In Honor of Senator John McCain (orig. written June, 2012)

In Honor of Senator John McCain (orig. written June, 2012)
This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site. If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email.

Friday - June 8, 2012 Call me what you will, but there are two reasons why I like Senator John McCain. One: he rejects the fear-based approach to illegal immigration that the Republican party takes, in favor of a more rational, compassionate view that recognizes all the complexities of the issue. Two: he is a fan of the National Lampoon. How do I know this? Because twelve or so years ago [now 17 years ago—gulp!], he was on the campaign trail and I was a young Managing Editor at the world's greatest humor brand. We were running a "Virtual Candidate" on our website, which, in 2000, seemed cool. No one had done it yet. And my Camerawoman/Marketing Director and I were running all over town, going to every political event we could find in an attempt to gather snippets of video to use on our website. One of those events was a McCain speech. I approached the Senator at the end of the speech, when all the media were crowding around him and said, "Senator McCain, I'm with the National Lampoon, and we're..."

Before I could finish, he exclaimed, "I love the Lampoon!" Needless to say, it wasn't the response I was anticipating. But I guess when you're surrounded by a ring of reporters who all want to take your name and some short Jew pops up with a cute redhead holding a tiny Sony camera and a sign featuring a physically-challenged frog and they say they’re from the National Lampoon, you might find it pretty refreshing.

But what’s amazing is that Senator McCain didn’t hesitate to express his love of a magazine (and comedy brand) that exercised its 1st Amendment right by printing all manner of political attacks (against both parties) and aired countless outrageous and politically incorrect things back in its heyday. He was happy to meet us and he wanted us to know it, room full of reporters be damned.

Today, working as a digital strategist on the Romney campaign, I got to tell him the story again.

We were called to an all-staff meeting at 585 Commercial, the main headquarters. Nobody knew he would be there, but everyone was abuzz with excitement. He gave a speech in front of a large flag, opened with a decent enough joke about how Arizona is the only state where mothers never tell their children they can one day grow up to be president (given the state’s track record), and at one point even dropped the f-bomb (so I guess that's three reasons why I like him right there, four if you count all the shit he went through in the war, five because he never bought into all that birther nonsense).

Here’s what he had to say after his opening jokes. It’s some meaty and interesting stuff:

“Listen. I want to tell you, I think things are going very well. I think if you had the night of the New Hampshire primary, if you would have said the polls show that this race is practically tied, I don’t think there’s many people that would have believed that. The campaign, and Mitt, thanks to his steadfast and steady, steady, steady running in this campaign we’re doing extremely well. I would warn you of something that you do know already. There’s a lot of ups and downs between now and the election day in November. There’s going to be some bad times and there’s going to be some good times, so you got to take a steady stream. Do not be affected by what’s on MSNBC or other communist outlets. [big laugh] So remember, I think we should be quite pleased, but don’t be euphoric because there are going to be bad times. This Obama team is as good and as tough as any campaign I’ve ever seen in Presidential politics, and frankly there’s very little they won’t do to reelect President Obama. I’d like to give an example of what’s spoken in the last couple days. As you know, there’s a new book out by New York Times reporter and it describes in detail two of our most secret and ongoing operations in the war against terror: the drones and the cyber-attacks. And they describe in detail an ongoing operation. We had a meeting yesterday with the Director of National Intelligence. The Director of National Intelligence is the most senior guy in all of our intelligence network. He said in his thirty years involved with intelligence, he has never seen a more egregious breach of National Security. Now, if you take a look at this book, you’ll see that it makes the President look like a very strong, steadfast leader on National Security issues. Well, Lindsey Graham and I have alleged that this wasn’t an accident, this link to the New York Times reporters. We all know they’re a propaganda outlet for the Obama campaign anyway, but this is really egregious. This literally puts our men and women who are serving in harm’s way. The trail of the drones is really a very serious thing and it admits we are doing certain things. And the cyber-attacks, I can tell you, the Israelis who we’re doing it together with, are besides themselves. Because they didn’t anticipate that all of this would be made public. And some of our other allies that I’ve talked to in the last forty-eight hours, have sworn they won’t cooperate with us anymore. Period. So, all this was done in the interest of the President’s reelection in my view. I’ve stated that publicly and of course, the President had a press conference this morning at which he seemed to fire back on that. By the way, there’s one anecdote in the book that I think you would be entertained by, even though the book overall is very praising of the President. I’m sure you recall when they took out Osama Bin Laden that there was a lot of things that were made public that shouldn’t have been public, including the identity of Seal Team 6, for example. Members of Seal Team 6 were not happy that their organization was out, among other details that never should have been made public. I think Secretary Gates was one of the finest Secretaries of Defense we’ve ever had. In the book it describes how he went over to the White House and met with the National Security Advisor, Mr. Donilon, and he said, ‘I have a new strategy for communications,’ and Donilon said, ‘Well, what is that?’ and he said, ‘Shut the fuck up.’ [big applause break] Now, I didn’t say that! [laughter] Secretary of Defense Gates said that. Finally, as a follow-up, we are calling for the appointment of a special council. Special council appointed somebody like Bob Bennet or someone like Willy Freyd, the former head of the CIA, somebody like that, a special council to conduct an investigation, because if people at the highest level of government are involved in this, then obviously you’re not going to get a real objective and thorough investigation. The White House has already rejected that...Could I just finally say, we all know we’re going to be up late on election night. We know that it’s going to be a very tough race, and obviously we all know that like most elections, it’s going to come down to getting out the vote. That’s your job. That’s your job to make sure that we get out every single vote that we have—uh, that we possibly can. Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Hampshire, you know the states...So, I think this is an incredible opportunity. And it’s all about jobs and the economy and I understand that. Listen, believe me, I’m from Arizona, I understand that. We were one of the hardest hit states when the housing collapse took place. But it is about national security. And it is also about the men and women who are serving around the world. Every fourth of July I’ve gone to either Baghdad or Kabul. And I can tell you that it is a remarkable experience to go over there and see most of them, at your age, the dedication and the incredible work that they do under very difficult conditions. So the next time you get a little weary and a little tired and a little frustrated, don’t forget that there’s some people over there, men and women, who are also having a pretty tough row to hoe. On fourth of July of 2008, Lindsey Graham and Joel Lieberman and I were in Baghdad and General Petraus—who is the finest General that I have ever had the opportunity of coming in contact with—had a reenlistment ceremony there in the Palace in Baghdad. And there was 275 men and women who were reenlisting to stay and fight in Iraq. It was really remarkable. In addition to that, was a group of 78 individuals who were not citizens, who have green cards, and we have a program in this country that if you have a green card and join the military you have an accelerated path to citizenship. You don’t have to wait along with everybody else. Well, just as we walked in there was five chairs that were empty. With boots on them. These were five individuals who had been killed two days before. Previous 48 hours, and had actually—as you can imagine—literally sacrificed themselves and their lives so they could become citizens of this country.

“So, there’s a lot at stake here, and I understand that it’s about jobs and the economy—I fully understand that. But I also think that we ought to understand that we live in a very dangerous world. And I do not believe that this President has fulfilled his duties in any efficient way as Commander-in-Chief of the military in conduct of our foreign and national security policy. I intend to spend a lot of time in a lot of different places. I’m going to that most important swing state, North Dakota tomorrow...well, thank you all and again, as the great, late mayor Daily of Chicago once said, ‘Vote early, vote often.’”

The senator then took a couple of questions from the crowd of young Republicans: “Senator, what was your favorite moment of the 2008 race?” “I think winning in Florida because you know that was a key race, but I think also, and you may be surprised about that, one of the nicest parts of that campaign was getting to know and appreciate Sarah Palin. I know a lot of people have criticized it and I know all that, but she’s a wonderful person. She galvanized our race. She galvanized our base. I can tell you facts are stubborn things. We were three points down and she gave her speech at the convention as vice president nominee and we were three points up the next day. And we stayed three points up until the day that the stock market went down 700 points in one day. And people watched their 401Ks and their pensions disappear. At the end of that day we went from three points up to six points down. And I know we could have run a much better campaign and I know we made a lot of mistakes, but I’ll tell you, it was really an uphill battle after that, the economic collapse. But I think the world of her. By the way, in case you don’t think she has an impact anymore? Watch when she endorses one of these candidates! She elects candidates. The latest was a race out in Nebraska, a primary for Senate, and there was a woman who was way behind—Deb Fischer—and Sarah endorsed her and she won the primary and I’m sure she’ll be the next Senator.

“What was your impression of President Obama as a senator?” “Not much to be honest with you. What I mean is, is that he didn’t do much. And he wasn’t, well he wasn’t there very long. One brief anecdote: when Ted Kennedy and I were on the floor of the Senate on the issue of immigration reform and that lasted about a month and we went back and forth and we were trying to hold our people together. And Kennedy and I had an agreement that I would vote against Amendments from our side—on the Republican side—that would harm this fragile agreement we had and he would vote against Amendments on his side, from Democrats who would harm him. Well, you may know that the Democrats do not like guest worker programs—United Farm Workers and all that—and guess who came forward with an Amendment to sunset—in other words, the whole immigration would formally go forward, but the guest worker program would be eliminated after three years—Senator Obama. I watched Ted Kennedy address Senator Obama in a less than pleasant way. But this was the same Senator Obama who said he was with us all the way and would vote with us and then turned around and voted, but had an Amendment that would have destroyed, if that Amendment had passed, it would have destroyed the whole effort that we had. So my encounters with him were not that much, but what was, was not ideal.”

And finally, the Senator closed with this: “Have a great time, and really one thing I would finally like to say—enjoy every minute of this. Enjoy every minute of it. You’ll be telling your grandkids about it, so enjoy. Enjoy. It’s tough, it’s hard, it’s long. But you really have now a chance that very few Americans do and be part of history. Thanks a lot.”

After his speech, I again approached him and told him the story I just told you, and again his eyes lit up at the words National Lampoon. I reminded him he'd said he loved the National Lampoon when I met him those many years ago and he smiled and said, "Oh, yes, that's right!" and then I told him I'd been a fan of his ever since despite our political differences, which is true. Any fan of the Lampoon is a friend of mine. I was going to add that I liked him so much I went and married a McCain, but there wasn't time. The Secret Service were already loading him into the elevator.

Popular in the Community

Close

What's Hot