As a politician with national aspirations beyond the Senate, Mr. McCain has a decidedly mixed legacy. Having stood up at one point to a woman who called Mr. Obama an untrustworthy “Arab” — Mr. McCain seized her microphone and said: “No, ma’am. (Mr. McCain was absent for medical reasons when the bill came up for final passage three weeks later and he did not cast a vote). That vote provided precisely the kind of opportunity for one last display of the adventurous bipartisanship for which Mr. McCain was so well known. Mr. McCain was a charming, imperfect man, driven by a code of honor and self-aware enough to know when he had violated it.

Source: New York Times August 26, 2018 00:33 UTC