Dan

Calabrese

Read Dan's bio and previous columns here

September 8, 2008

POW Psychology: So This is Why McCain Does What He Does

Maybe having been a POW does qualify you to be president. At least if you emerge from the experience in the way it appears John McCain did.

McCain’s acceptance speech on Thursday may not been oratory for the ages – although it wasn’t bad and it had its stirring moments to be sure – but to listen to it, you got the impression that so much of what McCain has done in his political career suddenly made sense. And you got the sense that for all the people we’ve sent to Washington hoping they would really change the place, this just might be the guy who will actually do it, simply because he doesn’t care what happens to him.

So that’s why he picked Sarah Palin. So that’s why he made friends with so many Democrats. So that’s why he drove conservatives crazy by going against Official Conservative Movement Orthodoxy on issues like taxes (he was wrong) and immigration (he was right).

McCain told us – and there is no reason to doubt him – that his five-and-a-half years as a prisoner in Vietnam transformed him into a new man, a man who would never put himself or his party ahead of his country.

A few conservative commentators bristled at the notion that loyalty to party should be equated with selfishness, but I think they misunderstood what he meant, which is that you work with anyone you have to, and you let anyone get the credit if you have to, in order to achieve something positive for the country. Too often, allegiance to party does conflict with that ideal. Many times, McCain has angered fellow Republicans because he aligned himself with Democrats to do what he thought was right for the country.

I don’t think McCain has always been right about those things. But I think he did it because he thought he was right, and therefore he applied the same principle that is now his campaign theme – Country First.

A McCain presidency will not be everything conservatives would like to see. But it might be a few very big things conservatives would love, and have longed to see for a very long time.

Few things would please conservatives more than a president who actually takes the veto pen to every bloated piece of pork-barrel spending legislation. We have yet to elect the president who has actually done it. George W. Bush didn’t want to start a public squabble with his fellow Republicans when they were running Congress and got spend-happy. Bush chose to spend his political capital on other battles – and you can make a good case for the battles Bush chose – but I don’t want the next president to shrink from the spending battle. I don’t think McCain will shrink.

McCain understands that legislation is often written at the behest of this interest or that. For the most part, Democrats cheer if legislation is written at the behest of organized labor, environmental groups or activity nonprofits. Republicans cheer if it is written at the behest of big business. McCain told us in his speech that he has stood up consistently to both, because he thinks legislation should be written to benefit the country as a whole.

McCain objects just as much when corporations seek special favors as when other groups do so. (Let’s hope he doesn’t undercut his own credibility by backing federal loans for the Big Three automakers to help him win swing-state Michigan.)

It seems authentic that McCain is a man who truly does not care about his own political fortunes, because his POW experience taught him that there are bigger things than himself. The speech was humble in tone and earnest in theme. Compare that with the over-the-top settings and the soaring-but-substance-free oratory of Barack Obama – who appears to think it is all about him, even though he’s done nothing to earn such a mantle of importance – and you start to see the real difference between these two men.

If McCain lays the smack to Washington’s wild appropriators, and finally gets federal spending under control, that alone would enough for me. I would like some other conservative things to be accomplished, and McCain promised a good many more of them than he can probably deliver, but turning off the money spigot would be so huge that it would make him an enormously consequential president all by itself.

The money quote was when McCain explained what it means to him that he wears the title of maverick: “What it really means is I understand who I work for. I don't work for a party. I don't work for a special interest. I don't work for myself. I work for you.”

Yes.

McCain’s gets that it’s not about you, regardless of what you’ve done. Or especially, as in the case of Barack Obama, when you really haven’t done much of anything at all.

© 2008 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

This is Column # DC204. Request permission to publish here.