Yes, he is far from my ideal as well, which is Ronald Reagan. Unfortunately, it is pretty hard to live up to those standards. I used to not be able to stand John McCain, but as I watched him more and more, he is starting to grow on me a little. Now I do not agree with many of his positions, such as the false premise of man-made global warming, but there is one thing you can be assured of with John McCain, he will stand by what he believes come hell or high water. When it comes to making decisions, he doesn't stick his finger in the wind to see which way public opinion is blowing.
I attended a McCain/Palin rally in Sterling, Va and was fortunate enough to be very close. I have heard politicians talk about reform before, but looking at him there, this was the first time I believed one of them. He had this sense about him, an aura that said, "I don't take bull." I think he has demonstrated this with his pick for VP. Everyone thought he was going to pick someone like Lieberman or Ridge. The news media commentators were doing their best to bait him into picking a pro choice candidate, saying things like, "If McCain is truly a Maverick, he will pick a pro choice candidate" and "If McCain picks someone on the far right, it'll just be proof that he is just afraid of Limbaugh." And yet, McCain did the truly maverick thing and picked the candidate conventional wisdom didn't even consider, and in doing so, has electrified the conservative base of the Republican Party.
After learning more about what he went through at Hanoi Hilton, I understand why he was so adamantly apposed to torture. Now, I don't agree with him on this stance. The United States, if we do torture, does not do it for the same reasons that the Vietnamese did. I think , for example, if a nuclear bomb is about to go off, we need to do everything we can to stop it. Often, the threat of torture is more effective than torture itself. Under torture, anyone will say anything, which defeats the point and does not make for good intel. If we take away the threat, then we take away that valuable tool. But I digress. The point is, McCain is not against torture for political reasons. He isn't playing politics with the lives of our people; he firmly believes torture is wrong. He isn't talking about global warming to score political points or to make money off of carbon credit scams (Al Gore). He sincerely believes it is a problem. I can admire and respect a man who stands by what he believes in, even at the expense of bucking one's own party. I cannot admire or respect a man who will do anything to stay in the good graces of the kook fringe left of his own party, the country (or troops) be damned. That is what I see as the fundamental difference between these two candidates.
