McCain would never have made Admiral - that's just a political story to support his Presidential run

A recent New York Times article claims that John McCain was offered an Admiral's star, but declined it to retire and run for Congress.

At a meeting in his Pentagon office in early 1981, Secretary of the Navy John F. Lehman told Capt. John S. McCain III that he was about to attain his life ambition: becoming an admiral. [Snip]

With Mr. Tower’s [conservative Texas Senator John tower]encouragement, Mr. McCain declined the prospect of his first admiral’s star to make a run for Congress, saying that he could “do more good there,” Mr. Lehman recalled.

The story is, however, sourced to John Lehman, who was Secretary of the Navy for only the last two months before McCain retired. John Lehman is an adviser to McCain's Presidential campaign, and there are no earlier reports that anything like this event ever occurred. Also, this story contradicts all earlier stories about the reasons for McCain's retirement from the Navy, including those told by McCain.

Why should such a conversation with the Secretary of the Navy have occurred? Such a conversation with a Captain being considered for promotion to Admiral would be highly unlikely, even unethical. It is also unlikely that the Secretary of the Navy would extend such an offer, since the Secretary of the Navy is not part of the Admiral selection process. The approval process, yes, but not the selection process. Potential Admirals are selected by other Admirals. To make the story even more unlikely, the supposed offer is said to have occurred only two years after McCain was promoted to Captain. Such a very short period of time between promotion to Captain and promotion to Admiral would have been an unprecedented.

Jeffrey Klein has this to say about McCain's prospects for promotion to Admiral:

All of the evidence, indications and comments that the New York Times published a flattering lie about McCain's career on its front page are easy for John McCain to refute. All he needs to do is sign Standard Form 180, which authorizes the Navy to send an undeleted copy of McCain's naval file to news organizations. A long paper trail about McCain's pending promotion to admiral would be prominent in his file. To date, McCain's advisers have released snippets from his file, but under constrained viewing circumstances. There's no reason McCain's full file shouldn't be released immediately. There's also a recent precedent for McCain signing the simple form that leads to full disclosure: Senator John Kerry signed the 180 waiver, which made his entire naval file public.

The Navy may claim that it already released McCain's record to the Associated Press on May 7, 2008 in response to the AP's Freedom of Information Act request. But the McCain file the Navy released contained 19 pages -- a two-page overview and 17 pages detailing Awards and Decorations. Each of these 17 pages is stamped with a number. These numbers range from 0069 to 0636. When arranged in ascending order, they precisely track the chronology of McCain's career. It seems reasonable to ask the Navy whether there are at least 636 pages in McCain's file, of which 617 weren't released to the Associated Press.

Some of the unreleased pages in McCain's Navy file may not reflect well upon his qualifications for the presidency. From day one in the Navy, McCain screwed-up again and again, only to be forgiven because his father and grandfather were four-star admirals. McCain's sense of entitlement to privileged treatment bears an eerie resemblance to George W. Bush's.

Despite graduating in the bottom 1 percent of his Annapolis class, McCain was offered the most sought-after Navy assignment -- to become an aircraft carrier pilot. According to military historian John Karaagac, "'the Airdales,' the air wing of the Navy, acted and still do, as if unrivaled atop the naval pyramid. They acted as if they owned, not only the Navy, but the entire swath of blue water on the earth's surface." The most accomplished midshipmen compete furiously for the few carrier pilot openings. After four abysmal academic years at Annapolis distinguished only by his misdeeds and malfeasance, no one with a record resembling McCain's would have been offered such a prized career path. The justification for this and subsequent plum assignments should be documented in McCain's naval file.

In short, the May 29th New York Times article has to be considered as nothing more than a political puff piece, a myth created three decades after the fact in order to bolster McCain's current run for President.

If there is any truth to the May 29th story, all McCain has to do is authorize the Navy to release his naval records to the Press as John Kerry did. Any selection proceedings that had been undertaken would appear all over the records.

Don't hold your breath.