McCain service reminds of an America that could have been
Sep 3, 2018, 8:01 AM | Updated: 8:04 am
I get the impression that a lot of Trump supporters felt McCain service was one long attack on Donald Trump.
It was Meghan McCain who set it off, when she said “The America of John McCain has no need to be made great again because America was always great.”
That was definitely a swipe, but considering the way Trump had insulted her father, it would have been more shocking if she hadn’t taken a swipe. Arizona IS a stand your ground state.
But then it’s hard for anyone to match patriotic credentials with John McCain.
Her line about “those who lived lives of comfort and privilege while he suffered and served” could apply to a whole generation of young men who found ways not to go to Vietnam.
I won’t repeat what the pro-Trump critics said, except to note that any sympathy they might have had for a daughter mourning her father evaporated once she opened up on the president.
Whereas the anti-Trump side saw the service as a memorial not just for Senator McCain but for the America they once knew.
And yet, this is how America is supposed to work, isn’t it? If enough voters had wanted someone with a traditional code of honor, who respected opponents and admitted mistakes … they could have chosen someone like John McCain. Instead, they chose the man who openly insulted him. No eulogy was going to change their minds.
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