March 25, 2008
"The young need old men. They need men who are not
ashamed of age, not pathetic imitations of themselves."
-- Peter
Ustinov
Once upon a time there was a no-name generation that went about its business and did not call attention to itself.
While the Greatest moved offstage and the Boomers ran amuck, it raised and educated families, laying the groundwork for a prosperous future. Overlooked, ignored by those who followed it, and alone among its peers, this generation may soon see one of its members become president.
Of course, the road will not be smooth. The attack on John McCain's age has only just begun. A mere tittering at present, it will be shouted from rooftops come the fall. In our youth-obsessed society, newness trumps experience. Media central casting gives this older generation a thumbs down, favoring the novel and the different. But Sen. McCain, who will turn 72 in August, still goes about his business with the dogged determination that sustained him through long years in a North Vietnamese prison.
Those of us born in the late 1930s retain only a weak memory of the Great Depression. But we noted well the solemn eyes of our parents and felt, in the marrow of our bones, the values of steadfastness and endurance they embodied.
Mr. McCain's most intense early memories are likely of a time when most men under 40 wore the uniform; and there is a difference, I believe, between those who remember it and those who don't. His country was enmeshed in a battle for its survival. Mr. McCain is the grandson and son of admirals, and Pearl Harbor and the great carrier battles in the South Pacific made a deep and lasting impression upon his childhood.
We remember when the German army had a stranglehold on Europe, and the Japanese on Asia. Those who lived through that eventful period understood the greatness of our nation -- our indispensable nation -- and knew that without it the future of mankind would be dark indeed.
The nightmare of a world at war and the ghastly revelations in its wake are deeply imbedded in Mr. McCain's psyche. Our generation recoiled at the depths of human cruelty -- we saw emaciated Jews liberated by our troops from Hitler's Belsen, and starved death-march survivors of Bataan emerging from incarceration in Japanese hellholes.
Those born later have barely an inkling of the impression those events made, and the deep bond it created with our country. At a time of reckoning, America rose up "in righteous wrath" against history's most evil villains. To have no pride in that significant accomplishment surely seems to John McCain, as it does to me, no less than moral blindness.
In his formative years, Mr. McCain experienced the dawn of a frightening new age. Murderous dictators, with nuclear arms at their disposal, threatened to annihilate those who opposed them.
This country, foremost among nations, paid the price to check them. He saw what ill-preparedness and hubris wrought in Korea: We could not withstand the initial incursion, and after finally overcoming it, provoked a Chinese invasion that led to our tragic winter retreat.
Troubled by American complacency in the mid-1950s, Mr. McCain chose to follow his father and grandfather to Annapolis. He earned his flying wings, became a squadron leader on the carriers Forrestal and Oriskany, and was shot down in combat over North Vietnam.
His bones broken by a mob that beat him half to death, Mr. McCain was thrown into the Hanoi Hilton where Ho Chi Minh's sadistic henchmen tormented him unmercifully. In a display of character that boggles the imagination, he somehow managed to survive with his identity intact.
While others talk of courage, honor and dedication, John McCain exemplifies those virtues. At a time when America's integrity and purpose were being questioned, his fortitude helped reaffirm our core beliefs. A nation that could produce young men of his caliber could right itself and overcome whatever obstacles it faced. After more than five years of imprisonment, he finally came hobbling home, and with a broad smile and a firm salute, took our collective breath away.
A society that views the tempering of time as an infirmity is a society in trouble. The no-name generation is more vital in its late 60s and early 70s than previous ones in their 40s and 50s. It may struggle for a "misremembered" name on occasion, but it knows far better than its juniors who it is, where it comes from, and for what it stands.
No one better represents this than Mr. McCain. His authenticity, unlike that of his Democratic Party counterparts, is beyond question. What you see is what you get, and what you get is the real thing.
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