Remembering a Maverick who will be deeply missed
He was known as ‘Maverick.’ If that’s the case, we could use a lot more of them.
It’s hard to consider something other than the five years John McCain spent as a prisoner of war in the infamous ‘Hanoi Hilton’ in North Vietnam as the defining moment of his life.
But it was another moment, one that took place years later but no doubt forged in the same ideals of the American spirit, that strikes us as quintessential McCain.
As we mourn this fighter pilot, statesman, congressman, senator and presidential candidate who lost his battle with brain cancer over the weekend, it is the moment that reminds of just how special John McCain was.
Back in 2008, at the height of the presidential campaign, McCain, the Republican standard bearer eight years after losing a bitter contest with George W. Bush, was locked in another contentious battle. The perennial soldier this time was going head to head with a brash, upstart, new young senator from Illinois, Democrat Barack Hussein Obama.
McCain was doing a town hall rally in the little town of Lakeville, Minn.
A woman approached the microphone and indicated she couldn’t trust Obama because “he’s an Arab.”
McCain never hesitated.
He cut the woman off, took the microphone and quickly corrected her, offering this exceptional response.
“No, Ma’am.He’s a decent family man and citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues, and that’s what the campaign’s all about. He’s not (an Arab).”
The crowd booed. The candidate was not deterred.
The Maverick persisted.
It is that sense of self-confidence, that devotion to following
his own moral compass, that underwrites McCain’s exceptional lifetime of public service.
McCain remained undaunted after his political defeats, a steely resolve forged during years of torture as a prison of war.
He spoke – and voted – his mind, and was not afraid to confront his own party when he felt the call to do so.
It’s a lesson President Donald Trump would learn a few years later, when McCain cast the deciding vote against the GOP push to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Ironically, McCain in effect became the savior of the hallmark legislation of the man who defeated him in his bid for the White House. And in so doing earned the bitter enmity of the man who succeeded Obama, a candidate who once led the movement that questioned if Obama was even eligible for office, demanding that Obama produce
a birth certificate.
Of course, Trump’s derision was not limited to Obama, or even Democrats. He routinely bullied and belittled other Republican candidates. Of McCain’s unquestioned status as a war hero, he offered this reply, dripping with arrogance and disdain.
“He’s a hero because he got captured,” Trump said. “I like people who weren’t captured.”
Ever magnanimous, McCain sought to calm the waters of outrage among veterans who took great offense to the snide remark, urging them to “put it behind us and move forward.”
McCain’s final legislative victory came, most fittingly, as the last push in a lifetime devotion to helping the nation’s defense and his fellow veterans. On Aug. 13, President Trump managed to sign into law the $716 billion John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act at a military
base in New York, in the process failing to make a single mention of McCain’s name.
McCain came from a family of Naval heroes, his father and grandfather were both four-star admirals. Like them he was a product of the U.S. Naval Academy.
He was on his 23rd bombing mission over North Vietnam in October 1967 when he was shot down and taken prisoner.
When his North Vietnamese captors offered him his freedom as part of a propaganda ploy, McCain showed the steely resolve that would be his hallmark, insisting that those captured before him be released first.
In his waning days after his diagnosis with glioblastoma, McCain’s voice continued to resound through the Capitol, chiding his colleagues for their insistence on allowing the overheated, partisan rhetoric to
supercharge the gridlock that has now become the nameplate of Washington.
“We’re not getting anything done,” McCain said.
From his time as a POW, to his distinguished service as both a congressman and U.S. senator, to presidential candidate, that is a description that could never be affixed to the Arizona Republican.
His death leaves a massive void in American politics, and a memory when the good of the country – not necessarily blind devotion to party and ideology – was the key factor in our noble experiment in democracy.
The nation will deeply miss this maverick.
We hope for more to rise up and take his place, but fear only more pettiness, bickering and gridlock that sullies the memory of a true maverick and American hero.