In remembrance, with purpose

The late Senator John McCain passed away peacefully at home in Arizona on Saturday, Aug. 25. McCain has been a fixture in the American psyche for more than 50 years since his capture and subsequent torture in Vietnam.

There are few better examples of people who loved the United States of America as much as John McCain, and even fewer who were as dedicated to serving its people however possible.

All that being said, McCain’s passing offers us an important opportunity to reflect on his life and career, but also to discuss how we remember complicated legacies.

Jonah Baker | Argonaut

It is easy to defer to Twitter as the barometer of public opinion when a person of importance passes. Doing so in McCain’s case, however, would bear more questions than answers.

According to the social side of the internet, John McCain is either a war hero and model politician or a chief standard bearer for a warmongering Republican party that could care less about the health of the less fortunate. And even beyond those strict party lines, there are complications regarding McCain’s own fluid stances throughout his time in office.

It would be distasteful to rebuke those who fondly remember the immense courage he showed as a prisoner of war, enduring years of unthinkable hardship and still refusing preferential treatment when his captors discovered that his status as an admiral’s son could be exploited for political gain.

In the same breath, we have to consider the less sterling parts of McCain’s track record. He was as vocal of a political warhawk as there has been in the modern era, resulting in complicity with a dangerous regime in Saudi Arabia and support for just about any military action taken by Israel on its neighbors.

The simple point is that McCain’s death is a truly sad and unfortunate reality, but it is also an opportunity to remember that we can also improve at how we remember public figures in death. It takes some legwork to be knowledgeable about McCain’s history and his time in Congress, but having that knowledge will better our conversations about complicated legacies going forward.

Mavericks like McCain are often some of the hardest politicians to talk about in retrospect. A quick visage of their lives demands respect in much the same way a remarkable resume would, but with dozens of yellow flags right beneath the surface.

We can absolutely draw inspiration from McCain’s harrowing time as a prisoner of war and from his battle with brain cancer. We can also understand that his rhetoric was often dangerous and lacking all the facts, and a McCain presidency could very well have worsened what was already a quagmire of Middle East foreign policy in the late 2000s.

The only point of contention that can be agreed on regardless of your political leaning, is that McCain was a complicated figure. He had real flaws. He also had redeeming factors. He was human, just like the rest of us. For the entirety of his life in the public eye, he wanted what he thought was best for America.

As members of the public, it is our duty to remember people like John McCain not just as political mavericks or enemies of the people, but as complicated characters that helped guide our country and culture to where it is today — for better or worse.

One of McCain’s finer moments came on the campaign trail in 2008 during a forum when a person essentially asked him to slander then-candidate Barack Obama as an “Arab.” This person used the term in a derogatory context. McCain responded in defense of his opponent.

“No, ma’am,” he said. “He’s a decent family man (and) citizen that just I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues, and that’s what the campaign’s all about. He’s not (an Arab).”

In this instance, McCain was a perfect example of good intentions with less sterling complications. By positioning character-driven individuals as opposites of Arabs, his less-polished side once again and revealed a dangerous distaste for an entire race of humans.

Few public figures have received as much scrutiny as John McCain in the information age. He will be remembered as one of the first to have a large portion of his political career interpreted through the lens of the internet, where hot takes are the norm and legacies are always up for reevaluation.

If there is one thing we are to take away from McCain’s life, it is that we must always read the whole book before casting judgments on public figures.

Jonah Baker can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @jonahpbaker