Blogging from New York: Day Two -- What McCain left out of his speech last night
From Johnny Apple’s Convention Almanac today:
[W]hen we talked over a drink the night before (last), Mr. McCain grew agitated about the television commercials sponsored by a group of Vietnam veterans who question the war record of Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the Democratic presidential nominee, and specifically his entitlement to the medals that he won. He found the advertisements "completely nauseating," Mr. McCain said.
Mr. McCain and I have been friends since I flew from Saigon in July 1967 to report on an accident on the aircraft carrier Forrestal in the Gulf of Tonkin, in which a Zuni rocket accidentally detonated and set fire to the 400-gallon fuel tank of his A-4D Skyhawk, parked on the flight deck. More than 100 men were killed in the inferno that followed.
Afterwards, he came to stay at my house in Saigon for a week or so, and we enjoyed the bright lights of the wartime capital together. Only three months later, he was shot down and held as a prisoner of war in Hanoi for five long years.
Is this really the best we can do, Mr. McCain asked, almost 30 years after the fighting ended? Are we fated to go over this ground again and again, looking backward instead of forward? Won't we ever get over that war? He said he "hated the way this issue is dominating the campaign," and I thought I detected deep frustration that he had managed to do nothing about it.
"If they question Kerry's medals," he said, "they question everybody's medals. All those men who found it so hard to come home, who found so little gratitude for their sacrifices when they got here, are going to feel mistreated again. The families of the people whose names are on the monument in Washington will feel wronged, too. The painful wounds we all worked so hard to close will all be reopened.
"We've got to get that garbage off the air as soon as we can."
… But Mr. Bush has never specifically condemned the Swift boat commercial, confining himself to a mild statement that Mr. Kerry served honorably.
Mr. McCain's comments on Sunday night were so much more vehement than any I had heard him make before that I asked him whether he thought the president had acted sufficiently boldly on the issue of the commercials. Not yet, he said. In that case, would he bring the matter up again with Mr. Bush?"Yes, I will," he said, "probably this week, but not in quite the same terms. You and I were there, and he wasn't, and he's the president of the United States, and he is entitled to be treated respectfully."
[W]hen we talked over a drink the night before (last), Mr. McCain grew agitated about the television commercials sponsored by a group of Vietnam veterans who question the war record of Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the Democratic presidential nominee, and specifically his entitlement to the medals that he won. He found the advertisements "completely nauseating," Mr. McCain said.
Mr. McCain and I have been friends since I flew from Saigon in July 1967 to report on an accident on the aircraft carrier Forrestal in the Gulf of Tonkin, in which a Zuni rocket accidentally detonated and set fire to the 400-gallon fuel tank of his A-4D Skyhawk, parked on the flight deck. More than 100 men were killed in the inferno that followed.
Afterwards, he came to stay at my house in Saigon for a week or so, and we enjoyed the bright lights of the wartime capital together. Only three months later, he was shot down and held as a prisoner of war in Hanoi for five long years.
Is this really the best we can do, Mr. McCain asked, almost 30 years after the fighting ended? Are we fated to go over this ground again and again, looking backward instead of forward? Won't we ever get over that war? He said he "hated the way this issue is dominating the campaign," and I thought I detected deep frustration that he had managed to do nothing about it.
"If they question Kerry's medals," he said, "they question everybody's medals. All those men who found it so hard to come home, who found so little gratitude for their sacrifices when they got here, are going to feel mistreated again. The families of the people whose names are on the monument in Washington will feel wronged, too. The painful wounds we all worked so hard to close will all be reopened.
"We've got to get that garbage off the air as soon as we can."
… But Mr. Bush has never specifically condemned the Swift boat commercial, confining himself to a mild statement that Mr. Kerry served honorably.
Mr. McCain's comments on Sunday night were so much more vehement than any I had heard him make before that I asked him whether he thought the president had acted sufficiently boldly on the issue of the commercials. Not yet, he said. In that case, would he bring the matter up again with Mr. Bush?"Yes, I will," he said, "probably this week, but not in quite the same terms. You and I were there, and he wasn't, and he's the president of the United States, and he is entitled to be treated respectfully."
posted by JFH @ 7:16 AM
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