andrew card, you may have heard the statement your former boss put out. i want to share some of it from george w. bush. he says, senator mccain is a friend i ll deeply miss. laura and i send our sympathies to cindy mccain and the family. thanks to god for the life of john mccain. he was a man of deep conviction and a man of the highest order. you intimated and tom brokaw laid out for us with an anecdote on the campaign trail, was not always the same, was it, mr. card? no. there was strain in the relationship. they ran against each other for president. i happen to be talking to you from jaffrey, new hampshire. new hampshire was a state where george w. bush was campaigning
respect, i think i m doing what i have always done, trying to cover the stories as clearly as possible. he would get steamed up about that. and then, two summers ago, i went to do a reunion of the prisoners and put it on the air. i could he him coming across the floor toward me. i didn t know what to expect. and he came up to me and he said, i made a mistake, tom. i shouldn t have behaved the way i did. i love you. i regard you. we have been friends in the past and we re going to be friends forever. i said, i can t tell you how much that means to me. tom, what was the last conversation with john mccain? pardon me? what was the last conversation with john mccain? the last conversation was one that you saw, not so long ago. he wanted me to have one of the final interviews with him. so, we were at his office.
announcement, tom. and the one line that stands out, at least to me and what is a very emotional note from her, she says, he showed me what it is to be a man. how was john mccain a man? well, i think he was a man in large part because of the occupation he chose at the beginning. it took a lot of bravery to do what he did. i thought he was a man because he was going to acknowledge his mistakes. he was honest with himself. he was honest with us. we had a strong relationship, with some time because i wrote the greatest generation. it was one of his favorite books. he would refer to it. when he ran against president obama, he thought the press wasn t treating him well and he turned on a number of us, including me. he compared me a couple of times and it was uncomfortable. and i said, with all due
it has a lot to do with social media. in those days, they didn t have somebody breathing down their neck every nanosecond, breathing down their neck to what they were doing. it was a calling to go to the u.s. senate and serve your country there for an extended period of time. now, people come and go more quickly to that chamber than they have in the past. john mccain was, in some ways, the last of a breed. we have senators who are there now, been there a long time, but very few cross the party line at all, democrats or republicans. and providing the country with an independent voice. i think we need more of that. that was a service that john mccain provided. tom, it s a voice that you know well. over the years, you ve been able to interview and speak with senator mccain.
drive around the south of france and enjoy the summer vacation. for roberta mccain to have lost her son this way, being honored by the nation he served for so long, has to be quite a moment. the son and grandson of four-star admirals, certainly we ve all recounted out john mccain at annapolis, was at the bottom of his class. but he knew he had that legacy and he was going to stand up and end up. he chose to be a naval aviator. and we know how bravely he did those missions and of course had that terrible fate to become a prisoner of war. i m also struck, if you have a moment, by the closing paragraph of john mccain s final book, with mark salter, the restless wave. if i can just share those