John McCain, Bill Bradley and what could have been in 2000

With all of the hullabaloo accompanying the craziness of the Bush v. Gore general election of 2000, people often forget about the two runners-up in the primary season — Sen. John McCain on the Republican side and Sen. Bill Bradley with the Democrats. I longed for these two distinguished, principled men to face off in an election that they vowed— in a written, signed compact, mind you — that would be about the actual issues without special interests dictating the discussions.

I truly believe that those two men could have mostly lived up to their promise of a principled general election campaign — although whether they really could have is a moot point since Howdy Doody and a talking tree got the party nods. I hate that we never got to see that McCain v. Bradley campaign materialize, and politics has gotten uglier ever since. Citizens United threw even more gasoline on that fire.

They had very different views. Bradley’s big issues were universal health care (looks like he was a little ahead of his time on that one) and gun control, while McCain was focused on a strong defense and bucking the political establishment and D.C. power brokers. It would have been interesting — and we would have been much better off with either of them as president.

I don’t agree with many of his political views, but I respect Sen. McCain as a war hero (yes, Mr. Multiple Deferment Trump, McCain is a war hero) and as a principled politician, not a pandering demagogue.  More than once during the 2008 campaign against Barack Obama he put his own supporters in their place when they said they were “scared” of Obama or accused him of being Muslim or being born in Kenya.

(By the way, I always wondered why Obama’s parents would have put a birth announcement in the Honolulu newspapers if he were born in Kenya; perhaps they were laying the groundwork for his presidential campaign from day one.)

Since Sen. McCain’s brain cancer diagnosis, political opponents and allies have offered up all kinds of encouragement and well wishes for this stalwart of the Senate. Of course, there also have been those handful of extremist idiots on the right and left who’ve offered sickening comments. The most flagrant might have come from Nevada Republican National Committeewoman Diana Orrock, who recently retweeted — adding the comment “Amen” — a post in which another user had said “Please Just F—ing Die Already #JohnMcCain #Neocons #Russia.”

Sen. McCain’s daughter, Fox News personality Meghan McCain was rightfully angry, tweeting: “@DianaOrrock — you are a godless, horrible monster who should be nowhere near GOP politics — let alone society in general.” Not only was I forced to agree with Meghan McCain on something, but I even retweeted it. I retweet stuff about 3 times a year!

Orrock — also the daughter of a famous figure, Satan — offered a pitiful apology in which she referred to her comments as “disrespectful” and then deleted her Twitter account. No, that’s not disrespectful — it’s sick and evil.

I hope John McCain wins this battle even as I also hope he loses most of his political battles when he returns to Congress.