McCain: The Last Man Standing

John McCain, as when he long was a prisoner of war in Vietnam, was given up for dead in the Republican presidential race earlier in the fall. But he lives! He lives!

His surprise win — it was not a surprise to me, for he had carried the state against George W. Bush in 2000 – in this week’s New Hampshire primary put him back at the head of the GOP pack for the nomination.

My better half tells me that she will not vote for him should he receive his party’s nomination. She faults him for being too old. That’s some complaint. He cannot help it if he is old. He has more energy than men half his age.

I prefer to view him as one of our country’s elders, and we have had precious few elders of late in national politics. We have too many pretty boys and girls running around with laptops trying to find the restroom perhaps in hopes that poor Larry
Craig will be in there and they will get to topple another powerful figure.

Anyway, I like John McCain. He is the one Republican presidential candidate for whom I would vote. And yes, part of the reason, a big part of the reason, in fact, is that he has lived a harder life than most Americans live and has survived it. He believes in the same old-fashioned values that I believe in — traits such as honor and valor. He not only talks the talk, but walks the walk.

As another columnist, David Brooks, has written about John McCain, “Telling the truth is a skill. Those who don’t do it habitually lose the ability, but McCain is well-practiced and has the capacity to face unpleasant truths. While other conservatives failed to see how corporations were insinuating themselves into their movement, McCain went after Boeing contracts. While others failed to see the rising tide of corruption around them, McCain led the charge against Jack Abramoff. While others ignored the spending binge, McCain was among the fiscal hawks.”

The ancient Greeks taught all who followed them a simple truth: Character is fate.

John McCain is a man of character and he well could be a man of destiny in 2008, too.

Columnist Richard Reeves agrees with my wife more than with David Brooks. He does not much like the Arizona senator, either. He apparently was rude a while back to Mr. Reeves’ spouse. Anyway, Richard Reeves weighs in on the senator, calling him “old John McCain” in a column scheduled to be published in next week’s Crewe-Burkeville Journal under the headline “John McCain: The Last Man Standing.”

I love Richard Reeves’ work, but I disagree with him on Senator McCain. Yet Mr. Reeves, unlike so many others of his ilk, is a fair-minded man. He has a superb line in his column about the senator: “….One of the most attractive things about McCain, not my favorite guy, is that he has lived a far tougher life than the rest of us, but he doesn't expect us to feel sorry for him…”

Lord, how I like that. Those of us who have lived tough lives, lives not always appreciated, too, often don’t want others to feel sorry for us. John McCain, the son of a Navy admiral and the grandson of a Navy admiral, clearly does not want pity. He is a man of honor, a man of virtue. And I look forward to casting my vote for him in November in what will be a first for me. I never have voted for a Republican for president of the United States. But there is a first time for everything.

John McCain is unique in the presidential race because of this simple fact: He is the only great person in either party seeking the highest office in the land and in the free world this year. — Rick Gunter