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Delegations meeting with people, leaders around the world. he commands that kind of respect. and thinking through the elected officials that we have now, there's really nobody else like that, but i think the president has had a long distaste for john mccain for whatever reason, in 1999 in an interview i think with dan rather on "60 minutes" brought up that the idea that he was captured. so this is something that's been going on for decades. right? so it's not a new thing. >> and i'm glad you make that point because the "washington post" is reporting tonight that president trump squashed plans ...

To be like him. the thing i liked most about him as a human being was he was in touch with his shortcomings and very open about them. while he was his heavyweight, respected, seen as a head of state around the world, he still could touch, you know, the average american person because he was open and honest about his shortcomings and failures and there was an amazing quality. >> one moment in that time, too, karen, was the keating 5 scandal which he later reflected on as one of his worst moment. >> that's right. this was during the savings and loan crisis back in 1989. senator mccain and four d...

Mccain in 2000 on that sort of improbable run that he made against george w. bush when h he really earned for all of the country that nickname of maverick. >> yeah. well, he -- he was a rascal. he -- he was driven by honor. his entire focus was serving with honor. but he was also human and he knew his flaws and he was very hard on himself. because he was a -- you know, a flawed person like all of us. so, and he was in the political world where you spend half your time trying to navigate mindfields with honor and the other half of your time suffering fools which it took him some patience to do....

Full of hope. and i remember thinking, if it had been that john mccain who had run this election campaign in 2008, maybe we would be looking at a different scenario. >> yeah, i think one of the things we -- one of the things that goes along with being a maverick is being something of a gambler. sarah palin was a huge gamble. >> indeed. >> at the time all the enthusiasm, all the excitement was with barack obama. mccain saying, we're going to roll the dice. we're going to try something new. we're going to shake things up. the thing we forget today is initially it appeared to be working. he had s...

Everything that was on his mind. >> had, michael steele, a way of being in the center of all of the biggest debates of our time. >> he loved quoting teddy roosevelt talking about the man in the arena face marred in dust and grime. he wanted to be in immigration, health care, confounding campaign finance reform where i would argue he won the battle and lost the war and left us with a worse campaign finance system than we had, and probably helped to eviscerate the power of the major political parties which led in some ways to the rise of donald trump. he wasn't right every time and we should rem...