Too Much Tequila, Too Little Sunscreen

An Open Letter to John McCain

Dear John,

I listened with interest to your first interview since the election; your guest spot on The Tonight Show. An interview by a comedian rather than a hard-hitting journalist gave you a rare opportunity to discuss what you have learned in a non-defensive, open fashion. There often is far more to learn from a lost opportunity than a win. What did you learn from your defeat? Nothing! Your discussion with Jay showed me again that you are as clueless as you came across throughout your unsuccessful campaign.

To give you a bit of credit, I don’t think any republican could have won with the country’s disenchantment, or out-and-out disgust, with the Bush administration and Bush’s disastrous policies. We’ve had it with everything Bush. On election night a network anchor described the only negative point against a losing incumbent Republican representative was that he had an R after his name.

We were captivated with the spirit and energy of the Democratic National Convention and wondered how your team could even attempt to measure up. How would you handle Bush and Cheney? All and all the Republicans did an excellent job except for you. You never talked about any of the issues in your acceptance speech. Instead, you chose to give us a verbal resume stressing two major points, you’re a war hero and a maverick. After 23 years in the Navy and over 30 years in the senate is this all you’ve accomplished? Obama talked about all of the issues of interest to me: healthcare, education, the economy, energy independence, and our lessening stature in the world. You talked about the courage you showed as a POW.

You are truly someone we should all respect and honor for your sacrifices in the Viet Nam war. A hero, I’m not sure being shot down by an enemy with no airpower or limited ground-to-air capability qualifies. What was your mission? Did you accomplish it? What were the circumstances surrounding you being shot down? Did the enemy outsmart you? Did your equipment fail or did you fail to exercise the proper defensive procedures? Anyway, your war hero claim begs more questions than it answers.

After nearly 35 years in the senate the only accomplishment you could talk about was being labeled a maverick without mentioning what you accomplished as a maverick. I think you meant that you didn’t always vote with your party. I see this as maybe good, maybe bad. I expected you to describe some issue where you went against the mainstream and was later shown to be right. You never came up with one instance where being a maverick was good.

Fifty eight years of service to our government in the Navy and the Senate and you couldn’t point to any accomplishments beyond these two. I’m led to believe that you’ve never done anything outstanding in all of this time. I think you don’t have fifty eight years of experience; your have one year of experience which you rehashed 58 times

Your campaign was awful. All your rhetoric and TV commercials were focused on portraying Obama in as negative a fashion as possible. You attempted to discredit Obama and paint him as an inexperienced liberal. We all knew that about him going in. Couldn’t you come up with one positive reason on why we should have voted for you? Sales people that can’t elaborate on the benefits of their products and can only discredit their competition never win. That’s exactly how you came across … a bumbling salesman with nothing to sell.

Lastly, trying to paint yourself as a Washington outsider promising change to the very system you are part-and-parcel of didn’t make any sense to me. You never talked about what you were going to change. You even tried to paint Sarah Palin as your change agent when you realized how dumb your change message was. Obama’s definition of change was very clear; he is going to reprioritize the issues. He thinks healthcare and education should be placed above expensive wars in third world countries and tax breaks for the rich.

My conclusion is that you are truly the C, or possibly even the D, student that you demonstrated at Annapolis. After 8 years of leadership by another C student. I believe that the job you sought is too tough for a C student or someone with just average intelligence and clearly below average academic ambition. America doesn’t need another C student.

Respectively,

Robert D. Rockwell

Ex-Republican & an A – Student

©2008 by Bob Rockwell