As John McCain ends cancer treatment, will ‘maverick’ be legacy?

In the end, McCain’s attempt to revive the “maverick” brand didn’t changes voters’ perceptions; his campaign and foreign policy were painted as extensions of Bush’s presidency and it stuck.

Whether his pick of then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, chosen to help shore up the conservative base that distrusted him, hurt or helped remains a matter of debate. But some blame McCain’s choice of Palin for the rise of right-wing populism that eventually led to Trump’s election in 2016.

“One, Barack Obama was a very, very strong candidate and that’s the most important thing,” McCain told The Republic in an interview in August 2017. “Second, when the stock market collapsed, it really sent us into a real drop. Third of all, I guess, Americans were ready for a change, too.

“But I’d like to emphasize the first thing I said: Barack Obama was an incredibly impressive candidate and he did a great job campaigning,” he said.

For some hard-right Republicans, McCain didn’t hit Obama, the first African-American nominee of a major party, hard enough or often enough out of what they considered a fear of being tagged a racist.

For example, McCain declined to make an issue of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s former pastor in Chicago who had made a string of controversial political statements in his fiery sermons, including rejecting the slogan “God Bless America” for “God Damn America.” 

In another memorable moment, McCain corrected a woman at a town hall meeting who said she couldn’t trust Obama because he was “an Arab.”

“No, ma’am. He’s a decent, family man, citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues and that’s what this campaign is all about,” McCain said.

McCain’s honorable campaigning seems quaint when viewed through the lens of Trump’s scorched-earth assault on his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, in 2016. 

Just eight years after McCain received the party’s nomination, Republicans would chant “Lock her up!” at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.

But Rubio recalled McCain’s exchange with the woman who said Obama was an Arab as “an iconic moment” in presidential campaign history.

“In the process of running in the 2008 election, there were multiple moments in that campaign where you saw him elevate above the moment and refuse to go in a direction that perhaps some wanted him to go,” Rubio said. “It was a testament to his character.”

Stature, seniority on Capitol Hill

McCain never settled his differences with the far-right wing of the Arizona Republican Party despite being the party’s 2008 standard-bearer. At one point, party activists censured him as too liberal on issues such as immigration. He drew conservative primary challenges from the right in 2010 and 2016, but dispatched both J.D. Hayworth and Kelli Ward easily.

With his seniority and national profile, McCain’s clout in the Senate grew. He got a reputation as a Senate heavyweight who could get things done.

In 2015, McCain, the classic Senate hawk on foreign policy, got his Capitol Hill dream job, taking the Armed Services Committee gavel.

As the panel’s chairman, McCain was in his element, whether it was working to reform the Defense Department’s weapons-acquisition process to curb waste, grilling Pentagon officials on policy or strategy, or blasting disruptive anti-war demonstrators as “lowlife scum” as he ordered them out of the hearing room.

“In his time in the Senate, this is a deeply passionate individual who has a sense of tackling injustice, whether it’s the suffering in Syria or what (Russian President) Vladimir Putin has done,” Rubio said. “When he locks on, he’s going to lock on. Very few things are going to move him off of it.”

McCain’s worldview was greatly influenced by the Cold War standoff between the United States and Soviet Union — as a naval aviator, he was stationed on the nuclear aircraft carrier USS Enterprise off Cuba during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis — and he was a relentless critic of Putin, whom he often called a murderer and a thug. Putin officially sanctioned McCain in 2014. A few years later, a Kremlin spokesman said McCain was known for his “maniacal hatred towards our country.”

McCain urged the United States to stand up to the threat posed by Putin.

“We need to be strong and steadfast,” McCain said. “Vladimir Putin is no fool. And he’s going to figure out the profit and loss from actions that he can take. We have to make it clear to him that the cost exceeds the benefit. And that doesn’t mean we’re back in the Cold War. But it does mean that we take a realistic approach to Vladimir Putin and his ambitions.”

McCain’s foreign-affairs outlook is set to live on through Arizona State University’s McCain Institute for International Leadership, which the senator helped get started in 2012 with unspent money from his 2008 presidential campaign.

The institute aims to groom new generations of global leaders and scholars by studying and debating world issues.

Spirit of bipartisanship

McCain’s chairmanship of the Armed Services Committee was, like much of his work in the Senate, marked by a spirit of bipartisanship. He worked well with Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., the committee’s ranking Democrat.

The committee turned out annual defense authorization bills that would pass the Senate overwhelmingly.

“That’s because, all these years, I’ve developed all these relationships with these guys and women, that we trust each other,” McCain told The Republic.

Even before he became chairman, McCain was able to get many of his priorities included in the must-pass defense bill, including in December 2014 language to allow a federal land swap needed for a massive copper mine near Superior. The project is expected to provide jobs and an economic boost to the area.

“I think it has a lot to do with national security,” McCain said at the time. “This mine, when it’s fully operational, will supply 25 percent of America’s copper supply, and that is a national security issue.”

As the committee’s chairman, McCain made overhauling defense acquisition one of his biggest priorities.

“In the last three National Defense Authorization Acts, Senator McCain has championed sweeping measures to reform, streamline and improve the defense acquisition system,” Julie Tarallo, McCain’s spokeswoman, said in November. “There is a long way to go to ensure America’s weapons systems are delivered on time and at cost, and Senator McCain continues to exercise rigorous oversight of the implementation of these much-needed reforms.”

Immigration reform failure

McCain’s bipartisan efforts yielded mixed results on other issues.

Even though McCain never sat on the Veterans’ Affairs Committee, his fellow Senate Republicans tapped him as the lead negotiator on a VA reform bill that he developed with Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.,the committee’s then-chairman.

The compromise legislation rose from a nationwide scandal about wait times that unfolded at the Carl T. Hayden VA Medical Center in Phoenix.

The failure of comprehensive immigration reform to become law after years of trying was perhaps his biggest disappointment.

McCain worked on the issue for more than a decade. His belief in legislation that balanced border security with a foreign-worker program and a pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants who have settled in the country hurt him politically with many anti-“amnesty” voters in his own party. A 2013 compromise he helped write as part of the bipartisan Gang of Eight, which also included Rubio, passed the Senate, but the Republican-controlled House of Representatives refused to consider it.

McCain viewed the issue as crucial for his home state — and his party’s future — and gave this advice to Arizona Republicans who refuse to budgeon the issue: