McCain's brain drain

What follows are some more or less random musings on the presumed Republican candidate for president, John McCain.

In his book, The Real McCain, Cliff Schecter quotes a "High-ranking Senate staffer" who said:

"Whenever we see anyone wearing their flip-flops, we say, 'I see you have your McCains on today.'" (p. 21)


Schecter takes a hard look at what McCain, the "heroic" veteran, really thinks of US military men and woman by examining his votes on bills relative to the welfare of our troops. "...a look at merely two years worth of those votes would tempt even the most charitable person to wonder what Senator McCain has against our troops."

For example: In 2005, Senator Daniel Akaka (D-HI) introduced a bill to increase veteran's medical care by $2.8 billion in 2006, and another which would have provided $10 million for "readjustment counseling services" for vets coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2006, Akaka asked for $1.5 billion for veteran's medical care, plus $430 million for VA outpatient care and treatment.

McCain voted in opposition to all of these proposals.

There's much more:

Senator Dodd proposed more funding to assist in rehabilitating the buildings at VA hospitals around the country. This bill mandated a "minor rollback in the capital gains tax cuts that the Bush administration has given to the richest one-fifth of 1 percent of Americans. " McCain was in opposition.

In 2006, Senator John Kerry, along with Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI), offered a resolution "to require the redeployment of United States Armed Forces from Iraq in order to further a political solution in Iraq..." This proposal received 13 votes and John McCain's vote was not among the 13.

A year earlier amendments were suggested that would have funded additional medical care and readjustment counseling for Iraq vets suffering from mental illness, PTSD, or drug addiction. McCain voted in the negative.

There were several other bills introduced in the Senate to assist veterans and McCain voted no on all of them. McCain's latest "no" vote was in response to Senator Webb's recent bill to provide our current returning veterans with GI bill benefits.

Schecter says that the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, "the country's first and largest Iraq veterans group, has made McCain's nonsupport of and lip service to America's active military and veterans much easier to identify."

IAVA researched 155 votes taken since September 11, 2001 on legislation having to do with veterans and their families. Each senator was given a grade based upon how IAVA determined
their support for veterans.

There were no A's. Thirteen Democratic senators were awarded an A-. Twenty-three were given a B+, only one of which was a Republican. ...

"The worst grade received by a Senate Democrat was higher than the best grade granted to a Republican. How did IAVA grade John McCain, the guy who everyone thinks of as Mr. Defense and Mr. Support the Troops? He got a D."


Maybe McCain's problem with supporting our men and women in uniform goes back to his days at the U.S. Naval Academy. In an article titled "Middie McCain More Moron than Maverick," Alec Sokolow asks and answers this question:

"What do you call the person who graduates fifth from the bottom of his class at Annapolis? The Republican Party nominee for President.

"That's right, Senator John McCain actually graduated 894th out of 899 middies at the Naval Academy. Only five other crew cuts achieved less than John McCain did in his class at Annapolis. And he was the son and grandson of U.S. Navy Admirals! He was a legacy, which means they probably had to keep his sorry dumb ass in the Navy!"

Sokolow offers much more about McCain's brain drain, which you can read here.


Schecter, too, makes a point of McCain's Annapolis stint in a brief biographical sketch included in The Real McCain (pp. 6-7 ff).

Speaking of McCain at Annapolis, Schecter says "His career at the academy was undistinguished in the usual sense--by accomplishment, say--but quite memorable in terms of rebelliousness. He was a proud member of the Century Club, an exclusive group of miscreants who had accumulated a hundred or more demerits. He also boxed for three years on the navy team where he was less a boxer than a fighter. ...

"After graduating, McCain trained as a naval aviator in Pensacola, Florida, and in Texas at Corpus Christi. He was a little wild; it was peacetime, after all. Was McCain aimless? Undistinguished? 'I generally misused my good health and youth,' he later said of those callow years ... As an aviator, he struggled with his flying. After surviving two years of flight school--and one test flight crash into Corpus Christi Bay--McCain became a Navy pilot."

And the rest, they say, is "history."


But it is often "history" read wrong. McCain still plays the "maverick," the good old boy who likes to sit around and drink booze and tell off-color jokes. He uses the "f" word a lot. But he is not a "maverick," and his career in the U.S. Senate, except for one or two instances, is notable for its lack of accomplishment. Throughout most of McCain's Senate years, he has prudently followed the Republican "party line." He has not, in any sense, been a "maverick," or "straight shooter." In other words, his Senate service is just about on a par with his college years at Annapolis.

Sokolow asks, pertinently, this:

"After the last eight years of entitled stupidity and stupendous incompetence by a likable but belligerent, stubborn legacy with major father issues, can we afford another 40 watt light bulb flickering dimly in the Oval Office? Do any of us really want to live in a country where our present--the leader of the free world--finished 894th in anything having to do with rankings of brain power or performance? Stupid is as stupid does. Run, Forrest, Run."