what this campaign is all about. he s not. andrea, that campaign was singly nasty up to that point. it was a difficult campaign but what did that moment tell you about john mccain? that he was not going to play the kind of dirty politics that were rising up and which have threatened to overwhelm the senate and the rest of the country right now. he would not play that game and the fact that he took the microphone away from that woman and at a very critical point. he could have let the rumors fester against barack obama. not that there s anything wrong with being an arab but it was being used in a trogtory sense and he picked up on that right away and corrected the woman at a town meeting in public at a very important point and it showed that he was if he s not going to win the presidency he was going to lose with dignity. michael beschloss, one of the things that mccain cited as a regret is that he didn t choose
direction of the president of the united states. or if they blame donald trump for having tanked in the mid-terms and they decide he s a political liability. let me play one sound bite off this topic. hillary clinton was on meet the press this morning and talked about john mccain s passing. she hit on the point we re kind of talking about here, about the division in the country and having john mccain passing in this particular moment. take a listen. our institutions are being severely tested right now, including his beloved senate. and he was in every way he knew how trying to sound the alarm. you know, jennifer, it does feel like the senate has sort of become the house and that john mccain was sort of the last remaining ones to keep the senate the senate or keep it above that kind of rank partisanship and pure
tradition that predates george washington, to stand forth as an example of what s right, of human rights, of standing up for humanity. that was an incredible moment in his life. and he also continued to oppose gena, the cia director for a long time. and that kind of senator, that kind of stature, in terms of the united states senator, is that style of politician going away, do we still have that in american politics? well, i hope not is the answer. we may have a new crop of politicians come into washington who change things. right now it looks like it s fading. when you ask john mccain what his legacy should be he
one of his best friends, joe lieberman, as his running mate. he hasn t said anything about sarah palin but he had the sense of wanting to have the country come together, get beyond partisanship, he would use that term, things larger than yourself as important to him. that was mccain and one of the most important parts of his legacy and in 2004 john kerry was serious about trying to recruit john mccain to be his running mate on the democratic ticket. that was what he was like and that goes back to the founders, i think, founders wanted members 60 the senate, wanted all of us to have strong views on issues but they wanted us to have relationships across the aisle and be able to come together at the end. they would have recognized john mccain as someone that they wanted to see as someone in public life. they would have loved jim? chris matthews. just in thinking about john mccain i was writing down who i could remember as the great men.
white and european heritage. people have been backed into a corner and people are scared and they are using the economic anxiety button and saying that s not racism, and we see the manifestation of that and we look at things like the passing of john mccain. god bless him and the traditional statesman and we juxtapose that against the mud wrestling and the jell-o shots that is omarosa and it s a low point for our american time. what happened to the trajectory? john mccain started out as somebody who was against the mlk holiday, something he later regretted and he expressed regrets for not coming out in opposition to the confederate flag early on, changed his mind on that. he had a personal arc on race, and we re seeing it pushed the over direction. he is no saint and i don t agree with all of to his principl principles, but he is a great statesman. i visited the hanoi hilton, and saw the instruments of torture and the degradation he was kept