Let us take a moment to praise John McCain

Susan Hill

Well said. Last night on BBC TV there was an interesting, if somewhat rushed and unfocused programme about Obama but where it WAS focused it was on race. I am the first to be delighted that the US has a black President -even if I would have preferred a Republican. But the emphasis on Obama`s victory being so amazing was almost entirely on his colour. Now if McCain or any other non-black had won, and there had been such emphasis - 'It`s so wonderful that we have a white man for President elect' you can imagine the uproar. Yes, it is historic, even if Obama is in fact only half-black. But if that is the main reason some people are so ecstatic then it is, I am afraid, a racist reason. Obama has not played the race card either - I heard someone say he was post-race, which is as it should be. I was set upon at a gathering in the summer during the Olympics when I happened to say the Chinese might find it hard to stay at the top of the medals table once the track and field events began and they were competing against all the top black runners. The howls of 'what has their skin colour to do with it ? What a racist comment' could have been heard across the pond.
Yet last night it was fine to talk about Obama and his family and his victory purely in terms of skin colour. Where`s the difference ?

David C

That is a good political epitaph (if such it be) and far better than the epitaph Kipling penned for some nameless British politician.
But, as with all hypotheticals, I cannot be sure of McCain's reaction to 11th Sept, just as Gore's response remains an unknown.
If you are saying that because of McCain's experience of war, as President, he might have tempered the "neoCon" attitudes with a greater appreciation of the tasks, then I am inclined to agree.

Ray

Hear, hear.

mac

James, Britain's surely a better place thanks to the selfless manner in which that celebrated patriot, that veritable 'serious man for serious times' and self-proclaimed peer of Obama, the one Gordon Brown puts the national interest first. I mean, he (and fellow nonpareils who laughably now include the TV star from Hull) keeps telling us that's his purpose, so it must be true, mustn't it?

Cynical, moi? Yes. The overblown adulation of Obama is worrying, and I've read too much of it even here. There's even a 24 page supplement in my Times today (and it's about "President' Obama, not the President-elect).

The reality is that he cannot possibly meet the exaggerated expectation that is being generated. He may or he may not turn out to have the venality or deviousness that afflicts so many politicians in high office (and Blair springs immediately mind, here), but I very well remember the rhetoric of the incoming young president's acceptance speech in 1960. with those stirring intentions of new frontiership. I was young too then, and I believed what I heard.

Unfortunately, just as in 1960 the promises cannot be delivered because big business, pork-barrel politicians and irreconcilable social and political pressures mean that, once off the stump cloths must be cut rather differently.

Then the propagandists spin the false pictures in earnest. But wait, that's not true of the New Labour project. No, they peddled their lies from the outset. And the lies grow ever bigger.

CJ Lucey

Don't forget to praise McCain's astonishingly high share of the national vote given:

1. massive voter registration efforts by Democrats;
2. massive voter turnout from the African-American community;
3. the very weak state of the US economy;
4. the near cardiac arrest of the US financial system in September;
5. the bear market in equities;
6. the political attrition of wars in Iraq in Afghanistan;
7. one-sided US mass media coverage intent on rubbishing Republicans and promoting an historic first: a black presidency; and
8. the fact that, only once since the 1940s (Reagan x 2 + Bush I), has one party occupied the White House for three successive terms.

Not the least of McCain's many achievments was remaining competitive in a presidential race whose outcome should have been clear months ago.

Bill (Scotland)

From the little I know of John McCain I agree he deserves considerable praise, but to say that his campaign did not play the race card is pretty hard to defend. It's true the way this has been done in very recent weeks/months has been highly-coded, but it has been there and there are any number of videos of him on YouTube high-lighting this aspect of his character. I've selected two to illustrate the almost subliminal techniques used and his reaction when 'called' on it. I'm not an American, so the visceral arguments between Reps and Dems mystify me, but I simply observe what he and others say as an outsider:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=iu1kmyfPb50

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=hQ4LzPhEYwk

Incidentally I spent I number of years living in Vietnam during the 1990s when I worked there for an international bank on assignment and have met a number of those who fought on the 'other side' during the Vietnam war, because many of them are now in senior positions in various government ministries and government entities and I came across them as a result of contacts with the government for licences etc. I am also good friends with one of my former Vietnamese colleagues who was from Saigon and worked in our branch there until 1975 when he was sent for 're-education' by the conquering northerners and still has the physical and mental traumas to live with that resulted so I have deep sympathy with John MCCain's predicament during his incarceration there and know the mind-set of some of those I have met who were involved in the North's war effort.

But claims that Mccain is totally clean on 'race' are decidedly disingenuous in my view.

Dan J

essential reading: http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/23316912/makebelieve_maverick/print

Obnoxio The Clown

Very well put, sir. And he was funnier at the roast and on SNL!

Andrew Forbes

I desperately wish he'd won ... in 2000. How much better the world would be.

But that didn't make him the right man in 2008.

RMH

John McCain, a great Amercian.

Shafted by Bush/Rove on 2000 when he would have been a decent President.

Shafted by his choice of Veep, the wingnuttiest wingnut who appaled 75% of swing voters to appease his base.

It was a shame (for him) that he did not pick Romney as that would have menay he may have won.

But 2012 will be fun. Will they go for the Tebbit/Redwood lady, who will not be as cute as she is now, and a Granny to boot, or will they tack to the centre ground to win the votes they need.

It is the IDS vs Cameron debate. The wingnut or the centrist. If they go wingnut they lose, if they go centrist they win.

Doug

Oh, please what about the reality, not the myth. McCain did put out an add trying to link Obama to Freddie Mac by using a black executive that Obama nor his campaign had any connection to. Why chose the black guy when there were white executives who could have been used? Sure he served his country and is now described as 100% disabled (really?) for his disability payments all while he is voting against any bill that helps modern day veterans re-train, find work and alleviate physical and mental disabilities. He was graded terribly by all the veterans groups with a D or worse while they gave Obama an A or B. It practically impossible to find an issue that he hasn't flip-flopped on for political convenience culminating in his disgraceful vote to authorise the use of torture. Nation first - like the Keating Five or his hand in covering up links to lobbyist Abramoff or picking Sarah Palin as a prospective VP. Even his record in the services is strewn with demerits and AWOLs and all ignored because of Daddy. This campaign revealed the real McCain and he didn't measure up to much.

Minnie Ovens

And that, I think, sums it up well.
But there is something extremely wrong in a country when so many vilify a patriotic and honourable man.
Age and experience, once so lauded, are now treated with contempt.

Tedd

Bill (Scotland):

You promised some evidence that McCain played the race card, but I think you pasted in the wrong URLs. Could you post the ones that have the evidence, please?