Huffington Magazine Issue 42 | Page 39

L PREVIOUS PAGE: SPENCER PLATT/GETTY IMAGES LAST AUGUST, a few minutes before GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan took the stage at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., I was hurrying down a flight of stairs to get to the floor to watch. I stopped short when I saw a cluster of people on the landing of the stairwell. John McCain was at the center, taking questions from what appeared to be mostly foreign reporters. Rather than getting into the hall to hear Ryan’s speech, McCain, who turned 76 that day, was lingering with a group of journalists who were asking him whatever popped into their heads. It was a stark contrast to the convention four years earlier, when the Arizona senator had been the Republican Party’s nominee for president, and had been the focus of attention all week long. He had gone from center stage to concrete floors and cinder block walls. An aide tried to end the questions and hurry McCain along, but the 5-foot-7 bulldog of a man was in his element. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” he said, talking ov er her. He turned back to the reporters: “What?” One of the reporters tried to bait him with a series of questions about whether foreign policy was a form of wealth redistribution, and McCain went back and forth until he’d had enough. “I think I have explained it to you as well as I can. All right?” McCain said. No matter the location, McCain has always run toward a fight. He likes to mix it up. It’s why he was a Navy fighter pilot. It’s why he takes questions from reporters in Senate hallways. It’s why during the 2000 presidential campaign he let reporters sit on his bus and ask him questions until they