Joe Porter: Call and Response

A relative of mine forwarded me a letter from a McCain supporter that has been making its way around the Internet for some time. I'll copy it below.. After Mr. Porter's letter, I'll copy my response to my relative.

My name is Joe Porter. I live in Champaign, Illinois. I'm 46 years old, a born-again Christian, a husband, a father, a small business owner, a veteran, and a homeowner. I don't consider myself to be either conservative or liberal, and I vote for the person, not Republican or Democrat. I don't believe there are "two Americas " but that every person in this country can be whomever and whatever they want to be if they'll just work to get there and nowhere else on earth can they find such opportunities. I believe our government should help those who are legitimately downtrodden, and should always put the interests of America first.

The purpose of this message is that I'm concerned about the future of this great nation. I'm worried that the silent majority of honest, hard-working, tax-paying people in this country have been passive for too long. Most folks I know choose not to involve themselves in politics. They go about their daily lives, paying their bills, raising their kids, and doing what they can to maintain the good life. They vote and consider doing so to be a sacred trust. They shake their heads at the political pundits and so-called "news", thinking that what they hear is always spun by whoever is reporting it. They can't understand how elected officials can regularly violate the public trust with pork barrel spending. They don't want government handouts. They want the government to protect them, not raise their taxes for more government programs.

We are in the unique position in this country of electing our leaders. It's a privilege to do so. I've never found a candidate in any election with whom I agreed on everything. I'll wager that most of us don't even agree with our families or spouses 100% of the time. So when I step into that voting booth, I always try to look at the big picture and cast my vote for the man or woman who is best qualified for the job. I've hired a lot of people in my lifetime, and essentially that's what an election is – a hiring process. Who has the credentials? Whom do I want working for me? Whom can I trust to do the job right?

I'm concerned that a growing number of voters in this country simply don't get it. They are caught up in a fervor they can't explain, and calling it "change".
"Change what?", I ask.
"Well, we're going to change America", they say.
"In what way?", I query.
"We want someone new and fresh in the White House", they exclaim.
"So, someone who's not a politician?", I say.
“Uh, well, no, we just want a lot of stuff changed, so we're voting for Obama", they state.
"So the current system, the system of freedom and democracy that has enabled a man to grow up in this great country, get a fine education, raise incredible amounts of money and dominate the news, and win his party's nomination for the White House that system's all wrong?"
"No, no, that part of the system's okay we just need a lot of change."
And so it goes. "Change we can believe in."

Quite frankly, I don't believe that vague proclamations of change hold any promise for me. In recent months, I've been asking virtually everyone I encounter how they're voting. I live in Illinois, so most folks tell me they're voting for Barack Obama. But no one can really tell me why only that he's going to change a lot of stuff "Change, change, change." I have yet to find one single person who can tell me distinctly and convincingly why this man is qualified to be President and Commander-in-Chief of the most powerful nation on earth other than the fact that he claims he's going to implement a lot of change.

We've all seen the emails about Obama's genealogy, his upbringing, his Muslim background, and his church affiliations. Let's ignore this for a moment. Put it all aside. Then ask yourself, "What qualifies this man to be my president? That he's a brilliant orator and talks about change?"

CHANGE WHAT?

Friends, I'll be forthright with you I believe the American voters who are supporting Barack Obama don't have a clue what they're doing, as evidenced by the fact that not one of them - NOT ONE of them I've spoken to can spell out his qualifications. Not even the most liberal media can explain why he should be elected. Political experience? Negligible. Foreign relations? Non-existent. Achievements? Name one. Someone who wants to unite the country? If you haven't read his wife's thesis from Princeton, look it up on the web. This is who's lining up to be our next First Lady? The only thing I can glean from Obama's constant harping about change is tha t we're in for a lot of new taxes.

For me, the choice is clear. I've looked carefully at the two leading applicants for the job, and I've made my choice.

Here's a question - "Where were you five and a half years ago? Around Christmas, 2002. You've had five or six birthdays in that time. My son has grown from a sixth grade child to a high school graduate. Five and a half years is a good chunk of time. About 2,000 days. 2,000 nights of sleep. 6, 000 meals, give or take." John McCain spent that amount of time, from 1967 to 1973, in a North Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp. When offered early release, he refused it. He considered this offer to be a public relations stunt by his captors, and insisted that those held longer than he should be released first. Did you get that part? He was offered his freedom, and he turned it down. A regimen of beatings and torture began. Do you possess such strength of character? Locked in a filthy cell in a foreign country, would you turn down your own freedom in favor of your fellow man? I submit that's a quality of character that is rarely found, and for me, this singular act defines John McCain.

Unlike several presidential candidates in recent years whose military service is questionable or non-existent, you will not find anyone to denigrate the integrity and moral courage of this man. A graduate of Annapolis, during his Naval service he received the Silver Star, Bronze
Star, Purple Heart and Distinguished Flying Cross. His own son is now serving in the Marine Corps in Iraq . Barack Obama is fond of saying "We honor John McCain's service...BUT...” which to me is condescending and offensive - because what I hear is, "Let's forget this man's sacrifice for his country, and his proven leadership abilities, and talk some more about change."

I don't agree with John McCain on everything - but I am utterly convinced that he is qualified to be our next President, and I trust him to do what's right. I know in my heart that he has the best interests of our country in mind. He doesn't simply want to be President - he wants to lead America, and there's a huge difference. Factually, there is simply no comparison between the two candidates. A man of questionable background and motives who prattles on about change, can't hold a candle to a man who has devoted his life in public service to this nation, retiring from the Navy in1981 and elected to the Senate in1982.

Perhaps Obama's supporters are taking a stance between old and new. Maybe they don't care about McCain's service or his strength of character, or his unblemished qualifications to be President. Maybe "likeability" is a higher priority for them than "trust". Being a prisoner of war is not what qualifies John McCain to be President of the United States of America - but his demonstrated leadership certainly DOES.

Dear friends, it is time for us to stand. It is time for thinking Americans to say, "Enough." It is time for people of all parties to stop following the party line. It is time for anyone who wants to keep America first, who wants the right man leading their nation, to start a dialogue with all their friends and neighbors and ask who they're voting for, and why.

There's a lot of evil in this world. That should be readily apparent to all of us by now. And when faced with that evil as we are now, I want a man who knows the cost of war on his troops and on his citizens. I want a man who puts my family's interests before any foreign country. I want a President who's qualified to lead.

I want my country back, and I'm voting for John McCain.

Here was my response:

I'm going to be honest with you here. I don't agree with almost anything in this letter. I've been blogging for almost a year and a half now, much of it focused on Obama's candidacy and McCain as being morally unfit for the presidency. I do not believe that McCain lacks the experience to be president -- although his actual grasp of both economic and foreign policy issues is tenuous at best, especially after three decades supposedly in the mix of things -- so much as I believe that he lacks the temperament and moral rectitude to be president. No person wanting the presidency is above reproach. No one. Anyone with the hubris to seek the office is by definition megalomaniacal to some degree. That said, in McCain, I see a person who will do anything to become president. Anything. His entire candidacy has been about himself first, country much farther down the line.

As for his service during Vietnam. I, too, am amazed by that experience and the suffering that he and others must have endured. However, it in no way either qualifies him to be president, or makes the nation beholden to him in evaluating him for the highest office in the land. The writer of this letter may see a "but" as condescending and offensive, but -- no pun intended -- I see it as every citizens' obligation to challenge those who seek to lead us.

Barack Obama's background is one that should be revered, not denigrated. He came from a poor family, with the still-sadly-reflecting-on-us hardship of being African-American to boot. With the help of a loving, protective, encouraging family, he picked himself up by his bootstraps and went to two of the finest schools in the land, Columbia and Harvard Law School. Is this not what we want of Americans? Is this not living our so-called maxim of "with hard work, you can make anything of yourself?" (As an aside, when Obama applied to Harvard, he did so without telling the school that he was black.) At Harvard, his peers elected him president of the Law Review. In this, his peers believed him to be the best among them and while it may pain me as a Penn Law grad to say it, those folks had to have been among the smartest people in the country to be there. (Notice I do not say "wisest." Wisdom and intelligence have almost nothing to do with each other.) With that position, Obama could have done anything: Clerked at the Supreme Court, worked at the White House, or taken a position of enormous prestige and salary in the private sector. He chose a private law firm in Chicago -- where he met his wife -- but remained less than a year b/c he started his community service while at the firm and it became his then-calling. From there, he became a community organizer, a position that should be lauded. I know; my wife has been one. His work there was in rough neighborhoods with people who often didn't trust him -- ironically -- b/c he had achieved education and the trappings of a world foreign to them. He worked horribly long hours for next to no pay. Serving the least among us. Next, he spent eight years in the Illinois Senate. This is surely the transition from that which can be deemed -- at least in large part -- selfless to the political, which is never wholly selfless. Politicians may want to help the people, but they all also want to help themselves. Still, his service in Illinois must not be overlooked. The size of the state makes the position a full-time one and one with significant power. He shined there, so much so that he gained the spotlight at the national level. That is where many of us -- myself included -- learned of him as he ran for his US Senate seat in 2005-2006. Today, as we approach the presidential election, he has almost twenty years of experience in public life. (And in that time, he managed to write -- not to have ghost-written for him -- several books that outlined his moral and political philosophies.)

As for foreign policy experience, very few presidents in our history have had it before attaining their office, or that of the vice presidency prior. Since WWII, only two have had this background, Ike and George H.W. Bush. The former, of course, was the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during WWII. The latter was Ambassador to China, Ambassador to the UN, and the head of the CIA. Many of the presidents that we see as interacting on the world stage in the grandest fashion have not been among those who enjoyed prior foreign policy experience. In our recent past, FDR, JFK, and Reagan all fit into this category. They excelled in spite of the supposed gap in their resumes because they had -- or developed -- a clear vision for the actions of their administrations and they surrounded themselves with people who had the experience that they themselves lacked. These presidents were men of conviction, but open to ideas and methodologies. Each was intelligent and engaged. I believe that Obama falls well within this pattern. Whether he will ultimately prove himself to be adept on the foreign stage should he win in November, I don't know. However, his early judgment on the war in Iraq, his early call for a renewed effort in Afghanistan, his call for the engagement of our enemies from a position of strength, and his absolute rock-solid belief in our need to shore up our position with our long-time and new-found allies -- to regain America's honor in the world of nations -- are the clarion call of a good start.

On the home front, Obama stands behind the restoration of Constitutionally-protected rights that the Bush Administration has stripped from Americans. The evisceration of the Constitution has done more to harm America from within than any foreign enemy ever could do. As Rome fell from within, so too shall the US. He wants to return fairness to the tax policy of the nation, decreasing the burden on the middle class. This is morally right and will free this group of people to be more productive. He wants to secure healthcare for every American and has a detailed plan to do so. And with the recent financial blow-up, he wants to reregulate our financial markets, to put umpires back in the game. If he does nothing more than push for these things, it will be a packed first term. One may disagree with his goals, but I fail to see how he has not enumerated what he will do or that for which he stands.

As for McCain, I will specifically only raise two issues. I'll then point you to a few blog posts of mine that may shed further light on my thinking about the man.

First and specifically regarding foreign policy, McCain's naval service did not provide him with any leadership background for the presidency. I say that with no disrespect at all. For it to be relevant to the scale of the presidency, he would have had to be a leader such as an Area Commander, dealing with the in's and out's of an operation spanning a large portion of the globe. Ike falls into this category. Being a fighter pilot, while certainly providing leadership experience, is not of this magnitude. To use a somewhat ham-handed analogy: Playing wide receiver in college doesn't make one qualified to coach in the Super Bowl. [I would also note that many military observers believe -- and even McCain himself has stated -- that he was admitted to the Naval Academy due to the positions of his father and his grandfather, the ultimate in affirmative action, if you will. Moreover, he was a very, very poor student while there and was only allowed to stay due to the influence of his family. Honestly, this doesn't bother me. We've had many effective presidents who were poor students. However, I do believe that it removes the Naval Academy as any sort of feather in McCain's cap.]

The second deals with McCain's relationship with his wives. He returned to the US after his captivity in Vietnam to his first wife, Carol, and their four children. Carol had been disfigured and crippled in a car accident while McCain was away. McCain began a series of affairs, one to a woman decades his junior named Cindy, whom he later asked to marry him... while he was still married to Carol. I'll say only two more things about this. First, this doesn't exactly smack of "high moral character" to me. Second, it does say something about Barack Obama that never once has he raised these facts against his opponent. I can't imagine the reverse being true.

As mentioned above, here I'll point you in the direction of a few details that I believe speak to McCain's lack of fitness for the presidency. If you take a look at my blog, you'll see that I could list volumes. However, I'll simply note a smattering instead.

The first deals with his choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate.

Next we have McCain clearly choosing being president over the wellbeing of his family.

On pigs and lipstick, speaking to both character and values.

Another POW, one who knew McCain at the Naval Academy and who was a POW for eight years, had things to say that I found interesting. As I said in my writing, I take them with a grain of salt, but they are interesting nonetheless.

Here, also, is a small survey of conservatives who are supporting Obama, with their justifications for doing so. Post one. Post two.

Finally, I will leave you with something that I wrote regarding our need for leaders of substance, leaders who are not common.

I found a response from another reader of Mr. Porter's letter. It is worth the read to be sure.

15 October 2008