But I have some small appreciation for what it is like to have to overcome difficulties thrown at you by both life and your own bad decisions and attitudes, including some similar to what John McCain has had to overcome.
Last night at the Republican National Convention, a real American hero stepped to the podium to humbly and deservedly accept his Party's nomination to be it's candidate for the office of President of the United States.
In doing so, McCain spoke as an everyman whose heroism was not always completely altruistic. He said that on the day he was shot down over North Vietnam, and subsequently became a prisoner of war, he prepared in the Gulf of Tonkin for that mission "for my own pleasure; my own pride. I didn’t think there was a cause more important than me."
At that point in his life, McCain was a 31-year old who had graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy nearly a decade earlier. His father and grandfather had each achieved the status of four-star Admiral in the Navy. McCain himself had already cemented a reputation as an independent-thinking maverick who admitted that he thought the "civilian commanders were complete idiots who didn't have the least notion of what it took to win the war."
