Jim harper and. Good to be here. Im just delighted you could join us. Also with us this evening is mark salter and the book is, ive got it somewhere. We have to sign here but this book is the luckiest man life with john mccain and i can say truthfully that jim and i have beenfascinated with it. I didnt expect to read every word because my reading is so bath and once i started i just couldnt put it down. Thats kind of you tosay, thank you. We did a book event with senator mccain in 2005 and i am liking. I know you did seven books, coauthored withyou and do you remember which one . Theres a book oncharacter and destiny. We saw thousands of copies and its a pleasure to work with senator in his office staff. When we read signed copies they would be but so i found it a little strange to be without him after spending time with him. The other thing i like to say before i turn it over to jim was i was really surprised to discover the mccain familymississippi group. I think i just assumed that he had was roots, i grew up in without illinois but i didnt recognize that john mccain was something of a carpetbagger when he ran for office but i asked john grisham yesterday, we did an event of course in smalltown mississippi and read just a little bit and im going to read it again to get their reaction. The attitudes of john mccains southern forebears and ancestors in earlier generations have distinguished themselves and more offer parallels to his own personality. No doubt those derived in part from the personalities of his father and grandfather who received, especially his grandfather in the tradition of the mississippi mccains. It certainly has literary enthusiasms and current in venture were inherited with the mccains and his mother and spencer who wrote about john mccain said this, when his grandfather left mississippi, what could they do around small towns in an impoverished area from the civil war, the law, the church, nothing seemed to challengethem. And both john and i think in his answers thought that was fascinating and also were surprised that john was a mississippian so thank you for that insight. Jim, im going to sit back and let you take over here. Thank you so much for doing this. Thank you barbara and thank you mark or a fascinating compelling book. My heart is on the table right away and i congratulate you on that. Im going to start by telling a story about the first time i ever met john mccain and how i learned a lot about him through that experience. We were both on the face the nation show and john mccain was coming out and i was going to go on and there was this pause there, break and john mccain walked up to me and said ive been reading this stuff youre writing about this fellow clinton and i dont like it and i respectfully disagree and then went on to the show. The next day, im sitting at my desk at the washington post, phone rings and its johnmccain. Its not you, is not a secretary, its john mccain and he proceeds to apologize to me and to say to me he had quite an irish temper and i said to him my mothers name was sullivan so im familiar with that and i was just impressed with the humility with which he did that. And the genuine nature of his apology. Now, you learn a lot about his temper. You write at one point that he and you got locked into a terrific argument andhe sent you finally , weve both been hotheads, the two of us. One of us should calm down. Talk a little bit about john mccains temper and how it manifested itself and how you lived with it or didnt live with it. This is kind of like a squalor that came out of nowhere suddenly, burst and moved on to sunny skies but he was very rarely ever directed downward. He could argue in a very heated way with anybody, his staff had a great license to tell him what they thought, they were never afraid to challenge him or disagree with him but he argue like heck if he didnt agree. I think he felt he lost control of himself and became discourteous and personal or something, he always regretted that and many people have helped the recipients of phone calls like yours or hastily written apology. It took on a legend that was kind of exaggerated i think and to be honest it wasnt that big of a problem. He just had one, it would come up quickly and it could be an intimidating thing to behold but he said if i had not joined the fight, i think the best line anybody ever wrote about john mccain personality was journalist bob timber in this wonderful book nightingalesong , you was describing mccain at the Naval Academy and when he participated in this summer and i think its for beta, unschooled as a boxer, mccain would throw punches until somebody went down and that really was an apt description of him. John mccain let his emotions and character show more and more clearly and just about any other politician. Discuss that in relationship to his upbringing and his family. As barbara has said, his family had deep roots in plantation life in mississippi so john mccain never considered himself and never acted as a southerner as you point out in the book. So he was brought up in a military context as a military black actually. Talk a little bit about his past and that influence on him. It wasnt just his father, there was his grandfather. I think it was the first father and son fourstar admiral. His grandfather was a west point graduate and he got a general in the army. He had the mccain relatives in the service and every processional soldiers and sailors and every generation going back to the revolution so he was imbued with the military and he had an officer doesnt lie cheat or steal ethos that he tried to stay loyalto. His sort of codes he lived by were an amalgam of codes that the he inherited, the licensesgrandfather and father taught him. The literature he wrote, he was one of the most well read people ive ever known and he consumed fiction and nonfiction. He always had two or three books going at the same time. But theres sort of the hemingway code of depression and courage selfsacrifice were very important to him as with honor codes of institutions that were important in his life. And the United States Naval Academy where he was rebellious, had very poor discipline. It was very close to building up of the nara Naval Academy, graduated in the bottom of his class but never took pride in it because he revealed honor code that i never violated honor code. He conformed and i think the idea that we are put on this earth to stewarts or cause biggerthan ourselves is what made him , is why he wore his emotionson his sleeve all the time. It was devoted to his cause no matter how successful he was herarely gave them a. And would get quite emotional about it from time to time and i think all those things contributed to that. You make passingreference to the fact that his father , jack mccain was a binge drinker. You have an allusion to his alcoholism. How did that affect john . It didnt affect him. You had a very hard time going out of john mccain how it affected him. He was someone, he was very candid, very guarded when you were talking to him but he did i notice become a little tightlipped when talking about his father. I think he revered his father and his father was donald time on deployments and i once asked him he said the difference between her father and grandfather was your grandfather love the navy and your father lived for the navy and give me an example of how that was. All he said was at christmas, my father would come down and we would open our presence and back upstairs, put on your uniform and walk to the office and thats all he said. Didnt offer comment on it and when i would ask them, he allowed that his father had a binge drinking problem and that he started but heroically, he would struggle against it, he get sober and get on the lag in a long time and fall off andstart all over again. Heprayed on his knees every night for strength. To overcome is habits and when i asked how did it affect him and you saw your fatherdrunk, how did it affect your view of him , he said ididnt recognize him. And i said why so . He goes because he was a completely different person and i didnt recognize himand thats all i can pull out of him. I can relate to that. Talk a little bit about his mother who unfortunately passed away last week at 108 and had been one of the more remarkable women. I never met anybody like her. She really was one of themost memorable people you never encounter. She had a good run and i think shed say 108 was plenty. But she was bold, fearless, adventurous, resilient and the most vivacious, beautiful into her golden years, beautiful women ive ever met and she had an identical twin sister when they were just as tight as sisters could be and they were both widows, they traveled constantly, she was roberta andersons travelers and in the 90s they went to new york as they often did and would drive to church and the rental car Company Refused the cart when they were too old, they were 190 so she was once lived in la where roberta and rowena were brought up , roberta decided to drive from washington to la to spend christmas with her and john got a call from arizona Highway Patrol and your mother had been pulled over there, doing 112 on the interstate. He credited john more importantly for the purposes of my book, he credited her with her his curiosity, his resilience because his father was a more remote figure and he was most transparently his mothers son and of course he was devoted to her and loved her very much and warmed her heart to see them reunited rightnow. Talk a little bit about how his mother and father presented him with the option of going to the Naval Academy. They never were him to go. He said nobody ever asked meif i wanted to go. He would talk about being a little kid, i guess he was about nine at the end of world war ii but hed hide under the table and his father would come home from the war and his grandfather unfortunatelydied the day he came back from the war. He have officers over and they be talking about their war experiences and he would hide under the table and listen to the stories his parents would introduce him all the time to their friends and say johnny, hes going to the Naval Academy and he resented it. He would say i knew i belonged there but he didnt like having free will or a say in the matter. This could have presented him with a real opportunity to be a rebel, to rally against theacademy. But i guess he didnt, he rebelled by being insubordinate. He piled up at the Naval Academy and he got in trouble a lot, went over the wall like he did at the academy and was in Downtown Washington and a neighborhood where there might be burlesque shows but he had the good fortune of being mentor. He worked off the yard of the english master and a guy by the name of William Ravenel who had been in tank command in pattons army in world war ii and john revere, he talked down about world shakespeare as his mother and father did as well but he revered them and he sort of modeled his code on William Ravenels code. But the Naval Academy, he really was described as a leader in his class but not because of academics for class standing or you know, any achievements, he was always in trouble and booted out of the place, he got in a lot of trouble and he said once, i want to pay off these demerits to walk to baltimore and back 17 times but i think that was his way of asserting himself and i think that was the way, the arc of his story of individualism that really didnt get subdued so much as he saw himself in the context of something larger than himself when he went to vietnam and i think resolved that needed him to assert independence from things while they always remain a maverick i guess youcould say , he really was about subsuming his own interests to some larger purpose. Im going to follow the chronology or actually the structure that you follow in your book which is that you go away from johns politics to talk about his political career so lets talk a little bit about, will come back to themilitary part. John mccains decision to run for congress in 1981, what led him to go to politics. His last job in the navy was the United States senate. He had known politicians who were friends with his parents but you work in the senate, he had an office in a rented Office Building and he was effectively the navys lobbyist to the Armed Services committee and he got members of that committee and it was his job tos escort some of those members when they took overseas trips and they became sort of a protcgc of power and Barry Goldwater and Steve Jackson and some of the old bowls in National Security guys and he became personal friends with the younger guys, garrett at that time who are old old now but they were young back in the 70s. Gary hart, bill , young senator biden. He traveled with them and became friends with them and he told me he would watch in amazement, he be preparing in the Armed Services committee and he would see skip jackson or tower or somebody and scroll something on a piece of scrap paper and that would become an amendment to the defense bill and they would have hundreds of millions of dollars cents from one account to another and just like that it dawned on him that these guys had more power in a one or two star admiral would ever have which was the most i think he thought he could realistically aspire to so he decided to recover from that and he moved clearly with an entry into politicsin mind. I want to ask you why you chose that structure instead of going straight into the incredible story of john mccain getting shot shot down and then was of course tortured and he refused to accept an early release. Why did it shift to the politics before he got that . I thought it would show better how that experience affected him as a politician if we got into thepolitical story. Any politician, you have conscience, you had some early on and what that experience, his sort of main crucible at the time of the vietnam he was offered amnesty and refused it, that was the test of his life that brought him to trust his own judgment and his own probity and sense of honor. It hobbled him, i think it made him realize that he wasnt Strong Enough and nobodys enough to get all the challenges of their life on their own without needing the help of others but it told him to trust his own judgment and it gave him a sense of honor which was provoked in a couple of Early Experiences on powers nomination so i want to begin the story to go back and show how that affected him. He was elected to the senate in 1986 and was with staff in 1989 and you were with him for two runs for the presidency in 2000 and 2008. At that time as republican colleagues nominee and you make the point that in all of his electoral campaigns but particularly in the president ial ones he ran on and those rather than our governingphilosophy. Talk about that a little bit. What difference does that make and how successful was that . It was a conventionally centerright kind of god. Mueller more effective government. A strong defense. He had both of those when you look for, when you ask him for a philosophical review of his policy , were here to solve problems. Im not here to philosophize. Im serving my country here, lets get practical humility about the role in congress but you shouldnt expect 100 percent of your way but you can make modest progress on your time and that was an honorable thing to achieve. But he looked at the american experiment in the sacred context. That we were proving that selfgovernment was the only moral government and that all human beings areentitled to its. He felt that was a great, precious cause and put in the hands of the people that were elected to represent americans with congress and the white house and who do their Work Overseas and that the things that sort of exacerbate public impressions of politicians that corrupt and all that were sort of complicated that cause and hurt that cause but he started this probity in government that were here to serve his normal project, lets make the most progress we can order problems and is not put ourselves first and i think he had a code, a man with a code of conduct and thats how he operated in the little seer. Most clearly perhaps in the instances in the 2008 campaign where he actually defended his opponents against racist attacks from his own supporters. I thought that was justabout john mccains finest moment. It was an impressive thing to behold, i was fortunate enough to be in that when he did that and it was booed by his ownsupporters, some of them. It was a round of applause. That came campaign also contained two enormous mistakes you have to make. Yeah. One was sarah palin and the other was calling foran economic suspending campaigning and failing forward a convincing program. Talk about those two mistakes and how quickly both of you, john mccain and you realize your mistakes didnt leave any lasting effects in your relationship . Not these decisions, no area earlier in 2007, i would say strained our relationship but we can talk about that some other time, ill answer yourquestion directly. John mccain would never allow one or the other to me or anybody else. He felt responsible for putting it on the ticket. Had probably been put in this position he wasnt prepared for that he struggled under the strain of and you saw would never say a bad word about her. He did say many times privately and publicly that he would have done what he wanted to do which was make Joe Lieberman his running mate. Was a politically fraught desire of his. Was led to a very messy convention and a lot of unhappy republicans he said that was my mistake, he never said that putting her on it was my mistake, if not putting jo lieberman on it was a mistake for those of you that dont know, Joe Lieberman was a democrat and a defendant independentcaucus with the democrats. He was convinced to meet with sarah palin and was impressed in the meeting with her. Because she was pitched to them as a reformer republican like he was, i dont fresh faced taking on the republican establishment and taking on Oil Companies in alaska and a settlement for her, for alaskans , was quite an improvement over what they were getting and also the argument was made that there were some dissatisfied Hillary Clinton voters who were well served by other primary and worked on in 2008 that might feel attracted to a mccain ticket that had a woman on it. Those were the reasons we picked her, not because she would start up the baseor anything else. She did have really very impressive retail skills that i think the press got in the first couple of days after he had picked her, but had forgotten. Ive never seen anybody work aligned she did anybody hes a charming one on ones and voters in for a speech at the convention with a teleprompter, he didnt miss a beat was the performance of a reaganesque in terms of that kind of communication skill. She wasnt mistakes that she contradicted what method had been all along, and experienced argument against the young less experienced senator barack obama and look like a political, not perfect and i argued against it. I lost the argument ill further admit that in the first week or so i thought maybe i was wrong, shesquite talented. And it wasnt until later on, nothing can prepare even a seasoned politician for the strain and spotlight of the president ial campaign. Its daunting experience and not many people can handle the pressure someone whos so relatively new to politics and certainly never exposed to that kind of attention before. Is bound to crack under the strain. What about his decision to hold his hand on economic summit really. I unfortunately argue for so we had managed to come out on the convention with five sixpoint meetings on obama. So the convention about and that usually dissipates we knew they would dissipate but by the end of september, late september we were, i thought very competitive. We still have a chance. What was then a horrible environment for therepublican candidate , president bush left him, not entirely his fault but was very unpopular. He had terrible numbers and their republican nominees in george bushs term. Figure out how to solve this so lets temporarily freeze the campaign, go to washington and as soon as we got there and went over to meet with the leader of the republican majority leader, then majority leader, john boehner, we knew right away with hide ourselves to House Republicans because they would say yes or no and those a terrible, terrible mistake and they couldnt give it to them. What john mccain told him to do the could care less. Better let solved by others in that particular juncture in john mccains life and a lot to figure out how to make the most of it. In the meeting at the white house he asked for, he tried to get banner to say what he needed. Needed. Everybody said mccain calls this meeting. Bush turned to mrs. John, i want to hear what john boehner has to say. He wanted to get some kind of idea what he would ask bush for in the democrat for that john boehner could deliver to his caucus. Thats why it was sort of, thats why he acted that way in that meeting. It was a mistake, a stupid stuff. It wasnt panic but just a loss of, when you struggle and kick and polite way to get to the 40yard line and suddenly you are back knocked back very late in the race, to the oneyard line, and with a downtick of you have a tendency to think im putting it up and throwing hail mary and that is essential what it was and it blew up interface, and you know, we realistically knew it was very unlikely he could win. How long did it take him to recover from that mistake and from his defeat . From his defeat, i think, he just gets busy. Hes a man with so many enthusiasms. He loved his work. He loved the senate. He threw himself into every fight he could find and it even issues had expressed particular and before he would get involved in just to stay busy. I remember he was, on election night, was very stored. When i gave a concession speech that will stand the test of time for graciousness and spirit of patriotism, love of country. But he turned to his detail later, the secret Service Detail leader, you guys have been great. Its been with a wonderful to get to know you. You can really good to me and thank you very much. Id like you to give me a ride home and then i dont ever want to see you guys again. The next morning he and cindy were spotted walking to a starbucks to get his cappuccino in the morning. One of the things he threw himself into at a glad to see you devote some attention to is the security conference where he showed up and show real leadership in forging and strengthening transatlantic alliance. I happened to be standing right beside him in 2007 when Vladimir Putin suddenly turned and gave a very aggressive, very nasty speech at the munich security conference. What i i could hear john mccain saint hardly to be a mostly to himself i thought was we have to find ways to work with them. We have to find ways to work with them. He was known as a hawk but, in fact, he tried to reach out. And i think, i would love to hear you describe what you think his accomplishments in Foreign Policy were. Well, you know, i think one of my favorite memories the normalization of relations of vietnam which told you, which was i think first, washingtons first sense of mccain the statesman. He had every reason not to even if he if you didnt objeca position, not to be involved in it. He was not treated particularly well when he was in prison. He was tortured. He thought it was in americas best interests to get past the work and he thought it was in our geopolitical interests to make a friend if not an ally out of vietnam and southeast asia. We have similar issues with the chinese now. He worked very hard and took a lot of gough on the pow mia question and had to put up with some crazy stuff but he was almost the architect, he and john kerry were almost the architects of normalization plan. Was ever the feeling that was some guilt attached to his stress on vietnam issues . No, no. He really, really kept the war behind. I dont think of any guilt about at all. He was a professional officer doing his duty. So no but he did feel that come he did have a strange affinity for the not strange affinity. Yet if affinity for the vietnam people turkey was a very curious person at a very observant person. Sort of the head political cadre of the pow camps who ordered his torture and ordered the propaganda statement he was forced to make, you know, he always remarked about this time the guy came and i think Christmas Eve or something, dressed and threepiece suit with the time its taken and talked about he, too, had an influential father like john had. Maybe they had something in common. He had mixed feelings about the guy obviously but that made an impression on him. It was a really lovely story that when he passed away there were long, long lines of vietnamese as of the u. S. Embassy to come inside the condolence book include one or more of his jailers. Theres a monument that bill, and insulting monument that built to a captured air pilot on the lake where john parachuted into where he was shot down. Still to this day there are heaps of flowers to use after he passed away. Walk the streets, he was a celebrity in vietnam. He would be mobbed but the balkans, another instance where crossed over to help bill clinton again. At the same time took a very dim view of Clinton Administration policy with north korea, the agreed framework and argued against that constantly and had lots of arguments. Foreign policy, defense policy were his passions in terms of issues. Thats for sure, but when you mention munich he started going to munich when he was in the navy, escorting the delegation to munich. He watched howard who chaired those delegation in those days, who played the role of the statesman and thats what he learned and thats what he aspired to be. Thats why he ran for congress. Even though he could be just as ignatius and you know, and i should probably call putin son of a bitch when he was saying we need to figure how to get this guy from causing more trouble, and he could get very, very tough with the russians have done in syria, just angered him like nothing ive ever seen in terms of geopolitics. I mean really angered him. He would be very pugnacious in munich but he was very popular there. Much love even though sometimes a target of his ire, because they recognized him as an american who is committed to our alliances and committed to making the world safer. On domestic policy a lasting image of john mccain eases vote on the Affordable Care act. Thumbs down in order to essentially extend the Affordable Care act. Tell us about that gesture and tell us about why he was the last person to vote. Okay. The time that occurred was obviously influential. He had just days earlier had a tumor, malignant tumor removed from the front lobe of his brain. He had a hole in his head. He flew to washington to participate in the debates on that motion against his doctors orders. But he wanted to speak to the senate but he knew in his heart that he had a terminal disease but it received the very best care and get any help is because he had access to the best medical care one could have in this country. And that it would be wrong of him to take a vote on something he had supported the repeal and replace of obamacare. The motion under consideration, the bill under consideration didnt replace obamacare. It simply repealed major portions of it and offered nothing in its stead. He said i cant deny people healthcare insurance as im about to experience the benefits of really goldplated healthcare insurance. That was sort of, it was also his concern with the way the senate had been deteriorating in terms of how it operated, that more and more decision would be aggregated into Leaders Offices, leadership staff providing all the bills, not the committees. The committees were the places where the most come the closest relationships are always one because thats where senators spend most of the time in the committee in the form friendships with members of the committee on both sides of the aisle and thats where compromises get struck and business gets done and make what i call moderate progress on our problems. More and more with every attack on every reform, every new fom of filibuster gotten rid of, its aggregating more power in Leaders Office and its, it was becoming like the house with longer terms. Thats also part of his motivation for voting the way he voted. So the subject, the speech he gave the day he returned from phoenix to the senate, the vote itself, i went home. I spent the day with him and i went home and ive been crisscrossing a couple of times the country because of his surgery. My wife and kids were in maine where we have a home, but i was at our house in the d. C. Area. I said im going to go and get some dinner. I thought he was probably going to vote against it but i didnt know for certain. And because im getting a little old, i eat my dinner, had a sip of scotch and fell asleep on the couch. I was awakened by 1 00 in the morning by sven chief of staff say he voted against it. And i missed it but, of course, i rewatched it. Weve played over over and over and over again. He was obviously getting lobbied by both sides intensive and he was the last person not by choice. Right before he intended to vote for the second time, Vice President pence was outside the floor, had asked him to come out so he could lobbied him one more time. Mccain courteously went out there and politely telling up and then pence handed him the phone and trump was on the phone and trump lobbied in and he rebuffed the request, and went back in and voted. For those of you who dont know, he couldnt go like this. He couldnt raise his arms because he broke both his arms in one of his legs when he was shot down. He always gestures, you know, in a in a political rally for something its always arms are straight out in front of it. Thumbs up like that. Typical and a vote the vote goes on for 15, 20, 25 minutes, however long. Theres a 15 or 20 minute clock and sometimes they can go 40 minutes before they blow the whistle because everybody comes in russias in at the end and the votes all at the same time. Its chaotic, confuse, you cant hear and the clerk and a with their sinker everybody gestures yes or they go like that, yeah or nay. Thats all he was doing was just a habit to do that. Just happened you could hear a pin drop it as if it had vote. Mcconnell is tentative like this to add in and people analyze nothing like a renaissance painting, but it was just happenstance really. I want as a self interested question. Sure. In discussing among other things his friendship with my friend johnny, you use the phrase that moment in vietnam with apple started a mutually Beneficial Association with the press to talk about his relations, why was it mutually beneficial and other times not so . If youre a politician youre going to have antagonistic relationship with the press on of a good basis. Its unavoidable. Its the job of the press to be an antagonist and its human nature cannot really enjoy the experience too often. I did like reporters at one time he might have actually imagined himself the report along for he got into politics rather than military career. He loved good writing. He loved the economy of crisp journalistic prose. He was always calling in to reading somebodys lead that had impressed him. He had a lot of warm relationships and friendships. He was a good friend of johnny apples that began in the aftermath of the fire and this date friends and i think he spoke at apples Memorial Service if i remember correctly. Yet of the friendships and he admired a great many reporters. David halverson, best and approach can be admired the book very much and so i know thats probably some, and are polarized the in age, sort of hot take world we live in, that probably seems like a sin or something but it really is the way human nature operates and the way we really are and often its the way we are when were at our best. I see we have signal, a question. We do have a question. I thought we might ask you to read through it. This is the one question. Someone wants to know, who would you advocate for in the vp process . Who did you who is addressed to . Market, who did you advocate for in the vp process . There were several people i think for a while. They came down to, the alternatives to governor palin were governor tim pawlenty of minnesota and governor mitt romney. I thought, i admired governor, now senator romney very much and he would begin a fine choice. I just thought we would spend the first five days, \60{l1}s{l0}\60{l1}s{l0}, 70s, two weeks coming out of the convention relitigating all the tax on each other when youre competing during the primaries and a little heated at times and a little sharp. I thought why do that . I was a big admirer of governor pawlenty. When we debated the choice in front of john between haven, i advocated for plenty. I might ask a question. Not really a question but maybe more of an observation. One of the things that really caught me in the book, i know senator mccain because not only have done business with them but id flown to washington on the same plane with you. I [inaudible] and senator mccain was not, he was larger than life but he wasnt physically. But what i thought utensil in the book several times was truly aweinspiring energy and his metabolism. I am so envious of his metabolism. Im only a year younger now than senator mccain when he died, and i just can hardly imagine how he was able to keep up that constant pace. Additionally, because he had some real physical injuries, his knee never worked properly. He couldnt raise his arms. Is that hereditary . No. That was all war related. Typical mccain, he turned his bad leg, i mean come he would go down staircases and he would take staircases all the time over elevators he reaches like gravity, sort of dropping that he had a gate, step gait that summer, sated for his bad knee. You couldnt keep up with it, the rest of us would have to trot to keep up with him. He did have a marvelous metabolism. He had an extremely strong physical will. I mean, to show he was still in physical shape to run for president at the age of 70, 71 in 2008, he had his son jack hike around the rim of the grand canyon. Thats quite a feat for a guy in his 70s. He was something. My wife worked for him for 12 years, was a personal assistant and choice tells this funny story that always like to share. One day joyce went and got in his lunch and it was invariably this. A hot dog, a bag of lays potato chips and the package of jelly candies and a coke. Year in and year out, they in and day out, youre to get this of what he had when he wasnt eating, having an deal with someone in the center punch or whatever. One day he comes back from phoenix and says come noticing tightness and we spent because, thats it, im a health kick. Im going on a duck. No more hot dogs. I i said okay what you are for lunch . A bologna sandwich on white with mail. Potato chips and chuckles. Sure. In new jersey it never seemed to hurt him. My question was, was not about his injury being hereditary but you know, heart condition clooney was part of his paternal family. He obviously didnt suffer from that and kept up that remarkable pace all the way through. I think he owed that to his mom. Because his father, if you look at his father his father died at 70 or 71 and it looked much older than his years and his grandfather died at 61 of massive coronary and looked as if he was 90. They had just gone through the strength of the Second World War but they were hard living. John was not much of a drinker. Yet smoke into his 40s but quit cold turkey and never relapsed. But he did have his moms health jeans up until he got, as is often the case, he was great unbelievably useful for his age until you get sick. Then he was sick. That came clearly from roberta who i dont think ever had a cold as far as i could tell. She was remarkably fit specimen. My question would be, since he had such a tremendous family military experience hereditary, but if you want to call it, tradition is a word im looking for, sorry, are any of his children involved in the military or any of his relations . This is a subject i know nothing about but it seems the mccain military legacy continues. Yes. His son doug from his first marriage was a naval aviator, now a pilot for american airlines. His son jack was a Naval Academy graduate, helicopter pilot, is now in the reserves but but i k the year john was dying and Russell Vought after that was flying in afghanistan, his son jimmy was a marine who lifted the corporal in iraq during the 2008 campaign. Tells a wonderful story about digging and mrap out of iraq, stuck in the mud when the sergeant told him her dad just one in new hampshire, you know. So yes, and is now in the army, the army guard in arizona. Thank you. Jim, what would you like to add to white us up . Mark, i just wanted to commend you for bringing out the importance that Ernest Hemingway played in john mccains life. You point out that what mccain thought of Robert Jordan in for whom the bell tolls was kind of a role model. Yes. An incredibly interesting particularly for me discussion on the snows of kilimanjaro, probably my favorite short story of all time as well. And, in fact, when i met my wife i told her she had to read kilimanjaro and the story of the leopard. Her nickname for me has always been leopard ever since. Is that right . Good. Talk briefly about the importance of the leopard in kilimanjaro to john mccain. I dont know if thats a conventional take on what it was. The story were talking about is late, the fact it was Late Afternoon of the day he would fly to minnesota and is at town hall event where he defended obama. He knew he was losing and he knew there was very little we could do to change that fact. We just had a few down hours, kind of weird that late in the campaign have more than 20 minutes of free time. Horsing around and he made a joke about were going to order room service. I made a joke about hemingway store trainee mentioned thats a great story but kilimanjaro, thats his best one. He told the volume of polled volumes out of anyways short stories out of his briefcase and proceeded to read and it begins with the National Geographic description of kilimanjaro and how high it is and what the name for it was and said, the line or something, western summit its a drive in frozen carcass of a leopard. No windows with the leopard was thinking at that altitude. The way i always read the story was one of come its heartbreaking but john seemed to character who is dying again can come i got on African Safari dying of gangrene and reflecting on his life and having flashbacks, hes delirious often but is also remembering times when it done something not so interested for others in the war. I think it was a greekturkish war, the protagonist was recalling, and sort of the essence of the mccain code i think if somebody wanted to explain mccain code of conduct was his belief that you redeem your own flaws and failures through courage and selfsacrifice in service to others. I think he saw that in this story. And the leopard to him, so when the guy is dying right before he dies he imagined to slang and playing and being rescued and is looking at the square top, white top of kilimanjaro and sort of i believe in the sun, and he said, i think about what was the leopard thinking at that altitude come to leave behind a life of regret in the something like, also leopard seeking its best self, its honor. Thats the the way john beauty. He read the whole story to a group of aids and his wife cindy all standing there kind of shooting each other looks. When he got to the end, a story he by his own account read what other times, when he got to the end he was crying. It was a very moving, as i recall it it moves me again, and he was just a special cat. Just never, he carried a new thin and many of the times you never going to meet anybody else like him. Market, thank you for sharing that story and for writing this excellent book. Thank you. Much appreciated. Thank you, everybody for watching. It has really been a pleasure and i would say it must be after writing, what, seven books with john, it must be strange for you but rewarding to write now johns story from own memory, your own perspective without john. Do you anticipate writing for the books, whether it is john or somebody else . I dont know what more i could say about him. Over a span of about 20 years we are writing to give every two or three years, and it became kind of a happy its close with sort of the inspiration for this book. Yeah, you know, thats kind of how i make my living or simultaneously get Something Else to write. I think i have, i think im bored people enough of my views of john mccain, on how to think of a different subject going forward. He was a lovely guy to know and its honorable man to write about, and its been the great privilege of my life to do so. You are watching booktv on cspan2, television for serious readers. There are so some programs to h out for tonight. For a complete schedule visit booktv. Org or check your program guide. Heres a look at some books being published this week. Find these titles this coming week wherever books are sold, and watch for many of the authors in the near future on booktv on cspan2. Hi, everyone. My name is autumn sanders and on the of asking as your hostess. I want to thank you all for coming. I want to thank the rest of the brown books team for making this event possible for joining us live
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