There is a real difference between John McCain and Chuck Hagel, close friends in the past. It's a difference that may could make 2008 an even more interesting and telling presidential race particularly if Hagel decides to run.
The men’s diverging views on Iraq set the parameters for the debate scheduled to unfold next week as the Senate opens its most extensive deliberations of the war since it began. Mr. Hagel is a lead sponsor of a resolution intended to rebuke the president; Mr. McCain has offered a plan to give the administration one more chance in Iraq...
Friends of both men say they believe that the respective Vietnam experiences of Mr. McCain, a prisoner of war for five years, and Mr. Hagel, an enlisted man on the front lines, offer a window into their diverging views.
Seems to me that their friend, Senator Webb, nails the difference between the two men.
“John McCain was a prisoner of war; I respect what he had to go through,” said Senator Jim Webb, Democrat of Virginia and a combat veteran of Vietnam. “He did not see the ground environment, how difficult things really are on the ground. He did not really see how bad this country was torn apart by the war, for the unfortunate reason that he was in prison.”
What Webb doesn't say -- I'm saying it -- is that John McCain has used his service and his imprisonment as political tools to a much greater extent and in very different ways from his veteran colleagues. John McCain is useful largely because he's a reminder of how military power is regularly misused by power grabbers. McCain is no antidote to George W. Bush. Quite the opposite. He, too, has the face and demeanor of a 24/7 opportunist.
