The passing of the Senator McCain yesterday is a punctuation mark on a number of national events, from the Vietnam War to the moderate Republicans holding out against the extremists flooding the party, from those who would blame him for anything from causing a disaster on USS Forrestal to being captured during the Vietnam War, to his work as an elected representative. In a sense, he was the mythical Everyman, the warrior, father, and participant in the public conversation concerning the management of the Republic.
In his latter years, his reputation as a maverick was, I felt, inconsistently fulfilled, as elements of the right-wing agenda were achieved without public protest from him. But his protests against the mismanagement of the Senatorial processes were a badge of honor for him, for they rose about partisanship and addressed issues that are important for the proper functioning of the Senate in the greater scheme of the country, and did so without regard to his own positions on those agenda items that might benefit from mismanagement, if only in the short-term.
His death is a loss to the country, immense as it is inevitable, but I think the conservatives will feel it more, because they’ve lost someone who could properly invoke a moral position to which most Americans would respond, unlike most members of today’s conservative movement. No one’s motives are unmixed, to my mind, but McCain’s motives to become an elected representative appeared to be more worthy than most.
RIP, sir. I hope your successors are worthy of you.
