The late Arizona Republican U.S. Sen. John McCain had more than a passing connection with Mississippi despite being best known here for his 2008 presidential debate appearance with then-Illinois Democratic U.S. Sen. Barack Obama at Ole Miss and for famously sparring with former U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran on Capitol Hill over the fortunes of Mississippi farm-raised catfish producers.
On Friday, Sept. 26, 2008, Obama and McCain squared off in the Gertrude C. Ford Center on the Ole Miss campus in the first of three televised debates during that campaign. The nation was mired in a financial crisis that threatened to derail the debate – at least from the McCain campaign’s perspective.
McCain wanted to actively take part in the federal financial bailout program being debated on Capitol Hill that week. He suggested that debate might halt his participation in the Mississippi debate. Obama’s camp didn’t offer that possibility.
McCain’s plane landed in Memphis at 2:15 p.m. the afternoon of the debate. As one of hundreds of national and state political reporters covering the debate, we didn’t know until less than a few hours before “show time” that McCain would attend and that the debate would indeed take place.
It did. Both candidates scored some rhetorical jabs against their opponent in the Oxford debate, but neither scored a knockout. But the reputations of Mississippi, Oxford, and Ole Miss benefitted from the media invasion the debate engendered.
Years late, in 2016, McCain used then President Obama’s visit to Vietnam and Japan as a springboard to undo Mississippi U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran’s 2015 victory when Cochran was finally successful in forcing federal officials to implement new rules for catfish suppliers, requiring on-site inspections of catfish farms and processing plants for both domestic and foreign producers, mostly from Vietnam, to ensure they meet the same standards that have long been required in the U.S.
Some 80 percent of all American seafood was being imported from China, Vietnam or other countries in the same region. McCain, long a defender of Vietnam and China’s seafood trade interests, angered U.S. producers when he said in 2014: “Vietnamese catfish remain popular with American consumers because it’s more affordable and cheaper to produce than domestic catfish grown in aquaculture ponds.”
But McCain finally won the catfish inspection debate in the Senate over the strident opposition of Cochran and fellow Mississippi U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker by invoking the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to overturn U.S. Department of Agriculture’s 2015 catfish inspection program. Ultimately in 2017, catfish inspection ended up in the hands of the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS). McCain’s connection to Mississippi was far deeper than a presidential debate and the catfish battle with Cochran.
William Alexander McCain, Sen. McCain’s great-great grandfather, bought the Teoc Plantation in Carroll County, Mississippi in 1851 and owned slaves there. McCain’s great-grandfather and namesake John Sidney McCain was elected sheriff of Carroll County, Mississippi. Major Gen. Henry P. McCain, a distant uncle, was the namesake for the Mississippi National Guard’s Camp McCain Training Center in Grenada County.
Sheriff McCain’s son, named John Sidney McCain, Sr., attended Ole Miss and transferred to the U.S. Naval Academy. He would rise to the rank of four-star Admiral in the U.S. Navy after commanding a carrier group in the Pacific in World War II. Admiral McCain’s son, John Sidney McCain, Jr., would also graduate the Naval Academy and also rise to the rank of Admiral in command of U.S. forces in Vietnam, where his son John Sidney McCain, III, the future U.S. senator from Arizona was interred in Hanoi as a prisoner of war after his plane was shot down.
Admiral McCain ordered bombings of Hanoi despite knowing his son was there. The Vietnamese tried to release young McCain early as a propaganda tool, but McCain refused.
I disagreed with McCain’s stance on Mississippi catfish and other issues. Still do. But utterly foolish questions of McCain’s personal courage, patriotism, and service – from anyone, no matter the office they hold – are reprehensible and without merit. McCain deserved the nation’s respect, thanks, and admiration for his courage.
Sid Salter is a syndicated columnist. Contact him at sidsalter@sidsalter.com
24 comments:
Sid and John McCain????
WOW!
This will certainly get your clicks up! In Mississippi we don't speak ill of the dead or our great ancestors...with that said...let the evil commence!
Just THREE election cycles ago, leftist hypocrites compared John McCain to Nazis and George Wallace. They mocked his service record, saying getting shot down in Vietnam doesn’t qualify one to become president. But now it’s 2018, McCain spent his last few years as an anti-Trump crusader, and the media and other lefties ADORE him. His death even moved them to suddenly respect the American flag! Their hypocrisy is OBVIOUS and SHAMEFUL.
Another take on McCain.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271155/john-mccains-failed-second-act-bruce-thornton
I like him in 2000 (oh, I was filled with that youthful naïveté), but he was an obvious fall guy in 2008, as his party did not nominate a fighter.
McCain and the GOP proved there is only one political party in this country and that all non-members should be eliminated.
I've never liked McCain. He proudly called himself a "maverick' because he screwd his own party every chance he got with his last effort being voting to keep Obamacare. He was a narcissistic, attention whore of the first degree to the end IMHO.
Mc Cain dumped his first wife when she became sick. He also had close ties to the Manafort lobbying firm, yes that Manafort, and it was reported back in 2008 that the Manafort set him up to meet with a powerful Russian oligarch who had close ties to Putin. Wasn’t Mueller the FBI Director then?
Cochran's acrimonious and bitter relationship with McCain went far, far beyond catfish but, as with everything he pens, Sid has chosen to fob off a facade of minor, but principled, policy differences in order to maintain the false appearance of RINO-herd harmony to the otherwise unsuspecting in Mississippi.
All the RINOs like Sid Salter also want to avoid reminding anyone how Mississippi-lineage John McCain, at the time 43 yeas old, threw his first wife to the curb for a trophy then only 25. Or how McCain proposed to his trophy wife and took out a marriage license (in Arizona) before he was even divorced.
Republicans, like McCain and Thad Cochran, want you to look past all their sordid personal foibles because to do so doesn't mesh with the campaign rhetoric about morality and ethics and abortion they used to get themselves elected. The RINOs already know they cultivated and groomed the reliable Sid Salter's of America to not give them up and, even, to lionize them in death.
12:26
then you must abhor Trump....good to know.
10:01am - WELL SAID!
Golf clap for you! (that is if I can pick out all the tiny pictures with bicycles in the captcha :-P )
And not a word about the black McCains in Carrol and their contributions to MS.
Now it's being reported Sarah Palin has not been invited to the funeral. I would say I'm shocked....but I'm not. She's probably relieved. What a petty little man.
The politics surrounding his death are a real shame. All Americans should at the very least be able to keep their mouths shut and respect his sacrifices for our country. I'd say it's the kids these days who have no respect but most of the disrespect is from people who should no better.
I think "Petty little narcissistic attention whore" pretty much sums up his legislative career. Oh, but we must respect the dead, at least for a period of time.
Since he pretty well choreographed his own funeral by doing such things as calling Obama and Bush out of the blue and asking them to deliver eulogies, "dis-inviting" Trump, etc., the politics surrounding his demise are largely his own doing.
As to his first wife, she supported his various candidacies and said they remained friends, at least in public, so as the offended party, she has the last word on that front.
As to his "Mississippi connections," since they largely ended prior to his birth and he never lived in Mississippi or asserted his Mississippi roots, he really doesn't have any substantive ties to the state, regardless of Salter trying to dredge some up.
Lastly, I see no reason to speak ill of the dead, so I'll refrain from offering any personal opinion of him.
“Its hot down here!” - John McCain
After reading some of the comments above, I have to wonder why anyone with a happy, successful life would run for office in our current political climate or even serve in government.
It's bad enough when, after you retire, the successful smears against you will be used to fuel political flames for the" see the other side was worse people" ( who seem to miss that being less bad isn't good). Alas, we see that even death doesn't end it. Even assassination won't end it no matter if the good you did, like ending a nuclear crisis, outweighed your flaws.
Your family will have to continue suffering the personal attacks and smears from vicious people whose loyalty to a party (or now a person) trumps any sense of decency.
I see a comment or two referring to McCain as a narcissist. Speaking of narcissists, I see ole Franc is posting.
8:00 - Share your clairvoyance with us. Who the hell is ole Franc?
Well, it didn't take Lindsey Graham long to hit the morning shows. He's already found a new sugar daddy in Jeff Sessions.
How many of you John McCain haters had the courage to serve in the military while the country was at war?
5:18 - There was nothing courageous about John McCain. He joined the military on a magic carpet and quickly rose in seniority due to a silver spoon, not unlike the boys of British royalty, one of whom piloted a helicopter with a golden stick and another of whom rode horses and whacked a ball with a mallet while becoming the equivalent of Lieutenant General. McCain's history of malfeasance is well documented and publicized. Nowhere does it suggest courage.
May his second wife enjoy his pension. And, yes, she's wealthy enough to donate it to the first one.
3:51, you are a sad, sad person.
@5:18 Let's just be glad that every brave American who has served this country in wartime did not come back and act like this pathetic little creep. We would have no country left.
9:41, I am fairly certain you did not serve and you are a Donald Trump fan. Both you and Trump are small people.
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