Speaks out on Trump, torture, immigs, the media
under the law.
“The cruelty of our enemies doesn’t absolve us . . . ,” he writes. “This was never about them. It was about us.”
McCain’s devotion to immigration issues reflects his constituents. The state he represents borders Mexico, and has a large Latino population. He calls the idea of mass deportations cruel and unworkable. He supports protecting the Dreamers and a path to citizenship for others.
And he says many of the people opposed to that are bigots, plain and simple.
“They believe the President shares their prejudice, and has promised to enact it into law,” he writes. “They’re not only opposed to illegal immigration, they’re opposed to immigration, at least immigration from south of the border, and the Caribbean, the Middle East, Africa and Asia.”
McCain advocates confrontation over quiet dismissal of these opinions, arguing silence will allow their “noxious views (to) spread further, and damage for generations the reputation of the Republican Party.”
That straight talk is vintage McCain, and why his most conservative critics have often dismissed him as a RINO — Republican in Name Only.
Certainly, he often seemed to get along better with his colleagues across the aisle. His new book has many fond memories of Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass). The two would engage in shouting matches only to later leave the Senate together, laughing.
“A battle not joined,” Kennedy used to tell him, “is a battle not enjoyed.”
Kennedy, he recalls, once even tried to get him to switch parties. McCain almost crossed party lines in 2008 by choosing Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, a Democrat-turned-independent, as his running mate.
McCain’s advisers were against it. After all, Lieberman was pro-choice and ran on Al Gore’s ticket in 2000. Oh, and one other thing: The optics of two old, white, male, Washington insiders would only emphasize Obama’s time-for-a-change message.
“It was sound advice that I could reason for myself,” McCain writes. “But my gut told me to ignore it, and I wish I had.” He went with Palin instead. McCain offers fond words for the “hardworking and intelligent” Hillary Clinton, who “is also, contrary to the negative public image promoted by her detractors, very warm, engaging, considerate in person, and fun.”
It would be fun if it were true, but that story about Clinton drinking McCain under the table in Estonia is fake news — and probably spread by his pal Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C).
McCain is hardly as fond of President Trump’s tall tales. In fact, he’s not fond of the President at all.
“Flattery secures his friendship, criticism his enmity,” he observes. For all of Trump’s angry tweets, he has only “a realityshow facsimile of toughness.”
McCain, on the other hand, knows about true grit.
“The bell tolls for me,” he writes in the book’s final passage. “I knew it would. I hope those who mourn my passing, and even those who don’t, will celebrate as I celebrate a happy life lived in imperfect service to a country made of ideas, whose continued success is the hope of the world.”