The Ambitious Politician: Mitt Romney and John McCain

Politicians make their decisions based on the goals that they have for their career and life, and they use political parties to further their ambition. The politicians only use parties when they "are useful vehicles for solving problems that cannot be solved as effectively, if at all, through other means." Two of the most well known congressional decisions of the Trump presidency are the decision not to repeal the Affordable Care Act and the decision of the Senate not to remove the president from office. The central Senate figures in those two decisions were Senator McCain and Senator Romney, respectively, because of their decisions to vote against their party. The decisions of those two senators support the ambitious politician theory proposed by Aldrich because they both used parties to accomplish their goals and stopped using parties when they were no longer to their advantage.

John McCain was a partisan warrior throughout his career, and more specifically, a republican warrior. He ran for president twice and usually voted with the Republican party. During the 115th congress(2017-2018), McCain voted with other conservative Republicans such as Mitch McConnell ninety-two percent of the time and voted with Donald Trump eighty-three percent of the time. The primary disagreement between McCain and the Republican Party came when the republican congressmen were trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act(ACA). The ACA was an Obama era health care policy, and its repeal was one of the top priorities of Donald Trump when he got into office. John McCain was one of the deciding votes on the repeal and decided to vote against the republican party and keep the ACA.

John McCain's decision to vote against his party and defy one of his party's leaders might seem like it goes against any theory that argues for influential parties, but Aldrich bases his theory on the ambitious politician. The politician that uses the party only when it advances his or her goals. John McCain used the party to get elected as a senator, and also to run for president twice. McCain used the party until he no longer needed it; two weeks before his decision on the ACA, McCain was diagnosed with a terminal illness. This news of his imminent death changed McCain's goals from reelection to other things, such as ideology. McCain did not believe that the repeal would be the best decision for Americans. He did not support the ACA, but he had seen the struggle of lawmakers to improve on the ACA during the previous months and doubted that improvement would come after the repeal. McCain no longer had the burden of reelection and therefore no longer needed his party, so he could now focus more on his ideologies.

Similarly, Mitt Romney used political parties to achieve his goals until he could more easily achieve his ambitions without parties. A few weeks ago, Senator Romney had one of the defining moments of his career as a politician; the impeachment proceedings of Donald Trump. The House of Representatives impeached Donald Trump, and he was being tried in the Senate to see if he should be removed from office. The only Republican senator who voted against his or her party during the verdict was Senator Romney. Romney's decision left many people wondering why he voted for the removal of the president, especially when his vote did not matter. The reasons for his decision have similarities to McCain's but also differences.

Mitt Romney used parties throughout his political career to be elected and reelected, and stopped using them when he did not need them anymore. He ran as a pro-choice liberal to become the governor of Massachusetts and then ran as a pro-life conservative during his presidential campaign. These two examples show how Senator Romney has used parties to gain political traction. During his decision to convict Donald Trump on abuse of power, he had more to gain without his party than with it; he had the opportunity to gain historical and political prestige. Mitt Romney had the experience of seeing the popularity that John McCain gained with his decision on the ACA. Ten percent of Republicans viewed McCain less favorably, but 20 percent of Democrats viewed him more favorably, and his overall popularity amongst Americans increased by five percent. Mitt Romney's popularity has not been surveyed since the decision because it was only a few weeks ago. However, based on the media's response and historical precedence, Mitt Romney has become more popular in the country as a whole, and the majority of voters, not Republicans, agree with his decision. Romney also had historical prestige on the line and no longer has to worry about "history's rebuke or the censure of [his] own conscious." He now goes into the history book as a nonpartisan warrior, because he was the first senator to ever vote against his or her party's president in an impeachment trial.

Aldrich's ambitious politician theory acknowledges that both of these men may have made these decisions for the betterment of the nation, but their ambitions were also satisfied. They both made controversial decisions against their party when they were at the end of their careers and had very little to lose and a lot to gain.