We have it signed here but his book is the luckiest n, light with john mccain and jim and i have been fascinated with it. I didnt expect to read every word as my reading list is so vast and once i started i couldnt put it down. Its kind of you tosay, thank you. You worked with senator mccain in 2005 and i am blanketing, i know you did seven books, do you remember which was the 2005 one . It could have been a book on character assassination. We sold thousands of copies and one to the senator and i believe we ran low on signed copies. I find this a little strange to be talking about him without him after spending time with him. The other thing id like to say before i turn this over to jim was that i was really surprised that the mccain family listened to deep roots. I just assumed he had western roots. Im a carpetbagger in arizona. But i didnt recognize that john mccain was perceived as something of a carpetbagger when he ran for office but i asked johngrisham when we did an event , of course he was in smalltown mississippi and i learned just a little bit and im going to read it again to get his reaction. The attitudes of his i. E. John mccains southern forebears had its ancestors in earlier generations to distinguish themselves in war offer parallels to colonies of his own personality. Derived in part from the personalities of his father and grandfather who were steep especially his grandfather in the tradition of the mississippi mccains. It certainly is high spiritedness , enthusiasm and craving for adventure run an inheritance from mccain and his mother and Melissa Spencer who wrote about john mccain said this when mccains uncle and grandfather went to mississippi. What could they do around small towns in an area not yet healedfrom the civil war . Law, the church, nothing seemed to challenge them. And both john and i think thought that was fascinating and also were surprised at johns history as an mississippianso thank you for that insight. 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 for a fascinating andcompelling book. I put my cards on the table and congratulate you on that. Im going to starty telling a story about the firstime i ever met john mccain andhow i quickly learned a lot about him. Through thatexperience. 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 a pae there, a break. Jo mccain walked up to me and said ive been readg this stuff youre writing about thisbozo clinton and i dont like it. I respectfully disagreand then went on to the showthe next day , im sitting at my desk at the washington post, and its john mccain. Its not you, its not his secretary,ts john mccain and he proces to apologize to me and to say to me that he had quite an irh temper. And i said to him well, my mothers maidename was salter so im familiar with that but i was justmpressed with your book d the way in which he did thatnd the genuine nature of his apology. Now, you learned a lot of his temper as well. You write at one point that he and you got locked into a terrificargument and he said to you finally, we both have been hot heads, the two of us. One of us should calmdown. Talk a little bit about john mccains temper and how it manifested itself and how you lived with it or didnt live with it. Its kind of like a summer squall, it came out in sudden bursts and moved on when it was sunny skies buhe was very rarely everdirected downwards. He could argue with anybody, his staff had great license to tell him what they thought they were never afraid to challenge him or disagree with him when he would argue write back if he didnt agree but when i think he thought he lost control of himself, you know, he became discourteous and personal or something, he always regretted that and many many people have been recipients of a note hastily written or an apolo. He didnt pick on a legend, it was kind of exaggerated i think to be honest really it wasnt that big ofa problem. He just had one. It could come up fitfully, it could be an inmidating thing to the hold while it was happening but he said a fight not joined isa fight not enjoyed. And i think the best line anybody ever wrote about john mccains personality was the late journalist bob temper in his wonderful book nightingale song. He was describing mccain as a plea at the Naval Academy and when he participated this summer and in a line i think itsverbatim , unschooled as a boxer mccain found e center of the ring and threw punches untilsomebody went down. That really was an apt description of him. Don mccain let his emotions and character show more and more purely than any other politician. Discussed that in relationship to his upbringing and to his family. His mily had the roots in plantation life in mississippi. John mccain never considered himself and never acted as a southerner as you point out in the book. And so he was brought up in a military context. As a military brat. Thats right. Talk a little bit about his parents, his family and that influence on him. It wasnt just his father but it was his grandfather. There was i think the first father and son, fourstar admiral. His grandfathers brother was a west point graduate. I think he got Brigadier General in the army. He had mccain relatives in the service and ever professional soldier and sailor and every genetion going back to the volution. But he was imbued with a sort of tradition of the military and his father and grandfather preached and ethos, but he tried very hard. His sortf codes he lived by were an amalgam of codes that he inherited. His father and grandfather taught him, the literature he wrote, he was one of the most well re the people ive ever known and he consumed fiction and nonfiction he always had two or three booksellg at the same time. But it was sort of the hemingway code of grace under pressure and courage and selfsacrifice was very important as were the honor codes of two institutions that were important in his life, alexander virginia and i think the Naval Academy where he was rebellious, had very poor discipline and very cle to building out of the Naval Academy, graduated fifth from the bottom of this class but he never took pre init, i never violated the honor code. I think the idea that were serving a cause bigger than ourselves is what de him, is why he wore his emotions onis sleeve all the time. It was devoted to hicauses and he rarely no matter how angry he was he would never give them up and he would get quite emotional about it from time to time and i think all those things contributed to that class unit passing reference 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 did affect him. He had a hard time pullingout of john mccain how itaffected him. He was among , he was very candid, very unguarded person when you were talking to him but he did become a little tightlipped when talking about his father. I think he revered his father and his father was gone all the time on deployments and i once asked him, he said the difference between your father and grandfather was your grandfather loved the navy and your father lived for the navy and i said give me an example of how that was and all he said was at christmas, my father would come down and we would open our presents and we would go back upstairs, put on his uniformand walked to his office and thats all he said. Didnt comment on it other than the observation and when i would ask him about his he would, he allowed his father had a binge drinking problem and that he struggled with all his life but heroically area he would get sober and be on the way for a long time and then start all over again. He would prey on his knees every night to overcome this, his habits and when i asked how did it affect you when you saw your father drunk, how did affect yourview of him , he said i didnt recognize him. And i said why so . He goes because he was a completely different person and i didnt recogni and and all thats all i uld pull out of him. Can relate to that. Talk a little bit about his mother who unfortunately passed away last week at age 108 and must have been one of the more remarkable women. I never met anybody like her. She really was one of themost memorable people youd ever encounter. She had a good run and she wouldve been the first to say her age was 20 but she was old, curious, adventurous , resilient, charming. Just beautiful, well into her golden years, beautiful woman ive ever met. She had an identical twin sister and they were just as tight as sisters could be and when they were both widows they traveled. She and her sister were inveterate travelers and in the 90s they went to europe and planned to rent a car in germany and drive to turkey and the rental car company to police on the car, they were in their 90s so they bought a mercedes. Her sister lived in la where roberta and rowena were brought up and she decided, roberta decided to spend christmas with her and john got a call from arizona Highway Patrol saying they must have just beenpulled over outside flagstaff 212 on the interstate. But he credits her and john more importantly for the purposes of my book, he credits her with his curiosity, his rebellion because his father was a more remote figure and his mother really raised him and he was most transparently his mothers son and of course it was devoted to her and loved her very much. It warmsyour heart to think they were reunited right now. Well, talk a little bit about how johns mother and father presented him with the option of going to the Naval Academy. And never ordered himto go. They just talked as a function he was going. He said nobody ever asked me if 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 and he said he hide under the table when his father came home from the war and hisgrandfather unfortunately died the day after he came home from the war. They would have to officers over and they be talking about their war experiences and he would hide under the table and listen to the stories that you hear his parents say its time to their friends, this is john, hes going to the Naval Academy and he resented it. He once told me it was a place i knew i belong at dreaded area and he didnt like having free will, having a say in the matter. This could have presented him with a real opportunity to be a belto rebel against the academy. But i guess he didnt, tell us. I think he rebelled biting insubordinate. He piled up against the Naval Academy and he got in trouble a lot, went over the wall like you would at the academy and went to Downtown Washington in the Old Neighborhood where there mighbe burlesqueshows. But he had the good fortune of being mens lord. Workedff the demerits by working ithe yard of one of the masters, the english master , i guy by the name of williaravenel who had been i think intake command in pattons army in world war ii. And john revered him area he taught john to love shakespeare and a lot of great literature as his father and mother didas well. But he revered him and he sort of model is co, modelehis code on william ravenels code ofconduct. But the Naval Academy, he was described as a lder in his class but not because of academics or class standing or you know, any form of achievement. He w constantly in trouble and ways being boed out of the place. He got in a lot of trouble and he said once, i had extradition on the weekends to pay off these demerits to walk to baltimore and back 17 times but i think that was his way of clearing himself and that was the great art of this story. The individualism that really didnt get subdued so much as he sawimself in the context of something larger than himself when hwent to vietnam and i think result that needn him to assert his independence and while they always remain mad i guess you could say, he talked about subsuming his own interest and accomplishing some larger purpose. Im going to follow the chronology or actually the structure that you follow in your bk is you go away from john dietary carrier to talk abouthis political career. So lets talk a little bit about it but we will come back to the military part. John mccains decision to run for congress in 1981, what led him to go intopolitics . His job in the navy was the United States senate. Nonpoliticians were friends of his were in there but he worked in the senate, he was effectively the navys lobbyist in the Armed Services committee and he got on that committee and as part of his duties he would assert some of those numbers when they took overseas trips and he became of a protcgc of john power and Barry Goldwater and jackson and some of the old bowls in National Security guys and he became kind of peers in personal conflict to the younger guys at that time. Theyre all old now but they were young back in the 70s. Bill cohen, young senator biden. He traveled with them and became friends with them and he told me he would watch in amazement area he be in the Armed Services committee and he would see Scoop Jackson or powers and they would scribble something on a piece of scrap paper and that would become an amendment to the defense bill and hundreds of millions of dollars would be sent from one account to another just like that and he said it dawned on me that most of these guys had more power than a one or two star admiral would ever have which was the most i think he said he could realistically aspire to. So he decided to retire from the navy and he went there clearly with an entry into politics in mind. I wanted to ask you why you chose that structure area you talk about politics instead of going straight into the incredible story of john mccain getting shot down. And then was of course tortured and he refused to accept an early release. Why did he shift to politics before he got that . I thought it would reflect but i would share how that experience affected him as a politician if we got into the story. It didnt matter because any politician you have a conscience, you have to task all the time and he had some early on and what that experience, is sort of main crucible in vietnam when he refused it, that was the test of his life brought him to trust his own probity and sense of honor. It will him. I think it made him realize that he wasnt Strong Enough, maybe Strong Enough to get through all the challenges of life on his own but it also wasnt to trust his own judgment and it refined his sense of honor which was provoked i think in a couple of early experiences, john powers nomination so i wanted to begin to go back and show how it affted him. He was elected to the senate in 1986 and staffed in 1989. And you were with him for two runs for the presidency. 2000 and 2008. At that time as therepublican partys nominee. And you make the point that in all of his electoral campaigns but particularly in the president s ones he ran on and egos rather than a governing philosophy. Talk about that a little bit area what difference does that make them and how successful was that . He was a conventionally centerright guy. Smaller, more effective government, a strong defense. He had those fears but when you look for, when you asked to give a philosophical review of his politics he looked at you like whats your problem, son . Not to philosophize. I saidim serving my country here , and he had a very practical humility about the role of amember of congress. But you shouldnt expect to get 100 percent of your away but you can make modest progress on the problems of your time and honorable thing to achieve so he believed if you look at the american experiment in a sacredcontext. That we were proven that selfgovernment was the only moral government and all beings are entitled to it. He thought that was a great precious clause that was placed in the hands of the people elected to represent americans and congress and the white house and who do their workoverseas. And you know, things that sort of exacerbate public impressions of politicians as selfinterested and corrupt and all that were sort of complicated that cause and hurt that cause so he sort of had this probity in government that we are here to serve and its a noble project, lets do it fairly. Lets make progress on our problems and lets not put ourselvesfirst all the time. I think it was a code, he was a man with a code of conduct and thats how he operated. Thats the thing that came through most clearly in the instces in the 2008 campaign where he actually defended his opponent against racist attac from his own supporters area i thought that was justabout john mccains finest moment. It was an impressive thing to behold. I was fortunate enough to be in that event where he did that and was booed by his own supporters, some of them. Most people ey are gave him a good round of applause. Campaign also contained two enormous mistakes that you helped h make. Yeah. One was sarah palin. The other was calling for an economic summit suspending campaigning and failing to put forward a convincing program there. Talk about those two mistakes and how quickly both of you, john mccain and you realize they were mistakes and didnt leave any lasting effects in your relationship with each oth . Not those two decisions, number earlier things in 2007 , i wouldnt say strained our relationship but wean talk about that some other time, ill answer yourquestion directly. One thing senator mccain would never allow one way or another, he felt responsible for puttg her on the ticket. He felt her he put her in a position she wasnt prepared for and she struggled under the strain of it and he felt bad about it and never said a d word about her. He did say many times privately and publicly that he wished he had done what he wanted to do what was make Joe Lieberman his runningmate. That was a fraught desire of hithat would have led to a very messy convention and a lot of unhappy republicans but he said that was my mistake. He never phrased it putting her on the ticket was my mistake, it was not tting Joe Lieberman on theticket was a mistake. Cent leaving lieberman was a democr and he was an independent caucus with democrats area he was convinced to meet with sarah palin and was impressed on the meeting with her. Because she was pitched to him as a reformer republican. Taking on the republican establishment and taking on the oilcompanies of alaa. And we got a settlemt for alaskans that was quite an improvement over what they were getting and also the argument was made that it would satisfy lori clinton voters who we dissatisfied with how the primary worked out and this might be a great ticket if it had a woman on it. Those were e reasons we picture, not because she thought she could stir up the base, those were the reasons she was picked and she could have very very impressive skills that i think the press got in the first days after we picked her. Had forgotten, i never seen anybody work aligned what she did and i ver seen anybody be so charming one on one to voters and a teleprompter went out andshe did miss of the. But performance was almost reaganesque. Sort of that communition skill. She wasnt, the mistake was she contradicted what his message had been all along, the experience argument against the young is experienced editor barack obamand the Country First because it lked like a litical pic, not a Country First. I argued against it. I lost the argent and ill fully admit that in the first week or so i felt maybei was wrong, shes quite talented. And it wasnt until later on, nothing n prepare even a seasoned politiciaor the strain and spotlight of a president ial campaign. Its a daunting, daunting experience and not many people can handle the pressure that someone so relatively new to politics and certainly never expected that kind of tention before and was bound to crack under the strain of it. [inaudible] that one i didnt argue againstunfortunately i argued for. We had managed to come out of the convention with a five or six foot meetg on obama, part of e convention which ually dissipated and but by the end of september or late september, we were i thought very competitive ar that we still had a chance and i thought what was that horrible environment for the publican candidate. President bush, bless him not entirely his fault but was ve unpopular, he had terrible numbers and was easy to pay the republican nominee as george bush is but i think the famous polling formulation right track wrong track i think it was 88 wrong track, i dont think even now with covid19 covid19 it would be anywhere near that. And then Lehman Brothers collapsed and we just did ea other like what can we possibly do salvage this situatn . We knew we were out of ideas that point and we said looks like were goingo put Country First and lets go try to figure out how tsolve this. Lets temporarily freeze the campaign, we will go to washington and as soon as we got there we wanted to meet with the leader of the republican majority leader, weiner. We knew right away that we had tied ourselves to House Republicans because they would say yay or no and that was a terrible mistake and they couldnt give a damn what john mccain told them to do. We were called to and resoed by others in that particular juncture in john mccains life. And it took a while to figure out how make themost of it. I think it was in the white house that he was known for, he tried to get baynard to say what he needed. Bush turned to him and says john and he sa i want to hear what john boehner had to say. He wanted to get some kind of idea of what he had bush for. And thats why he acted that way in thatmeeting but it was a mistake. It was a stupid blunder we shoulhave seen it coming its just a lot of , when youre struggling and clawing your way to get to the 40 yard line and suddenly youre back very late in the race, at one yard line, you have a down to go and you have a tendency to say put it up and throw a hail mary thats essentially what it was and it blew up in our face and you know, from that point on it was very unlikely he could win. How long did it take andto recover from that mistake . From defeat, he just gets busy. A man who has plenty of enthusiasm. Heot back the troops and every fight he cld find and even issues he had expressed before, he would get resolved. I remember he had on Election Night was very stoic. Wentut, gave a concession speech and i think that one stands the test of time, sort of graciousness and the spirit of patriotism but he turned to his detail later and said you guys have been great and its really wonderful to get to know you and thank you veryuch. Id like you to give me a ride home and then i dont ever want to see youguys again. And the next morning he and the city responded walking to get a cappuccino in the morning. One of the things he threw himself into and im glad to see your Pay Attention to is the security conference. Where he showed up and showed real leadership in forging and strengthening the transatlantic alliance. And i happened to be standing rit beside him 2007 when Vladimir Putin suddenly turned and gave a very, ver nasty on the security confence read i hear john mccain saying paly mostly to himself i thought was we have to find ways to work with him. He wasnown as a hot but he tried to reach out and i think id love to hear you describe what you think his acmplishments in foreignpolicy were. In some of the big moments of foreignpolicy i think one of my favorite memories was the normalization of relations with vietnam which was i think washingtons first hint of mccain statesmans. He had other reasons even if hedidnt object , he was not treated particularly well, obviously he was tortured but he thought it was in americas best interests to get past the war and he thought it was in our geopolitical interests to make a friend if n an ally out of vietnam and soueast asia. We had similar issues with the chinese. And so we worked very hard and took a lot of drops on the pow issue and had to put with some crazy stuff, but he was almost the architect, he and john kerry were architects of the normalization plan. Was there ever the feeling that there was guilt attached to his arrest on vietnam issues . Number really did, he really kept the war hind. I dont think he felt any guilt at all. It was a professional officer , just doing his duty. But nohe did feel that, he did have a strange affinity for vietnam, he had a affinity for the vietnamese people. Not necessarily acquired in prison but he was a very curious person and avery observant person. He was sort of the head political cadre of the camps, he ordered thepropaganda statement he was forced to make. He always remarked about this time i think in Christmas Eve or something, dressed in a threepiece suit and talked about and he too had a father like john had. And maybe he had something in common. He had mixed feelings about the guy obviously but that made an impression on him. And it was a really lovely storthat when passed away, there were long, long lines of vietnamese, the embassy, signed a coolence book including one of his sailors and theres a monument that they dont to a captured pirates on the lake, shore of the lakwhere john parachuted into when he was ot down. The heat flowers on it and still to this day flowers years after he passedaway. He was a celebrity in vietnam. He would be mobbed but the balkans was another instance where he would help clinton again at the same time, took a very dim view of admistration policy with north korea and the agreed framework. He had lots of arguments, he thought policy and defense policy were his passion in terms of issues, thats for sure but he did, you mention immunity, he started going to munich when he was in the navy. Just the delegation to munich and he watched who chaired those delegationsin those ys. Who played the role of the statesman and thats where he learned those lessonand thats what he aspired to do, thats why he ran for congress and even though he could be just as pugnacious as you know, he probably called putin a sonofabitch but he said weve got to figure out how to get this guy from causing more trouble. And he could get very worked up on what the russians had done in syria. But that angered him like nothing id ever seen in terms of geopolitics area real angered him. But he would be very pugnacious and he was very popular there. Even those who were the target of his iron because they recognized him as an american who was committed to our alliance and committed to making the worldsafer. On domestic policy lasting image of john mccain is his boat on the Affordable Care act. In order to essentially extend the Affordable Care act. Tell us about gesture and talk about why he was the last person to do so. He came, obviously the time that that occurred was obviously crucl, he had days earlier had a tumor removed from his front lobe of hisbrain. He flew to washington to participate in the debates on that motion against his doctors orders. But he wanted to the senate but he knew in his heart that he had a terminal disease but hed receive the best ca and if he had any hope its because he had access to the best medical care one could happen in this country and that it would be wrong of him to take a vote osomething. He had some supported repealing and replacing obamacare and the bill under consideration didnt replace obacare, it would repeal major portions of it and offered nothing instead. He said i cant deny people healthcare insurance as im about to experience the benefits of really goldated healthcareinsurance. So that was sort of also his concern was the way the senate had be deteriorating and how it operated. More and more decisions were being aggravated, leadership staff were writing all the bills, not the committees and these re the places where the closest relationships are always foreign because thats where senators and most of their time and these friendships with members of the committee on both sides of the aisle and thats how business gets done we make modest progress and more and more, every new form of filibuster, its aggravating more power in the office and its becoming like a house. That was also part of his motivation for voting the way he voted so the speech he gave the day he returned from phoenix, the vote itself i went home. And i went home and i did had been crisscrossing a couple of times the country beuse of this surgery. And my wife and kids were in maine where we had home but i was at our house in the dc area. I said im going to go home and get some dinner area and i thought he was probably going to vote against it. And because i had my dinner, i sipped a scott and was awakened at like 1 00 in the morning by him his chief of staff sayi he voted against it but i have course i realize it was played over and over again and he was getting lobbied by both sides intensely and he was the last person id expect, right before he had intended to vote for the second time, Vice President pence asked him to come out so he uld lobby one more time and politely told him no and pence handed him the phone and trump was on the other linend politely rebuffed the request and went back in. He couldnt raise his ar because he broke both his arms and one of his legs when he was shot down so he had always a political rally or something, his arms were out in frontof him like that. The boat goes on for 15, 20, 25 minutes, however long. It takes about 40 minutes before they blow the while and comes in and rushes in at the end both all at the same time and its a chaotic confused, you cant hear and the clerk can never hear wha theyre saying but everybody gestures as they say yay or may and thats all he was doing was just a habit to do that but you can hear a pin drop, everybody was standing around and people look at that thing like a renaissance painting but it was jushappenstance, really. I want to ask a selfinterested question. In discussing among other things this friendship with my friend johnny u use the phrase that moment in vietnam with apple started a mutual Beneficial Association with the press. Talk about his relationship and other times not so. If youre a politician yore going to have antagonistic relationships with the press on a regular basis. Its the job of the press to be an antagonist and it human nature to not really enjoy that experience too often. He liked reporters. One time he might have actually imagined hself as a reporter long before he got into politics in his military career. He loved good writing, he loved the economy of chris urnalistic prose. You always call me in to read some leads that impressed him and he had a lot of good relationships d friendships. It was a good friend of johnny apple in the aftermath of the fire and they stayed friends and i think he spoke at apples Memorial Service if i remember correctly and he admired a great manyreporters. And david how persimmon, he admirehim and so i know thats probably a polarized day and age and its a sort of a hot take of the world we live in, seems like a sin or something but it really is the way human nature operate and the y we really are and often its the way we arewhen we are at our best. So he never, i see weve got a signal, leaving a question. We do have a question and i thought we might he him read it. Someone wants to know who would u advocate for. [inaudible] who did you advocate for in the process . There were several peoplei favored for a while. It came down to the alternative was to governor palin and governor mitt romney. I admire now senator romney very much and he would have been a fine choice. I just thought we had been in the first five days, six days, seven weeks of the convention we were all these attacks are on each other when they were competing in the primaries and it got a little heated at times even though he was sharp so i was a big admirer of governor valenti. When we debated the choice in front of john between palin i advocated for plen. Id like to ask a question. Not really a question but more of an observation. One thing that caught me in is thbook area i know senator mccain, ive flown to washington in the same framework, senator mccain was largerthanlife. But what i thought you touched on in the ok veral times is this truly aweinspiring unitof his metabolism, im so envious of his metabosm. Im only learning right now of senator mccain and i just can rdly imagine how he was able to keep up that constant face and additionally, cause he had some real physical injuries. His knee never worked properly. Would you say hereditary . That was all were related. Its typical of mccain area he turned his bad leg, i mean he would go down staircases and he would take staircases all all the time over elevators. He would just let abby do the work were sort of dropping. He had this stage that compensated for his bad knee. You couldnt keep up with it. The rest of us would haveto try to keep up with him. He did have a marvelous metabolism. He had an extremely strong physical role. To show he was still in good shape at the age of 70, 71 or whatever he was in 2008 he had his son climbed the grand canyon and he was something. I like work for him for 12 years and she always felt thisfunny story and i always like to hear. One day she went down to his lunch and it was invariably a bag of lays potato chips and a package of chocolates and a coke. And so year in and year out, year after year when he wasnt eating or having a meal with someone or lunch or whatever. One day he comes back and says he didnt notice a certain type but said thats it, im going ona diet. No more hotdogs. What do you want for lunch . A bologna sandwich with mayo. And how abousome chips and chocolate . Yeah sure. It never seemed to hurt him. My question was about h injuriesbut a heart condition clearly was part of his maternal family. He obviously suffered from that and kept that up and it was remarkable. [inaudible] yo that to his mom because he had his heart by 70 or 71 and his father died of a massive coronary and looked as if he was 90. They had just gone through the strain of the Second World War but they were hard livers. John was not much of a drinker. He has smoked into his 40sbut had quit cold turkey and never relapsed. But he did have his mom help, up until he got as was often the case he was unbelievably youthful until he got sick. And then he was sick but he did and that came clearly from roberta who never had a cold as faras i could tell. My other question would be since he had such a tremendous family military experience, whatever you want to call it, tradition, are any of his children involved in the military or any of his relations . This is a subject of which i know nothing about but it seems that mccain military legacy continues now. Yes, his son doug from his first marriage was a naval aviator, not a pilot for american airlines. His son jack was a Naval Academy graduate. Is now in the reserves but i think the year john was dying and for several months after that was flying in afghanistan and his son jenny was a marine corporal in iraq during the 2008 campaign. Tell the wonderful story about being an mri stuck in the mind and they told him your dad just one new hampshire. So yes, hes now in the army, as an ar guard. Jim, what would you like to add . I just wanted to amend you for bringing out the importance that Ernest Hemingway played in john mccains life. As we find out that he, that cain thought that Robert Jordan was kind of a role model. And you close with an inedibly interesting paicularly for me scussion on kilimanjaro, probably my favorite short story of all time as well. In fact, when i met my wife , i told her that she had to re the ows of kilimanjaro and the story of the leopard. And her nickname for me has always been leopard. Talk a just briefly about the importance of the leopards in kilimanjaro, snows of kilimanjaro for john mccain. I dont know that the conventional take. Im sure you were talking about his the fact that it was Late Afternoon they would fly to minnesota and do that townhall event where he defended obama. But he knew he was losing and he knew there was very little we could do to change that. So we just had a few down hours that late in the campaign, is more than 20 minutes of free time. We were sitting around and i made a joke about, some joke that brought to mind the relations story d he mentioned that the great story but kilimanjaro is the best one and he told the volume of hemingway short stories about the old briefcase and proceeded to read it and it began as a nationalgeographic descriptn of kilimanjaro and how high it is what the messiah name for it was and he said its something near the western summit, no one knows that the leopard was seeking out and i think i the way i always reathe story was this heartbreaking regrets, but john was dying of gangrene, hes a guy on the africasafari dying of gangrene andes reflecting on his life and in flashbacks, use delirious but remember in times when he had done something for others in war. I think it was the turkish war at the protagonist was recalling. And the essence of the mccain code i think if somebody wanted me to plain the mccain code was this belief that you redeem your own flaws and failures rough courage, self sacrifice and service to others and i think you saw that in this sry and so when the guy is dying, right before he dies he imagines hes flying in a plane and being rescued and hes looking at the white top of kilimanjaro and its sort of a blaze in the sun. And he said i think i wrote what was the thinking at that altitude to leave behind a life of regrets and its seekg your best self, his honor. He wrote that whole story with his wife cindy stanng there kind of giving each others looks and its an account ive read 100times, at the end he was crying. Its very moving. As i recall it, it moved me again and he was just a special cat. He kind of knew then and any other times there were never going to be any others like him. Thank you for sharing at story. Thank you kimthank you so much for doing thisand thank you. Thanks erybody 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 johns story from your ownmemory , your own pspective without john. Doou anticipate writing further books whether its john or somebody else . I dont know if i got more i can say about him. For about 20 years we were writing books together fortwo or three years , it became kind of. That was kind of the inspiration for this book , but thats kind of how i make my living now. I think ive, i think ive bored people enough with my views on john mccain and i will probably change gears going forward