McCain, Giuliani and Schwarzenegger are speaking because they are brave.John McCain? He spent five and a half years as a POW under brutal conditions, refusing an offer of early release. Without doubt he displayed heroic courage.
I don't know if you have noticed, but this whole campaign has revolved around courage.
Rudy Giuliani? Though not on remotely the same scale as Senator McCain, he showed leadership and courage on September 11th, 2001.
Arnold Schwarzenegger?
Arnold Schwarzenegger?
David Brooks says:
Schwarzenegger has an unshakable belief in economic freedom.Um, okay. Clearly up there with leading a city attacked, while thousands die, and you barely escape with your own life. Clearly up there with years of torture, imprisonment, deprivation, and suffering.
Arnold, after all, courageously fights the California smoking laws, and the evil Democrats and unions.
What churl would deny any difference in scale?
(Mind, I've written numerous times about how the Governor has been a far cannier and more successful politician than his detractors foolishly predicted, and that there is much I find admirable about him. But. People. Let's have some frigging sense of proportion.)
Read The Rest Scale: 2.5 out of 5 if you want David Brooks' newsflash that courage is important.
Okay, this:
The coming weeks will be so tough because the essential contest - of which the Swift boat stuff was only a start - will be over who really has courage, who really has resolve, and who is just a fraud with a manly bearing.Fair enough.
Wait a minute, didn't Arnold fight at least two Terminators? And he switched from their side to the humans, not only putting himself in considerably more danger, but no doubt causing his estrangement from his friends and production line relatives.
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