Being Pitiful is not a Qulaification for the Presidency

I'm getting tired of ranting about Songbird, but he just pisses me off so much that I have to get it out of my system. The POW card can only be played so often before it really starts to sound like whining (which it fundamentally is). I'm reminded of the Widow Starkadder in "Cold Comfort Farm" who relied on her lament that she had seen "something nasty in the woodshed" a half century earlier to put down all criticism or dissent in the household. That's McCain in spades. "Wah, wah, wah. I was a POW. I was subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques that seemed like torture when applied to me but are perfectly OK for the US government to use on other people."

What is it about having been a POW that is supposed to insulate you from any criticism or suspicion? Is it that we are supposed to take so much pity on you that we refrain from wounding your delicate feelings? If so, are you really emotionally up to the task of presidenting? Or is that you showed endurance and courage by not completely going bananas because of the experience? If so, why don't we just take the detainees at Gitmo and let each of them be president in turn and dispense with these annoying elections?

I keep trying to wrap my mind around the reasoning. You surrender to the enemy and are detained; therefore, you no longer have the capacity to lie, cheat or be wrong about anything ever again. I suppose there are no former POWs with criminal records or who are registered sex offenders or who are junkies or who made any boneheaded decisions after their confinement. By Golly, those detainees at Gitmo are going to be pretty useful now that the US has purged them of the capacity to sin or err.

Or is it that we reckon that your confinement damaged you so much that we have to cut you a lot of slack to compensate for your suffering? Go ahead and cheat on your wife. We understand what a rough time you had. You're ethically challenged as hell? Of course, you are, poor old thing. Those Vietnamense beat the ethics right out of you. I still don't get why I should vote for you for president, though. Being pitiable is just not enough.