[Author’s note: This piece was originally submitted to American Thinker but they rejected it because McCain died last August. Normally, I spike articles that were rejected, but McCain IS back in the news, and people seem to have forgotten his full history. I haven’t, and I thought this piece deserved to see the light of day. On the other hand, maybe I’m not as clever as I think. If you like this article, please share it with your friends. If not (if you think Shakespeare is rolling over in his grave right now), please leave a comment advising me not to write this sort of blog post ever again.]
Friends, Republicans, fellow Americans: lend me your ears.
I come here to bury John McCain, not to praise him. Quite frankly, he doesn’t deserve praise. His Senate colleagues have decreed that we cannot speak ill of the dead, and John McCain is dead.
Senator Johnny Isakson (for whom I voted) proclaimed the late senator a hero and said, “Anyone who tarnishes the reputation of John McCain deserves a whipping.” Senator Mitt Romney (for whom I once voted) described John McCain as “heroic, courageous, patriotic, honorable, self-effacing, self-sacrificing, empathetic, and driven by duty to family, country, and God.”
However, the evil that men do lives after them, and Senator McCain was an ambitious man. He wasn’t merely content to be a senator from Arizona and one of the most powerful people in the United States; McCain wanted to be the most powerful, the President of the United States. He ran for that office twice. In 2000, Senator McCain lost the GOP nomination to George W. Bush. Then in 2001, he was one of only two Republican Senators to vote against President Bush’s tax cut plan, and did it again in 2003.
Was that the act of an honorable man, or a vindictive one? Was it a stand on principle, or grandstanding? When he lost the presidential election to Barack Obama in 2008, he blamed Sarah Palin for his loss. I voted for Senator McCain because he’d chosen Governor Palin to be his running mate, not in spite of her.
John McCain may have served our country during time of war with honor and distinction, but so did Benedict Arnold. What other attributes might Senator McCain and Benedict Arnold have in common? Well, for one thing, both men had a very inappropriate relationship with a British spy. In Benedict Arnold’s case, he tried to sell the plans to West Point to Major John Andre of the British Army. Had those plans safely made it back to General Cornwallis, the colonial army would probably have lost the Revolutionary War. John McCain sent one of his aides to England to meet with British spy Christopher Steele, author of the infamous, discredited “Russian dossier” and immediately became an operative for the Obama administration by passing that dossier along to James Comey and the FBI, which was exactly what the Democratic Party wanted him to do.
His friends have tried to defend the move as the act of a statesman, not a traitor. More than likely, the Mueller investigation wouldn’t exist if it hadn’t been for John McCain taking salacious opposition research originally funded by Democrats and produced by Russian agents with the help of a British spy, and then pretended that it contained credible information worthy of further investigation. Two years of obstruction for Donald Trump’s agenda due to interference from the Mueller investigation can be almost exclusively blamed on McCain for giving the garbage credibility.
Mitt Romney says that John McCain was an honorable man. Were those the actions of an honorable man? John McCain promised the voters of Arizona he would vote with President Trump to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but then in dramatic fashion for the cameras, cast the deciding vote with a thumb down that kept the atrocious piece of legislation alive. That was the vote of a spiteful, unpatriotic man who put his own petty personal grievances and ego over the best interests of an entire nation. He didn’t vote against repeal for any of the pathetic excuses he offered. John McCain voted against repeal because he wanted to deny Donald Trump the ability to achieve one of his core campaign promises — a promise he had made himself to the voters of Arizona.
John McCain was a very selfish man. He continued to serve in office and cast votes on legislation until his death, even though his diagnosis had been an aggressive cancer on his brain. Ironically, any federal judge actively sitting on the bench with the same condition would be forced to immediately retire because defense attorneys could attack future verdicts with the argument that the judge had a disabling mental condition and the defendant hadn’t received a fair trial…but the laws the trial judge will be asked to uphold can be passed with the vote of a mentally impaired member of Congress.
But John McCain was an honorable man. He was a soldier and a legislator. He was a driving force behind campaign finance reform to get “soft money” out of politics and proud that the law was called “McCain-Feingold.” How effective has the law been? Barack Obama raised an astonishing $1.1 billion dollars for his presidential campaign. Obama and Mitt Romney both declined public financing for their campaigns. When campaign laws were violated, Obama simply paid the fine.
Laws don’t apply to the political ruling class. They’re written for the rest of us.
Senator McCain got his name immortalized into federal law and people spoke favorably about him because he was perceived as trying to end the corruption of money in politics, and his peers deemed him an honorable man. Especially his Democrat peers. But what motivated Senator McCain to promote campaign finance reform? His guilty conscience? John McCain caught up in the savings-and-loan scandal of the late 1980s and early 1990s, the only Republican member of the infamous Keating Five. His “poor judgment” cost the American taxpayers $3.4 billion dollars when Lincoln Savings and Loan went bankrupt. The savings-and-loan crisis cost taxpayers a whopping $124 billion dollars—enough for President Trump to build an American version of the Great Wall of China.
John McCain came from a family that once owned slaves. He graduated from the Naval Academy at the bottom of his class. He served as a pilot in the Vietnam War, was shot down and captured by the enemy, and tortured as a prisoner-of-war. He was awarded a Purple Heart and a Silver Star. According to most accounts, his military service was honorable. Then he began a second career as a politician. McCain allegedly considered himself a public servant, and an honorable man, though not a particularly intelligent one. But he was also an adulterer who admitted cheating on his first wife, so no one should call Donald Trump or John McCain a paragon of virtue. His ego drove him to seek the highest office in the land when he was the least distinguished member of his class, a mediocre student with a bit of a bad attitude toward authority.
Johnny Isakson says he deserved to be honored, and Senator Isakson is an honorable man. Mitt Romney basically says the same thing, and Senator Romney is an ambitious man. One thing is certain: Senator McCain is dead. It’s time to finally bury his memory. He was given the funeral of a national hero, a spectacle of ceremony that seemed to last forever.
Enough is enough. Men have lost their reason.
My heart is in the White House with our president. I must pause while he makes America great again.
By all means, please keep writing precisely this kind of column. What got into American Thinker that they took a pass on this one? Truth is truth, whether the individual is dead or alive. Politicians eulogizing other politicians is pretty much just bloviating for the cameras. But truth will still be relevant in 100 years, provided, of course, that we still have a nation.