Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Nobody was going to beat Barack Obama in 2008. That's a fact. It was his moment. It wasn't that John McCain ran a bad campaign, or picked the wrong VP. It was just that it didn't matter, it was over when it started.
With the likely nominations of Barack Obama by the Democrats and John McCain by the Republicans, one of these two parties is headed for a 2009 crack-up that could prove as messy as any party civil war in recent history.
Among the events of John McCain's five-and-a-half years of imprisonment and torture in North Vietnam, probably the most heroic, and surely the most celebrated, was his refusal to accept an early release from his captors.
I took a lot of heat from Republicans when I stepped out of John McCain's campaign after the 2008 primaries. I still supported McCain, and voted for him, but I just didn't want to be the tip of the spear attacking Obama.
If someone busted into your house and robbed you, would you then forgive them if you found out they were a veteran? Of course not. So why are we forgiving McCain for selling out his country by supporting the Bush agenda?
When I'm 100 years old, if I make it that long, when I die, probably the first tag line will be John McCain's daughter, and I'm so proud of him and proud of my family's legacy and our life, so I don't have a problem with it.
A troubled economy is always the sitting president's fault. It was when Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter, when Bill Clinton defeated George H.W. Bush, and when Barack Obama defeated John McCain by running against George W. Bush.
Perhaps the right to authenticity and the reverence of authenticity should be reserved for people like John McCain. John McCain who at his most authentic chose to stay and face years of torture rather than leave before his brothers.
I am certain that the United States next year, under a new president - regardless whether it's Obama or McCain - will present an ambitious program promoting renewable energies and energy efficiency. Europe could quickly fall behind.
Sarah Palin lacked the preparation or temperament to be one heartbeat away from the presidency, but what she possessed in abundance was the ability to inflame political passions and energize the John McCain campaign with star quality.
You can't be elected president without passing though Iowa and bowing down before corn-based ethanol, before agricultural subsidies. I mean, even McCain was a critic of ethanol, but when he got to Iowa, he was singing a different tune.
I think that Obama is very cool. And I think he's clever, and I think he can be witty. But I don't think he's funny in either the way that Reagan was funny - or John McCain and Dick Cheney are both funny in that ruthless, kind of mean way.
McCain was so passionate and determined, but he was also practical. He understood what a heavy lift it was to get a 60-vote, filibuster-proof margin on something that lawmakers feared would hurt their ability to campaign to keep their jobs.
As someone who cares about human rights, I am deeply dismayed to learn that Mr. McCain's charity has accepted money from Saudi Arabia. Their track record of oppressing women, gays, Christians, and political opponents is notoriously horrific.
When you get John McCain going about the war against terror, he comes alive. That's when it gets fun. He rattles off the statistics, he showcases his wealth of military experience, and he doesn't recognize the concepts of defeat or surrender.
Romney, like Sen. John McCain and Bob Dole before him, were meant to mollify moderates, attract Independents, and 'rebrand' the party in a way that mostly fits the ideal of media types who would never vote Republican anyhow. Each of them lost.
Let me be absolutely clear. Israel is a strong friend of Israel's. It will be a strong friend of Israel's under a McCain administration. It will be a strong friend of Israel's under an Obama administration. So that policy is not going to change.
The Republican Party, which John McCain led as our nominee in 2008, is going to become irrelevant if we become the party of intolerance and hate. The party founded by Abraham Lincoln was a party that fought slavery and intolerance at every level.
I'm an emotional woman when it comes to service to our country. I watched many people's children leave and go serve. This is something that is the fiber of the McCain family. It was nothing more than me just saying I believe in this country so strongly.
I used to like John McCain, too, but I must admit that was because he was bucking his party to do things I agreed with. I would not have had that reaction if, say, Bernie Sanders decided to rebel out of principle and support privatizing Social Security.
John McCain felt very strongly about virtually every issue that he tackled, but it was never based in partisanship. He didn't try to score partisan points as he worked on issues. He would work with anyone who wanted to accomplish the goal that he shared.
There's a lot of surplus rage from the '60s that was never really worked through publicly. I think a lot of that rage still exists, and I think you see that when John McCain runs a commercial that beats up on Hillary Clinton's earmark for a Woodstock museum.
Presidents seem to fall into two positive categories: they're one of us, or they're heroes. Both McCain and Obama probably see themselves as potential heroes - presidents who will be looked up to, not presidents everyday people will remark are 'just like me.'
When I was sworn in, we had Republican-sponsored climate-change bills all over the place. You had John McCain running for President in 2008 on a strong climate platform. You could see American democracy actually starting to work at solving a difficult problem.
In 2008, Senator John McCain forbid his staff from using an ad that referred to his opponent Barack Obama's inflammatory former pastor Jeremiah Wright or from raising that issue in any other way. He believed it was a sneaky way to use Obama's race against him.
Remember, the first presidential candidate to reject public financing for both the primary and general election was... Barack Obama, in 2008. He did it, in spite of a flat pledge to the contrary, because his campaign saw that it could vastly outspend John McCain.
Should Sen. McCain capture the nomination as many assume, I believe this general election will offer the worst choices for President in my lifetime. I certainly can't vote for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama based on their virulently anti-family policy positions.
'Not again!' I thought to myself this morning, as news trickled out that John McCain was set to pick Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. Not again, because too often women are promoted for the wrong reasons, and then blamed when things don't go right.
Although I've been a longtime Democrat (primarily because, unless there is some very compelling reason to be otherwise, I am always for 'the little guy'), my political orientation is not rigid. For instance, I supported John McCain's run for the presidency in 2000.
In 2008 all the stars aligned perfectly for Obama's 6-point victory over John McCain. He was an inexperienced, untested neophyte, and successfully convinced enough voters to paint their own version of what hope-and-change was all about on the blank canvas he provided.
My husband saw me go through the 2008 campaign cycle. We did it together for Sarah Palin and John McCain. It ended disastrously, and afterward I really wanted to do something different, so I started writing novels, and I imagined a fictional female president in my head.
John McCain was one of the senators who voted against George Herbert Walker Bush's disastrous break of his no new taxes pledge when he raised taxes in 1990. That's really important. He's a supply-sider. And he's got supply siders like Phil Graham and Jack Kemp to vouch for that.
It is clear to me that Democrats want to attack me rather than debate Sen. McCain on important economic issues facing the country. That kind of distraction hurts not only Sen. McCain's ability to present concrete programs to deal with the country's problems; it hurts the country.
In '08, Barrack Obama was famously elected president. Even though I'd supported McCain and dreaded what I feared Barrack might do, I felt a surge of elation when the networks announced he'd won. I really hadn't thought the U.S. would go for an African-American for a decade or so.
A person like Donald Trump, who has said what he's said about Muslims, Mexicans, women, George Bush, John McCain - a person like that should not be the nominee of our party or be the president, and I will campaign for an alternative to Donald Trump until that avenue is no longer open.
The campaigns of Steve Forbes, Pat Buchanan, Ross Perot, and John McCain all outperformed expectations on their support from independent voters. They made no effort to shy away from ideology, but conveyed to voters that their policies were driven by principle, not party talking points.
Donald Trump called for the closing of borders to Muslims; John McCain said, in response to the President's address on the San Bernardino shooting, that 'this is the war of our time.' As that shooting shows, we react to terrorism with far more intensity than we do to an ordinary crime.
I admired the way McCain worked on campaign finance reform. I admired the way Nancy Pelosi stiffened the Democrats' spine during the health care debate. I admire the way Barack Obama has raised a dog in the White House without ever putting it on the roof of the car for a vacation drive.
One of the last books I read was 'Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime' by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin. It gives a really good behind-the-scenes look at the campaigns. I didn't ask the president how accurate it was. I wouldn't ask him that.
I read 'Game Change.' If you want to relive the campaign, that book is unbelievable. It's great. It's the book of that campaign. It brought all the memories back of everything with Clinton and Obama, and Sarah Palin and McCain, and choosing her, and John Edwards. It was an interesting book.
John McCain has taken tens of millions of dollars from special interests and lobbyists in his senate and presidential campaigns. Now, we have to wonder if he will be able to remain objective on national security matters, as millions pour into his 'charity' from oppressive foreign governments.
In 2008, Barack Obama did get Democrats hyperventilating, whipped up to a creamy froth, while John McCain creaked ahead like a cranky granddad whom Republicans let move to the front of the buffet line, deferring to seniority, as they had in 1996, when Bob Dole turtled to the top of the ticket.
We are all socialists now, it seems. John McCain, David Cameron and Gordon Brown attack bankers' irresponsible behaviour and salaries, and call for state intervention in the financial markets. But these calls will not get them elected or re-elected if they are addressed only to the banking sector.
Trump has never sacrificed anything for this country, and in fact, he has attacked people who have. It just makes me sick to my stomach when I see him attacking the mother of a fallen hero or John McCain. It just makes me sick to my stomach that this guy thinks he's prepared to be commander-in-chief.
I think this is a part of John McCain that a lot of people don't know about, is that he took younger senators under his wing. And, in my case, I - he taught me so much about national security and foreign policy, even when we didn't always agree. He took me four times with him to Iraq and Afghanistan.
It always seemed to me ironic that the McCain campaign kept referring sneeringly to Obama's meager resume - 'a mere community organizer!' - before he entered electoral politics. It was Obama's experience as a community organizer that proved such a killer app when he applied that skill to the Internet.
Jon Kyl did a really good job of presenting a case and moving issues. John McCain probably is one of the more effective legislators, getting things on through the process. I always thought, too - and this may seem kind of odd - Richard Shelby was just an effective guy a lot of times at stopping things.
McCain is completely against the sequester. It was one thing when we had a Democratic chair who was against it - all the Democrats were against it. But to have a Republican chair who is outspoken and strong against the sequester, who has the credentials in military issues - who is going to challenge him?
In some ways, it's better that Obama got elected than McCain. I'd rather be stabbed in the chest with an Obama steak knife than to have been slowly bled to death with McCain paper cuts. Say what you will, but Obama has brought about a patriotic and civic renaissance, the likes of which I have never seen.
McCain courted in 2008 what I would call 'fringe' evangelicals, in part because evangelicals were skeptical of his commitment to values voters. McCain's embrace of Palin came after having to scuttle endorsements from John Hagee and Rod Parsley, charismatics who believed in Armageddon and fiercely supported Israel.