Thoughts on the political career of John McCain

Scrolling somewhere this morning, I read an article somewhere about McCain and his Maverickism. Maverick was a name bestowed on cattle by Sam Maverick who refused to brand his cattle. When you came upon a steer with no brand, "It's a Maverick."

McCain would vote with party mainstream while in Washington. When he returned to Arizona to run for re-election, he would do what one pundit called the McShuffle and become 100% conservative. 

His autobiography's subtitle included self -reference to being a Maverick. In 2010, when running for re-election, he announced, "I am not a Maverick."

the odd thing is that the Tea Party types hate McCain. They think he's a liberal. Apparently they bought the whole "maverick" thing hook, line, and sinker without bothering to pay attention to his votes. 

The funeral was a whitewash of McCain's true history as a senator/politician. People acted like he was the leader of the Trump resistance when in fact he supported Trump during the campaign (until declaring he could no longer support Trump on Oct. 8th, 2016).  Then he voted with Trump's position almost all the time, as BG9 posted.

yahooyahoo said:
The funeral was a whitewash of McCain's true history as a senator/politician. People acted like he was the leader of the Trump resistance when in fact he supported Trump during the campaign (until declaring he could no longer support Trump on Oct. 8th, 2016).  Then he voted with Trump's position almost all the time, as BG9 posted.

The Trumpers I know on FB believe sincerely that McCain was part of the resistance.  Their position is that McCain has been purposely sticking it to Trump since he took office.  But if they were rational people who based their opinions on factually verifiable information, they wouldn't be Trumpers, would they?

A great many of us who are praising McCain right now are not doing so because of his votes or policy positions but because of the manner in which he worked with his colleagues in both parties and was not afraid to call out those on both sides of the aisle.  Obama mentioned in his speech that both he and GWB were better Presidents because of him.  Right now both parties are worse off because of the way politicians are behaving.