Pat Murphy

Pat Murphy, an editor at the Arizona Republic, became friends with
McCain in the early 1980s. As Murphy rose to become publisher of the
paper, their friendship continued.

In 1989, Murphy and his wife Betty had lunch with McCain in the Senate
dining room. They were talking about a hearing on a federal project to
build a dam system designed to deliver water from the Colorado River to
Arizona. Even though the project was supposed to be non-partisan, McCain
told Murphy he had planted highly technical questions with a member of
the Senate Appropriations Committee to ask when Rose Mofford, the
governor of Arizona, testified.

The idea was, because she was a Democrat, to make her squirm when she
did not know the answers.

Murphy was horrified and told McCain his feelings. After that, McCain
froze him out.

"What has struck me about McCain is that everybody underestimated the
ability of his advisers and him to hypnotize the national media, because
most of us in the media in Arizona thought of him as a guy who had a
terrible temper, occasionally had a foul mouth, a guy who whined and
pouted unless he got his way," Murphy said. "McCain has a temper that is
bombastic, volatile, and purple-faced. Sometimes he gets out of control.
Do you want somebody sitting in the White House with that kind of temper?'