What It Was Like To Get Yelled At By John McCain

On the afternoon before his dramatic vote to keep Obamacare, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) strode through the Senate basement and did what he almost always did: made time to talk to reporters.

Where was he on the GOP’s current, ever-changing Obamacare repeal bill, which at that point was shell legislation meant to keep the process moving?

“Having conversations with the governor of Arizona.”

Has he gotten more information from GOP leadership about the still-forming bill?

“Nope.”

How does he feel about passing a shell bill to keep the bill going?

“It’s very concerning, very concerning.”

Does it concern you at all…

With a laugh: “Everything concerns me.”

Was he worried the House might just take the Senate’s incomplete shell bill and pass it into law?

“I’m very worried about it and I would be worried about the product.”

McCain, roughly 12 hours before his dramatic thumbs-down that ended Republicans’ push to repeal his former presidential rival’s signature law, did something a lot of his wavering colleagues were loath to do in that high-pressure moment: explain his thinking to reporters.

He was upfront about his concerns with the bill, both with its rushed process and in the actual policy details. And that final line — that he was “very worried” that House Republicans might just pass the half-baked legislation into law — was the first time I really believed that he might indeed vote against the repeal.

I thought a lot about that conversation the last few days, my brief brush with history. And I’m grateful that he stopped to talk — both on a personal level as a reporter, and for a country on the edge of its seat in that moment about whether Obamacare would survive or be repealed.

McCain expanded on his worries on the bill later in the day in a press conference with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), his best friend in the Senate and a man who rivals McCain with his press-friendly approach. But McCain kept his big decision a secret until he had the cameras on him, telling reporters only “wait for the show” as he entered the Senate for his dramatic on-camera gesture that saved his former presidential rival’s namesake legislative accomplishment.

There are a lot of reasons to honor McCain this week. There are others to criticize his legacy. Plenty has been written about both, and I’m setting those aside for now — go wild in the comments section if you feel like it. This isn’t meant as a eulogy or obituary.

But politicians in both parties have grown increasingly reticent to mix it up with reporters on a regular basis in recent years, to tell us what they actually think, to field tough questions.

President Trump hasn’t held a press conference in 18 months. The White House briefing has gone from fact-finding into a sort of aggressive, fact-free performance art. And while the president’s vicious attacks on our industry are a new frontier, both a product and instigator of this, they go back years earlier. President Obama isn’t blameless — his team often bypassed the traditional media to blast out his messages and images on social media, without vetting.

A lot of senators still make time to talk to reporters. But the more powerful they become and the more we want to talk to them, the less often they make themselves available.

House and Senate leaders are generally hard to pin down outside of press conferences, which they often treat as burdens and use to call on their favored reporters. As politicians become presidential candidates, they disappear behind layers of staff. The higher they rise in the polls, the less often they take reporters’ questions. Even Trump had been incredibly press-friendly early on in his presidential run, before turning on the “enemy.”

Because of his stature, his fame, and his willingness to talk to reporters through the process, McCain stood out. His “straight talk express” presidential campaign buses gave reporters regular access to the candidate.

The two-time presidential contender loved the attention, basked in the spotlight, and unquestionably saw the political benefit of keeping reporters happy and interested — he often referred to the media as his “base,” only half-jokingly.

That didn’t mean his famous temper wouldn’t flare, or that he’d always answer our questions.

The senator completely blew up at me last year when I pushed him on whether he stood by his endorsement of then-House candidate Greg Gianforte, shortly after Gianforte had physically attacked a reporter for daring to ask questions, then lied about it.

But even in those cases, he was generally ready to let bygones be bygones.

“I understand you have a job to do, okay? I do understand that. Even if you’re a big jerk,” he told me with a laugh just moments after yelling at me.

Shortly before the 2016 presidential conventions, I was doing a story on how Trump had won the nomination. I chased McCain through the Senate halls, peppering him with questions about what his party had become, how Trump had taken over the party, his personal insults towards McCain. It was one of the few times I ever got McCain alone.

The senator clearly wasn’t thrilled about talking to me about the topic — he was in a tough primary fight at the time. But he humored me. And when I joked how he must be sick of us hounding him about Trump, he laughed along, before growing serious and telling me how he valued the media.

McCain was far from perfect — even in how he handled the press — but he proved time and again to be the gold standard with which to measure how much politicians actually value a freeform interaction with reporters. I didn’t know him nearly as well as the Capitol Hill veterans who’d been around him for decades, or the reporters who covered his presidential races. But I’ll remain grateful to him for how he treated the media, how he treated me.