John McCain, Unfit To Serve As Commander In Chief

John Sidney McCain III entered the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland in 1954. Young McCain wanted to become an admiral. He planned to achieve the distinction of being the "first son and grandson of four star admirals" . But that was not to be. McCain III possessed none of the innate character and discipline traits that helped mold his father and grandfather into great military leaders.

His father, John S. "Junior" McCain, and grandfather, John S. McCain, Sr., were famous four-star Admirals in the U.S. Navy. His father commanded U.S. forces in Europe before becoming commander of American forces fighting in Vietnam. His grandfather commanded naval aviation at the Battle of Okinawa in 1945. Both men became highly influential in U.S. Navy operations.

At the Academy, aside being known as a "rowdy, raunchy, underachiever" who resented authority, Cadet McCain became infamous as a leader among his fellow midshipmen for organizing "off-Yard activities" and hard drinking parties. Robert Timberg wrote in his book , The Nightingale's Song, that "being on liberty with John McCain was like being in a train wreck."

McCain's grades were "marginal." He drew so many demerits for breaking curfew and other discipline issues that he graduated fifth from the bottom of the class of 1958. Despite his low "class standing," and no doubt because of the influence of his family of famous Admirals, McCain was leap-frogged ahead of more qualified applicants and granted a coveted slot to be trained as a navy pilot.

He spent the next two and a half years as a "naval aviator in training" at Naval Air Station Pensacola in Florida and Naval Air Station Corpus Christi in Texas, flying A-1 Skyraiders. While a pilot trainee, McCain continued to party hard. He drove a Corvette and dated an exotic dancer named "Marie the Flame of Florida." Timberg wrote that McCain "learned to fly at Pensacola, though his performance was below par, at best good enough to get by. He liked flying, but didn't love it."

McCain, the "below par" pilot, eventually lost 5 military aircraft, the first during a training flight in 1958 when he plunged into Corpus Christi Bay while trying to land. The Navy ignored the crash and graduated McCain in 1960.

While deployed in the Mediterranean, the hard partying McCain lost a second aircraft. Timberg described the crash: "Flying too low over the Iberian Peninsula, he took out some power lines which led to a spate of newspaper stories in which he was predictably identified as the son of an admiral."

Unscathed, McCain returned to Pensacola Station where he was promoted to flight instructor for Naval Air Station Meridian in Mississippi. The airfield at Meridian, McCain Field, was named in honor of McCain's grandfather.

In 1964 McCain became involved with Carol Shepp, a model from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he had met at Annapolis. They were married in Philadelphia on July 3, 1965.

Flight instructor McCain lost a third aircraft while flying a Navy trainer solo to Philadelphia for an Army-Navy football game. Timberg wrote that McCain radioed, "I've got a flameout" before ejecting at one thousand feet. McCain parachuted onto a beach moments before his plane slammed into a clump of trees. The Navy dismissed the crash as "unavoidable" and assigned McCain to the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal in December 1966, which was patrolling the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean.

In Spring 1967, the Forrestal was assigned to join the Operation Rolling Thunder bombing campaign against North Vietnam. McCain lost his fourth plane on board the Forrestal on July 29, 1967 when a rocket inadvertently slammed into his bomb laden jet. McCain escaped, but the explosions that followed killed 134 sailors. McCain was transferred from the badly damaged Forrestal to the USS Oriskany. Shortly afterwards, on Oct. 26, 1967, he was down and captured by the Vietnamese.

Upon his release from North Vietnam and return to the United States in 1973, McCain reunited with his wife, Carol, who had been permanently crippled in a car accident while he was a POW. Still yearning to become an admiral, McCain enrolled in the National War College at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C. and underwent physical therapy in order to fly again. The Navy excused his permanent disabilities and reinstated him to flight status, effectively positioning him for promotion.

Timberg described McCain's advancement: "in the fall of 1974, McCain was transferred to Jacksonville as the executive officer of Replacement Air Group 174, the long-sought flying billet at last a reality. A few months later, he assumed command of the RAG, which trained pilots and crews for carrier deployments. The assignment was controversial, some calling it favoritism, a sop to the famous son of a famous father and grandfather, since he had not first commanded a squadron, the usual career path."

While Executive Officer and later as Squadron Commander McCain used his authority to arrange frequent flights that allowed him to carouse with subordinates and "engage in extra-marital affairs." This was a clear violation of the Military Code of Conduct rules against adultery and fraternization with subordinates. But, as with all his other past behaviors, McCain was never penalized; instead he always got away with his transgressions.

Timberg wrote, "Off duty, usually on routine cross-country flights to Yuma and El Centro, John started carousing and running around with women. To make matters worse, some of the women with whom he was linked by rumor were subordinates . . . At the time the rumors were so widespread that, true or not, they became part of McCain's persona, impossible not to take note of."

In early 1977, Admiral Jim Holloway, Chief of Naval Operations promoted McCain to captain and transferred him from his command position "to Washington as the number-two man in the Navy's Senate liaison office. McCain was promptly given total control of the office. It wasn't long before the "fun loving and irreverent" McCain had turned the liaison office into a "late-afternoon gathering spot where senators and staffers, usually from the Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees, would drop in for a drink and the chance to unwind."

In 1979, while attending a military reception in Hawaii, McCain met and fell in love with Cindy Lou Hensley, 17 years his junior, who was the daughter of James W. Hensley, a wealthy Anheuser-Busch distributor from Phoenix, Arizona. McCain filed for and obtained an uncontested divorce from his wife in Florida on April 2, 1980 and promptly married Cindy on May 17, 1980.

He resigned from the Navy in 1981 and went to work for his father-in-law in Phoenix; where he used the opportunity to make powerful and wealthy friends in Arizona including banker Charles Keating and Duke Tully, the editor-in-chief of the Arizona Republic. Keating was later convicted of fraud, racketeering, and conspiracy and Tully was disgraced for concocting a phony military record of combat in Korea and Vietnam including medals for heroism. McCain ran for Arizona's First Congressional District in 1982. McCain won the congressional seat. In 1987 McCain was elected to the Senate.

From the article:

To those who know McCain and are familiar with his behavior in captivity, the charge is ludicrous. McCain resisted his captors to such a degree that he was isolated in a special prison for troublemakers. He repeatedly refused special favors, including early release, and emerged as a spiritual and religious leader for other prisoners. Nonetheless, Sampley was persistent enough in his claims that the press in McCain's home state of Arizona picked up on the KGB story.

Sampley's antagonism toward McCain stems from the senator's failure to live up to Sampley's idea of how a former POW should embrace the MIA cause. In Sampley's estimation, McCain's personal experience should have caused him to champion the search for live POWs, the way it had Red McDaniel. Instead, McCain focused on the more neutral search for "truth," as well as on the prosecution of charlatans who took money from MIA families.

When McCain took the position that the United States should establish diplomatic relations with Vietnam in return for cooperation on the MIA issue, Sampley was outraged. He believed the United States should not have any dealings with its former enemy. Anyone who said otherwise — specifically, John McCain — was a traitor.

I still don’t understand how the Times is doing their count. For example, they show Romney with 23 michigan votes. But the michigan contest did not do a final assignment of delegates. And Michigan DID just do their assignment, and McCain got most of them.

Louisiana just did an assignment of delegates as well, and McCain got most of them.

At least they recognized that Iowa hasn’t assigned any delegates yet.

I’m used to people not listening, not understanding, having a limited view of things, desperate to have their own way, etc.

may I suggest not spending to much time at the mirror...

I can't understand a military person who becomes a Rat, I never understood it.

This guy's hatchet job is so transparent that you can tell he deep down likes McCain even though the Kool-Aid he drinks makes him write the hit piece.

The most extreme example of the SF hero/liberal was the late Col. David Hackworth, who was very conservative in most ways, but always came down on the side of the Rats in any written commentary or interview.

I think it is like a religion, once you are born a Rat, only a few ever shake it and become conservatives.

I still don’t understand how the Times is doing their count.

The count varies depending how the group doing it interperts the formulas or the intent of the state. I think the most unknown factor is the 579 unpledged delegates of which I suspect most will follow the party line come convention time.

The Greenpapers has a detail by state showing McCain with a total of 866 delegates at this time and a total of 1032 left to be decided. They show Louisiana as uncommitted and Michigan scattered among the candidates...

In any case a brokered convention has a very slim chance of occuring unless something really drastic happens to McCain between now and then, imo. We will be stuck with him for good or worse.

http://www.thegreenpapers.com/P08/R-HS.phtml

No defeatist-loser here. Just a man of conscience. If McCain is “Your Guy”, by all means vote your conscience. I do think, though, that an awful lot of people are not voting their conscience, but are having McCain forced on them. This, to me, is the real issue. You and others are quick to point out how bad the alternative is (I agree with that assessment, by the way.) and are quick to paint a dark picture of life under O. and H. I find my emotions reacting very strongly to that, no question. But, I find something else inside sounding an alarm, as well. And as I pause and think about what is setting off that alarm I am filled with all kinds of questions that have not been satisfactorily (in my view) answered. “He’s the candidate, deal with it,” is no kind of answer, given the ominous juncture we are at in this country.

“may I suggest not spending to much time at the mirror...”

Is this any reflection (ahem) of your depth of thinking on this subject? Thank you, though for the reminder of how so many of my students think (and act.) Now, off to the principal’s office with you!

“The divisions between conservatives and republicans are playing right into the hands of the left.”

Well given that the Party is called the “Republican” and not the “Conservative” party, just who do you think has the power to heal these divisions?

And do you and Ted think that Obama or Hitlery is fit to be CIC?

Looks like we have no choice!

McCain will be a far better CIC than either of the Dims. My husband is in the military right now. A large majority of them agree.

Unfortunately many of the younger military members have been born and raised in the socialist era and will jump on the Obama bandwagon unless we get REAL GOOD about attacking his (nonexistent) record and to-the-left-of-the-Soviet-Union policies.

Surprise, another hit piece showing up way too late. I like how this one blames McCain for losing a plane on board the Forrestal when it was hit by a rocket. (Was the rocket fired by the enemy? Was it being loaded onto another plane? Who knows?

The author also goes directly from 1967 to 1973 with barely even a mention of what happened to McCain during those six years.

In my opinion, anyone who saved their ammo for this point is a supporter of BO.

I totally understand, but at least McCain will be with us on some issues and having a Republican president elected will hopefully produce coattails and keep the damage minimal to none in the Congressional and Senate elections.

If conservatives stay home due to Mc Cain we will not only get socialism but a willing Congress to happily pass everthing the savior wants.

I think McCain will be a better CIC than a Dim and will hopefully produce better judges. He hopefully will veto all earmarks. This would be a good start. If he picks a good conservative VP, we might rest easy as he is old and not in the best health.

Mc Cain is definitely not the best, but we were all split between him-Huckabee-Romney-Thompson at first and even Rudy to some extent. It was a plurality and McCain is what we got. We have to live with it!!

McCain probably will make a better CIC when it comes to the war on terror. The question is what will he do at home? Based on what he’s done so far, there is much reason for concern. If we explode with bombs from without, or we implode with massive illegal immigration within (and the costs that follow) we still lose.

But before all that, can anyone explain McCain’s ascendancy? How is it we are faced with him as the Republican nominee (that is, above and beyond the election process)?

Please ....repeat after me...”this isn’t a classrom and I am not the teacher?” Now go stand in front of that mirror and say it 50 times....it might sink in. Asking where McCain came from is not a discussion topic its bait with an agenda.

Politics is and has always been the lessor of two evils. So your conscience has no problem helping elect the greater evil. How bizarre/warped is that? In the adult real world, voting for, voting against, or staying home, all have ramifications and consequences.

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