by John McCain
In truth, there were some hard feelings after I lost. But I got over them a lot sooner than many people believed I had, and sooner than the lingering antagonism between our staffs had faded. I disagreed with President Bush on some issues, including a few big ones like his tax cuts. But I agreed with him on other things, most things, really, and I liked him. He’s likable, and a good man. Last but not least, I was a Republican, a Reagan Republican. Still am. Not a Tea Party Republican. Not a Breitbart Republican. Not a talk radio or Fox News Republican. Not an isolationist, protectionist, immigrant-bashing, scapegoating, get-nothing-useful-done Republican. Not, as I am often dismissed by self-declared “real” conservatives, a RINO, Republican in Name Only. I’m a Reagan Republican, a proponent of lower taxes, less government, free markets, free trade, defense readiness, and democratic internationalism.
I also believe government should respond to our biggest problems and prepare for our biggest future challenges, be as transparent as possible and as efficient as possible. There are a lot of government responsibilities that have needed to be reformed for decades, especially one of my pet peeves, our broken government acquisition system. I believe the same can be said about the rules of contemporary politics, the way redistricting is done in most of the country, and the explosion of unlimited and dark money in campaigns, an invitation to corruption made possible by the Supreme Court’s decision in the Citizens United case, a mistake made by five justices who never ran for any office and were more naive than a cloistered nun about the corrupting effect of unlimited money in politics. I believe in the separation of powers, a press free to report without fear or favor, and free to infuriate politicians—including me—as they do. Lastly, I believe in principled compromises that move the country forward, goodwill toward Man, and empirical facts.
Here’s one fact fools ignore. Our Constitution and closely divided polity don’t allow for winner-take-all governance. You need the opposition’s cooperation to get most big things done. And so, I’ve worked with Democratic colleagues to do things I thought were important. Proudly. When I travel overseas, I like to travel in a bipartisan delegation. I’ve cultivated many relationships over the years with foreign politicians, journalists, and military leaders that made me a better proponent of my country’s interests and values, and more knowledgeable about our allies and adversaries. I want more members of Congress from both parties to acquire that experience with the hope they will help thwart the spread of a form of nationalism that barely distinguishes enemy from friend, seeing every relationship as purely transactional with a winner and a loser. Congress can produce statesmen as well as the executive branch can, statesmen who will help retain our primacy in world affairs. I’m pleased to help that happen by introducing colleagues to foreign leaders, as John Tower and Scoop Jackson and others did for me.
I didn’t accept Ted’s invitation to become a Democrat. But we did start working together on some issues. Our first project was a patient’s bill of rights, legislation that required HMOs to grant patients and doctors more decision-making authority. Specifically, the bill provided that doctors, not insurance company representatives, make medical decisions for their patients. It also guaranteed that patients could see medical specialists, and in a medical emergency go to the nearest emergency room. In exchange for these protections, I had hoped to include in the bill medical malpractice litigation reform. But one of our other co-sponsors, John Edwards, a trial lawyer who had, as the saying goes, “done well by doing good,” raised the alarm with the powerful Democratic Party benefactor, the trial lawyers lobby, a main source of “soft” or unregulated money for Democrats. They got Democratic leaders to kill the idea.
The HMOs were opposed to the bill as was most of the medical insurance industry, and most Republicans. Nevertheless, with unanimous Democratic support and eight Republican votes, the bill passed the Senate comfortably, though not by a veto-proof margin. The times being what they were, with HMOs suffering adverse publicity from news stories in every state about patients being denied treatment prescribed by their doctors, Republicans knew they had to appear responsive to public concerns. The bill that House Republicans had passed included some of the assurances ours had, but unlike our bill, it did not include provisions to enforce them. The bills couldn’t be reconciled in conference. We wanted a bill with teeth. House Republicans did not.
A patient’s bill of rights wasn’t my highest priority that year, but it was high on our agenda, and its failure was a disappointment. I’m sure it was for Ted, too, but one of the qualities I most admired about Ted was he didn’t despair in defeat or get carried away in victory. He pressed on. Universal health care, as everyone knows, was his highest priority that year and every year he served in the Senate. And every year he was disappointed until Barack Obama was inaugurated President of the United States, and Senate Democrats began working on the Affordable Care Act, which would pass the Senate over united Republican opposition four months after Ted died. Three months later, Obamacare was the law of the land. I had strenuously opposed it, but I was very sorry that Ted had not lived to see his long crusade come to a successful end. He believed it was going to happen. He always had. And knowing him, he wouldn’t have spent more than a day celebrating the achievement. He would have had other things to do, other crusades to wage. I would have opposed most of them, but cherished the few times here and there when I could work with him instead of against him.
He took the long view, Ted, and he hung in there. I had learned to do that as well, most notably during Russ Feingold’s and my multiyear commitment to passing campaign finance reform. Ted knew when an issue was ready for a big push. I did, too. Campaign reform was the central issue of my 2000 campaign. I could see people react favorably to my thesis that campaign reform was a necessary prerequisite to other government reforms, that too much money from too few sources bred a dependency on narrow interests that frequently undermined the national interest. I saw it with my own eyes, in the size of my crowds and their enthusiasm. I knew it was time. We also had gotten an assist from the Enron scandal that blew up in the fall of 2001. I had come back to Washington determined to use the political capital I had accumulated to pass a reform bill in that Congress, the 107th, and we did, sending the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act to President Bush in March 2002.
Ted had used his influence in his caucus to help overcome concerns about McCain-Feingold raised by important Democratic constituencies, including labor unions. The Democratic Party was more dependent on soft money than were Republicans. The Republican opposition was more up-front and vocal, led by my formidable friend, occasional opponent, and now majority leader, Mitch McConnell. Democratic opponents of the bill were more discreet, but they were very influential, and had the ear of senior Democratic leaders. In an exchange on the Senate floor overheard by one of my staffers, John Edwards, who had just finished speaking in support of the bill, asked Democratic leader Tom Daschle if anything could be done to stop it from passing. I’m sure most Senate Democrats genuinely supported reform, including senior senators such as Ted, whose public support meant that even Democrats who were cynical about the issue had to publicly endorse and vote for it, which was good enough for me. All but two Democrats voted for final passage, and ten Republicans joined me.
The harder task was in the House, which Republicans controlled. Although a substantial number of House Republicans supported the bill, enough to constitute with Democratic supporters a large majority in favor, Speaker Denny Hastert had declined to bring the bill up for a vote. House rules being what they are, leadership decisions aren’t easily overridden as long as they represent “a majority of the majority.” To get McCain-Feingold on the calendar over the speaker’s refusal would require a discharge petition, which needed only a simple majority to pass. But a majority required fifteen or more Republican votes. For House Republicans or Democrats to oppose their leadership and the majority of their caucus to get a bill up for debate and vote is a brave thing to do. Leadership frowns on that ki
nd of independence, and punishes it. Suddenly, you find yourself sitting on the postal service subcommittee and not in that seat you always coveted on Ways and Means. But the lead Republican sponsor of the bill, Chris Shays of Connecticut, did it. He got nineteen Republicans to vote for a discharge petition. His Democratic co-sponsor, Marty Meehan of Massachusetts, provided the necessary votes from his caucus with a major assist from the Democratic leader, Dick Gephardt, who was all in on campaign finance reform despite being a proficient soft money fund-raiser. Dick was an impressive behind-the-scenes force. For only the second time in House history a discharge petition to force action on legislation passed. After that, the vote on the bill itself was anticlimactic. It passed easily with 41 Republicans voting with 198 Democrats in favor of it. The President signed it, unenthusiastically, a week later.
That’s the formula for success for any major piece of legislation. Don’t give up, be persistent. If you can’t get it done in this Congress, try again in the next. Give the impression that you’re going to make yourself as big a pain in the ass on the issue as you can until some accommodation to your view is made by negotiated compromise if possible or by a vote. Be alert to changes in the political environment. Strike hardest when external events give you an advantage. Make necessary compromises to build a bipartisan coalition in favor of it. Use your friendships to recruit as many influential members to your side as you can. Friends on both sides of the aisle will warn you about problems you might not be aware of, they’ll tell you who you can count on and who’s quietly working against you. Box in the cynics with public and media attention, make sure the more transactional politicians know there’s a cost to opposing the bill. Leave critical responsibilities to your hardest-nosed allies, and hope they’ll stand up to threats and reprisals. Be the most hard-nosed advocate yourself to set an example. Gather all the pressure you can to move the process along as quickly as possible, even if it ruffles important feathers. A lot of momentum for an issue is illusory and based on excessive faith in the media’s sustained attention to it and the potency of its public support. Get it done before your opponents figure out that’s not the case. And get a little lucky. That’s how the sausage gets made.
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That’s the formula we tried to follow, Ted and I and our fellow travelers, in our multiple attempts to pass comprehensive immigration reform. We failed twice, and then once more after Ted had passed away, despite big majorities in both houses of Congress in favor of it. I’d like to say I’ll try again. But that is not up to me anymore. That’s a harder disappointment than other defeats have been because first, it’s something that most Americans want, and most members of Congress know is the right thing to do. But most of all, because it’s something this country needs to do now, in this political moment, as old fears and animosities that have blighted our history appear to be on the rise again, exploited by opportunists who won’t trouble their careers or their consciences with scruples about honesty or compassion for their fellow man.
Then there are the true believers in an exclusive America. It might be the cynics who are mainly responsible for inaction on immigration reform. They’re Republicans mostly, in gerrymandered districts where the only challenge they’re likely to face is from the Far Right. But people in both parties, people who know better, have used the lack of progress on immigration reform to their advantage. Their obstruction isn’t durable. They’ll change when the politics for them change. If and when being pro-immigration becomes a political advantage, they’ll shelter immigrants in their own homes.
Although their numbers aren’t large, it’s the true believers who fear America is contaminated by the customs of non-European immigrants who make this moment so fraught. They believe the President shares their prejudice, and has promised to enact it into law. They’re not only opposed to illegal immigration, they’re opposed to immigration, at least immigration from south of the border, and the Caribbean, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. They’re still a small faction in the Republican Party. But they’re the ones getting all the attention right now. They need to be confronted, not ignored or winked at or quietly dismissed as kooks. They need to be confronted before their noxious views spread further, and damage for generations the reputation of the Republican Party.
A backbench House Republican from Iowa, Steve King, has made a name for himself by regularly espousing ethnocentrism as the principal attribute of American exceptionalism and the foundation of Western civilization. Some days, King plays the social scientist with his openly expressed misapprehension that diversity and assimilation are incompatible. Other times, he seems to go out of his way to offend as many people as he can with his crude insults of folks who came to this country for freedom and opportunity.
In a tweet praising Dutch nationalist Geert Wilders, King wrote, “culture and demographics are our destiny. We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.” Leave aside the fact that our civilization isn’t in need of restoration, and marvel at the breadth of King’s ignorance of history. We built the civilization he wants to restore—the world’s freest, most enlightened, and most prosperous civilization—with the help of babies whose parents came here from every corner of the world.
We’ve had periods of practically open immigration and periods where government severely restricted immigration. Through all our history, immigrants kept coming. They came with permission and without it. They came from south of the border, north of the border, across the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. They came to escape violence, poverty, religious intolerance, and powerlessness. Most grasped the bottom rung of the ladder of opportunity and society, working jobs many American citizens wouldn’t, living in ethnic ghettos, speaking their native language. They were objects of fear, resentment, disgust, and hate. They were accused of stealing jobs from the native-born. They were victims of prejudice and violence. They dressed oddly. They had strange habits and food and entertainment. Their music was different, their theater, too. They had different ideas about farming and business. And yet they assimilated. As they did, they changed our civilization with their additions to it, and they were changed by it. The amalgamation was a more varied, cosmopolitan, rich, accomplished, capable, visionary society held together by shared ideals. That’s how assimilation works in this country, and what a country it has become as a result. Because all that’s needed to assimilate in America is to embrace our founding convictions, the foundation of Western civilization, that all have an equal right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, to the protections of the law, to be governed by consent, to speak freely, practice their religion openly, go as far as their industry and talent can take them. That’s it, and it’s beautiful in its wise simplicity. People came to this country and brought their culture and languages and customs with them, infused them in the stew of American culture, and became Americans. You can speak Spanish or Mongolian. You can like Yiddish theater. You can hum music from the steppes of Central Asia. You can worship Jesus or Allah or your ancestors. You can celebrate Cinco de Mayo or St. Patrick’s Day. You can be sentimental and proud of the heritage you brought with you. You can change American arts, food, and industry. Only our ideals must remain unaltered. You have to give your allegiance to those, and most immigrants do. They came here for the protection and opportunities our ideals provide. And often they do a good deal more than adhere to the country’s values, they fight and die for them, too. The first American combat casualty of 2018 was an immigrant, Sergeant First Class Mihail Golin from Fort Lee, New Jersey, a thirty-four-year-old Green Beret, who emigrated from Latvia when he was twenty-one. He was the latest of many thousands of immigrants, authorized and unauthorized, who gave their lives for America.
As long as you respect the rights and property of your fellow Americans, you are entitled to their respect, whether they give it to you or not. You have the same rights. You are protected by the same laws. You’re welcome to your opportunities. You’re welcome to America, land of the immigrant’s dream.<
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Steve King and his immigrant-bashing cohort—and let’s be as clear about it as Mr. King has been, he’s not just opposed to illegal immigration, but also to the current rules and levels of legal immigration—understand none of this for the very simple reason that they don’t understand American exceptionalism. They believe exceptionalism is the quality of a culture dominated by the customs, beliefs, and experiences of a single race and religion, not just allegiance to ideals that, while they are part of that culture, are universal, endowed to humanity by our Creator.
Here is one of the best illustrations of American exceptionalism I’ve ever heard, offered by an American President who believed this country was the most special place on earth, Ronald Wilson Reagan:
America represents something universal in the human spirit. I received a letter not long ago from a man who said, “You can go to Japan to live, but you cannot become Japanese. You can go to France to live and not become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey, and you won’t become a German or a Turk.” But then he added, “Anybody from any corner of the world can come to America to live and become an American.”
What he meant was that in all those other countries you must be born there to be of there. Even if you’re a legal resident of long standing, a citizen, even if you make a good living there, are protected by the same laws that protect the native-born, speak the language fluently, cheer for local sport teams, listen to the same music, cook the same food, fly the same flag, vote for the same candidates, even if you can run for public office there, you still can’t assume the national identity if you were born elsewhere. You have to have been born a member of the tribe.