America lost a great man yesterday when Arizona Senator John McCain passed away at the age of 81. For over a year, McCain had battled a brain tumor and yesterday, the battle was lost. McCain was a war hero, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, and U.S. Senator for over 3 decades.
John Sidney McCain III was the son and grandson of four-star Admirals. McCain followed in their footsteps by enrolling in the U.S. Naval Academy. He graduated in 1958 and subsequently served in the Navy. In October 1967, during the Vietnam War, McCain’s plane was shot down over Hanoi. Both of McCain’s arms one of his legs were fractured as he was ejected from his plane. He spent the next 5 1/2 years of his life in the “Hanoi Hilton,” suffering repeated beatings and torture.
McCain famously turned down the opportunity for early release (the Vietnamese had offered it for propaganda purposes since McCain’s father was the commander of all U.S. forces in Vietnam). McCain never patted himself on the back for this, claiming that any of his fellow POWs would have done the same.
Associated Press/CBS
McCain was released in 1973. Upon his return to U.S. soil, he underwent extensive rehabilitation for his injuries. Ultimately he retired from the Navy, as a captain, in 1981. According to his Wikipedia page, McCain’s honors and awards include the Silver Star, two Purple Hearts two Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medals and a Prisoner of War Medal.
McCain ran for the House of Representatives in 1982 and served Arizona’s first district from 1983 to 1987. In the fall of 1986, McCain ran for the retiring Barry Goldwater’s seat in the Senate and won it handily. McCain, of course, would be re-elected five times.
While serving in the U.S. Senate, McCain twice ran for President. He lost the Republican nomination to George W. Bush in a nasty primary fight in 2000 and then won his party’s nomination but lost in the general election to Barack Obama in 2008. He’s famous for having been a “maverick” Senator who didn’t always toe the party line but also infamous for his selection of Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential running mate.
In the last 20 months, McCain has been one of the few voices in the Republican Congress willing to stand up to President Donald Trump. While the vast majority of House and Senate members boarded the Trump Train, McCain never did.
When I think about John McCain, I think of a heroic man and a learned man. He often “bragged” about being the 5th from the bottom of his class at the Naval Academy but McCain had a keen intellect and was a voracious reader. I think about a man of great decency and honor, a man who commanded respect. McCain was one of the last U.S. Senators who believed in bi-partisanship. He believed in working across the aisle and, in one of his last speeches on the Senate floor, pleaded with his colleagues to work together more.
I’ll remember McCain’s goofy sense of humor. He self-deprecatingly referred to himself as “older than dirt” and quipped that he was so old that his Social Security number was 7.
I’ll also remember McCain for being a man of substance, a Senator who was a leader in the chamber not just a vote to be whipped as a rubber stamp for the party’s agenda.
When McCain ran for President in 2008, he ran on the basis of policy, not simply on promises. It was McCain who had advocated for the “surge” of troops in Iraq. It was a military strategy adopted by the Bush Administration in 2007. Because, in the beginning, it was a deeply unpopular strategy and because he had been an advocate of comprehensive immigration reform, McCain’s numbers sagged in the GOP primary polls and his campaign was nearly bankrupt.
To McCain’s benefit, the surge worked and McCain was able to ride the “Straight Talk Express” to a victory in New Hampshire over Mitt Romney, propelling him ultimately to the party’s nomination.
Dayton Daily News
When remembering McCain, it’s hard not to remember the moment, one he would much later and reluctantly call a mistake, that he chose Palin as his running mate. The Alaska Governor was clearly lacking in the knowledge or intellectual curiosity to be one heartbeat from the Presidency.
As a political calculation, the choice of Palin was popular with the Republican base. Her campaign rallies were much larger than McCain’s ever were. The base voters who distrusted McCain because he was “soft” on illegal immigration loved Palin for her folksiness and that she was a gun-toting, moose-hunting, abortion-hating true conservative.
McCain rarely talked about the Palin pick as a mistake; when asked about it in interviews, he would always repeat that she helped energize the campaign, which is true. But if you know McCain, you know that he wishes he had followed his own instincts and chosen his friend, Independent Senator Joe Lieberman, to be his running mate. The McCain presidential bid was doomed to fail, given the faltering economy and the historic nature of Obama’s candidacy. In retrospect, McCain surely would have preferred to lose on his terms, with a “ticket of mavericks.”
Still, even in losing, McCain showed the honor and grace that we should expect from our leaders. When, during a town hall rally late in the campaign, a woman referred to Obama as an “Arab” McCain shot her down, saying that his opponent was a “good family man” with whom he had serious differences with on policy. I’ll also never forget the graciousness McCain showed in his concession speech on the night Obama was elected.
McCain’s death is a profound loss for the American people and the institution of the U.S. Senate. His replacement will be announced in the coming days by Arizona Governor Doug Ducey. By state law, Ducey must name a Republican and whomever he names will serve until 2020. That replacement would then face election but just to serve the final two years of McCain’s six-year term.
McCain’s wife Cindy has been floated as one of the possible names for his replacement. Another name that’s been mentioned is 76-year old retired Senator John Kyl, who served in the Senate from 1995 to 2013.
Whoever is chosen to fill McCain’s Senate seat has some enormous shoes to fill. John McCain was a man of honor, who displayed uncommon valor, courage, dignity and service throughout his long life.
Rest in peace John McCain, American hero.
