Ben Franklin, John McCain Teach the Danger of Unintended Consequences
On Jan. 29, 1774, Benjamin Franklin was still loyal to the English throne, looking for a peaceful middle-of-the-road solution for the growing turmoil in the colonies, and in England as emissary for Massachusetts. On that day he kept an appointment at Whitehall that changed everything. The British government, furious over news of the Boston Tea Party, decided to unleash its fury on the one colonist it could get its hands on.
For nearly an hour, Franklin was subjected to the most game-changing tongue-lashing of the entire war, game-changing because it converted one of the most famous and influential men of of the age from a loyalist to a revolutionary. Whatever the momentary satisfaction the lords might have felt at being able to put Franklin in his place, they paid for it. Franklin returned to the colonies determined to make them a separate nation.
It is a well-known saying that those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and this brings us to the equally shortsighted man in the White House. President Donald Trump never met a person he couldn’t insult, and Arizona Senator John McCain was no exception.
Just to set the stage: McCain was a naval officer who was shot down and captured by the North Vietnamese in 1967. He was held prisoner for over five years, during which time he was tortured and sustained lifelong disabling injuries. During that time, he even refused a chance at early release due to his family connections, not wanting to take precedence over other men. Then we have Trump, who never served a day, thanks to college deferments and a diagnosis of bone spurs. On July 18, 2015, he had the gall to claim that McCain was not a war hero because he was captured, and he likes people who aren’t captured.
McCain responded with the measured calm of one who knows his own worth. And he even fell in Republican line to support the team. But it had to rankle.
Fast forward to July 27, 2017. Trump is desperate to pass a bill, any bill, that would repeal Obamacare, which was one of his key campaign promises. The last chance was something called the “skinny repeal,” which even its supporters didn’t like, but wanted to force through on the theory that the House would then modify it to something less damaging to the people who depend of Obamacare for their health coverage. With all 48 Democrats in the Senate opposed, it would take only three Republicans to kill the bill, and two of them were already against it. The decider would be McCain, and he dramatically held back to the last minute.
Now I have the utmost respect for McCain (disregarding his choice for VP running mate). I am sure his negative vote was based on his sincere belief that the skinny repeal was really bad legislation, and that we need to go back to the radical notion of bipartisan cooperation, and that 48 percent of America should not be totally disregarded because 52 percent represent a majority.
But McCain is only human. He had to remember the day Trump, the armchair warrior, sneered at his heroism. And with that climactic thumbs down, the real hero paid Trump back by denying him a desperately needed legistative victory.
That’s another lesson for the man who doesn’t read and therefore doesn’t learn: What goes around comes around.