Page 47 - Mark Salter News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

The republican convention and george w. bush was going to win the nomination and he asked me to ask john mccain to speak at the convention, and john mccain was hesitant to say yes. we met for a good hour in his office. we said we encouraged him to speak and he could say anything he wanted. he could write his own speech. and i had read every speech he had given during that campaign before i went to see him. and i just said, be yourself and talk about america. and that's what he did. and mark salter, his aide, was remarkable in helping john mccain. john mccain stepped up and made a big differenc...

Them. and where -- to belabor the metaphor, we're at a moment in our politics today where everybody is on one team or the other. it is a ferociously tribal moment. you cheer or you -- you hiss depending on which side of the stadium you are on. and senator john mccain lived up to the great american tradition of using reason as the approach to different issues. so yes, he was a ferocious critic of the war on terror, more of the harsher interrogation techniques for the obvious biographical reasons. but george w. bush had no more loyal supporter for his iraq policy than john mccain. i remember sit...

Senator mccain and mark salter in august of 2007. so exactly 12 years ago. and basically -- john mccain couldn't -- as joe said, he could barely get arrested. because he had put all of his chips on the fact that he thought the surge in iraq was an essential policy decision and he been very critical of george w. bush on the the other parts of that policy. but he called it as he saw it. and he said, if the surge works, people will give me a second look in this race and we'll go out and test our medal -- we'll test our metal. as if he had something to prove as to his medal. but one of the reasons...

Of "saturday night live." we're missing that in our public life these days, the kind of authenticity he brought to the arena. >> andrea mitchell, mark salter his long time aid sort of son from another mother and father in some ways, this was what he wrote in the "washington post" this weekend. mccain was a romantic about causes and cynic about the world. had the capacity to be both things and to live with the contradiction. he had seen human being at their best and worst often in the same experience. understood the world of all it is and thought of a moral failure to accept injustice as the in...

International republican institute which he chaired and she chaired the national democratic institute traveling around the world, working together. this is one of the things that he legislated. he was very proud of it. and he was very active till his illness in it chairing it. and she also an octojen flairian traveling around the world as he did, he was never home during congressional recesses. he was always finding someone in the world, mark salter wrote about this in the west just now in something he posted finding refugees, prisoners in myanmar who said to him we remember your voice. you ca...