At the
Stump, Mike argued that while Wes Clark's anti-McCain comments hurt
Obama now, in the long run they may cause people to question the McCain
campaign's use of his military service. In the comments, Rhubarbs suggests that McCain should take heed of the failure of past war hero presidential
candidates:
Question: Does McCain
really believe that "riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a
qualification to be president"? If so, there are other American aviators who
have been shot down more than once; surely McCain should cede the nomination to
one of them.
The correct response from
McCain would be, "Wes Clark is right -- getting shot down is not a qualification
to be president. But a lifetime spent in service to country, in uniform and in
Congress, is." Or somesuch. Because as much as the rightwing likes to fetishize
the military, the plain fact is that since Baby Boomers came of voting age,
every time but once that a military hero has run for president against someone
with less distinguished service or no service, the former hero has lost. The
only exception was George HW Bush in 1988. McCain may think there's hay to be
made playing up the "war service equals presidential material" angle, but the
more he plays that up, the more he looks like he's running on biography instead
of issues, and the more he looks like John Kerry or Bob Dole.
--The Editors