United States Presidential Candidates 2008

"For most of the time from his first election until his 2000 presidential campaign he was a reliable conservative Republican: pro-defense, anti-tax, anti-abortion, solid on social issues and the culture wars. But he was never a team player, never popular with his Republican colleagues, with whom he publicly quarreled on the slightest pretext, which made him seem more independent. It could just as easily be that he was more selfish. In high school, McCain’s nicknames included “McNasty,” and for more than two decades, the overriding majority of his Senate colleagues, in both parties, have repaid his angry outbursts against them with active and unrelenting dislike."

"His choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate was, of course, the apogee of his hotheaded, cold-blooded self-protectiveness. Denied his own first choice, his friend Joe Lieberman, the Independent-Democrat from Connecticut, he opted instead for the only candidate his advisers thought stood a chance of reinforcing his much-dimmed reputation as a maverick. But in doing so he chose a person so manifestly unqualified for the presidency as to make him look like little more than a hack. “He picked a running mate to prove what an outsider he was,” one former adviser said, “and by comparison he wound up looking like the most conventional person around.” Making Sarah Palin into one of the most influential people in the Republican Party may turn out to be McCain’s most lasting political legacy to his country. Rather than expressing second thoughts or misgivings about his decision, he has dug himself in and defended it."

"McCain and his wife, Cindy, have been living essentially separate lives for years. She has spent most of her time in Arizona while he has spent the workweek in a Virginia condominium where, he once told me, he sometimes went months at a time without ever entering the living room, simply coming home to the kitchen and bedroom late at night and leaving again early the next morning. In 2008, McCain was deeply stung by a long New York Times article about his working relationship with a lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, and its assertion that certain McCain aides feared the relationship had some years earlier morphed into an affair. To this day, McCain declines to give interviews to the paper, which was once one of his favorite outlets."

"Indeed, on nearly every issue—not just his signature ones, such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—McCain has been among Obama’s most relentless critics. That approach stands in contrast to the kind of support McCain was once willing to offer another young president, Bill Clinton. In 1993, the newly elected Clinton faced a firestorm of criticism for proposing to speak at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, in Washington, in light of his own well-chronicled efforts to avoid the draft. McCain wrote the White House and volunteered to go with Clinton if it would help. McCain’s distaste for Obama is deeply personal."

"McCain’s influence in the Senate and his claim to significance in national life have always rested on his willingness to anger colleagues of both parties by paying attention to crucial issues that they would rather ignore, and on being a thoughtful contrarian on key party-line votes. He held out the promise that he could represent for a cynical and defeatist age something like what the Republican Arthur Vandenberg became to Harry Truman’s bipartisan postwar foreign policy, or what Everett Dirksen was to Lyndon B. Johnson on civil rights: the guy from the other side of the aisle who made all the difference. It is much harder now to sort out which instances of McCain’s inconvenient truth-telling were more a result of circumstance than they were a consequence of conviction. He has told friends he has no wish to be like his predecessor, Barry Goldwater, whose last election was a narrow victory. But the late-era Goldwater was a mellower, riper figure, whose live-and-let-live libertarian streak came increasingly to the fore. McCain seems to be on the reverse trajectory."

"Yes, you can make that argument—that the grand sweep of history, in all its majesty and indifference, will leave behind a false version of John McCain. But you can also make another argument, and it’s the one John McCain himself has been making powerfully by his behavior and example. It is that history has revealed the real McCain at last."

"Mr. McCain fought in Vietnam. I think that he has enough blood of peaceful citizens on his hands. It must be impossible for him to live without these disgusting scenes anymore. Mr. McCain was captured and they kept him not just in prison, but in a pit for several years. Anyone would go nuts."

"Mr. President, let me take a minute to say something because of my friend, John McCain. Every day I come and open the Senate, we give the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag. We do that because of the country and what that flag stands for. But I was struck today having John McCain in the Chamber. Really, he is representative of what that flag is all about--someone who not only comes from a lineage of people who have served our country, but this good man has served our country in so many different ways. We came to Washington together in 1982. We came to the Senate together in 1986. I can remember while I was still in the House of Representatives I attended a prayer breakfast, and Senator McCain was the presenter. I cannot do justice and I will not even try to describe the presentation he made about a Christmas celebration they had when he was a prisoner of war. He spent so much time in solitary confinement. He could have left the prison much earlier. He would not do that because his comrades were still there. We take a lot of things for granted. Even though John McCain and I have disagreed on occasion on things political, one thing that will always be in my mind and my heart is people such as John McCain who represent what our country is all about."

"McCain has gone … too far."

"Although the election has only just ended, it is clear why Sen. John McCain lost. It is not because millions of people viewed now-President-Elect Barack Obama as a beacon of hope in a harsh world, or because they thought he transcended ideological, racial and other traditional boundaries, or because countless voters believed that he could truly change the face of American politics. These are all reasons, but not the reason. And the reason why McCain lost is because he lost the moderate vote when he had every chance to win it. The GOP base has never been enamored with McCain, and while social and religious conservatives publicly complain about the Arizona senator, the base still votes Republican. This was never in doubt. On the opposite end of the political spectrum, most Democrats were going to vote for Obama, even those dejected after he defeated Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) in the Democratic primaries. Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin may have energized her party’s base as McCain’s pick for vice president, but the idea that she effectively drew Hillary supporters away from the Obama camp into McCain’s is ludicrous. The voting bloc left standing, therefore, was the moderate vote."

"My relative calls himself an independent and is educated but solidly middle class. He has a great deal of respect for McCain due to the senator’s service to his country and his maverick reputation. In short, my relative epitomizes the kind of voter that McCain appealed to and counted on for support. But the McCain that my relative and many other moderate voters knew in 2000, when he ran for president and garnered a great deal of support from both sides of the aisle, was not the same man in 2008. In his campaign against Obama, he used the same negative tactics used against him in 2000 that he so vehemently denounced at the time; his campaign seemed unpredictable and unsteady, impatient and excitable; and his political stunts, such as suspending his campaign to go to Washington, D.C. ostensibly to provide leadership in the midst of the economic crisis, were not well-received."

"For moderate voters like my relative, they tried to ignore, subconsciously or not, the criticism being heaped on McCain for choosing Palin and his increasing negativity in his attack ads and rhetoric. But as the weeks wore on and Nov. 4 drew nearer, moderate voters who liked McCain saw fewer and fewer positive attributes. My relative sincerely wanted to support McCain, for while he didn’t dislike Obama, he just couldn’t vote for him based on a gut feeling — a common sentiment found among moderate voters nationwide. He never mentioned anything about Obama’s inexperience or race; just that he just couldn’t see him as our country’s commander in chief. In the end, my relative’s mind won out over his heart. The weekend before Nov. 4, he made up his mind and decided to vote for Obama. He cited two main reasons: Firstly, the John McCain that my relative knew in 2000 was no longer the man he saw in 2008, and secondly, he simply got scared by the possibility of Sarah Palin in the White House. This viewpoint was shared by moderate voters all over the United States and doomed McCain’s chance at the presidency."

"The irony is that McCain had the best shot of any Republican candidate to win the election, despite his unpopularity with the party base. Given his record, he was better-positioned than any other Republican to overcome his association with the Bush administration. Simply put, however, he never did this. There is much to admire in McCain. Deep down, he is an honorable, principled man who has served his country for the majority of his life. His maverick label has been tarnished, fairly or not, but he has reached across the aisle on big issues on multiple occasions. True, he did and said things during this campaign that go against the convictions that many people believe he holds true. But it was an exhausting campaign, and things are always said that are regretted later by both sides. He was gracious in his concession speech — probably the best speech he’s given in the entire campaign — and he deserves our respect."

"In the end, McCain’s campaign couldn’t create or sustain a consistent message, which he desperately needed to connect with voters. The campaign reflected McCain’s current public personality — restless, erratic and temperamental. This notion, coupled with the choices he made to mollify the GOP base, alienated the type of voter that he needed to attract in order to win the election, and sealed his fate as the underdog going into Election Day. In the last few months, McCain talked a lot about the importance of character, but it was his own character that came into question by my relative and other moderate voters — his former defenders turned estranged opponents."

"With Barack Obama holding a consistent 6-to-11 percentage-point lead in all recent national polls -- the stuff of an electoral vote landslide -- the 2008 campaign seems poised to enter its Harry Truman phase. That is the moment when John McCain, like virtually every losing candidate for more than half a century, invokes the ghost of "Give ’em hell, Harry" and the fading memories of a miracle 1948 electoral upset. About the only worse omen for McCain is when Republican talking points start to include the banalities of desperation like, "The only poll that matters is the one on Election Day." Republicans are already starting to gird themselves for a Nov. 4 debacle. A front-page story in Sunday's New York Times featured GOP leaders lamenting the disarray in the McCain campaign. More ominous for McCain are the results of a secret-ballot survey by National Journal magazine of roughly 100 prominent Republican campaign consultants. Freed from the demands of on-the-record spin, 80 percent of these operatives admitted that it was highly likely that Obama would win the White House. The other 20 percent -- the cockeyed optimists of the GOP camp -- predicted that the election could go either way."

"The last time the self-described Arizona "maverick" tried to shake up the election, he melodramatically suspended his campaign to return to Washington to do virtually nothing to ease the financial crisis. This may, in hindsight, be remembered as the 48 hours in which McCain lost the White House, since the whole thing (down to the brinksmanship over participating in the first debate) struck many voters as a political stunt. McCain's prior desperation gambit -- the selection of a "you betcha" Alaska governor as his running mate -- also does not look like the stuff of lasting political genius. But McCain still has a few gambits that he might try, especially if the alternative were a stinging defeat. Some Republicans wonder if the 72-year-old McCain should make an "I will serve only one term" pledge, so that as president he would be free of all political pressure (yeah, sure) in his effort to reform Washington and confront the deadly earmark crisis."

"What polling mavens too often forget is that an election is not a computer simulation or a contest decided by the best use of regression analyses in analyzing published data. As a one-time event, all that is required is for a winning candidate to get lucky, very lucky, on Election Day. And a passionate embrace from Lady Luck is probably now the only way that John McCain will ever find himself behind the desk in the Oval Office."

"The end of a lengthy political career is almost invariably sad, whether the final act is defeat, infirmity, or death. Ted Kennedy and John McCain both fought valiantly in public to remain active senators despite the dire diagnosis of aggressive brain cancer. Former segregationist Strom Thurmond treated the Senate as a high-class rest home as he—barely able to recognize his surroundings—nominally served the people of South Carolina until he died in office at age 100."

"And then there was his complicated relationship with our state. John McCain lived in many places after Vietnam, but for the last 36 years he called Arizona home, and represented the state in Congress — from 1982 to 1986 as a representative, and then from ‘86 to his death as a member of the United States Senate. McCain embraced Arizona, adopting the pretty landscape of central Phoenix and Cornville, posting photos of red-rock hikes, but doing very little during his tenure to support the state. In fact, his stand against “pork-barrel politics” at a time when his colleagues in Congress were busy lining their own states’ pockets with infrastructure cost Arizona dearly while increasing McCain’s popularity as a refreshingly honest leader who turned down handouts. In a lot of ways, it didn’t matter what state he lived in. John McCain was America’s senator, not Arizona’s, a transplant (or a carpetbagger — again, it depends on your perspective) who adopted the state as his own."

"But I can’t help but wonder if the long view will be quite so kind to McCain. Will John McCain go down in history as the refreshing voice of reason, the antidote to Trump? He might. Or history might take a different view. Will McCain instead be remembered as the man who opened the door in 2008 to Sarah Palin, simultaneously setting the table for the Tea Party and ultimately making a spot for Trump himself? It all depends on your perspective."

"One of the most fascinating parts of their story is the Game Change authors’ insistence that John McCain – he of the clenched fists and frequent outbursts, the infamous temper – never publicly repudiated Sarah Palin. McCain’s advisors, staff and friends, yes. They complained long and hard and nastily about her in ensuing years. But never the senator, Heilemann and Halperin write. And now, as the nation says farewell to one of the most fascinating politicians in history, a question remains: Will all of John McCain’s railing against Donald Trump ever make up for the fact that it might have been the senator’s own desperation to win in 2008 that led the nation to this point? Only time will tell."

"I have witnessed incidents where he has used profanity at colleagues and exploded at colleagues. He would disagree about something and then explode. It was incidents of irrational behavior. We've all had incidents where we have gotten angry, but I've never seen anyone act like that....He had very few friends in the Senate. He has a lot of support around the country, but I don't think he has a lot of support from people who know him well."

""This is the way the world ends," wrote T.S. Eliot, "not with a bang, but a whimper." This is the way the Republican presidential contest ends: not with a bang, but a white flag. Mitt Romney’s withdrawal effectively ensures John McCain’s triumph. Most become a nominee by rousing their party’s base. McCain has spent a decade reviling it. Eight years ago, McCain called evangelical Protestant leaders “agents of intolerance”: the single largest bloc of the Republican coalition. Earlier, he passed legislation limiting outside free speech campaign finance, swelling left-wing power to control the agenda. The GOP’s media enemy is its nominee-to-be’s dear friend. McCain has bashed Bush tax cuts, knifed conservative judges, and scored a Constitutional amendment ban on same-sex marriage: the very issue electing W. in 2004. Worse, he and Ted Kennedy championed "comprehensive immigration" reform of the 12 million to 20 million illegal immigrants who knowingly ignore our law."

"McCain would give illegal aliens citizenship. He mocks a U.S. president’s oath to protect border security, calling the vast majority of Americans who oppose amnesty "vigilantes" and "bigots." Last week, McCain, often booed, termed himself "a fellow conservative" at D.C.’s annual Conservative Political Action Conference. He is surely a foreign-policy hawk, even arguably an economic conservative. To win, though, McCain needs the GOP’s much larger social/cultural constituency. How does he woo those who disbelieve, even loathe, him? Mistrusting McCain’s words, many Republicans will respond only to acts: i.e. the vice presidency. Enter Mike Huckabee, coming from nowhere to take eight primaries and caucuses and embody the Middle America that frets about the mortgage, college education, a society that perverts right v. wrong."

"In 2004, more evangelicals voted than all blacks plus union members. Only a massive turnout narrowly gave Bush Arkansas, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Ohio, Tennessee and West Virginia, among others. Here Huckabee runs strongest. McCain is 72. Huckabee is 52. McCain is leaden on television. The former Arkansas governor dazzles. McCain is weak on values issues without which Republicans once routinely lost, and will this year lose again: culture, middle-class angst, Main Street v. Wall Street. Huckabee plays them like Louis Armstrong did a trumpet. Every other prospective veep — Charlie Crist, Mark Sanford, Phil Gramm; God forbid, Steve Forbes — is dull on the stump, wooden on TV and economically conservative: a McCain clone. Vowing to "unify the party," he needs the man who has done far more with far less than any candidate. Can McCain afford to pick Huckabee? He can’t afford not to. Given Bush’s albatross, McCain may not win even with Huckabee. Almost certainly, he can’t win without him."

"We really have to fault the mass media of the United States, not just for the last few days, but the last decades, pretending that somehow, by implication, almost that John McCain was doing the people of North Vietnam a favor as he flew over them and dropped bombs. You would think, in the hagiography that we’ve been getting about his role in a squadron flying over North Vietnam, that he was dropping, you know, flowers or marshmallows or something. He was shot down during his 23rd mission dropping bombs on massive numbers of human beings, in a totally illegal and immoral war."

"The reality is that while McCain's ghost may be smiling over the karma of Trump's loss of Arizona, the McCain-Trump feud was only one factor. While the senator was beloved by many in Arizona, not least because of his heroism in Vietnam (Trump avoided service claiming bone spurs), many residents new to the state have little knowledge of him. About half of the state's total population was added between the time McCain was first elected to the Senate in 1986 until his death, based on US Census Bureau data from 1980 and 2019. In addition, while many people came to the state every year, a significant number left -- even if the total kept growing. Arizona added 2.2 million residents from 2010 to 2018, while seeing 1.7 million move to other states. In other words, it's entirely possible that this churn prevented the kind of civic attachment that would have left a large cohort of Arizonans holding a grudge against Trump over his treatment of McCain."

"While the John McCain factor may not have been decisive in the Arizona vote, for some it likely resonated. And it wasn't only personal history and view of service that divided Trump from McCain. It was also their demeanor in presidential campaigning and ultimate defeat."

"Contrast McCain's approach with Donald Trump's fast rise in politics, which was driven, in part, by pushing the false narrative that Obama wasn't an American citizen and had forged his birth certificate. That narrative established Trump as one of the leading voices in the "birther" movement. Trump would go on to become president by embracing that type of much more combative, confrontational tone that hinged on conspiracy theories and divisive rhetoric. McCain would never make it to the Oval Office, but in the final years of his life, he fully personified his "maverick" nickname by becoming one of the leading GOP voices against Trump as the two repeatedly clashed. The divergent personalities of McCain and Trump were on a collision course from the beginning. McCain represented the old guard of Washington, a lion of the Senate who evoked respect from both sides of the aisle and believed honor was everything. Trump ushered in a new — many would say corrosive — era of American politics, in which insults are hurled at the ready, tribalism is paramount and apologies should never be doled out."

"A failed 2000 bid for president gave rise to a successful run at the Republican nomination eight years later. In those campaigns, McCain became known for his openness with voters and the press. He thrived in town hall settings, and New Hampshire would kick-start his first bid for the White House and revive his sagging hopes in 2008 after his campaign had been left for dead. McCain's controversial choice of Alaska's then-governor, Sarah Palin, as his running mate, in many ways may have opened the door for a candidate like Trump. Palin never seemed to mesh with McCain's more reserved, traditional style, and her hits on the media and giddiness in attacking Obama and others in personal terms seemed to presage a candidate like Trump. So, it was no surprise when Palin endorsed the billionaire businessman during the 2016 cycle."

"But even personal attacks aside, McCain saw there was something greater than wins and losses, or even words said in the heat of political battle. After all, the two men who ended his White House dreams, Bush and Obama, will reportedly deliver eulogies at his funeral — a final statement of "Country First" from what seems like a bygone era."

"Frank Luntz: He's a war hero. Donald Trump: He's not a war hero. Luntz: He's a war hero. Trump: He is a war hero— Luntz: Five and a half years in a POW camp. Trump: He's a war hero 'cause he was captured. I like people that weren't captured, okay? I hate to tell ya."

"I hardly know Cindy McCain other than having put her on a Committee at her husband’s request. Joe Biden was John McCain’s lapdog. So many BAD decisions on Endless Wars & the V.A., which I brought from a horror show to HIGH APPROVAL. Never a fan of John. Cindy can have Sleepy Joe!"

"McCain ran an aggressive, hard-hitting campaign against former Congressman J. D. Hayworth. If he had taken this same kind of principled conservative and ‘take no prisoners’ campaign against Barack Obama in 2008, he’d now be in the second year of his presidency."

"But the more one sees of [McCain's] impulsive, intensely personal reactions to people and events, the less confidence one has that he would select judges by calm reflection and clear principles, having neither patience nor aptitude for either."

"We’re not going to support that loser’s funeral,.. What the fuck are we doing that for? Guy was a fucking loser,"

"It is not terror but heroism if you were captured by the Vietnamese for dropping fragmentation bombs on their schools and hospitals Only those who have nothing can be terrorists."

"I know what he’s capable of — he’s capable of bigness that we didn’t see that in general election campaign that was run. I would hope that’s the path that he goes down. His political epitaph is going to be dictated by how he conducts himself in next six or 13 years. Will he be seen as a giant of the Senate who came back from a presidential loss like Scoop Jackson, Robert Taft or Ted Kennedy, or will he go down a different path? Only he can decide it."

"John McCain's tin ear on middle-class financial woes was evident in his prescription for the economy: more tax-cuts for major corporations, and continuation of the Bush tax cuts for U.S. millionaires. And this McCain stance was consistent with his stated desire to slash Medicare and privatize Social Security. The American public was fed-up with failed Bush/McCain economics, which claimed that prosperity would eventually "trickle-down" to everyone else. Obama won the presidential race largely because voters perceived that he, and not John McCain, cared about and would address middle-class economic struggles and inequities."

"Obama's plan fairly and inexpensively ensured that all Americans have access to quality health care services, but without the government providing those services. McCain's health care plan was intended to free the business community from providing for its employees, to enrich the health care insurance industry, and increase income taxes for all Americans. But not to provide health care services for the uninsured. For anyone who valued their health care insurance, Barack Obama was the only viable choice for president."

"The hard truth is that John McCain, Vietnam War POW, was obsessed with the Iraq War. And he couldn't seem to shake his angry, unhealthy obsession despite either reality or exorbitant cost."

"I don't know if you could ever say, quote "mission accomplished," as much as you could say "Americans are out of harm's way.""

"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."

"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."

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

"At the moment of conception."

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

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

"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."

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