I couldn’t bring myself to write this piece until today. It’s not that I didn’t try. But something in my mind convinced my hands that if I put it off, somehow John McCain might be with us a little longer. I needed that. The country needed that.
I’ve never known Washington without John McCain. I started on Capitol Hill more than 30 years ago interning for Dennis DeConcini, “the other senator from Arizona,” which is what they call every Arizona senator not named McCain. When I eventually became the other senator from Arizona, too, I came to understand that it’s a title that comes with being in the shadow of a giant.