Posted on 09/19/2005 2:19:08 PM PDT by gobucks
U.S. Sen. John McCain knows why he wants to be president.
He isn't running for the job - officially. That won't happen, if it happens at all, until after next year's midterm elections.
McCain, who turns 69 on Monday, said "there's no point" in formally announcing his candidacy until after the 2006 congressional elections.
But the Arizona Republican didn't skip a beat Tuesday when asked why he would want to run for the White House in 2008.
"Because we live in a time of great challenges," McCain said in an interview with Arizona Daily Star editors and reporters.
Chief among them is the war on terror, a "transcendent issue" likely to last for years, he said. But there is "a broad variety of domestic challenges" as well.
Sounding much like a candidate ticking off the priorities of his platform, McCain said they include immigration, Social Security, global warming, rising health-care costs and the "obscene" spending practices of Washington.
"My ego is sufficient to say that I think I have the background and experience to take on these challenges," he said.
Asked about possible opposition to his candidacy from conservatives, McCain cited polls that show he and ex-New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani are "the two most popular" members of the Republican Party.
That, he indicated, is a crucial factor in deciding whether he'll seek the presidency.
"As long as I have strong approval and support from most of the Republican Party, then running is a viable option," he said.
A recent poll by the Gallup Organization found that McCain's favorable ratings have consistently hovered above 50 percent since 2002, two years after he ran for the Republican nomination for president against George W. Bush.
But while the four-term senator is thought of highly across party and ideological lines, Gallup found a potential weak spot among conservatives - a key constituency to prevailing in Republican primaries.
The problem McCain could face with conservatives became evident earlier this month when the Arizona Republican Assembly, a conservative Mesa-based group, voted to censure him for what it called "dereliction of his duties and responsibilities as a representative of the citizens of Arizona."
The group unanimously passed a resolution critical of, among other things, the guest-worker legislation he's sponsoring with the man they called "his Democrat soulmate, Senator Ted Kennedy."
McCain didn't comment on the resolution but vowed to continue speaking his mind.
As the Gallup Poll noted, McCain has a generally consistent conservative voting record but forged a national reputation after a series of notable breaks with fellow Republicans.
On Tuesday, though, he sided with the president on two issues that have made headlines recently: teaching intelligent design in schools and Cindy Sheehan, the grieving mother who has come to personify the anti-war movement.
McCain told the Star that, like Bush, he believes "all points of view" should be available to students studying the origins of mankind.
The theory of intelligent design says life is too complex to have developed through evolution, and that a higher power must have had a hand in guiding it.
At a breakfast meeting Tuesday with the Tucson Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, McCain said Sheehan is probably being used by organizations opposed to the U.S. mission in Iraq. But, he added, she is "a symptom, not a cause" of growing public discontent with the war.
Your opinion of McCain is my opinion of you.
Stability is one of Senator McCain's strengths.
McCain if is the mental patient, IMO he is a complete disgrace to our party, I only hope the party has more sense than to put him up for POTUS, what a nightmare that would be if he made it.
The only one who I would consider worse is Hillery.
I disagree. McCain is not my first choice, but, if he is the nominee, I will support him unequivocally. He is so far superior to Hillary Clinton that voting for him is a no-brainer.
"RINO'S" have about 55% of the GOP vote in the polls, the true blues have next to nothing (25% collectively at most). Fancy that.
A majority on this site misunderstand what drives voting behavior, in both parties, but particularly the Republican party. They seem to think it is an ideological litmus test; it isn't, particularly when it comes to the presidency.
It doesn't excite me half as much as it does you.
I won't support either one unless there is substanatial and sincere movement to the right on social conservative issues.
You can count on it.
Pence is not on my radar sceen, and I am a political junkie. I barely know what state he is from.
Some of us like our conservatism hot or cold, not lukewarm, especially with respect to the presidency. Frankly, I don't know how you can quaff the tepid gruel you call a political philisophy without vomiting all over your tassel loafers.
My comment was on what drives voting behavior in numbers that matter, not your personal preferences, or for that matter mine. I think McCain is tempermentally ill suited to be president. If he falters, that will be the reason, not his views. Guiliani is my first choice, assuming he has a clean bill of health.
Then you can sit out the election and elect another Clinton. But, if you so much as stick your scrawny neck up in complaint against Hillary, I'll be on your butt like a diaper on a baby.
Guilani isa your first choice? Duck Torie... you're about to get blasted.
McCain's main problems -- he cares what MSM write and say about him and he thinks he's a statesman. He'd have to be a partisan to win the presidency.
No onyx, folks are very polite to me on this site, and treat me well, no matter my views. And I appreciate it. I don't get blasted, hardly ever, even when I sometimes deserve it. And so it goes. :)
And some that do I might add, I manage to defang, and we become friendly, as you know. I should have been a diplomat. :)
Both McCain and Guiliani campaigned hardy for GWB. I will always remember that.
Indeed. I have seen some dust ups...lol.
Explain how McCain changes positions so rapidly!
Sometimes, you have to negotiate with the liberals and other politician's ideas. McCain has the Reagan quality of working with both sides of the aisle. No 2 politicians agree 100% of the time.
Guiliani gave the best speech I have ever had the pleasure to listen to at the convention. You remember that tour de force don't you? The guy has real talent at that. And during the Katrina sloooows, I kept thinking about that what we needed was Rudy, up close and personal.
You know, with GW appointing Clinton to the Katrina relief effort, only to be trashed by Clinton, I think that I might agree with you!
Unforgettable speech and it came so naturally, as though he were merely speaking to a small group of people. I think the world of him, but realize his abortion and gay views are not in step with RWR's GOP.
WOO-HOO! My Drew Bledsoe just threw a dandy.
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