McCain still up for a fight, even in illness

US senator promoting a new book, delivering a counterpunch of ideals contrary to Trump’s running of White House

John McCain is not signing off quietly. As in so much of the senator’s extraordinary life, the rebellious Republican is facing this challenging chapter — battling brain cancer — in his own rule-breaking way, stirring up old fights and starting new ones. Rarely has the sickbed been so lively.

McCain is promoting a new book, delivering a counterpunch of ideals contrary to President Donald Trump’s running of the White House.

McCain’s long-distance rejection of CIA director nominee Gina Haspel’s history with torture goaded former VicePresident Dick Cheney into a fresh debate over waterboarding and other now-banned interrogation techniques.

If this is Washington’s long goodbye to a sometimes favourite son, it’s also a reemergence of old resentments and political fault lines that continue to split the nation.

Perhaps no one should have expected anything less from the 81-year-old senator, who can be crotchety and cantankerous but is also seen by many, both in and out of politics, as an American hero, flaws and all.

Most Republican senators are not heeding his advice to reject Haspel, who was chief of base of a detention site where terror suspects were waterboarded. McCain lived through years of captivity during the Vietnam War.

Trump has suggested reviving the now-banned brutal interrogation techniques.