John Ransom,
In 2008, while working as a driver for the John McCain presidential campaign, I witnessed the following exchange between two senior McCain staffers outside of Aspen, Colorado:
Senior staffer 1: “Did you hear the stage collapsed at the McCain rally in X?”
Senior staffer 2: “Oh, my God, no. Is the senator OK?”
Senior staffer 1: “McCain? John McCain? [laughter] Listen: John McCain always walks away without a scratch.”
It’s one of those anecdotes that makes for great literature because not only is it true – McCain does always walk away – but is also illustrative of the man’s character.
So let me say up front that like Donald Trump, I, too, wish there were a tad less surrender in Sen. John McCain.
Don’t get me wrong: I honor the sacrifice McCain made while an active-duty pilot in the United States Navy; and I also honor the six years he spent as a prisoner of war in the Hanoi Hilton during the Vietnam War.
And whatever else Trump knows about, it’s clear he doesn’t know this: Pilots shot down over enemy territory, like McCain was, hardly have the ability to shoot their way free.
They end up prisoners of the very people they were dropping bombs and rockets on.
McCain, we see, was no exception as a POW, except in this one area: Few, if any, contemporary politicians have used their status as a former prisoner of war as effectively as John McCain has. He parlayed that time as an internee into election victories, book deals and an outsized role in defense and intelligence matters not many have enjoyed.
In fact, John McCain has relentlessly dined out on his status as a POW to become the most famous prisoner of war since Winston Churchill.
Churchill, however, it will be noted, became famous as a prisoner of war because he escaped from captivity.
And no, I’m not saying that McCain should have tried to escape, although it would have been nice. Because subsequent to his release as a prisoner of war and his entry into American political life, John McCain has surrendered quite a bit.
No politician in the Republican Party worked as tirelessly to surrender your Second Amendment rights as John McCain has. No politician in the GOP has worked as tirelessly to surrender our country right at our own border as John McCain. Yes, the man who would protect the Iraqi border from Iranian incursions with every last drop of American blood – as I would do, too – has no problem surrendering the border in the United States right at the Rio Grande, as they say.
But perhaps the most illustrative surrender McCain made was the one people just don’t talk about.
And that was the surrender by McCain of his choice for vice president, Sarah Palin, within 48 hours of the August 2008 nominating convention that ratified his selection of her.
In all my time in politics, no episode made me as sick and disgusted as the one in which McCain staffers, seemingly with the OK of the boss, spent their time with the media painting their vice presidential candidate as a Wasilla hillbilly run amok in Nieman Marcus.
Many of these people were paid to run the McCain effort with your campaign dollars after being released from the Bush White House.
And despite pleading and begging, McCain surrendered and let these senior staffers – the ones who will back Bush or Romney, but not Palin – make their primary effort one of discrediting his vice presidential nominee.
That surrender in part is why Barack Obama won.
That surrender in part is why our country is in collapse.
And once again, John McCain walks away without a scratch.
So in this I agree with Trump: I prefer people who don’t surrender.
Or at least ones who never worked for Bush.
John Ransom is a finance writer who specializes in the intersection of the economy and politics. Ransom’s writings on politics and finance have appeared in the Los Angeles Business Journal, the Colorado Statesman, Pajamas Media and Registered Rep Magazine amongst others. He is currently a co-host on the Ray Lucia Show, syndicated in about 50 cities nationwide and at BizTv.com.