Today, November 17, Barack Obama and John McCain will meet to discuss how to work together to solve the overwhelming problems facing the United States. The news comes as a breath of fresh air to Americans who have been exhausted and disgusted by years of vicious partisan politics.
It may seem to some that this meeting between the president-elect and the senator is an historic one. And it is. But John McCain will not be the first statesman to set aside his personal disappointment to work for the betterment of America.
When Dwight Eisenhower was nominated as the Republican candidate for president, he beat Sen. Robert Taft, son of President William Howard Taft. Taft’s lifelong dream had been to follow his father into the White House. But Bob Taft had served with a rigid integrity that refused to allow him to bow to expediency. He took stands that were politically unpopular, and it cost him the presidency. (See his chapter in John Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage.) He once remarked that “tact was for people who knew they were wrong.”
Despite the loss of his party’s nomination, Taft felt personally responsible to prepare Congress for Ike’s extensive new legislative program. Three weeks after Eisenhower was sworn in as president, Senator Taft went to Augusta, Georgia to confer with him. Afterwards, the two avid golfers went out for a few holes of golf. It was during this game that unsettling symptoms hit this powerful man. By the seventh hole, his hip hurt, and he was having trouble breathing.
Before long, Senator Taft was in the hospital where, after exhaustive tests, it was determined he had a rare form of cancer. In eight weeks Taft would be dead. He would work almost until the end. Before he died, the senator insisted, “I’ve got to snap out of this in a hurry now! Eisenhower needs me.”
It takes men of extreme patriotism to set aside egos and get on with the business at hand. John McCain, too, has always been a man of extreme patriotism. As a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, he survived five and a half years of beatings, solitary confinement, starvation, dysentery and unset broken limbs, in torment the rest of us cannot bring ourselves even to imagine.
His comment upon returning to the States? “If I have to leave the Navy, I hope to serve the Government in some capacity…I had a lot of time to think over there, and came to the conclusion that one of the most important things in life—along with a man’s family—is to make some contribution to his country.” The entire country knows how hard John McCain has worked. And his contribution is to continue.
Go, John. This country needs you. Come together with President-elect Obama, and help heal this country.
