Thoughts on the passing of Senator John McCain
I remember in 2008, I, alongside plenty others who supported the Obama Campaign, said nasty, mean, and petty things about John McCain, the 71-year old Bush-supporting Republican Candidate for President who was too old and out of touch. Even after Obama was President, I saw things McCain was saying and doing and thanked God that John McCain was in the Senate, not the White House. If someone had told me 8 years after 2008 I would be recorded on camera openly praising and admiring John McCain’s politics, I would have thought you were insane.
That is of course exactly what happened, when I was President of the University of Delaware College Democrats and I helped organize an amateur attempt of an event, focused on campaign finance and money in politics. John McCain, bucking nearly his entire party, supported Democrats in having the wealthy control less of our political system, and here I was, as Democratic as anyone, saying great things on Senator John McCain’s intellect, nostalgic for the days he succeeded in limiting the power of the 1% along with progressive lion Russ Feingold. There is also the irony of the current President, who the country elected in 2016, and he was around the same age McCain was in 2008.
John McCain also took a chance on University of Delaware-dropout and longtime Republican operative Steve Schmidt to be a major leader on his campaign. Schmidt, who would return to UD and finish his degree, has become an unrestrained critic of what the current President and the Republican Party represent, switching to an independent and encouraged the American public to vote for Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections. Steve also verified much of what was seen in the HBO movie Game Change, based on the McCain Campaign in 2008. It is always nice to get verification on the accuracy of a political film.
Senator McCain represented a different era and I slammed him for just that as a naïve middle schooler. I later realized his era was actually great, and we as a country are far too discriminatory on the old. It was the last era where someone like John McCain could be great friends with Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, and Joe Biden. In an era now where Presidential candidates on the Republican side nodded when they were told on tape that Barack Obama was a dangerous Muslim, McCain did not hesitate in rebuking those false remarks. He was able to work with the other side to get things done. He even once said he was one of the first to “feel the Bern” on tape. He showed reason and compassion, even if you did not agree with him, and even in the modern day he was frustrating in his ideals to me. But he was a relic of the old era where government was not so hated, party labels meant less, and efficiency was higher.
What was also deeply commendable was John McCain’s respectful attitude towards his campaign opponents, both George W. Bush in 2000 and Barack Obama in 2008. Politics, like sports, is a competition, which explains why so many athletes transition into politics. Senator Ted Kennedy, who also died due to same type of brain cancer (as did Beau Biden), once said that he was turning down the NFL to compete in an another sport: politics. Good athletes show grace, humility, and sportsmanship even towards their most antagonizing opponents, even taking time to appreciate their abilities. Good politicians should do the same, and Senator McCain certainly did that. His eulogy at his funeral will be delivered not by his closest partisan friends but his two former opponents, Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
The older folks, if alive, provide wisdom, experience, and a logical pattern of thought based off experiences and self-obtained truths. John McCain had all of that. He fought for this country in Vietnam, and was tortured and imprisoned in the process. That could have made him bitter and that could have solely been his greatest accomplishment in life. But he went on to serve both chambers in Congress, eventually replacing Barry Goldwater, a man of conviction and integrity who also later on proved to be far more logical and thoughtful than what the election attacks that were made against him suggested. He even had the strength to forgive and visit Vietnam decades after the war ended, even the site he was jailed and tortured, and supported friendly US-Vietnam relations in the modern era. And even after running against Obamacare in 2010, he refused to repeal it despite supporting that effort for nearly a decade, coming to his own conclusion that it would be a mistake.
John McCain, much like Congressman Ron Dellums who also recently passed, went on the beat of his own drum. For a society that dislikes that so often, he was the embodiment of why that was a good thing. May he rest in peace and may this nation be thankful for his contributions, large or small.
(PS: here is John McCain’s farewell statement.)
