In Philly, a glimpse of what drives John McCain

WASHINGTON — There are lots of John McCain stories. Mine is from Philly.

This was in January, when Republicans held their congressional retreat at the Loews Hotel in Center City. A few reporters, maybe a half-dozen of us, were waiting in the lobby before President Trump was to speak to the gathered lawmakers, when down came McCain for an impromptu question-and-answer session.

He took a seat, the hotel's jazz music playing overhead and a wall of TVs tuned to Fox News behind him, and started by recounting his days at the Naval Academy, when he would visit Philly for the Army-Navy game. If you were in one of the academies, "you could not buy a meal or a drink" in the city, he told us, adding with a gleam, "Of course, I didn't partake of any alcoholic beverages."

Having loosened up the crowd with a veteran politician's skill, we scrambled through a series of issues, from defense spending to Russia, from Obamacare to the border wall, McCain fielding anything we threw at him and layering in cracks about his age. When he explained how well he knew Trump's national security team, McCain, 80, quipped, "There's very few benefits of old age, but I have dealt with these people for years."

Near the end of a 45-minute session, one reporter asked about a joke that McCain has repeated so often that he says his staff now mouths it whenever it begins.

"Ted Kennedy is the one that told me," McCain explained, "if a joke is funny it's worth telling again and again and again."

We were about done when we got a glimpse of the traits that have made McCain a giant. I asked about how he would work with Trump, with whom he had clashed, now that the new president had taken office.

McCain said he couldn't respond to every wild comment or tweet. But, he said, there were certain things he had an obligation to take on — particularly the idea of using torture in interrogations.

"I have to speak up, I have to. I have no choice on that," he said. "Because of my own personal experience, because of everything about that I've seen."

His personal experience is well-known but worth repeating: Shot down over Hanoi, with two broken arms and a broken leg, McCain was tortured, beaten, and left in solitary confinement. He contemplated suicide. And when the North Vietnamese realized his father was the U.S. commander in the Pacific and offered to let him leave, McCain refused. He insisted that those captured before him be allowed out first. He spent 5½ years imprisoned.

How many would have held to that sense of honor? How many would have the steel to follow through?

That experience alone would make McCain a hero even if he never set foot in the Senate. He's added to his service with more than three decades in Congress and was the Republican nominee for president in 2008.

In Philly, McCain served up a reminder of the ethos that kept him in that prison camp when he could have left, and that, in the 2008 race, saw him rebuke a supporter who denounced Barack Obama as "an Arab." He showed his understanding that some principles are bigger than what might be expedient, bigger than him and worth fighting for.

"Torture takes away the most important aspect of the United States of America: We are a moral nation. We are not like other countries. We don't torture people," he said. "It's not only the issue of torture. It's also the issue of what kind of nation we are."

Like anyone else, McCain hasn't always lived up to his greatest attributes. He has certainly made mistakes and political calculations.

But there, on a couch in Philadelphia, was a close-up look at the side that has made McCain respected across the political world.

That's why we saw such a remarkable outpouring when McCain's cancer diagnosis was announced Wednesday night, from senators and presidents of both parties, who professed admiration, respect, and heartfelt love.

McCain's daughter, Meghan, called him "a warrior at dusk."

Yet, still fighting. A day after the diagnosis was announced, McCain's office blasted out a statement criticizing Trump for reportedly ending some assistance to Syrian rebels, accusing the administration of "playing right into the hands of Vladimir Putin."

He added on Twitter, "Unfortunately for my sparring partners in Congress, I'll be back soon."