Perhaps the saddest thing about the spectacle of folly and degradation that the US Presidential election contest has become is that Obama lacks the courage to deliver the speeches necessary to put the truth before the American people. Out of frustration, I have decided to draft a few of these imaginary speeches and publish them here. The first one concerns McCain’s shameless use of his POW experience as a magically inexhaustible source of honor.
Speeches Obama will never deliver: #1 – John McCain’s Bottled Honor
John McCain does not receive enough credit as a politician. His career has been built upon a feat that is unrivaled in modern American history. Senator McCain took one episode of courage from his wartime experience and transformed it into a permanent claim of exceptional honor. It is as though he filled a bottle with honor during his POW ordeal, and this bottle has never run dry.
But can honor really be stored? Isn’t honor something that we have to validate every day of our lives? How can a man insist that all behavior subsequent to a notably honorable action is irrelevant? Let us consider the honor of Senator John Sidney McCain and consider if what is stored in the bottle marked POW Honor is sufficient to wash away the stains of his subsequent actions.
I ask you to judge if a man who betrays a loyal first wife is a man of honor. I ask you to say if a man ensnared in the Keating S&L scandal is a man or honor. Is a candidate who curses his wife in front of reporters a man of honor? Is a politician who embraces a President who slandered him a man of honor? Is a torture victim who voted to enable torture a man of honor? Is a candidate who accuses me of teaching kindergarteners about sex a man or honor?
John McCain cannot replenish his honor from a bottle that was filled in Vietnam. The shelf life of that bottle expired many, many years ago. John McCain is not a man of honor today; he is a man so consumed by ambition that he will commit one dishonorable act after another to win the glittering prize of Presidential power. Honor is not a preserved and stored attainment that excuses any subsequent action, and it is particularly dishonorable to use past glory to claim permanent exemption from the consequences of bad conduct.
So take a closer look at the bottled honor of John McCain, my fellow citizens, and ask yourselves why Senator McCain acts dishonorably today. Honor cannot be permanently attained by any man before his death. He must defend and preserve his honor in all the acts of his life. Whatever honor John McCain attained in Vietnam has been spilled and scattered in the imprudent and ambitious actions of his subsequent career. Look again, America, and see that the bottle of John McCain’s honor is empty. It is as empty as McCain’s promises for reform and as useless as his obsolete and dangerous views on foreign policy. The highest duty before us is to preserve our country, my fellow Americans, not our nostalgia for the lost honor of John McCain.