John McCain is not Your Friend

John McCain is not your friend.

After watching, reading, listening, and pondering McCain for the past few weeks I have concluded he is many things and he is not many things. John is a war-hero turned prisoner-of-war turned ambitous politician with his eye on power. Power is a common personality trait amongst many politicians almost by definition but for McCain, it is personal. To draw contrast, let's look at George W Bush.

Primarily a family man, Bush ran several businesses with modest success before becoming politically ambitous in the early 90's after watching his father lose to Bill Clinton. He won the governorship in Texas twice beforing being elected twice as President. However, his political ambitions did not define him. Although he enjoyed holding his posts, he did not covet them. Had he lost in Texas or on the national stage, he would have returned home and to the business of raising his family.

Others such as John Kerry, Al Gore, Bill Clinton, and John McCain are driven by their own narcissictic world view which puts them at the center of histories defining moments. Is there any doubt that Bill Clinton wishes 9/11 had happened in the 90's? Bush's presidency will still be in the history books in 100 years, Clinton's will be forgotten. For his egocentric brethren (Gore, Kerry, and McCain) this holds true as well. John Kerry started his presidential bid when he returned home from Vietnam. Although Al Gore's presidential ambitions started later, he could not let the dream go and went to court to preserve it.

Finally, we come to McCain who came home from Vietnam a war hero and immediately went to work as a politician. All these years later, he's still in Washington supposedly carrying out the peoples will. Well how is a person, who went from Vietnam to spending their entire adult life in Washington political circles, possibly equipped with the worldview necessary to understand the average American? He's not.

From McCain's perspective, it's his turn. It's that personal. He feels like his Vietnam experience gives him the right to be blindly ambitious, and arrogantly personal. He personally disliked Donald Rumsfeld (presumably because Bush didn't offer him the SecDef job) and so became his most outspoken critic, at least in the GOP. Now he personally dislikes Romney for reasons which I assure you are insane and trivial and not worthy of your time.

The beauty of the Republican party and more importantly the conservative movement is that our leaders are not from Washington, rather they are insurgent outsiders who arrive and leave in a timely manner. In the modern era, Reagan and Bush fit this mold. From American history, George Washington is the best example of this perfect President; essentially a man who reluctantly accepts the mantle and eagerly relinquishes it.

John McCain is not this man.