with the senator when he passed were his wife cindy and his family and at his death he served the united states of america faithfully for 60 years. and want to bring in kelly ayotte who was on the armed services committee traveled around the world many times with john mccain. senator, you re thoughts about john mccain and how this lion of the senate and great leader of the armed services committee brought a new senator into the fold and what he taught you. andrea, just what a tremendous loss for the country, and what he taught me, he was my dear friend. he was a mentor. he was such a tremendous leader on national security. as you know, everywhere in the world that he traveled he was so well received and he was tough
the al smith dinner from 2008 when you were sitting right there behind john mccain and he gave the most generous tribute to his political rival for the presidency, barack obama. that was classic mccain. classic make cain. thank you for having me. it is a pleasure however sad the occasion to watch you on television running this coverage and to hear everyone you had on the phone, including john meachum and jack jacobs and michael beshloss. what a night that was and all of us wondering how we ranked enough to be there to be in such a special seat and listen to these two men at the height of the campaign. you can t fake class. and he displayed nothing but old school class and good manners
to end but john was so much fun to work with, i didn t mind. despite having come up short in his first presidential campaign, mccain s national profile continued to rise. in 2005, he cohfr spons-sponsord ambitious immigration reform with ted kennedy mccain began to gear up for a second presidential run. todayi announce my candidac for president of the united states he was popular and prominent. despite a long list of donors and heavy hitting political operatives on his payroll, his campaign struggled the fund raising estimates didn t pan out and thus top
institute that puts the institution above a political party and john mccain, he was bipartisan and he was a republican. but when the chips were down, he would always defend the institutions above his party. and he would put his his slogan for the presidential campaign country first sometimes came up short. but he always strove to do that and he always strove for a better politics. it was a phrase that kelly also used in the remembrance of him about a joy that he brought, the sort of he epitomized the politics of joy. he did think the democratic party was his opposition but not his enemy. when you think about when we re losing him and where our politics are right now, since he s been battling this illness,
jonathan, chuck commenting there s an vacuum for these months except the comments that senator mccain has sent from his sick bed. we have missed it. absolutely. he stood out for his ability to move debates in particularly directions. i think at this time there s such a contrast between the honor of john mccain and the short supply of honor in american politics right now. in particular you can go back to his days in vietnam. refusing to go home early when he was offered that opportunity to standby his extraordinaries and troops all the way up to challenging the woman who approached him at a rally and said that barack obama was an arab and wasn t of this country. i think he brought that every day to his job. he brought it to the american