Remembering Senator McCain

Everyone knows that funerals induce gushes of emotion. Sometimes the emotions people express still surprise me. 

I remember the year John Kennedy died...not the President who was murdered, whom I remember only from old news video, but his son, who was about my age and used to publish a cheerful little magazine that aimed to get ordinary people to think about public affairs. I boarded a commuter train, and a regular rider got on at the next station, crying real tears, saying to people she knew, "I was just thinking about that poor little Caroline Kennedy. Now all of her family's gone!" I thought that was unusual, and wondered whether the woman knew the family personally. I mentioned that to a Black friend who said, "That's why they say White people are coldhearted. I don't believe you ever cried about John Kennedy! He was one of your people!" 

He was, and a fine specimen at that; but, no, I didn't cry. Not real tears. I don't expect that Caroline Kennedy shed a tear when my brother died, either; in fact I would have been shocked if she had.

I didn't know U.S. Senator John McCain, either, personally. I first heard his name when George Peters called me and said, "Find out about the Republican candidates in the 2000 election. I think McCain is the one who wants to be the 'Voice of the Unborn' and, if so, we'll back McCain." Well, no; I read Faith of My Fathers on tape, all the way through, so GP could make an informed decision. He decided McCain was a tad too liberal for him, Ambassador Alan Keyes a hair too conservative. He backed W-for-Walking-Target Bush.

Still, Senator McCain's rise to national fame won respect from both of us and from most people. 

He said in Faith of My Fathers that, apart from supporting better funding for the Department of Defense than your average Democrat, he could be described as a moderate Democrat as accurately as a moderate Republican. I do not have a problem with that. I think it's the position that best represents the majority of this country. But the extremists on both sides, who admired McCain's image without having read his book, were surprised and disappointed.

A certain non-writer at this web site claims to have known John McCain personally from Vietnam, and I wished he would write the obligatory tribute to the late senator. They did, and do, have something in common: physical toughness. Extreme toughness. I don't know whether they ever met after Vietnam but I think they'd have had to salute each other for the ability to work harder, through more pain, than any two ordinary random men who've never had a worse pain than an impacted wisdom tooth. I think Ronald Reagan, who cracked jokes about the bullet in his lung, would have called them heroes. 

So I expected to read some lachrymose funeral pieces about how much people admired Senator McCain and regretted the nasty things they'd said about him in the course of their everyday partisan mudslinging, and yes, the e-mail contained some. 

I was surprised to receive e-mail from the individual who claimed the blame for having campaigned against McCain with ugly letters about his adoptive daughter. Fundraising, yet. I would have imagined that, for this week at least, that individual would be sitting at home with the curtains drawn. Of course, for all I know, he is, and some smartypants borrowed his name to ask people for money. Needless to say, that e-mail was promptly deleted.

Then there was the politics-to-the-end story about McCain having banned Trump from his funeral...I don't know whether the McCain family are chortling or crying about that. It's none of my business actually. 

And then some correspondent complained that, making his obligatory statement that mentioned Senator McCain having been a great American, Trump wouldn't be likely to say that about his U.S. Senator...some of you readers may have seen that e-mail too; for others, I won't mention which correspondent or which senator are involved. 

Not all U.S. Senators will be remembered as great Americans even in their funeral eulogies, but that is sort of the job description; it's just that many of them don't do very well at it. 

Maybe some readers think they'd do better. Maybe that's even true, for all I know. Try it and see. Read the bills your elected officials have to read. How would you balance the requirements of your constituency, while doing all that reading, and enough side research to do that reading intelligently, and also being on call to help your individual constituents with pensions and scholarships and all that? Many Congressmen give up the attempt. The ones I have now, like the ones they've replaced, do at least try to work consistently with their constituents on some of the major issues and balance that with the pension and scholarship things. Rick Boucher, the Democrat representing the mostly Republican Ninth District in Virginia before Morgan Griffith stepped forward, used to be well known for serving his constituents as individuals and mostly not voting on legislation where there was no hope of consensus. At that he was well above average. Some of them just vote the party line, drink heavily, and behave badly toward Bright Young Things. But McCain was one of the U.S. Senators who actually did a large part of the work in the job description. There are others (Ron and Rand Paul come to mind, and...and...there aren't all that many). They are great Americans. 

But last night, I fell asleep with a list of other great Americans who (so far as I know) have been overlooked by President Trump running through my head...I mean to say. Is Trump the one you want to give your funeral eulogy? Senator Dole (and President Kennedy), who showed Senator McCain how working through intense pain was done, and Aretha Franklin, and Mitch Snyder, and Sam Walton, and Israel Cohen, and so many other public and private people whose loss has been felt by the whole nation, would probably have been glad. Ron Paul, Jimmy Carter, the Bushes, Ben Carson, and anyone else in Washington who is old enough to worry about Trump being able to attend their funeral, should probably give thanks. Eulogies are not Mr. Trump's major talent.

They're not mine, either. When I do sincerely mourn, I have little to say. When I go online to write, I'm in the snarky sort of mood that composes a sentence like, "However disappointed the extremists in both parties were by his politics, John McCain was a real hero and a great American," and, although I believe this to be true, I immediately think: "Summarize in a Sentence! Eulogies While You Wait!" 

I wished he'd been more of a fiscal conservative, and a stronger one--nevertheless, I respect what I observed of what Senator McCain did in the Senate, as well as in Vietnam. He seemed to be one of our more sincere, less corrupt elected officials, according to his beliefs, which obviously were not the same beliefs held by a great number of political pundits. He did not necessarily represent everyone in Arizona, but he consistently represented the ones he did represent. His life history is a record of extraordinarily tough jobs, done extraordinarily well, in spite of pain and hate. We should all be a little braver and tougher for having known what we've known of John McCain.

Keep the faith, Gentle Readers.