Go to the mobile version of this Web site.

Login | Contact Us | Site Map | Paid archives | Alerts | Electronic edition | Advertise | Subscribe to the paper | Today's Extras

Breaking News:

Subscribe

LITTWIN: McCain more about do-overs than change

McCain more about do-overs than change

By Mike Littwin, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published January 7, 2008 at 12:30 a.m.

Text size  

More Elections

More stories »

John McCain, you'll be relieved to know, is one person running for president who only occasionally calls himself a change agent. The pullback has to start somewhere.

McCain is, however, the do-over candidate. He's the second-chance candidate. He's giving himself - and, in his view, the rest of us - one last opportunity to get it right. In his TV ad running here, McCain reminds voters that he won the New Hampshire primary vote eight years ago.

"You haven't changed," he tells them, "and neither have I."

For better or for worse, McCain is McCain is McCain. And in one more unlikely twist to this presidential race: McCain also is the front-runner here again, running slightly ahead in the polls of Mitt Romney. He got there because Mike Huckabee beat Romney in Iowa, because Rudy Giuliani can't get any traction here, because Fred Thompson basically never showed up, because the surge in Iraq has been more successful than most predicted, because McCain wants to be president so badly he didn't know how to quit.

And if the voters have come back to McCain - whose campaign was left for dead just a few months ago - it could be because they couldn't find anywhere else to go.

I'm watching him Sunday at one of his town hall meetings and walk away reassured. He's still the same guy. The middle school gym is packed to overflowing. The crowd, if not exactly wildly enthusiastic, has come loaded with questions. And McCain - just as every other time I've seen him in town hall settings - actually tries to answer them. Believe me, that's more unusual than you think.

"He's one of us, a straight talker," says George Reasor, a Navy Korea veteran, of McCain. Reasor had switched at one point to Fred Thompson but said, "Fred didn't do nothing. He's still not doing anything."

This is a story you hear a lot here. Reasor switches from McCain because of immigration and finally, frustrated with the rest of the field, switches back. And so here we are again.

And here is McCain, again, telling the same lame Irish-bar joke I've heard a hundred times. He's selling the same package - cutting pork barrel spending and fighting the war in Iraq. He doesn't repeat what he said the other day - that we could be in Iraq for 100 years. He did, though, say he would never again do any Beach Boys-style straight-singing of "Ba, Ba, Ba, Bomb, Bomb Iran."

McCain likes to think of himself as a maverick. He's more like a 71-year-old scamp. He's a war hero, but, as someone reminded me the other night, he was also the kind of guy who might have led his Naval Academy class in demerits.

If you watched the Republican debate Saturday night, you saw McCain in full play, taking one shot after another at ex-front-runner Mitt Romney. It wasn't subtle. It was obviously, for McCain anyway, a moment of sheer joy.

As his friend, Sen. Lindsey Graham says, "The smile on John's face tonight means that sometimes politics catches up with you."

And so, when Romney, often accused of flip-flopping, talked about change at the debate, McCain jumped him: "We disagree on many things," he says, "but you are the candidate of change."

He got his laugh, and the debate by then had turned into a full-frontal ridicule attack on Romney - eventually joined by Thompson, Giuliani and Huckabee (who would love to finish third here). After a while, you could see it wasn't really about politics. It was about mean, nasty, high school-style fun. McCain, who plainly doesn't like Romney, would telegraph his punch with a wide smile - before throwing a left hook that started from about two blocks away - and Romney could never figure out when to duck.

Romney, who doesn't look like the kind of guy who snapped towels in the locker room, was at a complete loss. He was at more of a loss even than Hillary Clinton - after the Democrats came on the stage in what was a great doubleheader night of a debate on ABC - when she attacked Barack Obama and John Edwards rushed to Obama's defense.

But if you're McCain, and you're suddenly in the lead again, and your campaign is based, in large part, on the fact that you have the maturity and experience to deal with the dangers facing America, do you risk all that by mocking your opponent?

Apparently, if you're McCain, you do.

And yet. By Sunday, he was downplaying the attacks. And, by then, he was telling the Washington Post that he could lay claim to that change mantle, too. It's apparently irresistible if you're running in the same race as Barack Obama and, in McCain's case, competing for the same independent voters.

"I've made the most significant change that you could make - or certainly played a key role in it - and that is the new strategy in Iraq. . . . I can't think of better change, frankly, or more important than saving American lives."

I'm not sure it's quite the same kind of change. But earlier, I watched McCain as someone asked him which is more important - change or experience. He smiled. It's a trick question. He likes trick questions. One reason reporters get along so well with McCain is that he will sit down with them and take as many questions, tricky or otherwise, as they can think to ask.

So, which is it - change or experience? He didn't hesitate.

"Both," he said.

littwinm@RockyMountainNews.com

Comments

  • January 7, 2008

    6:25 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    dilligaf writes:

    This man had my vote if he could have got by Bush. And I haven't ever voted for a republican in my life. He was for an issue that that could have solved alot of problems in the political areana. And that was campaign finance reform. But when he let Bush muzzle him I found he his no differant then the others. It seems that that issue is dead. I haven't heard one canidate even mention it including McCain. This is sad. We need to stop letting these big corp. pile money in these peoples pockets.

  • January 7, 2008

    7 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    Michael writes:

    John McCain is an honorable man, a hero to his country, and all in all I agree with most of his positions. I know he would be strong on national defense and foreign policy. But he has 3 HUGE, glaring past mistakes when I evaluate him as a potential presidential candidate:
    1. He sponsored and voted for the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Bill. This bill was and is unconstitutional and Pres Bush threw it to the USSC and they should have overturned it. How can it possibly be legal to tell people when they can buy TV time or get out their message about political issues?
    2. Illegal immigration - he is a dove on this and no matter what he says he advocates some form of amnesty.
    3. The Bush Tax Rate Cuts - he was against them and he still is (I think).
    Those 3 issues are critical to me and I do not think I can see past them.

  • January 7, 2008

    11:54 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    encinomanbrewery writes:

    Has John McCain finally lost his marbles??? I can't believe I supported him in 1992. John McCain’s recent comments about staying in Iraq for 100 or more years and bombing Iran are reckless and put all Americans at risk by radical Islamists. John McCain’s statement and video will serve as a powerful recruiting tool for Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda and other radical Islamic Jihadists, who appeal to other radicals to incite violence against Americans by claiming that the USA desires to kill Muslims and occupy Muslim lands in the Middle East indefinitely. I wonder how many brave American soldiers will now be killed in Iraq and Americans elsewhere in the world due to his radical warmonger statements. The blood of these soldiers and civilians will be on his hands alone. God help our country if this bozo ever becomes President. He's now trying to start a war with Iran and they are 3 times as large as Iraq and won’t be a pushover like Iraq. John McCain can send his sons and daughters to die in Iran and Iraq, just don't try to send my children you chicken hawk fear monger. This country is already bankrupt financially and morally over the war with Iraq that had nothing to do with 911, nor fighting terrorism and finding Bin Laden. Tell me John McCain how is the middle class in America better off today with a dollar worth nothing on the international markets, $3.25 per gallon at the pump, taxes and deficits soaring, our borders being overrun by illegals, and the middle class shrinking? Wake up America and vote against the Neoconmen who have hijacked the Republican Party and this formerly great country of ours. This statement solidified why I am voting for Ron Paul in this election and I urge you to do the same.

Post your comment

Registration is required. Click here to create your free user account, or login below.

Comments are the sole responsibility of the person posting them. You agree not to post comments that are off topic, defamatory, obscene, abusive, threatening or an invasion of privacy. Violators may be banned. Click here for our full user agreement.




(Forgotten your password?)




News Tip

Know about something we should be reporting? Tell us about it.

Sponsored links



Reprints