A look at Huggy Bear ... from the archives

You know, the Internets are a great thing(s) ... as long as you don't have anything to hide, or that you want to forget.

Tragically, that frequently ends up not being the case for many Republicans ... in particular, Huggy Bear. You might recall that Huggy ran for president back in 2000 ... of course, most of America would like to forget 2000, the Year of the Stolen Election (ver. 1.0). Anyway, thanks to the Internets, we can revisit this revealing profile, published in March 2000, of the dessicated, goiter-ridden near-corpse that the GOP has seen fit to nominate for president.

It wasn't long after arriving in Pensacola that McCain racked up the first of his five crashes, beginning in 1958, on his way to becoming a "reverse ace." As told by Timberg, "McCain was practicing landings; his engine quit and he plunged into Corpus Christi Bay. Knocked unconscious by the impact, he came to as the plane settled to the bottom."

There was, however, no engine failure with the aircraft. According to one of McCain's former flight instructors, "The engine was removed from the aircraft that afternoon, mounted on a test stand and a new propeller installed. [It] was flushed with fresh water and started. It ran just fine. So the theory of engine failure was proven false."

The instructor added that McCain was "positively one of the weakest students to pass our way, and received consistently poor marks and a number of Dangerous Down grades assigned by more than one instructor. He had no real ability and was clearly out of his element in an airplane, and way over his head even as a junior naval officer."

There were four more crashes like that ... and yet, as far as I'm concerned, it's not even really the crashes themselves that put Huggy's reputation into question. So he was a lousy pilot ... I mean, that's not like being, say, a lousy oilman or a lousy baseball team owner, is it?

Okay, bad example. Anyway ... there's much, much more:

But some questioned the number and types of medals bestowed upon "Ace" McCain, the son of the admiral commanding in the Pacific as well as the grandson of another admiral.

"McCain had roughly 20 hours in combat," explains Bill Bell, a veteran of Vietnam and chief of the U.S. Office for POW/MIA Affairs -- the first official U.S. representative in Vietnam since the 1973 fall of Saigon. "Since McCain got 28 medals," Bell continues, "that equals out to about a medal-and-a-half for each hour he spent in combat. There were infantry guys -- grunts on the ground -- who had more than 7,000 hours in combat and I can tell you that there were times and situations where I'm sure a prison cell would have looked pretty good to them by comparison. The question really is how many guys got that number of medals for not being shot down."

"John McCain," says another Navy pilot and acquaintance of that era, "was the kind of guy you wanted to room with -- not fly with. He was reckless, and that's critical when you start thinking about who's going to be the president," The old pilot laughs, and then continues: "But the Navy accident rate was cut in half the day John McCain was shot down."

On a more serious note, however, there has been no discussion of what actions were or were not taken in dealing with McCain after each of the aircraft losses. Neither McCain's senatorial nor campaign offices returned Insight's calls on these matters. But a Navy insider notes that "after every such incident an inquiry is conducted to conclude the cause of the crash. If it were anyone other than the admiral's son, his wings would have been pulled. But that's where that kind of father comes in handy."

Wow, it's such a refreshing change to have a GOP presidential candidate who benefited from nepotism to cover up his many shortcomings, don't you think?

These are exactly the sorts of things that need to come out in this campaign. Surely it's more relevant to discuss a candidate's character and actions than, say, those of his pastor, isn't it? But as long as the mainstream media is Huggy Bear's "base," then I guess it's up to the bloggers ... and the campaign staffs. (Are you listening, Sen. Obama? Can you say "press release?" Hell, can you say "I'm going to focus on the Republican candidate rather than Sen. Clinton?" That would be nice ...)

(h/t ::matthew)