I traveled throughout the world with my friend and Senate colleague John McCain, visiting allies, trouble spots, and American soldiers. I’ll never forget one such trip: John and I were both reading when our jet encountered a terrible storm.
The aircraft was bouncing up and down as angry bolts of lightning split the night skies. But when I looked over at John, the former Navy pilot was engrossed in his book.
“Hey John,” I said, a bit incredulous. “Are you aware of what’s going on around this plane?”
He looked at me nonplussed. “Yeah, I am. Why?”
“Well, doesn’t it concern you?”
He leaned over to me and said, “Joey, if I was meant to die on an airplane, it would have happened over Vietnam.”
That was John McCain: fearless, focused, and confident.
For a quarter of a century, I served with John in the Senate, working for bipartisan legislation to improve our country at home, and to make America a powerful force for freedom throughout the world.
Getting to know John McCain was one of the greatest blessings of my time in the Senate. He was a great person, a superior public servant, and a trusted friend and colleague.
ONE FOR THE BOOKS
John hailed from one of the most storied military families in American history. Both his father and his grandfather were four-star admirals in the United States Navy.
After graduating from the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, John became a Navy A-4 Skyhawk ground attack pilot. He was deployed to Vietnam to serve on the USS Forrestal aircraft carrier.
In July 1967, an electrical malfunction on the carrier’s deck led to the accidental discharge of a rocket from an aircraft. When the rocket detonated, it set John’s jet afire — with him in it.
As recounted in his book “Faith of My Fathers: A Family Memoir,” Lt. Cmdr. McCain had just escaped his burning aircraft when a bomb detonated, hitting him with shrapnel.
The ship’s crew won a valiant battle to save their vessel, but at a terrible price: A staggering 134 sailors died, with another 161 wounded.
The battered Forrestal went off to a dry dock for repairs, but John wanted to get back in the fight. So he sought an assignment to another aircraft carrier, the USS Oriskany, and resumed flying missions over North Vietnam.
By October 1967, he’d already executed more than 20 bombing missions when his jet was hit by a missile over Hanoi. He was forced to eject from the aircraft, breaking both arms and his right knee in the process.
HANOI HILTON HELL
Reports say he parachuted into a lake and nearly drowned before being dragged to shore by a mob of angry Vietnamese.
There, the Vietnamese greeted the airman by pulverizing his shoulder joint with the butt of a rifle.
They stabbed him with a bayonet before hauling him off to the infamous house of torture known as the Hanoi Hilton.
Beatings and withholding desperately needed medical treatment were routine in that detestable hellhole.
His father, Adm. John S. McCain, became commander of all U.S. forces in Vietnam from 1968 to 1972. When John’s captors in Hanoi learned of his pedigree, they offered their prisoner an early release. But John was keenly aware that any preferential treatment he received would hand the Vietnamese a propaganda coup, and would devastate the morale of the POWs he would leave behind.
He agreed to accept an early release, but with one condition: Every prisoner captured ahead of him must also be given his freedom. The Vietnamese refused.
That was an act of honor and courage. It is hard to imagine most anyone else but John having the strength to do the same thing.
He would remain a prisoner of war until March 1973. By then, the damage inflicted on his body was so severe that for the rest of his life he would be unable to raise his arms over his head. When much later in his career he became an outspoken opponent of waterboarding, nobody had to ask why.
Upon returning stateside, John underwent a lengthy rehabilitation, then commanded a training squadron in Florida. He also served for a time as the Navy’s liaison to the U.S. Senate.
It was there that his lifetime desire to serve our country took a turn toward government. After he and Cindy married, they moved to Arizona where John was elected first to the House, and then to the Senate in 1986.
When I joined the Senate in 1989, two years after he did, I was aware of John’s heroic life and I had great respect for him.
One day I approached him on the Senate floor and said, “You know, we ought to work together on some things.” And he said, “I’d like that.” It was as simple as that.
One example of our bipartisanship: I supported then-President George H.W. Bush’s request to direct the American military to boot Saddam Hussein’s troops out of Kuwait in 1991.
COMMON GROUND
John and I both believed we could not let Saddam’s aggression stand, thereby inviting him to move against Saudi Arabia and jeopardize our oil supply and economy. We had to take action to push him back. That’s how our working friendship began.
Then, when the war in Bosnia broke out in the ’90s, John and I both feared it was a decisive moment: Would the end of the Soviet Union usher in an era when the bullies and aggressors would take over large parts of Europe again? Would we sit back and watch genocide occur in Europe?
John and I worked together and ultimately we helped get President Bill Clinton and European leaders to commit to halt the violence. That genocidal episode ended better than anyone could have hoped with the signing of the Dayton peace accords.
By this point, John and I had become good friends. We would travel overseas together to meet with foreign leaders and U.S. troops, and attended an annual security conference each February in Munich.
In fact, at John’s behest I continued to attend that conference even after I retired from the Senate in 2013.
That year when he called to urge me to go, he said, “You’re going to be the elder statesman on this delegation.”
Then when we got there, we were in a meeting with a world leader and he introduced me this way: “Remember Sen. Lieberman? We’re really very grateful that the folks at his nursing home let him out for the weekend.” Even I laughed.
TOUR DE FORCE
Despite the physical challenges John endured after Vietnam, he was an indefatigable force of nature. Staffers in their 30s said he ran them into the ground.
During our jaunts, it seemed he would always add another stop to our itinerary.
On our way to Munich we would go to Belgrade, Moscow, or Madrid. You’d just put your suit on, leave the plane, meet with the heads of state, see a little bit of the country, then get back on the plane and fly on to Munich.
During our travels, John became aware that I am religiously observant, and observe the Jewish Sabbath. It was unusual to him, but he understood when we were traveling it was important to get me there before sundown Friday.
He almost always did that — although he said he’d get me a rabbinical waiver if we went a little over sundown.
Traditionally, the American delegation to the Munich security conference would attend a party on the city’s outskirts on Friday night. But on the Sabbath, I don’t ride except in an emergency.
Typical of John, he said on Friday night: ‘I’m not going to go to the party.”
After that, on Fridays we’d have dinner at the hotel or walk to our favorite restaurant in Munich.
The size of our Sabbath dinner group gradually grew, as a lot of other members of Congress joined us. The Friday night dinner, by the way, was the only occasion when I saw John have a drink, a strong “Schnapps” liqueur.
His respect for my religious observance was just part of our friendship. Somebody joked to me once that traveling with John McCain was like being part of one of history’s great military death marches. The only question was which of us was going to make it to the end.
Thanks to John, we saw more, learned more, and had more experiences than we ever thought possible.
TRIED AND TRUE PATRIOT
The John McCain I knew was a patriot — he was born into it because of his father and grandfather. He was born to serve our country. When he would speak to students, he’d tell them what a great sense of satisfaction they would derive from serving a cause larger than themselves. For John, that cause was America. But his was not a mindless loyalty. It was a patriotism based on America’s values, and America’s purpose in the world. It was all about freedom and human rights.
The terror attacks that on 9/11 brought down the twin towers, part of the Pentagon, and a jet airliner in Pennsylvania, were a tremendous shock to all Americans — but especially to those of us who had spent our careers trying to do whatever we could to keep America strong and safe.
We were angry that our country hadn’t seen what was coming. Because when you look back, there was a terrorist attempt on the World Trade Center’s north tower using a truck bomb in 1993, attacks on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, and the attack on the USS Cole in 2000.
A lot of the government agencies involved in intelligence, surveillance, and law enforcement saw all this, but they weren’t collaborating. John and I felt a real responsibility to fix what was broken and, to the best of our ability, to prevent any attack like that from ever happening again.
About five weeks after 9/11, we were in the green room one Sunday for a joint appearance on Meet the Press. We talked with each other about the fact that we needed to know how 9/11 happened before we could try to make sure it never happened again. There was a rising but dissonant chorus calling for an investigation into what had happened. Different congressional committees were vying for the lead in it, there was some talk that the administration itself would appoint a commission.
On the show, we joined together to call for a totally independent, nonpartisan commission to investigate what led to the attack.
We also introduced a bill. It wasn’t easy because the administration was defensive about what had happened, and didn’t want an independent investigation.
Some members of Congress didn’t want it either, because they wanted to do it themselves. Fortunately, the families of those killed on 9/11 became a powerful and effective lobbying force in support of an independent commission. John and I met with the families several times.
The Commission was established and issued an excellent report. Then John and I, and Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, worked hard together with others in both parties to implement those recommendations. The Commission’s work led to the largest reorganization of our national security and intelligence architecture since the beginning of the Cold War in the late ’40s.
As I’ve said, our objective was to ensure what happened on 9/11 would never happen again. And I believe we did.
THE SURGE
In reaction to 9/11, the United States led invasions of Afghanistan and then Iraq. Initially, the war in Iraq went well. But due to a series of errors, conditions began to rapidly deteriorate.
Before long, there was a lot of talk on Capitol Hill that it was time for America to cut its losses and get out. John believed this would be disastrous for our country, and I agreed with him.
While it certainly wasn’t going well in Iraq, the United States could not retreat in defeat and expect that we would have the strength and credibility needed to protect our security and freedom in the years ahead. But that view was very controversial in the Democratic Party. My position on Iraq carried a political cost. I was denied the Democratic re-nomination in Connecticut in 2006, so I ran as an independent. And thank God and the people of Connecticut, I was re-elected.
In early 2007, John, Sen. Lindsey Graham, and I returned from a fact-finding mission in Iraq in time to support the influential report presented by Gen. Jack Keane, which played a key role in Gen. David Petraeus’s deployment of the surge strategy that added 21,000 U.S. troops to push back the insurgency.
Despite the naysayers who considered it a lost cause, it worked. After the surge, U.S. casualties in Iraq dropped from 961 in 2007 to 60 for the entire year of 2010. And once its civilian populace was protected, the country finally began to achieve a degree of stability.
What would have happened had America left Iraq to the blood-thirsty insurgents who later reconstituted themselves in Syria under the banner of ISIS? John and I believed that would have been an unmitigated disaster for American credibility around the globe, and for American freedom and prosperity at home.
When the 2008 presidential campaign began, among a lot of Democrats I still had the “mark of Iraq” on my forehead. Perhaps that is why neither then-Sen. Barack Obama nor former Sen. Hillary Clinton, both of whom I knew pretty well, asked me for my support.
As the campaign kicked off I watched John struggle. Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee won handily in Iowa, but from there the campaign moved on to New Hampshire, where I knew John’s “Straight Talk Express” would receive a warmer welcome.
One day I received a call from John, who said, “I’m going to ask you a question, and I just want to say, I know I’m asking a lot of you. And if you say no, that’s the end of it, and it won’t affect our friendship at all.”
I said, “Go ahead, what is it?”
He said, “You know, it looked like I was out of it earlier in the campaign. I’m doing better now. But the big event for me is going to be the New Hampshire primary.”
He pointed out that in the GOP primary in New Hampshire, independents can vote.
A QUESTION OF CONSCIENCE
“You’re mister independent,” he said. “Also, your support will show I work across party lines. So I want to know if you’d endorse me in New Hampshire.”
I asked him to give me a day or two to think about it.
After giving it due consideration, I decided, Why not? After all, I’d been re-elected as an independent, and my campaign had received a lot of Republican support. I knew John was totally prepared to be a great president. He had tremendous experience and had proven himself a leader over and over again. He’d asked me for the endorsement, and he was my friend. So I called him back and I said, “I’m ready to go.”
He won the New Hampshire primary. Afterward, his campaign often asked me to come out and campaign with him, which I did with pleasure. After winning in New Hampshire, John avenged his bitter defeat in South Carolina in 2000 by winning that primary as well.
His competition in Florida included Huckabee, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, and “America’s Mayor” Rudy Giuliani. But John barnstormed the Sunshine State with his customary relentless energy, received some key endorsements, and ended up capturing all 57 of Florida’s delegates.
It was a stunning victory that gave him the nomination. In fact the next day, Mayor Giuliani dropped out of the race.
John derived great satisfaction from that victory, and all the more because the pundits had basically declared him out of the race back in 2007. But he never gave up.
Success breeds success, and being on the Straight Talk Express bus was like being part of a touring band when everyone was having a great time together, including the media.
OBAMA DERAILS THE EXPRESS
John knew it was going to be tough to win in November. After two terms of President Bush, with the president of his party leaving office and not very popular, he knew people wanted a change.
As the year wore on, Sen. Obama was looking stronger and stronger. But John just kept working his heart out.
The press was constantly on the bus with him. He ran an open campaign, and sometimes he’d get in trouble because he’d be talking with the media off the cuff all the time. It was contrary to the way campaigns are normally managed, but that too was vintage John McCain.
That June or July, John’s campaign manager, Rick Davis, called me and said, “John wants to vet you for vice president.” I said, “Is he serious?” He said “Yes, he’s serious.”
The point, according to Rick, was that the two of us would be a bipartisan ticket at a time when the country was in economic trouble and divided by partisanship.
Two or three days later John and I were out on the campaign trail together and I said: “John, Rick called me about you putting me on the list to be vetted for vice president. I don’t know how you can do it,” I said. “I’m still a registered Democrat even though I got re-elected as an independent.”
He said, “No, I’m serious about it and I’m asking you as my friend to let us vet you.”
I said OK and went through the whole vetting process. John clung to the idea for a long time, until his campaign team convinced him that selecting me would divide the Republican Party.
I understood completely and believe that the most important lesson from this episode was that John even thought about asking me to be on the ticket. It showed again what an independent maverick he was.
When the economy seized up in September in the meltdown that would lead to the Great Recession, what was already an uphill battle became impossible. John knew it, but finished with his customary energy, honor, and grace.
NEW BATTLE LINES
We all have many sides to us. I had the privilege to observe John McCain under many different circumstances.
Yes, he’s the American hero, the tough guy, the fighter. But he could also be extremely contemplative and compassionate. When his Democratic colleague from Arizona, Rep. Mo Udall, languished in a nursing home, John made it a point to visit him regularly.
One thing a lot of people did not know about John: He was a great reader. He read history, he read fiction.
One of his favorites was Hemingway. He read some of the Hemingway novels a lot more than once.
It was this contemplative McCain who called me last year from Hidden Valley, his home in Arizona near Sedona. He was in between treatments for cancer.
He said, “Joey, I’m out here on the terrace and I’m watching the sunrise, and I’ve already seen one hummingbird come up to the feeder.” He kept track of how many different kinds of birds they’d seen out there.
He was realistic about his health. We talked on the phone shortly after the diagnosis. He said, “You know, this is serious.”
He told me what the odds were, adding, “But I’ve got great medical care, and I’m going to fight it.”
I told him: “John, those are averages they’re giving you. You’re not average. Everybody knows you’re not a normal person.”
After we finished laughing, he went right back to being philosophical.
“I’ve been so, so lucky with the life that I’ve had a chance to lead,” he said, adding, “I’m going to do everything I can to make the most of every day” — which he did his entire life.
When John returned to Washington after his first surgery this summer, rejecting his doctors’ advice so he could cast important votes on healthcare reform, his Senate colleagues gave him a long, emotional welcome. John made the most of the uplifting moment.
With his characteristic humor and unending grace, John quipped, “I’ve had so many people say such nice things about me recently that I think some of you may have confused me with someone else.”
He then gave one of the great speeches in recent Senate history, decrying the partisanship that has made the Congress so ineffective and disrespected. He also called for a return to bipartisan legislating, the “regular order” of the Senate.
Toward the end John confronted his mortality in a way he probably hadn’t since he was a prisoner of war in Vietnam. He did so with characteristic courage, realism, and optimism, and made the most of every day.
Whenever I spoke with him, his voice would brim with warmth and thankfulness. “Joey,” he’d say, “you and I have been to places that people with all the money in the world have not been to, and could not go to. We’ve learned a lot and we had a great time. And hopefully we did some good, too.”
NEVER SHOW FEAR
I know that a lot of Republicans didn’t like how John voted on the two attempts to repeal Obamacare. But his votes were consistent with the robust values that he articulated in his extraordinary speech to the Senate.
In that speech, John also turned his focus to America’s important role in the world
“America,” he said, “has made a greater contribution than any other nation to an international order that has liberated more people from tyranny and poverty than ever before in history. We have been the greatest example, the greatest supporter, and the greatest defender of that order.”
He brought it home with the indomitable American spirit: “We aren’t afraid,” he said. “We don’t covet other people’s land and wealth. We don’t hide behind walls. We breach them. We are a blessing to humanity. What greater cause could we hope to serve than helping keep America the strong, aspiring, inspirational beacon of liberty and defender of the dignity of all human beings, and their right to freedom and equal justice?”
Those ideals were not just rhetoric for John. He lived them throughout his public service. I know because when we traveled we always met with freedom fighters and dissidents. And we regularly introduced resolutions condemning tyranny and supporting those fighting it on just about every continent.
I will never forget being with John in Myanmar and meeting three young political dissidents who had just been released from a government prison.
They all bore the scars of incarceration, but said that one of the reasons they survived was that they learned that Sen. John McCain had spoken on their behalf on the floor of the U.S. Senate.
Those champions of liberty will never forget the inspiring words and deeds that characterized the remarkable American life of John McCain.
Neither shall we.
This is modified version of a story first published as the December 2017 cover story of Newsmax Magazine. Sen. Joe Lieberman was the first Jewish candidate to run on a major political party’s national ticket. Today he serves as a member of the board of trustees for The McCain Institute for International Leadership and several other organizations, and is a senior partner with the law firm of Kasowitz, Benson, Torres LLP.
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