…we were on the road, and McCain was reminiscing about his early political career. When he was elected to the House in 1982, he said, he was ”a freshman right-wing Nazi.” But his visceral hostility toward Democrats generally was quickly tempered by his tendency to see people as individuals and judge them that way. He was taken in hand by Morris Udall, the Arizona Congressman who was the liberal conscience of the Congress and a leading voice for reform. (Most famously — and disastrously for his own career — Udall took aim at the seniority system that kept young talent in its place at the end of the dais. ”The longer you’re here, the more you’ll like it,” he used to joke to incoming freshmen.)

….For the past few years, Udall has lain ill with Parkinson’s disease in a veterans hospital in Northeast Washington, which is where we were heading. Every few weeks, McCain drives over to pay his respects. These days the trip is a ceremony, like going to church only less pleasant. Udall is seldom conscious, and even then he shows no sign of recognition. McCain brings with him a stack of newspaper clips on Udall’s favorite subjects: local politics in Arizona, environmental legislation, Native American land disputes…

One wall of Udall’s hospital room was cluttered with photos of his family back in Arizona…Aside from a Congressional seal glued to a door jamb, there was no indication what the man in the bed had done for his living. Beneath a torn gray blanket on a narrow hospital cot, Udall lay twisted and disfigured. No matter how many times McCain tapped him on the shoulder and called his name, his eyes remained shut.

A nurse entered and seemed surprised to find anyone there, and it wasn’t long before I found out why: almost no one visits anymore. In his time, which was not very long ago, Mo Udall was one of the most-sought-after men in the Democratic Party. Yet as he dies in a veterans hospital a few miles from the Capitol, he is visited regularly only by a single old political friend, John McCain. ”He’s not going to wake up this time,” McCain said.

Shame on McCain for bringing a reporter along to his visit with Mo Udall where he laid sick to live out the rest of his days knowing that he was robbed by Parkinson’s disease!

For McCain to show Udall in such a state of suffering is disrespectful, politically cheap, and tacky to the late Mo Udall and the Udall family.

McCain has shown with this article that he will do anything to get press coverage or a sound bite at the expense of a great Arizona political icon such as Mo Udall. It shows that he will say anything and expose his relationships to pump himself up at the expense of the people such as Mo Udall.

Check out the 1997 New York Times article at:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C04EEDF1438F936A15756C0A961958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all