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Showing Original Post only (View all)His political honor... has fallen victim to the way that Obama has gotten fatally under his skin [View all]
http://prospect.org/article/bitter-twilight-john-mccain<snip>
That one, John McCain famously snarled in a presidential debate four years ago, referring to his opponent who was a quarter of a century younger and who had been in the Senate three years to McCains 20. Its difficult to imagine a better revelation of the McCain psyche than that moment, but if there is one, then it came yesterday at the meeting of the Senate Armed Services Committee, convened to consider the nomination of Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense. The McCain fury is something to behold, almost irresistible for how unvarnished it is in all its forms. In the instance of the 2008 debate, McCains dumbfounded antipathy had to do with facing an opponent he so clearly considered unworthy of him. In the instance of the hearing yesterday, McCains bitter blast was at somebody who once was among his closest friends, a former Vietnam warrior and fellow Republican of a similarly independent ilk, who supported McCains first run for the presidency in 2000 against George W. Bush but then appeared to abandon the Arizona senator eight years later.
In the time since, two things have happened McCain. One was the Iraq War, the worst American foreign policy blunder of the post-World War II era, which McCain wholeheartedly supported from the beginning and about which hes never intimated a second thought. The other was Barack Obama, electoral politics upstart lieutenant whose bid to become five-star general, bypassing stops along the way at captain, major and colonel, wasnt just temerity to a man who waited his turn to be released from prison, but insubordination. Those two things converged yesterday in McCains prosecution of Hagel, no less sorry a spectacle on McCains part for the fact that Hagel handled it so unimpressively. Perhaps Hagel was startled, figuring his one-time compatriot would be tough but not vicious. If thats the case, then he never knew McCain as well as he thought or hoped, because if he did then he would know that McCain is a man of grudges. In his memoir Faith of My Fathers, in which words like gallantry appear without embarrassment (and which no one has more earned the right to use), McCain himself acknowledges being the congenital hothead of legend whos nearly come to blows with colleges. Half a century later, he recalls every altercation with every Naval Academy classmate; as a child, rage sometimes drove him to hold his breath until he blacked out. No need to indulge in untrained psychotherapy from afar to surmise that the ability to nurse such a grudge may be what gets you through half a decade of cruel incarceration.
At any rate, what happened yesterday wasnt about Hagel at all. It wasnt even about the Iraq Wars 2007 surge, which McCain is desperate to justify because he can never justify the war itself that finds Hagel moved to the right side of history while McCain remains stubbornly on the wrong. Its about that junior senator from Illinois who crossed McCain early in some obscure backroom Senate deal no one can remember anymore, then denied McCain the presidency in no small part because Obama understood the folly of Iraq better than McCain can allow himself to. McCains personal honor in Hanoi was too hard won to be stained now by almost anything he does, including how hes allowed temperament, pique and ego to steamroll the judgment and perspective that we hope all of our elected officers have, let alone presidents. But his political honor, not to mention whatever might once have recommended him to the presidency, has fallen victim to the way that Obama has gotten fatally under his skin. Even if this once-noble statesman should succeed in denying Hagels nomination as he denied Susan Rices prospects for Secretary of State (and even the most devout Hagel supporter would have to acknowledge that the Defense nominees performance before the Committee was often a shambles), McCains unrelenting obsession with the grievance that Obama has come to represent to him is the saddest legacy in memory. The very fact of Obama and all things Obamic has turned McCain into something toxic, maybe even to himself.
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Can DUers imagine what Obama winning a second term has done to McGramps?
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His political honor... has fallen victim to the way that Obama has gotten fatally under his skin [View all]
malaise
Feb 2013
OP
McCain has never been "honorable". He has always been nasty, mean with a bad temper.
Jennicut
Feb 2013
#9
Ask both of his wives -- the first, who he dumped after an accident left her looking less
whathehell
Feb 2013
#23
his record as a war hero is not exactly unsullied, is it? how many planes did he crash?
niyad
Feb 2013
#14
"Can DUers imagine what Obama winning a second term has done to McGramps?"
Blue Palasky
Feb 2013
#20
Surely Senator McCain's paternal grandfather and father, both heroic 4-star admirals, turn over in
indepat
Feb 2013
#26