John McCain and the politics of empathy

Back in 2013, Senator Rob Portman of Ohio shocked the political world by announcing his support for the legalization of same-sex marriage. Portman’s declaration was noteworthy not for its content, but rather its messenger: Portman was a Republican, who, like the rest of his party, had a long history of opposition to equal rights for LGBT people. Why the change of heart? Portman’s reasoning was simple: two years earlier, his own son had come out to his parents as gay. “Knowing that my son is gay,” Portman wrote, “prompted me to consider the issue from another perspective: that of a dad who wants all three of his kids to lead happy, meaningful lives with the people they love.” His announcement was met with reverent media coverage.
In 2004, former First Lady Nancy Reagan caused a stir by endorsing the use of embryonic stem cells in medical research — a practice reviled by anti-abortion conservatives because it requires destroying human embryos. But Nancy Reagan had a personal stake in this fight: her husband, Ronald, was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, and the innovations made possible by stem cell research have provided rare hopes for a cure. “I’m determined to do whatever I can to save other families from this pain,” she said. “I just don’t see how we can turn our backs on this.” Her advocacy has received high praise from across the aisle.
In 1983, a young military vet from Arizona named John McCain was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. From the start, McCain made clear his conservative bona fides, voting against the establishment of Martin Luther King Day and ardently supporting the trickle-down economic policies of then-President Reagan. The notable exception to McCain’s strict Republicanism was his stance on torture: having been brutalized as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, McCain knew its horrors personally, and has stridently opposed the practice throughout his career in Congress. “The use of torture,” McCain stated in 2014, “compromises that which most distinguishes us from our enemies, our belief that all people, even captured enemies, possess basic human rights.” McCain’s uncompromising stance on torture continues to win him frequent praise — McCain, many on the left reluctantly agree, is a good Republican™.
These three examples, of course, share a common structure: a prominent Republican bucks the party orthodoxy on a certain issue, adopting a position typically held by Democrats because they (the Republican) had personal experience with the issue and recognized their party’s position to be morally wrong. Each incident made headlines and won praise because — and only because — of this rarity. That a progressive politician would possess enough basic human empathy to support LGBT rights and stem cell research, and to oppose torture, has long been taken for granted regardless of whether the individual has experienced the issue personally or simply learned about it secondhand.
Indeed, each of their statements was remarkably revealing. Portman, openly admitting he’d never before considered the perspective of a gay child’s parent; Nancy Reagan confessing that the rest of her party turned their backs on families in pain; McCain acknowledging that other Republicans deny that “all people, even captured enemies, possess basic human rights.” Yet instead of prompting a closer examination of the depravity of the Republican Party, all three statements were mostly met with uncritical praise for the individuals who made them.
On Tuesday, Senator John McCain chose to interrupt his government-funded treatment for brain cancer to trek to Washington D.C. and cast a vote in support of legislation that would take away health insurance from about 22 million people. As others have pointed out, the irony of the situation is monumental: McCain’s blood clot was discovered during a routine physical — a service that the Republican healthcare bill would revoke from millions. Moreover, McCain’s surgery, covered by his healthcare plan, would cost about $76,000 to an uninsured person — or $22,000 more than the country’s median household income.
One might be tempted, at first, to paint McCain’s decision as an anomaly; to consider it a rare slip-up by a senator typically willing to buck his own party on issues that matter to him. But to take that stance would be to forget why McCain’s stance on torture was noteworthy in the first place — because Republican politicians operate, by default, without considering the needs and feelings of the vulnerable.
When McCain cast a vote in favor of his party’s healthcare bill, he hardly made himself into a bad Republican. On the contrary — he proved himself to be a far better Republican than we ever knew.