McCain's Leadership?

John McCain seems to believe that Barack Obama does not have sufficient leadership experience to be president. For the most part, I have to agree with him. After all, once you throw out Obama's community activism, his teachings on constitutional law, his civil rights law career, and his 10-year stint as a legislator, there is really nothing else to lead you to believe that might make a good president.

However, McCain's focus on presidential leadership really misses the point: our recent presidents have been lacking as well.

• George W. Bush? A lifetime of commercial, political, and personal failures culminated in his being elected the governor of Texas, the second most powerful position in that state. Although he took refuge from his short workday with long breaks of video golf and solitaire, his friends still managed to fabricate a record of accomplishment.
  
• Bill Clinton? His main qualification was the governorship of Arkansas. Although he managed to look the other way while his state was the major transshipment point for Iran-contra cocaine, he couldn't stay completely clean either.

And what about McCain himself? His qualifications include a long career in the Navy and then in Congress, where he engaged in at least one bad act. Strangely, McCain's major character feature seems to be his status as a POW. I'm more than willing to go easy on POWs, but I found it more than a little disturbing that McCain has spent much of his career actually stopping any legislation aimed at determining the status of POW/MIA soldiers.

If anyone wants, I'll publish an article on the sordid details somewhere else, but in the meantime you can read pages 88-94 of this book.