“When you sit around and mope,
I mean, it’s a very destructive exercise.”
AGING
BULL
Paul on the floor the night before,
Politico hailed him as having
become, overnight, a “unifying
leader” inside the GOP, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) lauded Paul for an
“extraordinary effort.”
McCain couldn’t have cared
less about the hoopla. He read
a Wall Street Journal editorial
that said Paul was pulling “political stunts that fire up impressionable libertarian kids in their
college dorms.”
“We’ve done, I think, a disservice to a lot of Americans by
making them believe that somehow they’re in danger from their
government. They’re not,” McCain
said. “But we are in danger from
a dedicated ... enemy that is hell
bent on our destruction.”
During our interview, McCain
was frank about his current role
in politics and within the Republican Party.
“In some ways, it has been diminished,” he admitted, “because
I am no longer ever going to run
for president of the United States,
the nomination of my party.”
But he noted that he is also
freer to make deals inside Wash-
HUFFINGTON
03.31.13
ington, since he is “nobody’s competitor anymore.”
McCain made clear that he
relishes the opportunity to be a
power broker when Washington is
badly in need of them, even if his
deal-making influence hasn’t so
far extended to the biggest fights
over the size and scope of the federal government. Despite being
a consistent critic of the Obama
administration, that didn’t stop
the president from having McCain
and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.)
over to the White House to talk
immigration, sequestration and
other topics at the end of February. McCain was also part of the
group of GOP senators who dined
with Obama on earlier this month
at the Jefferson Hotel.
“Because of knowledge and expertise and background, ability
in establishing relations on the
other side of the aisle … I’m kind
of the go-to guy,” McCain said. “I
can’t tell you, two or three times a
week, some Democrat comes up to
me and says, ‘Hey, I think we really need to work on health care,’ or,
‘We want to work with you on—’
you know? And a lot of times,
about 90 percent of the time, I
say no because I don’t have the
knowledge, expertise, background,
desire, whatever it is. But on oth-