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Hawaii’s World
IF it's like father, like son, that's a plus with me for Sen. John McCain's bid for the presidency. Adm. John McCain was based at Camp Smith from 1968 to 1972 as a wiry, scrappy, cigar-smoking commander of all U.S. forces in the Pacific. He built up a substantial coterie of admirers among folks here. McCain’s father was
admired as CINCPACPartly it was because he had been willing to accept the CINCPAC job when his son was already a North Vietnamese prisoner of war who might suffer reprisals for U.S. attacks.
In appointing the admiral, President Lyndon Johnson knew he wouldn't flinch from doing his best. The son, in turn, showed the same colors, it was later learned, by refusing early release by the North Vietnamese.
The admiral's duties required hundreds of thousands of miles flying east to Washington or west to Asia. He said he fought the time zone adjustment problem by eating lightly the meals of whatever time zone he was in.
His wife was a twin, so much a look-alike of her sister that McCain often was asked how he told them apart. "That's their problem," he always chuckled in return.
Senator McCain came to chat with the Star-Bulletin editorial board in 1994 and again in 1996. On both occasions he accompanied Orson Swindle, also a POW in Vietnam, to back Swindle's run for Hawaii's First District House seat.
I remember him gently reminding Swindle that his POW record would not be enough to elect him, that he must assure voters he could do well for them in Washington.
Swindle lost both times, but narrowly. He now holds a Republican seat on the Federal Trade Commission. There, like McCain, he strongly opposes taxes on the Internet as part of a generalized opposition to excessive government regulation viewed as anti-consumer.
McCain was on the Indian Affairs committee of the Senate, which deals also with Hawaiian legislation. When the Democrats had a Senate majority, Hawaii's Daniel Inouye chaired the committee, then handed the chairmanship to McCain when the Republicans took over.
Not to worry, McCain told our board. He saw eye-to-eye with Inouye on Hawaiian matters and usually took his lead from the Hawaii senator. Fairly generous funding for Hawaiian programs has survived in the GOP-controlled Congress.
ACCORDING to writers who tracked McCain in New Hampshire, he has an almost pathological determination to always tell the truth. His positions are Republican conservative for the most part but less extreme than the far right. As Commerce Committee chairman he is against overregulation by government yet was willing to threaten regulation, for example, to get airlines to adopt practices that are more consumer friendly.
He gets big-money contributions from communications companies that oppose taxation of the Internet. I, for one, am prepared to believe that the position stems from his basic philosophy about government, rather than from being bought.
So far as character is concerned, I think McCain offers us a for-real Clinton opposite. I think he enjoys a peace with himself reminiscent of that in two past political achievers I admire -- Hawaii Gov. John A. Burns and President Ronald Reagan. We won't see John McCain remaking himself just because he suffers a defeat somewhere along the line.
A.A. Smyser is the contributing editor
and former editor of the the Star-Bulletin
His column runs Tuesday and Thursday.