very sweet and he thanked me for the opportunity of having the honor of working for john mccain which wasn t just i just recommended him. he did the job. but he was reminding me of the little things mccain did, which were genuinely gracious and thoughtful and considerate. he was he could berate staff if something went wrong as people did occasionally and in his case pretty occasionally but not that often. he would do all kinds of little things for people and relatives people that wanted to meet him. and go out of his way to do things, jake tapper had this pointed out he had a little party for a young man getting the medal of honor by president obama several years ago and jake invited many and he no need to do it or anything like that. it wasn t someone he knew or just thought, you know what,
economy and the crash came after the economic the economic crash came after the republican convention. i think the tickets on both parties might have been very different if the economic problems had been exposed before the conventions took place. but they didn t. that is a story in history. but this is a time to reflect on john mccain s remarkable contributions to this country and the world. and he really has been a champion for democracy all around the world. through his work at the international republican institute under the partnership of the national endowment for democracy which i m part of it and i respect the work that they do. but john mccain was a champion for democracy in america. but more significantly, he was a champion for democracy around the world and he actually did the work. he traveled with his colleagues from the republican party to do it with the international republican institute and with his democratic friends in the
hawaii in the winter of 1979, john met a teacher. 17 years his junior, cindy from a wealthy arizona family. she was just a beautiful young woman and great spirit and it was clear to me that he was very much in love with her. john and his first wife carol s divorce was finalized in 1980. a few months later, he and cindy were married. he was also ready for a fresh start to his career. mccain wanted to run for congress as a republican, but where? he never settled down anywhere long enough to call home. i suggested he would go to the state where his wife was from. he would be new but he would be new any place. his opponents labeled him a carpet bagger. he had weak ties to the area he was running. he quickly deflated that by saying the longest spot he had been in was prisoner of war.
and i couldn t be prouder than to have served senator mccabe. mike, thank you very much. thanks. and earlier tonight among those helping to remember senator john mccain this evening s joe scarborough, host of msnbc morning joe and joined us on the phone tonight talking to richard lui. he remained a committed small government conservative throughout his entire career. and you know, but he was always a maverick. he was not an insider. i remember david briar a former rules chairman of the republican party telling me when i first came to congress, he said there are two doors. and you need to choose which door you want to walk through when you go into congress. you can go in as an insider or you can go in as an outsider. and of course i think he meant that to encourage me to go in as an insider. i chose the other door. but senator mccain was always an outsider. and always a maverick. and you saw that in 2008 in his presidential campaign.
these were not popular positions that he took. no. we used to think of him as kind of the umpire of american life. he would call them as he saw them. and where to belabor the metaphor, we re at a moment in our politics today where everybody is on one team or the other. it is a ferociously tribal moment. you cheer or you you hiss depending on which side of the stadium you are on. and senator john mccain lived up to the great american tradition of using reason as the approach to different issues. so yes, he was a ferocious critic of the war on terror, more of the harsher interrogation techniques for the obvious biographical reasons. but george w. bush had no more loyal supporter for his iraq policy than john mccain.