McCain Ties His Prospects to the War

McCain's chief rivals for the Republican nomination also support the war. But as Washington outsiders -- Rudolph W. Giuliani was mayor of New York and Mitt Romney was governor of Massachusetts -- they have not spent years on the Sunday morning talk shows, defending the decision to topple Saddam Hussein and standing up for President Bush's war policy.

And should McCain win the GOP nomination, all his likely Democratic opponents have staked out antiwar positions that will leave him in a potentially even more difficult place in the general election -- as the sole defender of a war that most Americans have come to loathe.

McCain's situation has been a long time in the making.

He supported the president's initial decision to go to war in Iraq and has been one of the loudest and most consistent voices urging the deployment of more troops to the region. When Bush announced the buildup decision in January, Democrats eagerly dubbed it "The McCain Doctrine."

But the outspoken senator has also been a critic of parts of the war effort. He was one of the first Republicans to say publicly he had lost confidence in then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, whom he later called the worst defense secretary in history. In stump speeches, McCain describes the war as having been "badly, badly mismanaged" and even recommends several recent books by journalists that recount some of the war's biggest failures.

Rolling across Iowa, the endless conversation with reporters drifted to other subjects: public funding of contraceptives, college basketball, his age, boxing, campaign finance, immigration, gays in the military and the recent firing of U.S. attorneys.

But sitting in a booth at the back of the plush bus -- leather chairs, six flat-screen television sets and two big, comfy couches -- the conversation always returns to Iraq.

Is it fair that you will be judged by what happens in the war? McCain is asked.

He pauses for a moment.

"I would think that I am going to be judged at least somewhat by . . . " he says, trailing off. "Irony of ironies. Life isn't fair. I was the biggest complainer about how [the war] was being conducted at the time. But life is not fair."

He pauses again, and then smiles and says, clearly tongue-in-cheek, "I do feel real sorry for myself."