I never really liked Senator John McCain. I did not vote for him when he ran against President Barack Obama. I thought Sarah Palin was a bad pick for any political office. He got caught up in the Keating Five. I didn’t like that he voted against a Martin Luther King’s Day (later said he made a mistake.)
However, I did admire John McCain for his military service, the torture he was forced to endure in Vietnam and how he refused preferential treatment for his release. Ask former President John Kennedy said, people like John McCain did things because they were hard. More importantly overly the last few years, McCain seemed like the one of the only senators that could find a compromise across an ever widening political abyss. This was because he became a person that put his country, not his party first.
This has become so important in a time when Donald Trump feeds conflict and separation in America with every one of his tweets.
I found it significant that John McCain had so many former political rivals speak at his funeral.
As former President Obama, said during McCain’s funeral- “So much of our politics, our public life, our public discourse can seem small and mean and petty. Trafficking in bombast and insult and phony controversies and manufactured outrage. It’s politics that pretends to be brave and tough, but in fact is born of fear. John called on us to be bigger than that. He called on us to be better than that.”
Former President George Bush, another former rival said “He could not abide bigots and swaggering despots. There was something deep inside him that made him stand up for the little guy – to speak for forgotten people in forgotten places.”
I never thought I would say this, but I will miss John McCain’s in the US Senate and America. I worry about who will replace his voice of reason at this critical time in American history?
