Here are my observations and opinions on selected news of the day.
ON REFLECTION of the week-long remembrance of Sen. John McCain, the side stories abound.
JOE LIEBERMAN, the former Democrat senator who McCain initially wanted to be his 2008 running mate, revealed an interesting story about McCain’s infamous thumbs down vote against the repeal of ObamaCare. “His (McCain’s) vote wasn’t really against that bill, but against the mindless partisanship that has taken control of both political parties,” said Lieberman.
That, ‘my friends,’ as McCain would say, confirms my belief that it was McCain carrying his grudge against the president too far.
IT WASN’T THE FIRST TIME the vaunted senator allowed his memory of past events get the best of him. In a piece by John Fund in the National Review, “Media Obituaries Didn’t Give Us ‘The Full McCain’,” we learn of a distasteful encounter Bradley Smith, then chair of the Federal Election Commission, had with McCain.
A critic of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law that had passed Congress, but was later declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, Smith had tried on a number of occasions to meet with McCain, who always turned him down.
Years later, he reached out his hand from his wheelchair to shake hands with McCain, who he had never met, prior to giving testimony before the Senate. When Smith introduced himself, McCain pulled back his hand and told him he had no regard for the Constitution … calling him a bully and corrupt. This was never reported by journalists who witnessed the exchange.
In Fund’s account of the media’s coverage of McCain over the years, he quoted columnist Maureen Dowd’s comment during his presidential campaign, “Even some of McCain’s former aides are disturbed by the 73-year-ol’s hostile, vindictive, sarcastic persona.”
But that’s okay; we always knew he had that streak in him.
Reviewing the times that the media chose not to report all of McCain’s missteps because he was their darling, Fund says “by holding him up as a paragon of virtue, the media failed last week in their job of telling John McCain’s story in full” and suggest that the media’s credibility took another hit with Americans as a result, “a credibility that is already so low that someone like Donald Trump has been able to exploit it.”
POLITICO’S TIM ALBERTA waxed poetically about the “who’s who in Washington” notables who gathered at the National Cathedral on Saturday “that also felt like a memorial for Washington herself – a capital city that under President Donald Trump no longer seems capable, as the late senator was, of balancing fights with friendships, of divorcing disagreements with disrespect, of recognizing the basic difference between opponents and enemies.”
Alberta was quick to point out, however, that “The president cannot be held solely responsible for the fractured nature of modern American politics,” as he wrote of the ferocious battles of McCain, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. “The president finds himself at once disinvited from a singular Washington gathering and yet dominating its consciousness. This might not be Donald Trump’s town, but it’s still his country.”
In my farewell to McCain piece yesterday, I wrote that he will be remembered along with other elected officials past and present who dedicated their lives to public service.
Noting the words of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, “None of us will ever forget how, even in his parting, John has bestowed on us a much-needed moment of unity and renewed faith in the possibilities of America,” Alberta concluded his piece with: “It won’t last. In today’s Washington, it never does.”
THE LEFT-LEANING AXIOS AM is hopeful, however, saying that “amid the Trump-shaming” at the Saturday memorial, the eulogies and private conversations reflected “a broader dream that the United States is still capable of saner politics.”
It’s not going to happen. The anti-Trump resistance movement, aided by the Deep State, will not allow that to happen.
CNN’S RONALD BROWNSTEIN told his meager audience that “John McCain’s funeral was a ‘call to arms’ against President Donald Trump.” To which Robby Starbuck wrote @robbystarbuck, “As if they haven’t been at war for years now.”
Susan Glasser, writing @sbg1, said, “Hillary Clinton and Dick Cheney next to each other at the John McCain funeral … seems so much how Washington used to be, and is no longer.”
It’s all part of the phoniness of “old Washington” that helped put Donald Trump in office, Susan.
President George W. Bush was seen passing a piece of candy from former First Lady Laura, to former First Lady Michelle Obama.
“Jared and Ivanka held court with perfect strangers,” noted Tim Alberta of Politico.”
NO COMPROMISE – As I indicated yesterday, we can expect Congress to push for more bipartisanship in the name of Senator McCain.
I’ve always admired elected representatives who stick to principles and their positions, and I’m not alone. A Pew Research survey earlier this year revealed that 53 percent of those surveyed agree, while 44 percent disagree. Those who would like to see compromise to get things done, aren’t willing if it means breaking a promise.
“We win, they lose,” as President Reagan once said. I am not a believer in compromise. We conservatives always seem to get the worst end when we compromise. How do you compromise with the likes of Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi? Really.
Remember the Gang of Eight?
We win when we have the numbers it takes to pass legislation without the minority. That means we have to ignore the history of the party out of power regaining the majority in midterms and enthusiastically turn out for Republicans in November.
May God bless the United States of America.
