McCain Defense

Now, after all of that in the previous post, I want to point out one story that the popular buzz has all wrong: The idea that McCain said he "didn't disagree" with reinstating the draft.

On a complete technicality, he did say that, but he was responding to a very long question by an audience member. Now, it's fairly easy to, on reading the transcript, say "Uh, but, the last thing she said just before he said 'I don't disagree' was about reinstating the draft!", but think about how Q&A sessions work. Maybe you've never been a part of one. I have.

What happens, at least in my mind, is that I listen to the question until I have a sense of what the person is asking, and then I start formulating my answer. I try to keep half an ear on the person who is talking, in case they take the question in a different direction or throw some other curve ball, but as long as they don't, I'm not really listening to the specifics at the tail end.

And so, faced with this transcript:

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Senator McCain I truly hope you get the opportunity to chase Bin Laden right to the gates of hell and push him in as you stated on your forum. I do have a question though. Disabled veterans, especially in this state, have horrible conditions, their medical is substandard. They drive four hours one way to Albuquerque for a simple doctors appointment which is often canceled. Our VA hospital is dirty it is understaffed, it is running on maximum overload. The prescription medicines are ten years behind standard medical care we have seven hundred claims stacked up at the VA office in Albuquerque some of them are ten and seven years old waiting to be processed in the mean time these people are homeless. My son is an officer in the Air Force, and I am a vet and I was raised in a military family. I think it is a sad state of affairs when we have illegal aliens having a Medicaid card that can access specialist top physicians, the best of medical and our vets can’t even get to a doctor. These are the people that we tied yellow ribbons for and Bush patted on the back. If we don’t reenact the draft I don’t think we will have anyone to chase Bin Laden to the gates of hell.

MCCAIN: Ma’am let me say that I don’t disagree with anything you said and thank you and I am grateful for your support of all of our veterans.

... faced with that, I'd bet McCain didn't even hear the last sentence. She was winding down her question, the vast majority of which had been about the horrible conditions the "support our troops" administration allows our wounded vets to be subjected to, and in truth, until that last sentence, there's not terribly much there to disagree with.

So in my view, McCain wasn't "not disagreeing" with the draft portion, he was "not disagreeing" that the things our vets face one returning home are shameful and terrible.

We can argue at another time whether McCain has been the champion for veterans that he likes to pretend he is, I've seen some pretty good arguments that Obama has been far better on Veterans affairs than McCain has been, but in this particular exchange, at least, I think it's disingenuous of the left wing blogosphere(*) to only quote the last sentence and then McCain's response.

Liam.

(*) I still hate that term.