McCain served as a United States Senator from Arizona since 1987 after previously serving two terms in the United States House of Representatives. He won the Republican nomination for President of the United States in the 2008 election.
Before his career in politics, John McCain served in the United States Navy as a naval aviator, flying ground-attack aircraft from aircraft carriers.
October 1967, during the Vietnam War, McCain was shot down, seriously injured, and captured by the North Vietnamese. He was repeatedly tortured by his captors while held as a prisoner of war until 1973. McCain dealt with lifelong physical disabilities as a result of the war and his ordeal.
A lot of glowing accolades have been given voice by many people in the wake of his passing and even before. McCain was diagnosed with brain cancer last year and it was on Friday his family announced that McCain was would no longer go through chemotherapy.
“Honor” is a word that comes up a lot in describing John McCain in his service to his country as a soldier and as a Senator. He served with honor. He behaved honorably.
It may be understandable that in this day and age, we might be skeptical of such descriptions. "Men of honor" under scrutiny are not always deserving of the title.
So John McCain: What was the deal with him anyway?
While mostly following conservative political ideas, McCain was not afraid to disagree with his own party. This led to his reputation as a "maverick".
John McCain championed campaign finance reform, not exactly a favorite subject of the Republican party. His efforts resulted in the McCain–Feingold Act in 2002 which put limits on big money contributions and added transparency to the process.
In defiance of conservative hardliners, McCain worked in the 1990s to restore diplomatic relations with Vietnam.
But he was also of the mindset that the first Iraq War was not fought to a successful conclusion, that we cut our efforts too short and should've gone on at that time to take down Saddam Hussein's regime. It was a view that I think was misguided in the sense that war accomplished the goal set forth by Pres. George H. W. Bush, to expel Iraq from Kuwait and that was that. Still, from McCain's experience with Vietnam where the war dragged on and cost too many lives as a result, I can see where he might have thought, better to act now while the US had the upper hand than have to come back later and do this all over again.
Unfortunately, it was a mindset shared by others when George W. Bush became President that led us into the misadventure of overthrowing Hussein. McCain maintained strong support for the 2nd Iraq War even as the worst scenarios played themselves out.
John McCain entered the race for the Republican nomination for President in 2000. He got a lot of heat and attention for his blunt appeal; he called his campaign bus "the Straight Talk Express". But being himself didn't help as he lost ground during a heated primary season to Governor George W. Bush of Texas. McCain was slammed with a smear campaign claiming McCain had fathered a black child out of wedlock (the McCains' dark-skinned daughter was adopted from Bangladesh), his wife Cindy was a drug addict and he was a homosexual. These scurrilous attacks even included accusations that McCain was a traitor or mentally unstable from his North Vietnam POW days.
McCain made another go at running for President 8 years later, securing the Republican nomination in 2008. It was then that McCain began adopting more conservative stances and attitudes to get through the primary season; it was a change that would persist after Barack Obama won the general election, losing by a 365–173 electoral college margin.
One time in the lead up to the 2008 election, McCain was at a campaign event where a woman spoke up to voice her fears about Obama becoming President since he was "an Arab". McCain addressed the woman, saying that Obama was a good man and an American with whom he just happened to have disagreements with over policy. McCain's efforts to speak up for his opponent were met with boos.
In the Senate, McCain largely opposed actions of the Obama administration regarding foreign policy matters. Usually McCain's issues with Obama resolved around the president's reluctance or recalcitrance in engaging in political hot spots where a stronger, more forceful American response was needed to reduce violence and save lives.
McCain was not beyond engaging in partisan hyperbole. For example, he accused President Obama of being "directly responsible" for the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting "because when he pulled everybody out of Iraq, al-Qaeda went to Syria, became ISIS, and ISIS is what it is today thanks to Barack Obama's failures."
OK, I can see the dots connecting Iraq to al-Qaeda to Syria to ISIS. But connecting it to the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting and saying President Obama was directly responsible? That sounds like shit Sean Hannity would crank out.
On the other hand, during Barack Obama's presidency, McCain was one of the top five Republicans most likely to vote with Obama's position on significant votes; McCain voted with Obama's position on such votes more than half the time in 2013 and was "censured by the Arizona Republican party for a so-called 'liberal' voting record."
July 25, 2017, less than two weeks after brain surgery, John McCain cast a deciding vote allowing the Senate to begin consideration of bills to replace Obamacare. Along with that vote, he delivered a speech criticizing the party-line voting process used by the Republicans, as well as by the Democrats in passing Obamacare to begin with, and McCain also urged a "return to regular order" utilizing the usual committee hearings and deliberations. When the Republican leadership decided not to listen to him and tried to push through an Obamacare repeal/replace measure with out following due process, McCain cast the deciding vote to shut it down.
And that was John McCain. OK, that's not the whole story. But still it gives us something to think about.
What ultimately defines a "man of honor"? If it's to say that such a man always and without fail acts with honor, we will be hard pressed to find one on this earth. It bears remembering that a man of honor is still a man.
But honor is an increasingly rare commodity it seems.
Honor means thinking beyond our own needs and wants, in being dedicated to doing what's right. There is no special wisdom inherent that a person with honor is going to always make the right choice. But a person with honor will think with compassion for others before making that choice and will seek to atone for the wrong choices, something that I think defined John McCain.
Ultimately, John McCain for his gifts and his flaws, was just a man. But was he a man of honor? I think it was in his nature to try to be, to live a life of honor, to serve his country with honor. Certainly compared to the fecklessness of most of the Republican party, he endeavored to behave with honor.
From Sen. John McCain's last interview with CNN's Jake Tapper
Tapper asked: "How do you want the American people to remember you?"
McCain responded: "He served his country ... I hope, we could add, honorably."
McCain did not presume that to be remembered as an honorable man, he just hoped that maybe, we would.
In a world where too many people do not even try to live a life of honor, just for trying, I think John McCain was a man of honor.
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