Huffington Magazine Issue 42 | Page 51

AGING BULL HUFFINGTON 03.31.13 SCOTT J. FERRELL/CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY/GETTY IMAGES posal as “wrong.” “It created a special pathway to citizenship and lacked sufficient security and enforcement triggers,” Conant said in an email. “The bipartisan proposal this year is more conservative than what’s been proposed in the past.” SPARE ME YOUR SYMPATHY It is clear that McCain has begun to consider how he will be remembered. He claimed he hasn’t thought much about his legacy. But a year ago, he started The McCain Institute for International Leadership, using $9 million in funds left from his 2008 campaign that many Republicans expected him to donate to the Republican National Committee, as President George W. Bush did with $12 million in leftover donations in 2006. When I asked him whether he’d taken any flak from inside his party over that decision, McCain laughed and said, “Not directly.” He was forthcoming about how long he intends to stay in the Senate. McCain mentioned former Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), who died in 2010 at age 92, while still in office. “Unfortunately, we remember people as they are rather than the way they were,” he said. “I revered Sen. Robert Byrd. Sen. Robert Byrd, when I first came to the Senate, he knew the Senate, he was the toughest guy, he was — I mean, he was fair, he was incredible. You know, the last I remember of Robert Byrd is he’s sitting there in his seat in the Senate, in a very unfortunate physical condition. “I think two years from now is the time to think whether I would want to run for office again,” McCain said. “I do think that I Rep. Justin Amash at a House Foreign Affairs hearing last May. Amash called McCain “racist” for a joke he made on Twitter about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.