Let’s cherish McCain’s values of civility, decency and integrity
AMERICA is mourning the death of Senator John McCain, whose body lay in state in the nation’s capital for three days, followed by six memorial services that dominated the national and local news media.
It has become increasingly clear that the nation was mourning more than the death of a long-time senator: they mourned the loss of the values of civility, integrity, and bipartisan collaboration that McCain had practised and symbolised for so many years.
Strikingly absent from the memorial services was the current US President, Donald Trump, even while former presidents of both parties attended and gave speeches.
McCain had explicitly given instructions prior to his death that Trump was not to be invited to the memorial services. A few commentators interpreted this as reflecting the sharp political disagreements between Trump and McCain, including on immigration reform and the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, during which McCain had made his dramatic “thumbs-down” vote on the senate floor that prevented the repeal from passing.
Most commentators and the public, however, interpreted Trump’s absence as reflecting McCain’s concern about the corrosive, divisive effect Trump’s presence would have had on the ceremonies.
Over the course of two short years, Trump has eroded several norms of civil behaviour that have governed political institutions for decades. Foremost among his destructive behaviour has been his inveterate lying. According to the Washington Post’s “Fact Checker Database,” Trump has made false or misleading statements more than 4,229 times since he assumed the presidency, compared with Obama’s 18 false statements over eight years in office.
And Trump propelled his prominence in the political arena through the most vicious lie of all, the “birther” argument that President Obama was not born in the US and thereby not qualified to be President.
Trump has also increasingly challenged the norms of the independence of the judicial branch of government and the law enforcement offices in the executive branch. He asserted that the President is “above the law” while in office, and his recent nominee to the US Supreme Court, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, has written that the President is not subject to the laws of the land while in office.
Trump also has asserted that he has the authority to dismiss the attorney general and the special prosecutor, Robert Mueller, who is investigating potential collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.
Early in his term Trump fired then-director of the FBI, James Comey, also an unprecedented action. And Trump has treated the courts as political entities that he can manipulate, as he did when he claimed that Judge Gonzalo Curiel was incompetent to hear his case on Trump University because the judge was of Mexican descent, and therefore biased against him.
Through these attacks and actions, he is undermining the legitimacy of the courts and the judicial system. In the Charlottesville, Virginia, racial riots last year, instigated by White Supremacist groups, Trump stated that “there were good people on both sides,” and he refused to condemn the violence perpetrated by the White Supremacist groups. He also attacked black professional football players who refused to stand for the national anthem in protest at the ongoing police violence against black communities. His statements broke down norms of anti-black, racist speech and fostered additional racial hatred and discontent. One of Trump’s most egregious breaches of civility occurred when he criticised the parents, Khizr and Ghazala Khan, of an American soldier who was killed in Iraq, especially as the parents are Muslim and immigrants to the United States. In this same vein he attacked John McCain, calling him no war hero because he had been captured by the enemy. Trump said he defined heroes as those military officers who didn’t get shot down or captured.
But Trump’s attacks on civility are not restricted to the United States. As he was travelling for a state visit to the UK this summer, Trump proceeded to criticise and embarrass Prime Minister Theresa May, while praising her opponents Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson. And while Trump was absent from McCain’s memorial service, he and all other leaders were noticeably absent as well from the recent royal wedding of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry. Not wanting to invite Trump, the Queen apparently decided not to invite any foreign heads of state.
A year and a half ago my husband and I had the privilege of attending the memorial service of former First Minister of Wales Rhodri Morgan, who passed away in May 2017. The attendance and atmosphere at the memorial service could not have been more in contrast to Trump’s bombastic rhetoric, incivility, and divisiveness. Representatives of all parties attended the memorial, and political opponents and close associates alike praised First Minister Morgan’s vision for Wales, his integrity, decency, honesty, and commitment to the common good. He was lauded as a true statesman, who was liked and supported by factory workers, farmers, business leaders, and intellectuals.
He was known for his wit, humaneness, and belief in the goodness of everyone to work together for the future of Wales and the UK.
I much prefer the civility and decency of Rhodri Morgan to the iconoclastic attack of Donald Trump on civil norms and the institutions of democracy, including the rule of law. I can only hope that the sentiment toward civility and bipartisan collaboration, so yearned for at McCain’s memorial services, gains momentum and shapes our return to decency and integrity as a nation and in our politics.
■ Dr Short, a former Race Equality Commissioner for Wales, is now associate dean of Global and Community Initiatives and professor of practice at USC Suzanne Dworak School of Social Work in Los Angeles, California.