On the recordAugust 28, 2018
I know we have a series of votes coming up, and I won't stand in the way of those votes once we get over the next couple of minutes, but I didn't want to let the week go by without talking a little bit about John McCain here on the floor. A number of people have asked me this week--particularly members of the media have asked: Who is going to replace John McCain? I think the point is, he will be a hard man to replace. He brought a unique background to this job. He was raised in the house of a man who was going to become an admiral. His grandfather was an admiral on the deck of the USS Missouri when World War II ended. John McCain grew up in a house where visiting Members of the House and visiting Members of the Senate was not unusual. I think that gave him a real capacity to have a comfort level to speak forcefully and truthfully with people at all levels. Clearly, his time as a prisoner of war had a great impact not only on who he was but also on what he was able to do and what he was able to say and how he was able to say it. He was a man of intense energy. There is a picture in this building of Theodore Roosevelt seated in a chair, and his left hand is made into a fist. I never saw that picture thinking it was a fist about to hit somebody but a fist trying to contain his own energy. There was a reason Theodore Roosevelt was John McCain's hero. H.W.…
