A Candidate’s Courage, Candor and, Yes, Character

Call me a naive sentimentalist, but when a politician looks me squarely in the eye and says, “I failed,” it tweaks my interest. My ears perk. The pen scribbles.

Tell me more. I want to believe. I long ago became numbed by and largely immune to standard political blather--the contrived explanations, the cowardly evasions. Give me straight talk.

Politicians don’t ordinarily admit failure. So we start with that anomaly. But it only begins to tell this story--the story--of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), longshot presidential candidate who is putting all his chips on just three states: New Hampshire, South Carolina and California.

The inside word on McCain is he has a great personal story, but . . . He’s too much of a maverick for the Republican establishment (crusades for campaign finance reform), comes from a small state and is greatly outgunned by the GOP front-runner, Texas Gov. George Bush.

That’s all true, but . . . It should be noted this is one candidate of proven character--character that runs deeper than just a 30-second TV commercial. If there’s anybody still out there, that is, who actually cares about a president’s personal character.

McCain, 62, hopes California’s 3 million fellow veterans still do, at least. They comprise 12% of the state’s voting age population and are considered vital to his candidacy, because he thinks the GOP presidential nomination may well be decided in California’s March 7 primary.

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McCain’s story is not told in his stump speech. It’s not about political failure. It’s about his perception of personal failure as a Vietnam POW. It gets short shrift in most journalistic accounts due to space limitations.

However, a McCain autobiography--”Faith of Our Fathers”--is about to be released detailing his POW ordeal. And it was chronicled in a beautifully written book--”The Nightingale’s Song”--by Robert Timberg, a Vietnam vet and Baltimore Sun reporter.

In sum, the story is this:

McCain is the son and grandson of four-star Navy admirals. He was a Navy pilot shot down over Hanoi in 1967. In his ejection, he broke a knee and both arms and nearly drowned in a lake. Rescued by the enemy, he was bayoneted and his shoulder was smashed by a rifle butt. In prison, he was tortured but refused to divulge military secrets.

His captors soon realized their prize--the son of Adm. John McCain, newly appointed commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific. They saw a potential propaganda coup, a chance to embarrass the American command. “Do you want to go home?” the emaciated, crippled prisoner was asked.

McCain thought about it and answered “No.” It would violate the POW Code of Conduct, which required that prisoners accept release in order of capture. Other POWs had been held longer. There was an exception for the gravely sick and injured, but he ignored that. “Now, McCain, it will be very bad for you,” he was told.

Pick up Timberg’s book: “Amid laughter and muttered oaths, he was slammed from one guard to another, bounced from wall to wall, knocked down, kicked, dragged to his feet, knocked back down. . . . When the beating was over, he lay on the floor, bloody, arms and legs throbbing, ribs cracked, several teeth broken off at the gum line.

“ ‘Are you ready to confess your crimes?’ ‘No.’ ”

“The ropes came next. McCain had never been in torture ropes. . . . “

Day after day. Once, staggered by a beating, he rebroke an arm while falling against a bucket of his own waste.

McCain finally signed a war crimes confession.

“I failed,” he told me.

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Failed? McCain told me that last winter and it gnawed on my mind. Tuesday, as he campaigned here, I had to ask why he considered that a failure.

“I think to this day I should have been able to hold out longer,” he replied, speaking barely above a whisper about “honor” and “duty.” “I wasn’t as strong as I should have been.”

What had he learned from his 5 1/2 years as a POW that makes him a better elected official? “It made me much more tolerant and understanding when other people display frailties,” he said. “I was a fairly cocky young Navy pilot. . . . That experience gave me perhaps a better sense of my own weaknesses.”

Weaknesses? No, he has never done hard drugs, McCain answered. Nor even smoked dope. “I don’t view it as any particular display of virtue. I was just never exposed to it.”

He did screw up his first marriage after returning home, McCain admits. And he works every day on controlling a temper.

McCain is a right-of-center Republican whose views can be challenged. But his character will match any candidate’s. And hopefully, that still does matter to many Americans.