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| JOHN McCAIN: ONE-ON-ONE | |
 October 15, 1999 
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As part of a new series of one-on-one interviews with presidential candidates, Margaret Warner talks to Republican Sen. John McCain. |
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MARGARET WARNER: Tonight we inaugurate a new feature of the NewsHour's campaign 2000 coverage -- candidate interviews. Over the next several months, we plan extended interviews with the presidential contenders of both parties. We begin with a Republican, the senior senator from Arizona, John McCain. He's 63 years old, a Naval Academy graduate and decorated Navy pilot. He was shot down over North Vietnam in 1967 and spent more than five years there as a prisoner of war. He began his political career in 1982, when he was elected to Congress. He was first elected to the Senate in 1986. I spoke with him a short time ago. Thanks for being with us, senator. When you announced for president formally about three weeks ago, you said you were becoming a candidate because, "I owe America more than she's ever owed me." What did you mean by that?
MARGARET WARNER: So what do you think it is special that you offer? SEN. JOHN McCAIN: I think I can inspire a generation of Americans to be committed to causes greater than their self interest. I think I have that ability. And I also think that I can reform government which is in badly need of reforming. MARGARET WARNER: You never mention the word "character" per se, but your campaign videos, your personal story, your book has come out about your family, that photograph of you as the young navy flier, at almost every campaign event. Are you... SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Makes me very nostalgic. (Laughter)
SEN. JOHN McCAIN: I wouldn't use the word character, necessarily. It's leadership and confidence, ability to inspire confidence in their leader. I think, obviously, because of a lot of things that have happened, Americans have lost confidence, and it's a broad variety of factors ranging from a campaign finance system that needs to be fixed to the scandals, the partisanship, all the things that have really eroded the confidence and the trust that especially young Americans have in their government. Poll after poll shows that young Americans have become cynical and alienated. |
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| McCain and character | |||||||||||
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MARGARET WARNER: But how do you define character in terms of what's important in a potential president? SEN. JOHN McCAIN: I think part of character is the courage to stand up and do what you believe. In other words, don't have poll-driven policies, particularly when national security is concerned. Even if your polls tell you, "this is not popular with the American people," and you know because of your life experiences, because of your principles, because of your ideals that it is right, you stand up and do it. One of my great heroes is Harry Truman, who in 1950, Dean Atchinson said, "North Korea's attacked South Korea." If he had taken a poll, we would have never fought in Korea, but Harry Truman saw his way and did it. And these are the kinds of leadership qualities that I think at this particular moment in time, that Americans may -- I emphasize "may" -- be seeking. If that's true, then I think I can be very competitive; if it's not, then I won't be. MARGARET WARNER: What do you think most shapes your character?
MARGARET WARNER: Explain that. SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Well, like most Americans, I had sort of taken my country for granted, and once I was deprived of her company, I began to appreciate the incredible freedom, the noblest ideals ever conceived by man, that have been at least to some degree put into practice. And it made me again affirm the virtue of public service. MARGARET WARNER: What do you think you've discovered about yourself in that? SEN. JOHN McCAIN: I found that I was not as strong a person. I found something that I had been fighting against all my life and that was --I believed all my life up until then, that my individual strength was sufficient to carry me through any struggle. My experience in prison made me clearly understand I was dependent on others for strength, for, in one case, my very life. And how important it is for you to rely on and love your comrades and your friends and cherish everything about them. MARGARET WARNER: There are some critics of your candidacy? SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Many.
SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Well, I would argue that I have 17 years of legislative experience with a clear voting record of a strong conservative. I believe in smaller governments, stronger defense, lower taxes, less regulation, encouragement of entrepreneurship, encouragement of legal immigration. I think that my fundamental philosophies and beliefs are very clear, and I have articulated them for years and years. And most importantly, I voted on them. In other words, we all know that politicians' rhetoric may change, but your voting record is always there for all to see. Now have I exorcised independents from my party, have I angered some members in my party including leadership? Absolutely. And I don't enjoy that. But I do know, at least I have the confidence to know what I think is the right thing for the country. And if I'm convinced of that -- not likely -- but if I'm convinced of it, then I will take a position that sometimes doesn't win me Miss Congeniality every year in the Senate. MARGARET WARNER: But as you point out, you do have actually a very conservative voting record. And then you've got these few issues that you've broken with your party. Tobacco being one, campaign finance, pork barrel spending. How do you decide what issues you want to break with your party on? SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Well, very briefly let me describe the ones that you mentioned. I believe the government does have an obligation to young people. Young Americans -- 3,000 of them start smoking every day. 1,000 of them will die early as a result of a tobacco-related illness. Shouldn't it be the obligation of government to try to do something about that? So, I thought that there was a good way of achieving that. On campaign finance reform, when people are no longer represented, because of the influence of big money, then obviously that's an affront to everything I've ever thought and believed. On pork barrel spending, it's just terrible some of the things that are going on. Look, I identified $6.4 billion on the Defense Appropriations Bill that we just passed in wasteful and unnecessary spending. Meanwhile, we've got 12,000 enlisted personnel, brave young men and women, that are on food stamps. There's something terribly wrong there. |
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| Banning soft money | |||||||||||
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MARGARET WARNER: Now, this morning, in the Wall Street Journal, even as the Senate's debating your bill to ban soft money, you wrote that basically the Republicans had not been able to deliver on the promise of their takeover of Congress, because of money in politics. SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Mm-hmm. MARGARET WARNER: That's pretty tough stuff.
MARGARET WARNER: Some of your fellow Republicans yesterday. Things got pretty testy. They seemed to feel you were impugning their integrity. SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. MARGARET WARNER: Were you? SEN. JOHN McCAIN: I hope not, because I've always said that this system makes good people do bad things. I'll just relate a brief incident I just had. I ran into an old friend of mine, Senator Dale Bumpers. Senator Dale Bumpers said to me. Ask any ex-senator. Ask any former senator, and ask him if he doesn't think that this system corrupts us, him or her. Nancy Kassenbaum, he, or any of the others. That was an interesting comment, because it's true, and although a lot seem to deny it while they're in office, why is it that all of them, when they leave office, say "Gee, yeah, it's a terrible system, and needs to be fixed."
SEN. JOHN McCAIN: No. I was a reformer before, during and after. I did something very wrong, and because I went to a meeting with four regulators, with four other senators, and creating the impression of undue influence, and I was judged by the ethics committee of using poor judgment. It was actually worse than that, because I didn't carry out my duties properly. I should have known that just the meeting, no matter what was said, created an improper impression of exerting influence over regulators. MARGARET WARNER: Since Keating had been a big campaign contributor? SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Absolutely. Absolutely. MARGARET WARNER: Another major issue... SEN. JOHN McCAIN: If I could add very quickly... MARGARET WARNER: Please. SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Bob Bennett, the president's lawyer, was the independent counsel, he was appointed, he investigated for a year, recommended that John Glenn and I be dropped from the investigation, and since I was the only Republican, it's well known that John Glenn and I were kept in. But that still doesn't excuse what I did. |
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| McCain on foreign policy | |||||||||||
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MARGARET WARNER: Another sort of major focus of your campaign is foreign policy and defense, and your experience on that, and in your announcement speech, you said -- let me get it exactly -- you said, "In the end, the president is a lonely man in a dark room when the casualty reports come in." SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Mm-hmm. MARGARET WARNER: What were you trying to suggest? SEN. JOHN McCAIN: I was trying to say that the Vietnam War did not define my view on foreign policy, but clearly the shadow of Vietnam falls on things that I -- as I contemplate president future challenges to America's security. I believe that the responsibility for committing young men and women into conflict, which means the risk or loss of our most precious treasure, and that's their blood, is a lonely decision, and the only person responsible for that is the commander-in-chief, the President of the United States, and that responsibility must be borne with the greatest seriousness and responsibility. MARGARET WARNER: But how is that different than what you think others are saying?
MARGARET WARNER: Now, you have supported certain military use of armed forces overseas. Grenada, the Gulf War, in Kosovo you urged the president to prepare for a ground war once we were in. On the other hand, you opposed Somalia, Haiti, early intervention in Bosnia. What is your guidepost for when American combat troops should be committed overseas? SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Where our interests and our values are at risk. If we were a nation like any other in the world, and only "realpolitik," in other words, how it affects the United States, was the decision, we could make that decision in a matter of minutes. But we are a nation that is dedicated to Democratic values, to freedom and democracy throughout the world, and where those values are threatened, we also have to intervene where we can, and can beneficially. That's where it makes it very difficult. The United States sits astride the world as the most powerful nation since the Roman Empire, and we have, with that, great responsibilities and great blessings, and when we see a place like, for example, Rwanda, where hundreds of thousands of people are innocently slaughtered, we ought to try and stop it. But we ought to be able to stop it. When we see a situation like Kosovo, where the ethnic cleansing begins which would offend all of our values, as a Judeo-Christian nation, and not to mention offend our interest, when it could destabilize the region, and we have to do whatever is necessary. My biggest problem with the president was, one, he stumbled into it, but two, once we were in it, he wasn't prepared to do whatever's necessary. That's one of the lessons of the Vietnam War. MARGARET WARNER: But isn't America always able, if it wants to, to do what's necessary, in the current world, and given our current military might? SEN. JOHN McCAIN: I don't think it can beneficially effect the position... the situation in Haiti. We sent 20,000 troops, spent $2 billion in Haiti, and arguably, Haiti is worse off than it was before we went. So there has to be an important corollary to where we intervene, and that is, can we beneficially effect it? And also then, you also have to understand, what is the level of risk. Because sometimes, as in Somalia, where it may have been a noble cause to go there as peacekeeping, but then turning into warlord hunting, and casualties were entailed, and we had to withdraw, whether we wanted to or not. And that's also a job of the President of the United States, is to tell the American people why we do these things. I still am convinced that the majority of American people will rally around the President of the United States if he tells them the cause is just, and American ideals, principles, and interests are at risk. MARGARET WARNER: Now, some of your fellow Republicans in Congress have an even more restrictive view upon this question. For instance, you were unable to persuade them to support your resolution authorizing all necessary force in Kosovo. SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Yes. |
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| A new isolationism? | |||||||||||
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MARGARET WARNER: Do you think the president's right when he, for instance, said yesterday that he sees a new isolationism in the Republican party? SEN. JOHN McCAIN: There's always been some isolationism in the Republican party, and it was transcended in the 20s and 30s, as we know. But no, I don't think so. I think that the Republicans have a grave and deep mistrust about the president of the United States. I think this latest debacle of the CTBT could have been prevented.
SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Yeah, Test Ban Treaty --could have been avoided if the president had reached out to the leaders in the Republican party in Congress, which he did not do. I believe that fundamentally, the Republican party is still the party of Eisenhower and Reagan, not of Taft and the senators that rejected the League of Nations treaty. MARGARET WARNER: But there are a growing number of senators who feel differently, are there not, on the Republican side? SEN. JOHN McCAIN: But again, I think that it's read by -- I don't like to -- I don't enjoy beating up on the president. But launching a missile that hits a prescription... a drug factory and a supposed gathering of terrorists and then nothing? What was that? Going into Haiti, and spending years there, and all this money, and nothing happening. There's a level of mistrust here that I have not -- between the president and the Congress -- that I have not seen in the 17 years that I've been here. MARGARET WARNER: So you're saying you think the right president could lead even -- could lead a Republican Congress to certain use of combat forces overseas? SEN. JOHN McCAIN: There's not a doubt in my mind. But you also have to call in Democrats. You have to... as President of the United States, the first thing I'd do, before I was inaugurated, I'd call Joe Biden. I'd call Dick Lugar. I'd call the Speaker of the House. I'd call the chairmen. I'd call seven or eight of them down the White House -- not -- call them together, and I say, "Look, we've got to work together. We have got to go back to the tradition of this country since the end of World War II, and that's a bipartisan approach to foreign policy. Yes, we're going to disagree. But we can disagree and come to a reasonable conclusion on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty." What the president should have done is called the Republican leaders along with the Democratic leaders, and say, "Look, I know that this treaty is not going to pass. How do we prevent an embarrassment from the United States of America happening?" I think they could have worked it out. The president never even called Trent Lott. That's unbelievable. MARGARET WARNER: Finally, how do you find life on the campaign trail? SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Great fun, great fun. I said I was going to enjoy it, I do enjoy it. I mentioned one thing that's happened that's interesting since I wrote a book. I was on a book tour. Men mainly, some women, come and show me pictures of them in their service to the country. Mainly World War II, but also Korea, and Vietnam veterans and a few Persian Gulf veterans. It's very touching. It's been very wonderful. MARGARET WARNER: You say repeatedly, "I'm not afraid to lose." Why is that important? SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Because every time I've seen a candidate, or politician, or in life, someone who's more afraid of losing than anything else, they do things that they're sorry for at the end of the day. MARGARET WARNER: All right, well thank you, Sen. McCain, for being with us. SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Thanks for having me on. |
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SEN.
JOHN McCAIN (R-AZ): I mean I've been blessed with a rich and full life,
and an opportunity to serve like few Americans have ever had the opportunity.
It may sound a little boastful, but I think it's true. And the wonderful
things that have happened to me because I'm an American -- have been
such a wonderful reward that I can never repay them. 
MARGARET
WARNER: We're all in better shape then. Are you suggesting that that's
really -- character's really the basis on which you think Americans
ultimately do, or should choose a president? 
SEN.
JOHN McCAIN: I think a combination of experiences in my life beginning
with my father and grandfather, and the institutions of the Naval Academy
and the Navy. But probably the most defining, although not shaping --
probably the most defining obviously was my experience as a prisoner
of war, because that made me fall in love with America. 
MARGARET
WARNER: Many. And I've seen it both in left- leaning publications like
the New Republic, to the National Review, conservative
publication that say character's all well and good, but with you, it's
become almost... It has become a substitute for a political philosophy
or an ideology, and that you don't have one. Do you? 
SEN.
JOHN McCAIN: What I argued was that if you really want to carry out
a conservative policy, cut taxes, for example. The reason why the tax
code is 44,000 pages long is every time we pass a bill, we put in a
lot of special breaks for special interests. Education reform. We've
got to break the grip of those who hold it in position. On HMOs, we've
got on the Democrat side the trial lawyers who want everybody to sue
everybody for everything; on the Republican side, we've got the insurance
companies and the HMOs. Average Americans are not represented, and if
we want to put education back in the hands of the local government,
if we want to cut taxes, if we want to reduce regulations, if we want
to give more money back to the average citizen, then I would argue that
campaign finance reform is really a conservative issue, as opposed to
a liberal one. 
MARGARET
WARNER: You had your own impugn --integrity impugned during the Keating
Five scandal. How does that relate to what you're doing now? I mean,
is that part of it? 
SEN.
JOHN McCAIN: I don't know. I don't think it's different from anybody
else's, but I believe that I am qualified to handle that part of the
job. I've taken the "11th Commandment." I'm not attacking
or criticizing anybody else. We'll have debates and compare ourselves
at those points, but I believe that my life experiences, my military
experience, my 13 years on the Senate Armed Services Committee in constant
involvement in national security issues qualifies me to sit in that
dark room. 
MARGARET
WARNER: Test Ban Treaty? 
