John McCain quotes - page 9
The nastiness was infectious. McCain himself started asking, "Who is the real Barack Obama?" and his crowds sometimes turned scary. But the rest of the public wanted to know more about its economic future, not Obama's past. When McCain finally came up with a plan for the economy, the vision thing was still overwhelmed by his inability to hide a genuine disdain for Obama. At every debate, the edge in his voice and grimace on his face were unmistakable. If this indignant McCain had a bubble over his head, it would no doubt say, "Can you believe I'm in the ring with this unqualified guy and he's beating me?" Yes, we can.
John McCain
Much as many conservatives believe anyone would be better than President Obama, the Republican that the party nominated to compete against him in 2008 really wouldn't have been all that different. We still would have had scandals. The economy still would have floundered. The big differences: A war-weary American public would have been dragged into more wars, an auto industry in critical condition would have been left to die, ObamaCare would never have existed, and a grassroots conservative movement would have lacked the liberal foil needed to grow and thrive.
John McCain
It is my pleasure to join all of you today as we honor President Shimon Peres, one of the bravest and most principled political leaders of our time. I was honored to join with my colleagues in the Senate to pass legislation bestowing the congressional gold medal on this great man. I was not surprised when that legislation passed unanimously, and it my hope that our colleagues in the House will move forward with their own legislation soon. President Peres deserves this honor. The story of his life is entwined with the story of the birth and development of the State of Israel, and in him we see the essence of Israel itself--an invincible spirit that cannot be denied. Through his determination, his strength and perseverance, and his profound compassion, President Peres enabled a seemingly impossible dream to become a reality and changed forever the destiny of the Jewish people.
John McCain
In the time that I have known Shimon Peres, I have been inspired by his statesmanship, leadership, courage and civility. And among his many virtues, I have been most inspired by his idealism. Shimon Peres has always been a dreamer. He once said that "dreaming is only being pragmatic"--words that drew criticism from some and laughter from others. But he is right, of course. It is difficult to understand how someone who has witnessed such unspeakable horrors in his life can still place such faith in dreams. But it is due in part to his optimism and idealism, and his willingness to serve on behalf of those dreams, that Israel exists today. By never giving up on his dreams, Shimon Peres reminds us that we do not need to give in to complacency or cynicism--and why we can't afford to.
John McCain
Could I ask my friend if he recalls the recent testimony by Henry Kissinger, probably the most highly regarded individual in America today? He voiced his concern. His fundamental problem was that, as he put it, we have gone from negotiations to rid Iran from ever having the capability of developing nuclear weapons to delaying it. So that on its face--and again, I want to remind my friend from South Carolina that he and I and our beloved friend, former Member of this body, Joe Lieberman, made visit after visit to Baghdad and to Iraq. We probably were everywhere in that country on many occasions. And how well we remember the fight the surge brought on to bring stability to Iraq. It did bring stability. You remember the battle of Sadr City. Who was it that our forces, our young men and women, were fighting against, the Badr Brigades? Guess who is fighting in Tikrit today. The Badr Brigades.
John McCain
Mr. President, as we speak--as I am speaking on the floor of the Senate--in an act of stunning partisan politics, President Obama, the Commander in Chief of the U.S. Armed Forces, has decided he will veto the National Defense Authorization Act. He is choosing to hold our military hostage for a domestic political agenda, and he is doing so at a time when the crises we face around the world have never been greater, when U.S. leadership has never been weaker, and when our men and women in uniform need vital resources to defend and secure the Nation. As I said, in an act of stunning partisan politics, President Obama, the Commander in Chief, has decided he will veto the national defense authorization bill, and he is right now in the act of doing so--holding our military hostage for his domestic political agenda.
John McCain
The legislation the President vetoed today authorizes the overall amount for defense that he requested, every single dollar of it. By making clear that he will "not fix defense without fixing non-defense spending," the President of the United States puts defense and the men and women in the military on the same level as the IRS. The President is using our military--using our military--as leverage to fight a battle that the Defense authorization bill cannot accomplish. At a time of mounting threats around the world, it is disgraceful. It is disgraceful the President would refuse to authorize for our troops the resources they need to prepare for and engage in vital missions around the world and that deliver some of the most significant reforms to the Pentagon in more than 30 years.
John McCain
I spend a lot of time with the men and women who are serving in the military, including members of my own family, and they are not uninformed. They are very intelligent. They watch what we do--we, their elected representatives. Their voters trust us to defend them, care for them, to give them the weapons they need, the benefits they need, and the care they need when the wounded come back. They rely on us. They are going to see, as we watch Vladimir Putin on the march, as we watch the success of ISIS, as we watch Ukraine being dismembered, as we watch China commit more aggression in the South China Sea and fill in islands--and now? Now this Commander in Chief decides that this is a time to veto an authorization bill because he doesn't think there is enough domestic spending. It is a sad day, a very sad day. It is a sad day for America but most of all it is a very sad day for the men and women with whom we entrust our very lives and our security. It is a sad day.
John McCain
The bipartisan spirit of McCain's long collaboration with Edward Kennedy and other Democratic senators is no surprise. McCain calls Kennedy "the lion of the Senate," as indeed Teddy is - perhaps our finest senator ever. Jack Kennedy, too, was bipartisan, appointing two Republicans to his cabinet. McCain, one of the two or three most bipartisan national figures of our day, has worked with Democrats on the environment, court appointments, campaign finance, immigration and more. Obama has the most extreme partisan voting record of any senator. Now, gambling his candidacy on a dynamic young Alaska governor, McCain has confirmed his independence as a leader not bound by the insider politics of Washington.
John McCain
Frankly, neither of [the presidential candidates'] numbers adds up. But I've come to see a consistent pattern in Obama's. For the life of me, Senator Straight Talk, I see no such straight thing with yours. You rail against big government, yet continue to push cockamamie spending plans that make a mockery of it. That's why you're losing right now, Senator McCain. Not because you don't have the courage of your convictions. But because on economic matters, you have no convictions, period.
John McCain
In the absence of significant, substantiated findings regarding new, uncorrected violations, the Department of Defense decided to suspend the university from participating in the Tuition Assistance Program based on document requests by two government agencies that are not, in fact, the Department of Defense and does not indicate a violation or admittance of guilt. We call on our service men and women to serve and protect our interests, often at great cost to themselves and their families. Yet the Senator from Illinois suggests that they are not capable of choosing their own path when determining their postsecondary educational needs. By the way, on a technical violation of the budget agreement, the Senator from Illinois was one of the leaders in voting against the Defense authorization bill, which was the result of many years of work.
John McCain
I also want to point out that the President has a unique and really dishonest approach to those of us who have said for a long time that we have to have more involvement and predicted what would happen. Unfortunately, we have been wrong by saying, yes, the "popoffs"--as he called us in a speech from the Philippines--want to send hundreds of thousands of troops. That is a total falsehood. I will repeat again what we have been asking for for years, and that is another 5,000 or so Americans on the ground in Iraq and a multinational force led by the Sunni Arab countries with European participation--I would hope that people like the French would join in a--about 10,000 of 100,000-person force to go to Raqqa and take them out. As long as Raqqa exists, they will be able to export this evil throughout the world, including to the United States of America. There is no plan by this administration to retake Raqqa. There is no strategy, and that is, indeed, shameful.
John McCain
Let's get this straight. Assad will be tolerated to continue to barrel bomb and slaughter innocent people. "However unpalatable his conduct of the war..." This kind of Orwellian understatement not only obscures the truth, but it cripples the conscience. My friends, it cripples the conscience. Bashar Assad's conduct of the war, the barrel bombs, chemical weapons, slaughtering women and children, not only killed one-quarter of a million people, it is what gave rise to ISIL to start with, and it is what fuels them still. Secretary Kerry seems not to understand that fact. While in Moscow searching for "common ground" with Russia on Syria and Ukraine, Secretary Kerry said--and I am not making this up; I am telling my colleagues, I am not making this up--"Russia has been a significant contributor to the progress" the world has made on Syria.
John McCain
Mr. President, briefly, the Senator from South Carolina and I discussed this announcement that Russia will begin withdrawing some military forces from Syria. It obviously signals Vladimir Putin's belief that he has bombed and killed enough of the opponents of the murderous Assad regime to assure Assad's survival. For 4 years, this administration--this President--stood by as the Assad regime slaughtered nearly half a million people in Syria. Then, when Assad appeared weak, it watched as Putin intervened militarily and protected his brutal regime, in a move that the President described as Putin going into a "quagmire." Well, apparently now Vladimir Putin is leaving that "quagmire," and he is leaving a solid Bashar Assad in a position of strength. He is leaving thousands of dead moderate opposition that he has indiscriminately bombed, and the United States has their begging bowl out, asking and pleading that they somehow reach some agreement again in Geneva.
John McCain
For the last 5 years, we have been writing a shameful chapter in American history. To sum all of this up, leading from behind doesn't work. If America leads from behind, somebody else is going to be in front. If the United States leaves conflicts and creates vacuums, then bad things happen. Look at a map of the Middle East in January of 2009, when this President came to the Presidency of the United States, and look at that map now--the way ISIS has metastasized, the way hundreds of thousands have been murdered and millions are on the march as refugees. We still have apologists for this leading from behind, a policy which is described as "Don't do stupid stuff." This is the result of leadership that has left the scene in a way that we have not seen since the 1930s, in the days of Neville Chamberlain and "peace in our time."
John McCain
In short, the NSC staff is becoming increasingly involved in operational issues that should be the purview of Senate-confirmed individuals in the chain of command, and doing so beyond the reach of congressional oversight. If this organization were to return to the intent of the legislation that established it, it could reasonably claim that its strategic functions on behalf of the President are protected by Executive privilege. If, on the other hand, the NSC staff is to play the kind of operational role it has in recent years--and I could give my colleagues example after example--if it is going to play the kind of operational role it has in recent years, then such a body cannot escape congressional oversight. The purpose of the provision in the NDAA to cap the size of the NSC staff is to state a preference for the Congress's original intent in creating the NSC.
John McCain
He lost a bid for the 2000 GOP presidential nomination to George W. Bush, but became a staunch supporter of the Iraq invasion and the military surge that Bush mounted in 2007 to counter a spreading insurgency. He was one of Washington's foremost experts on military and national security matters, advocating tough policies against Iran, Syria, Libya, Russia and other unfriendly governments.
John McCain
"He's kind of the Democratic version of John McCain," said Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.). "I say that partially in jest. But partially it's true: Joe's a hard guy to figure out how to lead. You know? He dances to his own music." Like McCain, the moonshine-swigging former quarterback isn't afraid to let his colleagues know where he stands on a given day, either in the hallways of the Capitol or on cable news airwaves. Manchin often publicly discusses how he's struggling with issues or tough votes.
John McCain
It requires pragmatic problem-solving from even the most passionate partisans. It relies on compromise between opposing sides to protect the interests we share. We can fight like hell for our ideas to prevail. But we have to respect each other or at least respect the fact that we need each other. That has never been truer than today, when Congress must govern with a president who has no experience of public office, is often poorly informed and can be impulsive in his speech and conduct. We must respect his authority and constitutional responsibilities. We must, where we can, cooperate with him. But we are not his subordinates. We don't answer to him. We answer to the American people. We must be diligent in discharging our responsibility to serve as a check on his power. And we should value our identity as members of Congress more than our partisan affiliation.
John McCain
Tributes for McCain and the lauding of his courage, honor, decency, character, and readiness to reexamine his own mistakes will unfold at a time when Trump is facing an unflattering public debate about his own personality and behavior. The guilty plea by the President's former personal lawyer Michael Cohen and conviction of former campaign chairman Paul Manafort last week deepened the political and legal storm raging around the White House – but still did not push most Republican leaders to criticize Trump. In that context, the ceremonies marking McCain's passing seem sure to become more than a lament for a departed political giant. They are likely to become a debate about political morality and the comportment and principles expected of public figures in an already polarized political age that has been further roiled by Trump's disruptive influence.
John McCain