MCCAIN: "Going to campaign against JOHN KERRY is just something I wouldn't consider"

[liberalpragmatist]

Interesting find from a (very good) New Yorker article from 1996 on Kerry and McCain:

A Friendship That Ended the War
by James Carroll
Issue of 1996-10-21

...

John McCain has never changed his mind about Kerry's participation in that antiwar demonstration, but he has changed his mind about the man. Much sets the two apart. Kerry is tall and lean, with carefully coiffed dark hair, a sharp nose and chin, and a mouth that seems small for his face, which perhaps explains why his expression falls into a smile only with reluctance. He could be cast in any movie as the patrician senator. McCain looks more like a senator's friendly appliance repairman. He is stocky, with washed-out white hair and the slightly pasty skin of a man who has been through something. But a smile comes into McCain's face like a boat into its slip. McCain is the son and grandson of admirals, while Kerry's mother was a Boston Brahmin and his father a Foreign Service officer. Kerry, a liberal Democrat, is at ease in the role of Senator Edward Kennedy's junior partner; McCain is proud to hold Barry Goldwater's Senate seat. Kerry came out of Vietnam as a leading critic of the war, McCain as one of its few true heroes.

Nevertheless, their names have become linked, both through their surprising friendship and through their work together on the Select Committee. "Kerry-McCain" is said as if it were one word. It describes legislation they have co-sponsored, and defines an unusual place in the political landscape. This past June, for example, a Kerry-McCain measure provided millions of dollars in compensation for the "lost commandos"—covert agents from South Vietnam whom the C.I.A. had long ago cut loose. "Our relationship is now so easy," McCain told me, "this latest, on the commandos . . . was a two-minute conversation. We didn't have to explore each other's views or anything like that. We both thought alike, and we just did it." Last month, when a CNBC talk show wanted comments on the United States missile attacks against Iraq, Kerry and McCain appeared as a duo. Across the boundaries of ideology, the men have formed a potent bipartisan partnership, grounded in a common, if rarely articulated, experience of the loss, grief, and bitterness that marked the generation of Americans who fought the war in Vietnam and fought against it.

McCain has long since eaten the words he uttered for Ray Shamie in 1984, and it is a good thing for John Kerry that he has. This year, Kerry, up for reëlection, is being challenged by Massachusetts' popular Republican governor, William Weld. After two terms, Kerry has an impressive record nationally and locally, but in Massachusetts politics he is always overshadowed by Ted Kennedy, and now the contrast between his hyper-formality and Weld's self-mocking frivolity—this summer, Weld leaped into the Charles River fully clothed—has him in trouble: he is in a dead heat with Weld in the polls. Kerry's refusal—or inability—to play the role either of the breezy backslapper or of the sincere self-revealer seems to leave Clinton-era voters cold. At a time when the values of the sitcom and the soap opera prevail, Kerry's reserve may mean that his best hope for November is pinned to the President's coattails.

Few things would benefit Weld as much as a repeat of McCain's anti-Kerry visit to Massachusetts in 1984. The Arizona senator, whose Convention role as Dole's nominator signalled his importance, is one of the Party's most sought-after campaigners. McCain is working hard to protect the Republican majority in the Senate, and he regards the liberalism of Democrats like Kerry as a danger to the nation's future. Nevertheless, when I asked McCain if he would be campaigning for Weld, he shook his head, an emphatic no. "I simply would not do such a thing. I couldn't do that. . . . I'm surprised you would ask. . . . Going to campaign against John Kerry is just something I wouldn't consider." McCain's devotion to Kerry is an anomaly in American politics, and it is a measure of Kerry's reticence that few of his home-state constituents know of it, or of the story that lies behind it.

...

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/content/articles/050530fr_archive01

[rockymountaindem]

1. That was then

With the way McCain changes his position on all kinds of things (like Jerry Falwell and his crew) who knows what his position is today?

[HardWorkingDem]

2. Oh, wait, isn't this the same asshole...

who recently demanded Kerry apologize for botching the one joke? What a phony bastard McCain is.

What I want to know, is when do 60 year old and plus politicians quit having Falwell and Bob Jones Univ like epiphanies for political gain?

[Nite Owl]

3. Sometime in this past decade

McCain sold his soul.

[wiley]

4. Ah, yes, when Senators had integrity.