In Harrisburg, PA, John McCain boasted that, unlike Barack Obama, he was personally tested in a crisis, which better qualifies him to be president. As usual, McCain’s point of reference was while he was a naval pilot, in this instance aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise in 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis. His supposed testing of leadership came when
"I sat in the cockpit, on the flight deck of the USS Enterprise, off of Cuba. I had a target. My friends, you know how close we came to a nuclear war."
Pardon me, but I don’t think that quite qualifies as a JFK moment for McCain. He was not in a decision-making position at the time; President Kennedy was!
Nicholas Kristoff sees it the same way:
Suppose John McCain had been in the White House in October 1962, facing one of the great tests of the modern presidency. If so, we might remember that period not as "the Cuban missile crisis" but as "World War III."
He adds:
"Mr. McCain has become impish cubed — impulsive, impetuous and impatient — and those are perilous qualities in a commander in chief."
Indeed, McCain’s recklessness as a pilot would bear this out!