McCain Puts New Strategist Atop Campaign
John McCain is never happier than when he is portraying himself as the underdog and, as he appoints a new campaign manager, he is once again stressing this point:
In a telephone interview, Schmidt said that McCain faces a difficult challenge, given the overall mood of the country, but that he is encouraged by the race remaining relatively tight.
"There are 125 days left until the American people will decide the next president," he said. "Senator McCain is the underdog in the race. We suspect he is behind nationally five to eight points but well within striking distance. I will help run an organization that exists for the purpose of delivering John McCain's message to the American people."
These are themes which McCain has played with his entire political life: McCain - the little man succeeding against all the odds. And it's a theme which the US press have been happy to play along with, despite the fact that there aren't many "underdogs" married to an heiress with a $100 million fortune, but the press don't bother themselves with such triflings.
Instead they concentrate on telling us how modest McCain is and how reticent he is to discuss the fact that he was tortured by the Vietnamese. Considering his shyness on the subject, it really is a wonder that we know as much about it as we all do; perhaps it somehow escapes, on it's own, into the ether.
The truth is, of course, that McCain mentions the fact that he was a POW every single day and in almost every speech he makes.
There is a terrible irony here though. As much as McCain pushes his Vietnam record, a record which he strangely refuses to have released, the truth is that - under the current US administration's definitions of torture - McCain probably wasn't tortured at all.
Now a woolly minded Liberal like myself would, of course, conclude that withholding medical attention and slapping someone around was torture, but I have spent the last four years being told by Republicans that I am wrong and that this is simply an enhanced interrogation technique.
So it really is the height of irony to have a Republican - and a man who voted to allow the CIA to waterboard prisoners - now campaign stressing the fact that he was once "tortured" whilst defending the US.
Apparently, it's torture when the Vietnamese do it but not when the Bush administration do far worse.
McCain doesn't need a new campaign manager, he needs a new campaign. At the moment all he's got is that he once a prisoner of war. And that merits a certain amount of sympathy, until one realises that he's a POW who has voted to allow the CIA to do far worse things to other POW's than were ever done to him.
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