John McCain is who everyone wanted to be

John McCain succeeded Barry Goldwater as U.S. senator.

There’s a bit of cosmic appropriateness to that. Goldwater was a comfortable fit for the Arizona of his time, as McCain has been for the Arizona of his time.

Goldwater was an Arizona original. His rugged features and rugged individualism reflected a state transitioning into modernity.

McCain was an adopted Arizonan, as are so many of us. He came from somewhere else, but his somewhat incongruous combination of plainspokenness, populism and cosmopolitanism reflected who we had become.

McCain came to Arizona looking to represent the state in Congress. I met him shortly after he arrived. He sought me out

for advice and insight on what congressional seats might be coming open.

I told him he should consider getting into Arizona politics more slowly. Get involved in the campaigns of other people. Become active in the party. Maybe run for the state Legislature after a while. Work his way up.

Less than two years later, McCain was in the U.S. House of Representatives. Less than six years later, he was in the U.S. Senate.

That was the last time McCain asked me for political advice. I never blamed him.

McCain didn’t have to work his way up in the minds of Arizonans. He had earned a position at the front of the line because of the suffering and sacrifice he had made on behalf of his country as a prisoner of war.

McCain, however, never acted politically entitled. In fact, he won his first primary in Arizona in part by outworking his better established opponents. And he never subsequently took any election for granted, however weak his opponent might be.

McCain’s political philosophy was a subject of controversy over the years and during his maverick years he set the teeth of many conservatives on edge.

I borrowed a formulation to describe McCain that Bill Buckley used for both President Bushes. That McCain was “conservative,” but not “a conservative.” Meaning that McCain usually instinctively sided with the conservative position, but his approach to issues wasn’t deeply rooted in or anchored by conservative ideology. That description remains in McCain’s Wikipedia biography.

McCain described himself as a “Ronald Reagan-Teddy Roosevelt Republican” when he first ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000. At the time, I thought that ridiculous and mocked it. Reagan and Roosevelt shared a party affiliation by historical accident. Their views on the proper role of government couldn’t be more different.

I’ve since come to regard it as a pretty insightful self-description. McCain generally shared Reagan’s full-spectrum conservatism, if not Reagan’s rootedness in conservative ideology. But he shared Roosevelt’s independent spirit. And departed from Reagan’s full-spectrum conservatism with Roosevelt’s populist suspicion about the accumulation of economic power.

McCain’s approach to politics and issues was largely instinctual. Things struck him as right or wrong, and he talked about them in those terms.

This led to inconsistencies over time. But they weren’t really flip-flops or the abandonment of principle. They were simply different instinctual responses based upon the circumstances that presented themselves at the time.

For example, McCain was accused of abandoning principle in voting for the Republican tax reform plan last year. That’s because he had voted against the tax cut plan of George W. Bush in part because it favored the wealthy too much.

However, as the Republican presidential nominee in 2008, he supported retaining the Bush tax rates. And the top rate under this year’s GOP tax reform is still higher than the top rate under Bush.

I’m not sure Arizonans have understood what a giant McCain has been on foreign policy. He traveled the world extensively. His trips weren’t given the sig- nificance of a presidential visit. But they weren’t just congressional courtesy sessions either.

Occasionally word would get out about a foreign government doing something because McCain urged them to. I suspect there was a lot more of that than reached the public.

In recent years, McCain has become the most consequential advocate of an aggressive U.S. leadership role in the world. His words had weight. His views mattered, at home and abroad.

McCain never became president. But in 35 years in Arizona politics, he was never run close in a single election.

That’s because he became more than just one of us. He was who we wanted to be.

GETTY IMAGES John McCain won his first primary in Arizona in part by outworking his better established opponents. And he never subsequently took any election for granted, however weak his opponent might be.