At the conclusion of Friday night's debate between Senators McCain and Obama some TV commentators took note of the lack of memorable moments and sound bites. Now, one exchange from that debate is gaining attention: The candidates' mentions of memorial bracelets worn to honor two fallen soldiers in Iraq.
First it was John McCain who spoke of the bracelet he wore, bearing the name of Matthew Stanley, an Army soldier killed in late 2006 by a roadside bomb. McCain said:
I had a town hall meeting in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, and a woman
stood up and she said, 'Senator McCain, I want you to do me the honor
of wearing a bracelet with my son's name on it.'" McCain recalled. "He
was 22 years old and he was killed in combat outside of Baghdad,
Matthew Stanley, before Christmas last year. This was last August, a
year ago. And I said, 'I will -- I will wear his bracelet with
honor.'...And then she said, 'But, Senator McCain, I want you to do
everything -- promise me one thing, that you'll do everything in your
power to make sure that my son's death was not in vain.'
Soon it was Obama's turn to speak. As he directed his answer to debate moderator Jim Lehrer, Obama stammered briefly as he looked to his bracelet before reading the name of Ryan Jopek, a soldier killed by a roadside bomb in August 2006.
I've got a bracelet, too,
from Sergeant, uh, from the mother of Sergeant Ryan David Jopek, given
to me in Green Bay. She asked me, 'Can you please make sure another
mother is not going through what I'm going through?'
The ensuing controversy stemmed from earlier reports that Ryan's mother, Tracy Jopek, had e-mailed the Obama campaign asking for him not to mention the bracelet in public forums. Jopek told the Associated Press she never received a response, but that until last Friday she hadn't heard her son's name mentioned by the candidate. The AP reports:
A few days after offering it to the Illinois Democrat, Jopek, of
Merrill in north-central Wisconsin, had a change of heart. She realized
it could be interpreted as a protest against the war, a statement that
made her uncomfortable because other military families who suffered
losses still supported the conflict.
“I am a mother, a mother who
lost her son. It’s hard to know what’s right, what’s wrong about this
war. Very hard,” she said. “And I know there are a lot of families who
lost loved ones.”
Yesterday's New York Post took a further look at the issue and quoted an interview Ryan Jopek's father gave on Wisconsin Public Radio earlier this year. Brian Jopek, who is divorced from Ryan's mother, had this to say:
"She has turned down any subsequent interviews with the media
because she just didn't want it to get turned into something that it
wasn't. She had told me in an e-mail that she had asked, actually asked
Mr. Obama to not wear the bracelet any more at any of his public
appearances," he said.
"But, the other night, I was watching the news, and he was on, uh,
speaking somewhere, and he was still wearing it on his right wrist. I
could see it on his right wrist. So . . . that's a choice that he
continues to wear it despite Tracy asking him not to."
In response to questioning from Fox News anchors about the appropriateness of Obama's mention of Ryan Jopek, senior Obama campaign adviser Robert Gibbs accused the interviewers of making up facts during a short and heated exchange.
The National Review's campaign blog saw Obama's actions as "revealing" if indeed he'd gotten the message about Tracy Jopek's wishes:
It seemed on Friday night we had a Bush-looks-at-his-watch moment when
Obama had to double check his bracelet to recall Sgt. Jopek's name. If,
indeed, six months ago the Jopek family made clear that they wished
Obama to not wear the bracelet further (and indeed, stop citing him on
the trail), then Obama's bracelet comment may be a gaffe of historical
proportions...I think both aspects of Obama's
reference to his own bracelet — his seeming unfamiliarity with Jopek's
name and this report of ignoring the family's wishes — are a bit more revealing about the candidate.)
Despite such criticisms the Associated Press reported yesterday that Tracy Jopek was "ecsatic" about Obama's mention of his bracelet during the debate. As the AP reports:
Jopek criticized Internet reports suggesting Obama, D-Ill., exploited her son for political purposes.
"I don't understand how people can take that and turn it into some garbage on the Internet," she said.
Jopek
acknowledged e-mailing the Obama campaign in February asking that the
presidential candidate not mention her son in speeches or debates. But
she said Obama's mention on Friday was appropriate because he was
responding after Sen. John McCain, the Republican nominee, said a
soldier's mother gave him a bracelet.
So, maybe Jopek's latest statements to the AP settles the whole thing as it applies to the context of the debate. The question that people don't seem to be asking, however, is whether it was appropriate for both candidates to even mention the bracelets at all. If indeed they were wearing the bracelets as a sign of personal remembrance, why feel the need to point it out on national television? The answer is pretty obvious, but is that enough to make it OK?
