This is not meant as an attack on either of you. I simply feel very strongly about this.
The media portrayed Admiral Stockdale that specific way for their agenda. It was shameful that they did so.
The Admiral was asking a rhetorical question aloud, and given his classical training, that was not surprising. The media chose deliberately to take that perfectly valid rhetorical question out of its appropriate context, and use it as a weapon to hammer him as senile, old, and tired.
He may have been old and tired, and who wouldn’t have been, having borne the depredations and abuses of the North Vietnamese as the second senior ranking POW behind Robbie Reisner (both of whom received special and terrible torture from the Communists) but Stockade was never mentally incapacitated or senile. That is a Leftist lie, used by Leftists, to slander for craven political gain, a Medal of Honor recipient and completely honorable man.
It is well to keep in mind that this kind of thing is the stock and trade of the Left.
I don’t have a problem with people taking issue with Perot’s candidacy, although having a second Bush Presidency would have had issues of its own that make it less clear Bush was preferable in many, though not all respects to Clinton. But I do have a problem with the treatment of an honorable man, Admiral Stockdale, as a senile dunce. He didn’t want to be part of it, but viewed it, as the honorable man he was, as a call to service, and as he did his whole life, he answered that call, even against his personal reservations.
Ridicule Ala Alinsky. The radical leftist most potent weapon.
I never served, but I have great respect for those that did.
I remember watching Stockdale during the VP debates.
I knew nothing about him—good or bad.
I had no agenda either way—just wanted to hear what he had to say.
It was one of the worst public speaking performances I have ever seen.
That is just the facts—I had no agenda on this issue then and I have no agenda on it now.
Dennis Miller said it best about Stockdale:
Language Warning
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-RBYRpydXk
Walz is a Chicken Hawk ... seems to be well documented
He was assigned as an OIC in charge of about 6 students, including Stockdale, to provide special instruction. In 1993, when my dad was dying from prostate cancer, my sister wrote to Admiral Stockdale, who was working at the Hoover Institute at Standford, to ask if he remembered our dad, and if so, would he write a letter to him (as a way of lifting his spirits).
The letter he wrote to my dad was wonderful, crediting my dad's instruction and saying he likely owed his wings to him, providing updates on many of those they had both known back then.
The last line of the letter chokes me up everytime: "And I am still cutting it up here at Stanford, remembering old times and thanking my lucky stars for many breaks--including knowing you".
I understand. I knew it was rhetorical but had to laugh at the delivery.