John McCain, Statesman

Plato's vision of the statesman was of someone who knew better than the common rabble. He had the virtues to know what was best, such as the expertise to make judgments that the inexpert could never make rightly even though the inexpert might be the 'equal' of the expert before the law. The best thing possible would be for such men to be in the positions of power, Plato argued in the Laws:
The old saying, that "equality makes friendship," is happy and also true; but there is obscurity and confusion as to what sort of equality is meant. For there are two equalities which are called by the same name, but are in reality in many ways almost the opposite of one another; one of them may be introduced without difficulty, by any state or any legislator in the distribution of honours: this is the rule of measure, weight, and number, which regulates and apportions them. But there is another equality, of a better and higher kind, which is not so easily recognized. This is the judgment of Zeus; among men it avails but little; that little, however, is the source of the greatest good to individuals and states. For it gives to the greater more, and to the inferior less and in proportion to the nature of each; and, above all, greater honour always to the greater virtue, and to the less less; and to either in proportion to their respective measure of virtue and education. And this is justice, and is ever the true principle of states, at which we ought to aim....
The problem, of course, is that it can be quite difficult to know if you are an expert in political matters. Everyone knows whether or not he or she is an expert at fluid mechanics; but no one thinks they are inexpert at recognizing justice and injustice. Nevertheless, some are, and it is to be hoped that the experts are to be in positions of power to overrule the many.

That is, I suspect, the story that John McCain believes himself to be in right now. It may even be the true story, perhaps. The American people gave the whole Congress and the Presidency to the Republican Party on constant and many-times-repeated promises to unmake Obamacare. McCain stepped in and saved it, against the wishes of the majority, trusting his own judgment and expertise more than the will of the people. Alternatively, he could look as a member of a detached elite that is refusing to keep the very promises that raised it to power, betraying the people's trust.

I tend to differ with McCain where the Constitution is concerned. From my perspective he is prone to setting his own judgment above it, as in Campaign Finance Reform, and as now. The Constitution is silent on the Federal provision of health care; that being the case, under the 10th Amendment, it should be left to the states or to the people. We would be happier if we did not have to fight so hard about these matters where we Americans differ so greatly on what right looks like. Still, like others I can only make an assumption about my expertise on these matters. Certainly the vast majority of Americans do not care very much about the Constitution being upheld with any sort of exactness. They're happy to have some welfare, some Social Security, some Medicare, some Medicaid, some Federal regulations on what kind of crops you grow in your own yard within a single state, or... well, they have endured many things, and some minority of Americans are devoted to voting for ever more such things.

So did he do right or wrong? It depends on how good his judgment is, and what his virtues are. But if he is the statesman resisting the mob it is odd that the mob's judgment has been so steady. Mobs are supposed to be dangerous because they are swayed by passion, but Republican voters have wanted this law killed for seven full years. It may very well be that the considered and stable judgment of the many means that, in this case at least, the many is not merely a mob in need of correction by the wise.

All the same a man has to act on his judgment and live with his conscience, of course.

30 comments:

Anonymous said...

I admire his determination to do what he believes is his duty. However, I question his judgment, especially given his health.

LittleRed1

Anonymous said...

John McCain votes to continue to force Americans to pay for the murder of unborn Americans.
I consider him an accomplice to the ongoing systamatic genocide against unborn Americans.

Further, John McCain is a backstabbing lying bastard. Here listen to his own words
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWfOnluLxF0

Love the commentys expressed here.
"Will you please hurry the fuck up and die?"
http://knuckledraggin.com/2017/07/will-you-please-hurry-the-fuck-up-and-die/#comments

"John McCain Joins Pro-Abortion Republicans to Defeat Senate Bill Defunding Planned Parenthood"
http://www.lifenews.com/2017/07/28/john-mccain-joins-pro-abortion-republicans-to-defeat-senate-bill-defunding-planned-parenthood/


The terms "Statesman" and "conservative" are words I would never use to describe this Neocon Warmonger.

-Mississippi



Christopher B said...

I wouldn't be as charitable. I think based on his subsequent statement, and Schumer's speech before the vote, that he pretty clearly is attempting to polish his legacy as a bipartisan, and possibly even angling to be remembered as someone who forged a 'great' compromise on Obamacare. Much like his performance on TARP that wound up killing his Presidential campaign, I doubt this is going to work.

Anonymous said...

I hear Ted Kennedy needs a running mate.... Maybe John has asperations for a Bipartisan ticket......IN HELL.

http://feedyouradhd.blogspot.com/2012/07/ted-kennedy-announces-candidacy-for.html

-Mississippi

Anonymous said...

John McCain's Obamacare. He owns it now. Obamacare funds planned parenthood.
Want to see what planned parenthood is up to now?
This is a full throttled attack on mothers, fathers, and their children.

You did not like it the other day when a Vet's 2nd amendment right, was threatened when he acting as the grandfather stepped up to take care of his grandchildren and the state wanted to take his second amendment rights away?

Well the state is funding child killing and psych ops against the american family via obamacarefunneling funds to planned parenthood is no different.

How Planned Parenthood Goes After the Kids Who Survive Abortion
http://moonbattery.com/?p=86506

John McCain can go to hell.

-Mississippi

Elise said...

The "skinny repeal" was a last-ditch attempt to pass something that would let Republicans go home to their constituents and say, "Look! We did what we said: we repealed Obamacare." In other words, lie.

Yes, the "skinny repeal" got rid of the individual mandate, thus eliminating the most heinous of the unConstitutional aspects of ObamaCare. But it eliminates neither the requirement that insurers accept anyone who wants health insurance nor the requirement that insurers not charge more to people who have a pre-existing condition. That's a bad idea: my premiums are going up fast enough as it is.

I'm glad the "skinny repeal" failed both because it was a lie and because it was bad legislation. It looks to me like Senator McCain may have seen the bad legislation part since he warns:

We should not make the mistakes of the past that has led to Obamacare’s collapse, including in my home state of Arizona where premiums are skyrocketing and health care providers are fleeing the marketplace.

Unfortunately, neither he nor the rest of the Republicans seem to grasp that the solution is to repeat ObamaCare, period, rather than to keep trying to come up with a better version.

E Hines said...

McCain betrayed his constituents and the nation by voting to continue the Obamacare affliction on his constituents and the nation rather than accepting a first step toward getting rid of the thing and replacing it.

That it was a purely ego move on his part is demonstrated by his withholding his vote until he was last to vote and all eyes were on him.

The "skinny repeal" was a last-ditch attempt to pass something that would let Republicans go home to their constituents and say, "Look! We did what we said: we repealed Obamacare." In other words, lie.

Not at all. It was an interim move that would have removed some of the damage Obamacare was doing; it never was intended to be final legislation.

Eric Hines

Anonymous said...

Thus spoke the prophet in 1873, looking into the future and seeing the specter of future Senator, John McCain

"To my mind Judas Iscariot was nothing but a low, mean, premature Congressman.

- Mark Twain

Elise said...

It was an interim move that would have removed some of the damage Obamacare was doing; it never was intended to be final legislation.

Neither was ObamaCare.

Grim said...

I agree, Elise, that a pure repeal was the right move. We appear to have been lied to and betrayed by more than one Republican on that score, however. Including Republican governors, who ought to know better, but who have come to love that Federal gold.

Elise said...

Amen, Grim.

I didn't vote for Trump but his election gave me some hope that the Powers That Be in the Republican Party would finally realize how fed-up/angry people like me are. The unwillingness of the Republicans to even hold a simple up and down vote on a straight repeal in both houses of Congress pretty much took care of that. And don't get me started on how many conservative talking heads were delighted with the earlier replacement measures that "reformed" Medicaid while doing absolutely nothing for those of us who buy our own health insurance and don't qualify for (or don't want to take) subsidies.

Intellectually I know that other good, important policies have happened since January of this year but this betrayal overshadows everything else. Like you, I don't much think that my take on things is shared by a lot of Americans so I'll be interested to see how other Republican/conservative voters as a whole react to this fiasco.

Anonymous said...

.......Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) today declared Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to have joined the ranks of late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) when it comes to greatness in Congress......

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/2017/07/28/schumer-mccain-ranks-as-great-as-ted-kennedy/


HA!
They certain will be great together when John gets to hell to join Ted on his bipartisan ticket for president of Hell.

-Mississippi

jaed said...

some hope that the Powers That Be in the Republican Party would finally realize how fed-up/angry people like me are

I've come to believe that they do realize it; they just don't care. The common rabble are supposed to keep their heads down and accept what their betters decree for them, and this attitude is one shared by both parties.

One major problem here is that these people do confuse themselves with philosopher-kings. (I can see one of those pictorial memes: on one side, a classical painting of philosophers in the Academy, captioned "How politicians see themselves"; on the other, a clown car, captioned "How the people see politicians".) It is the recipe for populism: a political class that's malfunctioning badly enough (and populated by people ill-educated and stupid enough) that ordinary people are noticing, while simultaneously believing that they are truly the best and the brightest.

As for McCain, his own vanity precedes his country in his affections. His behavior during his captivity in Vietnam earned an enormous amount of respect, all of which he has managed to burn during his tenure as a politician, which in some sense is an achievement; I can't think of anyone else who's accomplished that at such a scale as he has.

Anonymous said...

Dad29 clearly sees what is at stake as two major events simultaneously occur magnifying the meaning for all to see and understand.

We Are All Charlie Gard Due to John McCain
http://dad29.blogspot.com/2017/07/we-are-all-charlie-gard-due-to-john.html

Christopher B said...

Grimm, Elise - I'm not understanding what you are arguing. Complete repeal at this point is a political impossibility given the status of the Senate. The only avenue open to make changes with only 51 Republican Senators is a bill that can pass through reconciliation since you are NEVER going to get a single Democrat to vote for complete repeal or even significant modifications. To go through reconciliation the bill can only deal with fiscal matters. It was vital that some changes be passed to provide a precedent that the GOP could and would change Obamacare. I'd say it's now likely that the GOP will lose control of both Houses of Congress in 2018. Get ready to deal with Obamacare for a long long time.

Elise said...

I'm not arguing anything. I'm saying that I want a straight up and down vote on a clean repeal. Even if it won't pass I want the vote anyhow. Why? Because I want to know that the Republicans made a good faith effort to keep their promise. And I want the Republicans who are not willing to vote for repeal to have to go on the record.

What difference does it make if the Republicans lose their majorities if they aren't doing with those majorities what they promised to do?

Dale Day said...

Check out http://www.cnsnews.com/blog/craig-millward/watch-mccain-repeatedly-called-obamacares-repeal if you want to know just how much a "statesman" McCain really is. He's a class A hypocrite.

Elise said...

I've come to believe that they do realize it; they just don't care. The common rabble are supposed to keep their heads down and accept what their betters decree for them, and this attitude is one shared by both parties.

Even if this is their attitude, I hoped that the rise of Trump would make them aware they have to pay attention to the common rabble out of self-preservation.

jaed said...

Judging by their behavior and what they say, I'd say that not only are they not aware of that, they are affronted by the very idea. The plan appears to be more or less what it was during the general campaign—Trump must lose and his supporters must be driven back to their kennels—except that they've now realized that the electorate will not do it, so this must be done post-election instead.

This is what the near-continuous shrieking about "impeachment" and "Russia" and "death penalty" and "25th Amendment" are all about. It's also, I believe, the reason for the media's growing willingness to experiment with directly punishing Trump supporters. As little as a year ago, it would not have even occurred to me that a major newspaper would track down and target a nine-year-old and his family for harassment, because that nine-year-old wrote a fan letter to the President—and that I'd then see supporters justify this, because the White House should have considered it before making the letter public. Bush was irrationally hated, but as far as I know, doing this sort of thing didn't even occur to anyone under Bush. Certainly major media outlets didn't do it.

I have come to understand that the real hatred is not for Trump qua Trump. It's for anyone who supports him.

E Hines said...

I'm saying that I want a straight up and down vote on a clean repeal. ... And I want the Republicans who are not willing to vote for repeal to have to go on the record.

You got that in the vote prior to the Skinny Repeal vote--that was a straight, pure repeal. Seven Republicans voted against that.

What difference does it make if the Republicans lose their majorities if they aren't doing with those majorities what they promised to do?

One difference it makes is that a Republican majority prevents the Progressive-Democrats from extending the damage they did with their last majority, even if a Republican majority doesn't roll back that original damage. Between 2018 and 2020 we're going to see two more Supreme Court Justices retire, maybe three. A Progressive-Democratic Party controlled Senate will mean no conservative, textualist Justice will be confirmed.

Eric Hines

Elise said...

the vote prior to the Skinny Repeal vote--that was a straight, pure repeal. Seven Republicans voted against that.

No, it was not. Obamacare Repeal Reconciliation Act (ORRA, H.R. 1628) was not a straight, pure repeal. A straight, pure repeal would not be 18 pages long. According to Vox :

The ORRA would keep key Obamacare regulations on the books, including the requirement that insurance plans not discriminate against people with preexisting conditions.

A clean repeal would need 60 votes in the Senate to get around the filibuster problem (see How Obamacare Was Passed - and Why It Can’t Be Repealed By Reconciliation).

I found this New York Times piece helpful in figuring out what happened this week: The Three Plans to Repeal Obamacare That Failed in the Senate This Week

A Progressive-Democratic Party controlled Senate will mean no conservative, textualist Justice will be confirmed.

Yes, and that’s the carrot/stick that the Republicans have used for a long time now, to convince people to vote Republican even though the Republicans aren’t doing what they promised to do. It's getting old. YMMV.

E Hines said...

We got one conservative, textualist Justice confirmed, and those Republicans got rid of the filibuster on Justices to achieve that. The Justice, and the Supreme Court, matter at least as much as Obamacare.

Eric Hines

Elise said...

The plan appears to be more or less what it was during the general campaign—Trump must lose and his supporters must be driven back to their kennels—except that they've now realized that the electorate will not do it, so this must be done post-election instead.

Since about a week after the election, my question about what's going on has always been: Let's say the drive to keep trump out of the Presidency/impeach Trump is successful. Do the people pushing for that:
a) Not understand what will happen?
b) Understand and not care?
c) Understand and consider it desirable?

Of course, perhaps I'm wrong and if Trump is impeached nobody will much care and the anger and fed-up-ness will become resignation and give-up-ness. I sincerely hope we never find out.

ColoComment said...

Yes, the Republicans have majorities, but not the super majority needed to do whatever they want in the Senate. Recall that the Dems had a near to- or absolute 60-vote majority (I don't 'zactly recall - had Kennedy died by then? Brown elected?) in the Senate to pass Obamacare & they still needed kickbacks, legislated bribery, and parliamentarian shenanigans to get it passed.
For some reason, Dem legislators are persuaded to vote in lockstep, while Repubs are cats that resist herding. A majority does the right-side voter no good if a Collins or a Paul go "rogue."

If they could not amass the 60 votes to fully repeal the da**ed thing & go back to status quo ante, then perhaps it is the better part to not tinker with it at all.

I confess to confusion about what the consequences of Senate passage would have been. I believe that the Senate & House bills would have gone to conference, yes? And some compromise would have been worked out for a final bill that had may have had a better chance of sucking in some Dem votes? Would that not have simply extended the insanity of Obamacare for more years than its now-expected lifespan, thereby more fully embedding it in the social, economic, and fiscal realities of our lives? I believe that both of these bills retain a huge amount of federal money going to insurance companies as premium support, which is nothing but a huge bailout for them, and a blank check drawn on the Treasury. It would do nothing to reduce the [recently increased] pool of Medicaid beneficiaries, nor would it have restrained care costs. And that's just the most obvious stuff. It would still be a huge federal government intrusion into an industry that the feds should not be present in at all.

I wonder if Sen. McCain didn't do smaller-government fans a big favor?

PS: too bad that no current politician (except maybe Rand Paul, Cruz, Lee, et al.) would vote for any of these suggestions:
https://www.aei.org/publication/steve-horwitz-8-steps-to-reform-health-care-lower-costs-improve-quality-and-increase-access/

jaed said...

Elise, I think they don't understand it.

The electorate has been signaling more and more strongly that it is uncomfortable with the direction policy is taking in several areas, for several election cycles now, and the response has been to double down and play Mean Girl at each iteration. The rumblings around the time of Porkbusters were ignored or mocked. The Tea Party movement was ignored or mocked, and when it elected people to office, they were co-opted or frozen out. They should have taken the rise of the Tea Party as a red-alert warning. Instead, they tried to clamp the lid down on that disgust with the political class.

So they got Trump. And they show no sign at all of recognizing why they got Trump—because no gentler or more polite approach has worked to get their attention. At this point, I'm honestly starting to wonder whether there's anything short of literal tarring and feathering that will get their attention. Maybe not even that will do it.

Grim said...

The Justice, and the Supreme Court, matter at least as much as Obamacare.

I think the SCOTUS argument continues to be relevant, but that doesn't mean that Senators who lie to their constituents should be re-elected. You could surely do worse, but that doesn't mean you can't do better.

Elise said...

Well, I'm in Alabama so I have a chance to vote for Mo Brooks to fill Sessions' Senate seat. It's not quite a tarring and feathering but I do think it's a chance to do better than either Roy Moore or Luther Strange.

ColoComment said...

Aha! I am not alone. "...if two people do it, in harmony, ..."

With another 48, they might call it a movement. ;-)

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/07/thank_you_john_mccain.html

Grim said...

It's not quite a tarring and feathering...

I deleted a few options of my own before posting the previous comment. Tarring and feathering is gentle by comparison.

jaed said...

I considered citing harsher measures myself.