Opinion: John McCain: No 2012 White House run :-))

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The morning after last week’s presidential election, Republican Sen. John McCain and his wife, Cindy, drove by themselves in Phoenix to get a morning coffee.

‘Not the newspaper,’ McCain told Jay Leno tonight. ‘I knew what it was going to say.’ (See below for a link to a video clip.)

For his good-natured 14th appearance on ‘The Tonight Show with Jay Leno’ tonight, McCain made no news, other than confirm the obvious: that he’s done with presidential politics. He trotted out some old jokes: Since the election he’s been sleeping like a baby, sleep two hours, wake up and cry, sleep two hours...

He called President-elect Barack Obama ‘a good and decent person.’

The Arizona senator attributed his loss varyingly to having been on Leno’s show too often and completely on the media, laughingly as it turns out. He said he’d never been seriously concerned about Leno’s write-in candidacy.

He praised his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

Dismissing unnamed McCain campaign sources who’ve recently trashed Palin to some reporters, McCain said, ‘I couldn’t be happier with Sarah Palin. And she’s going back to be a great governor and I think she will play a big role in the future of our country.’

Mentioning Palin, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal, McCain said, ‘There’s a group of young Republican governors and -- mainly governors, but also some in the Senate -- that I think are the next generation of leadership in our party. ... Our party has a lot of work to do. We just got back from the woodshed.’

McCain said he was eager to return to work in the Senate.

Leno noted that in 2012 McCain would be a young 76, and would he give it another go? ‘I wouldn’t think so, my friend,’ McCain said. ‘It’s been a great experience, and you know we’re going to have another generation of leaders come along, and I’ll hope that I can continue to contribute. That’s all.’

There was a special ending to the program, since it was Veteran’s Day. Leno asked McCain if he had a veterans story to share. And McCain talked about a POW cellmate named Mike Christian, from near Selma, Ala.

We won’t try to summarize McCain’s moving story. We’ll just publish the whole thing verbatim after the jump. Click on the ‘Read more’ line to see it. And there’s a video highlight clip down there too.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Sen. John McCain: ‘Just about every day, but especially on Veterans Day, I think of a guy I was in prison with a long time ago. For a few years we were in Hanoi and prison camps in North Vietnam. They kept us in solitary confinement, two or three to a cell.

‘They finally moved us into large cells, 20 or 25 prisoners in each cell. The guy that moved in with me was a guy named Mike Christian. Mike was from a small town near Selma, Ala.

‘Very poor family. Enlisted in the Navy at age 17. Later became an A6 bombardier/navigator. Was shot down and captured.

‘He loved this country. I moved in the same room with him. The uniform we wore in prison was blue, like, short-sleeved shirt, like, pajama trousers, and shoes -- sandals that were cut out of automobile tires.

‘I recommend them highly. One pair lasted me five and a half years.

(Laughter.)

‘Part of this change in treatment, they let us have some packages from home in which were small items -- some of us -- like a handkerchief or a scarf. He took his blue shirt, fashioned himself a bamboo needle, got a piece of white cloth, piece of red cloth, and sewed the American flag on the inside of his shirt.

‘Every evening before we would have our bowl of soup, we would put his flag -- his shirt -- on the wall of the cell and pledge our allegiance to the country.

‘It was an important part of our day.

‘One day the Vietnamese came, searched the cell, found his shirt, removed it, came back that night -- and I’m telling it fast -- opened the door of the cell, called for him to come out, closed the door of the cell, and beat him very badly for a couple hours.

‘Then they threw him back into the cell. The cell in which we slept had a concrete slab, light bulbs in all four corners, naked light bulbs. We cleaned Mike up as well as we could.

‘I went over to lie down on the concrete and go to sleep. And I happened to look over in the corner of the cell, and underneath the lightbulb, with a piece of white cloth and a piece of red cloth and his bamboo needle, was Mike, with his eyes almost shut from the beating that he had received, sewing another American flag.

‘He wasn’t doing that for us. He was doing it for his country. He wasn’t doing it for himself. He was doing it for his country and our ability to pledge our allegiance to our flag and country.

‘I’ll never forget Mike Christian.’

(Applause.)