{"id":31414,"date":"2018-10-22T21:21:34","date_gmt":"2018-10-23T01:21:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationalcenter.org\/?p=31414"},"modified":"2019-04-25T13:39:51","modified_gmt":"2019-04-25T17:39:51","slug":"in-renaming-senate-building-is-any-candidate-perfect-by-christopher-arps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalcenter.org\/ncppr\/2018\/10\/22\/in-renaming-senate-building-is-any-candidate-perfect-by-christopher-arps\/","title":{"rendered":"In Renaming Senate Building, Is Any Candidate Perfect? by Christopher Arps"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

John McCain, the late Arizona senator and former presidential nominee, was referred to as a \u201cmaverick\u201d by his colleagues and the media for his fierce independence.<\/p>\n

McCain, who began his service to our nation as a Navy pilot and then became a prisoner of war in Vietnam, received many accolades and honors over the years. But the latest proposed honor is stirring a bit of controversy. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has proposed renaming the Richard Russell Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill in honor of McCain.<\/p>\n

\"Christopher<\/a>

Christopher Arps<\/p><\/div>\n

Simple enough, right? Until I started working for former senator Jim Talent, R-Missouri, after his 2002 election, I had no idea there were office buildings in the shadow of the U.S. Capitol named after notable senators and congressmen. I just assumed members and their staff all had offices in the Capitol building itself.<\/p>\n

Ironically, the Talent office was in the Russell Building.<\/p>\n

That led me to get an education about who Richard Brevard Russell Jr. was.<\/p>\n

Representing Georgia as both its governor and a senator, Russell, a Democrat, served in the Senate from 1933 until his death in 1971. Despite being a New Deal progressive and ally of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, he later became the unofficial chairman of the Senate\u2019s bipartisan and informal \u201cconservative coalition\u201d that brought together northern Republicans and southern Democrats.<\/p>\n

While anti-union, this coalition was also known for its opposition to civil rights legislation. Illinois senator Everett Dirksen, a Republican and another member of that coalition, later broke with them and helped form another coalition to secure the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Dirksen, by the way, has the building next to the Russell Building named after him.<\/p>\n

Russell, with ardent segregationist Senator Strom Thurmond, created the 1956 \u201cSouthern Manifesto\u201d that laid out opposition to racial integration of public places. It was drafted to counter the landmark Brown v. Board of Education<\/em> school desegregation decision handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court two years earlier.<\/p>\n

The building should have never been named after a segregationist in the first place \u2014 even if he did have a distinguished career that saw him rise to the position of committee chairman and president pro tempore. It is fitting for this building to be renamed in John McCain\u2019s honor.<\/p>\n

But are Schumer\u2019s motivations fully transparent? It could be argued that there\u2019s more politics in the mix than praise. While Schumer gets to brush an embarrassing legacy of a member of his own party under the rug, he gets to further advance the stature of a very vocal critic of President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n

In one of his last acts of maverick moves, McCain\u2019s pivotal \u201cthumbs-down\u201d gesture on the Senate floor during the Obamacare debate saved it from being repealed and relegated to the dustbin of bad legislative ideas. Even McCain\u2019s funeral was considered a political event.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, many of those who laud McCain now didn\u2019t like his maverick ways when he ran against Barack Obama for the White House in 2008. Back then, he was called a racist for the things he called his Vietnamese captors. He was criticized for voting against making Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.\u2019s birthday a federal holiday. He was branded Islamophobic in 2013 for referring to former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a \u201cmonkey.\u201d He was criticized for voting to confirm Justice Neil Gorsuch, and who knows what would have happened to his legacy among liberals if he lived long enough to support Brett Kavanaugh.<\/p>\n

With this in mind, when might people clamoring for a McCain Senate Office Building to be renamed? Bloomberg Opinion recently suggested that \u201cCongress should adopt a retroactive rule requiring that the naming of federal buildings come with a 50-year sunset clause.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shouldn\u2019t greatness stand the test of time? If you can\u2019t find greatness, perhaps don\u2019t name the building after anyone at all.<\/p>\n

This might be why Schumer didn\u2019t previously suggest the Russell Building be named for the late senator Edward M. Kennedy.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

Christopher Arps<\/a>, a member of the Project 21 national advisory council, is a managing partner with the digital media and political consulting firm Capitol Consulting Group LLC. He is also the co-founder of Move-On-Up.org, a 43-state network of conservative and moderate black Americans. This was originally published by InsideSources<\/a>.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\n

New Visions Commentaries reflect the views of their author, and not necessarily those of Project 21<\/a>, other Project 21 members, or the National Center for Public Policy Research, its board or staff.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John McCain, the late Arizona senator and former presidential nominee, was referred to as a \u201cmaverick\u201d by his colleagues and the media for his fierce independence. McCain, who began his service to our nation as a Navy pilot and then became a prisoner of war…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":31299,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,60],"tags":[84],"yoast_head":"\nIn Renaming Senate Building, Is Any Candidate Perfect? by Christopher Arps - The National Center<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/nationalcenter.org\/ncppr\/2018\/10\/22\/in-renaming-senate-building-is-any-candidate-perfect-by-christopher-arps\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"The National Center\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/nationalcenter.org\/ncppr\/2018\/10\/22\/in-renaming-senate-building-is-any-candidate-perfect-by-christopher-arps\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/nationalcenter.org\/ncppr\/2018\/10\/22\/in-renaming-senate-building-is-any-candidate-perfect-by-christopher-arps\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"The National Center\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/nationalcenter.org\/#\/schema\/person\/b8ca6710c21895f6ce418b5cc391bb6f\"},\"headline\":\"In Renaming Senate Building, Is Any Candidate Perfect? 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