What Is Honor?

It was just last weekend that we heard Meghan McCain talk about “the America of John McCain…”  It was just last Saturday that we heard former President George W. Bush eulogize John McCain saying, “Some lives are so vivid, it is difficult to imagine them ended.  Some voices are so vibrant and distinctive, it is hard to think of them stilled.  A man who seldom rested is laid to rest.  And his absence is tangible, like the silence after a mighty roar.”  We heard former President Obama say, “…we honor him best, by recognizing that there are some things bigger than party or ambition, or money, or fame, or power.  That there’s some things that are worth risking everything for.  Principles that are eternal.  Truths that are abiding.  At his best, John showed us what that means.”  It seems like only yesterday that I heard 95-year-old Henry A. Kissinger define honor.  “Honor, it is an intangible quality, not obligatory.  It has no code.  It reflects an inward compulsion, free of self interest.  It fulfills a cause, not a personal ambition, it represents what a society lives for beyond the necessities of the moment….The world will be lonelier without John McCain, his faith in America…None of us will forget how even in his parting John has bestowed on us a much needed moment of unity and renewed faith in the possibilities of America.  Henceforth, the country’s honor is ours to sustain.”

Then came the tumult of this week which began with the Kavanaugh hearings in the Senate.  This was followed by Bob Woodward’s published excerpts from his forthcoming book which “included examples of Trump’s cabinet officials and senior aides bulking at his orders, defying his commands and privately disparaging him to others.”  This “Breaking News” as the media calls it was followed by The New York Times “Breaking News” of yesterday, when the newspaper published an anonymous opinion article written by a senior administration official.  This Op Ed stated (anonymously) that “a handful of appointees, serving at the highest levels of the Trump administration, consider the president to be ‘amoral,’ and on the precipice of dangerous decisions that could put the country at risk.”  What happened to “the country’s honor,” the “honor” Henry Kissinger said, “is ours to sustain?” 

Is there honor in cabinet officials and senior aides disparaging their boss? Why don’t they resign if they find him so repugnant? There is little about Mr. Trump that bespeaks of honor. Does association with him, working for him, make others like him?  Is that why they can tell Woodward one thing and tell the public the very opposite?  If Woodward’s book is fiction as the president claims—then Woodward is the one without honor.  

There are few times when I agree with anything Mr. Trump says, but I do join him in saying that the anonymous “senior official” who wrote the Op Ed is “gutless!”  I do not agree with Mr. Trump when he says the Op Ed is “Treason,” or when he insists that The  NY Times turn over the name of the anonymous author.  It is difficult to know what is honorable and what is not, and it is only through wrestling with the difficulty, I suppose,  that  true honor is born in any of us.