There will be many more like John McCain

From coast to coast, the passing of Arizona Senator John McCain made predictably and appropriately major headlines.

But many Americans have also expressed a special sorrow, tinged with the sense that McCain’s style of principled yet straight-shooting bipartisanship is being squeezed out of our political culture. In prominent places, influential voices are airing worries that we’ve lost not just John McCain but the possibility of more officeholders like him.

In some circles, the concern has become almost a mantra. A Washington Post columnist expressed “not a little trepidation that we won’t see his likes again.” Jeff Flake, now the senior Senator from Arizona, wrote in the same paper “we may never see his like again.” An appreciation in Politico began with the words “we won’t see the likes of John McCain again;” the editors of National Review concluded theirs with the wistful judgment that “the Senate won’t see his like again and neither will the nation.” The list goes on.

But one writer at the conservative magazine put it differently: “I hope that we will see his like again. And again.” That’s not just hopeful or optimistic. It’s wise — and reasonable.

Without a doubt, McCain was a singular presence in national politics. His was a powerful biography that called us to reckon with ultimate questions about duty and honor. His approach to Washington certainly bore its imprint. At the same time, it’s clear that the tenor of politics today sounds much different tones than McCain’s, and the culture is geared around producing people without his experience or values.

Yet it’s much too hasty to say his character type is behind us. Though a rarity, it still shows forth in American life. And however swamplike, Washington still offers huge opportunities for a newly frank and fusionistic kind of politics.

To begin with, our many veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere around the world know trial, tragedy and triumph well. A historic number who would have died on the battlefield now carry, along with scars and prostheses, their own exemplary lives into public life.

And, of course, one needn’t be a veteran to know hardship, sacrifice, and patriotism, and to respond to a deep and abiding call to serve. What’s more, even with a sound education, such character is formed over decades — and often flowers only amid great personal and historic crisis. Today, it seems stranger to think we’re not headed toward another such time than to think that we are.

Meanwhile, as we hurtle into an uncertain and perilous future, the contours of a new bipartisan politics are already coming into sharp relief. Sometimes in spite of himself, President Trump, a leading antagonist of McCain’s, has helped point the way. Americans are hungry for a less ideological and more forthright political movement that shores up our national solidarity, secures our core interests, frees us from corporate cronyism, and ensures that our increasingly technological future does not reward global financial institutions over our ordinary citizens.