Captivity, Candor And Hard Votes: 9 Moments That Made McCain

In this undated file photo provided by CBS, U.S. Navy Lt. Commander John S. McCain lies injured in North Vietnam. McCain, the war hero who became the GOP’s standard-bearer in the 2008 election, died Saturday, Aug. 25, 2018. He was 81. (CBS via AP, File)

BY LAURIE KELLMAN

WASHINGTON (AP) — John McCain lived most of his life in the public eye, surviving war, torture, scandal, political stardom and failure, the enmity of some colleagues and the election of President Donald Trump.

Even brain cancer didn’t seem to scare McCain so much as it sobered and saddened him.

“The world is a fine place and worth fighting for and I hate very much to leave it,” McCain wrote in his memoir, referencing a line from his favorite book, the Ernest Hemingway war novel “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” ″I hate to leave.”

A look at public moments that made McCain:

PRISONER OF WAR, CELEBRITY

McCain, became a public figure at age 31 when his bed-bound image was broadcast from North Vietnam in 1967. The North Vietnamese had figured out that he was the son and grandson of famous American military men — a “crown prince,” they called him. He was offered an early release, but refused. McCain’s captors beat him until he confessed, an episode that first led to shame — and then discovery. McCain has written that that’s when he learned to trust not just his legacy but his own judgment — and his resilience.

Less than a decade after his March 1973 release, McCain was elected to the House as a Republican from Arizona. In 1986, voters there sent him to the Senate.

THE KEATING FIVE

He called it “my asterisk” and the worst mistake of his life.

At issue was a pair of 1987 meetings between McCain, four other senators and regulators to get the government to back off a key campaign donor. Charles Keating Jr. wanted McCain and Democratic Sens. Dennis DeConcini of Arizona, Alan Cranston of California, John Glenn of Ohio and Don Riegle of Michigan to get government auditors to stop pressing Keating’s Lincoln Savings and Loan Association. All five denied improper conduct. McCain was cleared of all charges but found to have exercised “poor judgment.”

“His honor was being questioned and that’s nothing that he takes lightly,” said Mark Salter, McCain’s biographer and co-author of his new memoir, “The Restless Wave.”

THE SENATE

McCain became his party’s leading voice on matters of war, national security and veterans - and eventually became chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. He worked with a Democrat to rewrite the nation’s campaign finance laws. He voted for the Iraq War and supported the 2007 surge of forces there even as his own sons served or prepared to serve. But there was one thing that wasn’t as widely known about him: McCain, owner of a ranch in Arizona that is in the flight path of 500 species of migratory birds, became concerned about the environment.

“People associate John with defense and national security, as well they should. But he also had a great concern for and love of the environment,” said Sen. Susan Collins, the Maine Republican who traveled to the ends of the earth with McCain — to the Arctic Circle in 2004 and Antarctica two years later — on fact-finding missions related to climate change. Back on McCain’s Arizona ranch, the senator gave Collins an extensive nature tour of the property. “I particularly remember his love for the birds,” Collins said. “He loved the birds.”

TOWN HALLS, STRAIGHT TALK

McCain in the 2000 election did something new: He toured New Hampshire on a bus laden with doughnuts and reporters that stopped at “town hall” meetings where voters were invited to exchange views with the candidate. The bus was called the “Straight Talk Express,” and that’s what he promised to deliver at the town halls. The whole thing was messy, unscripted and often hilarious. And ultimately the events re-introduced McCain to voters as a candid and authentic, just a year after President Bill Clinton was acquitted of lying to Congress and obstruction.

In New Hampshire that year, McCain defeated George W. Bush in an 18-point blowout, only to be pushed out of the race in South Carolina. But the town halls remained a fond McCain memory.

“The town halls were festivals of politics,” Salter said. “They were so authentic and open and honest.”

‘NO MA’AM’

McCain, in 2008 making his second run for president, quickly intervened when a woman in Lakeville, Minnesota, stood at a town hall event and began to make disparaging remarks about Democratic presidential nominee and then-Sen. Barack Obama. “He’s an Arab,” she said, implying he was not an American.

“No ma’am,” McCain said, taking the microphone from her. “He’s a decent, family man, citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues and that’s what this campaign is all about. He’s not.”

It was a defining moment for McCain as a leader, a reflection of his thinking that partisans should disagree without demonizing each other. But it reflected McCain’s reckoning with the fear pervading his party of Obama, who would go on to become the nation’s first black president.

CANCER

McCain last year was diagnosed with glioblastoma, the same aggressive cancer that had felled his friend, Sen. Edward Kennedy, in 2009.

Friends and family say he understood the gravity of the diagnosis — but quickly turned to the speech he wanted to give on the Senate floor urging his colleagues to shed the partisanship that had produced gridlock. Face scarred and bruised from surgery, he pounded the lectern. Some of the sternest members of the Senate hugged him, tears in their eyes.

“Of all of the things that have happened in this man’s life, of all of the times that his life could have ended in the ways it could have ended, this (cancer) is by far one of the least threats to him and that’s kind of how he views it,” his son, Jack McCain, told the Arizona Republic in January.

HEALTH CARE VOTE

Republicans, driven by Trump, were one vote away from advancing a repeal of Obama’s health care law. Then McCain, scarred from brain surgery, swooped into the Senate chamber and, facing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, dramatically held up his hand.

The thumb flicked down. Gasps could be heard throughout the staid chamber. McConnell stood motionless, arms crossed.

Trump’s campaign promise — and the premiere item on his agenda — was dead.

TRUMP

McCain tangled with Trump, who never served in the military, for years.

As a candidate, Trump in 2016 claimed the decorated McCain is only considered a war hero because he had been captured. “He’s not a war hero,” Trump said at an event in Iowa. “I like people who weren’t captured.” Shortly before Election Day in 2016, McCain said he’s rather cast his vote for another Republican, someone who’s “qualified to be president.” Trump fumed, without using McCain’s name, that the senator is the only reason the Affordable Care Act stands.

McCain responded: “I have faced tougher adversaries.”

Follow Laurie Kellman on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/APLaurieKellman

War Hero And Presidential Candidate John McCain Has Died

FILE - In this Nov. 3, 2008, file photo, Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., speaks at a rally in Tampa, Fla. Aide says senator, war hero and GOP presidential candidate McCain died Saturday, Aug. 25, 2018. He was 81. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File

BY NANCY BENAC

WASHINGTON (AP) — Sen. John McCain, who faced down his captors in a Vietnam prisoner of war camp with jut-jawed defiance and later turned his rebellious streak into a 35-year political career that took him to Congress and the Republican presidential nomination, died Saturday after battling brain cancer for more than a year. He was 81.

McCain, with his irascible grin and fighter-pilot moxie, was a fearless and outspoken voice on policy and politics to the end, unswerving in his defense of democratic values and unflinching in his criticism of his fellow Republican, President Donald Trump. He was elected to the Senate from Arizona six times but twice thwarted in seeking the presidency.

An upstart presidential bid in 2000 didn’t last long. Eight years later, he fought back from the brink of defeat to win the GOP nomination, only to be overpowered by Democrat Barack Obama. McCain chose a little-known Alaska governor as his running mate in that race, and turned Sarah Palin into a national political figure.

After losing to Obama in an electoral landslide, McCain returned to the Senate determined not to be defined by a failed presidential campaign in which his reputation as a maverick had faded. In the politics of the moment and in national political debate over the decades, McCain energetically advanced his ideas and punched back hard at critics — Trump not least among them.

The scion of a decorated military family, McCain embraced his role as chairman of the Armed Services Committee, pushing for aggressive U.S. military intervention overseas and eager to contribute to “defeating the forces of radical Islam that want to destroy America.”

Asked how he wanted to be remembered, McCain said simply: “That I made a major contribution to the defense of the nation.”

One dramatic vote he cast in the twilight of his career in 2017 will not soon be forgotten, either: As the decisive “no” on Senate GOP legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act, McCain became the unlikely savior of Obama’s trademark legislative achievement.

Taking a long look back in his valedictory memoir, “The Restless Wave,” McCain wrote of the world he inhabited: “I hate to leave it. But I don’t have a complaint. Not one. It’s been quite a ride. I’ve known great passions, seen amazing wonders, fought in a war, and helped make a peace. ... I made a small place for myself in the story of America and the history of my times.”

Throughout his long tenure in Congress, McCain played his role with trademark verve, at one hearing dismissing a protester by calling out, “Get out of here, you low-life scum.”

But it was just as notable when he held his sharp tongue, in service of a party or political gain.

Most remarkably, he stuck by Trump as the party’s 2016 presidential nominee even when Trump questioned his status as a war hero by saying: “I like people who weren’t captured.” McCain declared the comment offensive to veterans, but urged the men “put it behind us and move forward.”

His breaking point with Trump was the release a month before the election of a lewd audio in which Trump said he could kiss and grab women. McCain withdrew his support and said he’d write in “some good conservative Republican who’s qualified to be president.”

By the time McCain cast his vote against the GOP health bill, six months into Trump’s presidency, the two men were openly at odds. Trump railed against McCain publicly over the vote, and McCain remarked that he no longer listened to what Trump had to say because “there’s no point in it.”

By then, McCain had disclosed his brain cancer diagnosis and returned to Arizona to seek treatment. His vote to kill the GOP’s years-long Obamacare repeal drive — an issue McCain himself had campaigned on — came not long after the diagnosis, a surprising capstone to his legislative career.

In his final months, McCain did not go quietly, frequently jabbing at Trump and his policies from the remove of his Hidden Valley family retreat in Arizona. He opposed the president’s nominee for CIA director because of her past role in overseeing torture, scolded Trump for alienating U.S. allies at an international summit, labeled the administration’s zero-tolerance immigration policy “an affront to the decency of the American people” and denounced the Trump-Putin summit in Helsinki as a “tragic mistake” in which the president put on “one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory.”

On Aug. 13, Trump signed into law a $716 billion defense policy bill named in honor of the senator. Trump signed the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act in a ceremony at a military base in New York — without one mention of McCain.

John Sidney McCain III was born in 1936 in the Panana Canal zone, where his father was stationed in the military.

He followed his father and grandfather, the Navy’s first father-and-son set of four-star admirals, to the Naval Academy, where he enrolled in what he described a “four-year course of insubordination and rebellion.” His family yawned at the performance. A predilection for what McCain described as “quick tempers, adventurous spirits, and love for the country’s uniform” was encoded in his family DNA.

On October 1967, McCain was on his 23rd bombing round over North Vietnam when he was shot out of the sky and taken prisoner.

Year upon year of solitary confinement, deprivation, beatings and other acts of torture left McCain so despairing that at one point he weakly attempted suicide. But he also later wrote that his captors had spared him the worst of the abuse inflicted on POWs because his father was a famous admiral. “I knew that my father’s identity was directly related to my survival,” he wrote in one of his books.

When McCain’s Vietnamese captors offered him early release as a propaganda ploy, McCain refused to play along, insisting that those captured first should be the first set free.

In his darkest hour in Vietnam, McCain’s will had been broken and he signed a confession that said, “I am a black criminal and I have performed deeds of an air pirate.”

Even then, though, McCain refused to make an audio recording of his confession and used stilted written language to signal he had signed it under duress. And, to the end of his captivity, he continued to exasperate his captors with his defiance.

Throughout, McCain played to the bleachers, shouting obscenities at guards to bolster the spirits of fellow captives. Appointed by the POWs to act as camp entertainment officer, chaplain and communications chief, McCain imparted comic relief, literary tutorials, news of the day, even religious sustenance.

Bud Day, a former cellmate and Medal of Honor winner, said McCain’s POW experience “took some great iron and turned him into steel.”

McCain returned home from his years as a POW on crutches and never regained full mobility in his arms and leg.

He once said he’d “never known a prisoner of war who felt he could fully explain the experience to anyone who had not shared it.” Still he described the time as formative and “a bit of a turning point in me appreciating the value of serving a cause greater than your self-interest.”

But it did not tame his wild side, and his first marriage, to Carol Shepp, was a casualty of what he called “my greatest moral failing.” The marriage to Shepp, who had been in a crippling car accident while McCain was imprisoned, ended amiably. McCain admitted the breakup was caused by “my own selfishness and immaturity.”

One month after his divorce, McCain in 1981 married Cindy Hensley, the daughter of a wealthy beer distributor in Arizona.

In one day, McCain signed his Navy discharge papers and flew west with his new wife to a new life. By 1982, he’d been elected to the House and four years later to an open Senate seat. He and Cindy had four children, to add to three from his first marriage. Their youngest was adopted from Bangladesh.

McCain cultivated a conservative voting record and a reputation as a tightwad with taxpayer dollars. But just months into his Senate career, he made what he called “the worst mistake” of his life. He participated in two meetings with bank regulators on behalf of Charles Keating, a friend, campaign contributor and savings and loan financier later convicted of securities fraud.

As the industry collapsed, McCain was tagged as one of the Keating Five — senators who, to varying degrees, were accused of trying to get regulators to ease up on Keating. McCain was cited by the Senate Ethics Committee for “poor judgment.”

To have his honor questioned, he said, was in some ways worse than the torture he endured in Vietnam.

In the 1990s, McCain shouldered another wrenching issue, the long effort to account for American soldiers still missing from the war and to normalize relations with Vietnam.

“People don’t remember how ugly the POW-MIA issue was,” former Democratic Sen. Bob Kerrey, a fellow Vietnam veteran, later recalled in crediting McCain for standing up to significant opposition. “I heard people scream in his face, holding him responsible for the deaths of POWs.”

Over a xx-year Senate tenure (took office 1987), McCain became a standard-bearer for reforming campaign donations. He denounced pork-barrel spending for legislators’ pet projects and cultivated a reputation as a deficit hawk and an independent voice. His experience as a POW made him a leading voice against the use of torture. He achieved his biggest legislative successes when making alliances with Democrats.

But faced with a tough GOP challenge for his Senate seat in 2010, McCain disowned chapters in his past and turned to the right on a number of hot-button issues, including gays in the military and climate change. And when the Supreme Court in 2010 overturned the campaign finance restrictions that he’d work so hard to enact, McCain seemed resigned.

“It is what it is,” he said.

After surviving that election, though, McCain took on conservatives in his party over the federal debt and Democrats over foreign policy. McCain never softened on his opposition to the U.S. use of torture, even in the recalibrations of the post-9/11 world. When the Senate in 2014 released a report on the CIA’s harsh interrogation techniques at secret overseas facilities after the 9/11 attacks, McCain said the issue wasn’t “about our enemies. It’s about us. It’s about who we were, who we are and who we aspire to be. It’s about how we represent ourselves to the world.”

During his final years in the Senate, McCain was perhaps the loudest advocate for U.S. military involvement overseas - in Iraq, Syria, Libya and more. That often made him a critic of first Obama and then Trump, and placed him further out of step with the growing isolationism within the GOP.

In October 2017, McCain unleashed some his most blistering criticism of Trump’s “America first” foreign policy approach — without mentioning the president by name — in describing a “half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems.”

Few politicians matched McCain’s success as an author. His 1999 release “Faith Of My Fathers” was a million seller that was highly praised and helped launch his run for president in 2000. His most recent bestseller and planned farewell, “The Restless Wave,” came out in May 2018.

Follow Nancy Benac on Twitter at http://twitter.com/nbenac

Oprah Winfrey, Barack Obama's Presidency and how It All Began

The last time I mentioned Barack Obama in one of my detailed write-ups was when I thought the lanky senator from Chicago was among the best qualified for the nation's top job on a Democratic ticket and the best overall on any given opponent from a quasi "conservative" Republicans who've caused more damage to this great country. Ever since, I have been on the sideline -- quite unusual, knowing me for being a political junkie on many grounds -- for I have seen it in my dreams that the time is now and for Obama it would be a landslide. I was right! Rush and Sean, can you guys handle it?

But let's think about it and the genesis of how it all began. Obama was not given too much of a chance until the incarnation of the Queen of talk show television, Oprah Winfrey, was seen together with Obama in Iowa at two rallies which drew about 33,000 people who trooped in from those cold winter icy roads on Saturday, December 8, 2007. While Winfrey was in Des Moines gearing up for an Obama rally, former First Lady Hilary Clinton was in nearby Williamsburg, Iowa, accompanied by her mother, Dorothy Rodham and her daughter, Chelsea, with full confidence not to be against anybody since voters should consider which of the candidates have a better chance to win when making their choices.

Clinton in her own words at that event in Iowa: "I have been vetted for 15 years. You know everything about me, probably including my blood type. There aren't going to be any surprises. I know what it takes to run against Republicans who are coming at you full-bore."

Winfrey, wearing a purple jacket and pants fired up the crowd at Obama's rally saying;

"At last I'm here. I came here because I deeply believe in America. Let's dream America anew again by supporting Barack Obama... I am not here to tell you what to think. I am here to ask you to think... Experience in the hallways of government isn't as important to me as experience on the pathway of life. There are those who said Obama should wait his turn, but none of us is God. We don't know what the future holds. So we must respond to the pressures and the fortunes of history when the moment strikes. And Iowa, I believe that moment is now."

That proclamation and a long hurdle of desperate campaigns on both fronts of the Democratic and Republicsn Parties including the unknown independents and some libertarians would catapult Obama to the White House.

Yes, Obama, whose campaign strategists had taken a different path with the application of unconvetional methods of election campaigns did a superb job in securing the Democratic Party ticket and winning by a landslide, retiring Senator John McCain on Presidential politics for good. The rest is now history with the election on Tuesday, November 4, 2008, of Senator Barrack Obama as president-elect of the United States of America.

And we all wept for history has just been made! And, yes, we all believe in America, because, eventually, America does the right thing.

Barack Obama's Acceptance Speech at the Grant Park, Chicago, IL

[*] OBAMA: Hello, Chicago.

(APPLAUSE)

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

(APPLAUSE)

It's the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen, by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different, that their voices could be that difference.

It's the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled. Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of individuals or a collection of red states and blue states.

OBAMA: We are, and always will be, the United States of America.

(APPLAUSE)

It's the answer that led those who've been told for so long by so many to be cynical and fearful and doubtful about what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.

It's been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this date in this election at this defining moment change has come to America.

(APPLAUSE)

It's the answer that led those who've been told for so long by so many to be cynical and fearful and doubtful about what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.

It's been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this date in this election at this defining moment change has come to America.

(APPLAUSE)

A little bit earlier this evening, I received an extraordinarily gracious call from Senator McCain.

(APPLAUSE)

Senator McCain fought long and hard in this campaign. And he's fought even longer and harder for the country that he loves. He has endured sacrifices for America that most of us cannot begin to imagine. We are better off for the service rendered by this brave and selfless leader.


I congratulate him; I congratulate Governor Palin for all that they've achieved. And I look forward to working with them to renew this nation's promise in the months ahead.

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA: I want to thank my partner in this journey, a man who campaigned from his heart, and spoke for the men and women he grew up with on the streets of Scranton...

(APPLAUSE)

... and rode with on the train home to Delaware, the vice president-elect of the United States, Joe Biden.

(APPLAUSE)

And I would not be standing here tonight without the unyielding support of my best friend for the last 16 years...

(APPLAUSE)

... the rock of our family, the love of my life, the nation's next first lady...

(APPLAUSE)

... Michelle Obama.

(APPLAUSE)

Sasha and Malia...

(APPLAUSE)

... I love you both more than you can imagine. And you have earned the new puppy that's coming with us...

(LAUGHTER)

... to the new White House.

(APPLAUSE)

And while she's no longer with us, I know my grandmother's watching, along with the family that made me who I am. I miss them tonight. I know that my debt to them is beyond measure.

To my sister Maya, my sister Alma, all my other brothers and sisters, thank you so much for all the support that you've given me. I am grateful to them.

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA: And to my campaign manager, David Plouffe...

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA: ... the unsung hero of this campaign, who built the best -- the best political campaign, I think, in the history of the United States of America.

(APPLAUSE)

To my chief strategist David Axelrod...

(APPLAUSE)

... who's been a partner with me every step of the way.

To the best campaign team ever assembled in the history of politics...

(APPLAUSE)

... you made this happen, and I am forever grateful for what you've sacrificed to get it done.

But above all, I will never forget who this victory truly belongs to. It belongs to you. It belongs to you.

I was never the likeliest candidate for this office. We didn't start with much money or many endorsements. Our campaign was not hatched in the halls of Washington. It began in the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston. It was built by working men and women who dug into what little savings they had to give $5 and $10 and $20 to the cause.

It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generation's apathy...

(APPLAUSE)

... who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep.

It drew strength from the not-so-young people who braved the bitter cold and scorching heat to knock on doors of perfect strangers, and from the millions of Americans who volunteered and organized and proved that more than two centuries later a government of the people, by the people, and for the people has not perished from the Earth.

This is your victory.

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA: And I know you didn't do this just to win an election. And I know you didn't do it for me.

You did it because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead. For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime -- two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century.

Even as we stand here tonight, we know there are brave Americans waking up in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan to risk their lives for us.

There are mothers and fathers who will lie awake after the children fall asleep and wonder how they'll make the mortgage or pay their doctors' bills or save enough for their child's college education.

There's new energy to harness, new jobs to be created, new schools to build, and threats to meet, alliances to repair.

The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even in one term. But, America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there.

I promise you, we as a people will get there.

(APPLAUSE)

AUDIENCE: Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can!

OBAMA: There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who won't agree with every decision or policy I make as president. And we know the government can't solve every problem.

But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. And, above all, I will ask you to join in the work of remaking this nation, the only way it's been done in America for 221 years -- block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.

What began 21 months ago in the depths of winter cannot end on this autumn night.

OBAMA: This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were.

It can't happen without you, without a new spirit of service, a new spirit of sacrifice.

So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility, where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves but each other.

Let us remember that, if this financial crisis taught us anything, it's that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers.

In this country, we rise or fall as one nation, as one people. Let's resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long.

Let's remember that it was a man from this state who first carried the banner of the Republican Party to the White House, a party founded on the values of self-reliance and individual liberty and national unity.

Those are values that we all share. And while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress.

(APPLAUSE)

As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, we are not enemies but friends. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.

And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn, I may not have won your vote tonight, but I hear your voices. I need your help. And I will be your president, too.

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA: And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces, to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of the world, our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand.

(APPLAUSE)

To those -- to those who would tear the world down: We will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security: We support you. And to all those who have wondered if America's beacon still burns as bright: Tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope. (APPLAUSE)

That's the true genius of America: that America can change. Our union can be perfected. What we've already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one that's on my mind tonight's about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. She's a lot like the millions of others who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election except for one thing: Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.

(APPLAUSE) OBAMA: She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn't vote for two reasons -- because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin. And tonight, I think about all that she's seen throughout her century in America -- the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we can't, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes we can. At a time when women's voices were silenced and their hopes dismissed, she lived to see them stand up and speak out and reach for the ballot. Yes we can. When there was despair in the dust bowl and depression across the land, she saw a nation conquer fear itself with a New Deal, new jobs, a new sense of common purpose. Yes we can.

AUDIENCE: Yes we can. OBAMA: When the bombs fell on our harbor and tyranny threatened the world, she was there to witness a generation rise to greatness and a democracy was saved. Yes we can.

AUDIENCE: Yes we can. OBAMA: She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma, and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that "We Shall Overcome." Yes we can.

AUDIENCE: Yes we can. OBAMA: A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and imagination.

And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen, and cast her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change.

Yes we can.

AUDIENCE: Yes we can. OBAMA: America, we have come so far. We have seen so much. But there is so much more to do. So tonight, let us ask ourselves -- if our children should live to see the next century; if my daughters should be so lucky to live as long as Ann Nixon Cooper, what change will they see? What progress will we have made?

This is our chance to answer that call. This is our moment.

This is our time, to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth, that, out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope. And where we are met with cynicism and doubts and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can.

(APPLAUSE)

Thank you. God bless you. And may God bless the United States of America.

(APPLAUSE)

END

Around Los Angeles With Ambrose

Quite often, when I say L.A. is the place people get to wonder why. I will come to that. The city is just amazing. Starting the week, I've done a whole lot of stuff from the nerve wracking Monday Night Football, pub-crawling, screening of feature films coupled with the pundits who are now caught in between the Barack Obama and John McCain campaigns which seemingly looks very much Obama is making a headway in the polls. Did I say that? AP says they are running neck and neck. My mistake.

But we should realize Obama is interestingly showing every bit of his eloquence in terms of being well-prepared to handle any situation that may arise from the McCain camp. I have done some soul searching and my hunch tells me it's going to be a landslide on Obama's favor. It's just less than two weeks away and we shouldn't be counting our eggs when not yet hatched.

It's mid-week and I'm still hanging in there. I was given a special invitation for the sneak preview or is it the world premier of 'Boiler Maker' directed by Paul T. Murray and starring John Savage, Jack McGee and Arie Verveen. Savage, McGee and Verveen did a good job. That was yesterday and it was great. The screening was at Fine Arts Theater in Beverly Hills and I couldn't believe the turn out. Everybody showed up and Robert Amico, my good friend, who was part of the production crew was glad to have me around and the fun really began after the movie inside the lobby of the theater when hugging, kisses and champaign became the order. I will be reviewing the movie right here and elsewhere in the upcoming weeks. So stay tuned.

What's been around Town

The Summer is gone and not much of the heatwave as predicted. I had fun and it was a real blast, from hanging around my neck of the wood and doing my own little thing, I mean the Hollywood hype kind of stuff to all that Summer jams and live concerts coupled with all that politicking, aggressive campaign stuff, Barack Obama and John McCain.

I have stayed away from the politics of the day, really focussing on the Summer jams which spiced me keeping my body and soul together. The reason is not far fetched. There are many other issues of the day that takes up my time especially when one has to be responsible one way or the other putting things into perspective that way the body and soul stays intact without being apart. And when the soul leaves the body it surely becomes a long story.

Anyways, it's all good. I enjoyed all the concerts so far including the comedy clubs. I did visit the Downtown Comedy Club a couple of times this Summer and it was a good company. The club is owned by OG of Saturday Night Live, Mr. Garrett Morris. It's a place to hang out on Fridays and Saturdays if you really want to crack up your ribs. Good place and great comedy.

The African Marketplace Festival which is currently vibrating on the playgrounds of Dorsey High School is another carnival of interest. I will write in detail soon. It has embraced people from all walks of life and Reggae OG Gregory Issaacs will be playing live on Labor Day to bid farewell to the festival. I will be there live and I'm quite sure it's going to be another hell of a show.

Oh, by the way, I'm still a political junkie and do not know, neither do I have a comment on the McCain Veepee pick. Without a doubt Obama made the right choice as the long hurdle to the White House begins. It's all about change and the American people can't wait anymore longer.

Sounds like a political junkie? You bet!

Campaign Desk Wednesday, July 02, 2008

Obama urges expansion of faith-based initiative

"The challenges we face today—from saving our planet to ending poverty—are simply too big for government to solve alone. We need an all-hands-on-deck approach," Obama said at a news conference outside a community ministry in Zanesville, Ohio. MORE>>>

John McCain observes anti-drug efforts in Colombia

"Drugs is a big, big problem in America," McCain told ABC's "Good Morning America" this morning from the port of Cartagena. "The continued flow of drugs from Colombia through Mexico into the United States is still one of our major challenges for all Americans." MORE>>>

Campaign Desk Monday, June 30, 2008

Obama: I will never question others' patriotism

INDEPENDENCE, Mo. - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Monday he will never question others' patriotism during the race and blames his own "carelessness" for some criticism of him so far. MORE>>>

McCain campaign: Clark's comments 'sad'

Clark, a military adviser for Sen. Barack Obama, questioned Sunday whether McCain's military experience qualified him to be commander in chief. MORE>>>

Obama and McCain campaign in states their parties lost in 2004

The likely presidential nominees of the major political parties today went to states their parties lost in 2004, as they worked to reverse those results in this fall's general election. Democrat Barack Obama delivered a speech on patriotism this morning in Independence, Mo., while Republican John McCain campaigned in Pennsylvania. MORE>>>

Presidential Campaign, Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Obama veep vetting team looks at retired military

Barack Obama is considering former top military leaders among his possible running mates, according to a senator who met Tuesday with the Democratic presidential candidate's vice presidential vetting team. MORE>>

Turning Point: Energy

As much as editors have come to love articles about “green” power sources like solar and wind, the most pressing questions for the candidates revolve around the our traditional fossil favorites—coal and oil. MORE>>

McCain, Obama trade jabs on economy, taxes

Barack Obama on Tuesday participated in a "change that works for you" work day with a local nurse in St. Louis, Missouri. "John McCain doesn't have a comprehensive plan to control rising healthcare costs... MORE>>