A surreal encounter with John McCain

WEEKEND READ: A testy brush with the mercurial maverick who might have changed history, but for a few unlucky breaks

I first really noticed John McCain during the 2000 US election, in which the Republican establishment identified a different preferred candidate early on — but the “maverick” was having none of it. A former Navy pilot shot down by the North Vietnamese, who survived five years of captivity, two of them in solitary confinement, he was not impressed with anyone or anything. He soldiered on.

The Democrats were always going to nominate Vice President Al Gore, because he had loyally waited out the shinier Bill Clinton for eight long years, manifesting stolid loyalty during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. And the Republicans rallied behind George W. Bush, the son of the one-term president who was robbed by the selfsame Clinton (though it was really Ross Perot who derailed Bush Sr. in 1992 by splitting the conservative vote – a fatal mistake in the US electoral system).

And yet, for a brief period that year, McCain was flickering brightly in a series of Republican primaries, roaming about the land in a bus emblazoned with the words “Straight Talk Express.” His insurgency was powered by the Arizona senator’s anti-establishment prickliness. Back then that meant speaking truths — as opposed to now, when it means burning down the house. Noticing that Bush was a dunce, I followed McCain with interest and was sad his campaign fizzled.

It was a strange election year for me, as I was barred from voting, due to living in Puerto Rico. I found myself disenfranchised on account of residing in a US “territory” and not a “state.” Puerto Ricans, US citizens all, live under federal law, serve in the military and carry US passports, yet cannot vote for president (nor do they have voting representation in Congress). Only three groups of US citizens can vote for president: Those in the 50 states, in D.C., and living abroad.

The 3 million citizens in territories like Puerto Rico are excluded. I have frequently voted by absentee ballot from outside the US — but a formal resident of Puerto Rico is not abroad. And if you think that’s odd, consider that residents of the nation’s capital could not vote for president until the 1964 election, when a Constitutional amendment took effect.

In 2000, a glimmer of hope came when US District Judge Jaime Pieras, responding to a petition, ordered Puerto Rico to hold a presidential election, declaring that denying the vote violated citizens’ rights. Governor Pedro Rossello, a vocal statehood advocate, supported the move, printing Gore-Bush ballots and — in a farcical approximation of what is anyway always a farce — forming a local “electoral college.” But the US Justice Department appealed, and the ruling was overturned just before the actual election.

It’s fascinating to contemplate alternate histories: After the Supreme Court awarded Florida to Bush that December, halting a recount that would likely have flipped the state and election to Gore by a few hanging chads, the Republican won the presidency by a 271-266 Electoral College margin. Solidly Democratic Puerto Rico would have had 6 electoral votes. Notice the numbers?

And what if McCain had been the candidate in 2000, and won? No 9-11, perhaps? Certainly no unjustifiable Iraq War! And possibly no Barack Obama (and therefore, probably, no President Trump, who said of McCain: “He’s a war hero cause he was captured; I like people that weren’t captured, OK? I hate to say.”).

My logic there is that had McCain won in 2000 there would have been no candidate McCain in 2008, to foolishly select Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate. That the cartoonish Palin was spectacularly clueless may not have mattered much in a normal election, but given the financial meltdown of that moment, it did. It mattered enough to get a half-black junior senator with the middle name of Hussein elected instead of poor McCain.

So when McCain showed up at the Ambrosetti Forum in 2012, I was eager to test my theories with him. This is the Lake Como gathering I first attended in 2008, and which I described in an earlier remembrance focused on Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. By now, I had moved on to Cairo, as the Middle East Editor of AP. Despite my exit from Europe, I was still a favorite of the “European House,” the event organizers, and was always received by the PR team with what felt like a form of affection, even if conditioned on the filing of “dispatches.” I was even allowed to host panels, as I had asked — but more on that another time.

McCain strutted about the Villa d’Este with the gravitas that is rightly the province of a former major party US presidential candidate (and one whose 2008 concession speech stands, certainly in light of 2020 events, as a model of decorum, dignity, and grace).

McCain informally headed the bipartisan trio of self-styled “mavericks” that had somehow become a thing — the others being Senators Joe Lieberman and Lindsay Graham. They’d just been on a tour of the Middle East, emerging quite displeased with perceived US passivity in the face of evildoing — so we had much to discuss. Indeed, given events of recent weeks now, it is remarkable that all the way back then, it was Iran’s nuclear weapons program that vexed them the most.

Lieberman said the "red line" in negotiations with Iran should be weapons capability and not the actual creation of a weapons — a nuanced view that betrayed his Talmudic roots. Graham said the United States should make it clear that if Iran pressed on it faced a "massive attack," a non-nuanced view that was similarly authentic. Graham felt Iran's leaders should expect to not survive a mistake of that magnitude. I agreed, even though agreeing with Sen. Graham is not normally a point of pride.

Enjoying a nuance with the Orthodox Jewish maverick

Lieberman’s “maverick” bona fides flowed naturally from the fact that he left the Democratic Party, whose VP nominee he had been in 2000, to become an “independent.” Slight of build and a little goofy in his way, Liberman was nonetheless able to project relative solemnity by means of a gravelly voice, a slow cadence, and the disinclination to say anything moronic. In politics, this is big.

The Republican Graham puzzled me: I spoke to all three, and by first impressions he was the most ordinary by a stretch. But upon reflection, I concluded Graham’s maverickness may have been the most profound: That someone so devoid of charisma, presentability and intellectual heft could get South Carolinians to repeatedly land him in high office is a Herculean feat. Either way, and sadly enough, Graham, the sole survivor of the trio, has strayed far from the “maverick” posture of those halcyon days. Today, in groveling eagerness to please Trump, Graham would much more credibly present as a “lickspittle.” Under such an adjusted brand, it is difficult to envision Graham still finding his place with the other two, who were in any case always also the more stalwart, if I may be so bold.

As for McCain, he cut a wistful figure — disarmingly accessible yet gravely ominous, a smiling, hard-headed, no-nonsense reminder of what might have been, if only, if only. He agreed to a sit-down interview, to be aired by our TV service as well. We organized ourselves in one of the villa’s plush salons, and made uncomfortable small-talk while the videographers fussed and fiddled with lighting and cables. Maverick or not, McCain’s straight talk was big, not small.

McCain in captivity, 1970s

The interview began. McCain said he was disappointed with Mitt Romney, then the Republican nominee, for sidestepping world affairs in his campaign for the White House. But he also blamed Obama for inaction while the situation in Syria and elsewhere "cries out for American leadership." He criticized Obama for not aiding rebels in Syria, abandoning Iraq and Afghanistan, and delaying tough decisions on Iran's nuclear program. "In a way it's almost like watching a train wreck," he said.

I asked McCain what he made of the notable absence of such talk at the previous month’s Republican National Convention, which nominated Romney and focused mostly on the economy? "Yup, it was" absent, he said. "The election is about jobs and the economy, but a failed ... national security policy over time is going to lead to significant domestic problems."

"It's the job of presidents and candidates to lead and articulate their vision for America's role in the world. The world is a more dangerous place than it's been since the end of the Cold War, and so I think the president should lead and I think candidates for the presidency should lead and talk about it, and I'm disappointed that there hasn't been more."

In the interview he was happy to detail how he would have done things differently, criticized Obama for pulling troops out of Iraq and telegraphing an intention of ending military operations in Afghanistan by 2014. Of course, events did not work out exactly that way, on any of the fronts.

"I would have left a residual force of some 20,000 troops in Iraq," he said. "Things are unraveling" in a way that threatens to yield a "fractured state" divided among Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish regions, under the sway of al-Qaida, and out of the U.S. orbit — "all the things we predicted would happen if we pulled out completely."

He was totally prescient, of course; within a few years much of Iraq was occupied by the barbaric Islamic State militia, a sort of Al Qaida upgrade, resulting in a ferocious civil war with a massive Western involvement on the side of the overwhelmed Iraqi government.

McCain was equally dire on Afghanistan, where NATO headquarters in the capital, Kabul, had just been struck by a suicide bombing that killed six and was claimed by the Taliban. "I know that the Afghan people strongly disapprove of a Taliban (return), but I think it's pretty obvious they know the Americans are leaving and they have to adjust to the post-American involvement environment and that means accommodating the certain forces that they otherwise wouldn't."

On Afghanistan "I've not heard (Obama) talk about success."

McCain said that Obama should also sidestep a paralyzed United Nations and reluctant NATO to cobble together a coalition of European and Mideast nations willing to lend a hand — arming the rebels and backing them in establishing a safe zone in the north.

"If we led, we could," he said. "It cries out for American leadership. American leadership is not there."

That’s two out of two. Obama started the abandonment, Trump agreed to complete it, Joe Biden implemented that surrender in the most shambolic fashion conceivable in the summer of 2021. The Taliban easily and almost immediately overran the crumbling forces of the pro-Western Afghan government – one of the most brutal failures in the history of American projection of power. This benighted mafia has since resumed their grisly misrule, to the excruciating detriment of the poor people of Afghanistan, especially girls and women.

McCain also called for a resolute stance on Iran. "Here's the conundrum. The president of the United States has repeatedly stated that Iranian nuclear weapons (are) unacceptable. Now we watch as they move inexorably down that path... Right now I don't see any exit sign. That doesn't mean I'm predicting that there will be this conflict, but at the same time I don't know a way out. One thing I'm pretty confident of is that that decision would not be made by the president of the United States before the November election.”

This, of course, was before Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal freezing that program (until Trump unwisely walked away from the agreement in 2018, compelling Iran to resume enrichment — leading to the 12-day war with Israel has month, and the US B-2 bombardment of the facilities in Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan).

McCain was scathingly critical of the political process in America, blaming outside money for driving down the level of political discourse. "I have not seen a campaign as poisonous as this is," he said. "I have not seen candidates call each other outright liars. It has to do with money. It has to do with these outside groups... We've reached the lowest level of discourse that I've seen in American politics." Obviously, this last bit is quite funny, in an very unfunny way.

When I asked about Palin, McCain had warm things to say. "She energized our party, and the nation," he said. "And the liberal left began a vendetta against her which is still the most disgraceful and despicable thing I've ever seen in American politics. No matter what she said they were going to try to destroy her with it."

I realized the maverick would not be happy with my theory about all of that, but one of my defining characteristics is that I don’t like abandoning a plan. Another is that I enjoy confronting interviewees (as well as people standing in parking spots trying to save them for a car that hasn’t yet arrived). So I pressed forward.

Could it be, I said, pretending to search for the right words, that Palin's seeming lack in fluency in economic affairs tipped the election by frightening voters who at that precise moment were terrified by the Great Recession, creating a fleeting and unexpected political market for competence, intelligence and expertise?

McCain bristled at the very proposition. It felt like I had proposed something utterly insane — like the Sixers winning the NBA title, or Donald Trump becoming president of the United States of America. "I know of no campaign in history that hinged on who the vice presidential candidate was, so if your theory is correct it is a major breakthrough in the history of politics," he said. Then he added, with what seemed like either sarcasm or resignation: "But it may be true."

I tried to continue this discourse, but McCain had had enough. Five years later, in his last major political act, McCain cast the deciding vote scuttling Trump’s effort to repeal Obamacare and toss tens of millions off healthcare. He was angry that day, famously mimicking a “thumbs-down” in the face of the serpentine Mitch McConnell. It was that same temper that I now experienced at Villa d’Este.

McCain ripped off his microphone and bolted up from his seat. Startled for a second, I realized I was witnessing the maverick at his most mercurial. Not for him the orderly, traditional wind-down of a formal TV interview. Not when the interviewer was a ninny. Not when the talk should be straight.

“Good meetin’ ya,” said John McCain. “I’ll be seein’ ya.” And he was gone.