Politicians From Arizona

""He’s kind of the Democratic version of John McCain," said Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.). "I say that partially in jest. But partially it’s true: Joe’s a hard guy to figure out how to lead. You know? He dances to his own music." Like McCain, the moonshine-swigging former quarterback isn’t afraid to let his colleagues know where he stands on a given day, either in the hallways of the Capitol or on cable news airwaves. Manchin often publicly discusses how he’s struggling with issues or tough votes."

"Few politicians who fail to win the presidency are subsequently judged to be giants in our history. Among the select few are Robert F. Kennedy, Barry Goldwater and Hubert H. Humphrey in the 20th century; Henry Clay, Daniel Webster and John C. Calhoun in the 19th century; and William Jennings Bryan, who straddled the two. There would certainly be lively debate about other political figures who deserve inclusion on such a list, and many non-politicians have earned places in our national story far more exalted than those of middling presidents and elected officials. As John McCain's contemporaries, we may be ill-positioned to insist with certainty that he will join the likes of Kennedy, Bryan and Clay as figures who were profoundly consequential though the White House eluded them."

"Our judgment may be clouded because McCain's personal virtues — his insistence on the importance of honor, his resolute candor, his graciousness toward adversaries, his willingness to sacrifice, his ability to laugh at himself and to admit to his failings — stand in such stark contrast to our current leadership, particularly the incumbent president. And while Bryan and Goldwater fundamentally changed their parties, McCain's eclectic independence makes it hard to define an ideology called McCainism that might serve as an enduring legacy."

"This is why McCain won so many liberal admirers, despite their many disagreements with him — particularly on the Iraq War, his deeply hawkish approach to foreign policy and his flip-flops on tax cuts. He also infuriated and befuddled them with his choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008, a decision that weakened his own wing of the party and ran counter to the seriousness of his approach to public life. And, given McCain's clearsightedness about who President Trump is, liberals wished he had taken the decisive step of upending his party's majority in the Senate. Yet it was impossible not to renew one's respect for McCain. He had a capacity to admit moral error that is rare among politicians of any stripe. He did this powerfully by calling himself out for pandering to voters in South Carolina's 2000 GOP primary by refusing to denounce the display of the Confederate flag at the state Capitol. He regularly put great things (the defense of the Western alliance on behalf of democracy above all) over petty things. He had a vision of the United States as a beacon of openness, thus his unwavering support for immigration reform, and of democracy as involving a government of equals, thus his consistent opposition to the outsize role of money in politics."

"One need not canonize McCain to appreciate him. On the contrary, the fact he was a politician who wanted to win means that he is a better model for other politicians than a saint. He could trim when he had to and sometimes brawled against opponents for reasons not of principle but of power — or just because he harbored a grudge. Yet the former prisoner of war did all he could to live up to words he revered from Viktor Frankl, the Holocaust survivor: "Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms — to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way." It is not easy to choose one's own way in ordinary life. It's even more difficult in politics. McCain will be long remembered because he kept faith with this obligation."

"The McCain campaign is creating a new category of campaign maneuver. I would call it self-punking. They keep doing this to themselves. When I talked to them today, I think they were pretty genuinely upset that they'd screwed this up, that there were young people running a finance operation who set this thing up. That's their story and they're sticking to it, and they may be right about that. But the fact is that the senior leadership in the McCain campaign surely knew about this, or they should have known about it. Clayton Williams is anathema to the very Democratic women voters McCain is saying he's going after."

"In terms of the relationship [between Gramm and McCain], I think, it's strong as ever and that … Phil Gramm's advice will be taken to heart."

"But Obama still insists on a 16-month withdrawal, which has become sort of a sliding scale, moving along with each passing month. Regardless of conditions, his strategy is to withdraw the troops in 16 months - not 12 or 24 - no matter when the clock starts ticking, whether it was 20 months ago or after he takes office in January 2009. McCain has refused to embrace any such arbitrary timetable, yet The New York Times insists that he must if the newspaper is going to print his opinion of the war. That is absurd, and it is journalistic malpractice. This is how radical The Times’ behavior is. In his article McCain chided Obama for setting a timetable for withdrawal, especially prior to his tour of Iraq and meeting with military leaders and Iraqi officials. That has been his position for several weeks. But The Times rejects that approach and insists that McCain actually embrace his opponent’s stand and violate his own previous pledges - or it would not publish his views. The Times ducked for cover by telling McCain this is standard practice at many newspapers, but I’m not familiar with any newspaper that has ever insisted a candidate, whether for town council or for president, change a position to match an opponent’s, in order to meet the newpaper’s op-ed requirements."

"Republican analysts, meanwhile, are surprised about how healthy their party's prospects look in a year when almost all indicators suggested they should lose. McCain remains competitive against Obama. He even leads in some key states. Indeed, some research predicts he could romp home against Obama. It is that prospect, Clinton supporters say, that leads them to keep fighting. They point to Obama's performance in North Carolina as a bellwether: it was his strong win there earlier this month that dealt an almost fatal blow to Clinton's chances. Yet, two weeks after that win, polls showed Clinton easily outperformed Obama there when measured against McCain. "Clinton has a very strong argument that she is a stronger candidate against McCain. It is just that it has fallen on deaf ears," said Mitchell."

"The problem for John McCain and George Bush is this: they have defined leaving as losing. Therefore, we cannot ever leave."

"Until last week, it was an open question which of these visions of McCain bore a closer relation to reality. But with the weeklong string of attacks uncorked by the Arizona senator and his people during Obama’s trip abroad and in its aftermath—some brutal, some mocking, but all personal and focused on Obama’s character—we now have an inkling of just how deep in the mud McCain and his people are willing to wallow in order to win in November: right up to their Republican eyeballs. As countless fact-checkers and tsk-tskers have maintained, the broadsides were a blend of distortion, innuendo, and outright slander. But that doesn’t mean they (and their inevitable successors) won’t prove effective, especially against an opponent with so little experience under ruthless and relentless fire. Before Obama hurled himself into the presidential scrum he’d never been hit with a negative ad—a point often raised by Hillary Clinton’s people. And though they made sure Obama lost his negative-spot virginity, the ads they ran against him were patty-cake compared with what he faces now. Hence the questions on which the general election may turn: Will Obama be capable of withstanding the pummeling the McCain forces have begun to unleash? Or, as Hillary privately predicted, will he crumple like a paper doll?"

"Many of McCain’s advisers from 2000, such as John Weaver and Mike Murphy, express qualms about the campaign’s newly nasty tone. (One can only imagine the sigh of relief emanating from Mark McKinnon, the heralded adman who helped McCain win the nomination but whose aversion to taking a cleaver to Obama caused him to sit out the general.) "In this kind of year—a change election, with big issues at stake—that sort of campaign is not gonna be in a voice the American people can understand," Weaver tells me. "And at some point, John will need the goodwill that he spent years achieving.” And you think he’s in danger of losing that? “This is not a cost-free exercise," he says. But Weaver, Murphy, and McKinnon are no longer guiding McCain. Instead, the motor behind his operation now is Steve Schmidt, the shaven-headed strategist who earned his bones running Karl Rove’s war room in 2004, Frenchifying and de-war-heroizing John Kerry. What Schmidt and his associates have apparently concluded is that McCain’s weaknesses—on the election’s most salient issues and as a candidate—are so pronounced and Obama’s vulnerabilities so glaring that the low road is their guy’s best, and maybe only, route to the White House. They’ve concluded, in other words, that even if McCain may not be able to win the election in any affirmative sense, he might still wind up behind the big desk if he and his people can strip the bark off Obama with sufficiently vicious force."

"The alternative, of course, is to get on offense, to batter McCain for his gaffes and incoherence, hammer him for his flip-flops, highlight how his maverick status is a thing of the past, and turn him into a combination of Bush and Grandpa Simpson. God knows there are those in Chicago champing at the bit to do just that—not least, one imagines, Obama’s chief strategist, David Axelrod, who can wield the cudgel of negative ads with as much vigor and glee as any Republican. Yet Obama seems reluctant to go there. Tough pol though he is, he’s a conciliator and not a confrontationalist at heart; he seems to believe that once undecided voters know him better, he will have them eating, along with so many others, out of the palm of his hand."

"A candidate may well change his or her position on, say, universal health care or Bosnia. But he or she cannot change the fact—if it happens to be a fact—that he or she is a pathological liar, or a dimwit, or a proud ignoramus. And even in the short run, this must and will tell."

"What possessed John McCain, with all of the makings to be a modern Daniel Webster, to descend into the depths of unprincipled contradictions?"

"And so Benet's opening description of Daniel Webster might have foretold Arizona U.S. senator John McCain, who fashioned himself a would-be president, once adored for his anti-establishmentarian streak and revered for his personal Vietnam War POW sacrifices. John McCain could have been Daniel Webster in dissuading misguided Americans from electing a fraudulent, dissembling, and America-loathing Barack Obama. Instead, John McCain ran an inept, cowardly, and deliberately underwhelming presidential campaign in 2008. McCain was AWOL on the campaign stump just eight weeks before election day. He squandered a respectable résumé, settling for a historical annotation as a ballot placeholder, enabling eight years of progressive and race-hustling hell. John McCain, unwilling to confront Barack Obama's elaborate deceptions and racial animus, surrendering to the nation's infatuation with identity politics, was scorned and rejected, shunted aside for a darling nobody."

"McCain could rejuvenate his forsaken ego only by emulating Ted Kennedy, self-anointed "Lion of the Senate." Flipping Benet's allegory, in 2008, McCain shunned the cloak of Daniel Webster, only to reveal the snakeskin one-piece jumpsuit tailored for Benet's soulless farmer. On the way to vainglorious heliocentricity, John McCain as a U.S. senator was unconvincing as a selfless statesman, an indefatigable advocate of his own press clippings. In his thirty years in the U.S. Senate, John McCain accomplished nothing, neither for his constituents nor for the nation. Yet he dreams of odes and eulogies, delivered by rivals and friends alike, for whom he could rarely muster a kind word, let alone a graceful final gesture."

"McCain gleefully bargained away, or more aptly auctioned off, his respected if not sympathetic heroic image – a man of inestimable courage and endurance under unimaginable circumstances. He morphed into an opportunistic sunshine patriot, malignantly self-centered, whose reward was fleeting adoration by media liberals using McCain to attack their antagonists when convenient. John McCain could be trusted for a sound bite trashing presidents of his own party and voting against the interest of everyday Americans when it mattered, but little else. His passing will be mourned, customarily so. Whatever demons having possessed John McCain's better instincts will mercifully search for a different host. Even Daniel Webster wouldn't be able to rescue McCain's ignoble political reputation."

"Unjustified war and unconstitutional abridgment of individual rights, versus ill-conceived tax and economic policies -- this is the difference between venial and mortal sins. John McCain would continue the Bush administration's commitment to interventionism and constitutional over-reach. Obama promises a humbler engagement with our allies, while promising retaliation against any enemy who dares attack us. … Based on his embrace of centrist advisers and policies, it seems likely that Obama will turn out to be in the mold of John Kennedy, who was fond of noting that "a rising tide lifts all boats." … Even if my hopes on domestic policy are dashed and Obama reveals himself as an unreconstructed, dyed in the wool, big government liberal, I'm still voting for him."

"In the end, Republican John McCain could not pilot his campaign through some of the stormiest skies ever faced by a presidential candidate. A global financial crisis and President Bush's unpopularity created a bad environment for any Republican candidate, campaign aides and analysts say, but McCain also created some of his own problems in his loss to Democrat Barack Obama. Among them: McCain's late-September decision to "suspend" his campaign in light of the economic crisis did not seem to impress voters. Republicans also are debating the wisdom of McCain's other key decision, the selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate. Beyond that, critics say, McCain struggled to find a compelling message, lurching from slogan to slogan."

"A great many Republicans have had their differences with Arizona Sen. John McCain over the years, and some of President Donald Trump’s biggest supporters are using the occasion of the release of the senator’s memoir to bash McCain in the sunset of his career and life. They take to Twitter to bash a guy who suffered torture for his country, lived a life of public service and consequence, and has the audacity to express his political opinions and preferences on who eulogizes him. You don’t have to love John McCain to know this is wrong and, as Jonah Goldberg put it, "grotesque.""

"It is true that those of us who supported George W. Bush over McCain in the 2000 GOP primary found his attacks against Bush to be whiny and irritating. McCain’s position and vitriolic statements on campaign finance "reform" were grating, especially when you consider that his legislation did the opposite of reforming the system. It drove money out of the hands of candidates and parties, and into the shadows of outside groups. McCain’s legacy on campaign finance, well-meaning as it may have been, is a broken system that he helped to drive fully off the rails."

"But he has been a loyal American and Republican all his life. He barnstormed the country for Bush in 2000 and 2004. I saw him on the campaign trail for Mitt Romney in 2012. He took on the mantle of Republican nominee for President in 2008, trying desperately to hold the White House for a party whose President was suffering from low approval ratings. Despite his ditching the GOP on a handful of issues (most recently Obamacare repeal), McCain has mostly been a solid citizen in the Senate. He has opposed wasteful spending (a Republican staple), and even now, serving under a President he clearly despises, votes for the Trump agenda 83% of the time, according to 538’s “Trump Tracker.” That’s a better “Trump Score” than Susan Collins, Mike Lee and Rand Paul, and nearly 22 points more than the tracker would expect based on the 2016 outcome in Arizona."

"As part of Social Security reform, I believe that private savings accounts are a part of it -- along the lines that President Bush proposed."

"As you know, there are al-Qaeda operatives that are taken back into Iran, given training as leaders, and they're moving back into Iraq."

"It's common knowledge and has been reported in the media that al-Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq. That's well known. We continue to be concerned about the Iranians taking al-Qaeda into Iran and training them and sending them back.... I am sorry, the Iranians are training extremists, not al-Qaeda, not al-Qaeda, I am sorry."

"Let me say that no one has supported President Bush on Iraq more than I have."

"We can be slow as well to give greatness its due, a mistake I made myself long ago when I voted against a federal holiday in memory of Dr. King. I was wrong. I was wrong. And eventually realized that, in time to give full support for a state holiday in Arizona. I'd remind you we can all be a little late sometimes in doing the right thing, and Dr. King understood this about his fellow Americans"

"We're no longer staring into the abyss of defeat and we can now look ahead to the genuine prospect of success."

"I think if you look at the overall record and millions of jobs have been created, et cetera, et cetera, you could make an argument that there's been great progress economically over that period of time. But that's no comfort. That's no comfort to families now that are facing these tremendous economic challenges. But let me just add, Peter, the fundamentals of America's economy are strong."

"In all candor, if I'd been President of the United States, I'd have ordered the plane landed at the nearest Air Force base, and I'd have been over here, ok?"

"To state the obvious, I thought it was wrong at the time... those statements and comments did not comport with the facts on the ground. … But do I blame [the President] for that specific banner? I can't blame him for that."

"I made it very clear, at that time, before and after, that we will not negotiate with terrorist organizations, that Hamas would have to abandon their terrorism, their advocacy to the extermination of the state of Israel, and be willing to negotiate in a way that recognizes the right of the state of Israel and abandons their terrorist position and advocacy."

"If I am elected President, I will work with anyone who sincerely wants to get this country moving again. I will listen to any idea that is offered in good faith and intended to help solve our problems, not make them worse. I will seek the counsel of members of Congress from both parties in forming government policy before I ask them to support it. I will ask Democrats to serve in my administration. My administration will set a new standard for transparency and accountability. I will hold weekly press conferences. I will regularly brief the American people on the progress our policies have made and the setbacks we have encountered. When we make errors, I will confess them readily, and explain what we intend to do to correct them. I will ask Congress to grant me the privilege of coming before both houses to take questions, and address criticism, much the same as the Prime Minister of Great Britain appears regularly before the House of Commons."

"We have drawn down to pre-surge levels."

"Let me just say again, We have drawn down. Three of the five brigades are home. The Marines, the additional Marines are home. By the end of July, they will have been back."

"Only a fool or a fraud talks tough or romantically about war."

"And I stopped beating my wife just a couple of weeks ago…"

"Maybe that’s a way of killing them."

"L.A. Times: You voted against coverage of birth control, [against] forcing health insurance companies to cover birth control in the past. Is that, is that still your position? John McCain: I'll look at my voting record on it, but … I don‘t recall the vote. L.A.Times: [Your campaign advisor's] statement was that it was unfair that health insurance companies [are forced by the government to] cover Viagra but not birth control. Do you have an opinion on that? John McCain: I don‘t know enough about it … I hadn‘t thought about it much."

"Vietnam vet: We haven't heard why you voted against your colleagues' proposals to increase health care funding in 2004, '05, '06, and '07, when we had troops coming back from two wars. Madow: Instead of the answer the questioner is looking for, McCain now takes credit for the GI bill and takes a political shot at Jim Webb. McCain: On the issue of the GI bill, I was disappointed that Senator Webb didn't support making it permanent. Senator Graham, other veterans and I will be looking to extend that to all veterans, not just 2001. I hope you'll urge Senator Webb to agree with that. McCain: I received every award from every major veterans' organization in America. The reason is I have a perfect voting record from organizations like Veterans of Foreign Wars, the American Legion, and all the other veterans service organizations because of my support of them. Vietnam vet: You do not have a perfect voting record by the DIV and the VFW. That's where these votes [of yours against increasing vet health care] are recorded. The votes were proposals by your colleagues in the Senate to increase health care funding of the VA in 2003, '04, '05, and '06 for troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, and you voted against those proposals. I can give you specific Senate votes, the numbers of those Senate votes right now. McCain: I thank you, and I'll examine your version of what my voting record is, but again, I've been endorsed in every election by all of the veterans' organizations that do that. I've been supported by them, and I've received their highest rewards, from all of those organizations, so I guess they don't know something you know. Rieckoff: [McCain's] voting record is not very strong. The Disabled American Veterans gave him a 20% rating out of 100. Our organization, the IAVA, gave him a D rating in the last voting session. He does not have a perfect voting record from the VFW. He's consistently voted against increased funding of the VA, and he's been a major opponent of the new GI bill."

"I was concerned about a couple of steps that the Russian government took in the last several days. One was reducing the energy supplies to Czechoslovakia."

"The first telephones cost a thousand dollars and they were about that big! We all remember that!"

"Diane Sawyer: Do you agree the situation in Afghanistan is precarious and urgent? McCain: Well, I think it‘s very serious. I think it‘s a serious situation. Sawyer: Not precarious and urgent? McCain: Oh, I don‘t know exactly—run through the vocabulary. But it‘s a very serious situation. But there‘s a lot of things we need to do. We have a lot of work to do and I‘m afraid that it‘s a very hard struggle, particularly given the situation on the Iraq/Pakistan border."

"There is nothing that's off the table. I have my positions and I'll articulate them. But nothing's off the table."

"I will not raise your taxes, nor support a tax increase."

"At the moment of conception."

"I think — I’ll have my staff get to you. It’s condominiums where — I’ll have them get to you."

"Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation."

"You know that there’s been tremendous turmoil in our financial markets and Wall Street. And it is – it’s – people are frightened by these events. Our economy, I think, still, the fundamentals are – of our economy are strong, but these are very, very difficult times. And I promise you, we will never put America in this position again. We will clean up Wall Street. We will reform government."