At the end of Monday night’s candidate debate, Arizona Sen. John McCain reprised themes of honor and duty that have been the touchstones of his career.
“I’ve been blessed to be able to serve this nation and Arizona in the most noble fashion,” he intoned after Democratic challenger Ann Kirkpatrick’s closing statement. “I believe serving a cause greater than one’s self-interest is the noblest of all things one can do.”
This comment wasn’t surprising coming from the man who spent 5½ years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam and wrote a 2008 book called “Why Courage Matters: The Way to a Braver Life.” But there was a whiff of hypocrisy in the statement, considering McCain had just, finally, said he won’t vote for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
Drawing on his own military experience, McCain has long made what feels like a classically masculine appeal to behave courageously and with honor. The argument isn’t strictly for men, but it probably appeals more to the traditionally male mind and draws on the largely male customs of the military.
The problem is, when McCain’s traditional, honor-bound masculinity came up against Trump’s cartoonish alpha-male posturing, McCain did not take the brave route. He waited till the coast was clear in his re-election bid, then announced he would not vote for Trump.
You can look at the McCain vs. Trump conflict as a competition between different versions of proud masculinity: selfless vs. selfish.
The comment Trump made in 2005, and revealed Oct. 7 by the Washington Post, is in keeping with the character of the man Trump has presented during his career and this campaign. In fact, it’s a logical extension.
His appeal is built on the idea that we need a man — a “real leader” — who doesn’t care about social niceties and pursues his own and the country’s interests ruthlessly. Last week, Eric Trump explained his father’s comments on grabbing women by saying he is an “alpha personality.”
That’s certainly what Donald Trump is trying to communicate. Remember how he said that avoiding paying income taxes “makes me smart”? How about when he called Jeb Bush “low-energy”? And when he mocked Marco Rubio for sweating on a debate stage?
“When we get in with Putin we need people that don’t sweat,” Trump said. “Can you imagine Putin sitting there and waiting for the meeting and this guy walks in and he’s like a wreck? No, you got to have Trump walk into that meeting, folks. We’ll do very nicely.”
It was all about establishing Trump as the ruthless male in the pack. And it was no coincidence that Trump and supporters pointed to Putin as a model to emulate. Putin is, of course, a ruthless killer of opponents whom vice presidential nominee Mike Pence hailed as a “strong leader.”
If you read Peter Pomerantsev’s 2014 book, “Nothing is True and Everything is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia,” you come away with the sense that cold sociopathy is the male ideal promoted in Putin’s Russia.
That is not, of course, the masculine ideal McCain has promoted throughout his career. He advocates selfless courage, not selfish ruthlessness.
Now, granted, it is fair that McCain has wanted to support his party’s candidate for president, since he’s a leader of the party and received its presidential nomination in 2008. But think about the transgressions he was able to overlook before deciding he’d had enough:
• Trump saying in July 2015 that McCain and, by logical extension, other prisoners of war are “not war heroes” because they were captured.
• Trump proposing in December 2015 to ban all Muslims from entering the United States.
• Trump’s attacks in June on a federal judge overseeing a civil case against Trump because the Indiana-born judge is of Mexican descent.
• Trump’s insults in July against the parents of Humayun Khan, a U.S. soldier killed in combat in Iraq whose father spoke at the Democratic National Convention, condemning Trump’s proposal to ban Muslims as unconstitutional.
This was a particularly potent moment for McCain. Khan’s father, Khizr Khan, said McCain was a family hero. Khan had sent McCain’s book to his son on duty in Iraq. Khan implored McCain to abandon Trump, but the senator didn’t show the family the bravery that they believed he had. Instead he issued a strongly worded statement:
“It is time for Donald Trump to set the example for our country and the future of the Republican Party. While our party has bestowed upon him the nomination, it is not accompanied by unfettered license to defame those who are the best among us.”
Why would he keep supporting Trump even then, even when his Republican colleague, Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake, had stood up to Trump?
Consider the state of McCain’s race when these incidents occurred. Up until Aug. 30, 2016, McCain was still facing a primary challenge by Kelli Ward. Rejecting Trump outright could have pushed more Republican primary voters into Ward’s camp.
Even before the primary, pollsters were checking the state of the expected general-election race between Kirkpatrick and McCain and found it close.
When Trump attacked Curiel for his Mexican heritage in early June, the Real Clear Politics’ average of polls on the race showed him with a 2.4 percentage-point lead over Kirkpatrick. When Trump attacked the Khan family in August, the polling average showed McCain had a 5.5 percentage-point lead.
Then McCain won the primary and opened up a substantial lead in the polls. On Oct. 7, when the world heard Trump had say that stars like him can get away with grabbing women’s genitals, McCain’s average lead was 16 points. Courage was now an option.
At the debate, McCain explained what finally turned him: “When Mr. Trump attacks women and demeans the women in our nation and in our society, that’s a point where I just have to part company.”
But if he were being more upright he would probably have said, “Now that I’ve got an insurmountable lead, I’m content to part with Trump.”
The episode was a missed opportunity for McCain to display the values he extols — to show what a selfless, courageous man does when faced with a selfish, ruthless one.
