The WSJ headline this morning blares, “McCain death leaves void.”*
With all due respect, what void would that be? McCain hasn’t been in Washington, or in the Senate for a vote, since late in 2017. He flatly refused to resign so that the governor of Arizona could timely appoint a replacement who would actually show up.
McCain spent most of his time making deals with the Democrats, and voted against the Obamacare repeal when it came up, even though he’d been agitating to repeal it for years. His nickname of “Maverick” was well-earned — he was certainly a maverick when it came to supporting the GOP agenda and working for the citizens of the state that elected him.
I won’t disrespect his military history because I am not in a position to dispute it. By most accounts, other than apparently being a lousy pilot, he seems to be worthy of the hero status he has been draped with since Vietnam.
But as a statesman, his attempts to conciliate Democrats and Republicans — which usually ended up as wins for the Democrats — and his attacks on freedom of speech symbolized by his signature McCain-Feingold Act — make him come up pretty damn short.
The void, in other words, was already there. The question now is whether or not Arizona will fill it with someone who is worthy and will support the conservative agenda with vigor. Over the weekend, it was apparently mooted that the gov was leaning toward appointing McCain’s wife. That should be a non-starter, for the same reason articulated by Glenn Reynolds — Senate seats should not be passed down through families. That ought to be obvious in the American republic, but a lot of folks seem to need a remedial course in how America is supposed to work, these days.
There is surely someone in Arizona better fitted to be a GOP Senator whose last name is not McCain.
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* In this case, the online edition actually sheds more light; the article is about a supposed foreign-policy void, which is another load of crap. We have plenty of foreign policy experts in the Senate. I am more focused on the dead tree headline in and of itself, which apparently for reasons of space left out the crucial phrase, “foreign policy” (because I’m guessing many subscribers probably saw it as I did and assumed it was about the empty seat rather than some specific aspect of policy where there is now some supposed void).