Elizabeth George

I love the Inspector Lynley mystery series -- in print and on Masterpiece Theater. Elizabeth George is a wonderful writer, and her depiction of Scotland Yard Inspector Peter Lynley, a British aristocrat working in a decidedly non-aristocratic position, seems so believable.

So it came as a great surprise to me to learn that Elizabeth George is American, born in Ohio and raised in the San Francisco Bay area. And it comes as even more of a surprise to find that she is writing, just as eloquently and well-reasonedly, on the upcoming election. George has done a series of pieces on the various issues --healthcare, the war, taxes, the economy, etc. In them she lays out her personal positions and their rationale just as convincingly as ever she wrote about Lynley.

I encourage you to take a look. Read them all or read a few - she's really done some homework. Here's an excerpt about McCain to get you going...

"What then, historically, are the Senator’s achievements?

The Senator graduated from an all-white, all-boys Episcopal boarding school, before going on to Annapolis where his father and his grandfather had both studied. He graduated after what he himself described as “a four-year course of insubordination”, with a record of accomplishment that put him fifth from the bottom of his class. There were 894 graduates above him.

Some people, it’s true, get off to a slow start in life, and while I prefer in my Presidential candidates someone who has taken his studies at least somewhat seriously, I can see that perhaps the enthusiasm of youth might have led the future Senator to be somewhat slack in his studies. It could be argued that his naval career illustrates what his scholastic career does not:

An examination of the Senator’s naval career exposes the fact that he crashed two jet fighters in advance of the one that was shot down over Hanoi, and he crashed one single-engine ultralight afterwards. That he crashed three planes is certainly not a crime, but it is noteworthy as a remarkable situation because fighter pilots generally are removed from flying upon crashing their first plane. The fact that the Senator was not removed could be attributed to his skill behind the controls of an aircraft, or it could be attributed to the fact that his father was a high-ranking naval officer at the time. I cannot say which is actually the case.

It might be argued that his achievement surviving as a prisoner of war makes him heroic, and certainly we will come to that. But for the moment, moving into his other achievements, there might be something else suitable for emulation. He’s had a long career in the House and the Senate, but four of his most recent positions bear a little scrutiny, I think: his opposition to the new GI Bill, which would have increased benefits to veterans; his vote against supplying Iraqi troops with adequate body armor; his vote to repeal the federal minimum wage; and his position that sought to deprive government healthcare to 3.5 million children in need. If we look to the past, we can see that he voted twice against campaign finance reform; repeatedly voted to deregulate organizations currently in difficulties in Wall Street; and even today he sites as his “biggest legislative victory” a bill in 1989 that abolished catastrophic health insurance for seniors."

--- from "On Heroism" by Elizabeth George