The Duck of Minerva

Nicely Done, Senator.

by Charli Carpenter

5 November 2008, 0424 EST

John McCain gave a gracious concession speech that did not pander at all to the sentiments of his disappointed audience. Instead, shrugging off repeated boos from his supporters, he spoke firmly about race, about bipartisanship, and about the responsibility of all Americans to support the person who will now be our President. In other words he joined Barack Obama in calling on the best parts of us as citizens.

This was the McCain I used to respect, the McCain I lobbied for during the Republican primary.

Charli Carpenter is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. She is the author of 'Innocent Women and Children': Gender, Norms and the Protection of Civilians (Ashgate, 2006), Forgetting Children Born of War: Setting the Human Rights
Agenda in Bosnia and Beyond (Columbia, 2010), and ‘Lost’ Causes: Agenda-Setting in Global Issue Networks and the Shaping of Human Security (Cornell, 2014). Her main research interests include national security ethics, the protection of civilians, the laws of war, global agenda-setting, gender and political violence, humanitarian affairs, the role of information technology in human security, and the gap between intentions and outcomes among advocates of human security.

0 Comments