“If you want to preserve - I'm very serious now - if you want to preserve democracy as we know it, you have to have a free and many times adversarial press. And without it, I am afraid that we would lose so much of our individual liberties over time. That's how dictators get started.”

American politician and naval officer

John McCain was an American politician and naval officer who represented Arizona in the United States Congress for more than 35 years. He served first as a U.S. representative from 1983 to 1987, then as a U.S. senator from 1987 until his death in 2018. A Republican, he was the party’s nominee for president in 2008. McCain’s long public career was centered on Arizona and on national politics. He spent decades in Congress, moving from the House to the Senate and remaining there until the end of his life. His name is closely tied to the Republican Party and to the 2008 presidential race.