New Book: Kerry ‘Unfit for Command’

JENNINGS: Do you take some satisfaction from the fact that the Bush administration now needs you?McCAIN: No, I don't. I think what I have to look at is the future of the country. I am a friend of John Kerry's. I think he'd be a good president. I think this president proved himself with his leadership after Sept. 11th, and his strength, and his ability to lead the country.JENNINGS: Do you think the president has been the uniter, which he promised to be at the convention four years ago?McCAIN: No. But I'm not sure how much of it is his fault. And I'm sure that some of it's his fault, okay? But we have this bitterness from the Clinton impeachment, from the Florida election. He didn't have anything to do with the chads. We have a more bitterly partisan Congress and nation than I've ever seen, and it's regrettable. And I believe that the president, after he's reelected, will try to fix that.JENNINGS: George Bush's political party, as we'll call it, is, among other things, is not well disposed to Senator McCAIN. And it is argued by some that your embrace of President Bush, in this campaign, is really a recalculation of your own political self-interest.McCAIN: You know, I hope that most of the people who have known me for the last 22 years that I've been in public office wouldn't believe that. Because I think most Americans that know me, and my constituents in Arizona do, that I try to do what's right. And many times that has not been popular, particularly at first. But my goal right now is to be reelected to the Senate. Am I confident of reelection? Yes. Do the people of Arizona expect me to seek their support and campaign for it? Yes.JENNINGS: Do you think Kerry has made a serious miscalculation by making his Vietnam experience as big a deal as he has?McCAIN: I believe that it was probably a mistake to emphasize it as much as he did. I believe the reason why he did, so that they could inoculate themselves against the "Dukakis in the tank" routine. And perhaps they overplayed their hand. But it's awful easy for me to sit on the sidelines. In South Carolina, which you referred to, I way overreacted. Way overreacted to the things that were said about me. So I'm sure no expert on how to do it right.JENNINGS: Is [Kerry] not strong enough to be president?McCAIN: I think he's strong enough to be president. I just believe that President Bush has already proven his leadership by his conduct of himself and leadership of this country after Sept. 11th.JENNINGS: Is John Kerry able to handle foreign affairs as well as President Bush?McCAIN: I would think he would handle it well. But again, I give the same answer about leadership. I think the president has proven leadership.JENNINGS: We've got X-days left until the election itself. Are you disappointed that so much of the time has been given to this Swift Boat controversy [that attacked Kerry's war record], and not enough to other issues, which you believe profoundly in?McCAIN: I'm terribly disappointed. Today, probably a young American will die in Iraq tragically. And instead of trying to work together, or apart, trying to resolve how we can win this conflict in Iraq, which is by no means certain, we're going back and refighting a war that we can't erase a single name from the Vietnam War memorial. And I think it's just terrible, and I know a lot of veterans, who are 18-, 19-, 20-year-old kids. They fought honorably. They came home. And they were not well-treated by their fellow citizens. That dramatically exacerbated their problems. Some of them still haven't come all the way home. So we're reopening all of those wounds, and I'm deeply, deeply disturbed about it.JENNINGS: Do you think there has been some miscalculation in Iraq?McCAIN: Sure. And I complained about them at the time.JENNINGS: And what do you think it has been?McCAIN: I think that we didn't anticipate, as the president just said, the challenges that we face in the quote, post-combat phase. And I implore Secretary Rumsfeld to send more troops. But one of the reasons why we avoid wars, is because mistakes are made in wars. Gen. MacArthur told Harry Truman that the Chinese would not evade invade Korea. We always make mistakes.JENNINGS: Can you tell me specifically what mistakes you think were made?McCAIN: Specifically, we allowed the looting. We should have shot the looters immediately, which [would not have] created an environment of lawlessness. We obviously should have understood that we had to have more troops there in the way of linguists and special forces, and civil affairs people. We should have probably made a transition to an Iraqi government sooner rather than later. But the point is, you make mistakes, you recognize the mistakes, and you fix them. That's what we need to do.JENNINGS: Anything else you want to say?McCAIN: I believe that my party needs to go back more to the principles of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, my two personal heroes particularly on environmental issues. I believe that climate change is real. I think we need to address it in a more meaningful fashion. I think that we need to probably recognize that there are severe problems out there economically, and otherwise amongst lower income Americans. We've just seen those statistics.