You’re all probably quite familiar with and equally fatigued by stories about how the U.S. Senate used to be a more cordial place where there were strong friendships across the aisle, but Vietnam veterans John Kerry and John McCain have had a long-lasting and meaningful relationship. You may not remember how white-hot the POW-MIA issue was in the late-1980’s and early-1990’s, but more than budget deficits or trade agreements with Mexico, it was what really animated H. Ross Perot’s politics. Working together, Kerry and McCain were able to keep the crazies at bay and help normalize relations with Vietnam.
But no one is immune from John McCain’s late-life turn to unrelenting bloodthirst and overall nastiness, and it shouldn’t be a surprise that Kerry is feeling the brunt of it, too.
Back in 2013, John McCain’s insatiable desire to see the world engulfed in human carnage had grown so disturbing that Mother Jones decided to methodically detail every country McCain had recommended attacking. The list, which has since grown, included: Nigeria, Kosovo, Bosnia (against the Serbs), Afghanistan, Iraq (including the first Gulf War, three separate times), Syria, Iran, Mali, Sudan, Libya, North Korea, Russia (more than once), and China. Type “McCain recommends military action” into Bing, and you get more than three-quarters of a million hits, including in Ukraine.
For many war hawks, including Hillary Clinton and, yes, John Kerry, the disaster in Iraq had a chastening effect. But not for John McCain, who plainly thinks that everything would have gone swimmingly there if we had just stayed longer and tried harder. He wakes up every day looking for some new place on the global map to drop American bombs and commit American troops. This long ago went far beyond self-parody into something more resembling pure evil, or perhaps simple insanity.
This is why he is so impatient with our Secretary of State, John Kerry. And let’s not pretend that John Kerry is some peacenik.
McCain’s bashing is ironic, Obama officials say, given that Kerry could be something of an ally behind enemy lines for the Republican. McCain is a hawk who complains that Obama hasn’t used American power more boldly. Kerry is among the more hawkish members of Obama’s team: He has pressed for arming Ukraine’s military, sending more aid to Syria’s moderate rebels, and was an enthusiastic supporter of Obama’s short-lived September 2013 plan for air strikes against Syrian forces.
Yet, McCain has nothing positive to say about his would-be ally:
Lately, McCain has sounded less like a friend than a foe. In recent months he has branded Kerry a “human wrecking ball,” urged him to “recognize reality,” called him “delusional” and said he has “accomplished nothing except mileage as secretary of state.” Last month, for good measure, he suggested that he considers Iran’s Supreme Leader a more believable source on the nuclear talks than Kerry.
For his part, Kerry is trying to take the high road, but it isn’t all that easy:
People close to both men insist their friendship is durable enough to withstand McCain’s barrage of criticism, and Kerry confidantes say the secretary of state shrugs off his antagonist’s potshots. Kerry has invited McCain to breakfast at the State Department, and occasionally speaks to him by phone.
But the bond has clearly frayed of late. One person who recently saw them together described their rapport as more cordial than brotherly.
“This has always been a volcanic marriage of two strong willed, proud guys who deeply respect each other, but sometimes drive each other absolutely crazy. It’s a real friendship, unlike so many of the cliched Washington variety,” says one close Kerry associate.
“But this phase has been jarring. Kerry has been surprised by McCain’s public tirades. It’s crossed some lines that Kerry himself is always careful never to cross,” the associate added.
My advice for Kerry is not to take this personally.
Take a look at the press. They used to adore John McCain. I’ve never seen a politician treated with more deference and respect and almost awe by the media than John McCain in the 1999-2000 time frame. Even in 2008, the effect had not totally worn off.
But, by 2014, even Dana Milbank wanted to know if John McCain had called for war so many times that no one took notice of it anymore.
And that doesn’t even get into the disillusionment entailed in watching John McCain pick Sarah Palin as his running mate.
So, John Kerry isn’t alone. There are a lot of people who have had to rethink their relationship with John McCain, including some of his Republican colleagues in the Senate.
“The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine,” Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), also a senior member of the Appropriations panel, told the Boston Globe recently. “He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me.”
So, maybe it’s sad and a little jarring to realize that your old friend is not the same man he once was, or maybe it’s hard to realize that you’d misjudged him all along, but remember, John McCain was a POW, so you can’t criticize him.
Unlike that train in Philly yesterday, the “McCain Express” derailed a long, long time ago.
The man is a now (and pretty much always has been) a hot-headed loon, bent on killing any and every one who gives the USA even a bit of a problem.
I thank the FSM that we have a POTUS like Obama, and not McCain – and a VP like Biden, and not Sarah “The Whore of Babblin’-on” Palin, one heartbeat away from becoming President.
Seriously, considering his age, possible brain tumor?
Nah, frontal temporal rot, makes for impaired judgment and often a sign of dementia. All he’s got left is the anger, he lost the argument years ago.
Never been a fan of McCain, but I think part of what you are seeing here is McCain’s reaction to the extreme rightward shift of Republican party. Things are not looking great for him against an even more loonier, more far right challenger in the primary and he is reacting accordingly.
Remember when there was a movement to draft him, cross-party, to serve as Kerry’s VP candidate?
Thanks, but I’d just as soon forget.
Not so much a popular movement I recall, but rather the movement by John Kerry himself to get McC on his ticket. Numerous times offered, always turned down. Denied initially iirc, then McC acknowledged.
Kerry’s people weren’t working in a vacuum.
The idea found support in a lot of places you’d have thought would know better — not a lot, but more than you’d think, given the sources — on DKos and DemocraticUnderground.
Memories of 2000 died hard, and the notion that McCain was a Bush-specific germicide lingered on for years.
Well there’s long been a segment, overlapping both liberal and moderate wings of the party, that is overly worshipful of and deferential to military types. Gen Wesley Clark for instance in that same election cycle.
And probably some on our side bought the propaganda that really, at heart, he was truly a maverick and moderate-minded, and not one of those crazy RW Republicans.
As for the offer, I suspect Kerry’s long-standing friendship w/McC, preceding that election by years, as well as politics and the EC, were far more important factors than what a few posters wrote at those two blogs, if they were noticed by the Kerry people at all. But they didn’t have to read lefty blogs to notice that McC was still liked by a fair percentage of Dems at the time.
A loss of personal filters that, sadly, seems to come with age.
Also, very bitter from losing in ’08. Very, very bitter.
I’m guessing this bloodlust to punish the world is a result of him being a POW. If he weren’t in Congress, people would be saying he has full blown PTSD and should seek treatment. Just because he hasn’t started waving a gun in some trailer somewhere doesn’t mean he hasn’t been ill for a very long time.
There was that GOP (Midwestern?) senator who during the 2008 cycle said essentially he wouldn’t trust McC with the presidency because of temperament issues.
Oh never mind –it was Cochran of MS (h/t Boo).
I can never forget that McCain was only 5 rankings away from being the goat of his class at the Naval Academy. He might have bilged out of Annapolis if he wasn’t the son and grandson of admirals, then there would have been no Senator McCain.
Which is to say, McCain has long been promoted well beyond his abilities.
Evidently he’s a compulsive gambler [kept off the front pages except in 08 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/28/us/politics/28gambling-web.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 ] and name-calling his wife. there’s much there that isn’t the result of old age, nor PTSD I’m guessing. never amounting to anything in life, being bailed out by his family’s status and never really earning living – being a kept man, I’m guessing doesn’t wear well over time.
John McCain was given the halo of courage for having survived the Hanoi Hilton. Like a lot of designation of “heroes” in our society, the halo was given without the history of the situation. John McCain used that halo to feather his nest.
That halo disappeared whe John McCain lacked the courage to stand up against the Military Commissions bill institutionalizing what had up to then been an informal administration violation of habeas corpus. Those with eyes to see saw that John McCain was fundamentally a coward and chest-beater beset with daddy and grand-daddy envy.
The nomination of Sarah Palin showed that John McCain lacked the fundamental judgement to govern.
The current bloodlust indicates that McCain’s relative might start looking for a convenient and agreeable assited living institution.
He never was his image. He was always a creation of the media from the moment he stepped off the plane that brought him back from Hanoi.
He is so past his sell-by date that if he were a canned good, one would be worried about him imminently exploding.