John McCain's Bequest

This Labor Day weekend was full of John McCain.  I agreed with maybe 50% of McCain’s politics--He was too conservative and too much of a ‘hawk’ for me.  He always wanted to spend more on the military, and was first in line to act militarily against other nations.  Maybe that was somehow a ‘knee jerk’ reaction to his own particular history. 

However he was also someone who fought for the ‘little guy’.  In recent days he was the one lone warrior who foiled Trump’s plan to obliterate the Affordable Care Act, and the one lone Republican who called out the Trump supplicants currently in Congress.

This weekend was full of tribute to the man and I watched most of the services on Saturday.  The Sunday morning programs invited guests from both sides of the aisle to comment on the ‘rebuke’ to Trump and how it would affect the Mueller probe, etc. etc.  The most insightful comments came for Leon Panetta, former Chief of Staff for Bill Clinton; and former Director of the CIA and Defense Secretary for Barak Obama.

When asked what he took away from the services and the overall weekend tribute to John McCain he had a truly thoughtful response.  He said that the services and remembrances of McCain were not only a re-affirmation of the values and ideals of the American Democracy, but also a moment for all Americans to hold up a mirror and ask themselves the question, “Who am I as an American, and who do I want to be?” 

The era of Trump has made this question of paramount importance. 

Over the past two years we have seen a real change in our profile as a nation with ‘ideals’ and ‘moral values’.  Honor, integrity, honesty, and most importantly truth and the rule of law have been corrupted by this administration.  Trump is just the latest incarnation of a drift that began decades ago when our representatives made money and power the most important things in the universe.  John McCain's values were the antithesis of that.  Above all for McCain it was honesty and integrity.

The result has been the inexorable slow ebbing of those most cherished ideals that the founders hoped would guide our actions and decisions as a republic.  The result of that slide has led us to the loss of compromise as a way to make progress, and recent milestones like the Merrick Garland episode, the reappearance of overt racism, fear of the ‘other’, abandonment of our belief that immigration is the strength of our perpetual renewal as a nation, among other events.

So Panetta’s reflection has great relevance.  As the frenetic verbal abuse of our institutions (Dept. of Justice; FBI; the press) by the President grows louder every day, we must ask ourselves, “Is this who we want to be as Americans?”  Are we ready to abandon truth and accept Rudy Giuliani’s statement that ‘Truth is not truth’?  Are we going to accept autocracy and accept the premise that the only ‘real’ truth is from the mouth of Donald Trump?

As I scanned the faces of those who attended that service on Saturday, I was heartened by the cross section of political views and positions that were represented in what was clearly a heartfelt  appreciation for the values that John McCain stood for.  America was his mantra.  As Obama affirmed in his eulogy, recalling the private talks he and McCain had in the Oval during his Presidency, both he and John were ‘on the same team’ no matter how they might have differed on policy.  Can the same be said today about Republicans and Democrats, or more specifically about Trumpists and the rest of us?

I wondered about the hypocrisy of McConnell, Ryan, other Republican legislators sitting in the National Cathedral who are mute as each egregious statement and action oozes forth from the White House.  How is it possible for these men to honor what McCain stood for and then so blatantly abandon those ideals in pursuit of their own agendas?

When pundits, and those of us who still operate in the realm of truth and honesty believe that this election—a mere 60 days away—is perhaps at the fulcrum of the survival of our nation as the founders imagined it, the solemnity of that moment this past weekend is prophetic.