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Both men, heroes in war and peace. Two political icons both honored as their bodies lay in state under the U.S. Capitol rotunda. First Hawaii’s Sen. Daniel K. Inouye on Dec. 20, 2012, and now Arizona’s Sen. John McCain.
When Inouye died, it was sometimes-political foe, sometimes-ally McCain tweeting out: “RIP Senator Daniel Inouye — a genuine hero of the Greatest Generation and a friend and role model to all of us in the Senate.”
On the Senate floor, McCain continued the eulogy after Inouye’s death.
“Inouye fought for the principles that he held dear. There will not be another like him, there will not be another United States senator who was literally deprived of his rights,” McCain said, explaining that while Inouye was fighting in Europe, fellow Japanese-
Americans were in relocation camps, some in McCain’s home state of Arizona.
In 2011, Inouye gave the annual speech remembering the attack on Pearl Harbor; it was a wise speech explaining that during a time of war, U.S. leaders set aside the Constitution, uprooting Americans because of their nationality. Observers said while Inouye spoke, McCain was the only other senator sitting on the floor.
While they were battle-
scarred war heroes, Inouye, the Democrat, and McCain, the Republican, were also fierce political opponents. As much as Inouye used pork-barrel funding to pay for programs in Hawaii, McCain despised the practice of “earmarking” that let politicians set aside federal funds without scrutiny for favorite projects. Inouye’s earmarks, for instance, helped launch the early Hokulea voyages. The same journeys also prompted McCain to give the federal subsidy a “Golden Fleece” award.
At the time in 1998, a spokeswoman for Inouye said, “Like beauty, pork is in the eye of the beholder.”
McCain also blasted Inouye for including a program to prevent Guam’s notoriously invasive brown tree snakes from catching a ride on military planes landing in Honolulu.
“I don’t know of, nor have I heard of, a brown tree snake ever posing a threat to national security,”
McCain groused at Inouye’s inclusion in the federal defense budget. That was one battle that Inouye won.
Hawaii and McCain were linked in many ways:
McCain’s father, John McCain Jr., was a Navy admiral who served as commander of the United States Pacific Command, guiding military forces from Pearl Harbor during the Vietnam War.
McCain was a prisoner of the North Vietnamese for 5-1/2 years and when he was released in 1973, the plane’s first stop on American soil was the touchdown at Hickam Air Force Base.
In his Senate floor speech, McCain also praised Inouye’s bipartisan dealing, saying, “No one ever accused Daniel
Inouye of partisanship
or unfairness.”
Perhaps for McCain, however, his best Honolulu memory is where he met his second wife, Cindy Hensley, at a military reception in 1979. They ended up having drinks at the Royal Hawaiian and as McCain said in a 2002 book, “By the evening’s end, I was in love.”
This past week, much of America was in love with McCain and his heroic story. But the real lesson to be learned is that, unlike many in politics today, John McCain and Dan Inouye were warriors. When they said, “I’ve got your back,”
it was the truth.
Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays. Reach him at 808onpolitics@gmail.com.
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