John McCain is definitely a man of courage. Not only did he make it through five years in a Vietnamese prison camp, he faced Dubya in a primary battle, which was as rough a go as the Hanoi Hilton. Guiliani, sure; he divorced his wife, took up with his mistress in public, and ended up rooming with a gay couple (word has it that NBC is filming a pilot episode of a sitcom update of Three’s Company based on this premise…), and still has the guts to ally himself with the party of hypocritical moral values and gay-bashing. But Schwarzenegger a hero? Huh? Because he didn’t whimper during his last bikini wax?

Brooks leaves himself wide open with his final comment:

The coming weeks will be so tough because the essential contest – of which the Swift boat stuff was only a start – will be over who really has courage, who really has resolve, and who is just a fraud with a manly bearing.

For the record, David, John Kerry did not stride across the deck of the USS Lincoln with a sock in his jock and declare “Mission Accomplished!” John Kerry did not say “Osama bin Laden dead or alive” and six months later say “Never mind…” John Kerry did not tell the Iraqi insurgents to “Bring ’em on!” and paint a target on the back of every American soldier. And John Kerry did not get his cronies in Massachusetts to come up with a planeload of Texas Air National Guardsmen to say that George W. Bush did not earn the fillings in his teeth. So, David, don’t get cute about a “fraud with manly bearing” unless you’re willing to put your man to the same test.