Faith and Credulity

What does David Brooks, the neo-conservative NYT columnist, mean when he makes the following statement about John McCain? "The most important legacy of his prisoner-of-war days is that he witnessed others behaving more heroically than he did." I keep seeing hints of this, but I have yet to see a full explanation. All we've heard is the heroic part.

Brooks goes on to try and make some kind of a political case for McCain, admitting that he is fundamentally split in his fundamental identity, between the small-government Western conservative and a Teddy Roosevelt kind of progressive/reformer. And then he makes the following prediction.

"If McCain is elected, he will retain his instinct for the hard challenge. With that Greatest Generation style of his, he will run the least partisan administration in recent times. He is not a sophisticated conceptual thinker, but he is a good judge of character. He is not an organized administrator, but he has become a practiced legislative craftsman. He is, above all — and this is completely impossible to convey in the midst of a campaign — a serious man prone to serious things."

The faith that Brooks has in McCain (I remember well that McCain was the Neo-Conservatives' initial favorite in 2000--the Weekly Standard where David Brooks worked then endorsed McCain as a 'national greatness' conservative) is undiminished , despite the recent months of the campaign. And though I really hope he is right if McCain ends up winning the election, yet his argument is not convincing at all, because to have picked Sarah Palin as the next Vice-President, the most important decision McCain will have made in this campaign, can hardly be said to demonstrate "a good judge of character." All the evidence points to the fact that she is the single most unprepared, unqualified VP candidate ever. Add to that McCain's recent erratic behavior and willingness to say anything to win--no matter how different from his previous positions--and you have a very disturbing, very self-contradictory and erratic pattern of behavior.

Is it possible that we could be proven wrong in that conclusion? I suppose that anything is possible, but every day seems to add to our initial judgment. This man should not be elected President, especially in this time of growing national and international crisis. And Brook's attitude here is not faith, but rather strained credulity.