Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 177

Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "The Restless Wave: Good Times, Just Causes, Great Fights, and Other Appreciations ," by John McCain.

We are blessed, and in turn, we have been a blessing to humanity. The world order we helped build from the ashes of world war, and that we defend to this day, has liberated more people from tyranny and poverty than ever before in history. This wondrous land shared its treasures and ideals and shed its blood to help make another, better world. And as we did we made our own civilization more just, freer, more accomplished and prosperous than the America that existed when I watched my father go off to war. 

We have made mistakes. We haven’t always used our power wisely. We have abused it sometimes and we’ve been arrogant. But, as often as not, we recognized those wrongs, debated them openly, and tried to do better. And the good we have done for humanity surpasses the damage caused by our errors. We have sought to make the world more stable and secure, not just our own society. We have advanced norms and rules of international relations that have benefited all. We have stood up to tyrants for mistreating their people even when they didn’t threaten us, not always, but often. We don’t steal other people’s wealth. We don’t take their land. We don’t build walls to freedom and opportunity. We tear them down. 

To fear the world we have organized and led for three-quarters of a century, to abandon the ideals we have advanced around the globe, to refuse the obligations of international leadership for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems is unpatriotic. American nationalism isn’t the same as in other countries. It isn’t nativist or imperial or xenophobic, or it shouldn’t be. Those attachments belong with other tired dogmas that Americans consigned to the ash heap of history. 

We live in a land made from ideals, not blood and soil. We are custodians of those ideals at home, and their champion abroad. We have done great good in the world because we believed our ideals are the natural aspiration of all mankind, and that the principles, rules, and alliances of the international order we superintended would improve the security and prosperity of all who joined with us. That leadership has had its costs, but we have become incomparably powerful and wealthy as well. We have a moral obligation to continue in our just cause, and we would bring more than shame on ourselves if we let other powers assume our leadership role, powers that reject our values and resent our influence. We will not thrive in a world where our leadership and ideals are absent. We wouldn’t deserve to.

The experience that made the biggest impression on me was a ceremonial one. General Petraeus had asked us to participate in an Independence Day event at Saddam’s al-Faw Palace at Camp Victory that included the reenlistment of over 600 soldiers and the naturalization of 161 soldiers, mostly Hispanic immigrants, who had risked life and limb for the United States while they waited to become citizens. Some of these soldiers, the reenlisted and the newly naturalized, were on their second and third combat tours. Some of them had just had their current tour extended. Most were kids, of course, and some of them had spent two or three years of their short lives living with fear and fatigue, cruelty and confusion, and all the other dehumanizing effects of war. They had seen friends killed and wounded. Some had been wounded themselves. They had seen firsthand the failed strategy that had allowed the insurgency to gain strength, and had risked their lives to reinforce what they knew was a mistake. They had retaken the same real estate over and over again. They had conducted raids night after night looking for insurgents and caches of arms. They had been shot at by snipers and blasted by IEDs, and buried friends who hadn’t survived the encounters, while month after month the situation got worse. And here they were, re-upping again, choosing to stay in harm’s way. Most of them, it appeared, were excited to be finally doing something that made sense, taking and holding ground, protecting and earning the trust of the locals. Lindsey and I spoke at the ceremony. We were awed by them. It was hard to keep our composure while witnessing that kind of courage and selfless devotion to duty. And it was all the harder after General Petraeus recognized the sacrifice made by two soldiers who had planned to become naturalized citizens at the ceremony, and were now represented by two pairs of boots on two chairs, having been killed in action two days before. “They died serving a country that was not yet theirs,” Petraeus observed. 

I wasn’t the only person there with a lump in his throat and eyes brimming with tears. I wish every American who out of ignorance or worse curses immigrants as criminals or a drain on the country’s resources or a threat to our “culture” could have been there. I would like them to know that immigrants, many of them having entered the country illegally, are making sacrifices for Americans that many Americans would not make for them.

The ceremony was one of the most inspirational displays of genuine loyalty to country and comrades I’d ever witnessed, and I’ll never forget it. On our return flight, Lindsey and I again discussed my political predicament and what to do about it. But I had decided before we boarded the flight that whatever I was risking by remaining a candidate, which wasn’t much more than embarrassment, it was nothing compared to what those kids were risking and the cause they were fighting for. I decided to stay in the race.

My fellow POWs and I could work up very intense hatred for the people who tortured us. We cussed them, made up degrading names for them, swore we would get back at them someday. That kind of resistance, angry and pugnacious, can only carry you so far when your enemy holds most of the cards and hasn’t any scruples about beating the resistance out of you however long it takes. Eventually, you won’t cuss them. You won’t refuse to bow. You won’t swear revenge. Still, they can’t make you surrender what they really want from you, your assent to their supremacy. No, you don’t have to give them that, not in your heart. And your last resistance, the one that sticks, the one that makes the victim superior to the torturer, is the belief that were the positions reversed you wouldn’t treat them as they have treated you. The ultimate victim of torture is the torturer, the one who inflicts pain and suffering at the cost of their humanity.

Hillary is also a very diligent person, who pays close attention to detail. We had arranged in Afghanistan to be briefed by the minister in charge of counter-narcotics. He was former mujahedeen, and had lost a leg fighting the Soviets. He was probably a fascinating guy. Unfortunately, his wasn’t the most fascinating briefing I’d ever received. Someone must have advised him that Americans like PowerPoint presentations (personally, I hate them). He had prepared maybe the longest PowerPoint in the history of PowerPoints, with slide after slide after slide on the structure and legal framework of the government’s counter-narcotics policies, on the progress of the poppy crop eradication effort, and various prosecutions the government had brought. Don’t get me wrong, it’s an important subject. But, my God, the presentation was just interminable, an hour and a half at minimum. That’s far too long and detailed for a bunch of generalists, which describes most senators, except, perhaps, the senator from New York. She was positively riveted. Our schedule had been exhausting. After twenty minutes, I was struggling to stay awake. I turned to my aide, Richard Fontaine, and whispered that I thought I was going to die, and asked him to figure out some way to get us out of there. As he pondered how, the minister carried on, and I continued to wilt. But not Hillary. She was gathering strength with every slide, asking lots and lots of questions, referring back to earlier slides, and extending the experience beyond my limits of endurance. Finally, mercifully, the briefing sputtered to its end. I turned again to Fontaine to whisper that it had been, without doubt, the worst PowerPoint of all time, just as Hillary volunteered to the gratified minister that it had been one of the best briefings she had ever received, and might she have a hard copy to take back to the Senate to share with colleagues?

The most interesting exchanges we had were with civil society activists, mostly young idealists, who were guiding the revolution on the streets and online. We had dinner with them at the ambassador’s residence. To an old geezer, they seemed impossibly young and energetic, and to an old cynic, very self-assured. But they fascinated me. We told them we admired their courage, and we hoped they might be the start of the Arab world’s transformation. I sensed that their ambitions weren’t quite that grand. They wanted an accountable government and economic opportunities. But of such desires sweeping revolutions can be made. They explained how they had used social media to communicate and coordinate their protests. The Internet was heavily censored by Ben Ali’s government, but not, curiously, Facebook, which became their main communication platform. I asked what assistance we could provide them and if there was anyone in the U.S. they wanted to speak to that we might be able to connect them with. It was unanimous. Mark Zuckerberg was their man. “If it wasn’t for Facebook,” one of them said, “there would’ve been no revolution.” They wanted to invite Zuckerberg to come to Tunisia, and asked me to intercede on their behalf. I told them I’d try to get in touch with him when I was back in the States. I did, too. I put in a call to him right after I returned, and told him that he was a hero to a group of extraordinary kids who were trying to change the Middle East, and were using his creation to do it. They wanted very much for him to come to Tunis, and I offered to put him in touch with some of them if he was so inclined. Alas, he didn’t appear to be, and I didn’t hear from him again.

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.

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.

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.