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Saturday, August 25, 2018

Which Parts Of A Man's Life Matter? Good Bye John McCain

It was only 2008 and when John McCain plucked Sarah Palin out of relative obscurity and opened the way for the totally unprepared to run for president.
He's also known to have been something of a womanizer when he was younger.  And the privileged son and grandson of an Navy admirals.  From NYT books:
"As far back as he could remember, Johnny McCain knew he was going to Annapolis, knew it with such unshakable finality that he never really thought twice about it, at least not seriously. It was part of the air he breathed, the ether through which he moved, the single immutable element in his life. He also knew that if he said what he thought — hold it, screw Annapolis, the place sucks — shock waves would reverberate through countless generations of McCains, shaking a military tradition that could both inspire and bully."
Roberta gave birth to Johnny at Coco Solo Naval Air Station in the Panama Canal Zone on August 29, 1936. The timing was auspicious. The base commander was his grandfather, who earlier that month, at the advanced age of fifty-two, had earned his wings as a naval aviator. Johnny's father was stationed nearby, at a small submarine facility. Jack McCain was transferred to New London a few months later, but for that brief period Panama became the epicenter of three generations of a family whose distinguished naval service would eventually span the great national upheavals of the twentieth century, from World War I through Vietnam and its still murky aftermath.
Johnny's father and grandfather may have made history, but nobody ignored his mother, the spunky, occasionally ditzy Auntie Mame of Navy wives. Though the family lived on Jack's salary, Roberta Wright McCain was born to wealth. Her father struck oil in the Southwest as a young man, made his fortune, and retired at forty, soon after Roberta and her identical twin, Rowena, were born. 
His time as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, no doubt, played a huge role in his calling out 'enhanced interrogation' as torture.  His last years he became a hero to the left as he stood up to Trump and voted to save Obama-care.

I recount all this on the evening of McCain's death - to ponder why some men are brought down by actions that other men can weather.   Some of it's timing - in the #metoo era, Sen. Franken left the Senate for behavior that was relatively mild compared to what other men got no penalty for.

I suspect in McCain's case, he was given a lot of passes due to being a prisoner-of-war in terrible circumstances.  And while he was sometimes impulsive - choosing Palin, for example - people tended to trust his sincerity and willingness to stand up for his principles.

I do think, though, that we ought to be discussing how we evaluate a person's life - how we balance the good and the bad.  Who gets passes and who doesn't.

3 comments:

  1. He may have stood up for Obamacare to redeem himself for unleashing the destructive Sarah Palin, unvetted by McCain apparently. She was the "John the Baptist" for the Trump anointing -- the legitimizing of all that is cruel in regressive thinking. As the "mean girl in high school" from the word go, she began the division in the country in preparation for what we have now, the diminishment (at best) of democracy in real time, if not the introduction of authoritarianism.

    But Palin and Trump may also become to be seen as the catalyst that woke Americans up, realizing democracy has to be fought for, can't be taken for granted.

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  2. It's interesting how many people behaved well at one time and then are given a pass for the rest of their lives. Yes, McCain seemed like a decent enough guy personally and saved Obamacare and talked against Trump but "a hero of the left?" Not enough in my eyes to redeem him for all the wrong votes in all those years in Congress.

    Rudy Giuliani is another guy who has been coasting on his 9/11 reputation, plus having been a crusading prosecutor, for decades. (Although I never did see where he deserved that reputation in the first place, having stupidly put the city command center in a complex that had already been the target of terrorist bombing, and having immediately tried to postpone the election right after 9/11)

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