Senator John McCain
We will dearly miss his courage, his wisdom and his judgment. He never shrunk from duty; he always spoke his mind on the great issues of the day; he embraced the difficult challenges facing our nation. He sought bipartisan solutions. Whether you agreed or disagreed with his policy prescriptions, he was not a captive of the special interests. He was a staunch and stalwart Republican, but he insisted on thinking for and speaking for himself on matters of high principle. He could not be bullied or threatened; he'd experienced far worse in prison in Vietnam. He was for our times the embodiment of a "Profile in Courage".
I’m sad that he did not defeat President George Bush in 2000. I think he was far better prepared to be commander in chief in the events leading up to 9/11 and its aftermath. He would have been a far better President confronting Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and around the world. He would not have allowed the Cheney/Rumsfeld cabal to make such horrendous mistakes throughout the Middle East.
He would have been a superb President with few delusions in confronting President Putin as Russia began to invade its near neighbors, annex their territories and sew dissension throughout the Western democracies.
I’m glad he was not our President in confronting the economic catastrophe of the Wall Street collapse and the Great Recession that ensued. Economics was not his strong suit. We were far better served by President Obama and his team in preventing the complete melt down in the global economy and the loss of many more millions of American homes, jobs and lifetime savings and then in rebuilding our nation’s economy.
Senator McCain saw clearly the dangers of President Trump and his acolytes, and, to the very last, he has done his heroic best to warn the nation of its deep peril. It’s up to all of us now to emulate his courage in facing this imminent threat to our nation’s ideals and its finest institutions.
Prepared by: Lucien Wulsin
Dated: 8/28/18