Did McCain really perform the Sandinista snatch?
WASHINGTON _ This is one of those stories that cuts both ways for a candidate.
On one hand, John McCain has the reputation as a fellow with a short fuse, something not altogether desirable for the commander of the world’s biggest nuclear arsenal.
On the other hand, more than a few voters might smile (clap?) at the prospect of McCain, who turns 72 next month, grabbing a revolutionary by his Guyabara shirt and yanking him out of his chair.
First, we must consider the source for this tale, fellow Republican Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi, with whom McCain isn’t close. (McCain has criticized Cochran’s penchant for earmarked pet projects in appropriation bills; Cochran has said that the prospect of McCain as the GOP nominee sends a chill down his spine.)
Anyway, Cochran says that on a congressional trip to Nicaragua in 1987, he saw McCain grab an associate of Daniel Ortega, then the leader of the lefty Sandinista National Liberation Front (and now president of Nicaragua), and lift him out of this chair.
Here is what Cochran told the Sun Herald of Biloxi (you can listen to it), a home-state paper. “McCain was down at the end of the table … and we were talking to the head of the guerrilla group here at this end of the table and I don’t know what attracted my attention, but I saw some kind of quick movement at the bottom of the table and I looked down there and John had reached over and grabbed this guy by the shirt collar and had snatched him up like he was throwing him up out of the chair to tell him what he had thought about him or whatever …
More Cochran: “I don’t know what he was telling him but I thought, ‘Good grief, everybody around here has got guns and we were there on a diplomatic mission.’ I don’t know what had happened to provoke John, but he all of a sudden got mad at the guy … “
What did McCain have to say about Cochran’s recollections at a news conference this afternoon while on a trip to Colombia:
“That was 21 years ago. I think that’s simply not true.
“I made many, many trips, and had many, many meetings with the Sandinistas and other leaders of central America. There is no, nothing ever — I must say I did not admire the Sandinistas very much. . .”
A reputation that is almost entirely contrived. Funny how having a temper was seen as a fine quality for other popular leaders like FDR, MacArthur, Truman, JFK and Johnson, just to name a few, but is now suddenly a horrible trait.
So Thad Cochran, bless his enormous ego and barely existant political stature, thinks it’s important now to tell the media about something that he supposedly witnessed John McCain do over 20 years ago? I wouldn’t question the motive or timing of that at all.
The unasked question however is this: Would we prefer as President someone who 20 years ago felt compelled to directly confont a representative of a smarmy, murderous dictatorship and who has since compiled decades of real foreign policy experience, or do we want someone who’s sole claim to fame was as a marginally effective “community organizer” who even today has virtually no experience doing anything other than running for public office?