EDITORIAL: McCain leads the way again

Sept. 24--If you're looking for leadership in national politics, you could do a lot worse than Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona. As we wrote in July, the 2008 Republican presidential candidate used his first appearance in front of Congress since being diagnosed with brain cancer to cast a decisive vote against his party's attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act. His reasoning then centered around his concerns over the lack of transparency and process involved in the crafting of the legislation.

Friday, the decorated war hero showed leadership on this issue once again by putting what may prove to be one of the final nails in the coffin of the GOP's latest such effort.

"I cannot in good conscience vote for the Graham-Cassidy proposal. I believe we could do better working together, Republicans and Democrats, and have not yet really tried. Nor could I support it without knowing how much it will cost, how it will affect insurance premiums, and how many people will be helped or hurt by it. Without a full [Congressional Budget Office] score, which won't be available by the end of the month, we won't have reliable answers to any of those questions," read his statement in part.

This is an important point, as McCain made clear in the same statement that he "would consider supporting legislation similar to that offered" if it went through normal procedures. They lost his vote simply by attempting to ram through a half-baked idea ahead of an artificial deadline.

Lee Hamilton, an adviser for the Indiana University Center on Representative Government and a retired longtime member of the U.S. House, has consistently laid out similar set of bipartisan goals in his columns we've published.

"Congress needs to fix its practices with an eye toward reversing polarization," he wrote earlier this month. "It should return to the deliberative order of doing business, and to real conference committees, which would require members to meet, discuss and compromise with one another. It needs to reduce partisan control of elections, the influence of special interest money, and gerrymandering for partisan advantage, and to strengthen the integrity of the electoral system."

Here we have a famous Hoosier Democrat and a decorated Republican statesman and hero saying the same thing. Most people in the middle want bipartisanship. True leaders of every political stripe understand this.

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