MIKE GALLAGHER: It’s an honor and a privilege to welcome to our show U.S. Senator and Republican Presidential Candidate, a man I hope we can call President Elect in a couple of months, John McCain joins us here on the Mike Gallagher Show, Senator McCain how are you sir?

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN: I’m fine Mike, thanks very much. Actually I’m exhilarated because of Sarah Palin’s…

GALLAGHER: What a night, what a night. I had a listener from Ohio who writes “Sarah Palin sliced and diced and did it with a smile; she hit it out of the park.” You have to be very pleased with your vice presidential running mates performance last night.

SEN. MCCAIN: I can’t tell you how pleased I am and when you see Sarah Palin unfiltered Americans are really enthusiastic. I just can’t tell you how she really, with her overall disposition and optimism and kind of the thing that America needs now. The spirit and the entrepreneurship and good government that she has represented, I couldn’t be happier and now I’ve got to do as good a job next Tuesday and that’s a tall order.

GALLAGHER: she raised the bar on you all of a sudden

SEN. MCCAIN: Sure did

GALLAGHER: But she is the real deal isn’t she. I mean, that’s the format that’s the medium that was an environment last night where you don’t have Katie Couric trying to play gotcha and list how many newspapers she reads in the morning or recite a bunch of Supreme Court decisions, I mean this is the kind of stuff that Americans are yearning for isn’t it?

SEN. MCCAIN: Exactly, and with respect to the media people, she may not know every single issue in the detail that Joe Biden does, after all he’s been there for about 35 years, but I can also assure that she doesn’t think that Franklin Delano Roosevelt did not address the nation over television. She knows that were gonna have to build some more coal fired plants in American the key is to get the clean coal technology and invest and get that going. She knows what necessary to create jobs. I can’t be more proud of her and the job that she has done and Mike I hope you can get to some of our town hall meetings because the kind of excitement that she ignites, frankly I have not seen before in American politics, and I don’t know how many tens of millions of Americans saw her last night, but now they know why.

GALLAGHER: Well and David Brooks in deed writes in the NY times today “ there are moments when members of a political movement come together as one” and I think that last night was one of those moments senator McCain. I also have to share with you an essay I’ve been reading on the air and people have loved this. It is called “Who am I?” “Who am I? I am under 45 years old, I love the outdoors, I hunt and fish, I am a republican reformer, I have taken on the Republican Party establishment, I have many children, I have a spot on the national ticket as vice president with less than two years in the governor’s office, have you heard of me before now? The answer I am Teddy Roosevelt. [Both Laughing]

SEN. MCCAIN: You know I heard about that somebody, several people have approached me. That’s been getting a lot of currency you reading that

GALLAGHER:I love that

SEN. MCCAIN: And he was a great reformer

GALLAGHER: He was a maverick. I get a kick out of that

GALLAGHER: Senator McCain, let’s talk a little bit about what’s on the table today. There is no question that Americans are upset and frustrated and confused to some degree about this Paulson plan. Let me give you a little bit of audio if you don’t mind…

SEN. MCCAIN: Yeah I hear…

GALLAGHER: From Senator Jim Bunning, let’s play what the good senator from Kentucky and your senate college said about the Paulson plan.

Senator Bunning [taped audio]: The Paulson plan will not help struggling home owners pay their mortgages. The Paulson plan will not bring a stop to the slid in home prices. But the Paulson plan will spend 700 billion dollars of tax payer’s money to prop up and clean up the balance sheets of Wall Street. This massive bailout is not a solution, it is a financial socialism and it’s un-American.

GALLAGHER: Senator McCain, you know me, I’m in the trenches fighting for you everyday, but boy I would have loved it if you would have said no to this plan.

SEN. MCCAIN: Well Mike these are dire straits. The last time you and I remember that was kind of this dire was Enron etc. But it was also when the savings and loan industry collapsed. We had to create the Resolution Trust Corporation and go in and buy up these bad assets and then move forward and it cost the American tax payer. But to have the whole real estate industry in America that the impact of not going in would have been far severe in retrospect, I think most economist are in agreement. But when we saw a 700 point drop in the Dow, that wasn’t just people who are rich on Wall Street and I have no use for them, but it wiped out 1.2 trillion dollars in pension funds, and 401-Ks, and mutual funds, and investments that people have in their retirements. Continued...