Message of Eugene Robinsons Op ed Piece: McCain a Crippled, Deranged Vet, With Poor Piloting Skills
By Rizzuto

Tue Apr 22, 2008 - Eugene Robinson thinks he's getting away with something in today's Washington Post. I'm not normally one for conspiracies and reading too far into written statements but this one just jumped off the page at me. Take a look for yourself. From The Washington Post:
How on earth is the Republican Party going to sell John McCain? Once the Democrats stop doing the job, I mean.

Image consultants could try to portray McCain as a latter-day Dwight Eisenhower. I've actually heard Republicans try to make the comparison, but it won't work without rounding up and destroying all the history books. McCain served his country courageously, getting shot down over Vietnam and spending years as a prisoner of war. All that Ike did was, um, save the world. I'm seeing a slight imbalance here.

Republicans certainly can't sell McCain to the American public as a sure-handed pilot to steer the economy through dangerous straits. Maybe voters will be generous enough to let him withdraw his confession that he doesn't really understand economics that well. But I don't see how most Americans will believe that McCain's basic economic philosophy -- keep cutting taxes for the well-to-do and restrain discretionary government spending -- will make their lives any better.

McCain can hardly be painted as a foreign policy sage. His biggest handicap in this regard, of course, is the war in Iraq -- an albatross that McCain actually volunteered to wear.
What caught my attention was the fact that the statement about McCain being shot down in Vietnam and McCain not being a "sure-handed pilot" were so close together. In addition, his "handicap" was a result in his 5 year stay in a Hanoi prison camp. It hardly seems like an accident.

Robinson continues :
The presumptive Republican nominee envisions a U.S. military presence in Iraq for decades to come -- which is not what most Americans want. Like George W. Bush, he intends for U.S. troops to fight in Iraq until "we win," without specifying who the enemy might be or what victory might look like. Does his refusal to "lose" -- he doesn't define that, either -- stem from the trauma of his Vietnam experience? I think it might, but in the end all that really matters is his plan to wade deeper into an obvious quagmire.
So McCain's dedication to military victory in Iraq is now some sort of political manifestation of PTSD? Unbelievable, how do they get away with this kind of negative speculation about the mental condition of a respected veteran? Is Robinson all of a sudden a psychiatrist?

Again, I don't enter into this kind of speculation lightly, but this jumped off the page at me as a pretty blatant attempt to denigrate McCain's service and mental health.




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