Word: honoring
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Honor and Its Limits The unanswerable question is whether McCain's rough campaign will eventually violate his own code of honor; he adores boxing, but he considers ultimate fighting a sickening national disgrace. Most Americans see McCain's focus on honor as a commendable commitment to principle; the danger comes when that insistence turns into dogma or a belief in one's monopoly on virtue. Asked whether he would look back at his tactics with Confederate-flag-style regrets, McCain at first refused to answer. When pressed, he gave the kind of canned, these-are-my-talking-points response...
...make him wary of U.S. involvement abroad. He opposed Reagan's deployment in Lebanon and peppered the Clinton White House with questions about military interventions in Haiti, Somalia and the Balkans. But as he began his presidential quest in the late 1990s, McCain began to argue that America's honor required much stronger responses to tyrants, and he attacked the Clintonites for refusing to send combat troops to the Balkans and for appeasing a retrograde regime in North Korea. "I understand the instinct to protect national honor, but [North Korea] has got 800,000 men 40 miles from downtown Seoul...
...McCain ran for President as a reformer, vowing to clean up Washington and restore honor to the presidency after eight years of Bill Clinton. But the wheels came off the Straight Talk Express right after New Hampshire, when he impulsively decided to pull all his negative ads off the air even though George W. Bush supporters were spreading vicious lies about him. Bush soon co-opted McCain's message - he too vowed to be "a reformer with results" - all the way to the White House. And McCain spent the next several years picking fights with Bush and the GOP establishment...
...policy reversals and some standard-issue political attacks are small concessions to expedience, considering the stakes of the election. The race may turn on economic matters - and McCain seems to be learning how to talk about gas and housing prices with passion - but his driving issue is America's honor in a dangerous world. He has framed his support for the surge in Iraq - and Obama's unrepentant opposition - as proof of his superior qualifications to be Commander in Chief and of Obama's willingness to put politics before country...
Though McCain is quick to say he considers his opponent a "patriot," McCain and his aides now view Obama with the same level of contempt they once reserved for tobacco-company executives, corrupt lawmakers and George W. Bush. They have convinced themselves that Obama is not honorable, that he does not love his country as much as himself. That makes it easier to justify doing whatever is necessary to defeat him - especially if it's done in the pursuit of honor...