IN WRITING ABOUT the qualifications for the chief executive of the United States, the Founding Fathers did not seem to care much about where candidates stood on the issues, or what their position papers said, or what their talking points might be. Neither did they care much about poise, posture, eloquence or even “experience”. The word that comes up most often, starting with the Federalist Papers, is “character”. It wasn’t what a man said, or believed, but what a man was that determined his fitness for office.
The German military theorist Carl von Clausewitz wrote in his landmark book On War, that “War is a contest of character”, by which he meant that, more than skill or intellect, it is a combination of physical and moral courage allied with resolution that determine success or failure. This is true at all levels of command, from squad to army, and even the entire nation. And it is true not only in war, but in any endeavor where decision-making carries momentous consequences, which is why the Founders placed so much emphasis on it.
The ongoing presidential campaign has tended to focus on matters like “competence”, “experience”, and “consistency”–but these are essentially peripheral matters. Yes, it is good to have leaders who are competent (I still remember Jimmy Carter), but competence without character can be catastrophic–witness Richard Nixon, or Aaron Burr. Experience is nice to have, but some of our greatest presidents had little or no experience going into the job–but they had the character to sustain them as they learned the ropes. And consistency can either be a sign of character or a sign of dogmatic indifference to facts and an unwillingness to admit one was wrong (it takes guts to change one’s mind in response to changing facts). So, in the end, we need a discussion about character, and for some reason, we have been loath to do so in a forthright manner.
Which brings me to a couple of recent incidents involving John McCain. The first was General Wesley Clark’s comments regarding McCain’s POW experience not being indicative of his fitness for national command. Before he stuck his loafers in his mouth all the way to the ankle on Face the Nation, Clark test-drove his remarks at a June 26 book publication event at the Johns Hopkins University-SAIS Center for Transatlantic Relations. Upon hearing his remarks, I was acutely embarrassed, first because it was a cheap shot; second because I was a contributor to the book on which Clark was supposed to be commenting; and finally because it was so clear that Clark himself did not “get it”. When he took the opportunity to repeat the comment the following day on national television, I was outraged, particularly in light of Wesley Clark’s own shortcomings in the character field, well known to those who served with him in the United States Army, and in allied military forces when he was NATO supreme commander.
The second incident was a conversation I had with a personal friend, James Warner, who had the opportunity to observe John McCain under particularly stressful conditions designed to test a man’s character to the utmost. You see, Jim Warner, like McCain, “missed out” on the 1960s because he, like McCain, was a guest of Comrade Ho Chi Minh in one of Hanoi’s finest detention facilities. I stand in awe of Jim, a man of tremendous reserve and dignity, who like McCain came out of the POW experience with a number of permanent physical disabilities courtesy of his hosts. He’s pretty open about his experiences, but he recounts them in such a modest, matter-of-fact tone that it takes a while for you to realize the man is talking about grotesque physical and mental torture. That Warner, like McCain and so many of the other Vietnam POWs has not only managed to overcome the trauma of captivity to get on with his life, but has become eminently successful in his chosen field (Jim is a lawyer and served as a policy adviser to President Ronald Reagan) makes one realize that here is a real test of character, one that tells you a lot about how the man will react in a wide range of circumstances: Can his word be trusted? Will he stick to his guns? Will he stand by his friends?
Recently, Jim published in a local paper, the Herald-Mail, an article about one particular incident during his captivity in Hanoi that demonstrates to my satisfaction that John McCain’s character is what qualifies him to be president of the United States. Jim tells it like this:
One of the first things we did was to institute regular religious services in our cells. On Jan. 1, 1971, we were told that all religious activity was forbidden. This led to a long series of increasingly hostile confrontations that someone has labeled “the Church Riots.” I was in a cell next to McCain’s. In early March, the four senior men in his cell were removed and for some time we lost contact with them. Then the four senior men in my cell were removed, and we lost contact with them, also. The confrontations rapidly escalated. On the evening of March 18 there was a confrontation that almost descended to guards shooting mutinous POWs. The communists were now afraid of losing control.
My recollection is that John McCain was now the senior man in his cell. In any case, I know that he was deeply involved with what followed. The senior men in our two cells kept us under tight control, but carefully staged demonstrations of our anger over the religious ban and the removal of our cell mates. On March 19, St. Joseph’s Day, the day after the dangerous confrontation, I remember the men in McCain’s room singing, at the top of their lungs, first “the Battle Hymn of the Republic,” then “Onward Christian Soldiers.” This was not merely courage, but exquisite leadership to get men to show open defiance when it was clear that there would be retaliation. The only question was in what form and how harsh that retaliation would be. Remember that all of these men had been tortured and knew to what lengths the enemy was willing to go to maintain control.
Jim goes further, noting that McCain was not engaged in an act of braggadocio or mindless defiance:
I know that Jim Warner disagrees with John McCain on many specific issues. So do I. But we agree on far more than we disagree. What is more, with John McCain, you know where you stand. He’s not likely to soft-soap you, or talk out of different sides of his mouth depending on the audience. What you see is pretty much what you get. That’s a refreshing change in a politician, one that stands in stark contrast to the “Candidate of Change”, who changes so often that it has gotten old in a hurry. We are a country at war. We will continue to be a country at war for the foreseeable future, even if, somehow, we were able to extricate ourselves from both Iraq and Afghanistan. As Clausewitz said, “War is a contest of character,” and right now, I only see one candidate with the kind of character that we need, one who combines physical courage with moral courage, determination, resolution, prudence, and magnanimity. Only one of the candidates is a real man, and in wartime, we can’t afford anything less as commander in chief.
Stuart Koehl is a contributor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD Online.
