Back Channels: A soldier makes a case for McCain

Since 2001, Bill Wade has been deployed nine times.

He had three tours of varying lengths in Iraq and also has served elsewhere in the Middle East, in Afghanistan, and in parts of Africa.

Yet it was the Army captain's last 18 months on active duty that solidified his support for John McCain.

Wade, now 33, was a congressional liaison officer for a year and a half that spanned the shift from Republican to Democratic control of Congress after the 2006 election. He wasn't impressed with what he saw.

"There really is not much difference in their tactics and their methodologies," Wade said. "Both parties were just fundamentally [broken] and beholden to their special interests.

"By the time the surge idea came up, Iraq was a horribly mismanaged war. All the politicians were running for the exit. McCain was the guy that said, 'Look, this is broke and we need to fix it.'

"He stood up to the Bush White House and Secretary [of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld, and I saw that as a true act of courage on his part. . . . And the surge has proven to be a tremendous success."

Wade was being interviewed on a chilly Friday morning in Scranton, just outside the McCain Victory office on Lackawanna Avenue. It was the first stop on a two-day bus tour that had Wade and three other veterans out to encourage McCain supporters and win over Democrats and independents from the anthracite coal regions to the southeast.

Three of the four vets have strong Democratic roots. Retired Air Force Col. George "Bud" Day, 83, a Medal of Honor recipient and McCain's first cellmate in Vietnam, recalls coming home from World War II and working for Harry S. Truman's reelection. Gina Savini, 45, is a South Philly native, the daughter of an Italian immigrant and, on her mother's side, the fourth generation to serve in the U.S. Navy. She calls her family "very Democratic," though many of its members, including Savini, have changed their registration.

Wade refers to himself as an "Irish-Catholic Democrat and McCain supporter." The leadership and courage the former POW has shown, both in the military and while serving in Congress, make him an easy sell for Wade, who is now a reservist and small-business owner. But Democratic leaders helped push Wade away, too.

"The Democratic Party I grew up in is not the same party of Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi," Wade said. "When Harry Reid said the war was lost, that was a kick in the stomach to me." Reid made those remarks while Wade was working in the Capitol.

"What I learned from that experience down in D.C. was that we don't have leaders in Washington. We have politicians," Wade said. "A politician will say whatever he has to say to get reelected, and McCain has proven time and time again that he is a profile in courage.

"McCain stood up to the Bush White House on detainee torture, on Guantanamo Bay. He stood up against his own party and was berated, and imploded his presidential campaign over immigration reform. Whether you agree with him or not, he took a stand.

"Where has Barack Obama ever stood up for anything? Where has he stood against his party?"

Wade is as ready for change as anyone, but not in just any direction.

"Change is a beautiful thing, but what's behind the word change? What are we getting from Obama? It seems to be unknown. At least with John McCain, his life has been an open book. You know where he comes from, you know where he stands, you know where he's going."

Wade questions whether "career politicians" such as Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr. can alter the status quo.

"As a small-town small-business owner, I can't relate to a Harvard lawyer or a career politician. I just don't see anything that they bring to the table that is going to change Washington."

Wade worries about Biden's recent comments about Obama's inexperience inviting a crisis. He drew a parallel to Nikita Khrushchev's early assessment of President John F. Kennedy.

"Khrushchev took away from that summit that this guy's weak, he's young, he's inexperienced. And it emboldened the Soviets to put nuclear missiles in Cuba.

"At that time, John McCain was sitting on the USS Enterprise in a cockpit worrying that we were walking into a nuclear war. You can't buy that kind of experience."

A lack of experience in the White House, Wade believes, led to the mismanagement of the Iraq war. He doesn't want to see Americans make the same mistake twice.

"Obama's a decent family man and a beautiful orator," Wade said. But with two wars to win and an economic crisis to overcome, "I don't think it's time to roll the dice."