I Hold No Ill Will

John McCain

Last week I mentioned Jimmy Carter, his mark on history and his life of service. Now I want to talk briefly about John McCain, another man who influenced our recent history.

One of the well-known incidents in McCain’s long career took place when he was campaigning for president in 2008. Thinking back on it now, the contrast with our current era is stark.

It didn’t happen because the stakes of the contest were lower then. During that fraught year, Americans were biting their nails over the most serious financial panic since the Crash of 1929. Wars were continuing in Iraq and Afghanistan. Terrorism remained a palpable threat.

Nor was the time completely unmarked by the rancor that we have come to take for granted. Some insisted that Barack Obama, McCain’s opponent, was not really an American.

John McCain would have none of it. At a town hall event in Lakeville, Wisconsin, a voter declared, “We’re scared of an Obama presidency.” McCain answered, “I have to tell you: He is a decent person and a person you don’t have to be scared of as president of the United States.” The crowd booed.

But the candidate did not flinch. He flatly disagreed with a woman who called Obama an “Arab.” “No, ma’am,” he said. “He’s a decent family man, citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues.” As Obama well knew, McCain was defending not just his opponent’s character, but his country’s.

On election night, McCain addressed his supporters, saying that the fact that Obama had won “by inspiring the hopes of so many millions of Americans, who had once wrongly believed that they had little at stake or little influence in the election of an American president, is something I deeply admire and commend him for achieving.”

McCain in Vietnam

That McCain was capable of a display of grace at one of the most disappointing moments of his life was no surprise. In 1967 he was a Navy airman flying over Vietnam. His attack aircraft was shot down. He landed in a lake with one leg and both arms broken. He was held at the infamous Hoa Lo prison, nicknamed the “Hanoi Hilton.” Given inadequate medical care, he was beaten, starved, and held for long stretches in solitary confinement.

When his captors discovered he was the son of an admiral, they offered to release him. He refused to accept the favorable treatment unless those captured before him were also let go. As a result, he spent a total of more than five years as a prisoner of war.

As a congressman and senator from Arizona, McCain was a conservative Republican, but he defied his party and mapped his own path on numerous issues. They included campaign finance regulation, pork-barrel spending, comprehensive immigration reform, and gay rights. He visited Vietnam in 1985 and pressed for normalized relations with his former enemies. In spite of his ordeal, he noted, “I hold no ill will toward them.”

In 2017 he was diagnosed with brain cancer. One of his last acts as a senator was to go against his party again and refuse to repeal the Affordable Care Act. He died in August 2018, just shy of his eighty-second birthday. Citizens of Vietnam joined many Americans in paying homage to a man whose bravery they respected.

Even if we have not served in the military, most of us have enough imagination to understand the courage and grit needed to step into a situation where you can be wounded or lose your life. We can appreciate the burdens that come with being a soldier, the indelible experiences beyond any imagining that a soldier may have to endure, the pain that some warriors carry through life.

McCain’s maverick spirit brought him into conflict with some members of his own party. They not only disagreed with him on the issues but questioned the heroism of his military service. McCain did not respond, but his daughter Meghan noted at his memorial service, “The America of John McCain has no need to be made great again because America was always great.”

Among those who praised McCain was the man who defeated him in his presidential bid. “So much of our politics, our public life, our public discourse can seem small and mean and petty,” Obama said, “a politics that pretends to be brave and tough, but in fact is born of fear. John called on us to be bigger than that.”

One of McCain’s favorite quotes was from Hemingway. “Today is only one day in all the days that will ever be,” the author wrote in For Whom the Bell Tolls. “But what will happen in all the other days that ever come can depend on what you do today.”

Most of us enjoy the luxury to pursue our lives in peace. Most of us know that in some way that luxury depends on other men and women, volunteers like John McCain, who stand willing to sacrifice their own lives to protect the nation.

We are five weeks away from a day that will influence “all the other days that ever come.” What we do that day will matter. The values that we bring to the polling booth will be the values that define our time.