On a Saturday in February 2017, The Better Half and I were observing a ritual: breakfast at Can Can in Carytown and a copy of The Washington Post. The paper contained an exasperating news story by Aaron Blake. John McCain at a conference overseas had assessed the potential damage The Tweeter in Chief could do. It was a fair critique but ultimately mere words.
Mr. McCain’s courage during his captivity in Vietnam was admirable but his reputation as a political maverick was more a carefully curated image than reality. With Mr. McCain, a chasm often separated word from deed. He had lambasted President Sharpie’s worldview while confirming cabinet members whose views were equally noxious.
When I wrote the letter, I thought that Mr. McCain was yet to cast a no vote on cabinet confirmations. I was wrong. He had rejected Mick Mulvaney’s nomination as director of the Office of Management and Budget. I sent a note to apologize with no expectation of a reply since I’m not a constituent. None was forthcoming.
The apology merits retraction. Mr. McCain was defending no principle in giving Mr. Mulvaney a thumbs down. He was settling a personal score. The two, during Mr. Mulvaney’s Tea-Party-Freedom-Caucus congressional days, had butted heads over military appropriations. Mr. McCain nursed his grudge carefully.
Mr. McCain deserved credit for his other thumbs down, his scotching of the GOP’s attempted recission of the Affordable Care Act in July 2017. Yet one must wonder whether the diagnosis earlier that month of terminal brain cancer influenced this. Could his vote have been empirical proof of the efficacy of Michael Moore’s ironic “Prayer to Afflict the Comfortable,” his call for the Deity to rain misfortunes on conservatives, since, given their deficit in empathy, only experiential learning can lead them to sympathy? (Michael Moore, Stupid White Men. . .and other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation! [New York: Regan Books, 2001], 234-5).
Mr. McCain’s legacy, moreover, cannot be measured in isolation from his elevation of Sarah Palin to national prominence, a cynical, self-serving calculation that pointed the way to the Trumpian flavor of political combat. Furthermore, the ascent of Meghan McCain to the punditocracy cannot be seen as other than nepotism run amuck. Rarely has anyone been afforded a platform with so little to offer. To paraphrase a gibe lobbed by a more lucid Joe Biden at Rudolph Giuliani: All Meghan McCain needs to construct a sentence is a noun, a verb, and “my daddy, John McCain.”
The letter people at The Washington Post are a pleasant lot. We had a brief editorial back and forth and that was that.
Aaron Blake, “McCain Delivers Takedown of Trump’s Worldview,” The Washington Post, 18 February 2017, A2 (www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/02/17/john-mccain-just-systematically-dismantled-donald-trumps-entire-worldview/).
“McCain’s Words and Actions on Trump,” The Washington Post, 22 February 2017, A12 (www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mccains-words-vs-actions-on-trump/2017/02/21/9c6e9264-f700-11e6-aa1e-5f735ee31334_story.html).