Just as it wasn't about the cookies Mrs. Clinton didn't bake; it's not about having been a POW, but the experience and what you take away from it.
When my friend, Andy, who'd escaped from Hungary in 1956 on foot and then signed up with the U.S. Air Force after graduating from high school in 1958 so he could get a college education, came back after a year of duty overseas, he was a psychological wreck. Not only had the effort to survive in the jungle, where his buddy had his throat cut while the others slept, taken a terrible toll, but, having been sworn to secrecy about where he'd even been, he found it impossible to even unburden himself. It wasn't until years later that we the American people learned our troops had been on the ground in Vietnam before most of us even knew where it was on the map. In the event, there's no way my friend Andy would ever be singing "Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran."
John McCain, on the other hand, seems totally unaffected by his experience or the wrecks he leaves behind. But then, perhaps that's because he never has to suffer the consequence. While, from all reports, he did his best to wreck his Naval Academy carreer, he still managed to do better than four others and graduate with his class.
I know we're not supposed to credit the interview McCain gave to the Cuban psychologist while he was a captive of the Vietnamese, but I can't come up with any reason why the interviewer would invent the following,
"I went to the Naval Academy. I took two university majors, electrical engineering and naval architecture. The courses were very difficult; 1,200 of us began and only 400 graduated. Discipline was very strict also."
instead of reporting the real number of 899 graduates, unless that's what McCain told him.
After that, the newly minted Naval Aviator joined a group that dubbed itself the "Bad Boys" and earned a reputation for carrousing, until he rescued his first wife, Carol and her two young sons from the wreck of her first marriage to classmate, Alasdair Swanson. That he wrecked three planes before the incident on the Forrestal and being shot down over Hanoi didn't seem to be held against him either. Indeed, it was the Vietnamese missile that wrecked his hopes of advancing more rapidly than his father. As he's reported to have told the psychologist:
Of course my father was not always an admiral; during World War II he was commander of a submarine. He has been in the navy since 1927 and has been an admiral since 1965. He holds the highest rank in the navy. If I had not been downed, I would have become an admiral at an earlier age than my father.
Which may explain some of McCain's continued resentment of his captors. Though the particulars are unclear because he's arranged to have the records sealed. So, one is left to wonder if perhaps what he's reported is worse than it actually was. And that might explain his recent reluctance to credit the reports of torture by the prisoners being sequestered on Guantanamo. McCain's experience tells him that prisoners of war tell lies. Still, he doesn't seem to share the military judgement that, since they lie, it's a waste of time to try extracting information from them.
Now that McCain has made his military experience an issue in his campaign for the presidency, any number of military men have stepped forward to assess what that means. From the perspective of one, the answer is, not much.
Following his recuperation after release from prison, he attended the National War College for a year. Next, he was appointed executive officer, then commanding officer of a naval air training squadron on a naval air station where his performance was judged to be exemplary.
He was then assigned to the Navy Liaison Office in the Senate and ultimately was in charge of this unit, where he lobbied, successfully, for a major weapon system not wanted by the president or the Navy Department.
Not much seems like a sound assessment. After all, the Air Force squadron McCain commanded for, at most, two years only contained twenty-four planes and their support, and McCain himself now rejects the usefulness of lobbying for earmarked projects the Department of Defense doesn't want. Moreover, since that practice has now continued for almost thirty years, it would seem that McCain's efforts to stop it have failed--raising the question of what the leadership he claims actually consists.
The admission that the blame for wrecking his first wife's second marriage is entirely his may be to McCain's credit. However, since she'd already suffered that heartache once and carried on despite her own physical injuries from a car wreck with spunk, throwing Carol McCain over for youth and wealth has to be considered as grossly insensitive. Which is probably why John McCain never noticed that his new wife's health was almost wrecked by an addiction to prescription drugs.
Being insensitive to other people's distress--a lack of situational awareness--would seem to severely restrict the benefits one derives from one's own and other people's experience. On the other hand, perhaps John McCain isn't really insensitive but has simply mastered the art of "plausible deniability," keeping himself willfully ignorant of what's going on so he won't have to be responsible when "mistakes are made." If so, then perhaps another component of his typical behavior is the "limited hangout" or apparent "straight talk" that distracts with a mea culpa to some minor infraction from a major subversive action. Which is what some people have argued is exactly what happened with the Indian Nation investigations that eventually landed one fellow, Jack Abramoff, in prison but left 745,000 pages of documentation under seal, not unlike the documentation for the MIA/POW investigations.
Where some people might conclude that John McCain is engaged in a cover-up of some nefarious activity or crime, it strikes me as entirely possible that secrecy is the objective and there's no ulterior motive. Of course, in a sense, because of the reforms of the 1960s, including most importantly the Freedom of Information Act, keeping secrets from the public is not only subversive of the Constitution but the apparent ultimate desideratum of people inclined to rule, rather than serve. So, McCain's preference for secrets may not be self-protective, but is surely self-advancing in the sense that his claims to experience and leadership and patriotism and ethics can't be verfied. We just have to take his word.
But, we already know from his own admission that he lies.