Thank You John McCain

A 2008 John McCain photo from his bid for the Presidency.  Taken without permission from Minnesota Public Radio https://blogs.mprnews.org/newscut/2018/08/on-john-mccain/

John McCain has passed.  A public servant whose career spanned six decades has left us.  His life and career were marked by triumphs and tragedies, scandals and heroism, controversy and bipartisanship.  Through the last three decades of ever metastasizing political balkanization, I have known John McCain as a steadfast voice of fairness and conciliation.  In a political landscape dominated by division politics, McCain strove to promote bipartisanship and a US for all Americans regardless of party affiliation.  McCain was a conservative Republican, but unlike the tribal identity politicians that dominate that once Grand party today, McCain's tribe was not the people who call themselves "Real Americans," his tribe was all Americans, including the ones who disagreed with him politically.

More than any politician that I have followed during my adult life, Senator McCain modeled an attitude that political rivals and opponents were not villains or enemies, but rather they were people with whom one could disagree on some issues while seeking to cooperate on others.  And consistently over the last 20 years, the Senator was someone who spoke out against torture, human rights abuses, hyper-partisanship, conspiracy theories, lies, and the incivility that threatens the survival of civil society in the country.  None of those things are unconnected, because they all stem from the idea that other people are human beings, and the belief that the best way to make our lives better is to work to improve our shared world.

Now, in fairness, John McCain was often too conservative for my tastes, and there were plenty of issues where I disagreed with the man on how to make things better, but he stood for an ideal of liberal democracy that I think stands above specific policy positions.  That ideal is that a liberal democratic society is not just for the winners and the majority, it is also for the losers and the minorities.  A liberal democracy is different from a direct or true democracy.  The core of that difference is the rule of law.  The idea that it is laws (not individuals or the electoral majority) that rule us, and those laws apply to all equally.  This means that if the majority votes to strip a minority of rights, life, or liberty that they cannot, because in a liberal democracy the rights of the minority are protected by laws.  For a contrast we can consider Soviet Gulags, wherein political dissidents were imprisoned and worked to death.  In that situation there was no protection of the rights of minorities or political losers.  In a system were simple majority rules (which would be true democracy), there is no protection for the rights of the minority.

Extremists of all political stripes frequently criticize many of the "undemocratic" provisions of our Constitution that seek to limit the ability of electoral majorities to force their will on others.  One very common refrain on the Left-wing of the political discussion is that the electoral college should be abolished because it prevents people who live in large urban areas from dictating policy to rural people.  On the Right-wing, a common gripe is Judicial Tyranny preventing religious conservatives from forcing their beliefs on everyone else (note that complaints about the judicial branch come from all sides depending on who is in power, because the judiciary acts as a check on legislation, so whoever is passing laws is the side getting shut down by the judiciary, and every new President tries to stock the judiciary with people that will obstruct the people that succeed them in the next inevitable pendulum swing).  And in fairness, most people do live in cities, and most Americans are Christians, so why can't urban Americans just tell rural people how to live, and why can't Christians deny the right to exist freely to people of other faiths?  Because those other people, be they rednecks, gays, hipsters, or Muslims (or gay-redneck-hipster-Muslims) are also Americans, and they have rights.  More broadly even, liberal democracy holds that all people, being human, have rights.

This ideal is foundational to this country.  The second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence lays it out clearly: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness."

The United States of America is founded on the idea that all people have rights by the simple fact of their existence as human beings.  That is the core of liberal democracy, and that is the core that John McCain fought for and defended, and that core is the reason that I have been such a John McCain fan, even as I disagreed with him on many specific issues.  Now I can't let discussion of liberal democracy pass without acknowledging the fact that our country has NEVER truly lived up to its ideals.  At the time of the Declaration of Independence, that definition of people did not include women, or blacks, or in many cases non-land-owners.  We have never truly had a country where all people are equal and all humanity's rights are equally protected.  But we have had the idea that we should have a country where everyone is equal, and that idea is worth fighting for.

No one on earth has ever lived in a society with truly perfect equality, and while we can all imagine such a society, no one truly knows what such a society would look like.  And that is why civility in society is so vital, without civility it is impossible to work with people who disagree on how best to achieve a more perfect union.  This is why the Regular Order that John McCain spent so long trying to protect and restore is of value.  Regular Order is not just people being polite to each other, it is the essence of non-violently resolving political differences to maintain the rule of law in this country.   Regular Order has failed before.  When it breaks down the results can be catastrophic, to the tune of more than a million dead one time when people got tired of being polite.  Of course in the instance that I just mentioned, the disagreement was over whether or not human beings can be property, and I don't think that is the type of disagreement that we can allow to stand, Regular Order or not.  But I don't think that we are facing (at least within mainstream American society) any such fundamental disagreements today.  And yet Regular Order is suspended in our government, and partisan rancor is at a dangerously high level.

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Whether you agreed with McCain's positions or not, I hope that you were able to appreciate his defense of Regular Order.  I know that he first came to my attention in the lead up to the 2000 election (the first Presidential election I got to vote in).  I was impressed by the way that he seemed to be championing an ethos of cooperation.  You hear politicians talk all the time about how Americans need to "Come Together," and yet that message always seems to imply that if only the other (bad) side would stop being unreasonable and acquiesce to all of this (good) side's demands everything would be great.  In contrast, McCain seemed to talk about compromise and bridge building.  As an idealistic young man I was shocked that his message didn't seem to galvanize others.  I have since come to realize that people don't get nearly as excited about incrementally getting some of what they want as they do about promises to have everything their own way.

I came of age in a unique time.  The Cold War was over.  We had won.  We had no Enemy with whom we were struggling.  The US was at peace and unchallenged for global supremacy.  The economy was booming.  Tech was offering the prospect of unlimited wealth and people were retiring at 30!  The US had finally brought spending and taxes into line, and there was a budget surplus.  The national debt was being paid down.  It was a hopeful time.  As a teenager and very young adult it felt like there was no real need to worry about politics.  What could go wrong.  Endless peace, prosperity, and budget surpluses were what we had.  All our leadership had to do was stay the course and things would go on being fine.

As we all know, that Pollyanna analysis of mine was overly simplistic and doomed.  The prosperity that seemed to be the new normal turned out to be a bubble.  But peace and budget surpluses should have been easy to maintain.  Leading up to the 2000 election I felt like it didn't really matter too much who won.  We would all be fine.  But it would be nice to have someone like McCain who might save us from the kind of partisan gridlock that resulted in the President being impeached for lying about cheating on his wife.  When McCain lost the primary to Bush II, I shrugged.  I didn't think it mattered too much, and so I voted for Browne since I didn't like any of the other candidates (Gore and Bush seemed like Tweedleblah and Tweedledumber, and Nader was simply too progressive for my tastes).

I want to avoid falling into the trap of bashing on other politicians while trying to eulogize McCain, so suffice to say, the 2000 election did matter after all.  It mattered a lot.  Eight years later the budget surpluses of the 1990's were a long lost memory replaced by unprecedented deficits and generational war.  Meanwhile the culture wars of Gingrich vs. Clinton had been replaced by government sanctioned torture and assassinations, and the legislative gridlock of the 90's had been displaced by executive fiat and signing statements.  We were living in a country where the President could wage war unilaterally, meaningful legislation was hard to pass so the President simply gave executive orders to run the country, prisoners of war were declared unlawful enemy combatants and held in extraterritorial centers without trial, tortured, and/or assassinated remotely by drones.  Through this time McCain remained a lonely voice among his caucus-mates calling for a return to Regular Order.

At the end of those eight years, I (like many) believed that our country needed a radical change in regime in order to return to a government ruled by laws rather than an autocratic executive.  I thought the only way for that to happen was to vote in a Democrat.  So even though I still liked McCain, I thought Obama was the one who would restore Regular Order and the rule of law.  Once again, I was wrong.

Again I want to avoid falling into the trap of bashing on other politicians while trying to eulogize McCain, so suffice to say, after eight years we were living in a country where the President could wage war unilaterally, meaningful legislation was hard to pass so the President simply gave executive orders to run the country, prisoners of war were declared unlawful enemy combatants and held in extraterritorial centers without trial, but mainly just assassinated remotely by drones.  Through this time McCain remained a lonely voice among his caucus-mates calling for a return to Regular Order.  Not everything was the same though.  ICE (which was founded under Bush II) had grown into a monster that held children in cages as the Obama administration tried to passively use the mistreatment of immigrants as a proof that it was strong on borders while contradictorily using executive orders to protect some illegal immigrants like the Dreamers (which ultimately only managed to make everything more of a mess).  And the unlimited program of robotic assassination had grown and become more fully automated.  Nowadays not only does the US use robots to kill you if it decides you should die, it uses a computer program to decide if you should die (No, seriously, we are identifying and killing people around the world based on metadata analysis algorithms).

And as we all can see now, these decades of erosion of political civility and the steady accessioning of powers to the chief executive have lead us to an almost complete breakdown of Regular Order and a vicious cycle of political whiplash as successive autocratic Presidents bypass the rule of law and force their will on the political losers through executive fiat.  John McCain was not without flaws, but he did fight against this.  He fought for a government in which disagreements were resolved through compromise bills, not executive declarations and unilateral railroading.

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I have recently come across a political analogy I really like, it is the sinking boat analogy.  I saw a comic strip that had some people at the prow of a sinking ship, high above the water, while while others frantically bailed water in the stern.  This analogy was referencing the rapid and extremely troubling growth of wealth inequality in our society (this is actually relevant to my last post).  I am not trying to falsely claim that John McCain was really trying meaningfully to fight wealth inequality, but this final digression does have a point, I promise.

I find that I really like this analogy, and I will briefly explore why:

I think that a clear majority of people in this country at this point feel like the Ship of State is sinking.  The naval metaphor is a long standing common one.  We are all familiar with the concept of the Ship of State, and sayings like "righting the ship" or "staying the course" are in common usage.  Using the metaphor of a ship or boat helps reinforce the idea that we are all in this thing together.

As long as the boat keeps floating pretty much all people argue about is where the boat should go.

But when the ship begins to founder (as all boats will take on water without constant maintenance) people start to argue about how to fix the boat.  Some might say the boat just needs to go faster for the water to drain out the scuppers (boost the economy and everything will be fine), and some people say we need to patch the holes to keep the water out (strengthen the safety net to keep people out of poverty).  Obviously both approaches should be considered since both the engine and the hull need to be sound for the ship to survive.  The trouble comes when only one approach is taken to the exclusion of the other for too long.  If you just keep goosing the throttle while the hull shakes apart, the ship sinks.  If you kill the engine you don't go anywhere while you wait to sink.

So what happens to the Ship of State when endless goosings of the throttle (tax breaks) and pulling the planks off the side to feed the boiler (austerity) have failed to fix the holes in the boat?  It sinks.  And as the ship sinks, the prow is lifted into the air.  The foredeck, crowded with the officers who have commanded the ship are high and dry, while the mass of humanity that is working the boat and now being fed into the fires drown first.  But this is always only temporary.  Eventually the whole ship will sink (failed state) and all the crew, officers included, will be set adrift (refugees).

As long as there are other boats around to pick up people, it is okay.  But when there aren't enough lifeboats we get refugee crises.  Usually other Ships of State have no problem picking up the floating officers (rich people), but people usually get grumpy when a bunch of swabbies (unskilled workers) try to climb aboard.  And there is always the fear that if too many people climb aboard the whole ship will swamp and everyone will be right back in the water.

The obvious solution is to try to fix the boat before things get so bad, but when things get bad people stop wanting to fix the boat.  The people on top don't want to get wet, so they don't want anything to change unless it lifts them higher out of the water.  The people already underwater probably just want a new boat (revolution).  The problem is the status quo is self-destructive, and building a new boat usually is pretty disastrous (most revolutions don't turn out real great.  Russia's October Revolution and China's Cultural Revolution are actually the recent success stories.  Take a look at Syria, which now looks to be heading back to something like the old status quo, for comparison).  Building a seaworthy ship (a country with a strong economy and protections for the rights and well-being of its people) is very hard to do, most Ships of State in history have been leaky wallowing tubs if they floated at all.

So you have leftist radicals who want to blow up the ship and build a new one without a bridge, and you have nationalists and fascists who want to throw people off the boat until it floats again.  The people who want to throw everyone else off are probably the people who either see the water coming or are starting to get wet around the ankles.  Right now that crowd is ascendant, but that means that an awful lot of people are still above water.  We can still fix the boat.

I want to fix the boat.

And in order to fix the boat we need to fix it for everyone on the boat.  Not just crew, not just officers, not just left, not just right.  We are all in this ship together, and if we don't want to be set adrift we need to fix the boat.  But there are a lot of different ideas about how we should fix the boat because no one has ever made a perfect boat.  We can't even start to fix the boat without cooperation and compromise.

I disagreed with John McCain on a lot of things, but I always felt like he also wanted to fix the boat.  And I thank him for that.

(It is extra fitting that McCain was a naval officer as were is father and grandfather before him)

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I feel a personal sorrow at the passing of John McCain beyond the death of the man who is the closest thing I have to a personal political hero.  The last time I wrote about the Senator in my blog was to scold him on the healthcare debate. I had been meaning to write something positive about him, and the influence he has had on me politically, before he died. I knew I was running out of time, but I procrastinated. Ultimately it isn't like he would have read anything I wrote about him, but I am sad the last time I wrote about McCain before he died it was a negative piece.  This post is in part an effort to rectify that imbalance.

John McCain is gone, but I pray that we shall see his like again and again.  Because we need people who will defend civility, the rule of law, human rights, and compromise.  We need people who will work to find common ground with people they disagree with.  We need them if we are going to fix this boat.

I thank John McCain for doing his part to try to fix the boat.

Goodbye Senator, I wish you fair winds and following seas.