Posted on 08/28/2018 8:17:55 AM PDT by Kaslin
John McCain's exit from life and politics has commentators of all sorts falling into interpretive contortions.
"I opposed him, but..."
"I liked him in spite of..."
It was McCain's gift, springing from personality and life experiences, to antagonize and enrapture, to confound and excite, often at the very same moment. He was neither wholly one thing nor entirely another: neither hardline "conservative" nor "establishment" dupe; neither the selfless public servant incarnate nor the loosey-goosey adherent to some individualistic code.
I admired and twice voted for the man. Even in not-infrequent moments of disagreement, I took care to cut him some slack. I will tell you why. He was, according to my estimate, two distinct things in short supply today: a serious man and a hard-core patriot. If you can't salute those particular attributes, which ones can you salute?
His moral seriousness, embodying a commitment to generosity, decency and right actions, hid behind a mask at times. Despite his physical sufferings as a prisoner of the communist North Vietnamese, McCain was by most accounts a hoot to be around. He didn't mind a little irreverence -- a trait I see as stemming, plausibly, from his deep personal acquaintance with authority, particularly of the military sort. The media for a time ate up all this irreverence with a spoon.
No wonder: There was no Savior of the Nation grandiosity about Sen. John McCain. A man who could laugh at himself -- who could, for instance, kid about the effect of Krispy Kreme doughnuts on his physical profile -- was entitled to some measure of celebrity. He was a different kind of Republican, we were notified, open-minded, friendly, even slightly progressive.
With such press notices he had to be at least a little pleased. Yet not so pleased as to lose his understanding of public service as contractual in nature. The voters had sent him to Washington, D.C. They deserved the best service of which he was capable. That implied the duty of serious attention to public concerns.
Of all public concerns, that which chiefly engaged McCain's attention was national security, underwritten by military preparedness. This was to be expected of a third-generation Navy man. His father and grandfather, as all the obituaries have noticed, were four-star admirals. A sense of duty, and of gratitude, comes embedded in such a legacy -- a sense of appreciation for the sacrifices of others, a realization of the necessity for sacrifices still to come.
Every reader knows of McCain's barbaric treatment by his Vietnamese captors -- a point of which Donald Trump disagreeably made light during the 2016 campaign, claiming personally to like "people who didn't get captured." McCain sustained tortures barely describable -- in part, I guess, for the crime of displeasing an entrepreneur safe at home, attending to business. Mostly, however, it was for the sake of loving America too much to shame her with submission to tyranny and cruelty.
Love of country, in our time, may be the least-fashionable public virtue on public display, and commitment to freedom a relic of an exasperating history dominated by white male patriarchs, slayers of Indians, enslavers of blacks. The John McCain who fell into Vietnamese hands while defending freedom knew better and, throughout his latter career, never gave over his faith in America as the primary carrier of the freedom virus. He offended many in public life by his advocacy of strong, interventionist policies abroad, meant, basically, to reinforce freedom in America itself. He constantly advocated such military spending as seemed requisite to the entirely legitimate (it would seem to me) goal of military predominance in a world teeming with screwballs and America-haters.
There seems ample room to debate the wisdom of this American intervention or that one without discarding the overriding wisdom that projection of national strength warns the screwballs and America-haters to keep their distance. Because if they don't, then they'll run, head-long, into the heirs of John McCain; lovers of freedom and imitators of his worthy example, telling foreign enemies, in McCain-like tones of defiance, just where they can get off.
I had his number 20 years ago. Most of us did.
If I could I would delete your posting!
It made me throw up in my mouth more than a little!
Even in death.
The only thing I’ll remember John McCain for is being the poster child for term limits.
John McCain was a politician and he was also his own constituency.
My opinion is this McCain-a-thon is starting to backfire. Yesterday on Fox Business every other breath was McCain, McCain McCain... unwatchable. Today I’ve been watching and barely a mention.
That one's a head-scratcher.
The end of McCain for me was the Keating 5. My take was that he was exonerated for being too stupid to be aware of what was going on. It may keep you out of jail, but it’s not good on your resume.
It’s easier in the US to get elected than to get a decent job.
"Commander McCain's captors, completely ignoring international agreements, subjected Commander McCain to extreme mental and physical cruelties in an attempt to obtain military information and false confessions for propaganda purposes. Through his resistance to those brutalities, he contributed significantly toward the eventual abandonment of harsh treatment by the North Vietnamese, which was attracting international attention."
He impresses me as a small, petty, vindictive man who is exceptionally good at showing people what they want to see, and fooling people who want to be fooled.
Even worse, AZ voters continued to send McCain back to the Senate for nearly 30 years after the Keating situation became clear. That entire sordid mess was almost the end of a company I worked for at the time that got wrapped up in a Keating construction project gone bad with eventual involvement in the Resolution Trust Corporation, i.e. the fedgov’s answer to the savings & loan collapse.
Average men don’t call their wife a “c—t” in public.
From childhood on, John McCain was a very troubled and vile man.
Yes, I’m sorry, he was a bad man.
Did they show photos of McCain with the leaders of ISIS and the Muslim Brotherhood? Did they mention that he lied about Obamacare and was the single vote that derailed it? Oh, how about when he mocked and ridiculed the Tea party? Gun owners? Trump voters? Remember in 2008 when the media called him a racist for running against Obama? How about when he defended Palin when she was brutally attacked by the media-—oh that’s right, he didn’t. I respect his military service but despised elitist BIG government attacks as a US Senator.
Gee at first I thought this was written by Bill Munchhausen
Guess I need to get my glasses checked
To me this, more than anything summed it up about McCain:
During the 2008 Campaign and the Financial Crisis, McCain suspends his campaign to fly back to Washington. For what? By all accounts he just sat in the room and said nothing the whole time. It was a stunt, and it backfired, bigly, as Obama kept on campaigning (’call me if you need me’).
I won’t read an article that calls Ace McCain a patriot in the headline.
I immediately turned off Mikey Savage yesterday when he called Ace a “D+ politician” and bashed anyone who didn’t consider the POS a war hero.
Loved seeing some conservatives say “Hell NO” yesterday when being implored by leftist freaks to let it go for a few days first.
FU Ace, and also our domestic enemies who are lionizing you today for your treason!
I don’t hate McCain personally, it’s more about the hypocritical media than anything. I think McCain got sucked in because of it. He didn’t see how they’d been playing him all those years.
Sold his soul along time ago.... I shed not a single tear for the POS....
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.