Well, Grampa John has begun spinning ridiculous tales yet again. Gramma's gonna kill us for letting him have that second beer.
Yes, John McCain is out there embarrassing himself once more, this time in an attempt to draw a distinction between "terrorist appeasers" like Barack Obama and "real Americans" like, oh say, Ronald Reagan.
From the New York Times:
"Yes, there have been appeasers in the past, and the president is exactly right, and one of them is Neville Chamberlain," Mr. McCain told reporters on his campaign bus after a speech in Columbus, Ohio. "I believe that it’s not an accident that our hostages came home from Iran when President Reagan was president of the United States. He didn’t sit down in a negotiation with the religious extremists in Iran, he made it very clear that those hostages were coming home."
Ah yes, good ol' Rambo Reagan! Stood firm against the terrorist hordes and refused to budge an inch until the hostages were released. Issued a no-nonsense ultimatum, stripped to the waist, and flexed heroically right there in front of God and the world and everyone until the godless terrorist hordes fell to their knees and let the hostages go.
Oh, wait a second. Sorry to do this folks, but I'm a professional editor and you know how ticky-tacky we get when we see minor little errors in a bit of text. There's just one little thing I see wrong with that NY Times quote, and it's just gonna sit there and bug me unless I fix it. Y'all understand, right?
Here ya go:
"I believe that it's not an accident that our hostages came home from Iran when President Reagan was [BEING SWORN IN AS] president of the United States."
MUCH better!
Yeah, ol' Grampa John seems to have conveniently forgotten that the hostages were released literally minutes after Reagan was sworn in, and not as the result of the sort of extended campaign of red-white-and-blue chest thumping that McCain seems to want to imply they were.
But here again, John McCain is just making up his own alternate version of history. But why? That's the big question. Is he doing it deliberately, banking on the hopes that we all have the attention spans of syphilitic gnats and won't know the difference? Or is he genuinely just unable to remember basic historical events these days?
And most importantly, is either possibility in any way considered a positive quality for a potential President of the United States?