Replacing the Grand Canyon State’s senior member in the United States Senate — the late John McCain — is not going with the smoothness Arizonans might hope for. When Arizona Governor Doug Ducey announced former Senator Jon Kyl as his appointee, the other day, he added a hitch: the replacement would be temporary, for Kyl has agreed to serve only until January.
Maybe Ducey should have consulted a temp agency.
Kyl may be like McCain in many ways — a Republican; a strong “defense” advocate; a “maverick” — but in one way he is obviously quite different: he does not demonstrate that deep hankering to serve forever in the upper house of our union’s dysfunctional Congress.
Kyl retired from the Senate in 2012, ostensibly to spend more time with his family.
How different he is from John McCain, who held his position in the Senate from the 1980s until his death on the 25th. I note that McCain did not resign in 2017, when diagnosed with an extremely serious form of brain cancer. Instead, he returned to the Senate to cast the deciding vote against the “skinny repeal” of Obamacare. McCain also did not resign later that year, despite his long subsequent absence from his beloved chamber — he did not vote in the Senate for any of 2018.
McCain held onto his title as United States Senator as if it were life itself.
I will let others praise this as courage. To me it seems more like a sense of entitlement. More accurately, an ambition borne of a misplaced sense of identity. At best, a personal mission quite separate from serving the citizens of his state.
Does Jon Kyle have a better perspective?
Well, he parlayed his senatorial career into a position with a major defense contractor. This could indicate a careerism of an even more alarming sort than McCain’s, however. It suggests the use of elected office as a mere stepping stone to where the real power is.
And where would that be?
The military-industrial complex.
twv
Wirkman Comment 