James Carroll: Candidates' Stories Tell Us What We've Become (Boston Globe, via CommonDreams)

[marmar]

Published on Monday, March 5, 2007 by the Boston Globe
Candidates' Stories Tell Us What We've Become
by James Carroll

IN ANNOUNCING his candidacy for president on David Letterman's show last week, John McCain used the word "wasted" in reference to American lives lost in Iraq. The next day, apologizing profusely, he said he should have used the word "sacrifice." McCain was doing more than avoiding the pit into which John F. Kerry fell with the "botched joke" that seemed to disrespect the troops. Indeed, McCain was protecting the core meaning of the narrative around which he has built his life, the story that will define his presidential campaign. Each candidate has such a story, and together they tell us a lot about what America has become.

John McCain's political career is built on the 5 1/2 years he spent in a North Vietnamese prison. It is not just that his exemplary fortitude was so powerfully displayed by that experience. Far more significantly, McCain returned from Vietnam as a rare figure of sacrificial redemption, a man who had not only survived an ordeal that destroyed so many of his generation, but who had been ennobled by it. His "straight talk" began with his defiance of brutal North Vietnamese prison guards. He was decidedly seen as a victim, not a perpetrator (his role as a bomber of civilian infrastructure was forgotten). In McCain, America gratefully saw a good warrior whose suffering mitigated the guilt that otherwise came from America's own shameful brutality.

McCain showed that the war could be a source of virtue, salving its absurdity. (Kerry showed the opposite, dooming him.) If McCain has consistently been the most militaristic politician of his time, enthusiastic in his support of the Bush war in Iraq, critical only of Bush's failure to send even more US troops into the maw, it is because his image is carefully constructed to embody the magnificence of sacrifice offered in war's name. For McCain to use the word "waste" is to contradict the very meaning of his own life -- and the pro-war saga that he hopes will galvanize a demoralized nation, carrying him to the White House.

Few candidates have such a compelling story, but each one is the central figure in an at least implicit narrative, touching on a crucial national conflict. The political contest is, above all, a competition of stories : John Edwards and poverty, Mitt Romney and a minority religion, Rudolph Giuliani and 9/11 -- you can hear the blocks being winched into place. ....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0305-20.htm