Inhofe makes peace with McCain

By RON JENKINS

Published August 27, 2008 at 4:09 p.m.
Updated August 27, 2008 at 5:53 p.m.

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OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) _ Sen. Jim Inhofe says he has made peace with John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, whom Inhofe has sparred with in the past over global warming and other issues.

Inhofe, R-Okla., once predicted that McCain could not win the GOP nomination, reasoning that his background on some issues would not sit well with activist conservatives.

"If you remember, I was saying that he couldn't win a primary, that's how smart I was," Inhofe said Wednesday in an interview with The Associated Press.

"I felt that way and I was shocked the way things rolled around," the Oklahoma senator said.

He quipped that his own candidate — former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson — "never woke up" during the GOP primaries.

Inhofe said he and McCain are friends, despite their differences, but McCain has three "very, very close friends" in the Senate and one of them is first-term Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla.

Recently, Inhofe said he went up to McCain on the Senate floor and jokingly said "John, am I going have to go through my junior senator to see you in the White House. And everyone laughed and thought it was pretty funny.

"And later on, I ran into John in the cloak room and he said: 'Look, Jimmy, we've had our differences of opinion...but I'm going to be president and you're going to be chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and we're going to need each other."

If McCain were to be elected president, Inhofe would become the ranking member of the powerful committee. Democrats would have to lose control of the Senate for him to become chairman.

Over the years, Inhofe said he and McCain have disagreed over global warming, drilling in the Anwar Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, military procurements and other issues.

Inhofe is the Senate's No. 1 critic of the idea of manmade global warming and is a supporter of drilling in Anwar, while McCain has said global warming is a threat and has opposed drilling in the Alaska refuge.

McCain's position on global warming, Inhofe said, "was more of a political decision. I think John knows it is an extremely powerful force — the far left environmentalists."

Inhofe said one of the problems in his relationship with McCain is that "we're both pretty stubborn.

"The happy ending took place when we had that conference in the cloak room."

Looking at the Democrats, Inhofe said Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, made a "brilliant" choice by selecting Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., as his running mate.

He said Biden is bright and knows foreign policy, but quipped that he is "clearly the most arrogant of the U.S. senators — and there's a lot of competition."

Inhofe is being opposed in his bid for re-election by state Sen. Andrew Rice, R-Oklahoma City, and independent Stephen P. Wallace.

Oklahoma will not be a help to the Democratic nominee, according to Inhofe. Oklahoma, he said, "will be his worst state."

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