One of the accurate gauges of a politician’s effectiveness is when they are loved on Monday and hated by Friday. I spent the weekend informally polling family and friends, hoping to get a handle on the life of John S. McCain III. In a few instances, people were adamantly either for or against him but in the majority of cases, people would stop in mid-sentence and say, “but then there was the time…”
Despite a disparaging remark about his service and capture as a naval pilot, Senator John McCain (R-AZ.) was an American hero. I was reminded that McCain opposed the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, but then there was the time he adopted a child of color. McCain co-sponsored the closest bill to passage to fix immigration, but then there was the time he said, “complete the dang fence.” I had to cover my ears when I was yelled at with the words, ‘Sarah Palin’ but then there was the time he demolished a woman who tried to use being ‘an Arab’ as a slight against Barack Obama. It cannot be argued that he was vociferously against torturing the enemy, partly because of his own ordeal and because he felt it was un-American, but then there was the time he wanted to escalate the war in the Middle East. Finally, John McCain vehemently opposed the Affordable Care Act, but then there was the time he gave a thumbs down to ‘skinny repeal.’
Senator John McCain was precisely what you want your representative to be…
When he made a mistake he said so, when he saw a wrong he stood in opposition and when being right was confused with winning, he knew the difference. For most of my life, people have characterized me as a super-liberal. I registered to vote at 18 and wrote in Jesse Jackson for President, I painted my face and wore a red, black and green flag when I protested the Vietnam War; I cheered in front of the White House the night Richard Nixon resigned, found ways to excuse the inexcusable and cried the night Barack H. Obama walked on stage in Chicago, with his family in tow, to accept his victory as the President-elect of the United States in November of 2008. The only deviation from my liberalism was contemplating a vote for John McCain in 2000 had he been the nominee for the Republican Party.
I do not want my sincere prayers and tribute to the McCain family to devolve into a lie about my true political leanings because he has passed away. I voted for Al Gore and would have, even if John McCain had been successful, but the fact that he made me think of changing is the highest tribute I can give the man. From his refusal to step ahead of the men who held seniority for their release from the notoriously named Hanoi Hilton prison camp, to his final speech of significance in the place I live now, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, McCain tilted but he never toppled. People remember the most pointed part of the speech, obviously aimed at the current administration, but for me the passage that best illustrated what John McCain believed was:
“We are living in the land of the free, the land where anything is possible, the land of the immigrant’s dream, the land with the storied past forgotten in the rush to the imagined future, the land that repairs and reinvents itself, the land where a person can escape the consequences of a self-centered youth and know the satisfaction of sacrificing for an ideal, the land where you can go from aimless rebellion to a noble cause, and from the bottom of your class to your party’s nomination for president.”-John S. McCain 2017 Liberty Medal Award Ceremony( full text)