[updated]
I can honestly say I understand John McCain.
This man grew up in a different time in America. If you research his past, you can see that the 1940's and 1950's helped to shape who he is today. It was a different time, a romantic time. (Insert Swing Band Music Here)
My parents used to speak of this time. Things seemed a little more important, a little more desperate and poignant. My dad was in the navy and my parents went from base to base, enduring long periods of seperation while Daddy was at sea. Longing love letters, air mailed, flew between them.
In the 1950's and early 1960's, America was so family oriented. And Patriotic.
A young John McCain, probably not so much a maverick as a rebel, sowed his wild oats and wanted freedom. Then he became a prisoner of war, and while I still insist that he was lucky to have been a POW as compared to what happened to other young men,(my cousin was killed and how his family wishes he were here now with grey hair and wrinkled smiles) it was clear his experience there changed him. It would change any one. Heck, we get irritated if we have to sit too long at a red light.
I think an irritated John McCain came into being, a famous public servant surrounded by so many corrupt people and policies. He clearly stated that he let Washington change him.
Wanting to be president has been an aspiration of his for a long, long time. Running for president this time, I feel as though somewhere in his mind he is still romancing the wars. When he said we might stay in Iraq for a 100 years, I think, honestly, thoughts of USO's and swing bands swirled about his mind, crisp white uniformed men dancing till dawn with a lady made of dreams.
Now I understand him lying and lying and smearing any one he can. He knows the elections of 2000 and 2004 were rigged and tampered with. He knows how to try to scare people or should I say sheeple. He knows the main stream media will not be fair and do their jobs. He knows there is a fox noise out there to carry his deceit for him.
I understand he honestly believes he will be elected, by any means possible. I also understand how much Barack Obama's acceptance speech must of scared him and his party. There is a magic air that surrounds Barack.
The one thing I don't understand is how he thinks the American people would accept his vice president pick. That one boggles the mind!