By JULIAN E. BARNES, ADAM ENTOUS, SARA MURRAY and CAROL E. LEE
Chuck Hagel was the one Senate Republican willing to help Barack Obama when he needed it most—in July 2008, as Mr. Obama, then an Illinois senator, prepared to fight Sen. John McCain in the presidential election.
Mr. Hagel, at the time a GOP senator who had already fallen out of favor with Mr. McCain and other Republican Party leaders, agreed to join Mr. Obama on a tour of Iraq and Afghanistan, just weeks before the national conventions. Running against a war hero with long experience in foreign policy, Mr. Obama had never visited Afghanistan and been just once to Iraq.
The overseas trip was intended to bolster Mr. Obama's foreign policy credentials and claims to bipartisanship. But through the long plane rides, cramped quarters and endless meetings, Mr. Obama came to see Mr. Hagel as a kindred spirit, as much for his beliefs as his pragmatism, said people who were there. As they relaxed in a Kuwait hotel room trading jokes and talking shop, a senior administration official said, it was obvious the two men "just kind of clicked."
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