Military Leaders From The United States

"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."

""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."

"Maybe with the economy the way it is, the Bush presidency as unpopular as it is, the desire for change as great as it is, there was never a chance for the guy McCain used to be. It may be too late for him to win with dignity, but there is still time for him to lose that way. And it matters. It will matter to him for the rest of his life. It matters to the process he has fought for and to the country to which he has dedicated his life. He deserves a better last act than the bad jokes of the Palin fiasco. Two weeks isn't much time. But it's time enough to change the way the ending feels, if not how it plays."

"John McCain brought tears to my eyes in 1988 when he led the Republican Convention in the Pledge of Allegiance. He made me believe there was such a thing as principle when he stood up to the scumbags trashing him in 2000, stood up to the scumbags trashing Kerry in 2004, stood up to the loudmouth talk-show hosts spreading anti-immigrant ire in 2007. I haven't seen that guy lately. I haven't seen the guy who carried his own briefcase and was willing to take every question and do his best to tell the truth in answering them. I haven't seen the guy who rode the Straight Talk Express, the guy Democrats such as me were most worried about facing in a general election. What I've seen is another desperate politician tossing mud at his rival, looking for cheap shots and funding robocalls instead of denouncing them."

"At this point, almost everything that matters is beyond McCain's control. He can't control the fact that the Dow has collapsed, that Joe the Plumber has a lien on his house, that Palin doesn't read newspapers or that Obama doesn't make mistakes. He can't even begin to match Obama in terms of organization or money. He is on the verge of the final days of a campaign that he will relive and second-guess for the rest of his life. McCain may not be able to do anything to change the numbers Nov. 4 or the colors on the map. But there is one thing he can do. He can decide how he will go out, what kind of man America will see, whether the candidate America remembers will be the one who started this race, the one who served in the Senate with distinction, the one who crossed congressional aisles to do what was right, the one who stood up for Kerry when he was being swift-boated, the one who championed campaign finance reform, the de-politicization of the judiciary and fairness in immigration reform, the one who really did put country first for decades; or a bad copy of the guy who beat him by playing dirty politics in 2000."

"If it's a race for re-election, a first term that doesn't become a second, at least you can go off, build the library and console yourself that you're still a member of the club. If you're young enough, you can convince yourself that there is always next time, four years down the road, that the next campaign is only days away. Even if you never run again (see Al Gore, John Kerry), you can get a long way thinking you might. There will be no such solace for John McCain if he loses. He tried twice. He made it to the finals. He is, frankly, too old to try again. It will be someone else's turn next time. And it's not clear, even if the talking heads don't want to admit it, that there is anything he can do now to change an outcome that is feeling more certain with each passing day. You can "what if" the race to death: what if he hadn't picked Sarah Palin; what if the economy hadn't collapsed; what if Hillary Clinton had won instead of Barack Obama? But what is matters, not what if. He did pick Palin; the economy did collapse; and for my money, I think Hillary would have beaten him handily."

"This week, [John McCain] strayed perilously close to being indicted for the deadly sin of flip-flopping, which famously helped doom John Kerry's presidential bid in 2004. [His] excoriation of the Supreme Court [ruling that habeas corpus applies to Guantánamo detainees] seemed like overkill, given the limited nature of the judgment, and doubly odd given that Mr McCain supports the immediate closure of the prison camp and the transfer of its prisoners to the mainland. That would give them far greater protection than anything the court has done."

"Now he’s back to declaring himself a maverick, but it’s not clear what that means. If he gains the presidency, is he going to rebel against the base he’s now depending on to get him elected? (Hence his selection of running mate Sarah Palin.) Campaigns matter. If he means "shaking up the system" (which is not the same thing), opposing earmarks doesn’t cut it. McCain’s recent conduct of his campaign – his willingness to lie repeatedly (including in his acceptance speech) and to play Russian roulette with the vice-presidency, in order to fulfill his long-held ambition – has reinforced my earlier, and growing, sense that John McCain is not a principled man. In fact, it’s not clear who he is."

"There’s an argument that all this compromise wasn’t necessary: some very smart political analysts believed from the outset that McCain could win the nomination by sticking with his old self. And they still believe that McCain won the nomination not because he gave himself over to the base but as a result of a process of elimination of inferior candidates who divided up the conservative vote, as these observers had predicted. (These people insisted on anonymity because McCain is known in Republican circles to have a long memory and a vindictive streak.) By then I had already concluded that that there was a disturbingly erratic side of McCain’s nature. There’s a certain lack of seriousness in him. And he does not appear to be a reflective man, or very interested in domestic issues. One cannot imagine him ruminating late into the night about, say, how to educate and train Americans for the new global and technological challenges."

"Other aspects of McCain, including his temperament, began to trouble me. He seemed disturbingly bellicose. He gave the Iraq war unflagging support no matter the facts. He still talks about "winning" the war, though George W. Bush gave that up some time ago. As the war became increasingly unpopular, he employed the useful technique of blaming its execution rather than recognizing the misconceptions that had led him to be one of the most enthusiastic champions of the war in the first place."

"When Bush, issued a "signing statement" in 2006 on McCain’s hard-fought legislation placing prohibitions on torture, saying he would interpret the measure as he chose, McCain barely uttered a peep. And then, in 2006, in one of his most disheartening acts, McCain supported a “compromise” with the administration on trials of Guantanamo detainees, yielding too much of what the administration wanted, and accepted provisions he had originally opposed on principle. Among other things, the bill sharply limited the rights of detainees in military trials, stripped habeas corpus rights from a broad swath of people “suspected” of cooperating with terrorists, and loosened restrictions on the administration’s use of torture. (The Supreme Court later ruled portions of this measure unconstitutional.) McCain’s caving in to this "compromise" did it for me. This was further evidence that the former free-spirited, supposedly principled, maverick was morphing into just another panderer – to Bush and the Republican Party’s conservative base."

"In retrospect, other once-hailed McCain efforts – his cultivation of the press ("my base") and even his fight for campaign finance reform (launched in the wake of his embarrassment over the Keating Five scandal) now seem to have been simply maneuvers. The “Straight Talk Express” – a brilliant p.r. stroke in 2000 – has now been shut down."

"I admired John McCain as a man of principle and honor. He had become emblematic of someone who spoke his mind, voted his conscience, and demonstrated courage in bucking his own party and fighting for what he believed in. He gained a well-deserved reputation as a maverick. He was seen as taking principled positions on such issues as tax equity (opposing the newly elected Bush’s tax cut), fighting political corruption, and, later, taking on the Bush administration on torture. He came off as a man of decency. He took political risks."

"I think that's one reason [McCain's] "celebrity" ad [attacking Obama] came out so quickly. You know, part of the strategy here is, once you get caught [lying in an ad], change the subject, and launch a new charge."

"When comparisons are drawn between the President and McCain, Trump’s supporters are certain to accuse the media and his critics of exploiting McCain’s death to aim what they will view as yet another unfair attack on the commander-in-chief. But many of the tributes to McCain from the establishment politicians with whom he felt comfortable can also be read as commentaries on the importance of character in public life and America’s mission and global role, and therefore as subtle, implicit criticisms of the conduct and attitudes of the man in the Oval Office himself. After all, many of Trump’s critics have long argued that he lacks the character needed of a President, a narrative that gathered pace last week as the legal woes mounted, threatening his presidency. A persistent criticism has been that Trump disdains the altruistic and patriotic motives that Obama saw in McCain and instead feeds his own ego in a search for personal recognition. In Europe, there is deep concern about Trump’s commitment to Western values and NATO – so it is impossible to read tributes to McCain from people like Stoltenberg in any other context."

"After two losing presidential campaigns, McCain never made it to the Oval Office – yet he is getting an emotional sendoff and assessment that might befit one of the men who did become President."

"Tributes for McCain and the lauding of his courage, honor, decency, character, and readiness to reexamine his own mistakes will unfold at a time when Trump is facing an unflattering public debate about his own personality and behavior. The guilty plea by the President’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen and conviction of former campaign chairman Paul Manafort last week deepened the political and legal storm raging around the White House – but still did not push most Republican leaders to criticize Trump. In that context, the ceremonies marking McCain’s passing seem sure to become more than a lament for a departed political giant. They are likely to become a debate about political morality and the comportment and principles expected of public figures in an already polarized political age that has been further roiled by Trump’s disruptive influence."

"Mr. President, I wish to join my colleague from Arizona, Senator McCain, in a colloquy regarding an aviation noise concern of particular interest to his constituents in the Phoenix area. During the floor debates on the transportation and housing appropriations bills in both the House and the Senate, there were a number of amendments adopted related to the Federal Aviation Administration's air traffic procedures and, in particular, the noise that FAA-approved flight patterns create in communities. The Senator from Arizona offered an amendment dealing with this issue, which I was happy to accept during the abbreviated consideration of the THUD bill on the Senate floor. As a result, the omnibus includes bill language requiring the Federal Aviation Administration to update its "community involvement manual" related to new air traffic procedures in order to improve public outreach and community involvement. The FAA is directed to complete and implement a plan which enhances community involvement and proactively addresses concerns associated with performance-based navigation projects. I know this is an important issue for you, Senator McCain, and I appreciate you joining me on the floor today so that we can send a clear message to the FAA about the importance of involving your constituents."

"McCain was down at the end of the table and we were talking to the head of the guerrilla group here at this end of the table, and I don’t know what attracted my attention. But I saw some kind of quick movement at the bottom of the table and I looked down there and John had reached over and grabbed this guy by the shirt collar and had snatched him up like he was throwing him up out of the chair to tell him what he thought about him or whatever. I don’t know what he was telling him but I thought, good grief everybody around here has got guns and we were there on a diplomatic mission. I don’t know what had happened to provoke John, but he obviously got mad at the guy and he just reached over there and snatched him."

"Chris Cillizza: Was the young McCain that came to the Senate in the mid 1980s significantly different from the man we saw in his final decade in the Senate? If so, how? Ross Baker: The 1980s McCain wanted to be one of the boys, fell in with bad company and spent the next three decades atoning. He spent years living down the Keating Five scandal, even though he got off with a slap on the wrist. In his 2002 memoir, written after his loss to George W. Bush, he was still lamenting that blot on his escutcheon. Cillizza: What was McCain’s greatest achievement as a senator? Greatest failure? Baker: His greatest lasting achievement was his dramatic last-second “no” vote to dismember ACA. His greatest temporary feat was McCain-Feingold [campaign finance reform]. My own high point – though it’s rarely remembered – was his takedown of the Jack Abramoff crew when he was chair of Indian Affairs. He turned Bureau of Indian Affairs and the whole Interior Department upside down. He did major things with a minor committee. His greatest failure: His persistent support for the Iraq war despite the good bipartisan vibes from the “Three Amigos.” The Keating Savings & Loan scandal of course, though McCain sized up the situation before the others. That scandal tarnished another hero, John Glenn. Cillizza: If there is a list of the 15 greatest senators ever, is McCain on it? Why or why not? Baker: He’s not up there with [[Henry Clay|[Henry] Clay]], [[Daniel Webster|[Daniel] Webster]], [[John C. Calhoun|[John] Calhoun]], [[Charles Sumner|[Charles] Sumner]] and LBJ, but he’s a lot closer than Ted Cruz will ever be. Few senators in recent years, however, have had such a stupendous sendoff. He always had the media eating out of his hand. That’s no minor accomplishment."

"Luckily, I agree with my party more than Senator McCain agrees with his party."

"Here’s what I also know: There are certain things that are right and certain things that are wrong – whether you are a Democrat, a Republican or somewhere in between. And attacking a dead man who spent five years as a prisoner of war and another three decades serving the country in elected office, is simply wrong. That’s true if Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce or whoever the next president will be did it. (None of them would have said what Trump did about a man with as decorated a past as McCain but the point still holds."

"When Trump initially attacked McCain as something less than a war hero in 2015, it was covered as the end of a campaign that never really got started. Trump has been in the race for all of a month. He was still an asterisk in most polling. And everyone who knew anything assumed that attacking McCain’s five years spent as a prisoner of war in Vietnam – a time that left the Arizona Republican with lifelong wounds – was a death sentence of Trump’s political ambitions. After all, while plenty of Republicans didn’t agree with McCain’s much-touted renegade nature – and his willingness to buck party leadership – no one ever questioned the man’s service to the country (in the military and in elected office). And doing so was seen as the easiest way to destroy your political future. Except it didn’t destroy Trump. For all the hand-wringing and predictions of doom for his campaign, he just kept right on going – first to the Republican presidential nomination and then to the White House. For many of his supporters, Trump’s broadsides against McCain were music to their ears – finally someone was standing up to the political establishment in Washington! Trump wasn’t afraid of slaughtering a sacred cow – or all the sacred cows! He didn’t care! And they loved it."

"McCain was sometimes wrong, but he was fearless in fighting for the principles he held dearest. He will be remembered in many ways — as a war hero, a political maverick, a reformer and a staunch advocate for an assertive American role in world affairs. But he will be remembered most as a patriot."

"Joining with Democratic Sen. Edward “Ted” Kennedy in 2005, he made a valiant effort to enact comprehensive immigration reform — a crucial need that Congress has still not met. He proposed a “cap-and-trade” system to curb greenhouse gas emissions, defying Republicans who scorned climate change as a hoax."

"He lost a bid for the 2000 GOP presidential nomination to George W. Bush, but became a staunch supporter of the Iraq invasion and the military surge that Bush mounted in 2007 to counter a spreading insurgency. He was one of Washington’s foremost experts on military and national security matters, advocating tough policies against Iran, Syria, Libya, Russia and other unfriendly governments."

"He was one of a kind — a blunt-spoken legislator with a sense of humor who followed a sometimes unpredictable course, often clashed with his own party and exercised an outsized influence on policy debates. After losing to Barack Obama in his 2008 race for the presidency, he absorbed the defeat and resumed his Senate work with unflagging zeal."

"Over the course of American history, a handful of U.S. senators have been so consequential that they are remembered better than some presidents. Among them are Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, Robert La Follette, Everett Dirksen and Ted Kennedy. John McCain, who died Saturday, deserves to be the most recent addition to this exclusive company."

"Frankly, neither of [the presidential candidates'] numbers adds up. But I’ve come to see a consistent pattern in Obama's. For the life of me, Senator Straight Talk, I see no such straight thing with yours. You rail against big government, yet continue to push cockamamie spending plans that make a mockery of it. That's why you're losing right now, Senator McCain. Not because you don't have the courage of your convictions. But because on economic matters, you have no convictions, period."

"It feels a little strange at this point to include a long, laudatory piece about Senator John McCain of Arizona. McCain lived an undeniably remarkable life, but unfortunately, in his final years, he disgraced himself with nastiness and dishonesty. Those qualities were always present in McCain. They were obvious if you knew him, though in retrospect I didn’t pay enough attention to his dark side. But most of the time, McCain’s flashes of ugliness were more than offset by his charm, energy, and good humor. From my perspective, though, his best quality was his recklessness. Unlike most politicians, McCain preferred to live extemporaneously, making things up as he went along, itinerary included. He loved unexpected surprises. McCain didn’t fear what might happen next, and he didn’t care who watched. It was a kind of performance art. Covering McCain as a candidate, you’d wake up in one city without any real idea of where you might end up at the end of the day. There will never be another presidential campaign like John McCain’s run in 2000. It was the last one. I’ll always be grateful to McCain, whatever his faults, for letting me see it."

"It takes only a day or two of this sort of thing for the average political reporter to decide that John McCain is about the coolest guy who ever ran for president. A candidate who offers total access all the time, doesn’t seem to use a script, and puts on a genuinely amusing show? If you’re used to covering campaigns from behind a rope line—and virtually every reporter who doesn’t cover McCain full time is—it’s almost too good to believe. The Bush campaign complains that McCain’s style and personality have caused many reporters to lose their objectivity about him. The Bush campaign is onto something."

"Battle cancer? At 67 years of age? At 80? At 8? Other than "following orders," military language never came into play. If a metaphor were needed, weather provided a more useful lexicon. Weather can surprise, strike hard and then dissipate. Cancer was akin to a great Nor'easter; once spotted on the radar screen, you batten down the hatches, consult the experts, follow the playbook, gather supplies and community and hope for the best. You don't fight weather. You don't blame its victims, and you don't put the onus on the stricken. With cancer, the only real war is the war of words. And even a wordsmith like Barack Obama, ever empathic, could use some re-education. "Give it hell, John," is what Mr. Obama tweeted to Senator McCain. You cannot give cancer hell. Cancer is hell. Some metaphors work."

"Senator McCain is a war veteran, POW survivor and presidential candidate. His courage has never been in question. But cancer cares nothing about heroism, and only five out of 100 people outlive glioblastoma; according to the best studies available, their survival was not due to willpower or fighting spirit. Teddy Kennedy and Beau Biden lacked for neither, and both were felled by the disease. If "battling cancer" has long been a misguided metaphor, it seems spectacularly inapposite in connection with the redoubtable John McCain."

"Cancer will not defeat John McCain. And John McCain will not beat cancer. Cancer is neither an opponent nor a binary condition. A medical team finds it, cuts it out, poisons it, irradiates it and prays for the best. If they are successful, if your stars are aligned, your cancer will go into hiding and lurk just outside the gates of good fortune for a long time."

"A bigger problem McCain’s seeming movement to the center on immigration poses, Gilbert told me, is the concern Republicans have that he’s just saying whatever he needs to get elected. Interestingly, it’s that same mistrust of the message that has Hispanic activists leery about McCain, even after at the last of three Hispanic events – the National Council of LaRaza in San Diego – he used the word "comprehensive" five times in his speech. The Hispanic community came into this round of appearances skeptical because McCain – their Republican hero just two years ago – had already disavowed the very bill he co-authored with Sen. Edward Kennedy. He did so in January when he said at a CNN debate that he wouldn’t vote for it if the bill came to the Senate floor now. That happened as McCain was getting killed on the primary trail. He announced he’d had an epiphany. He said he "got it" and now was preaching enforcement first. But now he’s telling Hispanics he’s with them and he’s always been with them, citing his consistent strong support from Latinos in Arizona. He also said at each stop that true to his maverick reputation he had bucked his party when immigration came up for a vote. And that he has always been critical of harsh anti-immigrant rhetoric some in his party have been accused of."

"Maybe Obama is right that now is a good time to raise taxes. Maybe we should, with Obama, have declared defeat in Iraq last year. We Democrats can disagree on policy. Ultimately, this election is about character, not race or age. Robert Kennedy wrote: "Courage is the virtue President Kennedy most admired." McCain, like the Kennedys, could never, ever, as Obama recently did in Illinois, have set records for voting "Present," instead of the hard choices of "Aye" or "Nay.""

"The bipartisan spirit of McCain's long collaboration with Edward Kennedy and other Democratic senators is no surprise. McCain calls Kennedy "the lion of the Senate," as indeed Teddy is - perhaps our finest senator ever. Jack Kennedy, too, was bipartisan, appointing two Republicans to his cabinet. McCain, one of the two or three most bipartisan national figures of our day, has worked with Democrats on the environment, court appointments, campaign finance, immigration and more. Obama has the most extreme partisan voting record of any senator. Now, gambling his candidacy on a dynamic young Alaska governor, McCain has confirmed his independence as a leader not bound by the insider politics of Washington."

"As with McCain, reform was at the heart of Robert Kennedy's early service. He fought the Democratic machine and spent enormous energy rebuilding Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn by encouraging black economic development rather than government dependency. Working for him nights and weekends to assist black startup businesses in Bed-Stuy, young volunteers like myself learned that Bobby was not the typical far-left ideologue or partisan operative, as Obama was until recently. Like RFK and unlike Obama, McCain sees private enterprise and personal responsibility, not government, as the essential principles of political economy."

"As McCain does today, in 1960 John Kennedy campaigned on cutting taxes and strengthening America's armed forces. Like Reagan, Kennedy was an eager sprinter in the arms race, saying that we must reverse the "missile gap," the alleged missile superiority of the Soviet Union. President Kennedy established that lower taxes mean more jobs and more revenue, facts ridiculed by Obama and embraced by McCain."

"Like Jack Kennedy, McCain is grounded by heroic service as a naval officer. His patriotism requires no parsing. Like JFK, McCain understands that you cannot conduct foreign policy without understanding history. No person of that background could suggest a unilateral strike on Pakistan, as Obama did last year, apparently forgetting that this United States ally has nuclear weapons. Calling Obama's threat to Pakistan "misguided" at the time, Sen. Joe Biden also said the freshman Illinois lawmaker was unprepared to lead America. Calling McCain "my hero," Biden has stated that he would be delighted to share a ticket with the Arizona senator, whom he has suddenly begun to denounce. I was in Berlin in 1961 when the Soviets built the Wall. President Kennedy immediately promised total support to West Germany. A tough foreign policy realist, he would respect McCain's prompt robust denunciation of Russian aggression in Georgia, rather than Obama's over-advised spineless prevarication. "The UN must stand up," said Obama, when he himself failed to do so."

"Party loyalty, nostalgia and the allure of a glamorous, slender figure promising a better world to a roaring crowd might mislead us into confusing the magic of Barack Obama with the reality of the two Kennedy brothers we have lost. Denver's theatrical staging enhanced this evocation, presenting a groundbreaking youthful candidacy passing the generational torch and completing the American Dream. But if substance guides us rather than style, if character is more important than audacious ambition, then we should recognize that this time the mantle of genuine American leadership rests on a truly bipartisan figure: John McCain."