Back in April, P.J. O’Rourke wrote a remarkable piece in The Weekly Standard about the pilots who fly fighter jets on and off of aircraft carriers.
Read the entire thing — it’s a great weekend read.
It takes a different breed of man. And I mean that in the most respectful and sincere way possible.
The skill, the nerves, the focus, and the training required to fly planes off the deck of a ship — well, it’s not something that most men have in them.
Sen. John McCain, though, is one such man who does have it in him:
Some say John McCain’s character was formed in a North Vietnamese prison. I say those people should take a gander at what John chose to do–voluntarily. Being a carrier pilot requires aptitude, intelligence, skill, knowledge, discernment, and courage of a kind rarely found anywhere but in a poem of Homer’s or a half gallon of Dewar’s. I look from John McCain to what the opposition has to offer. There’s Ms. Smarty-Pantsuit, the Bosnia-Under-Sniper-Fire poster gal, former prominent Washington hostess, and now the JV senator from the state that brought you Eliot Spitzer and Bear Stearns. And there’s the happy-talk boy wonder, the plaster Balthazar in the Cook County political crèche, whose policy pronouncements sound like a walk through Greenwich Village in 1968: “Change, man? Got any spare change? Change?”
Some people say John McCain isn’t conservative enough. But there’s more to conservatism than low taxes, Jesus, and waterboarding at Gitmo. Conservatism is also a matter of honor, duty, valor, patriotism, self-discipline, responsibility, good order, respect for our national institutions, reverence for the traditions of civilization, and adherence to the political honesty upon which all principles of democracy are based. Given what screw-ups we humans are in these respects, conservatism is also a matter of sense of humor. Heard any good quips lately from Hillary or Barack?
But there’s more to conservatism than low taxes, Jesus, and waterboarding at Gitmo
Liberals would be thrilled if this was true. But McCain is distrusted by the Republican base precisely because in the past he has refused to kowtow to those elements. Of course, in his effort to win the Republican nomination he has reversed his stand on the Bush tax cuts, kissed the ring of some vile preachers on the religious right, and voted in favor of waterboarding in the Intelligence Authorization Bill.
Now, he’s a member in good standing of Bush’s Republican Party.
Left by Preston on June 1st, 2008 at 9:15 am