Where is McCain when we need him?

It is times like this that I really miss the late Sen. John McCain.

McCain’s voice, at the end of his life, was one we so sorely needed to hear. Bowed by cancer, he stood at his tallest as he called upon us all to remember who we are.

And who we are not.

Before he died, McCain left us one final message, almost as if he knew this defining moment would come, when a president of the United States would proclaim that some Americans are less American than others.

That they, who would dare criticize his administration or our country, should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”

Never mind that the congresswomen to whom President Donald Trump referred are all women of color and all citizens of this country, with three of the four having been born here.

Trump’s blatant racism has white nationalists doing cartwheels while McCain, no doubt, is turning over (again) in his grave.

I’m guessing McCain would have agreed with very little that comes from the mouths of Democratic Reps. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.

But he would have defended their right to say it. Would have said that dissent is as American as, well, the U.S. Constitution that protects such speech.

“We are 325 million opinionated, vociferous individuals,” McCain said, in a statement released after his death last August. “We argue and compete and sometimes even vilify each other in our raucous public debates. But we have always had so much more in common with each other than in disagreement. If only we remember that and give each other the benefit of the presumption that we all love our country...”

Then there is Trump, who sees dissent as somehow unAmerican. Who sees opponents as enemies of the state.

On Wednesday evening, he continued the racist rant he began on Sunday with his shameful “go back” tweet.

“They don’t love our country. They are so angry. If they don’t like it let them leave, let them leave,” Trump said, referring to “the Squad,” as the four women are known, and singling out Omar, whose family fled Somalia when she was a child.

And as he stood there behind a podium with the presidential seal, an adoring North Carolina crowd chanted, “Send her back! Send her back!”

A leader would have immediately shut down such a chilling display of white nationalism.

In fact, a leader once did.

In October 2008, McCain attended a raucous town hall meeting in a Lakeville, Minn., gymnasium, where angry Republicans denounced Barack Obama. One man said he was “scared” of the Democratic presidential nominee. Others called him a “liar” and a “terrorist.”

“I can’t trust Obama,” one woman said, after McCain handed her the microphone. “I have read about him and he’s not, he’s not uh — he’s an Arab. He’s not — ”

McCain could have let her finish. It might have even boosted his popularity.

Instead, he grabbed the microphone and shut her down.

“No, ma’am,” McCain said. “He’s a decent family man [and] citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues and that’s what this campaign’s all about. He’s not (an Arab).”

McCain was booed.

Trump, meanwhile, was cheered on Wednesday night.

On Thursday, he tried to distance himself from North Carolina chant, saying the crowd went too far.

“I disagree with it,” the president told reporters in the Oval Office. “I wasn’t happy with that message.”

This, from a president who has spent all week fanning the flames of white nationalism.

All that was missing from Wednesday’s ugly North Carolina moment were the torches and pitchforks. That, and someone to grab the microphone and remind us that we are better than this.

Even if our president isn’t. wildly