I am a solid millennial. I grew up watching Nickelodeon and can pass most of Buzzfeed’s “90’s kids” quizzes. I became politically aware in the mid-90’s, and followed the 2000 election closely despite being a few months too young to vote in it. So John McCain has been a central political figure throughout most of my adult life. He has long been known as a “maverick,” willing to stand up to corruption and extremism in both parties, and maybe he deserved that at one point. For example, in 2000, he denounced Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson as “agents of intolerance.” Such heresies, combined with the vile Karl Rove’s smear campaign hinting that he had a mixed race bastard child, likely led to his losing the primary, and likely the presidency, to George W. Bush. While I doubtless would have had problems with President McCain, I believe the country would be a markedly better place if he had been leading the Republican party in the early 2000’s. McCain is largely defined by trauma. The trauma of his POW years is a foundational part of his narrative, and the political trauma of the Keating Five corruption scandal led him to become a champion of campaign finance reform in an act of repentance. I think the trauma of losing to Bush broke him, and he decided that he’d never be outflanked on the right again.
Since the 2000 election, McCain’s career has been about claiming to boldly stand up for principles while doing little in practice to promote them. There are exceptions, of course. He was a strident opponent of the Bush administration’s torture policies, though I’m not sure how much direct action he took against them. McCain’s political decline really began in 2007 when he decided to run for president again. I found it odd that many on the right considered McCain a traitor to conservatism despite his very conservative record (Ann Coulter went so far as to say she would vote for Hillary Clinton over McCain because Clinton was more conservative). The fact that his occasional reaches across the aisle should mark him as a RINO was an early sign of how radical the Republican Party would soon become. Regardless, McCain moved to the far right in ’07 and ’08. His sudden change of positions strikes me as political cowardice. I’ve heard that it’s wrong to call someone who was tortured a coward, but that’s a non-sequitur. Personal courage and political courage are two different things. No one can deny that McCain heroically refused to be released early in order to protect his squadmates (the only person I know of to seriously argue that point now sits in the White House), but that doesn’t mean he’s free from criticism over his craven political decisions (related reading: http://www.theroot.com/stop-calling-john-mccain-a-hero-for-flying-to-d-c-to-k-1797233267). The man frequently moved which way the wind blew, and that was never more evident than in 2008.
McCain’s most consequential pander was picking an unqualified far right governor to be his running mate. Sarah Palin quickly distinguished herself by throwing red meat to the fringe elements of the Republican electorate, bringing them into the mainstream discourse. She accused Obama of “palling around with terrorists” and helped propagate the “secret Muslim” and “birther” conspiracies (I know Trump claims Hillary Clinton started the latter, but that’s false- someone who claimed to be a Clinton supporter may have started it, but Clinton herself had nothing to do with it). In one memorable exchange in 2008, a woman at a rally told McCain Obama was “an Arab,” and McCain said that was wrong. He got a lot of praise from the media for that, but he didn’t do much to stop the rumors his own surrogates propagated. McCain profited politically from the racism of the fringe while trying to stay above it personally. This classic cartoon (NSFW: STRONG LANGUAGE) captured the dynamic well: http://wheany.tumblr.com/image/31117673161
On January 20, 2009, another Mc, Mitch McConnell launched an unheard of strategy of radical obstruction. He stated that his primary goal was to deny Obama a second term, and by denying him any bipartisan cover for his legislation he could keep the Republican base constantly riled up against the Democratic president. The strategy didn’t work in its primary goal, but it did allow the Republicans to take Congress in wave elections. The centerpiece of McConnell’s strategy was non-stop filibusters by the united Republican caucus. In doing so, McConnell broke the Senate. When forty percent of the chamber refuses to even consider the opposition’s proposals, it can no longer be called the world’s greatest deliberative body. It only would have taken one defection to make the strategy collapse, though. McCain had a unique opportunity- he had a bigger platform than just about any other Republican at that time. He could have voted for cloture on some of the Democratic proposals, and probably brought some other senators with him. This would have been in line with regular order and ended McConnell’s cynical strategy of party over country. It also would have weakened the right-wing claim that Obama was not a legitimate president, with its clear throughline to birtherism and finally Trumpism. McCain didn’t do that. He joined the opposition against cap-and-trade (a policy he and many other Republican senators previously supported), which may yet doom the human race. So my question is: when it counts, does McCain deserve his maverick reputation?
Since November, I’ve been living in fear of losing the ACA. My wife relies heavily on it- for instance, the medication that prevents them from developing diabetes would cost thousands without it. I worry I mention that too much, but I can’t help but take the issue personally. There’s a real possibility that losing protections against pre-existing conditions and Medicaid coverage would be lethal. Living under the cloud of a death sentence for someone you love takes a toll. So when McCain did his Caesar Rodney act the other day*, I was terrified. Then he voted for the motion to proceed, opening the door to tens of millions of people losing health coverage, and I said anyone who voted for that was a monster. I was then told that that was unfair because McCain gave a speech where he said he was voting to proceed in order to make a point and he wouldn’t vote for the bill itself. Fair enough, he did keep his word. Of course, voting to proceed made it much more likely that the death sentence on thousands of people is passed, but he did the right thing in the final vote. So I take it back, it wasn’t a monstrous thing to do. Except I still don’t understand something, and I would sincerely like anyone to explain it (this is not an invitation for liberal snark; I can supply that myself.).
Why did McCain need to vote for the motion to proceed in order to make a point about how the Senate is broken? There may actually be a reason for this. Senate rules can be bizarre; for example, the majority leader often has to vote against his own proposals in order to bring them up again later. It seems to me, though, that instead of giving a fifteen minute speech, McCain could have registered much stronger objections with one word: “no.” Had he voted down the motion, the corrupt process would have collapsed and McConnell would have to seriously reevaluate his methods. Instead, the message I got was that if McConnell pursues a radical strategy, he might hear some angry speeches from people who ultimately do what he wants. I don’t see how a bad tree can bear good fruit. If the process got this far by ignoring the rules, how does letting it continue restore the old rules? Furthermore, while I’m not in principle opposed to debating how to proceed, when the most generous version of this bill takes health insurance from an estimated sixteen million people, how could it possibly grow into something good? Here’s why I say the radicalization of the parties is asymmetrical: Democrats openly admit the ACA has flaws and have offered to work with Republicans to improve it. Republicans refuse to admit the ACA has virtues and only see it as something to be destroyed.
I’m also skeptical of McCain’s sincerity, since in the middle of his plea for bipartisan cooperation he flagrantly lied about the other party. This quote is important: “Hold hearings, try to report a bill out of committee with contributions from both sides. Something that my dear friends on the other side of the aisle didn’t allow to happen nine years ago.” This is just false. The ACA was passed through normal order after almost a year of open debate. Dozens of hearing were held. President Obama practically begged the Republicans to go along. Republican amendments were added. The whole thing was based on a Heritage Foundation idea that was implemented by Mitt Romney. Single payer wasn’t even considered. There is no comparison between the way 2009 Democrats acted and the opaque, hyper-partisan strategy being pursued today. Obama and the Democratic caucus started from a position of compromise, while McConnell said “Either Republicans will agree and change the status quo or the markets will continue to collapse and we’ll have to sit down with Senator Schumer.” Obama asked his party members to compromise with the opposition, while McConnell uses cooperation as a threat. In hindsight, Obama might as well have governed as a far left radical who ignored the opposition; since he was accused of that anyway, all his attempts to compromise accomplished was annoying his base. Ironically, the GOP’s intransigence has made it much more likely that the next Democratic president will ignore their input.
The point of this too long essay is simply that I have trouble trusting any of the GOP to do the right thing. Collins and Murkowski get my applause, and I’m grateful to the half dozen others who voted against the actual bills, but I have trouble seeing how this ends anywhere good. Why do Republicans want this? Do they really prioritize tax cuts for the wealthy over the health of millions? I guess they do, since that’s what their actions say. That’s the bottom line of this whole spiel: actions speak louder than words. Any one of the forty-plus senators who voted to repeal the ACA this week is a monster. As for those who voted to proceed but then against the bills, someone please help me understand what they’re thinking, because I just don’t get it. As for my Republican friends who think this goes too far, you have a lot more chance to stop it than I do. McConnell is pursuing his partisan strategy because it worked electorally in 2010 and 2014, and Trump was the natural outgrowth of all of it. I beg you to let your Republican representatives know that, even if you agree with them ideologically, you want them to return to a posture of compromise and cooperation. The Democratic leadership has offered to work together on improving the ACA and other laws provided you don’t destroy all the gains we’ve made over the last eight years. You may not believe them, but there’s only one way to find out.
*Caesar Rodney wasn’t actually dying when he rode to Philadelphia to vote for independence, but I’ve seen 1776 over a hundred times, so that’s the version that sticks in my head.
