Rich Lowry Must Be One Bad-Assed Dude

Well, this is the only conclusion I can reach having read this article of his. Of John McCain Lowry has this to say:

...together with Kerry supporter Max Cleland, the Arizona senator makes for the smallest caucus in American politics — Thin-Skinned Vietnam War Veterans Adored by the Media (TSVWVAM).

I then read his biography and it is not exactly clear what the National Review's editor has accomplished that would back up this image of himself,- but then again, how else to explain such words of his?

Lowry goes on to present McCain as someone overly sensitive,- someone who almost made up the story of being maligned and smeared in South Carolina during his 2000 Presidential bid. Others have a different view of what happened. Richard H. Davis, McCain's campaign manager in 2000, writes in his Boston Globe article,

John and his wife, Cindy, have an adopted daughter named Bridget. Cindy found Bridget at Mother Theresa's orphanage in Bangladesh, brought her to the United States for medical treatment, and the family ultimately adopted her. Bridget has dark skin.

Anonymous opponents used "push polling" to suggest that McCain's Bangladeshi born daughter was his own, illegitimate black child. In push polling, a voter gets a call, ostensibly from a polling company, asking which candidate the voter supports. In this case, if the "pollster" determined that the person was a McCain supporter, he made statements designed to create doubt about the senator.

And while there is no indication that Bush ordered such "push polling", there is no indication that he forcefully condemned such practices either.

Frankly, I would be less livid about the matter if the target were John McCain only (the way John Kerry is with the Swift Boat Veterans For The Truth attacking his military record),- and not his child. Personally, I believe that giving an orphan a chance in life is amongst the noblest things one can possibly do, and assaulting that act amounts to nothing less than an assault on the concept of decency itself.

But let us get back to the subject of Rich Lowry. He clearly thinks that a man who, like John McCain, went to many a battle and spent five years as a POW, two of them in solitary confinement, can be called "thin-skinned". He thinks the same term can be applied to Max Cleland. Maybe those men could in fact have been tougher. And Mr Lowry is certainly entitled to his opinions. I just wonder what makes him think he is John Wayne, Audie Murphy and Mike Tyson all rolled into one.