Replies to post #279977 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[BOREALIS]

John McCain’s Last Fight

The Arizona senator’s twilight struggle with Donald Trump is so bitter because they’re more alike than you think.

By MICHAEL HIRSH May 18, 2018

John McCain always said he’d go down fighting and so he has, dickering from his deathbed over CIA nominee Gina Haspel and pre-emptively uninviting President Donald Trump from his funeral, then leaving as a legacy some fierce final words for the leader of his party, who is now a political enemy. All Trump displays is “a reality-show facsimile of toughness,” writes the six-term Arizona senator and former GOP presidential candidate who for a generation of Washington politicians has defined genuine toughness, in his forthcoming memoir.

The irony of McCain’s curtain-closing contretemps with the president is that it is clearly Trump himself who has inherited McCain’s mantle as the leading Republican maverick in Washington. Both men have often taken on the party orthodoxy across an array of big issues, with Trump running as the ultimate populist outsider in 2016 and spouting apostasies on trade, immigration and foreign policy; and McCain doing so on just about everything at one point or another during his long career. Both are known for being irascible and often bad-tempered, and unsparing toward enemies and rivals, even in their own party. Indeed, during McCain’s first run for president in 2000 he managed to enlist only a handful of his 53 Senate Republican colleagues to support him over George W. Bush, and some cited his volcanic anger and congenital impatience (traits that McCain insists he has since reined in) as a reason. As one GOP senator told me back then, “I didn’t want this guy anywhere near a trigger.” The two politicians even share some views on the proper use of American force in the world and the perils of palliative diplomacy—McCain opposed the Iran nuclear deal as fiercely as Trump, for one.

The similarities, however, probably end there. McCain is widely admired on both sides of the aisle for his guts, integrity, humor and style, and—whether they thought him right or wrong—no one has ever questioned that he acted out of anything but patriotism and passion. Certainly it was never entertained—as it is almost daily in Washington about Trump—that McCain was mainly motivated by self-aggrandizement. Trump regularly fulminates against anyone he considers disloyal to him personally (one reason he is said to hate McCain); McCain has reserved his ire mainly for those he considers disloyal to his country’s interests. And while McCain can be scatologically harsh about his political rivals behind closed doors—sometimes to their faces—he has often been eloquently magnanimous in public, for example praising the late liberal icon Ted Kennedy as “probably the greatest antagonist I ever had on the floor of the Senate” and someone who “dedicated his life to the institution.” McCain became, throughout his career, the embodiment of the noble nonconformist on the Hill, the politician who was all too willing to sacrifice party loyalty to do what he thought was right for the country, to do so loudly and consistently, and to fearlessly pronounce everyone, including the occupant of the Oval Office, dead wrong if they disagreed with him.

It’s become a cliché to label McCain a “maverick” for his dramatic, and increasingly frequent, breaks with the Republican Party line. But it’s a cliché because the label fits: Over nearly four decades in Washington, McCain has given a master class in maverickism, and it is for this he will be most remembered. So it is fitting, perhaps that the inveterate fighter is taking on Trump—another Republican politician who rose by bucking GOP orthodoxy—in his final battle, and bequeathing to the nation a bookful of advice on how to be the right kind of maverick. To Trump, McCain writes in his new memoir, The Restless Wave: Good Times, Just Causes, Great Fights and Other Appreciations, the mere appearance of toughness “seems to matter more than any of our values.” He suggests the president is jeopardizing those values by undermining the free press with regular accusations of “fake news”—a tactic “copied by autocrats,” McCain writes—supporting torture, branding immigrants criminals and opening the door to moral equivalence with Vladimir Putin by saying, “We have a lot of killers too.” That, McCain writes, “was a shameful thing to say, and so unaware of reality.”

[...]

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/05/18/john-mccains-last-fight-218404

[BOREALIS]

John McCain, Honor, and Self-Reflection

By David Remnick
May 26, 2018

In a valedictory act of patriotism, morality, and public service, John McCain has clarified his principles, reviewed his mistakes, and called out Donald Trump’s low character and corruptions.

John McCain is going to die soon. For almost a year, the senator from Arizona has been living with Stage IV brain cancer. As a valedictory act of patriotism, morality, and public service, he has gathered his energies to clarify his principles, to review his mistakes, and to call out the low character and corruptions of the leader of his party, the President of the United States. Memorial Day weekend is a particularly apt time to spend some hours with McCain and his testaments––the myriad clippings, his new memoir,“The Restless Wave,” and a moving documentary, “For Whom the Bell Tolls.”

“Maybe I’ll be gone before you hear this,” McCain says in the audio version of “The Restless Wave.” His voice is clear, wry, determined. “My predicament is, well, rather unpredictable. But I’m prepared for either contingency or, at least, I’m getting prepared. I have some things I’d like to take care of first––some work that needs finishing and some people I need to see. And I’d like to talk to my fellow Americans a little more, if I may.”

Similarly, the documentary, which airs this weekend on HBO, begins with characteristic pride and self-recrimination: “I have lived an honorable life, and I am proud of my life,” he says. “I have been tested on a number of occasions. I haven’t always done the right thing.”

Imagine any of these sentiments coming out of the mouth of Donald Trump. A sense of honor. Self-reflection. Apology. It is impossible to conceive. Initially, McCain endorsed Trump, largely as a matter of party loyalty and political survival. Endorsing Hillary Clinton would not have gone down well with his voters in Arizona. McCain had long considered Trump grotesque, though the one outrage he more or less let pass was the one directed at him. Campaigning in Iowa, in 2015, Trump had mocked McCain, saying, “He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured.” McCain directed his criticism more at Trump’s remarks about the parents of a Muslim soldier who died in Iraq and a Mexican-American judge. McCain finally rescinded his endorsement in October, 2016, when the “Access Hollywood” grab-’em-by-the-pussy tape was released.

“I have wanted to support the candidate our party nominated. He was not my choice, but as a past nominee, I thought it important I respect the fact that Donald Trump won a majority of the delegates by the rules our party set. I thought I owed his supporters that deference,” McCain said after the tape emerged. “But Donald Trump’s behavior this week, concluding with the disclosure of his demeaning comments about women and his boasts about sexual assaults, make it impossible to continue to offer even conditional support for his candidacy.” McCain said that he would not vote for Trump or Hillary Clinton but would rather “write in the name of some good conservative Republican who is qualified to be President.”

McCain grew up in a distinguished military family, though he did not much distinguish himself at Annapolis. He partied like a demon and graduated near the bottom of the Class of ’58. What tested him was Vietnam. The story has been told countless times. In 2000, on assignment for Rolling Stone, David Foster Wallace sought to tell the McCain story as the Arizona Republican adopted a full-transparency press strategy in his battle for the nomination against George W. Bush. Wallace aimed his story at the Young Voter who, he figured, didn’t know the McCain story and didn’t care at all for politics.
The way he tells it is worth quoting at some length:

There’s something underneath politics in the way you have to hear McCain, something riveting and unspinnable and true. It has to do with McCain’s military background and Vietnam combat and the five-plus years he spent in a North Vietnamese prison, mostly in solitary, in a box, getting tortured and starved. And the unbelievable honor and balls he showed there. It’s very easy to gloss over the POW thing, partly because we’ve all heard so much about it and partly because it’s so off-the-charts dramatic, like something in a movie instead of a man’s life. But it’s worth considering for a minute, because it’s what makes McCain’s “causes greater than self-interest” line easier to hear.

You probably already know what happened. In October of ’67 McCain was himself still a Young Voter and ?ying his 23rd Vietnam combat mission and his A-4 Skyhawk plane got shot down over Hanoi and he had to eject, which basically means setting off an explosive charge that blows your seat out of the plane, which ejection broke both McCain’s arms and one leg and gave him a concussion and he started falling out of the skies right over Hanoi. Try to imagine for a second how much this would hurt and how scared you’d be, three limbs broken and falling toward the enemy capital you just tried to bomb. His chute opened late and he landed hard in a little lake in a park right in the middle of downtown Hanoi. Imagine treading water with broken arms and trying to pull the life vest’s toggle with your teeth as a crowd of Vietnamese men swim out toward you. (There’s film of this, somebody had a home—movie camera, and the N.V. government released it, though it’s grainy and McCain’s face is hard to see.) The crowd pulled him out and then just about killed him. U.S. bomber pilots were especially hated, for obvious reasons. McCain got bayoneted in the groin; a soldier broke his shoulder apart with a ri?e butt. Plus by this time his right knee was bent 90-degrees to the side with the bone sticking out. Try to imagine this. He finally got tossed on a jeep and taken five blocks to the infamous Hoa Lo prison – a.k.a. the “Hanoi Hilton,” of much movie fame—where they made him beg a week for a doctor and finally set a couple of the fractures without anesthetic and let two other fractures and the groin wound (imagine: groin wound) stay like they were. Then they threw him in a cell. Try for a moment to feel this. All the media profiles talk about how McCain still can’t lift his arms over his head to comb his hair, which is true. But try to imagine it at the time, yourself in his place, because it’s important. Think about how diametrically opposed to your own self-interest getting knifed in the balls and having fractures set without painkiller would be, and then about getting thrown in a cell to just lie there and hurt, which is what happened. He was delirious with pain for weeks, and his weight dropped to 100 pounds, and the other POWs were sure he would die; and then after a few months like that after his bones mostly knitted and he could sort of stand up they brought him in to the prison commandant’s office and offered to let him go. This is true. They said he could just leave. They had found out that McCain’s father was one of the top-ranking naval officers in the U.S. Armed Forces (which is true—both his father and grandfather were admirals), and the North Vietnamese wanted the PR coup of mercifully releasing his son, the baby-killer. McCain, 100 pounds and barely able to stand, refused. The U.S. military’s Code of Conduct for Prisoners of War apparently said that POWs had to be released in the order they were captured, and there were others who’d been in Hoa Lo a long time, and McCain refused to violate the Code. The commandant, not pleased, right there in the office had guards break his ribs, rebreak his arm, knock his teeth out. McCain still refused to leave without the other POWs. And so then he spent four more years in Hoa Lo like this, much of the time in solitary, in the dark, in a closet-sized box called a ‘punishment cell.’ Maybe you’ve heard all this before; it’s been in umpteen different media profiles of McCain. But try to imagine that moment between getting offered early release and turning it down. Try to imagine it was you. Imagine how loudly your most basic, primal self-interest would have cried out to you in that moment, and all the ways you could rationalize accepting the offer. Can you hear it? If so, would you have refused to go? You simply can’t know for sure. None of us can. It’s hard even to imagine the pain and fear in that moment, much less know how you’d react.

But, see, we do know how this man reacted. That he chose to spend four more years there, in a dark box, alone, tapping code on the walls to the others, rather than violate a Code. Maybe he was nuts. But the point is that with McCain it feels like we know, for a proven fact, that he’s capable of devotion to something other, more, than his own self-interest. So that when he says the line in speeches in early February you can feel like maybe it isn’t just more candidate bullshit, that with this guy it’s maybe the truth. Or maybe both the truth and bullshit: the guy does—did—want your vote, after all.

You read that story and then recall Trump’s smug and snide remark—“He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured.”

Watch that video of Trump and then tell yourself that this is the Commander-in-Chief who will be reciting Memorial Day bromides on Monday.

]https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jul/18/donald-trump-john-mccain-vietnam-iowa-republicans

As one of the highest-ranking officers in the Navy, McCain’s father met frequently with President Richard Nixon––but never took the opportunity to appeal for his son’s life. That was against the Code. Meanwhile, in Hanoi, McCain, after countless rounds of torture, became convinced he would finally die of his injuries. He finally broke and signed a letter of “confession.” Though the letter was rendered meaningless by his obvious courage, McCain says, “I will be ashamed of it for the rest of my life.”

Released in March, 1973, McCain came home to his wife and three children. The marriage collapsed. The documentary is clear that McCain behaved heedlessly. His first wife, Carol, with both pain and sympathy, says, “He was looking for a way to be young again and that was that.” When he ran for Congress in Arizona, he was criticized initially as a carpetbagger. “The longest I’ve ever lived anywhere in my life was Hanoi,” he said, and that ended that issue. He served two terms in the House and more than thirty years in the Senate.

Much has been made of McCain as a “maverick.” The film makes clear that he was at his best when he was true to himself, his instincts, his convictions. He failed himself when he gave in to expediency. He failed when he sucked up to Charles Keating, a sleazy Arizona builder and financier who contributed to his campaign. (“That will always be a bad mark on my record .?.?. it was wrong.”) He failed himself during the 2000 South Carolina primary when he fudged on the question of whether the state capitol should be able to fly the Confederate battle flag. And he failed himself when he gave in to an increasingly nativist, anti-intellectual Republican Party base and chose Sarah Palin as his running mate. That latter sin cut the deepest. It is not hard to draw a line between Sarah Palin and the rise of Trump.

He was always a conservative. He was a fiscal conservative. And he was a radical interventionist, doubling down on his support of the Iraq War long after it was judged by all as a catastrophe. For Iraq, he used what he always thought was the proper way of seeing Vietnam; in both cases he believed that if the United States had only fought to the end, using every resource, paying any sacrifice, victory would come. It is only now that he has come to see his mistake. The Iraq War, he writes, “can’t be judged as anything other than a mistake, a very serious one, and I have to accept my share of the blame for it.”

But even if you never would have voted for him—and I didn’t and wouldn’t—McCain cannot fail to leave a deep impression. His efforts, with John Kerry, to revive diplomatic relations with Vietnam; his leadership on campaign-finance reform; his moral opposition to torture; his vote against the first real effort to repeal Obamacare—these were stands that were, in large measure, reviled in his party and among many of his constituents in Arizona.

Trump’s poll ratings are in the low forties. This is, for McCain, an affront. How could they be so high after all that has happened, all that has been proved, all that has been said and tweeted? It’s not that Trump avoided military service because of bone spurs in his feet (though he somehow managed at the same time to be something of an athlete); McCain has not focussed on that easy contrast. Instead, he has attacked the President for his “appalling” rhetoric on immigration; his assault on free expression; his incitements of the “old ties of blood and race.” McCain seems almost bewildered writing about his President and his “convictions.” Trump, he writes quite accurately, “threatened to deliberately kill the spouses and children of terrorists.”

After McCain got his cancer diagnosis last October and started levelling more of these critiques of the President, Trump could not contain himself. The bully raised his head. “People have to be careful because at some point I fight back,” he said. “You know, I’m being very nice. I’m being very, very nice. But at some point, I fight back and it won’t be pretty.”

Trump had the good sense to stay clear of Barbara Bush’s funeral, in Houston. Now McCain has made matters easy for him. He has made his intentions clear: the leader of his party, the President of the United States, is not invited to the funeral of John McCain.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/john-mccain-honor-and-self-reflection