Dear Independent’s Eye:
I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there was a time when Arizona Senator John McCain was admirable. Papa says, “If McCain says ‘My friends’ it must be so.” I saw Senator McCain on TV talking in the Senate and he looked so angry he gave me nightmares. Tell me the truth: was there a time when John McCain was admirable?
Virginia Schmidlap
Virginia, your little friends were right. Once upon a time, John McCain was admired across the nation. He showed incredible guts as a prisoner of war after being shot down over Hanoi in 1967. He was freed in 1971 after being tortured and refusing to leave prison out of turn. By his 2000 Presidential primary campaign he published a book, “Faith of My Fathers,” and become a major cultural and political figure. He was considered someone who didn’t talk like a lockstep partisan. He excited people almost as much as Bobby Kennedy. The press loved him. Students flocked to see him on campuses. He angered some Senate Republicans because he didn’t always follow the party line.
He suggested he wanted Don’t Ask Don’t Tell repealed as soon as military bigwigs agreed. He worked with Teddy Kennedy on ill-fated immigration reform, thus earning him the enmity of conservative Republicans. He criticized the religious right.
The John McCain of 2000 would never support or respect the 2010 talk radio radio political culture incarnation of John McCain. He would consider today’s McCain a bitter ideologue and partisan hack seemingly motivated out of a desire to “get even” with groups who were once part of his supporting coalition – a man with a sour grapes attitude bordering on contempt for the man who defeated him in his bid for President. Today’s McCain seems to be frantically trying to repudiate past positions that once seemed genuinely heartfelt. If McCain’s image had to go up today on Mount Rushmore they’d need two faces.
The question is: was 2000 all an act?
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Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.