“Because we obviously don’t want a President who can’t be held to account for any potential failings or weaknesses.”

Actually, all the evidence is that a president who can’t be held accountable is exactly what we crave.

Look at the small things. You yourself capitalize “President”, even when referring to the office in the abstract, and not as the title of a particular president, where accepted usage does capitalize, as in “President Bush”. Why?

Look at the big things. I have never heard anyone, even people who profess concern over an “imperial presidency”, express anything but admiration for the sign Harry Truman had on his desk while he was president, “The Buck Stops Here.” This is a truly astonishing statement, if judged either by what our constitution says about the duties of the president to faithfully execute the will of Congress, or if judged more generally by the minimum subordination to the law that would make the president even a constitutional monarch (forget chief magistrate of a republic!), rather than an elected dictator. But we will brook no second-guessing of the president, no constraints on him by any other force in our political universe, no stoppage of the buck anywhere but on his (His?) desk. It’s all well and good for Justice Coke to have told James II in 1688 that he was beneath God and the Law. James II was just the King of England. But if he had tried that in 2008 with the US President, by God, we’ld have sent him to Guantanamo for hating America so much as to question our Sovereign.

Ha.

If he has had extensive therapy it ought to be widely known. He should be ready to announce that his mental problems are cured.

So it’s important that he get therapy.

Why not just accept that he’s a stupid asshole you don’t like?

OK, I was looking for a way to point out that McCain truly needs therapy without being too insulting to him.

McCain really did serve as a vietnamese POW. He says he really did get tortured. It had to be as bad for PTSD as a year or two in the infantry. Not like being Donald Trump. Of course, it’s possible McCain did get the treatment he needed and I didn’t hear about it. Perhaps after treatment he developed a reputation as a well-balanced sane human and I didn’t hear about that.

Some of his fellow POWs say that he cooperated with the north vietnamese and that’s why he got special treatment and the offer to go home early, not because his father was a top admiral. They say the reason he was kept separate from the other POWs was that the vietnamese needed to protect him from them. But they weren’t really in a position to know such things. False rumors get started in POW camps, often about anybody who’s unpopular.

It wouldn’t work to try to swiftboat him about it. The people who think a man’s honor should keep him from breaking under torture are the sort who were really mad at Kerry for coming out against the war, for working for the enemy. McCain swears he was true to the flag and that’s good enough for them. Similarly if the north vietnamese records have something interesting—who are you going to believe, John McCain or a bunch of north vietnamese?

Apart from such things, though, there’s a chance McCain will be the US president. So it’s vitally important that he get therapy. This is likely not to be a workable campaign issue either, because the sort of people who’d vote for McCain don’t believe in therapy. But it’s important for the nation.

Donald Trump did a lot better than my dad, who was a teacher his whole life.
Any clearer?

People in upscale parts of Biloxi did a lot better than people in the lower 9th Ward when Katrina hit.

See, because if it’s to McCain’s credit, then it’s to the other vets’ discredit.
And we don’t want to be saying that, do we?
Or listening to it.
Because it is a lame thought, and woefully untrue.

McCain did a lot better than the various vietnam vets who wound up divorced and homeless. That’s to his credit. But he needs therapy.

I agree that Bill Clinton also needed therapy without being in warfare, but that’s a different issue. We mostly lucked out with Clinton and he isn’t running for President at the moment.

Not only has McCain never been diagnosed with PTSD, his subsequent post-POW career in the Navy easily belies the fact. Anger management issues? What about the well publicized tirades of Bill Clinton? None of you lefties seemed to worry about the itchy trigger finger syndrome then, did you? Go ahead, hit Lexis-Nexus and view the “countless” articles which voiced such concerns alongside each mention of Clinton’s volcanic temper. In the words of Daffy Duck: “It is to laugh!”