LIKE IT IS

One of my favorite Hollywood stories was the time some director or some such wanted or needed to know Cary Grant’s age so he sent the actor a wire: “How old Cary Grant?”

He got a wire in reply that read, “Old Cary Grant fine. How old you?”

That’s about what John McCain is going to have to come to now that Hillary is like King Kong on the Empire State Building with airplanes diving at her from all sides with the ultimate finish, the equivalent of Robert Armstrong walking up to her lifeless candidacy and saying, “Oh no, the airplanes didn’t get her.” ‘Twas the beauty of the Oval Office that killed the beast.”

Barack Obama, the anti-Bush crowd and the Obama-smitten media having written Hillary off can now turn their attention to the destruction of a man whose warts are serious but few.

Barack Obama will have to be careful to show respect to an opponent who is a genuine war hero in a country that treasures its men and women in uniform, especially one who refused to leave prison camp when his captors offered to release him because he felt the son and grandson of admirals shouldn’t get special treatment. He was imprisoned and tortured for five years.

John McCain will have to tiptoe around the race question, just as I did when Kitsap County got its first black legislator. The lawmaker was bright and smart but lazy. Bright and smart I could say, but hold off on the lazy. That’s not acceptable about blacks. He also had a beautiful white wife, something I never mentioned throughout the campaign which he won, thus earning me furious letters from some of his new constituents demanding to know why I kept this “secret.”

It wasn’t relevant and it wasn’t a secret, I responded. You could have found out yourself by attending any of the meetings where the couple appeared.

Where the attacks on McCain will come from are in his apparent lack of interest in managing the economy and his age, 71. He can resolve the economy question by picking a Vice President with that talent. I commend Mitt Romney to him.

As for his age, age signifies experience. When my mother moved out on Pioneer Road near Seabeck during World War II, she was the oldest mother living there with the most kids, eight still at home of nine she arrived with. A 10th was born later. Yet when any of the other mothers had a problem with food or illness or anything, who did they call on for advice? My mother. My career Army father and one brother were off at the war.

Kids all up an down the road waited in my mother’s living room for the school bus. The library bookmobile parked in my mother’s yard on its weekly visits. When the mothers gave in to their daughters’ desire for a 4-H club, who did they persuade to run it? My mother. For years, my mother milked the neighbors cow when the husband was going to be away because she and his wife knew that if the wife ever learned how to do it, she’d by doing it for the rest of her life. So my mother milked that cow on her own.

Hillary made a big deal out of a 3 a.m. telephone call to the White House that she felt she could answer better than Barack whatever it entailed because she had experience.

Well, there are things about McCain that I am not thrilled about, but none of them has to do with lack of experience. At 71, he has tons of it. He’ll be an admirable commander in chief. He’ll end the war without bending the knee to the likes of Ahmadinejad. It’ll do Barack Obama good to spend the next few years getting more experience so he’ll be ready for his turn in 2012 when even I might vote for him. When he’s got experience.

Adele Ferguson can be reached at P.O. Box 69, Hansville, WA 98340.