RIP Senator John McCain

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www.rollingstone.com

John McCain: A 'Maverick,' Revisited

Tim Dickinson's 2008 profile of then-presidential nominee John McCain offers a revealing portrait of the man who took on Obama.
www.rollingstone.com www.rollingstone.com

Tim Dickinson’s 2008 profile hasn’t aged a day:
This is the story of the real John McCain, the one who has been hiding in plain sight. It is the story of a man who has consistently put his own advancement above all else, a man willing to say and do anything to achieve his ultimate ambition: to become commander in chief, ascending to the one position that would finally enable him to outrank his four-star father and grandfather.

In its broad strokes, McCain’s life story is oddly similar to that of the current occupant of the White House. John Sidney McCain III and George Walker Bush both represent the third generation of American dynasties. Both were born into positions of privilege against which they rebelled into mediocrity. Both developed an uncanny social intelligence that allowed them to skate by with a minimum of mental exertion. Both struggled with booze and loutish behavior. At each step, with the aid of their fathers’ powerful friends, both failed upward. And both shed their skins as Episcopalian members of the Washington elite to build political careers as self-styled, ranch-inhabiting Westerners who pray to Jesus in their wives’ evangelical churches.

In one vital respect, however, the comparison is deeply unfair to the current president: George W. Bush was a much better pilot.

This, of course, is not the story McCain tells about himself. Few politicians have so actively, or successfully, crafted their own myth of greatness. In McCain’s version of his life, he is a prodigal son who, steeled by his brutal internment in Vietnam, learned to put “country first.” Remade by the Keating Five scandal that nearly wrecked his career, the story goes, McCain re-emerged as a “reformer” and a “maverick,” righteously eschewing anything that “might even tangentially be construed as a less than proper use of my office.”

It’s a myth McCain has cultivated throughout his decades in Washington. But during the course of this year’s campaign, the mask has slipped. “Let’s face it,” says Larry Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel who served as chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell. “John McCain made his reputation on the fact that he doesn’t bend his principles for politics. That’s just not true.”
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How could you have considered it appropriate to post a two year old op-ed piece belittling a man who has just died of brain cancer? Have you no decency?
 
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It’s ten years old and, as I said, it hasn’t aged a day, it’s not an op-ed, it doesn’t belittle him, and I’ll save my decency for those who died of brain cancer and spent their last days with their families worried about medical bills.
 
John24 said:
and I’ll save my decency
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Charity is not zero sum. This is a Christian website. A person who “saves decency” loses what he saves.

Blessed are the merciful,
for they shall obtain mercy.
 
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As we say in the South, “how tacky”. To post this on a topic on McCain at this time is highly inappropriate.
 
I was thinking “Bless your heart” was also a good response to him.
 
Sen. McCain, 81, died Aug. 25 at his ranch near Sedona, Ariz., his office announced in a statement
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McCain wa s four years younger than RBG.
 
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robertmidwest said:
His mother isn’t holding a liberal seat on the SCOTUS. So to honest…I don’t care how hold she lives to be.
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This seems like an admission, already suggested in your numerous threads, that you are interested in the death of RGB.
 
ucfengr said:
I thought it was common knowledge that he blamed her for his 2008 loss.
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Why did he agree to have her run with him? He was all praises when she was chosen. Then after he loses, he blames her for his incompetent campaign?
 
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You’ve got the order of events off. He brought Palin on as a strategy to appeal to Evangelicals and the growing Tea Party movement. His dislike for her grew as the campaign progressed. It’s the sort of thing that happens when a running mate is essentially chosen by committee. That being said, McCain was hardly the first presidential candidate to dislike his running mate.
 
I don’t know if this has been pointed out yet (either here or in another thread), but did anyone notice that former Sen. Ayotte’s reading was from the Book of Wisdom (probably the standard first reading at most Catholic funeral Masses)?
 
niceatheist said:
McCain was hardly the first presidential candidate to dislike his running mate.
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That’s the truth. Just ask Lyndon Johnson. The Kennedys, John and Robert, despised him.

The feeling was mutual, unsurprisingly.
 
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