McCain’s Achilles Heel
by Paul R. Hollrah

In a December 27 article in the National Post, Canadian writer Theo Caldwell had this to say in comparing our Republican and Democratic presidential candidates.  He said, “To be sure, there has been a fair amount of rubbish and rhubarb on the Republican side…, but even a cursory review of the legislative and professional records of the leading contenders from each party reveals a disparity akin to adults competing with children.”

This assessment led me to consider the glaring disparity between, say, John McCain and Barack Obama, favored by the mainstream media to become the nominees of their respective parties.

John McCain, the son and grandson of Navy admirals, graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1958.  He entered flight training and earned his naval aviator wings at Pensacola in the summer of 1960.

A year later, on August 4, 1961, Barack Hussein Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, and fourteen months later, as Obama was just beginning to stand upright and take his first tentative steps, John McCain was assigned to the carrier USS Enterprise, on blockade duty in the Caribbean during the Cuban missile crisis.

Less than three years later, as Obama was completing his potty training, his mother and father divorced.  His father left Honolulu to attend Harvard, leaving Barack and his mother behind.     

Then, in December 1966, as McCain was assigned to duty aboard the USS Forestall, Obama’s mother married an Indonesian Muslim, Lolo Soreoto.  One year later, Soreoto moved the family to Indonesia, arriving in Jakarta at approximately the same time that the Forestall, with John McCain aboard, sailed through the South China Sea and into the Gulf of Tonkin.   

In Indonesia, the Soreoto family moved into a home in the Betawi section of Jakarta.  Barack Obama (aka Barry Soreoto) was enrolled in a local Roman Catholic school where, it is reported, native Betawi children frequently threw stones at the school and at its students. 

Meanwhile, John McCain, having been reassigned to the carrier USS Oriskany, was completing 22 bombing missions over North Vietnam.  And on October 26, 1967, while Obama was still learning to dodge stones tossed through the windows of his school in Jakarta, McCain’s A-4 Skyhawk was shot down over Hanoi by a Soviet-made SA-2 anti-aircraft missile.  

With two broken arms and a broken leg, a shoulder crushed by a rifle butt, and bayonet wounds in his left foot and abdomen, McCain spent six weeks in a Vietnamese hospital before being transferred to a POW camp.  Then, in March 1968, as Obama was about to complete first grade in Jakarta, McCain was placed in a solitary confinement cell where he remained for the next two years. 

But while Obama was enjoying a carefree, fun-filled summer in tropical Jakarta, things were taking a terrible turn for McCain in Hanoi, just 1,622 nautical miles to the north.  In July 1968, when his captors learned that his father had been named Commander in Chief of the Pacific Command (CINCPAC), the Vietnamese realized they had a valuable public relations card in hand.  They offered McCain repatriation, but, remaining faithful to the “first-in, first-out” rule, he refused to be repatriated ahead of those who were imprisoned before him. 

Angered by McCain’s affront to their humanitarian “generosity,” the Vietnamese subjected him to four consecutive days of brutal torture.  His arms and legs were bound in painful positions, dislocating his joints, he was beaten every two hours, teeth were knocked out, and bones were broken.  This occurred just days after Obama celebrated his seventh birthday in Jakarta

At a time when Obama was writing his third grade essay, “I Want To Be a President,” John McCain was suffering the terrors of solitary confinement in Hanoi, praying every day that he would live long enough to one day be set free. 

In March 1970, as Obama was midway through fourth grade, the Soreoto family moved to a Muslim section of Jakarta where Obama was enrolled in a Muslim school.  That same month, John McCain was released from solitary confinement and transferred to the infamous Hanoi Hilton, where he remained until his repatriation in March 1973. 

The McCain story could have been a compelling one… more compelling than the story of John F. Kennedy in World War II… but McCain’s passion for contrarianism, a passion that he has valued above duty to his uniform, above conservative principles, and above unity with his Republican colleagues, has caused him to stick his thumb into the eyes of conservatives on far too many occasions without ever admitting error, without begging forgiveness, and without ever saying, “I’m sorry!”  . 

McCain has now had some success in New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Florida, and it would have been interesting to see this man, McCain, standing beside this boy, Obama, contending for the world’s most powerful office.  Unfortunately, McCain’s contrarianism, his Achilles heel, will likely prevent that from ever happening. 

The last two Republican presidents, Bush 41 and Bush 43, have been bogus conservatives.  The Republican Party simply cannot survive another.