Presidential campaigns vie for vets’ vote

Presidential campaigns vie for vets’ vote

By Matthew Brown - The Associated Press
Posted : Sunday Aug 31, 2008 17:21:45 EDT

BILLINGS, Mont. — Retired paratrooper Vernon Kinn liked what he heard when Sen. Barack Obama came to Montana recently with a promise to build more health centers for veterans. That could end the 500-mile, roundtrip drive Kinn faces each time he needs a new hearing aid from Montana’s only VA hospital.

But Kinn, who served two years in Vietnam, was unsure he could turn his back on Republican Sen. John McCain, a former Navy pilot who spent five years in a Vietnamese prisoner of war camp.

“It’s going to take a lot of thought. After the war, nobody liked us. They spit on us. Now we’ve got to stick together,” said Kinn, 62.

As the Democratic and Republican presidential campaigns vie for support from the nation’s 25 million veterans, Kinn illustrates the mixed feelings among some in a crucial voting bloc.
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Kinn has the right to view McCain anyway he wants but in the process, he is giving McCain loyalty he does not deserve because he has not returned it to his fellow veterans. His support of Vietnam veterans and all veterans is just not there but he fully expects to receive it from them while he is always reminding them, after all, he was a POW. What he has done against them, well that shouldn't matter. What he wants to do to them instead of for them, that doesn't seem to matter either, in McCain's mind anyway. The veterans service organizations have failed him for his votes, not for the fact he is a veteran. The problem is, we should expect a lot more out of him because he is a veteran.