Introduction

I knew a man who slept through the night. He had nearly reached the end. Wounded, starved, delirious, and exhausted, he commanded himself to consider his situation carefully. The sights and sounds of salvation beckoned him, and must have quickened the impulse to run towards it. In the last few days of his journey, he worried that he was losing his mind. He was slipping in and out of consciousness. He had caught himself arguing loudly with a Sunday school teacher from his childhood. Thanking God for getting him this far, he briefly mistook his own voice for another American's. Now, he had to summon all that remained of his wits, and his formidable courage, to make the most fateful decision of his life: to make one last dash now or to wait for daylight. His choice might win a hero's welcome or indefinite pain and suffering; the blessings of a wife and children or the cruelty of an angered enemy; freedom or captivity; life or death.

He chose to wait.

Two weeks earlier, on August 26, 1967, Air Force Major George "Bud" Day had been shot down and captured north of Vietnam's DMZ. He had broken his right arm in three places, painfully sprained his knee, and battered his face when he ejected from his F-100 fighter jet. The North Vietnamese who captured him had roughly set his fractures, fashioned a crude cast for his broken arm, bound his ankles together, and put him in a hole in the ground until he could be transported north. Tough, old bird that he is, Bud decided to go home instead. Late in his first night of captivity, he freed himself from the ropes, crawled out of his hole, and quietly began his trek to the other side of the DMZ, and an American airfield, twenty miles or so to the south.

Over the next two weeks, he traveled at night and slept when he could during the day. He waded through rice paddies; dragged himself across jungle floors, climbed hills, crossed rivers, wandered in circles under dense jungle canopy, narrowly evaded re-capture, and, once, risked exposing himself to enemy fire while floating down the Ben Hai River on two pieces of bamboo. He subsisted on dew and rain water, a handful of berries now and then, and a couple of live frogs he swallowed out of desperation. He became ill, unable, at one point, to keep water in his stomach. He burned with fever. But he was tougher than most men, and braver. And he kept moving south.

Finally, near the end of the thirteenth day of his escape, he came to rest within a mile of a forward American airbase. He watched helicopters and aircraft take off and land, signaled one or two unsuccessfully, and fought the impulse to run toward his countrymen as fast as a starving, half dead man with a bum knee and a broken arm could. But he restrained himself. Given his condition and the powerful temptation posed by the prospect of imminent rescue from his miseries, his restraint strikes me almost as superhuman as was the astonishing feat of endurance and guts that brought him so close to salvation. Of course, as I would soon come to know, Bud Day is no ordinary man.

He had the presence of mind and discipline in the most trying of circumstances to weigh the risks of hurried action. He assumed that the perimeter of the airfield was mined. And he worried that in the dark, a limping, crooked, sun-darkened scarecrow of a man hastily making his way toward the base might be mistaken for someone other than an American pilot by a wary sentry with a loaded M-1 and an aversion to taking chances. So, he concluded that he would wait for daylight to make his approach, and lay down in the jungle for one last night.

It was a sound decision. It might have been the right one. The perimeter was likely mined, and he very well could have been mistaken for the enemy and fired upon. It was certainly a difficult decision, though. So much was at stake, and there were so many unknowns on which to base a truly existential decision. It was a very hard call.

He had made the decision not knowing if the day would prove him right or wrong, not knowing anything for certain. Would he be captured in the night? Would he be alive in the morning? He knew only that he had exercised the discipline necessary to make the best decision he could. Cowardice had not restrained him. Informed caution had, and courage, the courage to endure another night of terror and suffering. He was aware of his situation, its risks and rewards. He had weighed his prospects as judicially as time and circumstances allowed. And he chose well.

He had chosen well from the beginning of his odyssey to its end. When almost any other man in his condition would have rejected the idea of escape as impossible, he had risked it. Not rashly or mistakenly. He had assessed his circumstances correctly. He was not tightly bound. He was not kept in a cell, but in a shallow, underground shelter. Perhaps, because his captors had not imagined a man in his shape could manage an escape attempt, he wasn't closely guarded. He was familiar with the terrain, and knew the direction and distance to safety. He had the cover of darkness.

He believed in the mission. He had confidence in his ability to accomplish it, not an irrational confidence born of conceit. He knew he still had courage and stamina sufficient to overcome the weaknesses imposed on him by his injuries. He knew the time was right. His physical condition would decline with every day of captivity, and soon he would be taken north to prison. He did not act for himself alone, but for his family, whom he wished to return to and care for, more than he wished anything else. He was inspired by his duty to them, and to the military code that exhorted captured Americans to escape if possible. He could see it was possible, when others would have seen the contrary.

His last decision, too, was a question of timing. Was it better to risk friendly fire and tripping a mine in the dark or to risk capture on the very last night of his epic escape attempt? He made a sound, informed and hard decision that the risks of the former were greater than those of the latter. He would wait.

He had earned his freedom, fought for it, like no other man I have ever known. He should have had it.

As it turned out, he would wait nearly six years for the freedom he had nearly grasped that night. He had risen with the dawn, and made his way toward the base. In the open, several yards from the last jungle between him and safety, he was spotted by two North Vietnamese soldiers. They shouted at him to stop. He made a run for cover, and just before he reached it a bullet in his left leg brought him down. He hid in the bush as best he could. He lay still, trying not to breath or groan from the pain, his heartbeat the only perceptible sound he made, and only perceptible to him. He listened as his enemies tore madly through the jungle, shouting and firing indiscriminately. He lay still as one of them drew almost near enough to touch him, but who, for a moment, still could not see or hear him. And then he did.

They tortured him for his heroism on the long ride to Hanoi. They tortured him even more cruelly once he arrived at the dark, daunting and dangerous prison they called Hoa Lo, the "fiery furnace." Torture could change a man forever. But it didn't change him. He was as tough, as brave and as confident the day he left the place as he had been the day he had almost escaped it.

He had made a sound decision, in a crucible few people ever encounter. It had probably been the right one. But it had not worked out as he had hoped. That was his misfortune, and he was man enough to accept it without crippling regret.

As unfortunate as his capture was for Bud, it was salvation for many others. Few leaders in Vietnam's prison of war camps were as honorable, brave and inspiring as he was. The courage of his heroic escape attempt was recognized by a Medal of Honor, which was also given him for the trials he so bravely endured on behalf of all of us in the long years ahead. For included in the credit he can always claim, is my life. But for Bud Day, and his misfortunate, I do not I think I would have ever left the prison that he had tried so hard to escape. But that is another story.

I tell this part of Bud's story because it involved such a fateful and admirable decision. In the time I shared his circumstances, I would see him make other, hard, and, sometimes, life-risking decisions, and in my judgment they were usually the right ones. But I think this one, a decision with everything on the line, revealed all the attributes I most respect about good decision making and exemplary decision makers that it is one of the rare instances when the assessment of the quality of the decision doesn't depend most, or even much, on its outcome. The proof isn't always in the pudding, but it is often enough that we have come to accept the maxim has gospel. Not in this case. Part of the reason for that is we can never know for certain whether, had he chosen the other course, he would be alive to tell the tale. But more, it is because in the direst circumstances, suffering physically and mentally from extraordinary hardships, with no counsel, no assistance of any kind, utterly on his own, with his emotions in tumult, he managed to think clearly and carefully about his choice, and made a sober, considered judgment, committed himself to it, checked what was surely a hyper-charged survival instinct and went to sleep.

He was as aware of his situation, the environment in which he must make a decision, as was possible. He knew the terrain. He knew how to navigate it. He understood the risks and the opportunities. He believed he had the necessary resources—in this case, his own matchless fortitude—to achieve his objective. He had taken the measure of his enemy, understood as much as he could about their methods and resources. He appreciated the potential for catastrophic mishap when an eighteen-year-old sentry is startled in the dark.

He knew when the right moment was at hand to slip his ropes, having sensed that it would soon pass. And when he made his final decision, he sensed that the moment for his last effort had not arrived.

He had foresight. He could see the possible where most others would have seen disaster and hopelessness.

His foresight, as foresight often is, was rooted in his confidence. Conceit is often mistaken for confidence. His was like an instinct honed from years of experience and preparation. He was sure of himself, but it wasn't vanity that made him so. He trusted his strength and practical sense. It had always served him well. Vietnam was his third war, and this hadn't been his first existential decision. He compensated for his weakness, his desperation. And he trusted he had the courage to stick it out.

He acted with humility. He did not risk everything to avoid imprisonment and worse for his own sake, but for the family he loved well, and who needed him.

And, finally, he had been inspired, beckoned by duty, and an officer's sense of honor.

I have long believed these—awareness, timing, foresight, confidence, humility and inspiration—are the qualities typically represented in the best decisions, and in the character of those who make them. What follows is a tribute to those qualities, and to people who possessed them in character and action.

The stories we recount were chosen because they exemplified one of these qualities. As will be obvious to the reader, most of these decisions are distinguished by more than one quality. Indeed, as did Bud Day's decision, many of those that follow posses all the aforementioned attributes. But our purpose with each story is to illuminate best just one, and to learn by example, if not how to make a difficult decision, how to judge one after, and, possibly, hopefully, before it is made, to see if it can claim these qualities, which seem common to the best decisions.

We have not sought to provide a procedural formula for difficult decision-making, such as Benjamin Franklin offered his friend, the British scientist, Joseph Priestly. Write two columns on a piece of paper, he advised, listing the pros and the cons of a given course of action, and add to each over time as they occur to you. Often the hardest decisions must be made without benefit of time to examine every possible consequence. Ideally, if we foresee such a decision will eventually confront us, we can undertake an elaborate analysis before the moment arrives for action. But that is not always possible. Sometimes we must grasp the situation immediately or in a very short period of time, which allows only the most cursory review of our options and their potential outcomes.

We must prepare ourselves, of course, for such eventualities, by learning all we can about the situations in which we bear responsibility for acting. We must understand, to the best of our ability, the people involved, with us and against us, in any decision we make. We must know ourselves, our own strengths and weaknesses, and how best to employ the former and compensate for the latter. We must remember, almost instinctively, the lessons we have learned from earlier decisions, those that succeeded and those that did not. And we must learn by habit to act when necessary, no matter how challenging the obstacles, and to wait when caution is appropriate, no matter how urgently we feel the need to proceed.

But procedures for decision-making will always vary, depending on the circumstances and qualities of its author. We all have our idiosyncrasies, the values, habits, instincts, cares and superstitions—accumulated throughout our lives—that influence our judgment. When I assess a decision, I want to know all I can about the character of the decision maker before I examine the properties of the decision, its outcome or how it was arrived at. When General Eisenhower alone gave the signal to launch the invasion of Europe, he wrote a statement claiming all blame should it fail, and giving all credit for success to the courage and resourcefulness of his soldiers. That tells us a lot about Eisenhower's character, and offers evidence of the quality of his decision that is as important as the factors or procedures he used to make it. That he accepted his enormous responsibility so honorably, and with such gravity, suggests that it was made with great care and with humility. It seems obvious that who decides is as important as how it is decided.

In the end, it is always character that most moves history, for good or ill.

I cannot offer a several step, how-to-make-a-great-decision plan for beginners. I would be hard pressed to provide cogent instruction in how I make decisions. The ways I have arrived at important decisions, both right and wrong decisions, have varied over the years. Hopefully, it has amounted to a progressively better approach. But I have blundered often enough in recent years to foreswear such a boast.

My life has been blessed with the good company of many people of exemplary character and sound reason, who made hard calls, with courage and humility. I have learned from their example. If I fail to heed those lessons when making an important decision, the fault doesn't lie with the stars, but with my own deficiencies. When I have done well it is because I have had, if nothing else, the best teachers, whose example made a hard call clearer to me, and, in some instances, easier to make than it might seem.

I knew a man who slept through the night, when everything hung in the balance. He would accept whatever the day brought, whether it be joy or sorrow. He had done his best, and had taken his rest. And that, my friends, is all that is required of any of us.

Copyright © 2007 by John McCain. All rights reserved.