Senator John McCain — who has just about secured his party’s presidential nomination after fellow hopeful and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney dropped out of the race — doesn’t believe his age should be a campaign issue.
“I am 71 and I said I would out-campaign my opponents. I have out-campaigned them,” he told me in a recent interview. “Obviously we need some judgement now and judgement comes from experience and knowledge.”
When McCain was sent to fight in Vietnam in 1967, Senator Barack Obama, the youngest presidential hopeful, was only six years old.
That is precisely why Barack, now 46, says he — and not McCain or Senator Hillary Clinton, who is 60 — is the bridge to the future and change in the United States. And his message has resonated with incredible enthusiasm, particularly among young voters.
Nobody questions McCain’s military experience. There are many who consider him a real hero, especially because he spent five and half years as a prisoner of war in Hanoi. This is why his opinion on the current war in Iraq carries such weight.
Was the war in Iraq necessary, even if weapons of mass destruction were never found there?
“Yes,” he answered without hesitation. “Saddam Hussein had used weapons of mass destruction, was trying to get them again and he would have used them again. He was one of the most brutal dictators in history.”
McCain has supported the increase of troops in Iraq, has said the US may stay for “100 years” in that country, and promises that, as president, he would not withdraw American troops there.
“I’m not going to surrender and wave the white flag the way that Senator Hillary Clinton wants to do,” he insisted.
This border-state senator is considered a moderate because of his position regarding undocumented immigrants. Last year he unsuccessfully proposed in the Senate a legalisation path for millions of undocumented workers. But afterward, when he realised his defence of undocumented people could cost him his party’s nomination — and outright rejection by more conservative Republicans — he changed his strategy.
“I would propose securing our borders first,” he said.
That, however, is something no one has ever been able to do. On average, an undocumented person enters this country every minute, and remains here.
“I am saying that in the first year or two years at the present pace we can get the border secured and then we can address the other part of it,” he stated.
The “other part” is the legalisation of undocumented immigrants. And that’s the difficult part. The last time something like this happened was in 1986.
One of the big contradictions in American foreign policy is that it supports some dictatorships but rejects others. So I brought this subject up. The US has diplomatic and business relations with dictatorships such as those in Pakistan and China. But McCain, like the current US administration, refuses to establish relations with Cuba. Why?
“Because there is a dictator that continues to sponsor terrorist organisations that try to export unrest and the undermining of democracy in the region and in the world,” he told me, and then surprised me with a revelation: “On a personal note, there is a guy that I am looking for in Cuba that went to the prison camps in Hanoi and tortured my friends and I’d like to find him. We don’t know his name but we know who he is. That’s the kind of people that run Cuba.”
I ended the interview by reminding the senator that if the number of Latino Republican voters didn’t increase, he faced the risk of losing the presidential election. The Pew Hispanic Center, in their latest survey, reports that only 23% of the Hispanic community identifies with the Republican Party. And recent history suggests that unless the Latino vote reaches at least 30%, it’s very possible he will fail.
McCain — the warrior, the eternal optimist, the POW who survived, the candidate who nearly dropped out of the race but is now on the verge of winning the Republican nomination — acknowledged that his party was in trouble with Hispanics, but that he was not.
“I got more than 70% of the Hispanic vote in my last re-election to the US Senate. I have long, close ties with the Hispanic community and I’m very proud of it,” he asserted.
McCain, as if it were his last battle, is seeking allies and expects to find them among Hispanic voters. Without them, he knows he won’t be able to get to the White House.
For McCain, there is no afterward. It is, literally, now or never. McCain has many things going for him — courage and steadfastness come to mind — but time is not one of them. –Â