John McCain and the death of perspective

Donald Trump doesn’t remind you much of the brilliant actress Helen Mirren, but this week in Washington, with all the fuss over flags and funeral arrangements, he nicely reprised her Oscar-winning performance in “The Queen.” Maybe you’d call this version “The Drama Queen.”

If you didn’t see the 2006 film, the true-life premise goes like this: Princess Diana dies, and all of Britain loudly grieves. But Queen Elizabeth II, sitting in her palace, disdains her former daughter-in-law’s celebrity and prefers to handle the funeral privately, without making a big national to-do about it.

The new prime minister, Tony Blair (played by Michael Sheen, because there’s a law in England that Tony Blair can only be played by Michael Sheen), tries to help the aging Elizabeth see that times are changing, and that the monarchy itself could be in jeopardy. But the queen just can’t wrap her mind around the fact that the people love Diana in a way they can’t love her.

You see where I’m going with this?

Donald Trump doesn’t remind you much of the brilliant actress Helen Mirren, but this week in Washington, with all the fuss over flags and funeral arrangements, he nicely reprised her Oscar-winning performance in “The Queen.” Maybe you’d call this version “The Drama Queen.”

If you didn’t see the 2006 film, the true-life premise goes like this: Princess Diana dies, and all of Britain loudly grieves. But Queen Elizabeth II, sitting in her palace, disdains her former daughter-in-law’s celebrity and prefers to handle the funeral privately, without making a big national to-do about it.

The new prime minister, Tony Blair (played by Michael Sheen, because there’s a law in England that Tony Blair can only be played by Michael Sheen), tries to help the aging Elizabeth see that times are changing, and that the monarchy itself could be in jeopardy. But the queen just can’t wrap her mind around the fact that the people love Diana in a way they can’t love her.

You see where I’m going with this?

.

But man, would it be nice to see a few more public servants speak and vote their consciences, even if it means they might draw a primary or lose a seat, because the worst that can happen is that they’ll have to change jobs, which is what most Americans do with regularity, and it doesn’t exempt them from having to show integrity.

That’s what McCain was — not all the time, but most of it. He was the guy who apologized to South Carolinians for sullying himself with the Confederate flag. He was the guy who told that woman at a town hall in Minnesota that Barack Obama was a patriot, not an Arab.

He was the guy who stood firm against torture as a tactic of war when the leaders of his own party found ways to justify it morally and legally, because not being able to raise your arms to comb your own hair in the morning has a way of clarifying what you mean by American values.

To quote a character from another great film, “This Is Spinal Tap,” that right there is “too much f***ing perspective.”

Maybe our politics can yet be reclaimed by a new generation of veterans who bring some of this same perspective to the cause. It’s no coincidence that Seth Moulton, once a young platoon leader on the battlefield in Iraq, is the Democratic congressman willing to tell his party’s chief boomer, Nancy Pelosi, that it’s time to get out of the way.

Mostly, though, we’re left with parties who behave like teams in thrall to the passions of their rowdiest fans, and a president whose understanding of human frailty begins and ends with a mirror.

So while the queen broods, her subjects mourn. We’re saying goodbye to a statesman, and we don’t have a lot of those left to lose.