Earlier this week, a friend of mine in Pittsburgh, reader K.M., emailed me about John McCain telling a local television station, “When I was first interrogated and really had to give some information because of the pressures, physical pressures on me, I named the starting lineup, defensive line of the Pittsburgh Steelers as my squadron mates.”
That clearly wasn’t the case — McCain has told the same story before, but much differently — but I was reluctant to write about it. I thought that how McCain describes his P.O.W. experiences is a little too sensitive a subject.
But in light of additional context, and upon further reflection, McCain probably deserves more heat on this. In fact, my first instinct was probably backwards — McCain is pandering on the one issue that, one would hope, be beyond the realm of campaign exploitation, and that deserves more scrutiny, not less.
Asked what first comes to his mind when he thinks of Pittsburgh, McCain chuckled, “the Steelers. I was a mediocre high school athlete but I loved and adored the sports but the Steelers really made a huge impression on me particularly in my early years.”
And then McCain told a rather moving story about his time as a P.O.W. “When I was first interrogated and really had to give some information because of the pressures, physical pressures on me, I named the starting lineup, defensive line of the Pittsburgh Steelers as my squadron mates.”
“Did you really?” asked the reporter.
“Yes,” McCain said.
“In your POW camp?” asked the reporter.
“Yes,” McCain said.
It’s possible that McCain’s memory is once again faulty, but it’s unlikely — he’s told a similar story countless times. He’s written about it in his book; it was featured prominently in a movie about his military service; and McCain even repeated the anecdote many times during the debate over U.S. torture policy, as evidence of torture eliciting false confessions.
Which leads us to the other explanation.
McCain was asked to name the first thing that comes to mind when he thinks of Pittsburgh. It was a lighthearted, fluff question. But McCain hadn’t talked up his Vietnam service in the interview enough, so he used the question as an excuse to remind people of the abuse he endured decades ago.
But he clumsily had to change his own story in order to match the audience. McCain has always said he told his interrogators the names of the lineman of the Green Bay Packers. But McCain wasn’t campaigning in Wisconsin; he was campaigning in Pittsburgh — so the story “evolved” to include the Steelers. (From a football perspective, the story doesn’t even make sense. The great Steelers defensive line — with names McCain would know — didn’t appear until after McCain returned home. The Steelers were pretty bad when McCain was captured.)
What’s more, just a week before his comments in Pittsburgh, McCain was asked about how his Vietnam experience prepared him for the presidency. McCain got “visibly angry,” and later said, “I kind of reacted the way I did because I have a reluctance to talk about my experiences,” adding, “I am always reluctant to talk about these things.”
Just the opposite is true. McCain is now looking for excuses to bring it up, and use it to pander to voters in a swing state. What happened to this guy? Is he this desperate to be president? He’ll say anything to win?
Digby added:
Recall that Hillary Clinton was excoriated mercilessly for many years for allegedly lying when she said she’d been both a Cubs fan and a Yankees fan. This was shown to be accurate and provable, but it didn’t matter. All politicians are held to an entirely different standard than those who were held in Vietnamese prison camps. They are allowed to just make stuff up whenever they choose. It’s a sign of their good character and patriotism.
And imagine if Obama were caught in a pander this crude? (Or a memory gap this huge.) The man can’t even ask for a glass of orange juice in Pennsylvania without it being considered a sign of hi “inauthenticity.” If he made a mistake like this Morning Joe and Tweety would be drooling and speaking in tongues about what a disgusting flip-flopping kiss ass he was.
MSNBC raised a similar point: “Imagine if Al Gore or John Kerry had changed the facts of a story they told forever in order to appeal to whatever swing state they were speaking in?”
I think any intellectually honest person would have to agree we’d never hear the end of it. It would be a character-defining incident from which a Democrat would never recover.
Post Script: If you haven’t seen it, Rachel Maddow did a great segment on this story last night on “Countdown.” It was, of course, one of the only news shows to mention the incident.