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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