Does Sen. John McCain's dramatic return to the Senate floor Tuesday afternoon make him a hero or a villain?
Seems like nearly everyone has an opinion. I write to say to busybodies in both camps: Hold your fire. Even in this age of the hot take and snap assessments, why the rush to judgment?
Sure enough, McCain's legacy hangs in the balance. But we won't know which way things fall until we see the role the ailing, if still eloquent, senator plays in the larger drama now under way in the Senate.
That drama isn't likely to end until next week, though with the voting coming so fast, it could be over sooner. When the smoke clears, we'll know whether Republicans' increasingly quixotic quest to undo Obamacare has failed or not. And what role McCain has played in making that so.
In case you are wondering, the good guys are pulling for failure. Every plan the GOP has so far come up with would strip health coverage from tens of millions of Americans over the next decade.
McCain sees that. He gave a speech Tuesday blistering the health-care efforts led and defended by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his faithful deputy, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas. "We tried to ... convince them that it's better than nothing. That it's better than nothing? ... I don't think that's going to work in the end, and it probably shouldn't," he said.
McCain urged his colleagues to remember what used to make the Senate great, and pleaded with them to trust each other enough to return to the old, bipartisan order.
This is the stuff of rhetorical heroism, especially in a moment when partisanship seems so hard-wired into Washington that most of us are surprised when anyone there remembers how to pronounce it, much less promote it.
But others saw something else in McCain: a perfect _ and perfectly horrendous _ hypocrisy.
Writing for Esquire, Charles Pierce called Tuesday the ugliest day in the Senate since "the death of Strom Thurmond, who used to make a day ugly simply by showing up."
"(McCain) flew all the way across the country, leaving his high-end government health care behind in Arizona, in order to cast the deciding vote ... denying to millions of Americans the kind of medical treatment that is keeping him alive."
Just before his big speech, McCain voted for the motion to keep McConnell's Hail Mary efforts to repeal Obamacare alive. No wonder his critics are screaming.
As for the speech, it hit just the right notes. Many of us have been saying this for weeks. Start over, we urged Senate Republicans, and send the bill back to committee. For the sake of millions who depend on it, fix it first.
Fix it, and then you will have bought yourselves time for the death-eaters in your party who won't rest until Obamacare is gone, no matter the human cost, to develop a plan that actually improves on Obamacare without stripping tens of millions of Americans of their insurance.
Still, the anti-Obamacare folks (read: anti-Obama) are stubborn. They'll keep trying, though eventually they are going to realize that 52 measly GOP senators aren't enough. They're going to need to ask the voters for more. Fat chance they'll get them.
These high stakes are precisely why so many are angry that McCain chose not to make things simple Tuesday by matching his vote to his speech. A no vote on the motion to proceed would have shut the whole circus down at once. Millions of Americans, facing brain cancer and a thousand other grim diseases, would have kept their insurance for now.
But as he often has, McCain disappointed those who keep waiting for his big Maverick Moment. And when he voted with McConnell, many on the left cried foul. A few hours later, he voted for the very bill he had said was so lousy, the McConnell plan to repeal-and-replace. The shouting grew louder.
But such snap judgments are too hasty. That bill failed miserably, as McCain knew it would. The next day, he voted no with six other Republicans to defeat the archly cynical repeal-only bill, which President Donald Trump had demanded they pass.
More votes are coming, and we won't know until the last one is cast whether McCain's votes in total match his beautiful speech. Yes, he could have pulled the whole tent down on the GOP Tuesday, and if somehow McConnell manages to sneak some hateful bill through this week, it will be on McCain.
But until the voting is done, I say it's too soon to call McCain either a saint or a sinner.
His legacy hangs in the balance, and that's because also hanging there is access to medical care for millions of Americans who desperately need it.
ABOUT THE WRITER
Michael Lindenberger is a member of the Dallas Morning News editorial board. Readers may email him at mlindenberger@dallasnews.com.
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