John McCain, a true war hero and politician of courage, now belongs to the ages

As I scrolled through the seemingly unending series of bipartisan accolades to McCain, I couldn’t help but be struck by how far removed from the 2008 presidential campaign we are. You certainly remember that campaign, the one that resulted in the election of our nation’s first African-American president, Barack Obama. But you may have forgotten how injudiciously McCain was smeared as a racist. None other than the legendary Democratic congressman from Georgia and civil rights champion, John Lewis, accused McCain of “sowing the seeds of hatred and division.” Lewis also charged that McCain was potentially inciting violence during the campaign, and even compared him to one-time segregationist Alabama governor George Wallace.

Last night, Lewis appears to have had a change of heart. Upon hearing the news of McCain’s passing, he tweeted:

Politics, as Charles Dudley Warner once astutely pointed out, makes for strange bedfellows. Lewis appears to have softened on his reckless 2008 charges against McCain, viewing him as a modern ally in #Resistance efforts against President Trump, a man they both shared disdain for.

McCain famously derailed Trump’s efforts to have Obamacare fully dismantled and replaced with a GOP healthcare plan. Never one held hostage to polls, McCain truly was a maverick when it came to the bipartisan crafting of legislation and for doing the unpopular thing within his party, no matter the withering criticism he was forced to endure and the ignominious label that detractors often attached to him: RINO, or Republican in name only.

The Arizona senator first landed on the “sympathy from the Left list” when, during the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump infamously questioned McCain’s “war hero” status. In the first of a lengthy list of gravity-defying, he’ll-never-survive-this-latest-gaffe-or-revelation incidents, Trump snarked: “He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured.”

Trump, who famously avoided Vietnam service due to bone spurs, tersely tweeted out the only White House statement on McCain’s passing thus far:

Trump was dead wrong about McCain’s “war hero” status. But let’s not anticipate an apology or retraction anytime soon. Maybe his misunderstanding of the designation bears explanation and requires some retraining. We do tend to misapply the term “hero” these days. Sports figures and entertainers routinely receive the designation. But enduring training camp during the dog days of summer or embarking on an exhausting world tour of concert dates doesn’t make you a hero.

McCain, a 1958 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, earned his stripes as a “war hero” while actually serving in combat.

Surviving capture by enemy combatants after being shot down, and then refusing repatriation when your captors learn that you are the son and grandson of famous U.S. Navy flag officers, earns you deserved “war hero” status.

Languishing inside the infamous “Hanoi Hilton” prisoner-of-war camp in North Vietnam for some five and a half years, while enduring some of the most heinous torture techniques conceived by evil men, earns you deserved “war hero” status.

And yes, “hero” status attaches in the political arena, as well. You’re a hero when you politely, yet firmly, retrieve the microphone from a bigoted supporter at one of your town hall campaign events, when the misguided questioner expresses fear and concern over the fact that Obama was “an Arab.” McCain bluntly countered her claim:

“No, ma’am. No, ma’am. No, ma’am. He’s a decent family man, citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues. And that’s what this campaign is all about. He’s not. Thank you.”

And with that classic response, McCain swatted away the “barnacles” (extremist voters) that like to attach to the GOP’s “ship hull” in a manner that Trump should take notes on.

It’s this kind of political courage that first drew me to McCain during the 2000 primary season. I voted for him, because as a West Pointer I treasured and cherished his adherence to the fundamental principles of the U.S. Military Academy: duty, honor, and country. And as the son of a Vietnam veteran, I empathized with that generation of warriors who never truly received their due for the hardships and sacrifices they endured.

And as an FBI agent, who served in a combat theater during the early stages of the war in Afghanistan, I had strong opinions about the application of some of the enhanced interrogation techniques that I witnessed. While I never spent time at a black site, or personally observed waterboarding, I did witness some portions of the EIT program applied. And I was adamant in my position regarding the legality and effectiveness of the techniques in extracting information and keeping America safer.

Nothing that I heard from the usual suspects on the Left could move me from my position.

And then I happened upon McCain’s position on the matter. A man who had endured some of the most brutal torture at the hands of the North Vietnamese was opposed to American participation in the enterprise. He drew no line between the methods that had wrecked his body and limited his movements today and the Bush administration’s needle-threading of “stress positions” and “close confinements.”

And his opposition to the CIA’s clandestine program reshaped how I viewed it. Who was I to argue with a certified war hero who spoke from experience and defied his own party at considerable political peril? That’s what mavericks with a conscience do.

John McCain will be laid to rest at the U.S. Naval Academy Cemetery. His interment brings to mind the memorial quote from Abraham Lincoln’s Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, who somberly advised at the sixteenth president’s passing, “Now he belongs to the ages.”

Godspeed, Senator McCain. Now you belong to the ages.

James A. Gagliano (@JamesAGagliano) worked in the FBI for 25 years. He is a law enforcement analyst for CNN and an adjunct assistant professor in homeland security and criminal justice at St. John’s University.