The Restless Wave: Good Times, Just Causes, Great Fights, and Other Appreciations

by John McCain

Above all else, we must stand in solidarity with the imprisoned, the silenced, the tortured, and the murdered because we are a country with a conscience. It is a mistake to view foreign policy, as the Chinese would like us to view it, as simply transactional. It’s a mistake and a dangerous idea. Depriving the oppressed of a beacon of hope could lose us the world we have built and thrived in. It could cost our reputation in history as the nation distinct from all others in our achievements, our identity, and our enduring influence on mankind. Our values are central to all three. Were they not, we would be one great power among the others of history. We would have acquired wealth and power for a time, before receding into the disputed past. But we are a more exceptional country than that. We saw the world as it was and we made it better.

I’m the son and grandson of admirals. That’s the first line of my biography. But I am my mother’s son. I always have been. Thank you, mother, thank you.

I’ve spent the Fourth in Afghanistan or Iraq every year since 2003, and every visit I get choked up at a reenlistment ceremony. Hundreds of warriors, some having served multiple combat tours, celebrate our country’s independence by voluntarily surrendering theirs and signing up for more hazard and stress. I look forward to the inspiration every year.

I thought the best way to make some progress on the issue was to allow an organic, bottom-up effort to find a compromise or two or several that would be criticized by many, but acceptable to enough members on both sides in both houses of Congress. The way to do that was to allow legislation to proceed through regular order, the way most things used to be done here before we began trying to operate with minimal or no cooperation from the other side. Blocking amendments from being offered, limiting debate, putting everything we possibly can on the budget reconciliation measure, which requires only a simple majority to pass, and is how George W. Bush got his tax cuts and Barack Obama got Obamacare. Our dysfunction was years in the making, and it won’t be quickly unmade. We’re getting little done for the country, which exacerbates voters’ alienation from Washington, which encourages them to elect more people to Washington determined to stop any compromise, and block genuine progress on anything. Both Democratic and Republican leaders have been instrumental in creating these conditions. Both have tried to control the place more than its customs and human nature tolerate. Gridlock is the result. We hadn’t accomplished much more up to that point than confirming Neil Gorsuch’s nomination. Returning to regular order would give the Senate a chance to work its will on an issue, to use our ideas, our friendships, our initiative to see if we could slowly, inefficiently, frustratingly s...

I planned to arrive in Washington right before the vote on a motion to allow the Senate to bring the health care bill up for debate and amendment. Leadership still hadn’t announced what replacement for Obamacare they would offer as an amendment to the underlying legislation passed by the House. They wouldn’t propose the aforementioned skinny repeal, which offered no replacement at all until after the vote on the motion. Democrats had been blocking consideration of the House bill on the floor, and hoped to kill the entire effort by defeating the motion to proceed. They needed three votes. Mine would not be one of them. I wouldn’t stop debate of the bill, but I wouldn’t vote for final passage, either, if it weren’t considerably improved in the process. I would ask for floor time after the vote to make the speech Salter and I had worked on during the flight from Arizona.

I hope we can again rely on humility, on our need to cooperate, on our dependence on each other to learn how to trust each other again and by so doing better serve the people who elected us. Stop listening to the bombastic loudmouths on the radio and television and the Internet. To hell with them. They don’t want anything done for the public good. Our incapacity is their livelihood. Let’s trust each other. Let’s return to regular order. We’ve been spinning our wheels on too many important issues because we keep trying to find a way to win without help from across the aisle. That’s an approach that’s been employed by both sides, mandating legislation from the top down, without any support from the other side, with all the parliamentary maneuvers that requires.

I voted for the motion to proceed to allow debate to continue and amendments to be offered. I will not vote for the bill as it is today. It’s a shell of a bill right now. We all know that. I have changes urged by my state’s governor that will have to be included to earn my support for final passage of any bill. I know many of you will have to see the bill changed substantially for you to support it.

This place is important. The work we do is important. Our strange rules and seemingly eccentric practices that slow our proceedings and insist on our cooperation are important. Our founders envisioned the Senate as the more deliberative, careful body that operates at a greater distance than the other body from the public passions of the hour. We are an important check on the powers of the Executive. Our consent is necessary for the President to appoint jurists and powerful government officials and in many respects to conduct foreign policy. Whether or not we are of the same party, we are not the President’s subordinates. We are his equal!

America has made a greater contribution than any other nation to an international order that has liberated more people from tyranny and poverty than ever before in history. We have been the greatest example, the greatest supporter, and the greatest defender of that order. We aren’t afraid. We don’t covet other people’s land and wealth. We don’t hide behind walls. We breach them. We are a blessing to humanity. What greater cause could we hope to serve than helping keep America the strong, aspiring, inspirational beacon of liberty and defender of the dignity of all human beings and their right to freedom and equal justice? That is the cause that binds us and is so much more powerful and worthy than the small differences that divide us.

In my last Republican primary in 2016, my opponent accused me of being that lowest of characters in Washington, one of the wretches who lack the fortitude to disdain compromises and remain reliably useless at governing the country. “He’s a champion of compromise,” she warned. Yikes! What horrible transgressions might I yet be capable of committing were the voters of Arizona to send me back to Washington with another six-year mandate to help govern the country? Well, they did send me back. And you’re damn right, I’m a champion of compromise in the governance of a country of 325 million opinionated, quarrelsome, vociferous souls. There is no other way to govern an open society, or more precisely, to govern it effectively. Principled compromises aren’t unicorns. They can be found when we put political advantage slightly second to the problem we’re trying to solve.

Compromise as a virtue

In the course of a long career, I’ve seen a decline in civility and cooperation, and increased obstructionism. But there are still enough statesmen in Congress and the executive branch committed to meeting the challenges of the hour, and putting the country they’re honored to serve before narrower interests. They might not be the most colorful politicians in town, but they’re usually the ones who get the most done.

There is still corruption here, as there is in any human institution. But far, far less of it than in past times, when bribery of one sort or another was practically standard practice. We’ve drifted into stasis. Because the permanent campaign is a reality in this century, we too often blur the distinction between the requirements of campaigning and the responsibilities of the elective office.

I feared that all the conferees would be able to do was accept the Senate bill, repealing but not replacing Obamacare and robbing millions of Americans of their health insurance. If that were the case, only the House would have to vote on the bill again because only the House bill would have been changed. If it were entirely unchanged from the bill passed by the Senate, we wouldn’t get another opportunity to reject the final product.

Many members signal their vote with a hand gesture, typically a thumbs-up or -down. That’s how I always vote. The clerk can’t always hear “yeas” and “nays,” so we accompany them with hand gestures to make sure our votes are recorded accurately.

I was thanked for my vote by Democratic friends more profusely than I should have been for helping save Obamacare. That had not been my goal. I had campaigned on repeal and replace. The bill we voted on would only have repealed it. I’m not sure we’ll ever agree on a replacement, and so perhaps all we can do is try to fix parts of Obamacare. I would prefer something more comprehensive, but that might not be attainable in the near future. As I’ve noted already, sweeping changes aren’t easily achieved in our system of government. Incremental reform is often all that is possible, and there’s value and honor in that. Among the people who called to thank me was President Obama. I appreciated his call, but, as I said, my purpose hadn’t been to preserve his signature accomplishment but to insist on a better alternative, and to give the Senate an opportunity to work together to find one. He hadn’t called to lobby me before the vote, which I had appreciated.

My fellow Americans. No association ever mattered more to me. We’re not always right. We’re impetuous and impatient, and rush into things without knowing what we’re really doing. We argue over little differences endlessly, and exaggerate them into lasting breaches. We can be selfish, and quick sometimes to shift the blame for our mistakes to others. But our country “ ’tis of Thee.” What great good we’ve done in the world, so much more good than harm. We served ourselves, of course, but we helped make others free, safe, and prosperous because we weren’t threatened by other people’s liberty and success. We need each other. We need friends in the world, and they need us. The bell tolls for us, my friends. Humanity counts on us, and we ought to take measured pride in that. We have not been an island. We were “involved in mankind.” Before I leave I’d like to see our politics begin to return to the purposes and practices that distinguish our history from the history of other nations. I would like to see us recover our sense that we are more alike than different. We are citizens of a republic made of shared ideals forged in a new world to replace the tribal enmities that tormented the old one. Even in times of political turmoil such as these, we share that awesome heritage and the responsibility to embrace it.

What an ingrate I would be to curse the fate that concludes the blessed life I’ve led. I prefer to give thanks for those blessings, and my love to the people who blessed me with theirs. The bell tolls for me. I knew it would. So I tried, as best I could, to stay a “part of the main.” I hope those who mourn my passing, and even those who don’t, will celebrate as I celebrate a happy life lived in imperfect service to a country made of ideals, whose continued success is the hope of the world. And I wish all of you great adventures, good company, and lives as lucky as mine.