An American Who Still Believes in Heroes:
One Citizen and Senator McCain
Last night millions of American heard the terrible news about the senior Senator from Arizona’s latest challenge. Concurrent with the prognosis of the kind of cancer he is battling, we saw pictures of his 105-year-old mother and pictures of him over so many decades of leadership, patriotism and bipartisanship. John McCain has become one of the steadying forces of this country — someone who still seems to be candid and human and honest in a time of talking points and finger-pointing.
“The staggering courage of that man is something every American should be thinking about this morning,” said Mike Barnacle on Morning Joe today. Well I, for one, am. And here’s what I’m thinking about.
I don’t live in Arizona. I am not a registered Republican. And yet, of all the people in the legislative branch, I have felt more engagement, more representation and more of how I want our leaders to behave from Senator McCain than from anyone from my state or anyone for whom I could have voted. Don’t get me wrong… I have the utmost respect for Senators Durbin and Duckworth, but I don’t live in Arizona, so John McCain has no reason to care one bit about what I think or what I am concerned about.
Except that we are both Americans.
John McCain had the grace to correct a voter when she accused Barack Obama of being things he wasn’t. He did it quickly and without thinking twice. He did it with dignity and he did it in a way that did not insult the voter. He didn’t do it for the headlines it garnered. He did it because it was the right thing to do.
Last summer, after the massacre in Orlando, I wrote letters to every Senator in the United States about the need for common sense gun legislation. I wrote personal letters. I addressed them by hand. I put a stamp on each and every letter. Five senators wrote back. Two were from Illinois, where I live. Two from Indiana, and I figured they wrote back to the Indiana return address. One more senator wrote back.
John McCain.
Senator McCain’s was a form letter too, but it was also thoughtful, careful, empathetic and appropriate. He did not agree with everything I said but he agreed about the gravity of the subject and he made it clear the factors that he weighed as he thought about the issue. When I read his letter I thought, “now there’s a guy I could sit down with and have a spirited discussion.” I also thought that in the end, we probably would find a way to agree on most of the big stuff.
That, to me, is what makes him who he is.
Even in disagreement, he can see what it unites us, including that part of what unites is our different opinions and the precious liberty we have that allows us to express them. He knows, because he did the bidding of his country going into a war we didn’t understand because he believed in the principles of America that through some very strange logic, we were supposed to be fighting for in Vietnam.
He was the only one who wrote to me when there was clearly nothing I could do for him: I can’t vote for him. I can’t go door to door for him. He wrote me because I am an American who took the time. He is an American leader who took the time. His letter was not a fight. Its tone was not defensive. It was honest — it was clear he was struggling with the many massive dimensions of the gun argument in this country. It reminded me what’s missing in Trump’s America.
When Donald Trump was elected, my deep sadness was seeing how civil debate seemed to have disappeared, even on the evening cable news shows. And on top of that, after eight years of an African-American President and two years of a campaign where it looked like a woman would finally take the White House, I woke up thinking how ironic it was that our fate and the fate of our democracy now lay in the hands of a cadre of Republicans. With no hope for help from the crew taking over 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, three specific people, for me, held the hope of our country in their hands.
- Speaker Paul Ryan.
- Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
- Senator John McCain.
Here we are, six months into the debacle of the Trump Administration. Speaker Ryan has been a gigantic disappointment. Senator McConnell has come close to destroying the Senate. Both have stood silently by and have not spoken out against anything the President has done — not his ethics violations, not his muddled ego-driven decisions, not his insulting words or his advancement of the Russian agenda.
But Senator McCain has not stayed silent. Against impossible odds, he continues to speak up and speak out, not just as the conscience of the old-style Republicans who are watching their GOP go down the tubes, but as a member of the hallowed chamber of the Senate, a place that is supposed to house our wisest counselors, our last resort for common sense, grace and statesmanship.
I disagree with Senator McCain on many things, and had he not made the worst choice of a running mate in the history of the U.S. (except for Pence), he probably would have been our President. Despite that, I respect that he is doing what he believes is right, that he is clear about the need to protect America (especially from the Russians) and that the atrocities in places like Syria are things that he can understand in ways, thankfully, I hope I never will. If ever a guy had street cred, it’s John McCain.
Throughout last night and this morning his story has been all over the news. One of the commentators asked a doctor if this condition he is facing could be a result of his other cancer, which may have been a result of his time as a POW. The doctor said it’s possible… imagine, fifty years later, yet another price he is paying as he now defends our country against enemies both foreign and, sadly, now, domestic.
The voice of John McCain has been the voice of reason and logic and bipartisanship. Earlier this year I tweeted him that he wasn’t doing enough to fight the Republicans as they took advantage of Senate rules. And it turned out he had been. So I tweeted him an apology. It just felt like I should, like I owed it to him, even though he is really a stranger whom I will never know.
John McCain keeps me believing in America. Every day, he reminds us that you can be candid and you can have opinions and you can find solutions, if you come from a place of good intent and are willing to reach out to people you disagree with. He also reminds us that we have a duty to speak up when we see things that are just plain wrong, as we so often do with our current resident of the Oval Office.
As he lay there in the boiling sun, imprisoned in Vietnam for fighting for his country, his men and his life, did he think that fifty years later he would be facing this? That he would be the voice of honesty and patriotism, that he would have earned his place with the giants of the Senate, like Senator Kennedy and that young man who ascended to become the 44th POTUS ? Many times in the last six months as I have felt the stress and strain of what Trump is doing to our country while most Republicans stand silently by, I am inspired by Senator McCain who speaks up and fights on.
Senator McCain, you deserve our gratitude, our admiration and our deepest appreciation. In this period that President Obama has described as one of “an absence of American leadership” I, as a parent, have searched for role models. When my teenager rolls out of bed this morning, the first thing he will see is a picture of you. You are a role model, a leader and an intrepid soldier for America. I am as proud to call you a Senator as I am to call myself a Citizen. And I am as grateful to you for your service as I could be to any person who has ever held office in this land.
Despite the mess that we’ve made of this country, I still believe, thanks to John McCain.
Fight on, Senator McCain.
“This disease has never had a more worthy opponent,” said your friend Lindsey Graham.
Right on, Senator Graham.
We love, admire and need you, Senator McCain. Now more than ever.
And in the end, perhaps the most important thing I can say is this: if I could give you my vote, the most precious currency of this democracy, the one you put your life on the line for more times than any of us can count, I would.
