McCain Exploiting POW Card for Personal Ambition

Obama, his surrogates and the traditional media are invariably respectful of McCain’s Vietnam War experience 40 years ago as a POW. Yet McCain’s shameless exploitation of his POW experience, and use of it to excuse present day political liabilities and unforced errors, has now crossed the line to garish self-parody.

McCain likes to claim he doesn’t like to discuss his POW years, but the reality is he and his surrogates it is the essential element of his campaign’s political narrative. And they have been increasingly exploiting it as his ultimate excuse for any political liability he can’t otherwise explain away.

For example, today his spokeswoman, Bush/Cheney ‘04 veteran Nicole Wallace, rolled it out to defend McCain from the fact he breached his promise to be in a “cone of silence” (i.e., a green room) while Obama was being interviewed on the air by Rick Warren during the Saddleback Faith Forum. Turns out, McCain didn’t even arrive at the event until Obama had been on the air live for a half hour. Wallace said, “The insinuation from the Obama campaign that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, cheated is outrageous.”

Does this mean when McCain committed adultery with the much younger and much wealthier heiress, and now second wife, Cindy Hensley (McCain), he told his first wife that the insinuation that he, a former prisoner of war, cheated is outrageous?

Does this mean that when McCain was implicated in the Keating Five scandal and engaged in conduct he has conceded was wrong and unethical, his former prisoner of war experience makes any mention of such unethical judgment outrageous?

Here’s a brief video compilation from Jed Report of some recent creative uses of his POW card. Note to media: it’s not taboo to report the fact that McCain is politically exploiting his 40-year old POW experience for present day personal gain. After all, it is the McCain campaign that repeatedly asserts he suppresses his personal ambition in favor of the national interest.