September, 2018
Washington -- Today is John McCain's funeral and an occasion to reminisce. McCain's life intersected with mine several times.
The first was in the South China Sea in late July, 1967. His ship, USS Forrestal, crossed paths with mine, USS Rainier, during the night after the disastrous Forrestal fire that claimed 134 lives when a Zuni rocket accidentally discharged and hit McCain's bomb-laden aircraft on the flight deck. Forrestal was returning to Subic Bay in the Philippines for repairs; Rainier was outbound from Subic to resupply it and other ships operating in the Tonkin Gulf. Signalmen exchanged messages by flashing light. We advised Forrestal we would re-direct its many bags of mail via other ships.
McCain was shot down over North Vietnam soon thereafter, flying off USS Oriskany, and became a prisoner of war. In Hanoi, he joined my friend, NU classmate, and fellow Navy officer Dick Ratzlaff, who had been captured in 1966. They were both released in 1973. Dick Ratzlaff died in 1981, never fully recovering from his mistreatment at the hands of the North Vietnamese.
The next career-crossing was in the U.S. Senate in 1979, when McCain, now a Navy captain, staffed the Navy liaison's office in the Russell Senate Office Building. Senator Jim Exon, for whom I worked as legislative director, was a member of the Armed Services Committee. His legislative assistant for national defense issues, Greg Pallas, worked closely with McCain. I had recommended Greg* for the position partly because he had also been a Navy officer. He and McCain hit it off. From his Navy liaison position, McCain also developed close relationships with Senators John Tower, Gary Hart, William Cohen, John Breaux, Sam Nunn, Scoop Jackson and their staffs. Other key staff included Arnold Punaro (Nunn) and Richard Perle (Jackson).
Jim Exon considered himself a Scoop Jackson Democrat and usually followed Jackson's lead, until Jackson died in office in 1983. Greg Pallas succeeded me as legislative director for Senator Exon after I left the position in 1984. In 1986, McCain was elected Senator from Arizona.
In 1989, relationships were strained over the nomination of John Tower to be Secretary of Defense. Senators Nunn and Exon led the opposition; McCain supported Tower, who was defeated. Senator Exon retired in 1996.
I became congressional liaison for higher education at the U.S. Department of Education in the 1990s, but had little to do with Senator McCain officially. Greg Pallas remained a part of the bipartisan McCain-Breaux social circle; I was an occasional guest. Greg Pallas died in 2003 at the age of fifty-one. John McCain attended his funeral in Annapolis.
Senator McCain did not involve himself in higher education affairs much beyond advocating for the interests of the University of Phoenix. His efforts, in my opinion, were misguided, although perhaps understandable in the context of constituent services. McCain walked out** of a 2010 hearing chaired by Senator Tom Harkin, also a former Navy pilot, because he thought Harkin was being too hard on for-profit colleges.
Although McCain presented himself as a friend of veterans, he was notably absent when it came to protecting them from higher education fraud under the GI Bill. With others, I have been involved in setting up protections for veterans, especially with Veterans Education Success (VES); we could have used McCain's help.
But McCain rose to the occasion on other matters at least three times in his life, and for those he will be remembered as a hero. One was when, as a prisoner of war, he refused a North Vietnam propaganda move to release him as the son of the U.S. Commander in Chief of the Pacific (CINCPAC). Another was when, as a presidential candidate in 2008, he would not be drawn into race and religion baiting against his opponent. The third was his principled death-bed stand for America as a country based on values and ideals, not blood and soil tribalism.
McCain, a Republican, worked easily across political boundaries because at his core he was a follower of Alfred Thayer Mahan's geopolitical theories of sea power, as are many Democrats. He was an implacable foe of Russia, the heartland country destined under the theories of Sir Halford John Mackinder to dominate the world. His antipathy to Donald Trump was firmly rooted in geopolitical theory as well as personal dislike.
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* A native Californian, Greg Pallas stood out in his 1978 employment interview with chief of staff Bill Hoppner and me. Among several defense experts, he was the only one who had done his homework on Nebraska. He went on to adopt Nebraska wholeheartedly, forging lasting relationships with close associates of Jim Exon like Norm Otto and Chuck Pallesen. When Jim Exon retired, Greg Pallas had the senator's office, including his desk, recreated as a small museum on South 27th Street in Lincoln.
** The moment is memorialized in the award-winning documentary movie "Fail State", which had its Washington premier on September 4, 2018.
