Watching Joe Biden’s speech, it got to me last night, how respectful everyone is being to John McCain. He’s always described as “a friend” or a “respected colleague” or a “hero” because of his experience as a POW. And finally it just got to me. Jon McCain is no hero.
Because the more I read about John McCain’s life, his military service, his divorce of his first wife to marry a millionaire’s daughter to fund his political career, his abuse of his office of Senator to help out a con man who stole millions from depositors and investors and billions from taxpayers, his violations of the election reform laws he himself championed, his refusal to support funding for wounded veterans, his use of casual racist and sexist slurs, his hypocritical attitude toward the Bush’s administration’s use of torture, his ill temper and his simply downright meanness, the more I have become disgusted with the hagiographic portrayal of his life story which he has sold to a the media and which they have in turn sold to the American people, all for the price of a little phony camaraderie and a show a false friendship.
Because the truth is John McCain is not a very nice person. He had one horrific experience as a prisoner of war, where he was tortured and signed a confession that he was a war criminal, and learned nothing from it. He came away from that experience with no insight, with no lessons about the horror of war, with no empathy for his fellow human beings who have also suffered terrible fates.
Instead he makes bad jokes about bombing Iran, an action that would inevitably result in the loss of American, Jewish, Arab and Iranian lives for little if any gain. And he laughed at a supporter when she called Hillary Clinton, his colleague in the Senate a “bitch.” He claimed he opposed Bush’s policies when in fact he was one of Bush’s biggest war supporters and a a neoconservative warmonger who called for invading Iraq before Bush even imagined attacking Saddam Hussein. That, my friends are not the actions of a man I respect, nor should you.
Follow me below the fold, as I explain in more detail how I came to my conclusion that John McCain doesn’t deserve to be considered a hero.
By all accounts, John McCain was a braggart and a bully as a youth earning the nickname “McNasty” at the private boarding school he attended. The son and grandson of Admirals, he came from a family of military royalty. Getting in to the Naval Academy was no problem for him with that background, but he didn’t distinguish himself there except for the number of demerits he racked up and his low standing in his class. Yet, he did have the ability to make friends easily and to charm people, perhaps his best skill, one he would later use to his advantage in his political career. His friends said he was clever and had a sarcastic wit. Even then, he liked the role of the Alpha male, leader of his own little pack, even as he had trouble following the rules of the Academy. Enough so he was able to con one of his “friends” into taking credit for a rules violation that would have gotten him kicked out of the Academy his senior year.
He also liked to party and was in today’s parlance a “player” when it came to women. Eventually he would marry a former beauty queen and model, Carol Shepp. And of course, he chose to be a naval aviator as a career, the most glamorous option available. He crashed two planes, and lost his third plane when he was shot down over North Vietnam while flying his 23rd bombing run in October, 1967.
He was captured and tortured with beatings and held in solitary confinement for 2 years, a condition which we know can cause psychological damage. After his beatings and maltreatment he would sign a confession admitting to war crimes. He would refuse early release from his imprisonment because of the US military code’s requirement that those captured first must be released first, and US POW’s should refuse any release offered to them if they were not the longest held prisoner. These experiences form the basis for the claim that he is a “hero.”
Certainly John McCain was the victim of torture, and unlike some, I do not blame him for signing a confession admitting he was a war criminal. If we have learned anything from Guantanamo Bay it is that anyone can be induced to confess to anything if they are subjected to enough physical and mental distress. But being a prisoner isn’t particularly heroic. If that was the case, we would label all the prisoners who passed through Abu Ghraib and Bagram and Gitmo (and god knows where else), and were tortured, heroes. What torture and abuse does is make one a victim of human rights violations. Heroism can only be determined by what one does with one’s life after such experiences. In that measure, John McCain is a miserable failure.
When he returned home, he no doubt expected to find his loving and beautiful wife waiting for him. What he didn’t know was that she had kept a secret from him while he was in prison. She had suffered a terrible car wreck which permanently disfigured her and caused permanent damage to her body. As a result she was no longer the beautiful, sexy young wife he remembered. Instead she had lost several inches of height, gained weight, and was disabled. And soon, he would realize he would never advance to the rank of admiral, never have the opportunity to match the record of his father and grandfather.
By the late 1970’s McCain was already having affairs with other women, cheating on Carol. He had vowed to stand beside her in sickness and in health, but those vows meant nothing to him. Instead he was determined to jump start a political career after being assigned by the Navy to serve in Washington as a liaison officer to the Senate, capitalizing on his fame as a celebrity POW (his father had been in command of all Naval Forces in Vietnam). Their he met powerful republican politicians and made connections that would serve him well in the future. But he lacked the money and the base from which to launch a career that would take him to Congress.
In 1979, he found the solution to his problems when he began dating Cindy Hensley, a millionaire heiress whose father had made his fortune in Arizona as a Anheuser Busch beer distributor. By 1980, he divorced Carol and shortly thereafter married Cindy. By 1982, with her father’s money and the backing of wealthy donors like Anheuser Busch, Charles Keating and Fife Symington he essentially bought himself the Congressional seat from Tuscon, though he had never lived in Arizona until his marriage to his new bride. He “earned” his political career the hard way — by seducing an impressionable younger woman with tons of money even while he was a married man. Later he would disparage her openly in front of strangers as a “trollop” and a “cunt” but back then he needed her and her father to get into Congress. Indeed, he willing violated FEC rules to do so:
Cindy McCain’s father, James Hensley, and other Hensley & Co. executives gave so much the Federal Election Commission ordered McCain to give some of it back. McCain’s campaign used Hensley office equipment such as computers and copiers, and Cindy McCain personally paid some of the campaign’s bills.
The campaign gradually reimbursed Hensley for use of its equipment and Cindy McCain for her expenses. The loans — described initially by John McCain as coming from him and his wife — caught the eye of the FEC, which repeatedly questioned him about them; spouses are held to the same donation limits as everyone else.
McCain told the FEC the loaned money came from his share of joint accounts. At the time, McCain reported drawing a $25,067 salary and $25,000 bonus working for Hensley in public relations and receiving a Navy pension of $11,038 a year; his 1982 financial disclosure report showed bank interest but didn’t say how much the bank accounts held.
These are not the actions of a hero, are they? More like that of a soulless opportunist. But it would get worse for McCain. In 1986, the GOP cleared the field for a Senate run for McCain, and with the money from his new found “friends” like Keating, his father-in-law and other corporate interests, and with favorable news coverage from a frankly conservative press in Arizona he easily won election to the Senate. During the course of the campaign he told jokes like this one:
In June 1986, McCain … [referred] to Leisure World, a retirement community, as “”Seizure World.”
Ah, yes, the vaunted McCain humor, making fun of others. Still think he’s a hero?
And then of course, there was the Keating Five scandal, McCain’s most infamous example of selling his office to serve the interests of his friends/campaign contributors. Here’s as good a recounting of McCain’s role in the attempt by five US Senators to intimidate federal regulators to back off their investigation into the financial improprieties of one Charles H. Keating, Jr. from the Arizona Republic (a paper that, for the record, has a highly conservative and republican bias):
Charlie Keating always took care of his friends, especially those in politics. John McCain was no exception.
In 1982, during McCain’s first run for the House, Keating held a fund-raiser for him, collecting more than $11,000 from 40 employees of American Continental Corp. McCain would spend more than $550,000 to win the primary and the general election.
In 1983, during McCain’s second House race, Keating hosted a $1,000-a-plate dinner for McCain, though he had no serious competition and coasted into his second term. When McCain pushed for the Senate in 1986, Keating was there with more than $50,000.
By 1987, McCain had received about $112,000 in political contributions from Keating and his associates.
McCain had also carried a little water for Keating in Washington. While in the House, McCain, along with a majority of representatives, co-sponsored a resolution to delay new regulations designed to curb risky investments by thrifts like [the Keating controlled] Lincoln [Savings and Loan].[…]
It all started in March 1987. Charles H Keating Jr. .. .. needed help. The government was poised to seize Lincoln Savings and Loan, a freewheeling subsidiary of Keating’s American Continental Corp.
As federal auditors crawled all over Lincoln, Keating was not content to wait and hope for the best. He’d spread a lot of money around Washington, and it was time to call in his chits.
One of his first stops was Sen. Dennis DeConcini. The Arizona lawmaker was one of Keating’s most loyal friends in Congress, and for good reason. Keating had given thousands of dollars to DeConcini’s campaigns. At one point, DeConcini even pushed Keating for ambassador to the Bahamas, where Keating owned a luxurious vacation home.
Now Keating had a job for DeConcini. He wanted him to organize a meeting with the regulators. The message: Get off Lincoln’s back. Eventually, DeConcini would set up a meeting between five senators and the regulators. One of them was John McCain. […]
McCain told Keating that he would attend the meeting and find out whether Keating was getting treated fairly, but that was all.
”Keating gave me the clear impression that he expected me to do more,” McCain said later. ”He had several specific requests.”
When Keating questioned his courage, McCain invoked his POW experience. He told Keating that he didn’t spend 5 1/2 years in the Hanoi Hilton to be called a coward.
The two argued, then Keating stormed out.
Despite the dust-up, McCain attended not one but two meetings with the regulators. McCain later explained that he thought it was the right thing to do, because Keating was a constituent.
McCain would live to regret it.
Of course, we have nothing but McCain’s word that he was a reluctant participant, but nonetheless he did participate. I wonder how many other of McCain’s “constituents” would have received such “service” from their Senator.
The first meeting, on April 2 in DeConcini’s office, included Ed Gray, chairman of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, as well as four senators: DeConcini, McCain, Alan Cranston, D-Calif., and John Glenn, D-Ohio.
The meeting had a clandestine air. Gray came alone. None of the senators brought their aides. DeConcini asked Gray to withdraw a regulation in order to help Lincoln. Gray shook his head.
For Keating, the meeting was a bust. Gray told the senators that as head of the loan board, he worried about the big picture. He didn’t have any specific information about Lincoln. Bank regulators in San Francisco would be versed in that, not him. Gray offered to set up a meeting between the senators and the San Francisco regulators.
The second meeting was on April 9. The same four senators attended, along with Sen. Don Riegle, D-Mich. Also at the meeting were William Black, then deputy director of the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corp., James Cirona, president of the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco, and Michael Patriarca, director of agency functions at the FSLIC.
In a recent interview with The Republic, Black said the meeting was a show of force by Keating, who wanted the senators to pressure the regulators into dropping their case against Lincoln. The thrift was in trouble for violating ”direct investment” rules, which prohibited S&Ls from taking large ownership positions in various ventures.
“The Senate is a really small club, like the cliche goes,” Black said. “And you really did have one-twentieth of the Senate in one room, called by one guy, who was the biggest crook in the S&L debacle.”
And the result of McCain’s “help?”
A month later, the San Francisco regulators finished a yearlong audit and recommended that Lincoln be seized. But the report was virtually ignored because of politics on the bank board.
Gray was being replaced as chairman by Danny Wall, who was more sympathetic to Keating.
The audit, which described Lincoln as a thrift reeling out of control, sat on a shelf.
Eventually Lincoln Savings & Loan was seized by Federal regulators in when it collapsed in 1989. The cost of the government bailout of Lincoln was around $3 billion tax payer dollars. More than 21,000 investors in Keating’s firm, American Continental Corp, which controlled Lincoln, lost their life savings, when it too, went bankrupt. Keating himself would be convicted and serve 4 and 1/2 years in prison for state and federal convictions of fraud and racketeering. McCain would get off with a slap on the wrist by the Senate Ethics Committee for his role in helping Keating bilk the public out of billions of dollars. All for a few thousands of dollars (maybe millions) of tainted campaign contributions from Keating and his associates.
McCain went on to reinvent himself as a maverick reformer who passed election reform laws with the help of Russ Feingold, yet just this year he violated the laws he supported and sponsored, and to which his name is attached:
According to the latest Federal Election Commission report, John McCain has now spent $58.4 million dollars. McCain applied for public financing, and according to FEC chairman David Mason (in a letter to McCain), he can’t withdraw without permission of the FEC. So he is now legally in violation of campaign finance law.
He’s a man uses racist and sexist slurs, and gets away with them. He claims to support the troops while opposing measures such as the new GI bill which would help suffering veterans. His lack of empathy for others is astounding, though he is cgood at conning the national media, whom he has laughingly (and accurately) referred to as his base. He’s changed his views to appeal to the the most extreme factions of the Republican Party, and willingly accepted the endorsements of radical, bigotted and racist preachers on the right who have called for genocide against Muslims.
He questions Brack Obama’s patriotism and allows his surrogates to spread lies about Obama after promising to run a positive campaign and stay on the “high road.”
This is not a hero, people. This is a deeply dishonest, deeply fraudulent, deeply racist and sexist individual who thinks the best way to conduct our foreign policy is to use our massive military might to bomb other nations into submission, no matter how many innocent people die as a result. I’m sorry he suffered as a POW 40 years ago, but he clearly learned nothing from that experience, or at least nothing positive. And calling him a hero only furthers the chances that he will be elected President and take our country further down the path of ruin that George Bush has so “capably” done these last 7 and 1/2 years.
So don’t call him what he isn’t. he deserves respect for serving in the military. He deserves our sympathy for the pain he endured as a POW. But he doesn’t deserve to be called a hero. That’s one title he simply hasn’t earned.
