President Donald Trump pauses in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington Friday, March 24, 2017, during an announcement.
My husband and I watched with heartfelt gratitude the memorial service for Sen. John McCain, a man who served our nation on battlefields in both the military and Congress.
We didn’t always agree with the Republican senator from Arizona, who lost his battle against aggressive brain cancer Aug. 25. But we respected him for his honorable, patriotic, courageous and heroic service to our country.
That respect by a majority of the nation was reflected in the lowering of the U.S. flag on federal buildings to half-staff in McCain’s honor. But after just two days, President Donald Trump ordered the flag at the White House raised again until public pressure compelled him to lower it once again.
The contrast between two men couldn’t have been more apparent. One followed his family’s legacy and joined the Navy, flying planes in combat during the Vietnam War. The other — today commander in chief — did what he could to avoid being drafted into the military, including a deferment for bone spurs.
McCain’s plane was shot down during a bombing mission over North Vietnam in 1967 and he broke both arms and a leg when he bailed out, then suffered a major beating by civilians who pulled him from a lake in Hanoi. He was tortured and put in solitary confinement. In 1968, offered the opportunity by his captors to return to the United States because of his high-ranking father, a Navy admiral, he refused because the other prisoners of war weren’t given the same opportunity. The communist North Vietnamese sought a propaganda victory while showing other POWs that elite members like McCain were willing to be treated preferentially. But despite warnings from his captors of even worse torture, McCain rejected the offer of early release, abiding by the military code of honor.
Later, after rope torture and severe beatings every two hours, his right leg reinjured, his left arm re-fractured, teeth broken, suffering from dysentery and lying in his own waste, his spirit was broken and he attempted suicide. He had reached his breaking point, like many of his fellow POWs. Altogether, McCain remained a prisoner of the communists for 5 and a half years.
In contrast, Trump described his attempts to avoid contracting sexually transmitted diseases as his “personal Vietnam” and, in 2015, during his presidential campaign, mocked McCain’s status as a national hero by saying, “He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”
I didn’t vote for Trump because of his disrespect (for which he has never apologized even as president) for a man who wore our nation’s military uniform and suffered severely because of it. (I didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton either.)
McCain was a man of great character. I campaigned ardently for McCain when he ran for president in 2008. The late senator often expressed humility by describing himself as an “imperfect man,” acknowledging his mistakes and taking full responsibility for the failure of his first marriage.
It’s too bad the same can’t be said of Trump. I have yet to hear Trump acknowledge a mistake or fully accept responsibility for it. We should expect more from our president. We deserve better than the pettiness we’ve seen.
I give Trump credit for some of his accomplishments as president, made possible in large part by a Republican-controlled Congress, just as on occasion I gave credit to President Barack Obama. Yet I don’t respect the New York businessman. He is a great divider in this nation of ours, while McCain was known for reaching across the aisle to seek common ground with Democrats and push through legislation with bipartisan support.
When did working with people from another political party become a bad thing?
We are a divided nation—blue states and red states—but sometimes it’s in the purple where legislation beneficial to the most Americans is made.
It’s biblical, too. Mark 3:25 says, “If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand.” Our great Republican President Abraham Lincoln, when faced with a nation divided as much if not more than we are today, quoted the gospel in a June 16, 1858, address.
I have plenty of friends who are, politically, my polar opposites. But we are friends because we build on what we have in common — a desire to help people record their life stories, a yearning to encourage writers of the written word, a need to support the poor and the infirm.
What stood out at McCain’s memorial service at the National Cathedral Saturday, which he planned before he died, was the row of ex-presidents side by side — President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, next to George W. Bush and his wife, Laura, next to Bill Clinton, and his wife, Hillary. I would call it ecumenical, but that’s religious. It was a united front drawn together by a man who could work with some Democrats as well as Republicans.
Both a Democrat and a Republican president spoke at the memorial service. Each had crushed McCain’s presidential ambitions — Bush in the 2000 presidential primary and Obama in the 2008 general election.
“So much of our politics can seem small and mean and petty. Trafficking in bombast and insult, phony controversies and manufactured outrage,” Obama said. “It’s a politics that pretends to be brave and tough, but is instead born of fear. John called on us to be bigger than that, to be better than that.”
Bush and McCain later became friends. Bush said the senator “detested the abuse of power and could not abide bigots and swaggering despots.”
“He respected the dignity inherent in every life, a dignity that does not stop at borders and cannot be erased by dictators,” he said.
I applauded aloud when I heard McCain’s daughter, Meghan, call her father a warrior, hero, and man defined by love, and describe the America of John McCain.
“We gather to mourn the passing of American greatness, the real thing, not cheap rhetoric from men who will never come near the sacrifice he gave so willingly, nor the opportunistic appropriation of those that live lives of comfort and privilege while he suffered and served,” she said.
“The America of John McCain has no need to be made great again because America was always great.”
I couldn’t agree more. Rest in peace, Sen. McCain, and thank you for your endless service.
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Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at chaptersoflife1999@gmail.com
