As everyone doubtless knows by now, Senator John McCain died yesterday. He was 81.
My own feelings about McCain are more complicated than the unstinting praise now raining down on his memory. I admired the John McCain of the 2000 campaign — his Straight Talk Express days — and voted for him. I was shocked by his choice of the painfully stupid Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008, and voted against him. I applauded his emergence as a voice for sane Republicanism in 2016 as Trump recreated the party in his own soiled image.
I do wish there were more men like John McCain in the Republican Party today.