Start with McCain’s dramatic return to the Senate. Trump, who famously derided McCain during the presidential campaign (and had issued a strangely terse statement after his diagnosis) suddenly lauded McCain as a hero:

So great that John McCain is coming back to vote. Brave - American hero! Thank you John. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 25, 2017

Some liberals held out a weird hope that McCain would dramatically return to the floor, play the maverick, and defeat the vote to open debate; or they hoped he’d vote against it just to spite Trump. He didn’t. After much anticipation, and a thunderous ovation, he cast his vote to open debate, thus guaranteeing a 50-50 tie for Pence to break. Trump was delighted:

.@SenJohnMcCain-Thank you for coming to D.C. for such a vital vote. Congrats to all Rep. We can now deliver grt healthcare to all Americans! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 25, 2017

The speech McCain delivered after he cast the vote was a peculiar one, and in retrospect one to which Trump (and perhaps McConnell) should have paid closer attention. McCain lamented the departure from the slow, deliberative process of the Senate. He pled for bipartisanship. He warned that victory per se was not more important than the nature of that victory.

“It is our responsibility to preserve that, even when it requires us to do something less satisfying than winning, even when we must give a little to get a little,” he said. “Even when our efforts manage just three yards and a cloud of dust, while critics on both sides denounce us for timidity, for our failure to ‘triumph.’”

He also indicated that the proposals that McConnell was pushing—no one had yet seen any actual legislative text—were not to his liking.

“We try to do this by coming up with a proposal behind closed doors in consultation with the administration, then springing it on skeptical members, trying to convince them that it's better than nothing,” he said. “That it's better than nothing? Asking us to swallow our doubts and force it past a unified opposition—I don't think that's going to work in the end, and probably shouldn't.”

McCain’s speech engendered two major reactions. Some people took it as a rousing message and a profile in old-school Washington principles. Others, including me, found the exercise a bit strange. Here was McCain, pleading for a return to regular order, but then justifying his vote on procedure. He seemed to be trying to have it both ways: Having declared that the world was upside down, he was stubbornly insisting on voting as though it were right-side up. In retrospect, that view was not entirely wrong, but it was too harsh. McCain’s logic still makes limited sense, but he proved that he would remain true to it with his vote Friday morning.

In explaining his vote, McCain correctly described the bill as barely deserving the name. His close friend Lindsey Graham seemed to share similar objections to the bill, but agreed to vote for it after Speaker Paul Ryan agreed to a conference committee with the House. Graham seemed to believe that, even though the House plans had been more conservative than the Senate ones, and even though no GOP plan thus proffered would lower premiums and expand care, a Hail Mary in conference would somehow solve the problem. McCain wasn’t buying that deviation from standard process.