The Fading Relevance of an Expired Card
Back in the day of formal balls and debutants, a young lady would carry a dance card, which essentially was a detailed schedule of the men with whom she would dance each successive dance, on that particular evening. After the last dance, the dance card would then become a souvenir remembrance of the evening, one that could be re-read again and again in detail- providing the lady with fond and precise memories that would last a lifetime, as pages yellowed and ink faded throughout the many years. There was nothing sadder than an empty dance card, for it lay bare the disinterest men had, in dancing with a young lady unblessed with beauty or comeliness. For such ladies back then, who never married, the dance card would often prove to be a painful reminder of the stigma associated with spending a lifetime unwed.
In an old West Point ballad from the nineteenth century, as famously quoted by General Douglas MacArthur in his 1951 farewell address to Congress, it is said that “old soldiers never die, they just fade away…” In the same manner, old politicians who have had their run never seem to die, but rather fade into oblivion with the loss of their own relevance. When once their influence was sought and something to be cherished, they have an unfortunate tendency to serve that one-too-many additional term, and often make the end of their political career look vapid and trivial, bereft of ideas. This is especially true for senators on both sides of the aisle, who once gained the nomination of their party for the nation’s top job, but who were denied victory, in the end. No longer garnering attention from the media as they once had, some take to making outrageous statements in an effort to claim relevance that has passed them by.
Consider the yellowed and fading dance card that is Senator John McCain’s (R-AZ) as revealed in the invective he hurls at President Trump, taking each and every opportunity to remind us that he does not like, nor support, the forty-fifth president. He wasn’t nearly as hard on Trump’s immediate predecessor, Barack Obama, who defeated McCain quite convincingly in the 2008 presidential election. Judging how the longtime Arizona senator ran his presidential campaign that year, it is not certain that he really wanted to win. Not once did he ever take on his Democrat opponent anywhere near to the extent he has taken on the current Republican president- going back to the days and weeks well before Trump infamously took the Senator to task, saying “He insulted me, and he insulted everyone in that room… He is a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured… perhaps he was a war hero, but right now he’s said a lot of very bad things about a lot of people.”
Predictably, the mainstream media, Trump’s Republican rivals for the nomination, and everyone else opposed to Trump’s candidacy pulled out McCain’s “hero card,” and excoriated Trump for insulting McCain, who suffered torture as a prisoner of war in the notorious Hanoi Hilton of North Viet Nam. That particular card is pulled any and every time a Republican criticizes the senior senator from Arizona, and it’s a card that has expired from overuse, long ago.
What is left for an aging and tired old senator who has made a political career of being the unpredictable “maverick” just as likely to oppose his own party as to suck up to the opposing party? To be honest, he has never been truly conservative, or for that matter, really Republican- and he uses this modus operandi to garner attention and assert relevance that he otherwise neither has nor merits. McCain has done this for decades, so it is no surprise that he goes to Europe, and solidly chastises the new president and openly questions his competence for all the world to see and hear. McCain’s dance card is fading, and he knows it, which is why he acts like the south end of a northbound horse, and thus ignores the tradition of politics ending at the shores of his country.
Call Senator McCain a hero if you will, but he is no patriot…not anymore.
-Drew Nickell, 20 February 2017
© 2017 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.
author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”
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