"Up, Simba" continued

One thing that stood out to me about Wallace was his description of the Chris Duren incident. He first seems to have a positive view on how McCain reacts to Mrs. Duren, emphasizing that McCain didn't slam Bush for this phone call but instead apologized. Then he describes McCain's seemingly watery eyes and quick exit without his usual sign off catch phrase as dramatic, and from this point on questions McCain's true motives for his actions. How he used "dramatic" had a negative connotation when I read it. I thought about drama queens and this makes me believe that Wallace saw McCain like a drama queen and drama queens are definitely bad. His whole rant about McCain's motives explored many different possibilities, some good and some bad. This made me confused about what to make of McCain because all of Wallace's rhetorical questions (which some suggested that McCain was being sincere and others that it was all a political ploy) could be answered as yes. So to me, I could see McCain as being sincere but I could also see him as being manipulative since this was all occurring during the back-and-forth negative ads. I still have no clear opinion on this.

I didn't really know much about McCain before this essay. I just knew that he's a politician and my opinion of politicians aren't that positive, although I'm sure some of them really do care. Reading about McCain's service and experiences in Vietnam gave me a new perspective of him. I'm not very interested in politics and I don't really keep up with it, so it was my first time learning about the details of his confinement. I now have more respect for him and I see him more as a genuine person who might be one of those caring politicians. I also feel sympathy towards him because Wallace's account of his campaign seemed to require lots of effort and he ended up losing this and also the more recent presidential campaign. It must've been really disappointing to lose two major elections like that after months of planning and traveling and making speeches.