Hey there, it's the NPR Politics podcast. It's Saturday night at 9.41 pm. And we're here because

Senator John McCain has died. He was 81 years old and had served the nation for some 60 years.

I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Scott Horsley. I also cover the White House.

I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. And I'm Ron Nelving, Editor-Corerespondent.

And we're here with a late-night podcast because John McCain wasn't just any Senator.

He was a prisoner of war in Vietnam, a very long serving Senator of the Republican nominee

for President in 2008. All of us here on this podcast have covered John McCain at one time or

another. I covered him when he was in the United States Senate starting in 1987.

And thereafter, but the memory of that really sticks in my mind is the summer of 1996 in San Diego

at the Republican National Convention. Robert Dole was the nominee that summer. And John McCain,

as a surrogate, stood out in the lobby of the media hotel not just once in a while,

but almost all day long until the convention session began. Holding forth four crowds of

reporters, sometimes small, sometimes large crowds, but always standing there in a polo shirt,

looking immensely comfortable and casual. And talking about how great Bob Dole was,

and talking down the Democratic incumbent president Bill Clinton. But mostly just being

enormously charming. And that was the beginning of John McCain presidential candidate. He came back

in 2000, of course, and ran as a formal candidate eventually getting the Republican nomination in 2008.

And I had the good fortune to cover that campaign, the O8 campaign, which for most of its duration was

an extremely freewheeling, ad-libbing stream of consciousness kind of campaign from the back of a bus.

It got a little bit more buttoned down in the final months when he was gunning for the White House.

And then I had the opportunity to of course cover the Obama and Trump administrations. And as a

senator, John McCain tangled with both those presidents. And I pick up in 2010 when I started

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