![\"TUCSON,](\"http:\/\/theintercept.imgix.net\/wp-uploads\/sites\/1\/2018\/08\/mccain-palin-1535393276-e1535393321716-1024x694.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&q=90\")
<\/p>\nSen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin attend a campaign rally at Pima County Fairgrounds, March 26, 2010, in Tucson, Ariz. Photo: Darren Hauck\/Getty Images<\/h5>\n<\/div>\n
WHAT IF JOHN MCCAIN<\/u>\u00a0hadn\u2019t run for president in 2008?<\/p>\n
Donald Trump might not be sitting in the White House today.<\/p>\n
At first glance, that might sound odd. The six-term Republican senator, who passed away Saturday, has been\u00a0hailed<\/a>\u00a0as an\u00a0outspoken opponent<\/a>\u00a0of the president, while Trump himself\u00a0despised<\/a>\u00a0McCain and famously\u00a0claimed<\/a>\u00a0the former prisoner of the Vietcong was \u201cnot a war hero.\u201d<\/p>\n McCain has also been held up, by both right and left alike, as an exemplar of political civility, integrity, and decency; a nonracist Republican;\u00a0the<\/em>anti-Trump. Bernie Sanders\u00a0called<\/a>\u00a0him \u201ca man of decency and honor;\u201d Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez\u00a0praised<\/a>\u00a0him as an \u201cunparalleled example of human decency.\u201d<\/p>\n Nothing could be further from the truth. Even if you discount the fact that McCain once\u00a0publicly dismissed<\/a>\u00a0his wife as a \u201ccunt.\u201d Or that he\u00a0referred<\/a>\u00a0to two of his fellow Republican senators as a \u201cfucking jerk\u201d and an \u201casshole.\u201d Or that he\u00a0mocked<\/a>\u00a0Chelsea Clinton, then a teenager, as \u201cugly.\u201d Or that he\u00a0refused to apologize<\/a>\u00a0for calling his Vietnamese captors \u201cgooks.\u201d Or that he\u00a0slammed<\/a>\u00a0anti-war protesters as \u201clow-life scum.\u201d<\/p>\n Ignore all of that and you\u2019re still left with his hate-mongering, race-baiting, Trump-precursing 2008 presidential campaign \u2014\u00a0against<\/em>\u00a0the first black Democratic nominee for the White House. How\u00a0have the vitriol and smears of a decade ago been so easily forgotten by his eulogizers? So casually consigned to the media memory hole?<\/p>\n Remember: McCain\u00a0introduced<\/a>\u00a0the loathsome Palin to the world in August 2008, when he plucked her from Alaskan obscurity and made her his running mate. In doing so, he granted prestige, influence, and credibility to a know-nothing demagogue and conspiracy theorist; a woman who thrived on racial and cultural resentment and would later become a leading figure in both the\u00a0tea party<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0\u201cbirther\u201d movement<\/a>. Sound familiar? Palin, as the Washington Post\u2019s Dana Milbank\u00a0wrote<\/a>\u00a0in 2016, was \u201cpolitically, the Mother of Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n As even Nicolle Wallace, MSNBC host and former adviser to McCain,\u00a0conceded<\/a>\u00a0during the 2016 campaign: \u201cMr. Trump is riding the wave of anxiety that Ms. Palin first gave voice to as Senator John McCain\u2019s running mate. Mr. Trump has now usurped and vastly expanded upon Ms. Palin\u2019s constituency, but the connection between the two movements is undeniable.\u201d<\/p>\n Is it any wonder then that the New York Times\u2019s Jonathan Martin, in an otherwise\u00a0fawning piece<\/a>\u00a0on the late Arizona senator in May, observed how \u201cmany in Mr. McCain\u2019s own party believe that, by selecting Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008, he bears at least a small measure of blame for unleashing the forces of grievance politics and nativism within the Republican Party\u201d?<\/p>\n Remember also: McCain has never apologized for picking Palin. As Martin\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0in his piece, McCain did express regret that he hadn\u2019t selected his friend and fellow\u00a0Sen. Joe Lieberman as his 2008 running mate, but \u201che continues to defend Ms. Palin\u2019s performance.\u201d Yes, her racist and conspiratorial performance.\u00a0That\u00a0<\/em>performance.<\/p>\n It\u2019s easy, though, to blame all of the Trumpish campaign of 2008 on the former governor of Alaska. It was McCain, however, who unleashed and empowered her \u2014 and failed to restrain or rebuke her as she incited\u00a0angry crowds<\/a>\u00a0against Obama. \u201cThe growing furor in the Republican Party was something that we, as a campaign, failed to address,\u201d\u00a0admitted<\/a>\u00a0Wallace. And, while it was Palin who shamelessly accused Obama of \u201cpalling around with terrorists<\/a>\u201d and dog-whistled to rally-goers that the black Democrat wasn\u2019t \u201ca man who sees America the way you and I see America<\/a>,\u201d\u00a0it was McCain who spent much of the days and weeks before the election\u00a0trying to tie Obama<\/a>\u00a0to his former acquaintance, Bill Ayers, the co-founder of a Vietnam War-era militant group. It was McCain who authorized his campaign spokesperson to\u00a0remind reporters<\/a>\u00a0of \u201cBarack Obama\u2019s long association with a domestic terrorist.\u201d The spokesperson added, \u201cThe American people know radical when they hear it, and John McCain is not the candidate in this election they should be concerned about.\u201d<\/p>\n You think shouting \u201clock her up<\/a>\u201d\u00a0and \u201cCNN sucks<\/a>\u201d at Trump rallies is bad? McCain-Palin rallies in 2008 featured Republican supporters in the audience\u00a0shouting<\/a>\u00a0\u201cTraitor!\u201d, \u201cTerrorist!\u201d, \u201cOff with his head!\u201d, and \u201cKill him!\u201d at the mere mention of Obama\u2019s name. \u201cWatch the tape of the guy screaming, \u2018He\u2019s a terrorist!\u2019 McCain seems to shudder at that, he rolls his eyes \u2026 and I thought for a moment he\u2019d admonish the man. But he didn\u2019t,\u201d\u00a0wrote<\/a>\u00a0Joe Klein in Time magazine on October 9, 2008. \u201cTrue enough: he no longer has his honor. But we are on the edge of some real serious craziness here and it would be nice if McCain did the right thing and told his more bloodthirsty supporters to go home and take a cold shower. But McCain hasn\u2019t done the right thing all year.\u201d<\/p>\n On October 11, 2008, Democratic congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis\u00a0lambasted<\/a>\u00a0both McCain and Palin for \u201csowing the seeds of hatred and division\u201d and even compared their dangerous campaign rhetoric to that of arch-segregationist George Wallace.<\/p>\n Some conservatives expressed outrage with McCain, too. David Frum\u00a0accused<\/a>\u00a0him of \u201cwhipping Republicans and conservatives into a fury that is going to be very hard to calm after November.\u201d Andrew Sullivan\u00a0urged<\/a>\u00a0the Arizona senator to desist from dangerous and inflammatory attacks on a young, black Democrat: \u201cFor God\u2019s sake, McCain, stop it. For once in this campaign, put your country first.\u201d Republican activist and former McCain ally Frank Schaeffer\u00a0denounced<\/a>\u00a0the GOP presidential candidate for \u201cplaying with fire,\u201d unleashing a \u201cmonster of American hate and prejudice,\u201d and holding rallies that \u201care beginning to look, sound, feel and smell like lynch mobs.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet, astonishingly, all of this has been whitewashed from McCain\u2019s political record. None of it makes an appearance in the raft of\u00a0unctuous<\/a>\u00a0obituaries<\/a>\u00a0that have been published since Saturday. Instead, a\u00a0single moment<\/a>from that campaign \u2014 in which a woman at a town hall accused Obama of being \u201can Arab\u201d and McCain replied by saying, \u201cNo ma\u2019am, he\u2019s a decent family man\u201d \u2014 has become the only thing anyone seems to remember from it. Over the past couple of days, the clip of that exchange has\u00a0gone viral<\/a>\u00a0on Twitter, with everyone from former Bush administration official\u00a0Fran Townsend<\/a>\u00a0to liberal author\u00a0Stephen King<\/a>, citing it as proof of the late senator\u2019s \u201ccharacter and integrity\u201d and his \u201cfinest moment.\u201d<\/p>\n Sorry, what? I have\u00a0never understood<\/a>\u00a0how this was a badge of honor for McCain \u2014 nor do many\u00a0Arab-Americans<\/a>, for that matter. Actor Ben Affleck\u00a0summed up<\/a>\u00a0the problem on \u201cReal Time with Bill Maher\u201d a few days after the incident. \u201cWhat if someone said, \u2018I heard he\u2019s a Jew.\u2019 \u2018No, no, he\u2019s not a Jew, he\u2019s alright \u2026 he\u2019s a decent guy\u2019?\u201d Affleck asked the audience. \u201c\u2018Arab\u2019 and \u2018good person\u2019 are not antithetical to one another. \u2026 We\u2019ve allowed this idea where denying \u2026 that Obama is not an Arab, nor is he a Muslim, we\u2019ve allowed that denial to turn into the acceptance of both of those things as a legitimate slur.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2008, McCain could have pushed back against this idea, expressed by the increasingly Trumpish GOP rank and file, that there was something wrong with being Arab or Muslim; after all, his fellow Republican and Vietnam veteran Colin Powell\u00a0did so rather eloquently<\/a>\u00a0on television<\/a>around the same time. But, no, McCain, whether wittingly or unwittingly, allowed a distinction to be drawn between being an Arab and being a decent family man. Some suggest he should be given the benefit of the doubt on that remark because it was a spur-of-the-moment, off-the-cuff response to a rambling and racist questioner; his intent, they say, was noble.<\/p>\n Maybe. But context matters. How do you explain the rest of his shoddy election campaign? Shamefully, he ran for president while repeatedly claiming his black opponent was a friend of terrorists. Embarrassingly, he chose to give the nativist Palin a national platform she didn\u2019t deserve. Disgracefully, he stayed silent as his own supporters called for the killing and beheading of Obama.<\/p>\n So the reality is this: if you were drawing up a list of Americans who share blame for the rise of Donald Trump, John McCain\u2019s name would have to be somewhere near the top of it. With the noxious Palin at his side, the Arizona senator ran a nasty, bigoted, and desperate presidential campaign in 2008 that\u00a0paved the way<\/a>\u00a0for Trump and Trumpism in 2016.<\/p>\n And you don\u2019t have to take my word for it. It\u2019s been\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0that McCain requested for Obama to speak at his funeral. Perhaps the former president can start his eulogy by repeating aloud what he\u00a0told New York magazine\u2019s Jonathan Chait<\/a>\u00a0in October 2016: \u201cI see a straight line from the announcement of Sarah Palin as the vice-presidential nominee to what we see today in Donald Trump \u2026 and the shift in the center of gravity for the Republican Party.\u201d<\/p>\n Thanks, John McCain. Thanks a lot.<\/p>\n