There is a rumour milling about that John McCain’s war prison story in which a guard draws a cross in the dirt to indicate he too is a Christian is borrowed from famed writer Alexandr Solzhenitsyn. He told the story to Saturday’s faith forum audience and has used it in campaign ads. The great thing about personal anecdotes is, often, you cannot question their validity for fear of seeming petty. This is doubled when you’re talking about a former prisoner of war. ‘How dare you question his experience?’ When I heard that story I did not immediately recognise Solzhenitsyn because I have hot read him. I did notice that it didn’t seem plausible. There was just something about the way he told it that it just seemed too good to be true, but far be it from me to question his experience. Thankfully, someone else has done it. Make up your own mind about it.
By the way, I’m not biased about this incident. I feel the same way about this borrowing of a story as I did about Hillary’s ‘mis-speak’ on landing in Bosnia under heavy gun fire. If McCain did indeed borrow this story (and there is no real way to prove it one way or another) then I feel both he and Hillary should be ashamed of themselves for pandering so pathetically to voters; but I guess that’s what politics is really all about.
It’s my thinking that McCain’s treatment in Vietnam should be left along. There’s little doubt in my mind that McCain’s accounts of his experiences are genuine, and that those experiences must have been utterly crushing. I’ve got a lot of respect for his honesty, actually: it can’t be easy for a Presidential candidate to admit that he attempted suicide and signed a note admitting war crimes. Just like it can’t have been much fun to have both arms broken and undergoing surgery that makes Itchy and Scratchy look like a cartoon about cotton wool.
That said, I struggle to see how any of it – real or imagined – is relevant to a modern Presidential campaign.
Any comment made by a candidate for the post of the most powerful world leader is fair game for picking apart. Just becasue a candidate comes out with an emotional sob story doesn’t mean we should think “aww poor canditate, lets leave him/her alone”. The entire reason for relaying this story to voters in the first place is to make voters feel sorry for him, it is a tactic. Much has been made of his war experience, but clearly he hasn’t learnt anything from it because he still insists on forcing other young soldiers into a hooky war. Could that be because his great war experience consists of laying on a bed in the tropics?