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McCain tells a tall tale?

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In December, when most of the leading presidential candidates were releasing holiday-themed ads, John McCain — who’s “reluctant” to talk about his service during Vietnam — was able to combine two messages in a single campaign commercial: “One night, after being mistreated as a POW, a guard loosened the ropes binding me, easing my pain. On Christmas, that same guard approached me, and without saying a word, he drew a cross in the sand. We stood wordlessly looking at the cross, remembering the true light of Christmas.”

It’s a story McCain has not only put in his ads, but has also repeated for several years, including over the weekend, at the forum at Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church.

Yesterday, however, questions arose about its veracity.

According to a very persuasive Daily Kos diary, the anecdote McCain told about a North Vietnamese prison guard making a cross in the dirt as a sign of solidarity — or as he said, “just two Christians worshiping together” — is very similar to a story about Alexander Solzhenitsyn and his times in the Soviet Gulags.

“As Solzhenitsyn stared at the Cross drawn in the dirt his entire perspective changed. He knew he was only one man against the all-powerful Soviet empire. Yet he knew there was something greater than the evil he saw in the prison camp, something greater than the Soviet Union. He knew that hope for all people was represented by that simple Cross. Through the power of the Cross, anything was possible.”

Steven Waldman notes that McCain’s recounting of this story has changed over the years and “has gradually morphed from being about the humanity of the guard to being about the Christian faith of the guard and John McCain.”

Is it possible that Solzhenitsyn and McCain had extremely similar experiences? Of course it is. Coincidences happen.

But there’s reason to be suspicious about whether McCain’s powerful anecdote is apocryphal.

Ezra noted:

When he returned from captivity, McCain wrote a 12,000 word memoir for US News and World Report. The role of religion is emphasized, and the rare glimpses of humanity in his captors is detailed. The story of the guard and the cross is notably absent. In 1974, McCain is invited by Ronald Reagan to a prayer breakfast. He tells a powerful story about the sustenance he found when spirituality crept in the cracks of his captivity. He does not tell the story of the guard.

It first appears, as far as anyone can tell, in 1999, in McCain’s book, Faith of my Fathers. It reappears in this 2000 speech, though it’s slightly ambiguous whether McCain is saying it happened to him or another prisoner (my read, unlike this Kos diarist, is that McCain is referring to himself.) Minor details change over time — in one version the guard draws with a sandal

, in another with a stick — but the basic shape remains pretty constant.

There may be nothing here. But McCain is a huge Solzhenitsyn fan. And the enthusiasm with which he repeats this story in his presidential incarnation contrasts oddly with his apparent reticence to mention the moment — even when talking about religion and captivity — in the thirty years before his presidential run.

Hilzoy recommends caution, arguing that “people should be very wary of leaping to conclusions” on this. Quite right. McCain has made this story an important part of his campaign, and it may very well be true. He may have an explanation for the possible discrepancy.

I’d also add that, in general, I think it’s a huge mistake to go after McCain’s experiences as a prisoner of war to score political points. (Though, it’s worth noting, that questions about the anecdote were first raised by McCain’s critics on the right, not the left.)

I also believe, however, that McCain, through the course of his campaign, has been playing fast and loose with the truth. A lot. If McCain is using a powerful, emotional story that isn’t true, voters deserve to hear about it.

Comments

  • danimal

    says:

    It smells to high heaven, but there are two real problems with using this as an attack. One, there is no way to disprove it. At best, it becomes a he said/she said kind of issue. Two, it draws attention to the one part of McCain’s biography that genuinely is admirable. There are plenty of other events that lead to less flattering portrayals of the man (ditching his first wife, Keating Five, etc).

    Better to clobber him with today’s lies rather than yesterday’s stories.

  • MsMuddled

    says:

    It’s entirely possible that this guard still lives in Vietnam. Wouldn’t it be lovely if we could find him?

  • stevem

    says:

    As I note here, the story doesn’t show up at all in Robert Timberg’s book The Nightingale’s Song, which was about McCain and other well-known Annapolis grads who went through the Vietnam era, and was based in part on “a long series of interviews” with McCain and other principals. And it’s not in there even though there’s an entire chapter devoted to Christmas stories of McCain’s prison years.

  • stevem

    says:

    I meant to point out that Timberg’s book came out in 1995, and was instrumental in putting McCain on the map as a political celeb. That was when there still seemed to be a moderate wing of the GOP (people thought Colin Powell might be a good presidential candidate for the party). Notice when the story first turns up: four years later, 1999, when McCain’s chief rival for the GOP nomination is a guy named Bush who’s intensely focused on courting the religious right.

  • biggerbox

    says:

    I’m not prepared to believe McCain on this until he stops accusing a sitting US Senator of sedition, which is what he is doing when he repeatedly says Obama wants to “lose” the war.

    That said, I’d rather he get nailed for other lies, ones that don’t re-emphasize the “You know, he was a POW” meme. It’s bad enough that his campaign mentions it in response to every question. We don’t need to help.

  • Steve

    says:

    Okay, so I won’t bash him on the veracity of his story; I agree that it cannot be disproven. However, I ask for agreement that it likewise cannot be proven, and I supplement that by proffering this simple question:

    Why did it take a full quarter century for John McCain to suddenly “remember” this benchmark event of his captivity?

  • GeorgiaGirl

    says:

    I think that de-bunking his POW stories will take away that edge he has on the topic, rather than reminding every one that he was a precious POW.

    Two words: Swift Boat

  • Lance

    says:

    MsMuddled said: “It’s entirely possible that this guard still lives in Vietnam. Wouldn’t it be lovely if we could find him?”

    It’s entirely possible that ALL of John’s guards are still alive. But if even one of them has died, that will be the one that drew the cross.

    The problem with apocryphal tales is some are told for effect (it’s a lot more effective if you tell people this incident happened to you) and some are told because the teller believes it happened to him. This, sadly, is a side-effect of senility. There was a news story about Ronald Reagan and some of the stories he told as if they were really history. Turns out they were fiction he saw in the movies and internalized as if they were history. The problem for St. Ronnie and St. John is that they repeat their stories and lose the reality of the source.

    This is a serious issue, but not about JSMcC*nt lying. The Issue is whether JSMcC*nt can recognize the truth anymore. If not, as we can see with his blind support of Georgia after they attacked South Ossetia, the consequences are too grave to allow him to be President.

    Perhaps the debates will so demonstrate this that there will be a revolt as the Republican Convention and they won’t nominate him.

  • jimBOB

    says:

    Did he make this up? Sure, probably. Will you ever be able to convince his followers that he did make it up? Almost certainly not.

    We’ll have to beat him the old fashioned way. (sigh)

  • Charles

    says:

    MsMuddled,

    No, it would not be great to even try and find the guard.

    A) It’s quite likely he is no longer alive, even if he ever existed. Did you notice, lately, that McCain is fairly old?

    B) Even if found, what would he do? Corroborate John McCain’s story? And that would change things exactly how?

    The true believers will believe, in the total absence of any evidence, and even in the face of countervailing evidence.

    Having associated with all too many pathological liars in my time, the way you handle them is to simply ignore what they say if it isn’t directly to the point — and McCain’s experiences, so long ago, as a POW are not germane to the point of his readiness to be president — and, if it is related to the issue at hand, take them with a huge grain of salt.

  • Basilisc

    says:

    It would be horribly unfair to bash him on a story that’s ultimately unverifiable. It would be utterly tasteless and disrespectful, not least to other POWs. It would also attack him at his strongest point, ie his POW experience.

    In other words, it would be precisely the kind of attack that the GOP has mounted regularly against Democrats for, oh, the last fifty years or so. And the mainstream GOP has been organising and sponsoring such attacks for at least twenty years. And winning.

    So what are Democrats waiting for?

  • slappy magoo

    says:

    I totally believe McCain’s cross story. I also believe the anonymous novel “Go Ask Alice” was written by a good girl who got sucked into the hippie-acid trip lifestyle, dropped out of society, got clean, and then sucked into the lifestyle again by those dirty sirty hippies and then she died.

    Prove me wrong, suckas.

    I’d love for this story to be proven OR disproven, but there’s really no way to do it. Worse, if an actual intrepid reporter were to ask McCain why iy took so lnog for him to ever mention the story, he’ll claim it was too personal to share (cue the McCaniacs: Awwwwwww).

    And if then asked about why his story is so similar to Solzhenitsyn’s, he’ll claim he became familar with his work AFTER his experiences as a POW, because he was told how similar their ordeals were…the faith of Christianity is eternal (cue McCaniacs: AWWWWWWW! FOUR MORE YEARS FOUR MORE YEARS FO…uh…We mean…JOHN MC-CAIN! JOHN Mc-CANI!

  • OkieFromMuskogee

    says:

    McCain’s hero worship of Ronald Reagan may have something to do with all of this. Consider one of Reagan’s famous anecdotes:

    “Where do we find such men?” This was the stirring climax of President Ronald Reagan’s tribute to American soldiers on the fortieth anniversary of D Day. In previous speeches Reagan first credited the line to an American admiral in James Mitchner’s novel, “The Bridges at Toko-Ri,” then said an actual admiral had spoken these words. Finally, the president took possession of the words (at one point saying it was a question he’d asked his wife Nancy as they passed the graves at Normandy).

    (From “The Quote Verifier” by Ralph Keys, p. 246.)

    http://books.google.com/books?id=d6JZryGvfxYC&pg=PA246&lpg=PA246&dq=Bridges+at+Toko-Ri+reagan+anecdote&source=web&ots=-GFQ68gx1Y&sig=lNdvDJM_CRf0Q4iaCyN9AlMYzQY&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result

    McCain may be just a chip off the old blockhead!

  • woody, tokin librul

    says:

    I can find no reason to give McSame the benefit of the doubt, given the extent of the lies, misrepresentation, dissemblings, and other ‘blunders’ of which he’s been guilty.

    it’s my firm and ficed opinion that he has lied, and continues to lie, about everything about his POW experience except the duration. There’s outside sourcing for my suspicions.

  • idreamofpennylane

    says:

    I hate to say this…but it doesn’t matter. The story was told not for your average voter, but for an evangelical. Members of my family are evangelical, and they could care less about whether this happened to him or not. The point that McCain is making is that Christians are prosecuted for their faith. This doesn’t have to be true, but they like feeling like the underdog (i know, i know, they aren’t, but still). Sadly, all he has to do is say it and it has its desired effect.

  • tomj

    says:

    For anyone moved by the story, an honest question would be why did you wait so long to tell this story?

    It has been my experience that I seem to talk most about things that made a big impression on me at one time or another in my past. That is what Pastor Rick was asking for, and as told the story has the feel of a life sustaining and affirming experience. Why hold it back?

    But the only reasonable answer is that it was private, which raises the more important question of why use it in a presidential campaign in the first instance…and in written form.

    He needs a good witness to a more bare telling of this one.

  • The Truth about McSame

    says:

    You don’t need to talk to the North Vietnamese guards. Ask other POWs at the Hanoi Hilton. Were there dirt floors in the cells? Not according to the photos I have seen.

  • Charles

    says:

    It strikes me that Vietnam is a large country, and probably contains dozens of men of the appropriate age who, for a modest sum, would happily verify the story.

  • doubtful

    says:

    It’s a rousing religious experience that no doubt inspired John to, upon returning to America, screw a woman who wasn’t his wife.

  • Goldilocks

    says:

    From Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church Forum, August 17

    Warren: You publically say you are a follower of Christ. What does that mean to you and how does faith work out in your life on a daily basis? What does it mean to you?
    McCain: Means I’m saved and forgiven and we’re talking about the world. Our faith encompasses not just the United States of America but the world. Can I tell you another story real quick?
    Warren: Sure.

    You see, on a daily basis he is saved and forgiven. Of course he can make up any story he likes (and usually does). Wonderful to be on such good terms with your Maker.

  • Lance

    says:

    doubtful said: “It’s a rousing religious experience that no doubt inspired John to, upon returning to America, screw a woman who wasn’t his wife.”

    That made me smile 😉

    Thanks for putting John Sidney McC*nt into perspective for us Doubtful.

  • Marcia

    says:

    Another problem here is that McCain told the same story in the 2000 campaign, but that time he told it about “a scared American prisoner of war in Vietnam “. Now the story has evolved to be about him. Check out the story in the NY Times. Note the date. tinyurl.com/5fqcp3

  • Tom Cleaver

    says:

    His entire Vietnam experience proves that he is incompetent and totally unqualified to be President, from killing 137 of his fellow sailors on the Forrestal as the result of breaking the rules and committing a “joke” that went bad, to his incompetence in getting shot down (rule one about flying a bomber: don’t turn around and fly low and slow over the place you just bombed). This is a man the Navy had determined was unqualified for higher rank, whose naval career would have been over, but for the providence of landing in the “POW Promotion System” that promoted a POW at the earliest time they qualified by seniority.

    The man is a perfect Republican: nothing about him is real.

  • joey

    says:

    McCain has constantly and consistently “joked” with the truth. Someone who would find bomb bomb bomb Iran funny would most certaily get a big chuckle out of turning on the Limo TV and watching Obama’s responses to the questiions. “Sir, you’re not supposed to be watching this…silence…Rightttt…all laugh…turn it up”

    When called on his bogus surge talking point he goes back to before the surge was even announced and claims that the Sunni awakening was part of the surge.

    He clearly makes stuff up as he goes along. He also knows no one can question his POW experience so he is free to make up whatever he wants.

    The cross story was too big an item to be forgotten or not mentioned for years even when speaking about the humanity of the guards. What does it take for people to see through this phony. Many already do but maybe others do and just feel they cannot say anything for fear of McCains feigned outrage “Oh please” or “I don’t like to talk about it, it brings up bad memories” is his stiff arm to the face.

    His evil laugh gives him away. “Can’t prove” his hot doging got 134 fellow sailors killed on the USS Forrestal…”Can’t prove” I cheated and heard all the Q & As at Saddleback…”Can’t prove” I stole that cross story and made up the incident. You can’t prove any of it..but it mounts up after awhile and forms a weighted doubt about McCain’s character especially when combined with the opinions of his fellow senate members about what a temper he has or the amount of outright lying he’s done on the campaign trail. I don’t have to prove it…and I don’t have to believe McCain either.

  • Elbows

    says:

    Without any proof, which obviously you’ll never have, the story is a complete non-issue because to even accuse McCain of lying about his POW experience would political suicide. I wish there was some proof that it is fabricated but there isn’t.

  • MsMuddled

    says:

    @ Charles

    Having associated with all too many pathological liars in my time…take them with a huge grain of salt.

    All too true. Thanks for the reminder.

  • Hedgehog2006

    says:

    A similar scene was played in the movie “Quo Vadis” (1951 Mervyn LeRoy), long, long ago, but maybe just within McCain’s memory reach.

    A fish drawn into some facepowder and then quickly erased as a sign for christianity.

    Snipers, crosses in the sand, so many faux memories. Politicians should all go see a doctor.

  • joey

    says:

    btw…I know the Vietnamese guard McCain is referring to …His name is Cross and since he can’t read or write he has a habit of just drawing the symbol of his name in the dirt. Who knew it would get mis interpreted.

    McCain: Wrong on Everything…and Lying About It.

    McCain would rather start a war than lose an election. He’s trying to do it right now.

    McCain has no integrity and would say and do anything to win this election…anything.

  • Splitting Image

    says:

    “Another problem here is that McCain told the same story in the 2000 campaign, but that time he told it about “a scared American prisoner of war in Vietnam “. Now the story has evolved to be about him. Check out the story in the NY Times. Note the date.”

    Actually, I think McCain was referring to himself in that anecdote. At that point he might have genuinely been trying to downplay the “fact” that he was the soldier in the story.

    The real meat of this business is that McCain co-wrote a book about Solzhenitsyn (from which the NY Sun article was excerpted) but has never mentioned the fact that similar things had happened to them both. You’d think he’d have mentioned it at some point: “You know, I never liked those Russians much, but this one guy wrote a story that was so similar to what I went through that I had to read his book, and I thought wow, we’re not so different after all.”

    If McCain’s story was true, it was a little bit of shared history between him and a great literary figure that he might have been able to use, oh let’s say if the writer had died recently and happened to be in the news because of it.

    Wonder why McCain didn’t think of that.

  • msmolly

    says:

    From FDL yesterday:
    August 17th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
    Peterr
    In response to moondancer @ 10 (show text)

    Actually, that “fish in the dirt” story has roots that go back to the first century in Christian history. It’s been told in many places, well before McCain or the Gulag Archipelago, as a way in which two Christians identified themselves to each other in times when the church was living under persecution. The only two people who could possibly verify it are McCain and the guard.

    See wiki: Ichthys

  • Scott Herbst

    says:

    I’d rather leave this one alone. He may be lying about this story. He might not. But where we win is on issues, and this is distracting from them. I can’t see a way to definitively prove whether this happened or not and, failing that, its going to be hard to convince anyone who wants to believe the story that it wasn’t true. Lets not get sucked into this one.

  • Always hopeful

    says:

    I agree that we shouldn’t go after him on this. It would make him seem persecuted which the RR will relate to (although they have never really been persecuted).

    It ticks me off though they the Repugs can go to their convention and wear purple heart bandaids when Kerry was a decorated wounded veteran, and do the swiftboat stuff, essentially attacking Kerry on his strength, yet we can’t do the same to McCain (witness Wesley Clark). It would never go over well if Dems did it. Why is that????

  • Lance

    says:

    Always hopeful said: “I agree that we shouldn’t go after him on this. It would make him seem persecuted which the RR will relate to (although they have never really been persecuted).

    It ticks me off though they the Repugs can go to their convention and wear purple heart bandaids when Kerry was a decorated wounded veteran, and do the swiftboat stuff, essentially attacking Kerry on his strength, yet we can’t do the same to McCain (witness Wesley Clark). It would never go over well if Dems did it. Why is that????”

    One, we have too many gutless dweebs on our side.

    Two, there is no Liberal Media. It all belongs to Corporations that own and are owned by the Republican’ts.

    That’s why no Media should be owned by any Corporation. They are souless and are run only for profit, not for the good of the Society.

  • pfgr

    says:

    This is a really interesting thread.

    I read McCain’s book, Faith of Our Fathers, in 2000. I was mightily impressed. It was like reading a novel (maybe for reasons I did not expect at the time), and I couldn’t put it down.

    When I watched the Rick Warren thing with my wife Saturday, and he started to the “cross” story, I said “I read about this in his book.” But, I was surprised as he told it that the story was different than the one he told in his book.

    For one thing, the way he described being tied up was different. In the book, they were tied with arms behind the back, lifted up so their weight would pull on their shoulders. In front of Warren, he had the prisoners sitting on the ground with head bowed between the knees, ropes tied behind them. (I’ve seen that in pictures from Git’mo, maybe that’s where McCain got the image.)

    Second, he collapsed together two stories, in the book it was different guards who loosened the ropes and made the cross in the dirt.

    Third, as I remembered it, the guard made the cross in the dirt with a stick, not his sandal. And the part about two Christians praying together was entirely new, there was no mention of them being in prayer in the book.

    Now, it’s been 8 years since I read the book but it was a pretty memorable passage.

    Anyway, I said to my wife, “he’s changed the story. I can’t believe it.” Honestly, before that moment it never occurred to me that he might have made it up. But in telling it, he changed details, stuff that was not necessary to shorten it, and there seemed no reason to make those kind of changes. Unless, of course, the story was phony and he was making the details up.

  • Scott F

    says:

    This “fish tale” ties into the larger theme about whether McCain had access to the questions in advance at Saddleback. Check out the Youtube video of MaCain’s answer to the education question. He answers the three part question before it has been asked. Hey, those of you who are sheepish to use this stuff against McCain are well-meaning I am sure but dangerously wrong. You probably still believe that sound policies and honest answers win elections. If McCain is making up personal stories, that’s news. It raises questions about McCain’s character, of which he’s made a big deal. If you use this stuff, and if it is stirred carefully and thoroughly, it could, in a weeks time, result in CNN starting out a discussion in the Situation room about whether McCain has a problem with playing fast and loose with the truth . . . Does he have a character problem . . . which translates into a certain number of voters thinking less favorably of him . . . Sound familiar. Makes McCain chase his tale for a while rather than attacking Obama. This stuff works, and the Republican’s know it. That’s why they are fighting this one hard.

  • libra

    says:

    Cross in the Sand… Dodging bullets at Tuzla Airport… Vastly different, no? That’s why they merit different treatment.

  • Millie

    says:

    Character is a reputation earned, good or bad. I would not trust him or his wife who was actively involved in the breakup of his first marriage, to be honest in any aspect; especially one that validates leading our country. If you can’t be trusted in your own house, than how can you run another?

    He is reluctant in every aspect:
    He is not going to pick his VP until the lead candidate picks his, coincidentally on his b’day, which is heard by his favors as being younger, no kidding. He hasn’t demostrated true leadership in this race, he counterpoints his opponent’s moves and is not impressive in doing so. He can’t lead himself to the water fountain, let alone in speeches. Someone else wrote it, he uses it typical McCain fashion.

  • pattonbt

    says:

    Of course this story is not true. And of course the media should go after McCain on this. I mean if CNN can run a segment on whether Obama is the freaking anti-christ or whether he is a ‘secret muslim’ (as if being muslim makes you evil somehow) then why cant we review potential McCain consipracy theories (although this consipracy is of course true – its too good a story to not have been used for 25 years by an ambitious politican).

    Plus as someone upthread said, this is a typical republican tactic – go after the strength and negate it. Lets not kid ourselves whats at stake here. All McCain wants is to be POTUS, he doesnt want to lead. He will let the neo-cons and the destructive part of the republican party hold his ear. The decent wing of the republican party has not existed for more than 25 years. Dont be fooled that McCain can break from their current form.

  • Paul

    says:

    The cross in the dirt is a central turning point in the Gulag Archipelago. And that book is an important one to John McCain.

    He included it in his writing about 12 “tough calls.” Solzenitzen’s decision to write the book, McCain says, is one of historical importance.

    So now we’re to believe that its just a coincidence this central incident from Russian literature also happened to McCain personally? Doubt it.