“Revenge is a dish best served cold.”

It’s a terrible old cliché, but it unavoidably comes to mind in the case of John McCain’s dramatic destruction of Donald Trump’s proposed repeal of Obamacare.

When he arrived for the vote McCain, who could easily have pleaded ill-health and simply stayed out of the whole thing, told assembled reporters to “wait for the show”.

The wait was worth it.

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Because of McCain’s unexpected intervention, Trump narrowly lost his bill, was duly humiliated and, obviously, turned to Twitter to vent his anger and frustration.

It was a typically Trumpish response, too – un-statesmanlike, vindictive – even towards the American people he is supposed to serve, and childish: “3 Republicans and 48 Democrats let the American people down. As I said from the beginning, let ObamaCare implode, then deal. Watch!”

So McCain is doubly heroic – once for serving his country in the Vietnam War, and his suffering was ridiculed by Trump during the 2016 election campaign; now again for his service to ordinary Americans who endure their own pain because they cannot afford to pay for a doctor to treat them. The Congressional Budget Committee says that some 15 million people would have lost their health care coverage if Trumpcare had been passed. Now they are probably safe, as Trump has suffered such a decisive defeat.

Was it McCain’s act of revenge? I hope so. Trump certainly deserved it. It isn’t a competition, but I found Trump’s denigration of McCain over being captured in Vietnam one of the most offensive things he has said or done over a lifetime. (“He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”)

Senators vote down Trump healthcare bill that 'would kill 20,000 people'

The remark is a living monument to offensiveness: the alternative Trump Tower of insults.

It’s worth comparing the two men’s war records. In brief: Trump hasn’t got one, McCain has.

Born in 1946, Trump was of prime military age when the Vietnam War was at its peak in the mid-1960s and early 1970s. The draft saw many young Americans of Trump’s generation, disproportionately poor and black, sent off to fight communism, and 58,220 of them didn’t come back. Trump had four draft deferrals, including for college and for a bone spur in his foot. While John Kerry also served with distinction (though his war record was also to come under unfair attack), Al Gore went on to become a forces journalist and even George W Bush did some time with the domestic National Guard (though well away from any whiff of napalm in the morning), the athletically built Trump sat the whole ugly episode out.

Imagine what a fine leader of men Trump would have been during the Tet Offensive or on an Apocalpyse Now-style expedition up the Mekong River to smash the Viet Cong. Or maybe he would have been like the good-hearted, old-fashioned hero portrayed by John Wayne in The Green Berets? Trump’s innate abilities could have seen him grow into the Eisenhower of his age. Or maybe Lieutenant Trump would have just spent his time bragging about his money, lounging around the officers’ mess, stuffing his face, chasing skirt and ridiculing the Vietnamese and men under him, more liability than asset in the struggle to win hearts and minds?

Years on, still unabashed, Trump even had the effrontery to question the loyalty of Muslim members of the American forces, and Khizr Khan, father of a boy killed in action, put it bluntly to Trump: “You have sacrificed nothing and no one.” When Trump was asked about what he himself had done for his country by George Stephanopoulos, only a man possessed of Trump’s unbalanced ego could have come out with the response: “I think I’ve made a lot of sacrifices. I work very, very hard. I’ve created thousands and thousands of jobs, tens of thousands of jobs, built great structures. I’ve had tremendous success. I think I’ve done a lot.”

John McCain gave rather more for his country. He was captured, yes, but who expected him to commit hari-kari rather than be interned? Since when was that ever US policy? Was every POW a coward? Maybe so in Trump’s world. Should a serving navy pilot such as McCain resist torture? Yes. As McCain did. For refusing to betray his comrades and his country and refusing an offer of early release he, already badly injured after his plane crashed, was beaten repeatedly, contracted dysentery and was in such bad shape that he couldn’t feed himself. The “Hanoi Hilton” they called the hell hole he was in; it was no gilded Trump Tower.

So McCain would certainly have had good personal cause to avenge himself against Trump. No-one would blame him for it. Yet McCain is a more patriotic, grown up statesman than that. He has gone to Vietnam and met representatives of the regime that almost murdered him in the name of reconciliation. He has always put country before himself or his party. He isn’t cruel to others. He has nothing to prove. He is the antidote to Trump, and the world should be grateful that America can produce figures such as him.

Revenge and resentment do look to be the wellsprings of Donald Trump’s political ambitions. Maybe the only reason the world has him in the White House today, and the only reason he is so set upon tearing up Barack Obama’s personal legacy, is because Obama made such a fool of Trump at a White House dinner back in 2011. Sitting there, unable to hit back, Trump endured gag after gag at his expense. It hurt, and we know what Trump’s reaction to that is: seek revenge. Look also at the highly personal, and frankly mad, way Trump supported the Obama “birther” conspiracy theories. One of Trump’s own allies, Roger Stone, has suggested as much, saying the 45th President was “motivated” by the way President Obama poked fun at him and his TV show The Apprentice: “These are the kinds of decisions that keep me up at night,” sneered Obama, talking about which kid to fire on the show.

As has been noted elsewhere, and more than most times in history, American politics has come to resemble some sort of Shakespearean mash-up, with the same timeless themes driving policies and the bizarre personalities of the Trump administration.