I was never enchanted with John McCain, but there was a time, during his run for the Republican nomination in 2000, when I respected him. But during the 2004 campaign, when the "swiftboat" group attacked McCain's good friend John Kerry, McCain's only comment was to equate the demonstrably false attacks on Kerry's distinguished military service with the mild and limited investigations into Bush's "service" in the Texas National Guard. It became clear then, if it had not been before, that McCain's "straight" talk was no more than the usual politically self-serving double-talk.
Now McCain is in for some of the same type of vicious, unfounded and right-wing attacks that Kerry suffered. According to Raw Story:
Jerry Kiley filed papers last week to establish the nonpartisan group Vietnam Veterans Against John McCain. "When people truly get to know him, there's no possibility they'll consider him for president of the United States," says Kiley, who served in the Army...
They see McCain as an apologist for Vietnam's Communist government who sold out fellow POWs and servicemen missing in action from America's lengthy war in Southeast Asia...
Sampley has also long hammered away at McCain's mental state and argues that his experience in a Vietnamese POW camp makes him unfit to serve as president.
"The Chinese and Soviets, the Communist Vietnamese, they had sole control over him, they know more about him than the American people or than he knows about himself," Sampley asserted. "He's done somethings that they're holding over his head, and with how that affects a man, should he really be president?"
I hope that John Kerry and other people in Congress (including veterans like Rep. Murtha) can show Sen. McCain how really principled people act. I hope they state absolutely clearly that attacks of this sort are wrong and hateful. And I hope that people watching see the difference between the wish-washy McCain statements during the attacks on Kerry and what a real mensch, a real straight-talker will do in that type of situation.
But a less nice part of me is going to thoroughly enjoy watching McCain squirm as poetic justice has its way with him.