Members Of The United States Senate

"We have dealt a serious blow to Al Qaeda in recent years, but they're not defeated, and they'll strike us again, if they can. Iran remains the chief state sponsor of terrorism and is on the path to acquiring nuclear weapons."

"Sen. Obama thinks we can achieve energy independence without more drilling and without more nuclear power. But Americans know better than that. We must use all resources and develop all technologies necessary to rescue our economy from the damage caused by rising oil prices and restore the health of our planet."

"Some may choose a better public school. Some may choose a private one. Many will choose a charter school. But they will have the choice, and their children will have that opportunity. Sen. Obama wants our schools to answer to unions and entrenched bureaucrats. I want schools to answer to parents and students."

"In this country, we believe everyone has something to contribute and deserves the opportunity to reach their God-given potential, from the boy whose descendents arrived on the Mayflower to the Latina daughter of migrant workers. We're all God's children, and we're all Americans. We believe -- we believe in low taxes, spending discipline, and open markets. We believe in rewarding hard work and risk-takers and letting people keep the fruits of their labor."

"We lost -- we lost the trust of the American people when some Republicans gave in to the temptations of corruption. We lost their trust when rather than reform government, both parties made it bigger. We lost their trust when instead of freeing ourselves from a dangerous dependence on foreign oil, both parties -- and Sen. Obama -- passed another corporate welfare bill for oil companies. We lost their trust when we valued our power over our principles. We're going to change that."

"I fight for the family of Matthew Stanley of Wolfeboro, New Hampshire. Matthew died serving our country in Iraq. I wear his bracelet and think of him every day. I intend to honor their sacrifice by making sure the country their son loved so well and never returned to remains safe from its enemies."

"I don't mind a good fight. For reasons known only to God, I've had quite a few tough ones in my life. But I learned an important lesson along the way: In the end, it matters less that you can fight. What you fight for is the real test."

"I've fought for the right strategy and more troops in Iraq when it wasn't the popular thing to do."

"I don't work for myself. I work for you. I've fought corruption, and it didn't matter if the culprits were Democrats or Republicans. They violated their public trust, and they had to be held accountable."

"Change is coming."

"I've found just the right partner to help me shake up Washington, Gov. Sarah Palin of the great state of Alaska. ... She has an executive experience and a real record of accomplishment. She's tackled tough problems, like energy independence and corruption. She's balanced a budget, cut taxes, and she's taken on the special interests. She's reached across the aisle and asked Republicans, Democrats, and independents to serve in her administration. She's the wonderful mother of five children. She's -- she's helped run a small business. She's worked with her hands and knows -- and knows what it's like to worry about mortgage payments, and health care, and the cost of gasoline and groceries. She knows where she comes from, and she knows who she works for. She stands up for what's right, and she doesn't let anyone tell her to sit down."

"All you've ever asked of your government is to stand on your side and not in your way. And that's what I intend to do: stand on your side and fight for your future."

"John and I sure had those fights, and we sure had that friendship. I am just glad we never found ourselves in opposite dugouts. You see, John and I spent years as neighbors in the Russell Building. Often, when softball season rolled around, our offices would take the field together as one united McTeam, we called it. As a seriously wounded war hero and a childhood polio survivor, I would have to say John and I didn't exactly have the makings of an elite double-play duo. I took the mound once or twice, but I admit, we mostly offered moral support. Moral support. Really, that is what John McCain gave this body and this country for so long. His memory will continue to give it because while John proudly served with us as the Senator from Arizona, he was America's hero all along. Just this month, Congress finalized a major bill for our All-Volunteer Armed Forces that we named after John. This might seem like a small detail, but, really, it was a fitting capstone for a career so thoroughly defined by service in and then service for the ranks of those who wear our Nation's uniform."

"When John saw an issue the same way you did, you knew you had just found your most stalwart ally. You would thank your lucky stars because when you found yourself on the other side of that table, as I think all of us learned, you were in for a different kind of unforgettable experience. Either way, serving alongside John was never a dull affair. I found myself on both sides of that table over the years. John and I stood shoulder to shoulder on some of the most important issues to each of us, and we also disagreed entirely on huge subjects that helped define each of our careers. John treated every day, every issue, with the intensity and seriousness that the legislative process deserves. He would fight like mad to bring the country closer to his vision of the common good. But when the day's disputes were over, that very same man was one of our most powerful reminders that so much more unites us than divides us; that we should be able to differ completely on policy and stay united in love of our country."

"Madam President, on Saturday evening, a great loss echoed throughout our country. Six decades of patriotic service came to an end. We have suspected for some time that we would bid farewell to our colleague, the senior Senator from Arizona, John McCain. John took full advantage of the months since his diagnosis. His hard work continued, but happy reminiscing, fond farewells, final reflections, and time with family actually came to the fore. I was privileged to spend a small share of that time with John. We sat on his back porch in Sedona under the desert sky, replaying old times. John did things his way these last months. For his colleagues here, the time confirmed a sad but obvious truth: The Senate won't be the same without John McCain. I think it is fair to say that the passion John brought to his work was unsurpassed in this body. In more than 30 years as a Senator, he never failed to marshal a razor-sharp wit, a big heart, and, of course, a fiery spirit."

"Feinstein is a trailblazer and one of the most successful women in American political history, but not one of its greatest senators. Feinstein has never been connected to a singular important issue, as the late Ted Kennedy was with healthcare. Nor has she authored any landmark legislation, as John McCain and Russ Feingold did with their namesake 2002 campaign finance reform bill."

"I remembered what John used to tell me—that if you get in a fight with a pig, you both get dirty, and the pig likes it."

"My husband, John McCain, never viewed himself as larger than life—but he was. He believed in fighting for the good and never quitting, and he had more tenacity and resolve than anybody I ever met."

"He passed the way he lived, on his own terms, surrounded by the people he loved, in the place he loved best."

"Just because a candidate's opponent says something is true about that candidate doesn't necessarily mean you should lead with it."

"This is not the way a tested hero behaves. … It's like we caught him getting a manicure or something."

"The noble simplicity of sentiment in McCain’s tweets is a world removed from Trump’s gaudy and boastful displays. And McCain’s demonstration of character and courage is a far more reliable guide to American greatness than the pronouncements of a president who speaks of it nonstop and embodies it not at all."

"I have known and been friends with John McCain for almost 22 years. But every day now I learn something new about candidate McCain. To those who still believe in the myth of a maverick instead of the reality of a politician, I say, let's compare Senator McCain to candidate McCain. Candidate McCain now supports the wartime tax cuts that Senator McCain once denounced as immoral. Candidate McCain criticizes Senator McCain's own climate change bill. Candidate McCain says he would now vote against the immigration bill that Senator McCain wrote. Are you kidding? Talk about being for it before you're against it. Let me tell you, before he ever debates Barack Obama, John McCain should finish the debate with himself. And what's more, Senator McCain, who once railed against the smears of Karl Rove when he was the target, has morphed into candidate McCain who is using the same "Rove" tactics and the same "Rove" staff to repeat the same old politics of fear and smear. Well, not this year, not this time. The Rove-McCain tactics are old and outworn, and America will reject them in 2008."

"I think that John McCain and Ted Kennedy represent what the Senate has been at its best ... what it can be again, a place where men and women of good will can come together and address the great challenges facing our nation."

"He knew that my father cared for this country. He knew that my father lost his brothers for this country. He knew that my father was part of this country and respected that. And my father genuinely loved and respected John McCain. It’s an example of what we need today and that is that even though they disagreed, they were always searching for ways to put their country ahead of their party. It sounds trite, but no, not at all – These days we’re living in, we really need people to have that as their goal."

"They both recognized and loved each other’s passion. For my father’s part, everyone knew how passionate (Ted Kennedy) was and that was known for John McCain. He really loved the fight, but he never let that get in the way of respect. And that’s what is missing in today’s politics, that genuine respect for democracy."

"McCain will be remembered as a war hero, American patriot and public servant who was conservative but unafraid to buck his party from time to time. He will be remembered for clashing with Trump and suffering for it politically among members of his own party. He will be remembered for picking Sarah Palin and later regretting it. He will be remembered for making the campaign finance system worse while trying to make it better. He will be remembered for being entangled in the Keating Five ethics scandal. He will be remembered for being tortured, and then leading the opposition to certain interrogation tactics during the Global War on Terror. But no matter how you remember him or what you think of him, John McCain has earned the right to speak his mind and to have anyone at his funeral he wants. Feel free to disagree with McCain, but lay off the vitriolic, tribal attacks. He suffered mightily for your right to do so."

"In 2000, McCain ran as the anti-establishment insurgent, trying to upend the Bush apple cart. But today, at the sunset of McCain’s life and career, it is another group of insurgents, Trump and his supporters, who cast McCain as an unreliable relic, out of touch with the people of Arizona and the Republican Party. They hate his views on immigration and his detestation of Trump’s behavior and style. In some ways, Trump pulled off what McCain was trying to do back in 2000. McCain called it the "Straight Talk Express," pulling no punches and offering unprecedented press access. He didn’t win but forever absorbed the brand of “maverick” in the process. Trump did the same thing. He ran against the establishment and was the most press accessible candidate in 2016. McCain was, tactically, ahead of his time, while Trump got the timing just right."

"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."

"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."

"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.""

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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?"

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."