You see, he postures like he did today on the transsexual issue, but he wasn't called to actually vote on anything in connection with it. The Times loves these pompous self-aggrandizing statements of his because they point and say, "Oh, isn't he a maverick!"

In reality, most of the times he's actually done something, it's been because he had some personal, petty grievance to settle. He stayed in the 2000 Presidential Race long after his chances of victory were slim to none to spite George W. Bush. Regardless of what you thought of Bush, he was clearly going to be the candidate, and continuing the race was just hurting the Party at the expense of McCain's own vanity.

The same thing happened again when he wanted to pick Joe Lieberman as his running mate in 2008 and the Party refused (understandably so) on the grounds that Lieberman was not a Republican and had been on the 2000 Democratic ticket (again, I think there was some really bad blood between W and McCain and it was partially for that reason). When they didn't let him he picked Sarah Palin as something of a "fuck you then" pick. Again, hurting the Party to settle a petty score.

I realize that you agree that he never met a war he didn't want to start, or get involved in, but it is worth mentioning that in this, too, it's more about his personal desire to settle scores than the good of the country. From Kosovo in 1999 to Syria in 2017, it's about proxy wars with Russia (or worse, not even by proxy) or China. I think he blames them rather than Vietnam for his captivity for some reason, but I can't prove that, obviously. There's no objective reason why he would hate Russia in the 1990s - no longer communist, not yet Putinist, democratic if imperfectly so - but he did hate Russia even then.

I realize that decorum says we shouldn't wish him ill, but I openly speculated it might be nice if he didn't survive the surgery he had before I knew about the cancer. I guess I'll just leave it at that.

It's probably the only time in my life I will be cheering for the cancer to win.