There have been many diaries about McCain over-playing his POW card. And he is. But watching Barack last night, something occurred to me. (I am somewhat slow, so perhaps I'm just late to the party)
John McCain is out of touch BECAUSE he was a POW.
Generally, McCain tends to bring up the POW card when he's trying to defuse criticism of his policies, or when he wants to tug at the patriotic heart-strings of his audience. He wants to both elicit a feeling of sympathy and respect, and he also wants to use his experience to reassure people that he knows what it's like to have it hard.
But the second part of that formulation is actually rather weak. Follow me if you would...
The thing is, it's undeniable that McCain's service AND his captivity, as well as the fact that he was tort^H^H^H^H aggressively interrogated give him insight and perspective that the vast majority of us don't have, including Barack Obama.
Have you ever been a POW? Me neither. John McCain has. He knows. He does!
But... ?
The vast majority of American's don't have it as bad as McCain had it for five years, but don't you see what that means?
McCain has known two things:
- Privilege
- Captivity
If you are one of the privileged, John McCain gets you. If you've ever been a POW, John McCain gets you too.
But what John McCain does not get is ALL the people who fit somewhere in between. He has absolutely no experience with it. In his mind, if you're better off than a POW and you are complaining, you're just a freakin' whiner!
That's how it was for him. Life sucked for a while, but then he came home and things were much better. He doesn't understand that you can be better off than a POW and still have a pretty shitty life. He has no idea what life on $18k/year with 3 kids is like. He doesn't know what it means to be laid off from the only big plant in a small rural area.
He doesn't understand why having two working parents who can barely manage to pay the bills is tough on families. He hears this and think, "So what? I spent five years sleeping and shitting in the same place. Now I'm running for President. Quit whining!"
He has no usable frame of reference.
His POW experience distorts his sense of reality such that anyone who doesn't have it as bad now as he had it then has got nothing to complain about.
So while the POW card can perhaps buy him a bit of respect, it actually makes it LESS likely that he will be able to understand the lives and needs of the average American. His experiences are nothing like those of the average American. He has lived on the extremes and that vast ocean in the middle only exists as a fuzzy concept in his withering intellect.