THE LIFE &LEGACY OF JOHN MCCAIN
From his time as a POW to his years in politics, McCain proved resilient after life’s setbacks.
Career: As lawmaker, McCain believed in Senate’s role, was resilient,
— John McCain was an essential element of the nation’s political conversation for half a century, an ever-present figure eager to challenge friend and foe through his singular temperament — sometimes angry, often funny, always ardent.
Now he is gone, leaving behind a storied life and a tear in America’s political fabric at a time when national unity — always a McCain theme and ultimate goal — seems especially elusive.
“We are losing someone who really, no matter who was the president, believed in the Senate’s role in checks and balances,” said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who was a frequent traveling companion of McCain on official overseas trips. “He truly was a giant in the Senate, a towering figure
and someone who really made a difference not just on policy, but in asserting the Senate’s constitutional role.”
The capital has had some time to adjust to life without McCain given his absence since December for treatment of the brain cancer that finally took his life Saturday. He weighed in from afar on a range of issues in the meantime, but the digital messages from Arizona lacked the power they might have had if delivered in his always self-certain style on the Senate floor.
It seemed particularly fitting that McCain died nine years to the day after the same virulent form of brain cancer claimed the life of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, his longtime friend, occasional foil and legislative partner on big issues such as immigration. Both enjoyed a boisterous scrap on the Senate floor and could laugh about it afterward. Both were the type of larger-than-life characters who could command the attention of
the Senate — and the nation — on the issues of the day.
McCain had real power, not just the kind that comes from seniority and being a committee chairman, but the kind that comes from rich — and sometimes shattering — life experiences that provide credibility
and heft to positions. No one else could talk about the need to ban torture with the authority of McCain, who had been tortured during his more than five years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.
He was also an institutionalist, helping lead the bipartisan Gang of 14 that in 2005 struck a deal to preserve the filibuster against judicial nominees. It was a temporary reprieve, as it would turn out, but it showcased McCain as a creature of the Senate willing to put what he saw as the fate of the chamber above more partisan interests.
McCain was tremendously resilient. He endured grueling rehabilitation from his POW experience to return to the military and become naval liaison to the Senate, whetting an interest in politics that eventually took him to the House and then the Senate.
As a first-term senator in 1987, he met with federal regulators on behalf of a donor and savings-and-loan chairman. The ensuing Keating Five scandal, which stretched from 1989 to 1991, was a public humiliation for McCain, a real blow to someone who lived by a stringent honor code.
The only Republican implicated, he also received the most lenient finding by the ethics committee, which found him guilty of poor judgment. But that searing experience drove McCain to become a more independent lawmaker as well as a champion of campaign finance changes intended to reduce the influence of big money in politics, and he eventually became his party’s presidential nominee in 2008, after a failed bid in 2000.
The loss to Barack Obama that followed rocked McCain, and he returned to the Senate
unhappy and somewhat at a loss. But he eventually recovered his footing and remained an outspoken force on immigration and the military — and an outspoken opponent of the Obama administration on a variety of domestic
and foreign affairs issues.
The final elections of his career marked a turn to the right for McCain as he sought to fight off the tea party movement, a groundswell he helped accelerate with his selection of Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential nominee in 2008. But in one of his last acts, he defied the far right — and President Donald Trump, the man who had ridiculed his capture in Vietnam — by helping to derail the Republican drive to overturn the Affordable Care Act.
Much of McCain’s signature campaign finance overhaul has been undone by the courts. The nation’s immigration problems remain unresolved. And the famous deal to preserve the
judicial filibuster has long since dissolved.
But his impact on the Senate, his influence on his colleagues, and the force of his will won’t be forgotten.
“The lions are gone,” Collins said. “The lions of the Senate are gone. It is very sad.”
‘The lions are gone. The lions of the Senate are gone. It is very sad.’ Sen. Susan Collins R-Maine