Beer in the Headlights

Karl Rove penned a terrific piece about the John McCain that most folks don't know. It's a John McCain with whom all voters should become familiar.

Politics aside, John McCain is a good man who has done some intimately heroic things for people in need. I'm not referring to entitlements or hand outs. John McCain has committed selfless acts of kindness and generosity.

Take for example his care for Medal of Honor recipient COL Bud Day while both were POWs:

Mr. Day relayed to me one of the stories Americans should hear. It involves what happened to him after escaping from a North Vietnamese prison during the war. When he was recaptured, a Vietnamese captor broke his arm and said, "I told you I would make you a cripple."

The break was designed to shatter Mr. Day's will. He had survived in prison on the hope that one day he would return to the United States and be able to fly again. To kill that hope, the Vietnamese left part of a bone sticking out of his arm, and put him in a misshapen cast. This was done so that the arm would heal at "a goofy angle," as Mr. Day explained. Had it done so, he never would have flown again.

But it didn't heal that way because of John McCain. Risking severe punishment, Messrs. McCain and Day collected pieces of bamboo in the prison courtyard to use as a splint. Mr. McCain put Mr. Day on the floor of their cell and, using his foot, jerked the broken bone into place. Then, using strips from the bandage on his own wounded leg and the bamboo, he put Mr. Day's splint in place.

Years later, Air Force surgeons examined Mr. Day and complimented the treatment he'd gotten from his captors. Mr. Day corrected them. It was Dr. McCain who deserved the credit. Mr. Day went on to fly again.

And then there's the little known story about the McCains' adopted daughter:

The stories told to me by the Days involve more than wartime valor.

For example, in 1991 Cindy McCain was visiting Mother Teresa's orphanage in Bangladesh when a dying infant was thrust into her hands. The orphanage could not provide the medical care needed to save her life, so Mrs. McCain brought the child home to America with her. She was met at the airport by her husband, who asked what all this was about.

Mrs. McCain replied that the child desperately needed surgery and years of rehabilitation. "I hope she can stay with us," she told her husband. Mr. McCain agreed. Today that child is their teenage daughter Bridget.

I was aware of this story. What I did not know, and what I learned from Doris, is that there was a second infant Mrs. McCain brought back. She ended up being adopted by a young McCain aide and his wife.

"We were called at midnight by Cindy," Wes Gullett remembers, and "five days later we met our new daughter Nicki at the L.A. airport wearing the only clothing Cindy could find on the trip back, a 7-Up T-shirt she bought in the Bangkok airport." Today, Nicki is a high school sophomore. Mr. Gullett told me, "I never saw a hospital bill" for her care.

Compare the character of John McCain over the years with that of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. The differences are stark and revealing. Barack Obama couldn't muster the necessary chutzpa to divorce himself from his vitriolic, delusional bigot of a pastor. Obama's ties to Tony Rezko have yet to be fully exposed to daylight. Hillary Clinton's long litany of self-serving and questionable judgment could one day be the stuff of legends.

The mantra of Bob Dole's 1996 campaign still rings true; character matters. There is one candidate remaining that has shown both under extreme pressure and utter privacy to have nearly unassailable morals, and that would be John McCain.

COL Ed