A unique moment in the McCain acceptance speech
At the very end of his mostly pedestrian but (in our view) very effective speech at the RNC yesterday, Senator McCain said something that struck us as perhaps the most startling personal revelation ever made in a presidential nomination acceptance address. Probably everyone else knows this, but we didn’t. Senator McCain said that he broke under torture:
A lot of prisoners had it worse than I did. I’d been mistreated before, but not as badly as others. I always liked to strut a little after I’d been roughed up to show the other guys I was tough enough to take it. But after I turned down their offer, they worked me over harder than they ever had before. For a long time. And they broke me. When they brought me back to my cell, I was hurt and ashamed, and I didn’t know how I could face my fellow prisoners. The good man in the cell next door, my friend, Bob Craner, saved me. Through taps on a wall he told me I had fought as hard as I could. No man can always stand alone.
Perhaps we haven’t been paying attention all this time, but we didn’t know until today that during this two-week long episode McCain says he twice attempted suicide and finally signed confessions given to him by the North Vietnamese. It is certainly unsurprising in light of all this that Senator McCain opposed waterboarding and some other coercive means of gathering information. His sufferings during captivity are almost beyond comprehension.
Inspired by the intriguing confession in McCain’s speech, we did a little further inquiry. We have a copy of Faith of My Fathers (a book with no table of contents or index, by the way), but hadn’t read it. We looked in on the episode that McCain referred to in his speech last night (pp.244-245):
Bob Craner tried to reassure me that I had resisted all that I was expected to resist. But I couldn’t shake it off. One night I either heard or dreamed I heard myself confessing over the loudspeakers, thanking the Vietnamese for receiving medical treatment I did not deserve. Most guys broke at one time or another. I doubt anyone gets over it entirely. There is never enough time and distance between the past and the present to allow one to forget his shame. I am recovered now from that period of intense despair. But I can summon up its feeling in an instant whenever I let myself remember the day.
McCain’s book discusses his post-captivity physical therapy (p.345) but appears silent on whatever psychological treatment he received. It would be very interesting to know about this, but, as with Senator Kerry, this subject apparently continues to be off-limits in political discourse. (Why do we think that the MSM may well wake up to the idea of questioning Senator McCain on this matter in a way that they did not with Senator Kerry?)
Having said that, reading even a little of what John McCain endured for year upon year has fundamentally altered our understanding of this man. We are in awe of what he and his comrades went through and came out the other side. (Of course many did not come out the other side; read the story of Lance Peter Sijan and remain unmoved if you can.) We can only begin to imagine what McCain’s close friend and fellow POW Bud Day was thinking and feeling as he sat smiling on the convention floor, watching a speech that neither man could have dared to imagine forty years ago.
September 5th, 2008 at 7:19 pm
A long time ago my parents were killed in a car crash when I was 18, and a couple of years after that I went into psychotherapy to learn the best way to deal with it and finish growing up without them. I had no adult relatives I was close to. Therapy was an intense, intimate process that sometimes dealt directly with my loss and often did not.
Could you please explain what details of psychological and emotional recovery you feel a person should be required to reveal? My first reaction is to think your point is intrusive to the point of being destructive if pursued. The man says he can summon up the despair of the time in a instant. Why do you wish that on him? Did i misunderstand you? What do you mean, please?