Whatever regard I hold for either of these two politicians...
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-08-28-carter-denver_N.htm
Are you kidding me?
Does anyone else feel like he's 'using' it? Not any more than his opposition saying he 'looks different' than the guys on the dollar bill.
If you think he is reluctant to bring it up or use it politically, you must be living under a rock. He has used it repeatedly as a get-out-of-jail-free card, from the very beginning when running for a House seat in AZ after only living there for two years. At a candidates forum he shutdown accusations he was a carpetbagger, speaking about moving around all his life in the military and finishing with "The place I lived the longest in my life was Hanoi." Pretty devastating political line.
The question now is he using it too much so as to cheapen it. Well, I'll let you decide:
When confronted with questions about his past adultery, his spokesman Brian Rogers responded that Americans "know that John McCain’s faith and character were tested and forged in ways few can fathom.”
http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16571.html
When Elizabeth Edwards criticized his medical care proposal and brought up that McCain had always enjoyed government health benefits Sen. McCain responded that he knew what it was like to get inadequate care "from another government".
During an October debate, while criticizing a plan from Sen. Clinton to fund a museum celebrating Woodstock, Sen McCain said he missed the 1969 festival because he was "tied up at the time".
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601070&sid=a1msL0Eaj96k&refer=home
When questioned about whether he was in a "cone of silence" (as Paster Warren said he was) during the recent Saddleback Forum his spokesman said: “The insinuation from the Obama campaign that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, cheated is outrageous."
When asked what in an interview with Blender Magazine what his favorite song was he selected ABBAs "Dancing Queen". When asked what he was thinking, he joked "“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.” Of course, he was shot down in 1967 held captive until 1972, and the hit song came out in 1976.
When it was pointed out his inability to recall how many houses he had, he deflected the criticism by saying:
"I am grateful for the fact that I have a wonderful life," McCain said. "I spent some years without a kitchen table, without a chair, and I know what it's like to be blessed by the opportunities of this great nation...So the fact is that we have homes, and I'm grateful for it."
Along with this, when Jay Leno joked about it on "The Tonight Show" by saying "For a million dollars, how many houses do you have?", Sen McCain came back with this zinger:
"Could I just mention to you, Jay, that, at a moment of seriousness. I spent five-and-a-half years in a prison cell. I didn't have a house. I didn't have a kitchen table. I didn't have a table. I didn't have a chair. And I didn't spend those five-and-a-half years because, not because I wanted to get a house when I got out."
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/08/on-leno-mccain.html
You think that Sen Obama talking about looking different once or twice is the same as Sen McCain invoking being a POW? I don't. For me, I probably wouldn't pull that experience out every time I had to deflect criticism (OK, I might have used it to explain picking something as lame as "Dancing Queen"). I have tremendous respect for the man and remember vividly choking up when reading about his experiences in "The Nightengale's Song" and "Faith of My Fathers". When I read criticism of him where people spread awful things about him and his time in there, it gets me incensed. But because of that, I feel some disappointment as to how he brings it out at the drop of a hat...it seems to me that it's like he's the old pilot who uses his war stories to get free drinks at a bar.
A blog from Lt. General Robert Gard, Jr:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lt-general-robert-g-gard-jr-/mccains-pow-defense-deval_b_120515.html
