Some (Imperfect) Humanity From John W. McBush

I didn’t watch any of that Saddleback business the other night between the presumptive nominees for president, partly because I think the whole exercise was meant to inflate the profile of Rick Warren beyond what I believe he deserves (I realized later that I should have given my post on this last Thursday the hardly-original title of “The Purpose-Drive Hype”).

Of course, though, you can expect those individuals in our corporate media who claim some notion of spirituality (such as Michael Gerson of the WaPo here) to state decisively that his performance in this forum somehow represented a victory for John W. McBush. See, Obama’s cool detachment, as Gerson sees it, is a vice, whereas McBush’s ability to provide snap answers thus humanizes him in our eyes (implying that Obama is some sort of an automaton; one of the reasons I hate to hear politicians talk about faith like this is because it’s so damn easy for pundits to spin these exercises anyway they want).

As Gerson tells us, though, there was a moment where McBush opened a metaphorical door, if you will, through which our corporate media has steadfastly refused to cross, so I will do so here…

The candidate who once seemed incapable of the confessional style of politics talked at length of Vietnam experiences and his adopted daughter from Bangladesh. Asked by Warren about his greatest moral failure, McCain's response -- "the failure of my first marriage" -- had an abrupt and disarming authenticity.

And in response to that, I present this story from the Daily Mail (yes, I understand the type of a publication it is) about Carol McCain, McBush’s first wife.

The story tells us of how they married in 1965 when she was “a successful swimwear model” from Philadelphia (Carol had two sons from a prior marriage, and a daughter Sidney was born after she and McBush tied the knot), though McBush requested combat duty in 1966 (he probably could have remained stateside due to his marital status, but I’m not positive of that) leading to his imprisonment in 1967.

Afterwards (the story tells us)…

…Carol went to spend the Christmas holiday – her third without McCain – at her parents’ home (in 1969). After dinner, she left to drop off some presents at a friend’s house.

It wasn’t until some hours later that she was discovered, alone and in terrible pain, next to the wreckage of her car. She had been hurled through the windscreen.

After her first series of life-saving operations, Carol was told she may never walk again, but when doctors said they would try to get word to McCain about her injuries, she refused, insisting: ‘He’s got enough problems, I don’t want to tell him.’

H. Ross Perot, a billionaire Texas businessman, future presidential candidate and advocate of prisoners of war, paid for her medical care.

When McCain – his hair turned prematurely white and his body reduced to little more than a skeleton – was released in March 1973, he told reporters he was overjoyed to see Carol again.

But friends say privately he was ‘appalled’ by the change in her appearance. At first, though, he was kind, assuring her: ‘I don’t look so good myself. It’s fine.’

He bought her a bungalow near the sea in Florida and another former PoW helped him to build a railing so she could pull herself over the dunes to the water.

‘I thought, of course, we would live happily ever after,’ says Carol. But as a war hero, McCain was moving in ever-more elevated circles.

Through Ross Perot, he met Ronald Reagan, then Governor of California. A sympathetic Nancy Reagan took Carol under her wing.

But already the McCains’ marriage had begun to fray. ‘John started carousing and running around with women,’ said Robert Timberg.

And Perot, as the story notes, is fiercely critical of McBush for all of this. In spite of this, though, the story tells us that Carol McCain is supportive of her former husband and believes he is the better candidate for president.

I don’t have anything else to add to this post, really. It’s not my intention to present some “money quote” demonstrating that McBush is a worthless heel for abandoning his first wife. That’s not something I admire, to be sure, but this stuff happens in the real world, particularly in McBush’s circles (something which Carol McCain plainly realizes). I’ll let other people make those judgments.

Also (again), it’s not my intention to try and draw some equivalency here between McBush and John Edwards. I have many other issues with the senator from Arizona, and I’ve actually seen more fortitude from him on this than I’ve seen from the former North Carolina senator on his little tryst.

I’m just trying to present this information since I haven’t seen it anywhere else (I report, you decide, if you will).

Besides, if anything like this had been linked somehow to Obama, we’d be hearing about it in a 24/7/365 news cycle, to the point where he would probably already be gone from the race.

(And by the way, here are thoughts from Jack Cafferty in a related vein - h/t Atrios...I think the difference between Dubya and McBush is that the former is a scheming, pathological liar who knew how to twist and distort enough to wangle two terms in the White House, and the latter is someone who, at this point, is a confused, doddering old man willing to say anything to get elected.)

Update: And by the way, those "values voters" are none too thrilled with McBush not showing unconditional acceptance of their loony agenda by blindly accepting one of their own, as opposed to what he has stated here.