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He can always go lower.
And they will always leave it: the voters who appointed Donald Trump to the presidency, the terrified Republicans to cross them, are experts in lap-dog. What they condemn in others is ignored, excused, sanctified.
So now, the president is obsessively attacking a man who, even after seven months of death, is more decent and brave than Trump could ever be. He lied about John McCain's record of dealing with veterans, complained that he was not thanked for the senator's funeral, and misrepresented McCain's role in the Russia inquiry and his vote on a draft law to repeal Obamacare.
As long as Senator John McCain lived, he testified to the limitations of Trump's power and character: McCain's heroic service in a war Trump avoided, his refusal to engage in the president's infatuation for Vladimir Putin, his outspokenness about the traditions and integrity of the Senate, embodied in this chamber vote in the House – all this has diminished a president completely consumed by narcissism and insecurity.
McCain being dead does not make Trump feel better. So he profanes his memory. Disrespect for the military, it seems, is inexcusable only in black men kneeling on football fields.
Trump loves cruelty. Chaos is his comfort zone. There is no big plan, no strategy beyond the urgent need for attention and the pathetic pose of tenacity. The creators of "The Apprentice" struggled against this, doing reverse engineering of Trump's capricious judgments and unjustified acts of cruelty in the editing room to give the impression that the reason was at work. There was none at the time and there are none at this time.
A handful of Republicans defended McCain against Trump's attacks last week. But most of them did so by praising McCain rather than directly criticizing Trump. Senator Lindsey Graham, a critic at the time of Trump, whom McCain was a dear friend and mentor, was measured unconsciously: he does not like the way the president talks about his friend, he says, but he still loves the president.
We now know better than to ask ourselves if, in the end, it will be too much. Trump never does too much. He was right when he said that he could shoot someone from Fifth Avenue without losing a voice.
The senator from South Carolina, like so many Republicans, did the math. He needs Trump and voters who love him, not only to stay relevant, but to survive politically.
McCain and he were already on this well-worn road long before Trump ran for president. The Republican primaries of South Carolina in 2000 were ugly. Supporters of finalist candidate George W. Bush have spread rumors that McCain is the biological father of the Bangladeshi child he and his wife, Cindy, have adopted. that Cindy was an addict; that McCain betrayed his country to Vietnam, where he was held prisoner of war for five years and tortured.
"I will not take the highest route to the highest position in this country," McCain said after defeating Bush. "Never, never, never."
But in 2008, McCain also did the math. It's reversed on the signing issues. He cleared the tactics he had deplored in South Carolina, his campaign pointing to the Democratic Barack Obama as being less than an American, sympathetic to terrorists, so do not trust him. Hate has crept into the rallies, stoked by Sarah Palin, the Vice President's choice that he has done nothing inflicted on the world. She recruited "mainstream media" as Trump shouted "False news!". His fans threatened the journalists and called for violence.
McCain could not contain it. Just when he took the microphone of a woman who said that Obama was a scary Arab – "No, love me, he's a decent family man," he told him – the crowd booed him.
The Republican Party no longer belonged to men like John McCain. And since then he has moved further away from him. Until now, a president in office can spend days attacking a dead man with almost absolute impunity.
We will learn more about the depths that Trump has dug, as the details of the Mueller report appear. But we already know the definite result.
He always draws with it.
Yvonne Abraham, columnist for the Globe, can be contacted at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @ GlobeAbraham.
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