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AGING
BULL
McCain’s longtime confidant, adviser and co-author on many of
his books, referred to it as “amateur psychoanalysis.”
“Circumstances have changed,
but he really hasn’t,” Salter said.
Salter said that when McCain was a flight instructor at
a Mississippi air station in the
mid-1960s, the pilots in training would be afraid to go up with
him. McCain would sit in the
seat behind them, berating them
when they messed up and banging them on the back of their
helmets with his clipboard.
McCain laughed off the idea
that he had ever stopped being himself. “Just remember,” he
said, “that when it’s a Republican
administration and I call for the
resignation of the secretary of
defense, and I say that this Medicare Part D is a bad deal because
it’s not paid for and vote against
it, Bush’s signature: ‘Hey, well
there he is! The old maverick!
God bless him for standing up for
what he believes in!’”
When he has opposed Obama,
McCain said, the media depiction of him has changed. “‘Ah,
that angry old white guy. He, you
know what, he’s just bitter about
losing,’” he said, summarizing
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03.31.13
the portrayal.
McCain acknowledged his combative nature. It’s why, he said,
he has never spoken with journalist Bob Woodward for one of
his books. He’d prefer to be out
in the open, on the record, because when he has something
tough to say to someone, he usually just says it to their face.
“I just do everything on the record, because it’s on the record
anyway,” he said.
“McCain may stab you, but
he’ll always do it in the chest,”
Salter said.
Sen. Ted Cruz
at the 2012
Republican
National
Convention.
Cruz is part
of a new crop
of Republican
lawmakers
McCain has
found himself
at odds with.