Since this past week has been a non-stop celebration of John McCain ideology in the American press, I'll add my own bit of praise for McCain's posthumous accomplishment: he made his funeral a slap in the face of the current President, who McCain had good reason to despise. And he managed to have the last Democratic President be the main deliverer of the message of McCain's greatness. And to do so in a way that reflected his famous no-red-America-no-blue-America speech of 2004 at a time when McCain's own party is practicing willing partisanship in support of a criminal President while the Democratic Party is afraid to take a partisan stance against that President and in favor of the Constitutional order.
Of course, George W. Bush gave a eulogy, too, at McCain's request. Bush, Liberator of Peoples and Scourge of the Heathen, managed to read his text without notably stumbling. And there was also the signature smirk, when he seemed to take special pride in getting out a complete sentence.
According to Shrub Bush, McCain spoke for "the little guy" and for "forgotten people and forgetten places."
I suppose some of the beneficiaries of the plutocratic tax cuts which he supported were short, so I guess that could be standing up for "the little guy."
What was consistent with McCain's record was the neoconservative refrain that Bush and McCain used to justify the Iraq War that it was all about liberating "death camps" and the like, the mission to bring freedom to countries like Iraq by invading their country, killing hundreds of thousands of their people, and plunging them into protracted conflict and instability. Or, in Shrub's words in the eulogy, "the true peace that comes only with freedom." The peace of the grave is more like it.
Bush and his Vice President Dick Cheney created the torture program and the parallel system of "justice" thjat still stumbles along at Guantanamo. McCain criticized the torture policy. But he certainly wasn't willing to take any drastic political action to stop it. And the Torture President is one of the people he specified he wanted to give a speech at his funeral.
As I predicted last week, one of the two Presidents giving eulogies was a Republican praising a Republican. And that Obama's speech would inevitably be the more eloquent or memorable of the two. That was true. Not that it took any great predictive powers to guess that.
I'll give Obama credit for noting, in his mild way, that "John was a pretty conservative guy." But it was in the context of praising his Maverick greatness. And, of course, as I also predicted, he praised the virtues of moderation and bipartisanship. McCain "did understand that some principles transcend politics," Obama said. That some values that transcend party." Those principles he listed as self-government, the Constitution, etc., etc. "even the arcane rules and procedures of the Senate." And, of course, the bold Maverick would "occasionally work across the aisle," that dreadful phrase that has come to basically mean that Democrats like to surrender to Republicans.
Democrats will mostly gush about how Obama's mom-and-apple-pie invocation of American virtues to be a mighty putdown of Trump's Administration. Obviously, he didn't go so far as to explicitly condemn the kidnapping of immigrant children.
And then the talking heads even on the "liberal" MSNBC will advise the Democrats to follow his advice by surrendering to Republicans. Which way too many of them are inclined to do anyway!
Since McCain passed away, I've been resisting the temptation to do my own obituary-type piece on him. Because he was a world-famous Senator and adored by the Establishment press (Pete Vernon, Remembering John McCain and his relationship with the pressColumbia Journalism Review 08/27/2018), who in any case write up obituaries in advance for famous people.
One obituary essay on McCain that really manages to talk about him in a nuanced but critical way without being hagiographic or churlish is Charlie Pierce's John McCain Was a Flawed Politician I Never Stopped AdmiringEsquire Politics Blog 08/26/2018.
I understand that the death of prominent political leaders produces don't-speak-ill-of-the-dead kind of evaluation and obituary hagiography. And those are part of the broader pattern of funeral, buriel, and mourning routines and rituals. That's a tradition that dates back to before the time of homo sapiens. And it's very normal in those traditions to show respect for the dead in part by remembering them in terms of very broad human qualities like Devotion, Love, Courage, Loyalty, Diligence, Faith, and so on.
The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) wrote that caring acts remembering the dead is the only truly unselfish human activity, because the departed being memorialized can't reciprocate in any way.
When I first encountered that quote, I was impressed by it. And thought it sounded straightforwardly true. Until I thought about it a little bit.
Because funeral rites and other rituals remembering the dead are very much social activities, even those that may be carried out alone, like visiting graves. They and the language that emerges around them are part of social and individual life and they serve various functional purposes, even straightforwardly selfish ones. Guilt over one's relation to the departed could be selfish motivation for indulging in such rituals.
So can more pragmatic cupidity. An estranged family member may show up to a funeral in hope of getting some advantage in the distribution of the departed's assets. (This doesn't imply, of course, that people should be sloppy or irrresposible in guarding their own legitimate interests in such situations.)
When it comes to major political figures like McCain, selfish interests inevitably come into play. And especially for someone like McCain who was active political figure with a national and international audience up until the end of his life, people in politics will inevitably tailor their rememberences to be consistent with their own political outlooks.
In the case of US Democrats and Republicans, it seems to me that such moments bring out one of the worst instincts of Democratic politicians, i.e., to try to identify themselves in some way with Republicans by praising someone like McCain uncritally in this period. While the Republicans are pretty unapologetic about using such occasions to their partisan advantage. And that matters in the real world of politics.
The fact that McCain specified that he wanted George W. Bush and Barack Obama to deliver eulogies at his funeral has political implications. Democrats of course are deligted that the request is a slap at the sitting President, such as he is. But the mutual effect of those two speeches will be different. One will be a Republican praising a Republican. Do I even need to mention that Bush's will not be the more eloquent or memorable of the two? Obama, on the other hand, will praise the virtues of moderation and bipartisanship. And then the talking heads even on the "liberal" MSNBC will advise the Democrats to follow his advice by surrendering to Republicans. Which way too many of them are inclined to do anyway!
Here's an example from 2009, an NBC/AP story on the passing of Ted Kennedy, Without Kennedy, no Senate Dealmaker 08/27/2009, dated two days after Ted Kennedy's death on August 25:
No one is irreplaceable in the Senate, a popular saying goes. But Sen. John McCain, a Republican, called Kennedy just that in a statement Wednesday. McCain, last year his party's presidential nominee, was even clearer during the weekend.
"He had a way of sitting down with the parties at a table and making the right concessions, which really are the essence of successful negotiations," McCain said in a weekend television talk show.
"It's huge that he's absent," McCain added.
McCain at the time was working hard with the other Republicans to defeat the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), which because McCain and the Republicans failed to do so, was able to bring health insurance to millions of Americans who had previously not been able to afford it. Expanding health care coverage had been one of Kennedy's signature issues throughout his Senate career. And here Kennedy wasn't even in the ground yet and McCain was using his memory to encourage Democrats to surrender on health care.
One of the major "maverick-y" things he's now credited with doing, siding with the Demcorats in key votes last year against repealing Obamacare, was scarcely a bold stand on principle, as Jordan Weissmann explains in John McCain’s Complicated, Inscrutable Legacy on ObamacareSlate 08/26/2018. Those votes probably had something to do with constituent pressure. (Sarah Jaffe, John McCain’s Constituents Are Revolting Against His Attempt to Take Away Their HealthcareIn These Times 07/27/2017) But that's fine. If a politician does something constructive that his constituents support, that's a good thing.
We have a duty to provide this nation with the strongest and most reliable defense establishment on earth. We can be satisfied with nothing less. Before you believe the rhetoric or the liberal left that your defense dollars have been wasted, conduct a little test.
Go out to the nearest military base or one of your navy ships. Ask the chief petty officers. Ask the master sergeants what they think of the Reagan-Bush defense program. First they will recall the 1970's when, under Jimmy Carter, we had guns that couldn’t shoot, planes that couldn’t fly, and ships that couldn’t leave port because of the lack of spare parts and trained personnel. They will recall families of enlisted men on food stamps.
Then, they will tell you that today we have never had more highly qualified and motivated men and women serving in our military. And they are ready to defend our interests throughout the world - just as they did in our successful strike on Khadafy terrorism in Libya, which Michael Dukakis opposed; the rescue mission in Grenada, which Michael Dukakis did not support; and in our defense of the Persian Gulf which Michael Dukakis opposed -- where there is now peace. ...
It is dishonorable for this nation to sell Central America down the river to communism. The Sandinistas, displaying their contempt for the church, the press, and every standard, of decency have crushed basic human rights and have violated the promises and commitments made in 1979, and of the Arias peace plan they signed last year.
Just as shameful is the conduct of the Speaker of the House, that best selling author Jim Wright, who thinks he is Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs. Now it is time to give the freedom fighters the support and the where-with-all to bring justice and freedom to Nicaragua. Now it’s time to stop the spread of communist subversion in Central America. And it is absolutely the time to stop the flow of Soviet and Cuban weapons into the Western Hemisphere.
Under Ronald Reagan and George Bush, America has gone from a whipping boy and laughing stock of the world to a nation that inspires respect from our allies and restraint form our adversaries.
Much of the speech is devoted to the Republican theme that Democratic Presidential candidate Michael Dukakis dishonored the American flag and the Pledge of Allegiance, the kind of frivolous demogoguery that today's Republicans are practicing against professional football players who kneel in protest against police needlessly murdering young black men.
That speech was unfortunately a good preview of his future political career on the national stage. It's closing lines were, "Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Republicans. Duty, Honor, Country." John McCain was already equating patriotism and supporting the Republican Party. It's an ugly legacy. Here are artiles on various aspects of it:
C.W. Nevius et al, McCain Criticized for Slur/He says he'll keep using term for ex-captors in Vietnam San Francisco Chronicle 02/18/2000
Earlier this year, McCain admitted in a general way that the Iraq War he so enthusiastically supported was a mistake: John McCain’s shocking concession on the Iraq War: it was a “mistake” Vox 05/25/2018: "McCain is among the most hawkish Republicans in the Senate and was an ardent supporter of the George W. Bush administration’s decision to go to war with Iraq and a later US troop surge." MoveOn posted this clip of what became one of McCain's more famous moments. It's not a fluke, it's a representation of what he stood for in foreign policy, Reckless 04/20/2007:
And he may not actually have been such a nice guy, as Cenk Uygar reported 10 years ago,
McCain is being credited in the tributes for opposing torture. But he "then ended up voting for legislation that has helped make torture legal, at least in the eyes of the president." The President in that case being George W. Bush. Who McCain requested to give a eulogy at his funeral. (Robert Scheer, The Contradictions of John McCainTruthdig 08/26/2018)
Even his famous defence of Obama during the 2008 Presidential campaign against a dingy question from a woman in his audience really isn't all it was cracked up to be. (Jane Kim, Arab or Decent?Columbia Journalism Review 10/14/2008)
McCain had plenty of virtues. But he applied them mostly to destructive political causes. His political legacy very prominently includes, yes, warmongering and unleashing Sarah Palin onto the national political scene. As Charlie Pierce puts it:
By the time the Republican convention of 2008 rolled around, there was little left of the 2000 John McCain except the ambition that had always burned in him.
Then he picked Sarah Palin to run with him and that was the ballgame, at least for me. I had come to like him during the time we'd spent together when I was doing a profile in 1999 as he was warming up for his first presidential run. He was destined, always, to disappoint me politically but that was only because we didn't agree on anything. The choice of Palin was where I climbed completely off the tire swing. Only someone dangerously blinded by ambition would consider putting her that close to the national command authority. He had lost his way entirely. Anybody who wants to be president badly enough that he'd pick a half-bright human parka as his running mate never should be elected to that office.
Paul Krugman writes this week (Why It Can Happen HereNew York Times 08/27/2018), "the reality [is] that the modern G.O.P. feels no allegiance to democratic ideals; it will do whatever it thinks it can get away with to entrench its power." McCain leadership in the Republican Party was a significant part of what took the party down that path, most dramatically by his choice of Sarah Palin.
Chauncey DeVega makes a valuable point about how we need to understand the celebration of John McCain of a Bold Maverick by the Democratic Party, as well as the media. In John McCain is no maverick: The man who inflicted Sarah Palin on us kowtows to TrumpSalon 07/26/2017, he reminds us that McCain is the single person most responsible for making Sarah Palin a national political figure. And that McCain has been fine with the transformation of his party into an authoritarian, Christianist entity willing to be led by a malicious Orange Clown: "McCain’s policies are mostly the party’s; the Republican Party’s policies are largely his."
And this is a critical point:
The Democratic Party’s failures are also exemplified by its relationship with John McCain.
Democrats and the so-called liberal media lionize and respect him, fawning over his superior character and declaring him a “maverick.” But on Tuesday, as many times in the past, McCain sided with his fellow Republicans and against the American people. Even as Democrats cheered McCain’s return to the Senate, it should be clear that he is no friend of theirs.
Unfortunately, the Democratic Party continues to treat its enemies on the other side of the political aisle with respect and to hold out a pathetic expectation that bipartisan compromise and negotiation are possible. For years, the Democratic Party has been in a fight to the death with the Republican Party. Yet the Democrats keep bringing hugs and handshakes while the Republicans show up with knives and guns. Who will win in the end? The answer is obvious. The question is really just a formality.
My take is that this is typical McCain, who has one of the most consistent conservative and Republican Party-line voting records in the Senate, gave us another example of his long performance as the Serious Conservative who expresses deeply concerned about the sad lack of bipartisan accord and then votes the hardline Republican position.
It also has a stock appeal to bipartisan cooperation, meaning the Democrats should agree to what the Republicans want. But the Maverick's many doting admirers in the press corps happily processes this as high-minded statesmanship.
It was an ugly day in the United States Senate on Tuesday, as ugly a day as has been seen in that chamber since the death of Strom Thurmond, who used to make a day ugly simply by showing up. The Senate took up the Motion To Proceed on whatever the hell hash Mitch McConnell wants to make out of the American healthcare system. (The decision now seems to be between whether we kick 30 million, 22 million, or 18 million of our fellow citizens to the curb.) ...
But the ugliest thing to witness on a very ugly day in the United States Senate was what John McCain did to what was left of his legacy as a national figure. He flew all the way across the country, leaving his high-end government healthcare behind in Arizona, in order to cast the deciding vote to allow debate on whatever ghastly critter emerges from what has been an utterly undemocratic process. He flew all the way across the country in order to facilitate the process of denying to millions of Americans the kind of medical treatment that is keeping him alive, and to do so at the behest of a president* who mocked McCain's undeniable military heroism.
... the Straight Talk Express is in the ditch. The Affordable Care Act was the product of endless hearings and at least 100 amendments proposed by Republicans. It was scored by the CBO. The Senate debated it for almost a month, and the senators knew what was in it. Right now, the bill that John McCain facilitated likely will be one that isn't scored by the CBO, and the Freedom Caucus crackpots in the House are trying to defund the CBO and hand the job of scoring legislation to the Heritage Foundation. I would bet a substantial number of buffalo nickels that John McCain votes for whatever bill finally comes before him, no matter how many people's lives that bill makes miserable.
