McCain has hope for US despite ‘challenges in the world’, says memoir co-author

The Restless Wave was not meant to be John McCain’s last book. But when the six-term Republican senator from Arizona was diagnosed with brain cancer, what might have been a distillation of the McCain Doctrine evolved into a memoir that offers reflections on his career and a robust defense of the world order he championed for more than three decades in Congress.

“He wanted it to be more reflective and more personal,” said Mark Salter, McCain’s former chief of staff and co-author of The Restless Wave: Good Times, Just Causes, Great Fights, and Other Appreciations, in an interview this week. “Above all he wanted to convey how fortunate he felt he was for being able to serve this country for 60 years in the navy and then Congress.”

Salter, who speaks with McCain frequently and visited him at his ranch near Sedona less than two weeks ago, said that the senator was “doing OK” and was “working on getting stronger”.

McCain’s story is well known: a prisoner of war in Vietnam, he refused an early release based on his father’s senior position in the navy despite enduring torture. He went on to become a US representative, then senator. He ran for president twice, and in 2008 became his party’s nominee.

In his book, published on Tuesday, McCain expresses doubts over not having chosen his friend Joe Lieberman, a Democrat turned independent, for his running mate. Instead he picked Sarah Palin, a decision critics says unleashed the volatile forces of populism that have sharply divided the Republican party and paved the way for Trump’s ascent.

Salter adamantly disagrees that selecting Palin opened a Pandora’s box of populist conservatism.

“Donald Trump would have gotten himself elected whether Sarah Palin was around or not,” he said. “The pathologies and the dynamics that produced this political moment preceded her arrival on the national scene.”

While McCain made clear his preference was Lieberman, the Arizona Republican has never voiced publicly – or privately, Salter says – specific regrets about choosing Palin. And in the book, the senator defends Palin’s performance and takes the blame for some of her shortcomings as a running mate.

Since his loss to Barack Obama, McCain has played the role of senior statesman, making grueling trips to the Middle East and eastern Europe during recesses from Congress. After Trump’s election, he made those trips with more frequency, Salter said, “to reassure allies from Australia to Europe that the United States was still a responsible leader of the international order that we superintended with our allies for 75 years”.

In his memoir, McCain draws sharp contrasts with Trump’s nationalistic impulses, espoused by his former chief strategist Steve Bannon.

Salter said: “The way he put it once was that the post-World War II western-led international order has liberated more people from tyranny and poverty than at any point in history and made the United States incomparably wealthy and powerful – but yes, let’s throw it away, because Steve Bannon has a better idea.

“It’s a ludicrous, ignorant, uninformed, ahistorical, nonsensical, comic book view of the world, and that concerns him,” Salter added. “That there’s an audience for it in the country … that concerns him.”

Salter said McCain had wrestled with his decision whether to vote for Trump for president months before he publicly announced that he would not support him.

As a former party nominee, Salter said McCain felt a “responsibility” to honor the party’s choice, “even if the party mistakenly ended up choosing somebody who probably was not the best guy for the job”.

McCain revoked his support after the publication of the Access Hollywood tape in which Trump brags about grabbing women.

Despite the senator’s doubts about Trump’s moral leadership and his fear that the US will retreat from the world stage, Salter insists McCain is optimistic about the future of the country.

“He’s worried about the challenges in the world and he’s worried about the state of our politics,” Salter said. “But he does think we’re a match for the problem – that we can get through it.”