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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Photo credit: Mary Altafer / Associated Press