56rdable care act. and recently he took the position that the death penalty if not flatly unconstitutional, certainly has outlived its usefulness, and has many more problems than it s worth. and he s quite outspoken about the need, in his view, to get rid of the death penalty. ruth baders ginsburg had almost received icon status, but to me stephen breyer was the most talk atiff. he would show up at a new yorker festival and do a q&a. he would occasionally do interviews. he didn t mind talking about life at the supreme court, and it was so unusual. usually his eight other colleagues didn t. who becomes the most loquacious and you have he leaves. ruth bader ginsburg did a lot of interviews, but you re right, he loved to talk about the law,
history. he was icon status, i was a mid-level white house staffer. we used to run into him, there was no one who i was more star-struck by than him. he just had a presence. and his break with not just the bush administration, but his break with the republican party, i ve been saying this all day, was so seismic. i don t know that there was an endorsement that sort of had the impact, john mccain was someone that colin powell had known forever. when he endorsed then-senator obama, it was a huge, huge, huge deal. both for then-senator obama and against john mccain. to hear him say it was because of sarah palin, he understood