Not that we’re in agreement politically, but I’ve got a lot of respect for McCain, more than I have for pretty much any other politician. He seems genuine, humble, funny, intelligent, thoughtful, etc. Nothing like a few years in a Vietnamese prison camp to give you some perspective, I guess.
Although I did not get to meet him, a group of debaters from a camp I was working at at Howard University a few years ago ran into him in the lobby of a Senate office building during a tour. The camp director introduced himself and told McCain what the camp was, and the Senator stopped and talked with the kids for about 20 minutes. The debate topic that year was about civil liberties and the war on terrorism, so they were asking about Guantanamo and treatment of enemy combatants and that sort of thing.
Afterwards, the kids were excited to tell me about meeting him, but shocked to learn that he was a Republican. From what I’ve seen, Republican is an expletive in most urban communities, and the idea that this friendly, funny, down-to-Earth man represented the dark side was really shocking to the students.
I think that also makes McCain’s willingness to hold an impromptu Q&A with them especially notable, because there was really no political gain in it for him, the way there is when candidates visit a little league game or go to some small town Bingo night or something. The vast majority of these kids were not of voting age, and the color of their skin alone would be enough to tell McCain that no matter how much of an impression he made on them, it wasn’t likely to translate into political support from them or their families.
Anyway, enough glowing. Check him out with Jon Stewart, I found him pretty entertaining: