PD Editorial: The Straight Talk Express is on the road again

Sen. John McCain, who is being treated for brain cancer, doesn’t need to worry about his health insurance.

So, yes, there was some irony in McCain’s remarks to his Senate colleagues Tuesday after returning to Washington to help resuscitate legislation that would make it harder for millions of ordinary Americans to keep their health insurance.

But the plainspoken Arizona Republican still was spot on in his remarks about the poisonous political atmosphere that has reduced the Senate to antipathy and inaction.

“Stop listening to the bombastic loudmouths on the radio and television and the internet,” McCain told his colleagues. “To hell with them. They don’t want anything done for the public good. Our incapacity is their livelihood.”

And, he noted, “merely preventing your political opponents from doing what they want isn’t the most inspiring work.”

McCain’s vote was instrumental in bringing legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act to the Senate floor for a debate. But he also said he wouldn’t vote for the GOP-sponsored bill as presently drafted, predicted that it wouldn’t pass and urged his colleagues to return to “regular order,” drafting legislation in committee hearings “with contributions from both sides.”

The Obamacare repeal legislation was written behind closed doors by a small group of senators who excluded Democrats and even some of their Republican colleagues. It was the catalyst for McCain’s speech, but he didn’t limit his critique to health care.

“We’ve been spinning our wheels on too many important issues because we keep trying to find a way to win without help from across the aisle,” he said. “That’s an approach that’s been employed by both sides, mandating legislation from the top down, without any support from the other side, with all the parliamentary maneuvers that requires.”

McCain, who dubbed his presidential campaign bus the Straight Talk Express, has a long history of speaking his mind. But his speech Tuesday packed extra punch because of its timing - coming two weeks after he was diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer and one day after President Donald Trump turned a Boy Scout jamboree into a partisan political rally.

McCain’s remarks alone aren’t likely to pull American politics out of the partisan morass. Fortunately, he isn’t the only leader sticking up for comity and compromise.

Gov. Jerry Brown struck the same themes in a radio interview broadcast Tuesday.

Talking to NPR about a compromise cap-and-trade bill passed in Sacramento last week, Brown said: “Some of the folk on the left said, ‘You can’t talk to oil companies. Are you talking to the Chamber of Commerce? Are you talking to the Farm Bureau? That’s just horrible.’ And then on the other side, the Wall Street Journal and some of the Republican activists said, ‘You’re a Republican. You can’t vote for something that a Democrat would support.’

“Well, both of those, in my view, are forms of political terrorism that are conspiring to undermine the American system of governance.”

On Wednesday, the U.S. Senate was unable to muster the votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act without a replacement. Still more attempts are expected. More failures are likely.

Perhaps, eventually, GOP leaders will take McCain’s advice and start looking for an approach that both parties can support. As McCain put it in his speech, “What have we to lose by trying to work together to find those solutions? We’re not getting much done apart.”