McCain's Heroism Could Save an Undeserving G.O.P.

Eight years ago, when he first sought the presidency, John McCain presented himself to the country much the way he is presenting himself now—as a battle-scarred American hero who had endured unspeakable physical and mental abuse for his country and who had emerged from it to pursue a life of courageous and principled public service.

Only back then, the Republican establishment, which just spent the last three nights in St. Paul feting him as living shrine to all that is righteous and noble about this country, didn't see him in such glowing terms. They called him a Democratic plant, challenged his heroism narrative, and rallied around—like their lives depended on it—a well-connected son of privilege who had shown exactly zero interest in serving his country in Vietnam, preferring the comparative light-lift of the Texas National Guard.

Days before that year's pivotal South Carolina primary, George W. Bush appeared in Sumter. He was joined by a Vietnam veteran named J. Thomas Burch, Jr., who took the microphone and summed up McCain's service thusly: "He came home and forgot us." Bush said and did nothing. Five of McCain's fellow senators, all of them Vietnam veterans, exploded with outrage, penning a letter to Bush to defend McCain's honor and to demand an apology. Four of them were Democrats. To the G.O.P. establishment, this was merely further proof that McCain was an invention of the left. His heroism, his sacrifice, his honor—they meant nothing.

The Republican nomination went to Bush—and the defeated war hero flirted with switching parties.

Four years later, the Democratic Party nominated for the presidency a Navy veteran who was awarded the Silver Star, Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts for his service in Vietnam. Rather than acknowledging his sacrifice and contesting the election on other grounds, the Republicans—as they did to McCain four years earlier—turned Lt. Kerry's contributions to his country around, feeding and spreading vile and baseless rumors and accusations that he wasn't the patriot his biography suggested, that he'd been faking it and lying about it. The Texas Air National Guardsman felt like more of a veteran to them, and that was good enough.

But now, as the summer turns to fall and the G.O.P.'s eight-year lease on the White House hangs in the balance, the service that once meant nothing to the G.O.P. now means everything.

"There is only one man in this election," Sarah Palin, McCain's running mate, declared in St. Paul on Wednesday night, "who has ever really fought for you—in places where winning means survival and defeat means death."

The delegates loved that one, and the line—obviously—is true. But it was just as true in 2000—except that the fighter was McCain, and the G.O.P. establishment and the party's conservative base wanted nothing to do with him. And it was just as true in 2004—except the fighter was a Democrat, and his service was savaged, not praised, by the G.O.P.

Bush himself spoke reverently of McCain's war heroism this week, noting that as a P.O.W., "his arms had been broken—but not his honor." No, breaking his honor was left to the Bush campaign of 2000, which trafficked in filthy, destructive and brutally effective smears about McCain and his family.

This is what it has come to for the G.O.P.: embracing and swaddling itself in the very biography and hero narrative that it made a mockery of in the last two presidential elections.

Over and over this week, speaker after speaker exploited the gruesome and inspiring details of McCain's story. Fred Thompson, in his documentary narrator's voice, provided a graphic prime-time description of the acts of torture McCain endured in Hanoi. Sam Brownback demonstrated from the podium how high McCain can lift his arms thanks to the injuries he endured in captivity. Tom Ridge solemnly talked of visiting McCain when his presidential campaign seemed doomed and of McCain telling him, "I've been through worse."

McCain's heroism never meant much to the Republican Party—until this week. And yet, their sudden reliance on it just might work, for two reasons.

One is the unusual power generated by the marriage of McCain's story, which Americans have long known but which they will appreciate anew after this week, to his reputation as a reformer, something else Americans have long been aware of but that has regained its luster this week. The effect of listening to McCain mix talk of reform and of shaking up Washington with references to all that he endured in Vietnam vests his campaign with a potent sense of duty, purpose and principle—and of credibility, something in short supply among Republican politicians at the end of the Bush era.

"I fell in love with my country when I was a prisoner in someone else's," he said in his acceptance speech.

"I loved it not just for the many comforts of life here. I loved it for its decency, for its faith in the wisdom, justice and goodness of its people. I loved it because it was not just a place, but an idea, a cause worth fighting for. I was never the same again. I wasn't my own man anymore. I was my country's."

It also works because of the contrast between McCain and Obama. Officially, the G.O.P. ridicules the Democratic nominee as a polished and smooth-talking empty suit with an inflated sense of himself and his role in history—and with a swooning army of naïve and mind-numbed supporters. Unofficially, they know, but will never admit, that they stand to benefit from feeding suspicions about Obama's exotic background—not simply his race, but the idea that there is something "anti-American" about him. The G.O.P.'s rhetoric this week—and McCain's tonight—stokes these fears.

"I'm not running for president because I think I'm blessed with such personal greatness that history has anointed me to save our country in its hour of need," McCain declared.

Bill Clinton, a Vietnam draft evader who ran against Dole and George H. W. Bush, saw his patriotism questioned, but he was never vulnerable to such a subtle assault on his identity as an American.

Just before the Democratic convention last week, the presidential race was essentially a draw. Obama received a boost from Denver, moving ahead by about six to eight points. Surely, that lead will evaporate by this weekend. In fact, a CBS poll released today already showed the McCain-Palin ticket pulling into a tie, and this was before the impact of Palin's and McCain's speeches could register.

Earlier this decade, no one was more contemptuous of John McCain's service to his country than the Republican Party establishment. Now they've changed their tune—just in time, maybe, to win an election they have no business winning.