Fitz column mug

David Fitzsimmons, Tucson’s most beloved ink-stained wretch.

 Steven Meckler

Dear John,

I remember meeting you 30 years ago when you began your career in the Senate, around the same time I was beginning my career at the Arizona Daily Star.

β€œMcCain’s stopping by. Come to the meeting,” said my editor. As I hurried to the boardroom I struggled to hold onto the objective poker face required of all inquisitors. It wasn’t easy because I was meeting you, the hero of my youth.

When you were shot down, this military brat was in junior high. I knew every cruel and noble detail of your story. Both of my brothers were in Vietnam at the time. The master sergeant made us watch Walter Cronkite every night and I vividly remember the grainy pictures of you at the Hanoi Hilton. They were as compelling to me as the stations of the cross. As I walked to the Star’s conference room I wondered what had become of the POW/MIA bracelet I wore in high school and college.

My POW, Jeremiah Denton, bless him, made it home and became a senator. So did you.

You had nicknames like β€œPunk” and β€œMcNasty” but I wasn’t afraid; I had grown up in a family of uniforms, bars and stripes, where those kind of nicknames were considered compliments. You, the newly elected Senator from Arizona, a carpetbagging pretender to the Goldwater throne, bounded into the room, a tornado of glad-handing exuberance. The arms that had been mangled by the enemy offered me a hearty two-handed handshake and I concealed my awe. I had never met a man whose hair had been turned white by torture.

I did the count in my head. One Silver Star. Three Bronze Stars. Two Purple Hearts. Five years in Hell. Tortured for the first two. And you, the admiral’s son, refused an early release. Wouldn’t be honorable. Honor mattered more than freedom.

You dropped in often through the years. Through the dishonor of the Keating Five scandal and through the career-redeeming McCain-Feingold Act, which enacted short-lived campaign finance reform. Through your collaboration with Ted Kennedy, the untouchable liberal, with whom you co-wrote meaningful immigration reform that died in a merciless desert called Congress β€” because one voter’s bold β€œMaverick” is another voter’s β€œRINO offering amnesty to illegals.”

In your three decades you took more hostile fire from your right flank than you ever did from the Viet Cong. One day we will have meaningful immigration reform and meaningful campaign finance reform and it will be because you had the courage to tackle these tough issues when few others would.

As a satirist I want to say thank you for Sarah Palin. We all make mistakes. Unfortunately your mistake paved the way for the Orange One. The irony is Shakespearean that your spawn’s spawn became our worst nightmare. And your arch-enemy.

Sacrifice. Patriotism. Decency. Honor. Your daughter Meghan was right about your virtues. You’re everything our commander in chief is not.

During your 2008 presidential run I was dazzled by an amazing redemptive act: You called out a fatuous bigot for insulting your opponent during a nationally televised town hall. β€œNo, ma’am. He’s a decent family man. …” Such audacity. Asserting your foe, Barack Obama, was a good citizen was a stunning moment of decency so rare it should rest in a holy reliquary in the National Archives.

At every meeting we’d joke about getting older and you’d rant about what a terrible den of iniquity Congress was, β€œmy friends.” I always found that a charming act of hope, your habit of calling people, β€œmy friends.” Then you’d ball your hand into a fist, cup it in the other hand and declare that you couldn’t wait to get back in the fight. And then our inquisition would proceed and it wouldn’t be long before you’d be peppering the β€œstraight talk” with ribald jokes and self-deprecating stories.

Your voting record infuriated this liberal, yet, from time to time, you rose up on the side of greater wisdom. Thanks for your decisive β€œObamacare” vote, a vote that will aggravate β€œCadet Bone Spurs” all the way to his grave.

Your speech on the Senate floor, in defense of restoring civility and bipartisanship to our national debate, was as stirring as any made by a Philadelphia revolutionary fresh from the fields of Lexington and Concord.

For that spirit, I am honored to have known you, John. Count this master sergeant’s son among the millions who thank you for your service and call you hero. May God bless you on your journey home.

Respectfully,

David

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Contact editorial cartoonist and columnist David Fitzsimmons at tooner@tucson.com.