American Ranger: John McCain: The Man Who Must Be President

A friend in Kentucky sent me the following article which was published in the Wall Street Journal on April 30. It tells a little more about the kind of man John McCain really is. More of these accounts need to be publicized and, hopefully, McCain’s friends and fellow warriors will step forward sooner rather than later:* * * *Wall Street JournalApril 30, 2008"It came to me while I was having dinner with Doris Day. No, not that Doris Day. The Doris Day who is married to Col. Bud Day, Congressional Medal of Honor recipient, fighter pilot, Vietnam POW and roommate of John McCain at the Hanoi Hilton. (The above Associated Press photo shows Col. (Ret.)Bud Day with John McCain at a campaign stop in Pensacola, Fla., in January.)As we ate near the Days' home in Florida recently, I heard things about Sen. McCain that were deeply moving and politically troubling. Moving because they told me things about him the American people need to know. And troubling because it is clear that Mr. McCain is one of the most private individuals to run for president in history.When it comes to choosing a president, the American people want to know more about a candidate than policy positions. They want to know about character, the values ingrained in his heart. For Mr. McCain, that means they will want to know more about him personally than he has been willing to reveal.Mr. Day relayed to me one of the stories Americans should hear. It involves what happened to him after escaping from a North Vietnamese prison during the war. When he was recaptured, a Vietnamese captor broke his arm and said, 'I told you I would make you a cripple.'The break was designed to shatter Mr. Day's will. He had survived in prison on the hope that one day he would return to the United States and be able to fly again. To kill that hope, the Vietnamese left part of a bone sticking out of his arm, and put him in a misshapen cast. This was done so that the arm would heal at 'a goofy angle,' as Mr. Day explained. Had it ...