[Rhodes22-list] Political Ad - OOPS!

[Brad Haslett]

Did you see the new Obama ad that came out today making fun of the
fact that McCain doesn't use e-mail?  Turns out, McCain can't type as
a result of his injuries while in captivity.  Oops! Back to the
drawing board. Here's a quote from a 2000 article and the whole
article below.

"McCain gets emotional at the mention of military families needing
food stamps or veterans lacking health care. The outrage comes from
inside: McCain's severe war injuries prevent him from combing his
hair, typing on a keyboard, or tying his shoes. Friends marvel at
McCain's encyclopedic knowledge of sports. He's an avid fan - Ted
Williams is his hero - but he can't raise his arm above his shoulder
to throw a baseball."

Brad

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McCain character loyal to a fault

By Mary Leonard, Globe Staff, 3/4/2000

EMPE, Ariz. - Facing a threat that his homosexuality would be exposed
by Christian conservatives at a city council meeting, Mayor Neil
Giuliano did what he thought was nobody's business: He held a press
conference and declared, ''I happen to be gay.''

The reaction of Arizona's senior senator, John McCain, was swift and angry.

''John was the first to tell the religious right, 'This doesn't make a
damned bit of difference,''' Giuliano said, remembering how McCain
went out of his way to call him a good mayor and a great friend.
''Politically in Arizona, McCain should have done just the opposite.
Instead, he came right to my defense. He's a loyal friend.''

GOP presidential candidate John McCain has a pattern of putting his
heart ahead of his head and even his political judgment. Peel off the
pretense of a cocky fighter pilot and a prickly politician, those who
know him well say, and what really shapes John McCain is his loyalty
to family and friends and a fierce sense of duty to defend underdogs
under attack.

Today McCain will be in Boston seeking support in Tuesday's GOP
primary in Massachusetts. He has been in hot water this week for his
highly personal lashing of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, who he
said he believes have dishonored him with their negative attacks.
McCain was forced to apologize after calling the two Christian
conservative leaders ''forces of evil,'' and then he faced new
questions about his temperament to be president.

''I don't think it should be a source of worry,'' McCain said during a
candidates debate Thursday night, ''but anything is fair game, as I've
found out during this campaign.''

To admirers like Giuliano, McCain's sensitivity, generosity, and
loyalty are the hallmarks of his character. To targets of his outrage,
McCain's thin skin is his fatal flaw.

''His greatest strength is also his greatest weakness,'' said Mike
Hellon of Tucson, a state GOP leader who has known McCain for two
decades. ''John is impatient with fools. Particularly if people are
acting improperly or in a self-serving fashion, he can be very
difficult. He puts loyalty first, even when it is not in his best
interest.''

Lisa Graham Keegan, Arizona's superintendent of public instruction,
was close to McCain until she publicly called for the resignation of
Governor Fife Symington after he was indicted for bank fraud in 1996.
McCain, who stood by his friend Symington, considered Keegan disloyal,
told her so in no uncertain terms, and shut her out of his political
circle.

''He was right: I was disloyal, and I meant to be,'' said Keegan, who
is so sure McCain would be a good president that she recently arranged
a meeting in which both apologized for the falling out.

Now, Keegan frequently travels with McCain's campaign and advises him
on education policy. ''He's never going to win the Miss Congeniality
award or take you to lunch, but he is always looking to do the right
thing.'' she said.

McCain had values drilled into him by a father and grandfather who
were decorated Navy admirals and adhered to a rigid military code of
honor, duty, and country. He's a proud graduate of the Naval Academy
(though, McCain ruefully notes, he was a hell-raiser who barely
squeaked through). And he had a profound lesson in allies and enemies
as a tortured prisoner of war in Vietnam for 51/2 years.

Bruce Merrill, the pollster in McCain's first congressional campaign
in 1982, said he respects and admires the senator's compelling
history. But like others who have been in combat with McCain, Merrill
has been awed by his ambition and alienated by his self-righteous ''in
your face, do it my way or you'll pay a hell of a penalty'' style.

''He is a very forceful, dynamic person, and in 30 years of political
consulting, I have never seen a candidate as driven as John McCain,''
said Merrill, a professor at Arizona State University in Tempe. ''He
is a crusader, and the mythology that has built up here - that he
divides the world into his camp or the enemy camp - is consistent with
a crusade.''

McCain saw enemies challenging all his relationships - friends,
family, fellow veterans - during the bitter, losing primary fight last
month in South Carolina. There was Texas Governor George W. Bush,
failing to renounce a supporter who accused McCain of disloyalty to
veterans. There was Robertson, in a taped telephone message, calling
McCain's friend, the former New Hampshire Senator Warren Rudman, ''a
vicious bigot.'' And there were strident voices all over the airwaves,
spreading ugly stories about his wife and children.

Barreling down a South Carolina highway on the campaign bus, aides
showed McCain a flier filled with personal smears that had been
circulated at an event earlier in the day. McCain snatched the leaflet
before his wife, Cindy, could read it.

''Why upset her unnecessarily?'' McCain snapped. ''Like most wives,
she doesn't want to see those things said about her husband.''

The McCains were deeply and personally offended by Bush's visit to Bob
Jones University, which bans interracial dating, and by rumors about
their ''black child.'' On a relief mission to Bangladesh in 1991,
Cindy McCain claimed an orphan who was so severely disfigured by a
cleft lip and palate that she was unable to eat. She brought
2-month-old Bridget home to Phoenix, where the McCains adopted the
baby and nursed her through a dozen operations.

''What people miss about John is that behind the tough, fighter facade
is a deeply sensitive person, and things really hurt him,'' said
Everett Alvarez Jr., who was a fellow POW in Vietnam.

Uncomfortable war hero

Orson Swindle, McCain's neighbor in the Hanoi Hilton, blinked back
tears when he recalled McCain's reaction to winning the New Hampshire
primary last month. ''Amid all the electricity that night, John got
incredibly solemn,'' Swindle said. ''He came over and looked me
straight in the eye, as if to say, `My God, look how far we have come
and what we have done.''

McCain has never been comfortable as a war hero, honored and greeted
with adulation, Swindle said, when so many other Vietnam combat
veterans came home to no warm welcome at all. ''That wound is still
with a lot of us,'' said Swindle, adding that it probably fuels
McCain's strong sense of injustice.

But McCain's loyalties have at times blurred his political judgment.
At the request of Charles H. Keating Jr., a Phoenix developer and
political benefactor, McCain met in 1987 with federal bank regulators
who were closing in on Keating's shaky Lincoln Savings & Loan
Association. After an investigation of McCain and four other senators,
the Senate Ethics Committee reprimanded McCain, though concluded he
did not act improperly. Still, it appeared McCain had catered to the
kind of special interest he now decries.

Another strong and unlikely relationship was at work in 1992, when
McCain supported a Senate bill allowing fetal-tissue research. His
good friend and Democratic mentor, Representative Morris K. Udall, was
suffering from Parkinson's disease, and Udall's family convinced
McCain fetal tissue showed some promise as a cure. Antiabortion
activists still are attacking McCain for his vote.

McCain and Jim Kolbe ran for the US House from separate Arizona
districts in 1982, but only McCain won. Two years later, when Kolbe
ran again, McCain ignored the political convention that you don't
campaign against an incumbent and went door-to-door for his friend
Kolbe until he was too exhausted to stand up straight. Kolbe won.

Kolbe called McCain first as he prepared in 1996 to disclose his
homosexuality. ''Before I got two words out, John said, `I know what
this is about, and it doesn't matter,''' Kolbe said. ''He wasn't
shocked or offended.''

McCain stands out as having one of the most loyal and long-serving
staffs on Capitol Hill. Aides say he doesn't micromanage, but he does
solicit their views, inquire about their children, pummel them with
smart-aleck insults, and work them to the bone, the same way the
63-year-old McCain works himself.

On the day of the South Carolina primary, McCain telephoned Deb
Gullett, a longtime aide and his Arizona campaign manager, to tell her
he was losing that hard-fought contest.

''He called to ask me how I was doing, to make sure we were fine, and
I just wanted to cry,'' Gullett said. ''He also said, `By the way, get
your dead asses back to work,' and that is a direct quote.''

Mark Salter, McCain's chief of staff, said his boss isn't cozy with
his Senate colleagues because he gores their sacred cows and ''won't
treat them like movie stars, with exaggerated courtesy.'' Salter, who
has worked for McCain for 11 years and coauthored his best-selling
biography, ''Faith of My Fathers,'' attributed reports of the
senator's hot temper to ''legend-padding.''

Family first

Senator John Kerry says he and McCain forged a bond as Vietnam
veterans and he respects him as a loyal friend. ''I enjoy his company,
John's a funny guy,'' the Massachusetts Democrat said. ''Most of the
bad things you hear come from people he's put on the spot.''

Kolbe said McCain got better at controlling his temper in the wake of
three unnerving and very personal events. One was the Keating scandal,
which he saw as an assault on his honor. A second was the discovery
that his wife had been addicted to prescription painkillers from 1989
to 1992 and had stolen drugs from her family's charitable foundation.
A third was a 1993 diagnosis of malignant melanoma, the most lethal
type of skin cancer. McCain had the cancerous mole removed from his
shoulder, and no melanoma has recurred, according to his medical
records.

''Those things were pretty scary for him, and he really refocused his
life and realized what a blessing his family was to him,'' Kolbe said.

McCain blames himself for the breakup of his first marriage. McCain
wanted a fuller, faster life than he found back home with his first
wife. Carol Shepp McCain, who lives in the Washington area, has spoken
kindly of her former husband, says she supports his candidacy, and
attributes their divorce to ''John turning 40 and wanting to be 25
again.''

McCain did what he believed was honorable: He provided generously for
Carol, who had been seriously injured in a car accident during his
captivity, and their three children, including two adopted sons from
her previous marriage. ''If you can ever have an amicable divorce,
this one was,'' said George ''Bud'' Day, a lawyer and POW friend who
drew up the papers in 1980.

A month after the divorce, McCain married Cindy Hensley, 24, an
heiress to a Phoenix beer-distribution fortune, and part of a
politically well-connected family. They have four school-aged children
who McCain dotes on and disciplines in a way his own father never did.

The grown children from his first marriage - Doug, Andy, and Sydney
Ann - are campaigning for McCain, and Andy works for the Hensley
family's company in Phoenix.

McCain sent leatherbound copies of his biography to Doug's children,
autographing them ''The Old Geezer.'' ''The kindergarten teacher
admonished my daughter to stop calling her grandfather that,'' said
Doug, a former Navy flier who is now a commercial airline pilot in
Virginia Beach, Va. ''She said, `but that's what he likes to be
called.'''

For a geezer, McCain is as energized as a Boy Scout leader around his
children, camping, hiking, fishing, swimming, and grilling the food at
their weekend cabin near Sedona, Ariz. On the campaign bus, the
youngsters are either fighting McCain for the last potato chip in the
bag or giving him a hard time.

''Pork-barrel spender!'' Jimmy McCain, 11, yells at Jack, his
13-year-old brother. Jimmy's not sure what the expression means, but
it sounds funny and besides, he's heard his candidate-father bellow it
hundreds of times.

Betsy Cuming, an old friend from Yuma, said the family lives in
Phoenix, not Washington, because McCain thinks the children of elected
officials get coddled, spoiled, and too often uprooted. Sharon Harper,
the McCain's neighbor in Phoenix, said McCain wants to be president
for a very personal reason: To restore honor to the military before
all or some of his children are old enough to serve.

McCain gets emotional at the mention of military families needing food
stamps or veterans lacking health care. The outrage comes from inside:
McCain's severe war injuries prevent him from combing his hair, typing
on a keyboard, or tying his shoes. Friends marvel at McCain's
encyclopedic knowledge of sports. He's an avid fan - Ted Williams is
his hero - but he can't raise his arm above his shoulder to throw a
baseball.

After Vietnam, McCain had Ann Lawrence, a physical therapist, help him
regain flexibility in his leg, which had been frozen in an extended
position by a shattered knee. It was the only way he could hope to
resume his career as a Navy flier, but Lawrence said the treatment,
taken twice a week for six months, was excruciatingly painful.

''He endured it, he wouldn't settle for less,'' said Lawrence, who
rejoiced with McCain when he passed the Navy physical. ''I have never
seen such toughness and resolve.''

McCain's determination was evident to Lawrence in another way. During
the therapy, he insisted his ''physical terrorist'' was the perfect
match for one of his POW buddies, William Lawrence. She resisted,
McCain persisted, and the Lawrences were married months after McCain
forced them to meet at his home over dinner.

McCain says his campaign is ''a noble mission,'' and those close to
him believe he has brought to it the same character traits -
toughness, endurance, even risk-taking - that Ann Lawrence observed
many years ago.

''He has a zest for life that sometimes can drive the rest of us
nuts,'' said Cindy McCain, who reluctantly signed onto her husband's
presidential express last fall, not really expecting it to become this
runaway train. ''When we're exhausted, John says, `There's more to the
day - let's go!'''