by John McCain
What had his relentlessness achieved? What had all the international attention focused on him done, all the public pressure applied to Beijing to win his release from prison, and when he was dying to get him out of the country? It hadn’t succeeded. Nothing he did in his life can be said to have substantially moved China a step closer to the freedom he bravely and persistently urged for his compatriots. Nothing the world did can be said to have spared his suffering. Did any of it change anything? When Liu died, President Trump was in Paris offering what “great respect” he has for Xi Jinping. “A great leader . . . [who] loves China. Who wants to do what is right for China.”
Maybe all we can say of his relentless struggle is that it was the right thing to do. He lived a righteous life. And a righteous life is its own reward. But I think we can say more. His struggle will inspire others to carry it forward. His suffering was for a purpose greater than himself, and that purpose won’t be abandoned. Others will suffer for it. Others will die for it. But it will succeed in time. It might be many years, many decades, before the human rights of the Chinese people are secure in their own country. But it will happen. It will happen because the rationalization that Asia isn’t the West, and Confucianism isn’t compatible with individual liberty, is a lie. It is natural for human beings to want to live without fear of oppression. It is natural to want to make choices for yourself, all your choices. It’s natural to the human mind to use our needs, wishes, desires, the ideas that interest us to direct our lives, to inform our choices about where to live, what to do for work, whom to love, how many children to have. If the state can control some of those decisions they can control all decisions, even who lives and dies. It’s unnatural to the human heart, every human heart, to surrender its agency. Every generation of Chinese produces people who refuse to accept the state’s authority over their conscience. They will read Liu Xiaobo, admire his courage, honor his sacrifice, learn from him, and press forward until some Chinese generation succeeds.
Those in the West who rallied to his defense were reminded by the regime’s recalcitrance, by its refusal to be moved by expressions of outrage or appeals to human decency, that China is more than just a massive market and investment opportunity, more than the world’s most populous nation of consumers, more than an economic, military, and political rival. China represents the alternative to Western civilization, an unjust and cruel alternative. But for all the vibrancy of its economy, all its commercial sophistication and enterprising people, China’s rulers lack the vision to see around the corner of history because they lack faith in the human heart, and trust only power and fear to achieve their ends. We must persist, too. We have more than commercial interests at stake in our relationship with China, and even those are ultimately poorly served by letting China abuse its citizens without protest or sanction. We must appeal and insist and condition relations on China’s progress toward a freer, more just society. The freer they are, the less of a threat they become.
Above all else, we must stand in solidarity with the imprisoned, the silenced, the tortured, and the murdered because we are a country with a conscience. It is a mistake to view foreign policy, as the Chinese would like us to view it, as simply transactional. It’s a mistake and a dangerous idea. Depriving the oppressed of a beacon of hope could lose us the world we have built and thrived in. It could cost our reputation in history as the nation distinct from all others in our achievements, our identity, and our enduring influence on mankind. Our values are central to all three. Were they not, we would be one great power among the others of history. We would have acquired wealth and power for a time, before receding into the disputed past. But we are a more exceptional country than that. We saw the world as it was and we made it better.
CHAPTER TEN
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Regular Order
SOMETHING WAS OFF. I DIDN’T know exactly what. Fatigue mainly. I felt unusually tired. Of course, I’m in my eighties, and men my age are supposed to be tired. But my motor has always run at more rpms than the average geezer. I’m restless and curious and usually looking forward to something so that I don’t tire easily. When I am a little beat, it’s nothing I can’t fix by taking a weekend off. I thank my 106-year-old mother. Her main attributes are enthusiasm, wanderlust, and good genes. Her vivaciousness is a force of nature. Even now, after a stroke has slowed her down, when her brisk pace is a memory and speaking can be a chore, and her twin sister’s passing robbed her of her life’s longest companion, there’s still a spark in her, a brightness in her eyes that would light up the world if she could resume her peripatetic life. I’ve inherited modest measures of her qualities, sufficient to give me the energy for a busy life and the enthusiasm for it. I’m the son and grandson of admirals. That’s the first line of my biography. But I am my mother’s son. I always have been. Thank you, mother, thank you.
I attributed my weariness to the trip I had recently returned from, a five-day run to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and a brief stop in the UAE. I have made so many quick trips to the region like this one without jet lag bothering me very much. I didn’t know why this one had made me so tired. It had been an interesting time. The highlight, as it is every year, was the promotion and reenlistment ceremony in Kabul on the Fourth of July, presided over by our delegation and the commanding officer of our forces in Afghanistan, General John Nicholson. I’ve spent the Fourth in Afghanistan or Iraq every year since 2003, and every visit I get choked up at a reenlistment ceremony. Hundreds of warriors, some having served multiple combat tours, celebrate our country’s independence by voluntarily surrendering theirs and signing up for more hazard and stress. I look forward to the inspiration every year.
I also enjoyed the company. Whenever possible, I like to travel with a politically diverse delegation, ideally with a few new members of the Senate along, and I invite people with that idea in mind. This delegation included my old friend and road trip buddy Lindsey Graham. He’s the second-funniest man I’ve met in this business, after the late Mo Udall, my Arizona congressional colleague and mentor. With an eye for the absurd, he can brighten up the dreariest day and make any journey, even the most exhausting slog, fun. He has a hard time not being amusing and amused. We had traveled to Kyrgyzstan in 2005, crossing paths in Bishkek, the capital, with a visiting delegation from the House of Representatives. Our ambassador to Kyrgyzstan had asked if we would mind combining delegations for a scheduled meeting with the new prime minister. Lindsey and I had both served in the House before we were elected to the Senate, and we both have friends there. But Senate snobbery being as pervasive as it is—ask any House member—we do have a not very republican attitude in the Senate that tends to look down at the so-called people’s chamber. We serve six-year terms and the rules of the Senate allow each member considerable independence. Every man and woman a king, we like to think. Not so much in the House. Nevertheless, not wishing to impose on the prime minister’s time any more than necessary, we consented to the request.
The House delegation was late. We started the meeting without them. The prime minister was an urbane fellow, and we were in the middle of a pleasant, interesting conversation when an aging elevator noisily stopped on the floor where we were meeting and disgorged its passengers, the tardy members of the House delegation. Introductions were made, and the previous discussion was suspended until our new cohort each had a few minutes to make brief introductory remarks. One of them, a nice guy from Tennessee, attempted to use his state’s topography to establish a bond with our host. Like an Army scout trying to communicate with an Indian chief in a 1950s Western, he spoke slowly and loudly, using his hands to illustrate his message. “I come from a state with biiiig mountains,” he offered. “Kyrgyzstan has biiigger mountains,” he acknowledged, shaping the outline of a mountain peak with his hands. “Kyrgyzstan very beautiful. My state very beautiful.” To which the prime minister responded nonchalantly and in very good English, “Yes, I know. I have a daughter at Vanderbilt.” I almost didn’t dare to look at Lindsey.
When I did shoot him a glance, he was shaking from the pressure of not bursting out laughing. His eyes were leaking, and he was emitting little sounds that I guess were strangled cackles. Then I had to fight, with mixed results, to keep a straight face. We’ve had a regular laugh over that memory and scores of others from our travels ever since. He is the best company.
Sheldon Whitehouse, another frequent traveling companion and a smart, widely respected senator, had joined us on that July Fourth trip, too. And I had invited two other colleagues, both in their first terms, Dave Perdue of Georgia and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. As I noted earlier, I always welcome a chance to introduce new senators to our national security challenges in person, so to speak. And I especially value those opportunities when the members hold opposing views. Dave and Elizabeth certainly fit that bill. Dave’s very conservative and Elizabeth is very liberal, and there are very few issues where they would naturally find common ground.
That’s one of the values of these trips. When you’re traveling long distances in short amounts of time, much of it in the confined space of a military airplane, and keeping a crowded schedule on the ground, you put a premium on collegiality, courtesy, and good humor, not partisan affiliation. At dinner—and I always try to schedule at least one private, nonofficial dinner in a restaurant in each country visited—you enjoy a good joke or a story, and conversations that aren’t strictly about politics and issues. You get to know people as more than the person across the Senate floor who disagrees with you or votes against your bill. Your staffs get to know each other, too. You become friendly, and sometimes you become friends. And while you will go on debating and voting against each other, you’re less likely to resent it, and maybe, every once in a while, you’ll find a way to work together on something beneficial to the country. That’s the idea, anyway. It doesn’t always work out that way, but it does often enough that it’s worth continuing the effort. I’m not friends with all my Senate colleagues, and some, no doubt, will eagerly make the same disclaimer about me. But for all the times I haven’t improved the comity of the Senate, the angry outburst, the heated exchange, the cutting sarcasm I’m guilty of from time to time, I also have a reputation for cross-party friendships and bipartisan collaboration. I led delegations overseas that have helped colleagues become better friends and better senators. If you ask me for a short list of accomplishments in my Senate career I’m proudest of, that would be one.
Usually I return from an interesting trip excited about the experience, and my mind occupied with things I had learned and want to follow up on. This time I felt run-down, and something else that I couldn’t put my finger on. I didn’t think it was serious, necessarily, just an unfamiliar sense that I wasn’t myself. It worried me since it was the second time in a little more than a month that I had felt run-down and off-kilter. I had taken a more arduous trip in May with friends, John Barrasso from Wyoming and Chris Coons of Delaware, to Australia, Vietnam, and Singapore, seven days, each heavily scheduled with meetings and public events. I was bone-tired when I got back from that one, too, just a few days before former FBI director James Comey was scheduled to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee.
I’m an ex officio member of the committee, which means I’m usually the last to ask the witness questions. When my turn finally came, I tried asking Mr. Comey a question that Lindsey had texted my staff. Something happened between reading the question and asking it. To this day, I’m really not sure what caused it. But as was widely noted at the time, I was incomprehensible. It was a high-profile hearing, carried live by the cable news networks. My strange performance was the focus of commentary on cable and fuel for Twitter. I felt embarrassed for myself and sorry for confusing Comey. It was one of the more mortifying experiences of my public career. Even now, I wince at the memory of it. I tried to move on, and put the whole thing down to a bad bout of jet lag. But a small concern nagged at me. And then I couldn’t shake the fatigue from the July trip.
As luck had it, my regular physical at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale was scheduled for that Friday, July 14. I mentioned my general fatigue to my doctors as well as recent instances when I’d felt a little foggy mentally, and brief episodes of double vision. They added a brain scan to my exam. I left Mayo that afternoon and was happily driving north on I-17 to Hidden Valley for the weekend when my phone rang. It was my primary physician. She informed me that the scan had found something. She didn’t say what. “Okay, I can be back there Monday morning,” I agreed. “No,” she replied emphatically, “you need to turn around and come back now.”
A few hours later I was being prepped for surgery. A top neurosurgeon at Mayo, who I heard later had been called at the airport as he was about to depart on a long-planned trip, was enlisted to perform the operation, a minimally invasive craniotomy with eyebrow incision. In other words, they cut a hole in my skull along my left eyebrow to look at my brain’s left frontal lobe and see what the trouble was. There they found a two-inch blood clot, and skillfully and thoroughly—according to every doctor who subsequently reviewed the surgeon’s handiwork—removed it, and sent a tissue sample to the pathology lab. The operation took five and a half hours. When I came out of the anesthesia, one of my doctors asked if I knew the year. I answered correctly, which was, he informed me, the first time a patient of his could remember the year immediately following brain surgery. Brain scans after the surgery reaffirmed the clot had been entirely removed. I showed no signs of cognitive difficulty. I cracked a couple jokes to reassure myself as much as my doctors that I still had my wits. I was released the next day at my insistence, and went home feeling a little vain about how quickly I had gotten back on my feet, how tough I still was. I felt gratified when one of my doctors told me I showed an unusually high tolerance for pain, and I made sure to repeat the observation to friends. That might strike readers as a rather petty concern under the circumstances. But under the circumstances there’s comfort to be found in one’s lifelong idiosyncrasies.
I was back at Mayo the following Tuesday to meet with a medical team that included neuro-oncologists, and discuss the pathology report. It had revealed that the blood clot had been a primary brain tumor called a glioblastoma. I’d never heard the term before, and didn’t immediately grasp the meaning of the diagnosis. I knew it was serious from the sober demeanor of the medical professionals in the room, and when someone, I don’t remember who, mentioned it was the same cancer that Ted had, I got the picture. The Mayo team was confident the surgeon had gotten out all the tumor that was visible. But this kind of brain cancer has tentacles, they explained, that can lurk invisibly. It almost always comes back. I was otherwise in very good physical condition, they informed me, and recovering from the craniotomy with astonishing speed. Good to know. We discussed odds and averages, and courses of treatment, the standard approach being chemotherapy and radiation.
“How soon can I start?” I asked. Dates were suggested, and I said I’d rather start after I returned from Washington. I got some puzzled looks at that. “I want to go back to Washington,” I explained. “We’re in the middle of a big health care debate, and there will be votes I can’t miss. How soon can I go back?”
Not soon, was the consensus. To which I replied, “Sooner.” They didn’t want me thirty thousand feet in the air and subjected to cabin pressure while I had a hole in my head, and maybe some swelling from the recent operation. They eventually relented and agreed I could leave a week from then following a quick exam to make sure I was fit to travel. We discussed what to do if there was a problem during the flight and what symptoms to watch for that might signal a stroke. We chartered a private plane and made plans to fly to Washington on Tuesday, July 25.
I had a lot to think about, obviously. A thing like that takes a little getting used to, for me and my family. My first reaction was to assign the news to the place in me where I store memories of adverse experiences, and not accord it greater significance than any other. “Here’s another one,” I thought, “just an
other one.” In the blur of those first hours and days after the diagnosis, I knew I would have to concentrate on a purpose unrelated to my cancer or I would have been balled up with shock and anxiety. The news of my diagnosis was followed by an outpouring of sympathy and support. I heard from scores of people, presidents, colleagues, foreign leaders, people in business, sports, and entertainment. President Obama tweeted, “Cancer doesn’t know what it’s up against. Give it hell, John.” I liked that quite a bit, especially since it came from someone to whom I had given a little hell from time to time. I heard from both Presidents Bush, too, and both Clintons, and from President Trump and the First Lady. I’m grateful to all of them. I had a long talk with an old friend, Joe Biden, whom I first got to know when I was the Navy’s liaison to the Senate and he was a first-term senator, way back in the Jurassic era. His son Beau had succumbed to the same kind of brain cancer. Our conversation was equal parts practical and encouraging, an old friend helping another through a rough patch he had prior experience with. Joe and I have argued a lot over the years, but he is a first-class human being, and it’s a lucky thing to be his friend.
Many well-wishers were friends and acquaintances, but most people who sent kind regards to me I had never met. They meant the most to me. Public figures sometimes complain about the abuse heaped on them by people who don’t really know them. I’ve had my share, some of it deserved, no doubt, but it’s nothing compared to the unearned kindnesses I received from strangers as I’ve walked through airports and ballparks and other public spaces. This won’t last, I always told myself, and I tried to repay their generosity with a few moments of my time, asking their names, posing for pictures, making jokes. Now I was inundated with concern and prayers from kindhearted strangers. I felt unusually blessed. But as much as I appreciated it, the public attention to my condition was concentrating my attention on it as well. There is nothing to be gained by that, I told myself. What will be will be. So I focused on work. I wanted to go to work. I wanted to go back to the Senate.