McCain’s grace
A Sun reporter who covered John McCain for years reflects on a man who could be a harsh critic of everyone — especially himself
The John McCain I knew was willful and combative — a Senate scrapper. When I covered him as a Washington reporter for the Arizona Republic in the 1990s, he seemed every bit the wild-swinging boxer he had been at the Naval Academy in the 1950s. For more than a year, McCain wouldn’t speak to me or my Republic colleagues after the newspaper printed an editorial cartoon about his wife, Cindy, that he considered cruel. I was barred from his presidential campaign bus, the “Straight Talk Express,” in 2000 because of disputes between McCain and the paper, and I often kept up with the campaign by trailing the bus in a rental car. He once refused to shake my hand.
But the more I got to know him over the years, the more complicated — puzzling, even — he became. He used to sit near Rep. Morris K. Udall’s hospital bed and softly talk or read newspaper articles to the former Democratic presidential candidate after Udall’s Parkinson’s disease had reached an advanced stage. Udall was too ill to respond.
McCain didn’t publicize his visits to the Washington veterans hospital to see Udall, who died in 1998 at age 76. I only found out about it from his friends. But discussing the relationship years later, McCain said the older man possessed something McCain had to continually strive for — grace.
Udall was a lanky, self-effacing, Lincolnesque man who exhibited an ease with people that voters sensed was genuine. McCain could be engaging and jocular but also temperamental, sometimes holding years-long grudges or allowing his passion to override his better instincts.
But what struck me, in covering McCain for nine years, was how he sometimes circled back to his own behavior and tried to make amends.
On Capitol Hill, acknowledging weakness can be considered admitting defeat. McCain talked about his frailties and rough edges.
“I’ve done many, many things wrong,” he told me in a 1996 interview. “And one of those is a tendency to become impatient, if not angry. I think those who work with memost closely would agree that there have been some changes over the years. But it’s been an evolving thing with me. I think that Mowas born with some of these natural attributes which, in my case, took time to develop.”
Grace for McCain came in fits and starts. It was a lifelong pursuit, dotted with memorable moments along the way.
In1970, a Democratic activist named David Ifshin became known for his Vietnam anti-war efforts, appearing on the cover of Life magazine. At the time, McCain was a prisoner in Hanoi after his plane was shot down and he was captured, breaking both arms and one leg.
McCain was a POW from October 1967 to March 1973. Ifshin traveled to North Vietnam with Jane Fonda during that period and spoke against the war on Radio Hanoi. His messages were piped into McCain’s cell.
Years later, McCain criticized Ifshin’s anti-war actions in a speech. But the passage of time — and introspection — eventually The Arizona National Guard carries the casket of Sen. John McCain during a memorial service at the Arizona Capitol. intervened.
Ifshin apologized to McCain during the 1980s. McCain delivered an apology of his own.
When Ifshin died of cancer in 1996, McCain spoke at the funeral. “He always felt passionate about his country,” the senator said. “I learned a lot about courage from David.”
While he didn’t always love what I wrote, my relationship with McCain softened at times, too. He wrote me a congratulatory note when I got engaged in 1999. He had been at the restaurant table in Philadelphia the night I met my wife while covering his push to limit the influence of big money in politics. “Glad I was there at the beginning,” he wrote. And his mother, Roberta, invited me to tea that year after I profiled her in the newspaper. “I really would love to have you over, any time you are free,” said her card.
We had tea and finger sandwiches and she talked about her son (she called him “Johnny”) and about playing bridge and her many foreign trips.
Roberta, who turned 106 in February, may well be a source of McCain’s impish humor — and his striving to be a more gracious version of himself. She once scolded her son for cursing the guards while a prisoner of war, and during the 2000 presidential race, she took a swing at the ban on Republic reporters on the campaign bus. “What happened to freedom of the press?” she said with a smile.
I don’t know whether John McCain ever felt he achieved Udall’s grace. He was a harsh critic not only of others, but of himself.
But it’s clear that much of the nation, from Arizona to Washington to Annapolis, appreciated what he was: resolute, thoughtful and willing to buck political orthodoxy that got in his way.