Understanding John McCain
McCain's Vietnam experience was so shattering that he sees the world through a new lens, the experience so profound that he has emerged from it with a lifelong commitment to country. This gives credibility to McCain's claim that he is a maverick, beholden not to party but to principle and country. This claim to independence is necessary in a political climate in which the present occupant of the White House is found to be unsatisfactory by nearly three out of four Americans. So, the narrative explains why a voter can believe that John McCain is different from ordinary politicians, especially ordinary Republican politicians, and they can't believe he should be trusted to embark on a new course away from current administration policies.
Third, at the end of his speech, McCain recited how he came to be utterly broken but then restored, even redeemed with a new commitment to service to others when a fellow prisoner urged him by prison telegraph not to quit and die to carry on the fight out of respect for his comrades who were carrying on the fight for him.
Psychologists and scholars of religious experience, especially Christian scholars, have long been aware of the empowering release generated by total surrender of the will. One can describe this in psychological language, or in Biblical language, or even in evangelical idiom. Whatever language one uses to describe these epiphanies there is no question that very often they are real and long lasting. Psychologists would begin to explain the phenomenon by reference to the ego. An Old Testament scholar might think in terms of the first and second Commandments and the muscular faith which follows adherence to them. Christians speak of dying to the self, picking up the cross and following the Savior to become a new man-to be born again. Perhaps the most famous example is recounted in the Book of Acts which tells that Saul of Tarsus was physically knocked off his horse by the Holy Spirit. Saul experiences an epiphany, Saul becomes Paul, and any is transformed from a murderous persecutor of Christians to a fully committed martyr who becomes the great evangelist of the early church, indomitable in spirit, inflexible in commitment, and-like the other disciples- utterly fearless. Significantly, Paul, the newbie Christian, does not shrink later from taking on "to his face" Peter the acknowledged leader of the disciples to dispute matters of doctrine.
In contemporary history we have the example of George Bush and his transforming encounter with Reverend Billy Graham. Indeed, we have the Reverend Billy Graham's own epiphany in the forest. We have the countless examples recited daily in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. It is from the success of this group the countless so-called "12 step" groups have been formed to apply the same empowering message of surrender.
The important thing to understand about these epiphanies is that when they are genuine they are often life-long and tremendously empowering. Lives really are transformed forever. Criminals go straight, alcoholics stays sober, and the miserable are made happy. In fact, these newly born spirits enjoy their new condition so much that they seek ways to prolong the joy they have obtained in their moment of sweet release. Almost universally, these people find that service to others is the surest way to prolong that wonderful feeling of well-being.
Isolated, sick, starved and beaten beyond human endurance, John McCain ultimately broke and signed a confession which he mistakenly assumed amounted to a betrayal of his country. Who was this wretched man who lay so anguished in that cell? In his memoir and in his speech, McCain described himself as a kind of a hotshot jet jock, a screwup, a discipline problem in school, and an accomplished accumulator of demerits as a midshipman. Evidently, he was also an enthusiastic swordsman. In short, he was an arrogant SOB. Now, in that cell, he had fallen far. At this pivotal moment came the means of his redemption via the prison telegraph: Service to others out of love of country. In his speech McCain declared:
"And I wasn't my own man anymore, I was my country's"
