Prez knows his base, stays tribal on McCain
If you’re confused by President Trump’s reluctance to celebrate the life of Sen. John McCain, it’s because Trump knows something you don’t: his base.
The Red Hats And Talk Radio wing of American politics has long had a problematic relationship with the Arizona senator. And by “problematic,” I mean, they hated his guts. For years, McCain was the poster child of the kind of Republicanism they loathed, the kind of Republicanism that eventually led many of these voters to turn to Trump in the first place.
And if he were still with us, McCain would say “You’re damn right.”
New Hampshire political consultant Michael Dennehy, who worked extensively on McCain’s 2000 campaign, told me this weekend that, in his own way, McCain was the Donald Trump of his day. He sees a parallel in their willingness to ignore the party leaders, say what’s on their minds and give people straight talk.
He has a point. But McCain’s straight talk often involved insulting the base of his own party.
In McCain’s world, Trump voters were “wacko birds” and “crazies.” In “Game Change,” the much-praised (by the Left, anyway) book about the 2008 election, McCain is quoted as saying opponents of his amnesty solution for illegal immigration are “going to destroy the (expletive) party.”
“Listen to these people,” he reportedly said to fellow amnesty supporter Sen. Lindsey Graham. “Why would I want to be the leader of a party of such (expletives)?”
The point of bringing this up is not to speak ill of the dead, but to remind the media engaged in their hagiographic coverage that the dislike between McCain and the talkradio base isn’t about allegiance to Trump. The two sides have been battling for years.
When McCain was losing badly to Barack Obama, he pulled Sarah Palin out of obscurity to rescue his failing campaign. It worked, in the short term. But when the media pile-on of Palin was complete, McCain threw her under the bus, saying later:
“I wish I’d picked Joe Lieberman instead.”
Nobody doubts that he meant it, either. And now, the same talk-radio Republicans McCain trashed are being trashed yet again for not fully celebrating the life of a guy who despised them.
Trump knows this, and I suspect that’s one reason why he’s reluctant to issue the sort of eulogy the media wants.
There’s also the fact that Trump hated the guy, and the feeling was mutual. Proactively disinviting the sitting president from your own funeral isn’t exactly “reaching across the political divide.”
Should the president be the bigger man? Should he celebrate the life of an American hero who suffered so much for our nation, its uniform and its flag?
I think so. But Trump knows his base. Trump knows the praise for McCain coming from Democrats and the media is praise for McCain’s willingness to support Democrats: their positions, their politics and their antipathy toward the Americans who made Trump president.
This is not an insult to Sen. McCain or his memory. He’s still a hero. People who deny that fact truly are crazies. And it’s true he was willing to tell people tough things they didn’t want to hear. But it’s hard not to notice that he reserved his toughest talk for his fellow Republicans.
I wish we had a better president. I wish we had more graciousness in American politics. I wish our political discourse could be elevated above current pettiness of “My team good, your team bad.” But it’s not. We’re here.
And one of the many people in American politics who helped us get here was Sen. John McCain.