John McCain's biographical tour stops in Alexandria, Virginia this morning, where McCain will visit his high school alma mater and speak about, according to the campaign, "the mark of a man," -- or "the imprint left on his heart by a once-in-a-lifetime relationship with a teacher whose lessons were the kind that transcend a young man's mind and soul and shape his ideas about right and wrong, compassion and forgiveness."
The campaign has released another web ad to prove scenic accompaniment for the day.
Here, in another speech by Mark Salter, is how McCain describes his "hero," his English teacher, William B. Ravenel:
"I doubt I will ever meet another person who had the impact on my life that my English teacher at Episcopal High School did....
He seemed to his students to be as wise and capable as anyone could expect to be. He loved English literature, and taught us to love it as well. He had a way of communicating with his students that was uniquely personal and effective. He made us appreciate how profound were the emotions that animated the characters in Shakespeare’s tragedies. MacBeth and Hamlet in his care were as compelling to boys as they were to the most learned scholar. No other teacher had as much of our respect and affection. He was simply the best man at the school; one of the best men I have ever known. In the fall of my senior year, a member of the j.v. football team had broken team rules. I cannot recall the exact nature of the offense, but it was serious enough to warrant his expulsion from the team. Mr. Ravenel called a team meeting, and most players argued the accused should be dropped from the roster. I offered the only argument for a less severe punishment.The student in question had broken training. But unlike the rest of us, he had chosen at the start of the year not to sign a pledge promising to abide faithfully by the training rules. Had he signed it, I wouldn’t have defended him. Moreover, he had confessed his offense and expressed remorse freely without fear of discovery. I thought his behavior honorable. So did Mr. Ravenel. But he kept his own counsel, preferring his boys to reason the thing out for ourselves. As we were doing so, Mr. Ravenel began to nod his head when some of the others began to take up the defense. Finally, he closed the matter by voicing his support for leniency. The team voted to drop the matter.
After the meeting broke up, Mr. Ravenel told me we had done the right thing and thanked me. He said he had been anxious before the meeting, but had not wanted to be the one who argued for exoneration. He wanted the decision to be ours. He told me he was proud of me.
I also found this passage interesting:
As a young man, I would respond aggressively and sometimes irresponsibly to anyone whom I perceived to have questioned my sense of honor and self-respect. Those responses often got me in a fair amount of trouble earlier in life. In all candor, as an adult I’ve been known to forget occasionally the discretion expected of a person of my years and station when I believe I’ve been accorded a lack of respect I did not deserve. Self-improvement should be a work in progress all our lives, and I confess to needing it as much as anyone. But I believe if my detractors had known me at Episcopal they might marvel at the self-restraint and mellowness I developed as an adult. Or perhaps they wouldn’t quite see it that way.
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Does anyone fall for this corny approach any longer?
Boy, talk about "just words."
We all know what McCain is all about: he really is very simple to understand.
He is for unending war in Iraq; no matter how one parses his words, that is what his policies amount to. He has admitted that he sees any withdrawal of troops as "surrender." He has no definition of victory and no exit strategy.
He is probably for starting a war with Iran and trying to take over that country as well. In fact, it seems that for McCain the answer to terrorism and 9/11 is simply to take over the entire Middle East. He sees all Middle Easterners as part of the problem; to him they are all terrorists. He has no sophistication in his thinking; he takes a WWII approach to a 21st century problem.
On the economy, he is basically Herbert Hoover and GW Bush: do nothing...totally laissez faire economics. Hey, if you're losing your home...who cares? McCain will comfort you with how it was your fault all along.
And McCain will continue to give huge tax breaks and subsidies to the wealthy but not to the middle class.
Oh yeah...there's the fact that pretty much his entire campaign is run by lobbyists.
That is pretty much McCain in a nutshell. He's not so hard to understand; in fact, he pretty much is more of the same Bush policies just wrapped up in a different package. Admittedly that package is easier to accept than Bush, but nevertheless it is the same package.
Posted by cm | April 1, 2008 7:11 AM