McCain doesn’t follow his own lofty advice

Before the infamous and blood-curdling, whipped-up fear of Y2K, I told a friend who worked for Congress in Washington that I was thinking about backing John McCain for the Republican presidential nomination. He said, “You don’t want to do that. McCain is crazy.” I have seen in spades that he was right.

For his fortitude and suffering in his military service to the United States, McCain deserves all the glory, honors, accolades and all other words of praise that can be handed out. Nevertheless, his political machinations are just as underhanded and mean-spirited as any other member of the U.S. Senate. His actions after his speech lauding working together and pleading for incremental improvements prove that point. His first vote after making his dramatic return to the Capitol was in favor of moving to official votes to makes changes to the collapsing Obamacare. Good for him. But his last act was a “No” vote that killed all legislation for the present — even the tiniest incremental improvement — to make any changes in the federal government’s seizure of American health care and everything remotely connected to it. The House has passed a health care bill. With McCain’s vote the Senate would have passed its health care bill. A conference committee would have hammered out a compromise, which McCain praised in the feigned holiness of his speech. Both houses of Congress would then have had a chance to vote on a less-than “pure victory” bill. Again, something McCain praised as the epitome of governmental comity.

I see McCain, in his speech and votes, polishing his own image as a maverick and a “party of one.” I see, too, that he returned to Washington with a secret score-settling mission in mind. By casting the deciding vote against the extremely watered-down compromise on health care improvement, he got a “pure victory” over members of his own party. He got revenge in a “political triumph” over President Trump who dissed him during the nomination campaign. All his pious mouthings about working together to advance incremental improvements are just so much hot breath. GERALD HOLLAND Bentonville