Here I am being on TV a few days back (and they don’t let you on TV unless you really know what you’re talk­ing about, as I’m sure you under­stand being good TV-​​watching cit­i­zens of the 21st Century and every­thing):

– Ward

Ward posted a very thought­ful com­men­tary on Military​.com yes­ter­day that I thought all of you who are fans of the Bossman might like to take a look at…

In the last pre-​​presidential elec­tion poll Military​.com ran ear­lier this week, 78 per­cent of our read­ers picked John McCain over Barack Obama. In a poll con­ducted the fol­low­ing day, the lead­ing answer to the ques­tion “What issue was the most impor­tant to you as you voted for pres­i­dent” was “the econ­omy” (39 per­cent) even more impor­tant than “the wars” (32 per­cent). Juxtaposing these two polls not only yields one of the answers to how Obama won the elec­tion, it also shows the degree to which Americans, even Americans with war fight­ing expe­ri­ence, are con­vinced Jihadist ele­ments are no longer an immi­nent threat. 

On the morn­ing after the elec­tion the pun­dits sum up the results with the idea that Barack Obama’s vic­tory is one of hope over fear. And assum­ing that’s true, the abil­ity for a peo­ple to carry that out is a lux­ury that shouldn’t be taken for granted. 

Contrast this pres­i­den­tial elec­tion with the one held four years ago. The year 2004 has faded as a dis­tant mem­ory now, but think back: That the Rovian-​​style polit­i­cal oper­a­tives were able to lever­age fear in Americans to win a sec­ond term for George W. Bush says more about the fact that Americans were actu­ally scared at that time than it does about the hired guns abil­ity to affect out­comes at will. 

In 2004 the Iraq War was going poorly. Casualty rates were high. The insur­gency was pro­lif­er­at­ing. Al Qaeda was bloom­ing in new places, and Bin Laden and his con­fi­dants were releas­ing mes­sages at a reg­u­lar clip. Major European cities were weath­er­ing ter­ror­ist attacks. 

America wasn’t scared because Karl Rove told it to be. America was scared because the times were scary to the degree that the major­ity of vot­ers feared a change at the top. Four years later not only has that fear faded, it is all but gone from the national consciousness.

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We posted a story over at Military​.com this morn­ing based on an inter­view your favorite DT poster, Ward Carroll, con­ducted with Sen. John McCain yes­ter­day after­noon. Id rec­om­mend giv­ing the story a read and lis­ten­ing to the inter­view, which we posted as a Podcast last night. 

McCain is fight­ing an uphill bat­tle in his quest for the Republican pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion, cham­pi­oning a war the gen­eral pub­lic is sick of talk­ing about. The fact that a man who was a pris­oner of war in Vietnam for five and a half years told us hes as con­vinced the U.S. is win­ning in Iraq “as any­thing I have been con­vinced of in my life” is say­ing some­thing. His cam­paign may have lost its “straight talk express” lus­ter among the polit­i­cal media and pun­dits, but hes still a remark­able man with firm convictions. 

Heres Wards edi­to­r­ial on the McCain story…

I had a chance to chat with Senator John McCain yes­ter­day as part of my weekly “The Editor’s Desk” pod­cast at Military​.com. Check it out here.

Regardless of your pol­i­tics, you should be aware of (if not respect­ful of) what this man has done in his life. Never mind what he’s accom­plished as a law­maker. His career as a naval avi­a­tor is more impres­sive, in my book. Few know that he was aboard the USS Forrestal (CV 59) when a Zuni rocket inad­ver­tantly fired across the flight­deck, set­ting off a mas­sive fire that killed scores of men and destroyed dozens of air­craft. Here’s the video:

McCain was in the cock­pit of an A-​​4 wait­ing to launch, parked on the port side aft, right next to the A-​​4 that. His jet was hit by the rocket. Once he real­ized how bad the sit­u­a­tion was, he ejected out of his burn­ing jet and para­chuted into the water behind the car­rier escaped by climb­ing out of the cock­pit, walk­ing down the nose and jump­ing off the refu­el­ing probe. 

Some months later his jet was hit by a SAM over Hanoi dur­ing a bomb­ing run. Again he ejected, this time at high speed. The wind blast broke both arms and his right leg. He landed in a lake in the mid­dle of Hanoi, uncon­scious. He came to and fought to get to the sur­face but sank again. He finally located his lift pre­server and floated to the top of the lake only to be greeted by an enraged mob. Soldiers had to inter­vene to keep him from being killed by the locals. 

McCain was taken to Hoa Lo prison and imme­di­ately worked over for infor­ma­tion by his cap­tors. Soon the Vietnamese found out he was a four-​​star admiral’s son, so they nursed him to health and took him to “the Plantation” for pro­pa­ganda pur­poses. He spent two years in solitary. 

When McCain’s father took the CINCPAC job, the Vietnamese tried to get him to accept early release. In spite of his health and fre­quent tor­ture ses­sions, he refused. 

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