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A review by mcsnide
The Restless Wave: Good Times, Just Causes, Great Fights, and Other Appreciations by John McCain, Mark Salter
4.0
While Sen. McCain's politics were very different from my own, I have always respected him for his service to our country, his willingness to put country above politics, and his dogged determination to pursue what he believed to be the right path. In this final book written with his longtime collaborator Mark Salter, he made a forceful case for his vision of America.
He viewed America as deriving our moral force from our ideals and our willingness to hold ourselves and others accountable to those ideals. He believed whole-heartedly in liberal democracy. He despised autocracy in all its forms, and believed that we best serve our ideals when we champion freedom for all. This certainly comes across as naive at times, as he never really engages with critics of the Arab spring who point out that the Arab street is no fan of religious liberty, pluralism, or other virtues that are vital to western democracy.
That said, he had no qualms about calling out Americans who fail to live up to his high standards. He castigated President Bush's failures in Iraq, including on the moral issue of detention and torture. He took President Obama to task for what he viewed as a wrongheaded retreat from American leadership of the world. He saved his harshest rhetoric for President Trump and his constant divisive rhetoric, his embrace of dictators, his unwillingness to confront the racist elements of the right, and his coarsening of American civic life.
If I had to pick one quotation from the book that best sums up Sen. McCain's approach to life and politics, it would be this:
“You can fail to tell the truth. But the truth cannot be a failure even if it’s ignored or rejected."
Our politics are much poorer from the loss of Sen. McCain.
He viewed America as deriving our moral force from our ideals and our willingness to hold ourselves and others accountable to those ideals. He believed whole-heartedly in liberal democracy. He despised autocracy in all its forms, and believed that we best serve our ideals when we champion freedom for all. This certainly comes across as naive at times, as he never really engages with critics of the Arab spring who point out that the Arab street is no fan of religious liberty, pluralism, or other virtues that are vital to western democracy.
That said, he had no qualms about calling out Americans who fail to live up to his high standards. He castigated President Bush's failures in Iraq, including on the moral issue of detention and torture. He took President Obama to task for what he viewed as a wrongheaded retreat from American leadership of the world. He saved his harshest rhetoric for President Trump and his constant divisive rhetoric, his embrace of dictators, his unwillingness to confront the racist elements of the right, and his coarsening of American civic life.
If I had to pick one quotation from the book that best sums up Sen. McCain's approach to life and politics, it would be this:
“You can fail to tell the truth. But the truth cannot be a failure even if it’s ignored or rejected."
Our politics are much poorer from the loss of Sen. McCain.