Vice Adm. James B. Stockdale, a highly decorated Navy pilot who inspired fellow prisoners of war in North Vietnam and later ran for vice president as H. Ross Perot's running mate in 1992, died on Tuesday in Coronado, Calif. He was 81.

[...]

A winner of the Medal of Honor, Admiral Stockdale was shot down over North Vietnam on Sept. 9, 1965. He spent seven and a half years as a prisoner, four of them in solitary confinement. While a prisoner, he organized a culture of defiance among his fellow captives, including another naval aviator, John McCain, who went on to become a senator from Arizona and a presidential candidate.

Though he had a distinguished military career, Admiral Stockdale is perhaps best remembered as Mr. Perot's running mate in the 1992 campaign. Mr. Stockdale was first selected as a stand-in on the ticket, since Mr. Perot needed to name a vice presidential candidate in order to qualify for the ballot in several states. Mr. Perot later kept Mr. Stockdale on after he fired his professional advisers, who wanted him to run a more conventional campaign with a better-known and more experienced running mate.

Mr. Perot and Admiral Stockdale received 19 percent of the popular vote.

Admiral Stockdale seemed out of his league in the debate with the major party vice presidential candidates, Dan Quayle and Al Gore. He startled the audience and those watching on television with his opening remarks: "Who am I? Why am I here?"

While the statement transformed him into the butt of jokes from late-night comedians, he later wrote in The World & I magazine that he had chosen his words deliberately to showcase his basic view of himself that "I am a philosopher."

In the article, Admiral Stockdale said he drew his inspiration from the writings of Epictetus, a former Roman slave who was an adherent to the teachings of the Stoics. "Stoics belittle physical harm, but this is not braggadocio," Admiral Stockdale wrote. "They are speaking of it in comparison to the devastating agony of shame they fancied good men generating when they knew in their hearts that they had failed to do their duty vis-à-vis their fellow men or God."

Posted by: Jonathan Singer / 4:44 AM | Basie! Home