It's so funny, I just sent rep to someone on this thread last night saying something to the extant of "I'm so glad I missed this thread and stayed out of it," but it's been a siren calling me since I woke up this morning and she's eating me now, LOL.
I'll keep it respectful, but that's pretty easy for me in this case, as you'll see below.
I don't think there's anyone who's thinking this is just another election, it's probably the most important one I'll ever have the chance to vote on in my lifetime (is that a strange kind of optimism?).. I know Dems who think we don't have a good candidate and I know Republicans who don't think they do either. I'm completely opposite of that, I think we have two great candidates. I wish they'd be a ticket together, though I also understand how that's pretty much not possible..
John McCain has always been a hero to me since I came to know who he was. What he went through in Vietnam is inspirational and worthy of respect from everyone. Everyone knows about it, so I won't get into what I mean with that. There's another story about John McCain that's more personal to me though, although nobody knows my side of it, LOL. When I was in Iraq, I was talking quite a bit to one of my fellow soldiers about things we were seeing happen to prisoners that we didn't agree with. We were kind of talking in whispers at first- it seemed odd to us that everyone was OK with it, and it kind of makes you feel crazy in a way, like you're the only one who thinks it's wrong. Looking back I think probably 85- 90% of soldiers probably felt the same way but we were probably all feeling like we were the only ones.
Anyway me and my friend were brainstorming what we were going to do about it. I won't go into too many details but suffice to say we KNEW that some of the abuses were ordered by people higher than the soldiers who were committing them. That's not to say it gets anyone off (it doesn't) but we worried that whatever we did about it would come down hard on those guys and not on the NCO's and Officers who more than allowed it. So for a long time we just talked privately to soldiers who committed offences, saying things like, "Hey just remember that we don't know what most of these guys are with us for, whether they were caught planting IED's or whether they were just out after curfew and heading somewhere to be questioned. Chances are more than half of them could be out on the streets tomorrow. How do you want them to feel about the American soldiers when they are out? What are you setting into motion if you abuse them?" After a while we had changed some minds and not changed some others. But nothing stopped, except our obligation to do the prisoner guard anymore.
Anyway, long story short (too late sorry) we decided to write a letter to John McCain. I think the reasons that we selected him were obvious, his own abuse by the Vietnamese, his understanding of the military, his reputation (more solid at that time than today) of standing up to anyone of either party when he thought they were wrong. We wrote the letter, we wrote home for the address of his office, and when we got it we talked again.
And we decided not to mail it.
We changed our minds because we got CYNICAL at the end. We were in a position (that's probably hard to understand for civilians) where we felt an enormous amount of responsiblity for each other (other soldiers with us) and didn't want to betray anyone. We got to thinking that in the end we would probably just hurt the smallest cog in the works. I was there in 03-04, when we didn't really have much connection to the outside world. No internet, very slow mail, no TV (and even when that changed, we were always on some out in the boonies FOB). When I got home I found out that John McCain had been fighting the issue the whole time, and looking for accountability from all the ranks. I was really ashamed to say the least.
I know many people (especially on my side- I'm a confirmed Democrat) say he doesn't look like that guy anymore: heck he's even changed his mind about torture. (Let's not get into semantics about this, I know he hasn't advocated all torture, but he's now agreed that there are 'special circumstances' where 'special tecniques' are called for and that runs against his earlier position)..
So the question is, do we feel that his turn around on so many issues is real? I don't really. I think he's saying what he has to say to be the Republican nominee for President. They all do stuff like this. I think he's one of our nations best politicians, but he's still a politician. His integrity has come through for me when it counts, in his job. This is the silly season and people have to play the game. Another thing that has impressed me about him- When we first went to war in Iraq, General Shinseki (the whole Army's General the number one) said it would take somewhere in the neighborhood of 300,000 US troops. Rumsfeld said that number was wildly off mark, and the next week a career soldier who rose through the ranks to the NUMBER ONE spot was taking an early retirement. Sure, that means he was fired. That's an enormous amount of disrespect for real expertise. I don't think Iraq was the war to fight, but I've always thought that if you were going to anyway, you ought to heed the advice of your military leaders. IMO, that advice that was not heeded accounts for much of the problems we faced in Iraq in later years. I wasn't psychic about that, lol, but Shinseki was and John McCain has pushed for that advice since (I'm referencing the famous surge here.. Which has been a success as far as Iraq goes.) That tells me that John McCain has the wisdom and humility to understand that one of the major powers of the President is the fact that he has the ear of any dang person he wants to hear from. Respect for experts has been wholly missing in the last 8 years.
Sounds like I'm voting for McCain right? I most certainly am not. How can I not vote for him given what I wrote above? Because John McCain is on the wrong side of just about every single major issue that I believe in. I first saw Barack Obama speak as Kerry's keynote speaker and remember wishing he was the candidate. I was trying my best to be, but was not wild about Kerry. I remember thinking "Shame that that guy could never be President in this country." Cynical again. I'm so tired of being cynical, and I'm thinking this is a pretty good election cycle for everyone to drop it. We have two very sincere candidates IMO, and I really feel that if my candidate wins or loses, this nation is going to be 100X better than today.
Anyway for all this typing it's still just .02
