Some say P.J.O'Rourke is the new Mark Twain; but of course I'm the new Mark Twain so that can't be. He is the new Mencken, at least, or as fierce as Bierce, surely. I can't tell if he's lazy or smart --I imagine it's both-- because he almost never writes anything. He certainly never writes anything not worth reading.
Somebody at the Weekly Standard and the Defense Department got the bright idea to send him out on the carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, and he didn't go up the gangplank to get on, either. If this doesn't explain John McCain to you, you're beyond explaining, and should just pull the lever for the empty suit or the empty pantsuit right now and get it over with.
Some say John McCain's character was formed in a North Vietnamese prison. I say those people should take a gander at what John chose to do--voluntarily. Being a carrier pilot requires aptitude, intelligence, skill, knowledge, discernment, and courage of a kind rarely found anywhere but in a poem of Homer's or a half gallon of Dewar's. I look from John McCain to what the opposition has to offer. There's Ms. Smarty-Pantsuit, the Bosnia-Under-Sniper-Fire poster gal, former prominent Washington hostess, and now the JV senator from the state that brought you Eliot Spitzer and Bear Stearns. And there's the happy-talk boy wonder, the plaster Balthazar in the Cook County political crèche, whose policy pronouncements sound like a walk through Greenwich Village in 1968: "Change, man? Got any spare change? Change?"
Some people say John McCain isn't conservative enough. But there's more to conservatism than low taxes, Jesus, and waterboarding at Gitmo. Conservatism is also a matter of honor, duty, valor, patriotism, self-discipline, responsibility, good order, respect for our national institutions, reverence for the traditions of civilization, and adherence to the political honesty upon which all principles of democracy are based. Given what screw-ups we humans are in these respects, conservatism is also a matter of sense of humor. Heard any good quips lately from Hillary or Barack?
Read: 24 Hours on the "Big Stick"
