OK, I went a little long on the “About” section, need to work on that. But about James Stockdale:
I never met him and I sure as hell would never have voted for him, even if the top of the ticket weren’t H. Ross Perot. Still there was something so endearing about him and bordering on compelling to me…I sensed that he and I had something in common, something to do with the ability to be accidentally adorable when we found ourselves way in over our respective heads and way out of our respective leagues. It was confusing though to feel something like familiar affection for a conservative war guy.
Vice Admiral James Bond Stockdale (yes, his middle name was really Bond, James Bond) died of Alzheimer’s disease in 2005. I’m not drawing any ridiculous parallels between his neurological situation and my own. For the record I feel pretty silly about the time I’ve wasted on a pity party cuz I didn’t know I was learning-disabled until my mid-fifties. My problems pale in the face of Alzheimer’s and related dementias. I am grateful every day that what I “have” is not progressive and, unless a co-morbidity gets way out of hand, not fatal.
I’m not saying Stockdale had NLD or anything like it and if he did, I don’t know about it. But he obviously functioned really well when he was in the US Navy which for him was an excellent fit. In fact in his early career he was incredibly accomplished but when he tried a new field of endeavor he pretty much sucked. Out loud. In front of America and the world, and I’ll bet he never knew why. Sound familiar, NLD’er’s? For whatever reason(s) the guy was an amazing “specialist” who looked like a useless, incompetent old fool when he tried to be a “generalist” and get into politics, which was a terrible fit. Phase One of his career ended the minute before he asked those two questions and Phase Two started the minute after.
This was a guy who earned a Medal of Honor, three Navy Distinguished Service Medals, four Silver Stars, a Legion of Merit with Combat “V” decoration, two Distinguished Flying Crosses, two Bronze Stars with Combat “V”, an Air Medal, two Purple Hearts, a Prisoner of War Medal and a goddam partridge in a pear tree for all I know. I was never a military-industrial complex kind of gal but even I know this is a big deal. He was a POW in Viet Nam for seven years and survived torture and beatings and extensive injuries without exploiting the experience endlessly like a certain other more successful and less deserving politician of similar experience. He was president of the Citadel and advocated for other POW/MIA’s. He is among the most decorated and distinguished officers in the US Navy EVER, there are buildings and a ship named for him and and a statue somewhere, he wrote eight books (seven of them BEFORE the unfortunate decision to try politics) and had a graduate degree in International Relations and Marxist Theory. (!) All this and more and he is remembered for, and as, a punchline.
After he and Perot lost the election in 1992 not much happened except a whole lotta downhill clinically. Here’s what he had to say to Jim Lehrer about That Moment, via Wikipiedia:
It was terribly frustrating because I remember I started with, “Who am I? Why am I here?” and I never got back to that because there was never an opportunity for me to explain my life to people. It was so different from Quayle and Gore. The four years in solitary confinement in Vietnam, seven-and-a-half years in prisons, drop the first bomb that started the … American bombing raid in the North Vietnam. We blew the oil storage tanks of them off the map. And I never—I couldn’t approach—I don’t say it just to brag, but, I mean, my sensitivities are completely different.
If there is such a thing as resting in peace I hope that James Stockdale is doing it.
