John McCain: The Last of the Lincoln Republicans

"We don’t build walls to freedom and opportunity. We tear them down. To fear the world we have organized and led for three- quarters of a century, to abandon the ideals we have advanced around the globe, to refuse the obligations of international leadership for the sake of some half- baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems is unpatriotic."    

Senator John McCain (R), 2017

John McCain was an American hero in many ways. 

He was a military POW how resisted 5 years of torture in the Hanoi Hilton, yet returned to Vietnam to make peace with his own captors and help reestablish diplomatic relations.

He followed Barry Goldwater as the senator for Arizona and championed just, unpopular and politically inconvenient causes such as campaign reform, immigration reform and lately, offended both Left and Right by supporting his rival George W. Bush's surge in Iraq and voting down President's Trump populist and popular repeal without replace of the ACA healthcare bill known as Obamacare -which he also opposed vehemently-.

His argument for opposing the latter was a call to a civility lost in the populist wave that brought Trump to the White House:

A populist wave that McCain lamented to have helped by selecting populist firebrand Sarah Palin over his democratic first choice, democratic senator Joe Lieberman.

He ran a uninspiring campaign against Barack Obama in 2008 and damaged his reputation with an uncharacteristic surrender to populist pandering. It was perhaps an example of his fighter jet pilot tendency to quick judgement that, like others on the USS Forrestal and over Hanoi, backfired badly. He somehow took distance by standing against deranged birthers that hated his rival more than any Republican principle.

McCain never hesitated in working and voting across the partisan divide, engaging in lively debates and lifelong friendships and collaboration with rival Democratic leaders such as Ted Kennedy, Joe Biden and Russ Feingold. He is and will certainly be admired and missed by the best  of both parties. And certainly reviled and insulted by the worst. 

Thanks to John McCain's dedication to fight partisanship, he will remain a healthily divisive figure between those who put country over party and those who don't. The former will remember him fondly, the others will hate him stronger as time goes by. He would probably relish keeping such friends and foes.

McCain made one notorious exception to his civility. His widow asked that the sitting president, Donald J. Trump, was not welcomed at his funeral. 

McCain's contempt for Trump was just the latest rejection of his populist views and unpresidential behavior by most of the moderate Republican leaders, a long list that included a similarly embarrassing absence at Barbara Bush's funeral -where his wife Melania sat and chat with president's Bush, Clinton and Obama- and public denunciations by all of the living former presidents (including Bush 41 and Carter), 2012  and presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

In any case, what caused Cindy McCain's request was not just Trump's disrespect and incivility towards him, but toward the very American values and principles McCain fought for as a soldier and as a senator.

The best farewell to John McCain is following his advice and his example of civility and honor.

Republicans will have a lot to do and a lot to change to meet John McCain's standards.