Since word came out that John McCain had passed away over the weekend, there have been many tributes to this Arizona Senator, American war hero, and almost-President. Rather than repeat a lot of what you’ve probably seen or heard since then, I thought I’d touch on a number of interactions I’ve had with him over the years.
The first time I actually remember meeting McCain was 24 years ago, when he and Senator Phil Gramm of Texas came to Cincinnati to do a fundraising event for me. It was at the Hyatt Hotel downtown, and according to the Enquirer article about the event, about 250 people attended. I was running against then-Congressman David Mann and it was about two weeks before the election. Both senators said nice things about me, and then, again according to the Enquirer, McCain laid into David Mann, and Phil Gramm criticized President Bill Clinton, saying Clinton was on a trip to the Middle East because he had more support there than he did in the Midwest. I won the election two weeks later, and have had the honor of serving the people of the First Congressional District of Ohio in the House of Representatives since then, except for one term, 2009-10.
About 10 years later, as a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, I was in Vietnam and Cambodia. Although most of the time was spent in various meetings with governmental officials, both ours and theirs, I did have time to visit the Hoa Lo Prison in Hanoi, better known as the Hanoi Hilton. Of course rather than a luxury hotel, it was hell on earth, and American POW’s, including John McCain, were mistreated, tortured, and abused there – John McCain for 5 ½ years, after being shot down. When I returned to the U.S., I met with Senator McCain in his office, and showed him the photos I’d taken in Vietnam. He thought the rather tacky memorial the Vietnamese had erected illustrating his capture on the banks of the lake he parachuted into was interesting. And the flight suit, parachute, and helmet on display next to McCain’s photo below, McCain got a kick out of, because he said they weren’t his!
A few years later, in April of 2006, John McCain was kind enough to come back to Cincinnati again to help raise money for my re-election effort. I had a particularly challenging race that year, as John Cranley was running against me for the second time. Cranley had been the top vote-getter in the city council race the year before, so we knew we were in for a real battle. I ended up winning 53-47, but the Democrats knocked off a lot of Republicans that year, and took back the House.
So anyway, according to the press article below, about 300 people attended the event. And both of us being Republicans, McCain and I agreed on most issues, but there’s one we didn’t, and that was immigration. So of course that’s the only issue the press focused on. My view was then, and continues to be now, that we need to get control of our southern border BEFORE we come to some agreement/compromise over the 11 plus million people who are here illegally. McCain, then-President Bush, a few Republicans, and almost all Democrats said comprehensive immigration reform, pathway-to -citizenship, amnesty, open borders, or some other more liberal/progressive version of immigration was the answer. John McCain and I just had to agree to disagree on that one. But I still appreciated him helping me out.
Sometime after that, my younger brother Dave, his wife Ellen, and their 4 kids visited Washington D.C. One evening we were done voting in the House, but the Senate was still in session, so we wandered over to the Senate side of the Capitol, to watch the Senate in action from the visitors’ gallery. After John McCain was done giving a speech, he was kind enough to come out and talk with my brother’s family, and take the photo below.
Back in August of 2015, again as a senior member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, I was visiting several of our NATO allies on the frontline with Russia – Poland, Estonia, and Latvia. When visiting a NATO base in Latvia, I along with some embassy personnel and committee staff, drove to the base in a crowded suburban van. After waiting for an hour or so, 3 black hawk helicopters descended from the sky, containing Senators John McCain, John Barrasso of Wyoming and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island. (I couldn’t help but hear the music from Apocalypse Now, “Ride of the Valkyries” in my head.) We then had productive meetings with American, Latvian and other NATO allied generals concerning our strategic posture towards Russia.
My last memorable interaction with John McCain was when Burma’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi, visited Washington back in September of 2016. The reception was to be held in one of the Senate meeting rooms, and for whatever reason, John McCain and I got there pretty early, so we shot the breeze for quite a while. I remember that one of the main things that we talked about was how our mothers were doing (he’d met mine one of the times he came to Cincinnati for me.) His mother Roberta McCain, is 106 years old! And mine is 94.
Anyway, it was an honor and a pleasure to have gotten to know this legendary American hero over the years. That’s not to say he didn’t at times frustrate his friends and colleagues. To me, the epitome of that was when he gave the thumbs-down to repealing and replacing ObamaCare, at literally the 11th hour. But even though he never actually attained the highest office he sought, the Presidency, he will long be remembered, as if he had.