The Oregon general who backs Obama (Puff piece, laugher)

The Oregonian ^ | July 28, 2008 | Harry Esteve

[jazusamo]

Merrill "Tony" McPeak of Lake Oswego advises the Democratic hopeful on military matters

LAKE OSWEGO -- Somewhere on the scale between swagger and shuffle, gruff and glib sits Gen. Merrill "Tony" McPeak, Oregon's answer to the Great Santini.

Santini was a fictional Marine pilot whose intense assessments of right and wrong, duty and cowardice got him crosswise with, well, almost everyone he encountered. But he was one heck of a pilot.

McPeak? He's Air Force, for starters, keeps his cool a little more and gets along better with others. But he exhibits the same curt impatience for ineptitude, be it moral or political. And, according to those who've seen him in action, he's also one heck of a pilot.

Which all helps explain how the Grants Pass High School grad and one-time President Bush-backer finds himself among Sen. Barack Obama's inner circle of advisers. As one of a dozen national campaign co-chairmen, McPeak has schooled Obama on foreign policy and military issues, introduced him at more than a dozen campaign rallies and stood in frequently as a campaign surrogate with news media.

"He's someone who understands what a commander in chief will have to deal with," says Nayyera Haq, spokeswoman for the Obama campaign. "He's a Republican who crossed party lines. He was an obvious choice."

McPeak, who admits his own flaws as readily as he condemns them in others, downplays his impact on the presidential race between Obama, an Illinois Democrat, and Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican.

But in a contest that could turn on issues of national security and the war in Iraq, McPeak, the former chief of the U.S. Air Force, has given Obama, who never served in uniform, valuable credibility on military and warfare issues.

Obama's fitness to be commander in chief, McPeak says, was an issue when he first entered the race and will continue to be a concern with voters right up to when they cast their ballots. It's not, however, an issue with McPeak.

"He has gut-fighting sidewalk smarts that have allowed him to prevail when people said he couldn't," McPeak says over a cup of coffee at Blue Joe, his favorite Lake Oswego cafe. "And he did it in a way that they didn't even know their throats were cut until they tried to smile."

No wonder the two hit it off.

It's the summer of 1954, a hot day in Grants Pass. Kids are diving off a log anchored in the middle of the bitingly cold Rogue River. Tony McPeak, on break from San Diego State College, is lifeguarding to earn the spending money he'll need when he goes back to school.

Bill Hamilton, a Grants Pass pharmacist who went to high school with McPeak and lifeguarded with him, recalls what happened next. "A kid comes up and says, 'Hey, there's somebody who's gone down.' "

McPeak, a tall, skinny guy who excelled on his school debate team, bolts into the river, dives to the bottom and heads downstream of the log. Somehow, he finds the boy, hauls him to the surface and up on the bank.

"He had actually stopped breathing," Hamilton says. "We pumped him. Someone called an ambulance. He made it."

McPeak, too, finds a way to prevail. He grew up poor, but got a scholarship that paid his tuition. He joined the Reserve Officer Training Corps in college because it offered $1 a day. Between classes, he pumped gas, washed dishes and "hashed" at a campus fraternity

The military wasn't exactly a calling, but the idea of flying intrigued him, so he joined the Air Force. Lightning reflexes, such as the ones that saved the boy's life that day on the Rogue, put him in the elite ranks of fliers.

During the Vietnam War, he became part of a secret flying squadron called "Misty" that served as forward observers along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, spotting targets and calling in airstrikes.

"You had to be rather fearless," says John Hammar of Montgomery, Ala., who served in Misty around the same time as McPeak. "Usually you were hunting trucks and convoys. Sometimes you'd take ground fire. Sometimes you get shot down."

McPeak flew 269 combat missions in Vietnam. Many vets came home shattered. Not McPeak. He moved up, becoming a four-star general who served four years on the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

"I spent 37 years either fighting somebody or getting ready to, and loved every minute -- including Vietnam," McPeak says. "But I was a professional. This was my job."

Yes, he thought U.S. policy on Vietnam was misguided, just as he thinks it now is in Iraq.

But, he says, "you don't want fighter pilots who spend all their time in introspection."

It's midwinter in Iowa. The roads glisten with ice. McPeak relaxes in the cushy seat of a charter bus. The only other riders are Obama and a couple of top campaign staff.

"I got to know him in the context of cold pizza and Diet Cokes," McPeak says. "That was a highlight for me because it was so personal. We're not talking national security. We're watching NCAA basketball on satellite TV. We're betting on the games."

Not so long ago, McPeak wagered on Republicans to run the country. He was Oregon co-chairman of "Veterans for Bush" during the 2000 campaign. He was a staunch conservative and had advised the elder President Bush as a member of the Joint Chiefs.

Former Rep. Denny Smith, R-Ore., also a fighter pilot, was the other co-chairman. He says McPeak was deeply interested in Republican politics, even attending a precinct meeting in Clackamas County.

Then, Smith says, "something happened that he was very unhappy about."

Smith says he doesn't know what triggered McPeak's decision to leave the party. McPeak says he was turned off by Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney's go-it-alone policies, which he says helped alienate the United States from the rest of the world. But the clincher, he says, was the invasion of Iraq -- a decision he opposed from the outset.

"I didn't leave" the Republican Party, he says. "I was tossed out. I was tossed out by foolishness in Washington."

He registered as an independent and started helping Democrats. He first signed on with Howard Dean's presidential bid. Then, after Dean self-destructed, he joined Sen. John Kerry's campaign.

McPeak, now a registered Democrat, says he regrets endorsing Bush without doing his homework. "If I had met him I would have understood immediately the guy was kind of shallow."

Meeting Obama for the first time, McPeak says, was electric.

"I sound like a case of puppy love," McPeak says. "I'm a 72-year-old guy with scar tissue on top of my other scar tissue. I'm not that easy to impress." But, he says, "this guy has just got 20,000 volts running through him."

Three months after Obama scored big in the Iowa caucuses, his campaign bus rolls into Oregon and down the Willamette Valley to Salem. McPeak's on it. During a break, a reporter asks him about a statement by former President Clinton that a campaign between his wife, Sen. Hillary Clinton, and McCain would involve "two people who loved this country."

"It sounds more like Joe McCarthy," McPeak says, comparing Clinton to the communist-hunting senator of the 1950s.

The comments prompt immediate scorn from the Clinton camp. McPeak calls Obama and offers to resign. Obama declines, but dispatches aides for a gentle chat, suggesting that the brusque McPeak choose his words more carefully.

Back at the Blue Joe coffeehouse, McPeak assesses his shortcomings. "I'm blunt, and bluntness is not the name of the game in politics," he says. "It's careful calibration, and I'm not very good at it."

He also admits to a reckless streak. About a year and a half ago, he was stopped and cited for driving under the influence of intoxicants. He pleaded guilty and was ordered to a diversion program.

"It was a bad mistake, very stupid," he says. "I had to go to rehab. I haven't had anything to drink since."

At a rocky outcropping on the Willamette River, McPeak, still as tall and lanky as his Rogue River days, tosses a rubber float into the water and watches as his yellow lab, Sophie, leaps in to fetch it. The river's a short walk from McPeak's Lake Oswego condo. It's clear he relishes the time with his dog.

With the primary over, McPeak has cut back on his work with the Obama campaign, spending more time on his own pursuits. He's a member of nearly a dozen corporate boards and travels frequently to attend meetings. He has started a biotech company that's working on a product he's not ready to discuss publicly.

Earlier in the week, he says he saw a diminishing role for himself in the campaign, but Haq, the Obama spokeswoman, disagrees, calling him "still a valuable member of the team."

As Sophie drops the rubber float at his feet, McPeak acknowledges he may be called on to attend the Democratic National Convention next month.

"You know, I don't go around trying" to get invited to campaign events, he says with typical candor. "When they want me, they call. They usually give me about five minutes notice."

[jazusamo]

If I was McPeak I wouldn't tell anyone I advised Obama on foreign affairs or military issues.

[jazusamo]

Ping!

[PhiKapMom]

Did McPeak advise Obama on what new Air Force uniforms should look like? That is about his only qualification that I can think of and as soon as the worthless General retired his uniform design was scuttled by the incoming General.

McPeak is an embarrassment to the Air Force.

[weegee]

Republican for Obama?

Conservatives for Marixsm?

[reagan_fanatic]

He has gut-fighting sidewalk smarts that have allowed him to prevail when people said he couldn't,"

LOL!!

[K-oneTexas]

I agree. McPeak is an embarrassment to the Air Force and just about everyone else. His simply marvelous “Bus Driver” uniforms were all the rage when I was in. Yeah, Right. :)

[jazusamo]

Ya just can’t make stuff like this up. :)

[Kitanis]

“McPeak is an embarrassment to the Air Force.”

It was more than the uniforms.. That man re-organized units, Screwed up policies and increased mandated draw-down goals so much that I personally saw people who would and should have stayed in bail out of the AF in droves..

I believe that he was the start of the procedual problems that plague the USAF today..

[tbpiper]

He has gut-fighting sidewalk smarts

He proved that to me by his excellent assesment of the surge strategy.

----

McPeak's philosophy 'Anybody but an Airdale'.

[silverleaf]

You don’t know McPeak, do you?

Talk about ego.....

[Cold Heart]

“Talk about ego.....”

Appropriately, he lives in Lake Ego, Oregon.

[Dick Vomer]

If I was the man I was 25 years ago, I'd take a FLAMETHROWER to this article.

What ya got here is a "rat ship". A vessel for sea going snithches.

And if you think McPeak is a "bloodied" Vietnam vet.... well the Oregonian is as full of cr#p as most democrat propaganda organizations.

I can just see the security council for Obamalamadingdong... McPeak and Wesley Clark with Madeline Albright (by half) all sitting around a bathhouse in the Castro District of San Fran or at their condo on Fire Island.

I told my kids I was going to pass this year on the presidential election, screw it... I'm going to vote for McCain and just hope that we have enough conservatives in congress and the senate to stop the Rino douche bag.

The democrat turd sandwich, "The Chosen One" Obamalamadingdong is just a menace.

He needs to graduate to the great American racial shakedown circuit with Jackson and Sharpton.

What an election....gawd.

[Salgak]

McPeak was a running joke. An absolutely typical “perfumed prince” of the 5-sided Funny Farm.

The are not-really-legends of him spending up to half his time working on a matter of utterly vital importance to the US Air Force: a better-looking dress uniform.

[freekitty]

If this man is impatient with ineptitude; why is he supporting Osama Obama?

[wmileo]

I respect his service in Vietnam but he sounds like a jerk. This is not uncommon in the military. Just listening to him and Weasley Clark can make you question Tax payer funding of the US Military Academy system.

[zek157]

I believe that he was the start of the procedual problems that plague the USAF today...

Like shutting down SAC?

[jazusamo]

You summed up this piece and the Oregonian perfectly.

[jazusamo]

Obama and McPeak are two of a kind, neither one recognize ineptitude.

[300winmag]

McPeak was a running joke. An absolutely typical “perfumed prince” of the 5-sided Funny Farm.

At least McPeak had significant combat experience as a very junior officer, as opposed to Weaseley Clark, who gives even perfumed princes a bad name.

[jazusamo]

He and Weasel Clark are so alike it’s not funny.