Posted on 07/04/2005 9:12:46 PM PDT by nickcarraway
US senator John McCain is a vocal critic of Guantánamo Bay, thinks George Bush was wrong on Kyoto and was even asked by John Kerry to be his Democratic running mate. So why do so many people think he will be the next Republican president? He talks to Julian Borger
John McCain's Senate offices hum like a government in exile, emitting a constant stream of alternative policy pronouncements and a whiff of indignant disbelief that the man at the centre of it all is not wielding power. Senator McCain, a Vietnam war hero, remains far more popular across the country than George Bush, the man who beat him to the 2000 Republican nomination with the help of a well-financed campaign in South Carolina that is still a byword for dirty tricks.
McCain insists he has not made up his mind whether to run in 2008, when he will be 72, but he talks like a man who intends to. Most polls, for what they are worth this far in advance, show him beating Hillary Clinton, John Kerry or any other potential Democratic challenger with ease. So the man who is in London today to give the Alistair Cooke memorial lecture represents both the administration that might have been, and one that may yet come to pass.
Among those feeling wistful may well be Tony Blair, who could have done with his support this week at the G8 summit. Unlike George Bush and many on the Republican right, McCain has become an earnest advocate of action against global warming, and believes walking out of the Kyoto accord was a significant blunder.
As a route to repairing transatlantic relations, McCain says: "I think we should work more closely with all European countries under the leadership of Prime Minister Blair on the issue of climate change. If I were directing the policy, I would say we would offer to enter a revised Kyoto agreement as long as India and China were included." One of America's major gripes about the original Kyoto accord was that it exempted developing countries from curbing their greenhouse gas emissions. McCain has sympathy for this position, but does not believe that it justified the Bush administration's decision in 2001 to abandon talks altogether and allow the issue to drift. "I think that in return for the United States' membership, a country that emits 25% of greenhouse gases, [the Europeans] would be willing to make concessions."
Ultimately, however, McCain believes the future of the transatlantic alliance will be decided in Iraq, a war he supported. He admits that the failure to find weapons of mass destruction has severely weakened traditional alliances and strained public trust in government, in the US as well as Britain.
"I think if we can show success and bring about a flawed but functioning democracy, and that spreads throughout the region, then, WMD or no WMD, our involvement would have been worth it," he says. "If, however, we fail, and Iraq falls prey to factionalism or radical Islamic extremism, then I think the critics are fully justified in their condemnation of what we did."
The only way to avoid that "catastrophic" failure, the Arizona senator has long argued, is to commit more troops. "It's one of the major mistakes that have been made that has caused us to experience some of the difficulties we've experienced. The assessment of any objective observer of the situation on the ground, particularly after our initial successes, is that we didn't have enough troops to control the country. Every indication is that we didn't have enough troops to stabilise the country. I might add, I heard that more than two years ago from a British colonel in Basra."
McCain, who was a prisoner of war in the infamous "Hanoi Hilton" for more than five years of the Vietnam war, has also been highly critical of the treatment of detainees at Guantánamo Bay, calling for them to be tried or released, and pointing out that "even Adolf Eichmann got a trial". As well as chiding the administration on its conduct of the war and on its detainee policy, McCain has been a constant thorn in its side over campaign finance reform, leading the charge to try to drain some of the corporate money from the political swamp.
These high-profile stands, and his disdain for the party whip, have inevitably endeared McCain to Democrats. A recent poll by the Pew Research Centre in Washington found he had a 66 % popularity rating among liberals, higher than Howard Dean, the former presidential candidate and current chairman of the Democratic National Committee. His crossover power is such that John Kerry, a friend and fellow veteran, even asked him to be his running mate against President Bush and Dick Cheney. McCain turned down the offer, which he sees as a case of mistaken identity.
"I think of myself as a strong conservative," McCain says slowly and with some emphasis, in response to the suggestion he could be described as "middle of the road". He is every inch a war veteran, who believes in the exercise of American military might in support of the country's values. He was calling for Saddam Hussein to be toppled long before Bush started thinking about it. He is also a fiscal conservative, sceptical of government social spending, and most importantly in America's ceaseless cultural war, he is anti-abortion.
Some have argued that America's liberals have allowed McCain's plain-spoken, maverick style to blind them to his thoroughly conservative credentials. But his cross-party appeal may say more about how far the American political landscape has shifted over the past decade. Under Bill Clinton, Democrats became converts to fiscal discipline at home and humanitarian intervention abroad. Since losing twice to Bush, and having been almost driven out of the broad Christian heartland, the Democratic party is even re-evaluating its hitherto uncompromising stand on a woman's right to abortion. (Its leader in the Senate, Harry Reid, is "pro-life".) In the current climate McCain is able to appear moderate merely because he has not made the crusade against abortion the central organising principle of his life, and because of his readiness occasionally to break party ranks.
The senator himself, however, explains his bipartisan support as being more a question of style than substance. "My approval ratings may have something to do with the desire of a majority of Americans for less divisiveness ... I don't believe in personal attacks or disrespect to people who hold opposing views."
Certainly the senator knows something about personal attacks. In the 2000 Republican primary elections, his low-budget "Straight Talk Express" campaign upset the heavily financed Bush juggernaut in independent-minded New Hampshire by 19 percentage points. For a brief moment, it looked possible that the grizzled war veteran could wrest the nomination from the party's callow dauphin. But the next stop on the primary trail was South Carolina, the conservative heartland, where the Bush campaign and its supporters pulled out all the stops.
Pat Robertson, America's pre-eminent television evangelist, swung his Christian broadcasting network against McCain, as did the National Rifle Association and the National Right to Life Committee. They were nervous about McCain's commitment to campaign finance reform, which threatened to cut, or at least weaken, the link between their financial clout and their political influence. "In South Carolina, estimates are that in three weeks something between $13m and $20m were spent and most of that was in attacks," McCain says.
The onslaught was extraordinary even by modern campaign standards. Flyers started appearing on car windshields suggesting he had fathered a black child (an apparent reference to Bridget, a Bangladeshi girl whom McCain and his wife Cindy adopted). Others claimed he had committed treason while imprisoned in Hanoi or was mentally unbalanced as a result of his experiences.
His tendency to give straight answers, which charmed voters in New Hampshire, got him into trouble in South Carolina, where a battle was brewing over whether the Confederate flag should be flown from the state capitol. Bush dodged the issue, saying it was purely a matter for the state. McCain waded straight in, telling a television interviewer the flag was "a symbol of racism and slavery". It was a message that the state's white Republicans were not ready to hear.
McCain is clearly determined that should he run in 2008, he will not trip up in South Carolina a second time. He has close political allies in the governor's mansion and in the state's congressional delegation who have helped him burnish his image there. He has also been more careful than he was in 2000 about what he says about the Christian right. But the senator maintains he has not yet made up his mind about running, and will not until the 2006 congressional elections. "I'd like to know the mood of the country after those elections," he says. "I'd like to be able to gauge the mood of the country and my chances at that time."
He will then be 70. He remains an extra-ordinarily dynamic figure for his age, clocking more international miles than most of his Senate colleagues, but a scar on the left side of his face serves as a reminder that he might have died from skin cancer five years ago had a melanoma not been spotted in time. He is checked every three months for a possible recurrence. His wife, Cindy, recently had a stroke, and her health may also be a factor.
Many US Democrats and centrists are trudging towards 2008 without great hopes. The conventional wisdom is that Hillary Clinton will win the Democratic nomination but then lose the presidential election, because she will galvanise the people who hate the Clinton name more than those who love it.
Many eyes are on John McCain as the sole alternative to a continuation of the Bush revolution. The ideological religious right will be out to stop him, but by 2008, after another few years of ideological battles at home and counterinsurgency abroad, the Republicans could be ready for a change of style.
McCain is too old for president.
Because "so many people" have a kumquat where their brain should be.
"...and a whiff of indignant disbelief that the man at the centre of it all is not wielding power. "
Hey Johny Boy. The reason you don't wield the power....is because Republicans want to, at the very least, vote for someone who even knows how to talk like a Republican.
AND NOBODY LIKES YOUR BACK STABBING WAYS.
He won't be getting my vote.
McCain doesn't need to run. If folks want a Dem, odds are they'll vote for the Witch of Washington.
A lot of people here say that. If he makes it, I'll enjoy seeing posts telling us that we have to vote republican anyway because there isn't any other choice.
I'll vote my conscience regardless of what people here state.
If he's the Republican nominee, there will be an awful lot of people, myself included, who will hold their nose as they vote for the man.
No way McCain wins the Republican nomination.
Please G-d.
At the very least, it's going to be very interesting
McCain will never will the nomination.
McCain thinks the minority in the Senate is able to determine the worthiness of judicial nominees for up or down votes on confirmation.
That alone ensures he will not receive the nomination.
Right?
Not to mention too self-serving and too opportunistic.
What we have here is a man without any real commitments beyond himself. Like Algore, he craves the Presidency and will do anything to get it. He has no policies borne of principal, but will promote the policies of those who help him gain power.
If McCain ever becomes President, George Soros will own him.
He's not getting my vote. I also know a few libs that don't like him or Hellery.
"Many eyes are on John McCain as the sole alternative to a continuation of the Bush revolution."
The reporter can't resist this editorial comment which shows once again why the MSM loves McVain: they always see him as their favorite RINO.....
Would that there were more of you. There might be some hope for this republic.
I'll never vote for the lesser of two evils, because if I do, I'll still be voting for evil.
That's true :) Voting for Mc Cain would be like voting for the Rats anyway. It ain't going to happen.
Is McCain a semi tranquilized version of Howard Dean?
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