Why John McCain’s loss feels personal

I can’t quite put my finger on why I’ll miss Senator John McCain so much. I seem to have this feeling that I knew the man, which of course I didn’t. What made him seem so familiar and special? I suppose it has something to do with the personal attachment to presidential candidates that we feel here in New Hampshire during primary season.

I always made a point to see McCain when he was in my hometown of Peterborough. The first time was at an ice cream social in the summer of 1999, early in the run up to the 2000 primary. A small crowd of about 30 people partially filled a meeting room in the 100-year-old brick Town House. My husband and I brought our nine-year-old daughter to see grass-roots politics in action, basically bribing her with ice cream.

McCain, along with his Straight Talk Express bus, was about to become the darling of that New Hampshire primary, which he won by 17 points defeating George W. Bush. But on that day, you wouldn’t know it. He gave a short, no-frills stump speech in the basement of the Town House and then opened the floor to discussion.

When he asked for questions, my nine-year-old’s hand shot up as if she were vying to be chosen for an elite kickball team. I pressed lightly on her outstretched arm to push it back down. I figured that talking to Senator McCain was serious business for the adults in the room. Besides, I had no idea what was about to come out of my kid’s mouth. McCain took notice (it was hard not to), nodded his head in my daughter’s direction, grinned, and said, “Yes, young lady, what is your question?”

She framed it succinctly without hesitation, “There are too many kids smoking at my school. What are you going to do about it?”

McCain seemed to take great pleasure in that moment. I’m guessing it had something to do with our daughter’s spunk. But no doubt he was also delighted to answer a question that led directly to some talking points about anti-tobacco legislation that he was currently sponsoring. Our daughter had unwittingly thrown him a softball.

After a 15-minute question-and-answer session, McCain went around the room and shook everyone’s hand. Each and every one of us. He chatted up my daughter with special attention.

After that, we were hooked. We saw him multiple times at the Town House. I even ran into him on the street in front of the bookstore once as he was walking downtown with a small swarm of reporters around him. I later discovered that McCain was often in town because he’d developed a particular fondness for Peterborough, holding the last Town Hall meetings of both his 2000 and 2008 primaries there.

Regardless of the setting, McCain was a perfect fit for the Granite State. He always came across as an affable, charming rascal. A maverick and a middle man, the senator had no airs. He just spoke his mind. He deeply appreciated bipartisanship and his ideas often resonated with Democrats, Republicans, and Independents alike. His record backed his words. His bipartisan initiatives in Congress included major legislation on campaign finance reform and the pursuit of significant immigration reform as a member of the Gang of Eight. He pursued these aisle-crossing alliances for one simple reason: he thought it was good for the country.

Beloved by many in our state, McCain was sometimes referred to as New Hampshire’s senator from Arizona. This is high praise in a place where participation in the presidential primary is considered an intramural sport. We talk politics along with Red Sox scores as a matter of course. Our state representatives comprise the third largest legislature in the English-speaking world (after the British Parliament and the United States Congress). In a state of 1.3 million people, this means that virtually everyone in New Hampshire knows someone who has held state office and we freely share our opinions with them.

We feel it is our duty to talk straight. And we live by our words in small cities and towns in which we need to get along with our neighbors. We speak our minds respectfully (mostly) and move on. We don’t like bullies. And we loved McCain for playing the game in much the same way.

McCain’s appeal also had to do with his willingness to buck his own party when he felt it was warranted—most recently when he voted against repeal of the Affordable Care Act. Of course, this doesn’t mean he wasn’t a conservative Republican most of the time. He was. He just didn’t let his pack dictate his every move.

He made mistakes. The selection of Governor Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate in 2008 was a major error. Refreshingly, he was able to publicly admit this and other mistakes too. This characteristic elevated him to the kind of citizen our founders imagined: imperfect, yet principled and dedicated to the flourishing of the republic. No one needed to tell McCain the difference between right and wrong. He had an innate moral meter. This didn’t mean he used it all the time. Who does? But he knew when he’d overstepped his bounds and accepted the consequences.

Mercurial at times, McCain could be a hothead, a statesman, a taskmaster, and a truth teller. He was quick with a quip. It made him all the more relatable; he was human like us. He took chances and, yes, failed at times. When he did speak forcefully it was often to defend not just policies, but the truth. As in a frequently quoted video clip in which he corrected an attendee at one of his 2008 campaign rallies who called President Obama an Arab: “No, ma’am. No ma’am. He’s a decent family man and citizen…”

Even as he entered his eighties, McCain never felt like an old-school relic. He was a walking, talking Golden Rule who was unafraid to take down jerks and tyrants in defense of his country. His virtues—the ones that columnist David Brooks talks about as eulogy virtues—were on display each day. We didn’t need McCain to die to recognize his character traits of courage, honor, duty, and honesty. 

My 28-year-old daughter texted me several times in the 24-hour period that began with McCain’s decision to stop treatment for brain cancer. She was deeply saddened by the news. She now works in D.C., in politics herself. I have no doubt that her career was influenced in some small part by her brief encounter with McCain when she was nine.

When his death was announced, I heard it first from her. Neither of us are Republicans and, still, the loss was searing. She and I agreed that his death represented more than the passing of an elder statesman. It felt like the death of the country’s integrity, a loss of someone who knew how to defend our institutions in essential and necessary ways. Then she said something you rarely hear about any politician these days.

“He was wonderful,” she said.

Just that. He was.

Corralling the chaos without losing your mind

I woke Wednesday morning, like I do most mornings, with two conflicting gravitational pulls. Should I check the news and listen to pundits dissect the president’s tweets and congressional antics? Or should I take a break from the cultural chaos and amble around the house, double check my Christmas lists, and count how many tins I can re-use for this year’s cookie deliveries.

On this morning, the news found me. I woke to NPR reporting that NBC’s “Today” show anchor Matt Lauer had been fired for sexual harassment. If I’d chosen to stay away from the news that morning, I still couldn’t have avoided this particular bombshell. My daughter texted me on her way to work, “Matt Lauer gone!!” She’s recently been texting me each time a prominent man is accused of (and usually fired for) sexual misconduct. It’s become an all-too-frequent exchange. Later the same day, she texted, “Garrison Keillor?!?”

This was just the daily dose of sexual harassment news, which could occupy its own cable channel these days. But the 24-hour news cycle had just begun. Also that morning, President Trump retweeted anti-Muslim videos from an extremist organization in the U.K., known primarily as a racist hate group. The validity of at least one of the videos was quickly called into question. But the anti-Muslim sentiment Trump conveyed was clear — and deeply disturbing to Republicans and Democrats alike, not to mention our closest international ally. U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May wasted no time with her response, “It is wrong for the president to have done this.” 

Later the same day, the tax bill passed a critical milestone in the U.S. Senate, clearing the way for a vote on a bill that will hand more money to the wealthy and balloon the deficit. It will also remove a key pillar of Obamacare, sending the Affordable Care Act reeling into a steeper downward spiral. A swelling deficit will likely be followed by a call to gut Medicare and Social Security. These are not inconsequential impacts for most Americans. But the unpopular bill is being hastily rammed through the Senate in what appears to be a political move fueled by the Republicans need to score a legislative win and appease donors. Senator Lindsay Graham (R-South Carolina) confirmed this motivation, saying that "financial contributions will stop" if the GOP fails to deliver corporate tax cuts. Oh, did I mention that North Korea launched a test to prove its missile ranges now extend as far as Washington, D.C. Or did that news tidbit break the day before?

It’s exhausting. There is not enough yoga, meditation, or long walks in the woods to keep me from feeling anxious and overwhelmed. One of my friends put it beautifully when she posted a link to a story on the dismantling of the State Department’s foreign service. Her post read simply, “For those with the bandwidth to consider yet another crisis.”

It’s hard not to bury our heads in the sand. Mimicking our polarized society, there’s a binary approach to deal with the cascading chaos. Some of us choose to engage with the news full on by seeking multiple credible sources in an attempt to find the truth. That is, if we still believe in the truth and have the energy to pursue it. Or we choose to avoid the news completely and let only the most critical of news events bubble to the surface through friends or the stray Internet post.

But social media doesn’t seem like a good way to siphon news. I remember in college, the only news that made its way to our electronically deprived dorm one semester was that Lynyrd Skynyrd’s plane had crashed. I doubt this was the most newsworthy event that took place during those few months. But for our subculture (college-age kids fairly obsessed with sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll), it was an important, possibly critical, piece of information.

It reminds me of our news landscape now. We’ve retreated into our subgroups and each little tribe decides what’s important to them and clings to it, holding it to the light as a filter through which they view the world. The difference is that college kids know they are in a bubble that at some point will burst, dropping them into the real world filled with jobs, family, and other responsibilities. But our American political subcultures keep digging in with a vengeance, tunneling away from those who disagree with them. Leaving a maze of disconnected Americans.

I wish I could look away from our cultural train wreck. But I can’t remove myself from the fray and be the citizen I want to be. There are people to talk with about the political issues that matter and opposing voices I need to understand. Bearing witness is the least I can do. It’s the best I can do. For now, it has to be enough to be informed, armed with the truth, and ready for action.

#MeToo meets the military and it ain't pretty

I don’t even remember his name. Though he was someone on the periphery of my friend group. I do remember the heart-pumping shock of being thrown to the ground. Of struggling to push him off me. His breath smelled of the cheap beer that was flowing at a spring-fling event at the community college in Watertown, New York, where I’d spent freshman year.

We were on a path in the woods, just off the main field where most people were gathered. It was not a remote, untraveled path. No one happened to be nearby at that moment. I wriggled, I flailed, I yelled. The 70s rock music—I think it was a live band—drowned out my cries.

I eventually escaped. My relentless fighting and his drunken sloppiness combined to fuel my getaway. I patted the dirt and debris off my jeans and shirt. Picked at the dried leaves and pointy twigs in my hair. Walked off with an attempt at sterling posture because that’s what good girls are taught. Pretend it didn’t happen. Look unscathed. I mean, I wasn’t raped, was I? I re-entered the crowd with its inviting sounds of easy laughter and friendly voices. All I wanted to do was blend in, be safe again. I told my best friend what had happened. Felt lucky. I’d avoided true harm.

Not long after, I went out with friends to a local disco bar named Twilight 22. The dress I was wearing fell just below my knees and had a double-slit skirt made for twirling on the dance floor. As I was standing next to a boyfriend at the edge of the small dance floor, several men behind me lifted the back panel of my skirt. One grabbed the slit on the left side; another yanked the slit on the right. They peeled me.

I turned around to laughing faces. They had the short haircuts and indifferent attitudes that gave every appearance of being soldiers from Fort Drum, a local Army base. I’d learned to spot them young. These were the kind of soldiers my parents warned me about ever since I could remember; the ones eager to show the flip side of valor to local girls they’d never see again. (My father, a five-year veteran of World War II, was a reliable source in such matters.) Embarrassed and ashamed, I simply moved away to another part of the dance floor, which seemed less saturated with groups of men holding beers at rakish angles.

I’ve been reliving these stories the past week, along with dozens of more insidious, less vivid ones that center on heckling, groping, and leers—the run-of-the-mill harassment that comes with being female in America in the late 20th and early 21st century. Despite the appearance of women “having it all,” or possibly because of it, nasty comments and subversive attitudes are never far away. If you are female and have escaped these behaviors, lucky you. But the legions of #MeToo posts on my social media feeds throughout the last week indicate that most women of virtually every age know exactly how this feels.

Sharing these experiences as part of a global community of women felt important. Hearing men on my social feeds say they took our messages to heart, felt significant too. This meant they heard us, believed us, didn’t question us, and wanted to change the culture.

Then came chief of staff John Kelly, who marched through the #MeToo campaign with a machete. In the White House briefing room, from a position of power, he inserted himself into the controversy surrounding President Trump’s remarks to Myeshia Johnson, the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, one of four serviceman killed in Niger. Representative Frederica Wilson (D-FL), a family friend who was traveling with Johnson, heard the conversation on speakerphone and made public statements about Trump's clumsy remarks to the grieving widow. Myeshia Johnson, six months pregnant with the couple’s third child, later confirmed Wilson’s account of the conversation and said that the president’s comments made her cry even worse.

Most presidents would have cleared up this controversy quickly, taken ownership for the miscommunication, and offered a heartfelt apology to the widow of a fallen soldier. But that’s not Trump’s style. He engaged in a Twitter war with Wilson, then deployed General Kelly for a battle round, trading on the chief of staff’s personal experience of losing a child in service to our country.

Kelly has undeniable qualifications on this topic. His perspective was meant to clear the air while providing cover to Trump for the president’s less-than-perfect condolences. But an emotional Kelly made some critical missteps from the press podium. He lied about Wilson’s remarks at the dedication of a FBI building in Florida and accused her of politicizing a Gold Star family’s grief (when it was Trump who'd started this particular war, commenting on how previous presidents handled communications with the families of fallen soldiers). Kelly, known as a man of integrity, made a blatant attempt to discredit Wilson whom he referred to as an “empty barrel.”

Here’s what I took away from Kelly’s remarks: he didn’t believe a woman’s version of events and he intentionally dishonored her by spreading falsehoods. At the pinnacle of the #MeToo campaign, it was a smackdown.

Kelly, ironically, went on to lament the good ole days in which women were treated as sacred. As he put it: “You know, when I was a kid growing up, a lot of things were sacred in our country. Women were sacred, looked upon with great honor. That’s obviously not the case anymore as we see from recent cases.”

Kelly had just confused everyone, as he smeared a female member of Congress for aggrandizement, while absolving a president who has a track record of disrespect for women.

The battle lines were set up to squelch the female perspective. On one side were two powerful men: Trump and Kelly. On the other side, were three women: Myeshia Johnson, Rep. Wilson, and Cowanda Jones-Johnson, La David's aunt, who'd also heard Trump's call and confirmed its tone and content. Kelly could have met the women at least halfway, honoring their feelings and judgment, but that did not seem to be an option. There appeared to be an instinct to slur and silence them.

During a week in which the #MeToo sisterhood emerged like a resurfacing submarine from the dark recesses of society, Kelly’s comments about women were tone deaf. The millions of oral histories unleashed by the #MeToo campaign were often decades old, proving that there were no “good ole days” to be a woman in America. Kelly’s attempt to rewrite history as most women know it felt like a betrayal.

While most of us will never understand what it feels like to be the parent of a fallen soldier, Kelly seems unaware of the threats that women in America face, and have likely always faced. Nor does he understand what modern women really want. Being treated as sacred has never been the point. Women want respect, to be treated as equals. To be honored as friends, partners, colleagues, mothers, wives, sisters, daughters. In this case, to be believed for telling the truth—wasn’t that what the #MeToo campaign was all about?

We can also handle the truth, and this administration should start telling it more often about topics that matter. For starters, American women would like to know why are we fighting in Niger? How did these four servicemen lose their lives? Where are the other military hotspots in the world that we should know more about, and what are the risks?

Many of us expected so much more from General Kelly. Because a man of honor knows when to admit he made a mistake. It’s not too late for him to restore lost credibility. He would be wise to make a public apology to the American people for his misstatements about Rep. Wilson. He should also make a private, personal phone call to Myeshia Johnson to express his deepest condolences and apologize for the added stress she's been forced to endure. Without taking responsibility for his missteps, he uses his own position of power to slash and burn women to make his administration look good. Feels just like old times.