"My task which
I am trying to achieve is … to make you hear … that glimpse of
truth for which you have forgotten to ask."
- Joseph Conrad,
"The Condition of Art"
A headline in a recent edition of
the St. Louis Post-Dispatch – front page, above the fold – reads "Senator,
ex-POW driven by code of honor."
In terms of the service to country
rendered by John McCain, there may be no more apt description. His decision to
deny offers to be released in deference to longer-detained prisoners was impressive.
Unfortunately, despite the onslaught
of accolades in the past days in the wake of his recent death, his service days were where the code of honor
ended. As he shifted into political life, he became, well, a politician.
Just into his first senate term, he
was stained with the stench of scandal when he emerged as one of the Keating Five.
When he ran for President in 2008,
he was set to go with his gut and pick Joe Lieberman as his Vice President,
but, instead, at the last minute and for the purpose of political expediency,
he took some very poor advice and chose the unknown Governor of Alaska.
He worked hard to hone a reputation
as a maverick, and in doing so, emerged as some sort of grand statesman.
Maverick? Ha! This is one of the great fallacies in modern politics. He may
have shouted, but when it came down to voting, though he battled Bush and
harangued Trump, he voted with each of them better than 90% of the time. And
it’s the votes that count. He prided himself on delivering "straight
talk," but ultimately, he was still a party man.
On occasion, he would make up for
his political phoniness, such as his correction of some boneheaded woman while
on the campaign trail who was boohooing about Obama being a Muslim, which
remains one of the more noble gestures I've witnessed in 44 years of following
politics on a daily basis. And the showman in him came to the fore just last
year with his dramatic thumb-down to Trump's and the Republicans' attempt to
kill the Affordable Care Act.
But in the end, he was just another
politician who wasn't always what he seemed to be. Which isn't very honorable
at all.
