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COLUMNS

McCain put country ahead of politics

Clive McFarlane
clive.mcfarlane@telegram.com

There was a moment after he cast the decisive vote that killed what even some Republicans had called a fraudulent and potentially disastrous health care repeal bill that Sen. John McCain paused to look directly at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Mr. McConnell, the architect of the bill and of what some might argue is the moral and unethical unraveling of the Republican Party, was standing in the middle of the Senate floor with his arms folded across his chest, like some emperor trying to use his presence to rally his flagging troops.

No doubt there were some among his colleagues who were compelled to help the Kentucky senator save face, even though they knew he had staked out a fighting position on a bridge too far.

Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, one of the few voices of reason among Republican legislators, had just hours before declared Mr. McConnell’s bill a fraud and a disaster, and yet in the end he would vote for its passage.

Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, a deep red state, and Susan Collins of Maine, a blue state, had clear and consistent stands that they would not support any repeal-and-replace effort that would worsen rather that improve health care for the residents of their states.

Indeed, Mr. McCain’s historic moment might not have happened if these courageous Republican women had not stood firm in their convictions and against all the political threats from the White House and vile attacks on social media.

It isn’t that Mr. McCain is a supporter of Obamacare.

“Arizona families are demanding affordability, accessibility and choice when it comes to their health care – not the expensive, restrictive and poor quality care that has been forced upon them by Obamacare,” he said last year, when health insurance premium rates were projected to spike in his home state of Arizona.

“Until President Obama and congressional Democrats wake up to the law’s failure, and until we repeal and replace it with solutions that encourage competition and put patients back in charge, the Washington-knows-best approach will continue to unfairly burden the Arizona families it was supposed to help.”

Yet, despite his doubts about Obamacare, Mr. McCain, a former prisoner of war, understood that a fight on behalf of the people cannot be won if it is prosecuted without honor.

“Here we learned to dread dishonor above all other temptations,” he said of his naval experience in a 1993 speech he gave to the Naval Academy’s graduating class, after he had won a second term in the Senate.

“I have watched men suffer the anguish of imprisonment, defy appalling human cruelty ... break for a moment, then recover inhuman strength to defy their enemies once more,” he said, alluding to his time as a prisoner of war.

“All these things and more, I have seen. And so will you. My time is slipping by. Yours is fast approaching. You will know where your duty lies. You will know.”

And in the early hours of Friday, when he cast his vote against Mr. McConnell’s health care repeal bill, he knew where his duty lay.

He believed that Obamacare wasn’t working for many in his state, but he also knew that what Mr. McConnell was proposing would be even worse. He also knew that the residents of his deeply red state understand this to be so, with the polls suggesting that the bill on which they were voting was only supported by 6 percent of Arizona voters.

I wonder what he was thinking in that second after he cast his vote, in that second when he looked directly at Mr. McConnell.

Was he tempted to tell his Senate leader, “I’m sorry, but I had to do this.”

Or did he for the first time see Mr. McConnell for what so many others have seen - a man fighting for himself rather than for the people, a man whose personal agenda against former President Barack Obama (“My No. 1 priority is making sure president Obama's a one-term president,” he had said following Mr. Obama’s election) had led him to put his interest above that of the people?

We might never know what Mr. McCain was thinking in that second. We saw him turn abruptly and return to his seat, leaving the lonely figure of Mr. McConnell standing with downcast eyes.

Perhaps it was best that he turned away without a word, because in moments like those it's a person’s deed and not his words that speaks the loudest.