except when he talks (and talks and talks) about his POW experience.
Does John McCain exploit his POW experience for political gain? Or is he really the reluctant hero that the Media has obediently portrayed?
Let's hear first from Senator McCain:
"One of the things I've never tried to do is exploit my Vietnam service to my country because it would be totally inappropriate to do so."
Now that we've all stopped laughing (I'll wait here if you need a minute............Okay?)
I thought is would be interesting to compile a list of McCain's reluctance to invoke his POW experience...
Turns out McCain has a thick deck of POW cards that he plays. For this game, I've grouped them into three stacks: 1) getting out of trouble; 2) shaping his policies; and 3) no discernable reason whatsoever.
Category I: The Get Out Of Trouble Card
McCain has a long history of using this stack of cards:
An indignant McCain during the S&L crisis:
'Even the Vietnamese didn't question my ethics.''
During his first congressional race he rebutted charges of being a carpetbagger with:
"I wish I could have had the luxury, like you, of growing up and living and spending my entire life in a nice place like the first district of Arizona, but I was doing other things. As a matter of fact, when I think about it now, the place I lived longest in my life was Hanoi."
And clearly his campaign has been given the go-ahead to use this card. And use it they do. Such as Saddleback-gate:
"The insinuation from the Obama campaign that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, cheated is outrageous,"
And now McMansion-gate:
"This is a guy who lived in one house for five and a half years -- in prison,"
Category II: Explanation of Policy Card (ie: The Pander Card)
Defending his opposition to recognizing the
MLK holiday:
"I know what it is like to be deprived of your rights. I know what it's like to be in confinement. I know what it's like to be beaten. I know what it's like. So I think I have a special appreciation that maybe a lot of people don't have for what it's like to be deprived of your rights. ... We all improve over the years and we learn and we grow."
McCain responds to Elizabeth Edward's call for universal healthcare by reminind us all that:
"It's a cheap shot, but I did have a period of time where I didn't have very good healthcare, I had it from another government"
His experiences also apparently shape his Cuba policy:
``My record is unchanged and consistent for 24 years,'' McCain said. ``A Cuban officer and enlisted men came to Hanoi and tortured my friends -- killed one of them. My position on Cuba has been exactly the same.''
And he reached for this stack when speaking at the National Association of Latino Elected Officials:
"When I was in prison in Vietnam, I like other of my fellow POWs, was offered early release by my captors. Most of us refused because we were bound to our code of conduct, which said those who had been captured the earliest had to be released the soonest. My friend, Everett Alvarez, a brave American of Mexican descent, had been shot down years before I was, and had suffered for his country much more and much longer than I had. To leave him behind would have shamed us."
Category III: Just out of Habit Cards (no discernable reason....)
Defending his choice of "Dancing Queen" as his favorite song:
"I’ve got to say that a lot of my taste in music stopped about the time I impacted a surface-to-air missile with my own airplane and never caught up again."
McCain on Woodstock:
"Now my friends, I wasn't there," McCain said of the rock-and-roll festival. "I'm sure it was a cultural and pharmaceutical event. I was, I was tied up at the time."
General purpose campaign sloganeering:
"In the prison camps of North Vietnam, there weren't Republicans or Democrats, there were just patriots."
And a last thought from Mr McCain himself:
"[I'm] sick and tired of re-fighting" the Vietnam War.
"It's offensive to me, and it's angering to me that we're doing this," he said. "It's time to move on."
Maybe the Senator should take his own advice.