not for that other hill his Rough Riders
climbed in Cuba. Smiling Ike would not have been liked so much had we not
first seen his frowning, yet confident face as the troops embarked for
Normandy.
There is something primordial in all this. Americans were not the first people to
look for their chief among their bravest youth. Human nature suggests that we
seek courage among those who display it early and patriotism from those who
show it under the worst possible condition.
This does not mean that gallantry in war is a prerequisite for strong leadership.
Franklin Roosevelt proved his stuff when struck by polio in young adulthood.
Ronald Reagan displayed his patriotic fervor through years in the political
wilderness. His love of country was so conspicuous that when it came time in
1984 to gather on the beaches of Normandy, the American president seemed
as important a part of the 50th celebration as the combat veterans around him.
It should come as no surprise that many Americans, especially the same voters
who liked Ike, JFK and Reagan, would now look with interest and favor
toward John McCain.
What we are seeking, after all, is not generalship but audacity of purpose.
More than political agreement, much of the electorate looks most of all for
character.
After the indignity and self-indulgence of recent years, the best of us are
seeking as our leader someone who can produce evidence that he has, perhaps
only once, taken a risk or suffered hard injury for a cause greater than himself.
Whatever other tests lie ahead, McCain met this one as he lay 30 years ago
atop his own blood and waste in that stinking, steaming Hanoi cell where, he
once joked, they didn't leave mints on your
02/28/00: Grading the American presidents
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