Piling On John; Or, McCain: Douche-Bag or Ass-Hole?

Izzat the first Mrs. McCain on the left there, in March 1973 when Johnny came gimping home? J. Sidney McCain III (La-di-dah!) makes the front pages of both the NYT & LAT today, w/ stories about his desire to really have it easy by getting one of those cushy Congressional gigs.

He had spent the previous four years as the Navy’s liaison to the Senate, sampling life in the world’s most exclusive club as he escorted its members on trips around the globe — sitting with the sultan of Oman on the floor of his desert tent, or smuggling a senator’s private supply of Scotch through Saudi Arabian customs.

He had found a sense of purpose in an apprenticeship to some of the Senate’s fiercest cold warriors. And in Senator John G. Tower, a hawkish Texas Republican, he had found a new mentor, beginning a relationship that many compared to the bond between a father and son.

With Mr. Tower’s encouragement, Mr. McCain declined the prospect of his first admiral’s star to make a run for Congress, saying that he could “do more good there,” Mr. Lehman recalled. But Mr. Lehman knew duty was only part of the reason.

“He just loved it up there,” Mr. Lehman recalled. “Like very few military people, John heard the music up there, and he really wanted to do it.”

We see how he ran on his status as a "war hero," as opposed to knowing anything about the Arid Zone & what an actual representative would have to know about the state to, um, represent it. And how Cindy's dad helped. A lot.

With Hensley beer money and other contributions, the McCain camp began spreading his story through advertising. There were photos and videotapes of him limping across the tarmac, returning home after years as a prisoner of war. The candidate also was aided by his friendship with Arizona Republic Publisher Darrow "Duke" Tully, who touted himself as a war hero and was eager to spread McCain's story across his pages. The two were so close that Tully was named godfather to John and Cindy McCain's first child. (Tully resigned from the paper after it was learned that he had fabricated his war achievements; it turned out he had never served in the military.) Another influential friend was financier Charles H. Keating Jr. The Phoenix resident raised more than $100,000 for McCain. (Keating went to prison in the 1990s for his role in the failure of Lincoln Savings & Loan.)

[...]

Carlson had moved to the Phoenix area about 15 years before McCain and worked to build her Arizona resume. She was a county committeewoman and a state representative. Before that she headed a local GOP women's group. When Rhodes stepped down, she figured it was her turn to move up. Two other candidates jumped in, which threatened to split the important Mormon vote. Then, as she said, in waltzed this out-of-towner named John McCain. "It bothered me. It bothered a lot of people," she said. At town hall meetings, she said, McCain's aura as a war hero upstaged everything. "It's pretty hard to run against that," she said. "How do you debate issues important to Arizona like groundwater contamination when everyone is talking about him as a POW celebrity?"

Then you could turn to the local fish-wrapper's op-ed page & see how dedicated Johnny Mack is to his fellow vets. Apparently if they actually get benefits comparable to WWII vets, Sid's afraid they won't re-up for the many, many more wars "we" must have in order to insure democracy, squash terrorism, & control every natural resource that some other country has the nerve to be sitting on.

We've previously covered (alright, alright, excerpted & linked to, not "covered") the "McCain screws his fellow vets" angle. Twice.

And we'll leave you w/ this:

At one point, Mack reportedly tried to maneuver around the celebrity candidate by reaching out to McCain's first wife, Carol, in search of anything that might sink him. But Carol alerted McCain and, at the next debate, he unloaded. "If you ever try to hurt anyone in my family again," McCain said he warned Mack, "I will personally beat the [expletive] out of you." In describing the incident in his memoirs, McCain said: "I used as much steel as I'm capable of demonstrating" in forcing Mack to back off. Asked about the episode, Mack said: "I don't want to talk about it."

"If you ever try to hurt anybody in my family..." Let's see, what's more hurtful, dumping your wife who raised your children while you were in the Hanoi Hilton, or asking the dumpee (Not really a family member any more, is she?) if she might have something bad to say about the asswipe who dumped her? Get the impression that Sid's response to virtually anything said to or about him would be "I will personally beat the [expletive] out of you?" Including other nations & world leaders? Just what we need, yet another pin-dicked pseudo-macho hothead in the White House.