McCain Ties His Prospects to the War
Running for President in Iowa, Arizonan Addresses Support for Iraq Buildup

By Michael D. Shear
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 18, 2007

AMES, Iowa -- Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) refuses to hide from what he calls "the elephant in the room," despite knowing full well that the issue he talks most about these days is one that could sink his campaign for the White House.

Two-thirds of the American people disagree with McCain's support for the Iraq war and the president's decision to send additional troops to the conflict. As McCain seeks the presidency, it would make sense for him to change the subject -- to health care, to the economy, to social issues, or just about anything else.

But McCain and his top advisers have concluded that to do so would seem evasive and inauthentic for a military man whose life story is built around his experiences in the Vietnam War. They have decided that -- for good or ill -- he has no choice but to plead with voters for their understanding about his decidedly unpopular position on the subject.

"How can you really, you know, with a straight face, walk into a town hall meeting and not talk about the issue that is costing American lives as we speak?" McCain asked reporters gathered around him last week on the 2007 version of the Straight Talk Express, the rolling gimmick that made him famous during his first presidential campaign in 2000. "That's why I have to do what I have to do, foolish as it may be."

In 2000, McCain was the maverick Republican taking on the establishment -- and the then-governor of Texas, George W. Bush -- by talking about cutting spending and overhauling the campaign finance system. He still talks about those subjects. But in a post-Sept. 11 world dominated by Iraq, they have become secondary.

On Thursday, McCain found himself in Ballroom A at the Quality Inn & Suites in Ames for just such a town hall meeting. He made a joke about a pair of fictional twins getting drunk in a bar and another about the string of losing presidential candidates from Arizona. And then he immediately launched into his explanation about the war.

"Is it hard and tough? Yes. Is it difficult? Yes. Can we win, succeed? I believe we can," he told the crowd. "Can I guarantee you success? No. But I can guarantee the consequences of failure. The consequences of failure are chaos, genocide and, sooner or later, we go back."

The audience was largely quiet, even somber, as McCain spoke. Even in conservative places such as this, where polls suggest that a majority of Republicans still back the war effort, discussion of Iraq does not produce a reliable applause line. But that does not stop McCain from devoting more than a third of his stump speech to the subject.

"I am convinced that if we lose this conflict and leave, [the terrorists] will follow us home. It's not Iraq they are trying to take," he tells the audience. "Whether it was before, it is now part of this titanic struggle between good and evil, between radical Islamic extremists and their efforts to destroy everything we believe in."

Afterward, several people in the audience said they appreciated his backing of the unpopular war effort. "I truly believe that if we leave Iraq, they are going to follow us back here," said Larry Reynoldson, 63, a retired boat dealer from Boone. "I'd rather fight the war over there than over here."

Back on the bus, McCain said he believes his political fortunes are directly tied to the war. It could be his biggest liability, he said. Bigger than anger among conservatives at the positions he sometimes strikes that are out of step with their views. Bigger than the notion that he is no longer the independent voice he once was. If the war is still going badly by the time votes are cast, nothing else may matter.

"I don't know. I don't know and I can't worry about it," he replied when asked whether the war could be his undoing. "I know it's trite, but I'd rather lose a campaign than lose a war. If you can show them, 'Hey, this way we can succeed,' then I think they are still willing to support it. But after four years, there is a great deal of skepticism."

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."