Obama voted for the Webb-Hagel-Lautenberg-Warner GI Bill which revises the GI Bill to increase college aid to GI's who have served at least three years. Bush and McCain think college aid should be restricted only to GI's who serve many extra tours. Otherwise, they feel, GI's might simply leave the armed forces and go to college, rather than staying the course. (McCain opposed the bill, but did not show up for the vote. It passed 75-22.)
I think it's interesting that John McCain went to the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, for free, before he ever served anywhere. So isn't it a bit rich for him to deny servicemen the same benefit after serving that he, as the son of a four-star Admiral of the Navy, got up front?
Should college benefits only be available to the elite members of the service academies, and not to ordinary servicemen?
Or to put it another way: what kind of elitist is John McCain that he thinks that people like him should get a free ride, but ordinary enlisted men shouldn't?
Should Barack Obama make this a talking point?
Sen. Webb's bill essentially restores the GI Bill benefits that helped so many people (including my father) in the past; as college tuition has risen, those benefits have been worth less and less. Sen. Obama has supported Sen. Webb's bill out of decency and respect for the soldiers and sailors and airmen who are risking their lives for us. Sen. McCain has never met a veteran's benefit he didn't think should be cut.
But Sen. McCain's position is not just Republican hypocrisy. It's elitism. It comes from a failure to remember that he, himself, got his education for free. Students at service academies like Annapolis (McCain's alma mater) and top ROTC recruits get a totally free ride through college; many also get free graduate school and law school in exchange for a guarantee of years of service. That guarantee can be shorter than the length of time McCain's version of the GI Bill would require of ordinary soldiers before they're entitled to any education benefit.
If you go to West Point, for example, you are required to serve as an Army officer for five years. In exchange you get four years of free college. Under McCain's bill, you have to serve six years to get full educational benefits.
Annapolis isn't easy to get into. You have to be a superb student, or very well connected. We know McCain wasn't a superb student; he ranked 894 in his class of 899. But he couldn't have been better connected.
No one doubts that McCain served his country with great honor during the Vietnam War, or that he deserves all the benefits he got both before and after that service. But he should not seek to deny those benefits to other veterans.
Officers and enlisted men and women both serve, both risk their lives. Both should be entitled to a great education, not just elites who can get themselves into a service academy. It is really the least we can do for people who put themselves in harm's way for us.
I'm thrilled that Sen. Obama isn't taking any guff from McCain on the grounds that he's never served in the military, therefore he's not entitled to say anything about it. (I don't remember Ronald Reagan's war service being particularly impressive, except in his own mind, and we all know about Shrub's going AWOL.) And, as Brian Beutler points out ("McCain Sells Out Vets"), McCain is so anti-veteran that you really shouldn't have to do more than point to his record.
But should we, and Sen. Obama, make an issue of McCain's elitism, in addition to his hypocrisy, disrespect and sheer mean-spiritedness?