The Whoppers of 2008—The Sequel

John McCain's personal character has been a dominant feature of his public image.[264] This image includes the military service of both himself and his family,[265] his maverick political persona,[113] his temper,[266] his admitted problem of occasional ill-considered remarks,[90] and his close ties to his children from both his marriages.[22]

McCain's political appeal has been more nonpartisan and less ideological compared to many other national politicians.[267] His stature and reputation stem partly from his service in the Vietnam War.[268] He also carries physical vestiges of his war wounds, as well as his melanoma surgery.[269] When campaigning, he quips: "I am older than dirt and have more scars than Frankenstein."[270]

Additionally, McCain proposes that the federal government buy troubled mortgages, and provide low-interest mortgages to qualified homeowners. For people with 401(k) plans, he wants to allow more flexibility about when money can be withdrawn, and would lower the tax on that money, as well as lowering the tax on unemployment insurance benefits. McCain is also proposing to cut the capital gains tax on stock held for more than one year, while increasing the tax write-off for stock losses.[257]

On Iraq, McCain's goal is that by 2013 most servicemen and women will have returned, the Iraq War will have been won, and Iraq will be a functioning democracy, "although still suffering from the lingering effects of decades of tyranny and centuries of sectarian tension." McCain expects that by 2013, there will still be violence, but at a much-reduced level, and without American troops in a direct combat role.[258][259]

From the late 1990s until 2008, McCain was a board member of Project Vote Smart (PVS) which was set up by Richard Kimball, his 1986 Senate opponent.[260] PVS provides non-partisan information about the political positions of McCain[261] and other candidates for political office. Additionally, McCain uses his Senate web site, and his 2008 campaign web site, to describe his political positions.[262][263]

The Almanac of American Politics rates congressional votes as liberal or conservative on the political spectrum, in three policy areas: economic, social, and foreign. For 2005???2006, McCain's average ratings were as follows: the economic rating 59 percent conservative and 41 percent liberal, the social rating 54 percent conservative / 38 percent liberal, and the foreign rating 56 percent conservative / 43 percent liberal.[249]

Columnists such as Robert Robb and Matthew Continetti have used a formulation devised by William F. Buckley, Jr. to describe McCain as "conservative" but not "a conservative", meaning that while McCain usually tends towards conservative positions, he is not "anchored by the philosophical tenets of modern American conservatism."[250][251]

The two political issues that voters have been most concerned about in 2008 are the economy and Iraq.[252] On the economy, McCain says he would make the Bush tax cuts permanent instead of letting them expire, eliminate the Alternative Minimum Tax so as to assist the middle-class, double the personal exemption for dependents, reduce the corporate tax rate, and offer a new research and development tax credit.[253][254] At the same time, he pledges to eliminate pork-barrel spending, freeze nondefense discretionary spending for a year or more, and reduce Medicare growth.[254] McCain is also opposed to high salaries and lucrative severance deals of corporate CEOs and is in favor of Say on pay laws that give stockholders a vote on executive compensation.[254][255] Another proposal of the Arizona senator is to build 45 new nuclear reactors by 2030, in order to fight climate change and establish U.S. energy independence.[256]

Various interest groups have given Senator McCain scores or grades as to how well his votes align with the positions of each group.[245] The American Conservative Union awarded McCain a lifetime rating of 82 percent through 2007, while McCain has an average lifetime 13 percent "Liberal Quotient" from Americans for Democratic Action through 2007.[246][247]

The Arizona senator subsequently resumed his familiar position as a political underdog,[202] riding the Straight Talk Express and taking advantage of free media such as debates and sponsored events.[203] By December 2007, the Republican race was unsettled, with none of the top-tier candidates dominating the race and all of them possessing major vulnerabilities with different elements of the Republican base electorate.[204] McCain was showing a resurgence, in particular with renewed strength in New Hampshire ??? the scene of his 2000 triumph ??? and was bolstered further by the endorsements of The Boston Globe, the Manchester Union-Leader, and almost two dozen other state newspapers,[205] as well as from Independent Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman.[206][207] McCain decided not to campaign significantly in the January 3, 2008 Iowa caucuses, which saw a win by former Governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee.

McCain's comeback plan paid off when he won the New Hampshire primary on January 8, defeating former Governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney in a close contest, to once again become one of the front-runners in the race.[208] In mid-January, McCain placed first in the South Carolina primary, narrowly defeating Mike Huckabee.[209] Pundits credited the third-place finisher, Tennessee's former U.S. Senator Fred Thompson, with drawing votes from Huckabee in South Carolina, thereby giving a narrow win to McCain.[210] A week later, McCain won the Florida primary,[211] beating Romney again in a close contest; Giuliani then dropped out and endorsed McCain.[212]

On February 5, McCain won both the majority of states and delegates in the Super Tuesday Republican primaries, giving him a commanding lead toward the Republican nomination. Romney departed from the race on February 7.[213] McCain's wins in the March 4 primaries clinched a majority of the delegates, and he became the presumptive Republican nominee.[214]

McCain, having been born in the (Panama) Canal Zone, will if elected become the first president who was born outside the current 50 states. This raises a potential legal issue, since the United States Constitution requires the president to be a natural-born citizen of the United States. A bipartisan legal review[215] and a unanimous but non-binding Senate resolution[216] both concluded that he is a natural-born citizen, but the matter is still a subject of some legal controversy.[217] Also, if inaugurated in 2009 at age 72 years and 144 days, he would be the oldest U.S. president upon ascension to the presidency,[218] and the second-oldest president to be inaugurated.[219]

John McCain formally announced his intention to run for President of the United States on April 25, 2007 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.[194] He stated that: "I'm not running for President to be somebody, but to do something; to do the hard but necessary things not the easy and needless things."[195] He also said that the United States should never fight a war without fully committing the necessary resources, unlike what initially occurred in Iraq.[195]

McCain's oft-cited strengths as a presidential candidate for 2008 included national name recognition, sponsorship of major lobbying and campaign finance reform initiatives, his well-known military service and experience as a POW, his experience from the 2000 presidential campaign, and an expectation that he would capture Bush's top fundraisers.[196] During the 2006 election cycle, McCain had attended 346 events[57] and helped raise more than $10.5 million on behalf of Republican candidates. McCain also became more willing to ask business and industry for campaign contributions, while maintaining that such contributions would not affect any official decisions he would make.[197] Despite being considered the front-runner for the nomination by pundits as 2007 began,[198] McCain was in second place behind former Mayor of New York City Rudy Giuliani in national Republican polls as the year progressed.

McCain had fundraising problems in the first half of 2007, due in part to his support for the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007, which was unpopular among the Republican base electorate.[199][200] Large-scale campaign staff downsizing took place in early July, but McCain said that he was not considering dropping out of the race.[200] Later that month, the candidate's campaign manager and campaign chief strategist both departed.[201] McCain slumped badly in national polls, often running third or fourth with 15 percent or less support.

Owing to his time as a POW, McCain has been recognized for his sensitivity to the detention and interrogation of detainees in the War on Terror. In October 2005, McCain introduced the McCain Detainee Amendment to the Defense Appropriations bill for 2005, and the Senate voted 90???9 to support the amendment.[183] It prohibits inhumane treatment of prisoners, including prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, by confining military interrogations to the techniques in the U.S. Army Field Manual on Interrogation. Although Bush had threatened to veto the bill if McCain's amendment was included,[184] the President announced in December 2005 that he accepted McCain's terms and would "make it clear to the world that this government does not torture and that we adhere to the international convention of torture, whether it be here at home or abroad".[185] This stance, among others, led to McCain being named by Time magazine in 2006 as one of America's 10 Best Senators.[186] McCain voted in February 2008 against a bill containing a ban on waterboarding,[187] which provision was later narrowly passed and vetoed by Bush. However, the bill in question contained other provisions to which McCain objected, and his spokesman stated: "This wasn't a vote on waterboarding. This was a vote on applying the standards of the [Army] field manual to CIA personnel."[187]

Meanwhile, McCain continued questioning the progress of the war in Iraq. In September 2005, he remarked upon Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers' optimistic outlook on the war's progress: "Things have not gone as well as we had planned or expected, nor as we were told by you, General Myers."[188] In August 2006, he criticized the administration for continually understating the effectiveness of the insurgency: "We [have] not told the American people how tough and difficult this could be."[165] From the beginning, McCain strongly supported the Iraq troop surge of 2007.[189] The strategy's opponents labeled it "McCain's plan"[190] and University of Virginia political science professor Larry Sabato said, "McCain owns Iraq just as much as Bush does now."[165] The surge and the war were unpopular during most of the year, even within the Republican Party,[191] as McCain's presidential campaign was underway; faced with the consequences, McCain frequently responded, "I would much rather lose a campaign than a war."[192] In March 2008, McCain credited the surge strategy with reducing violence in Iraq, as he made his eighth trip to that country since the war began.[193]

In May 2005, McCain led the so-called "Gang of 14" in the Senate, which established a compromise that preserved the ability of senators to filibuster judicial nominees, but only in "extraordinary circumstances".[175] The compromise took the steam out of the filibuster movement, but some Republicans remained disappointed that the compromise did not eliminate filibusters of judicial nominees in all circumstances.[176] McCain subsequently cast Supreme Court confirmation votes in favor of John Roberts and Samuel Alito, calling them "two of the finest justices ever appointed to the United States Supreme Court."[177]

Breaking from his 2001 and 2003 votes, McCain supported the Bush tax cut extension in May 2006, saying not to do so would amount to a tax increase.[153] Working with Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy, McCain was a strong proponent of comprehensive immigration reform, which would involve legalization, guest worker programs, and border enforcement components. The Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act was never voted on in 2005, while the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006 passed the Senate in May 2006 but failed in the House.[165] In June 2007, President Bush, McCain, and others made the strongest push yet for such a bill, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007, but it aroused intense grassroots opposition among talk radio listeners and others, some of whom furiously characterized the proposal as an "amnesty" program,[178] and the bill twice failed to gain cloture in the Senate.[179]

By the mid-2000s, the increased Indian gaming that McCain had helped bring about was a $23 billion industry.[94] He was twice chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, in 1995???1997 and 2005???2007, and his Committee helped expose the Jack Abramoff Indian lobbying scandal.[180][181] By 2005 and 2006, McCain was pushing for amendments to the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act that would limit creation of off-reservation casinos,[94] as well as limiting the movement of tribes across state lines to build casinos.[182]

In the 2004 U.S. presidential election campaign, McCain was once again frequently mentioned for the vice-presidential slot, only this time as part of the Democratic ticket under nominee John Kerry.[168][169][170] McCain said that Kerry had never formally offered him the position and that he would not have accepted it if he had.[169][170][171] At the 2004 Republican National Convention, McCain supported Bush for re-election, praising Bush's management of the War on Terror since the September 11 attacks.[172] At the same time, the Senator defended Kerry's Vietnam war record.[173] By August 2004, McCain had the best favorable-to-unfavorable rating (55 percent to 19 percent) of any national politician;[172] he campaigned for Bush much more than he had four years previously, though the two remained situational allies rather than friends.[154]

McCain was also up for re-election as Senator in 2004. He defeated little-known Democratic schoolteacher Stuart Starky with his biggest margin of victory, garnering 77 percent of the vote.[174]

After the September 11, 2001 attacks, McCain supported Bush and the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan.[152][159] He and then-Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman wrote the legislation that created the 9/11 Commission,[160] while he and Democratic Senator Fritz Hollings co-sponsored the Aviation and Transportation Security Act that federalized airport security.[161]

In March 2002, McCain-Feingold passed in both Houses of Congress and was signed into law by President Bush.[115][152] Seven years in the making, it was McCain's greatest legislative achievement.[152][162]

Meanwhile, in discussions over proposed U.S. action against Iraq, McCain was a strong supporter of the Bush administration's position.[152] He stated that Iraq was "a clear and present danger to the United States of America", and voted accordingly for the Iraq War Resolution in October 2002.[152] He predicted that U.S. forces would be treated as liberators by a large number of the Iraqi people.[163] In May 2003, McCain voted against the second round of Bush tax cuts, saying it was unwise at a time of war.[153] By November 2003, after a trip to Iraq, he was publicly questioning Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, saying that more U.S. troops were needed; the following year, McCain announced that he had lost confidence in Rumsfeld.[164][165]

In October 2003, McCain and Lieberman co-sponsored the Climate Stewardship Act that would have introduced a cap and trade system aimed at returning greenhouse gas emissions to 2000 levels; the bill was defeated with 55 votes to 43 in the Senate.[166] They reintroduced modified versions of the Act two additional times, most recently in January 2007 with the co-sponsorship of Barack Obama, among others.[167]

McCain began 2001 by breaking with the new George W. Bush administration on a number of matters, including HMO reform, climate change, and gun legislation; McCain-Feingold was opposed by Bush as well.[152][115] In May 2001, McCain was one of only two Senate Republicans to vote against the Bush tax cuts.[152][153] Besides the differences with Bush on ideological grounds, there was considerable antagonism between the two remaining from the previous year's campaign.[154][155] Later, when Republican Senator Jim Jeffords became an Independent, throwing control of the Senate to the Democrats, McCain defended Jeffords against "self-appointed enforcers of party loyalty".[152] Indeed, there was speculation at the time, and in years since, about McCain himself leaving the Republican Party, but McCain has always adamantly denied that he ever considered doing so.[156][152][157] Beginning in 2001, McCain used political capital gained from his presidential run, as well as improved legislative skills and relationships with other members, to become one of the Senate's most influential members.[158]

Incensed,[140] McCain ran ads accusing Bush of lying and comparing the governor to Bill Clinton, which Bush said was "about as low a blow as you can give in a Republican primary".[126] An anonymous smear campaign began against McCain, delivered by push polls, faxes, e-mails, flyers, and audience plants.[126][142] The smears claimed that McCain had fathered a black child out of wedlock (the McCains' dark-skinned daughter was adopted from Bangladesh), that his wife Cindy was a drug addict, that he was a homosexual, and that he was a "Manchurian Candidate" who was either a traitor or mentally unstable from his North Vietnam POW days.[126][136] The Bush campaign strongly denied any involvement with the attacks.[136]

McCain lost South Carolina on February 19, with 42 percent of the vote to Bush's 53 percent,[143] in part because Bush mobilized the state's evangelical voters[126][144] and outspent McCain.[145] The win allowed Bush to regain lost momentum.[143] McCain would say of the rumor spreaders, "I believe that there is a special place in hell for people like those."[89] According to one report, the South Carolina experience left McCain in a "very dark place".[136]

McCain's campaign never completely recovered from his South Carolina defeat, although he did rebound partially by winning in Arizona and Michigan a few days later.[146] He made a speech in Virginia Beach that criticized Christian leaders, including Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, as divisive conservatives,[136] declaring "... we embrace the fine members of the religious conservative community. But that does not mean that we will pander to their self-appointed leaders."[147] McCain lost the Virginia primary on February 29,[148] and on March 7 lost nine of the thirteen primaries on Super Tuesday to Bush.[149] With little hope of overcoming Bush's delegate lead, McCain withdrew from the race on March 9, 2000.[150] He endorsed Bush two months later,[151] and made occasional appearances with the Texas governor during the general election campaign.[126]

The Arizona Republic would write that the McCain-Bush primary contest in South Carolina "has entered national political lore as a low-water mark in presidential campaigns", while The New York Times called it "a painful symbol of the brutality of American politics".[126][136][137] A variety of interest groups that McCain had challenged in the past ran negative ads.[126][138] Bush borrowed McCain's earlier language of reform,[139] and declined to dissociate himself from a veterans activist who accused McCain (in Bush's presence) of having "abandoned the veterans" on POW/MIA and Agent Orange issues.[126][140]

McCain announced his candidacy for president on September 27, 1999 in Nashua, New Hampshire, saying he was staging "a fight to take our government back from the power brokers and special interests, and return it to the people and the noble cause of freedom it was created to serve".[131][126] The leader for the Republican nomination was Texas Governor George W. Bush, who had the political and financial support of most of the party establishment.[132]

McCain focused on the New Hampshire primary, where his message appealed to independents.[133] He traveled on a campaign bus called the Straight Talk Express.[126] He held many town hall meetings, answering every question voters asked, in a successful example of "retail politics", and he used free media to compensate for his lack of funds.[126] One reporter later recounted that, "McCain talked all day long with reporters on his Straight Talk Express bus; he talked so much that sometimes he said things that he shouldn't have, and that's why the media loved him."[134] On February 1, 2000, he won New Hampshire's primary with 49 percent of the vote to Bush's 30 percent. The Bush campaign and the Republican establishment feared that a McCain victory in the crucial South Carolina primary might give his campaign unstoppable momentum.[135][126]

McCain won re-election to a third senate term in November 1998, prevailing in a landslide over his Democratic opponent, environmental lawyer Ed Ranger.[113] In the February 1999 Senate trial in the impeachment of Bill Clinton, McCain voted to convict the president on both the perjury and obstruction of justice counts, saying Clinton had violated his sworn oath of office.[123] In March 1999, McCain voted to approve the NATO bombing campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, saying that the ongoing genocide of the Kosovo War must be stopped and criticizing past Clinton administration inaction.[124] Later in 1999, McCain shared the Profile in Courage Award with Feingold for their work in trying to enact their campaign finance reform,[125] although the bill was still failing repeated attempts to gain cloture.[115]

In August 1999, McCain's memoir Faith of My Fathers, co-authored with Mark Salter, was published;[126] a reviewer observed that its appearance "seems to have been timed to the unfolding Presidential campaign."[127] The most successful of his writings, it received positive reviews,[128] became a bestseller,[129] and was later made into a TV film. The book traces McCain's family background and childhood, covers his time at Annapolis and his service before and during the Vietnam War, concluding with his release from captivity in 1973. According to one reviewer, it describes "the kind of challenges that most of us can barely imagine. It's a fascinating history of a remarkable military family."[130]

In 1997, McCain became chairman of the powerful Senate Commerce Committee; he was criticized for accepting funds from corporations and businesses under the committee's purview, but in response said the small contributions he received were not part of the big-money nature of the campaign finance problem.[113] McCain took on the tobacco industry in 1998, proposing legislation that would increase cigarette taxes in order to fund anti-smoking campaigns, discourage teenage smokers, increase money for health research studies, and help states pay for smoking-related health care costs.[113][122] Supported by the Clinton administration but opposed by the industry and most Republicans, the bill failed to gain cloture.[122]

In the 1996 presidential election, McCain was again on the short list of possible vice-presidential picks, this time for Republican nominee Bob Dole.[120][102] The following year, Time magazine named McCain as one of the "25 Most Influential People in America".[121]

McCain developed a reputation for independence during the 1990s.[104] He took pride in challenging party leadership and establishment forces, becoming difficult to categorize politically.[104]

As a member of the 1991???1993 Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs, chaired by Democrat and fellow Vietnam War veteran John Kerry, McCain investigated the fate of U.S. service personnel listed as missing in action during the Vietnam War.[105] The committee's unanimous report stated there was "no compelling evidence that proves that any American remains alive in captivity in Southeast Asia."[106] Helped by McCain's efforts, in 1995 the U.S. normalized diplomatic relations with Vietnam.[107] McCain was vilified by some POW/MIA activists who, unlike the Arizona senator, believed large numbers of Americans were still held against their will in Southeast Asia.[107][108][109] Since January 1993, McCain has been Chairman of the International Republican Institute, an organization partly funded by the U.S. Government that supports the emergence of political democracy worldwide.[110]

In 1993 and 1994, McCain voted to confirm President Clinton's nominees Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg whom he considered to be qualified for the U.S. Supreme Court. He would later explain that "under our Constitution, it is the president's call to make."[111] McCain had also voted to confirm nominees of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, including Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas.[112]

McCain attacked what he saw as the corrupting influence of large political contributions ??? from corporations, labor unions, other organizations, and wealthy individuals ??? and he made this his signature issue.[113] Starting in 1994, he worked with Democratic Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold on campaign finance reform; their McCain-Feingold bill attempted to put limits on "soft money".[113] The efforts of McCain and Feingold were opposed by some of the moneyed interests targeted, by incumbents in both parties, by those who felt spending limits impinged on free political speech and might be unconstitutional as well, and by those who wanted to counterbalance the power of what they saw as media bias.[113][114] Despite sympathetic coverage in the media, initial versions of the McCain-Feingold Act were filibustered and never came to a vote.[115]

The term "maverick Republican" became a label frequently applied to McCain, and he has also used it himself.[113][116][117] In 1993, McCain opposed military operations in Somalia.[118] Another target of his was pork barrel spending by Congress, and he actively supported the Line Item Veto Act of 1996, which gave the president power to veto individual spending items[113] but was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1998.[119]