During the past week’s tributes to Senator John McCain, there were more than a few “unveiled” digs at the current occupant of the White House.  However, it was Donald Trump’s absence and respite from his voice which told a more potent story.  And the message?  Stop psychoanalyzing Trump and the decreasing minority of Americans who support him (per the latest ABC News/Washington Post and IBD/TIPP polls.)  Instead, talk about people who are not Donald Trump.  The contrast will speak volumes.

Fifty years ago at Robert Kennedy’s funeral, Edward Kennedy said, “My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life.”  John McCain did not see that eulogy.  At the time, he was entering his ninth month of imprisonment in the  Hỏa Lò Prison, more commonly referred to as the Hanoi Hilton.  But he knew who had his back.  And he viewed death not as an end, but as just one more opportunity.

For me, the most telling tribute in all the accolades to the late Senator was when Barack Obama said:

It also showed John’s disdain for self-pity. He had been to hell and back and yet somehow never lost his energy or his optimism or his zest for life. So cancer did not scare him. And he would maintain that buoyant spirit to the very end, too stubborn to sit still, opinionated as ever, fiercely devoted to his friends and, most of all, to his family. It showed his irreverence, his sense of humor, a little bit of a mischievous streak. After all, what better way to get a last laugh than to make George (Bush) and I say nice things about him to a national audience.

McCain’s public shunning of Donald Trump was one more chance to exploit an opportunity.  And a well planned one at that.   In the movie Now You See Me, the story is told of magician Lionel Shrike. As a young performer, Shrike asks a man to sign a playing card which turns out to have been the king of spades.  He places the card in a hollow tree. The tree grows around the card.  Two decades later he asks the same man to sign another card.  Shrike then saws the old tree in half to reveal the card from 20 years earlier.  The true magic associated with the Shrike tree is explained by Interpol agent Alma Dray (played by Mélanie Laurent). “The trick was not to look closely.  It was to look so far that you see 20 years into the past.”

McCain did not care whether he died prematurely of cancer or lived to be 106 years old like his mother.  The day Donald Trump said he did not think captured Americans were war heroes, McCain placed a king of spades in his own tree.  You could see it coming.  Instead of being buried in Arizona, eventually to be joined by his beloved wife Cindy, he chose to be interred next to his best friend and Naval Academy classmate Admiral Chuck Larson.  Larson’s wife Sarah told CNN’s John Berman that pact was agreed to “20 some years ago.”  In his final performance before an international audience, McCain’s last and perhaps most enduring trick was changing Donald Trump from commander-in-chief into pariah-in chief right before our very eyes.  Well played Senator.  I salute you.

POSTSCRIPT

Speaking of contrasting behavior, it is ironic that Friday afternoon, while McCain became only the 31st individual to lie in state in the Capitol rotunda, Trump announced via Twitter he planned to hold a “major rally for Senator Ted Cruz in October.”   Yes, “Lyin’ Ted” (Trump’s words) has asked the man he called a “pathological liar,” “utterly amoral,” “a nacissist at a level I don’t think this county’s ever seen” and “a serial philanderer” to boost his sagging re-election poll numbers.  The same Donald Trump who suggested Cruz’ father was part of the plot to assassinate John Kennedy.  The same Donald Trump who retweeted a less than flattering picture of Cruz’s wife and suggested the campaign had dirt on his rival’s spouse.

Way to stand up for your family, Ted.  Are your wife and father going to be on stage with you and Trump when the two of you pretend you care about each other?  Or will they demonstrate a greater sense of honor than you have?  Could be a an interesting Thanksgiving at the Cruz household this year, especially if Senator-elect Beto O’Rourke is celebrating the holiday with his wife and children.

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP